today

Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday criticised the ruling Congress-NCP government for repealing the Urban Land Ceiling (Regulation) Act (ULCRA) and called on Shiv Sainiks not to allow the city to be hijacked by builders.

He said that if the poor did not get their due, the Sainiks would not allow a single brick to be laid for the proposed construction of high-rise apartments in the city. If slum dwellers were denied water at the expense of these high-rises, then water pipes would be broken, he warned.

He said slum dwellers would be affected by the Dharavi re-development plan and even the airport expansion plan would displace poor people. He said Mumbai need not beg the Centre for funds for re-development. At least 25 per cent of the taxes Mumbaikars paid must be returned to the city for re-development, he said.

The repealing of ULCRA would open the floodgates for builders and high-rise apartments. “Where will all the amenities come for these new buildings,” he asked.

On the one hand, the government was making way for builders and on the other, it had scrapped the “zhunka bhakar” stalls which used to sell cheap food.

IMO: Food is certainly dear enough already for the poor. The new supermarkets are all very well, for the well off, but the cost of their construction and management has to be met somewhere. Presumably costs will eventually be fully reflected in prices and company profits. In the U.K. food is very expensive and farmers are going bankrupt because they are being squeezed by the supermarkets. In India, prospects may be even worse because of the 123 agreement, which apparently at the present time may be projected to solve only 2% of India's power problems, horrible as they are here in Vasai. In fact the so-called global warming protest where city dwellers were told to turn the electricity off for an hour because of global warming, met the admittedly mildly sarcastic response from some : "we cannot do that, it is never on for an hour". Almost true, Vasai sometimes reminds one of Stalinist Russia, in the country - all black dark in places. So what will 123 do ? Well it is likely to provide GM food for India. This could ultimately, and fairly soon, mean that for India to have farms, they will be dependent on the US for GM grain replacements. i.e. they will have to pay enormous licence fees for GM food, and be under US control. The way the US beat Russia in the cold war, and could impoverish every Indian who may also, because of expensive housing due to the repealing, have no homes and no food. Just nuclear bombs, which they have already. The USA looks like a good target.

According to a BBC World Service report (about 4:30 pm Mumbai time). An overwhelming majority of a large audience at a BBC broadcast in Cairo a few minutes ago agreed that the only source of news they could trust was from bloggers. I gather that possible other sources included local broadcasts (specific examples of misleading information given), Fox News (of course) and by implication the BBC as well (I'm afraid I agree - up to a point). Hurrah for bloggers ! We are possibly the world's last bastion of freedom.

A further broadcast from the BBC, apparently unconnected to the one just before, by a Mr. Rosenberg,the son of the Rosenbergs murdered in cold blood by the American Government with the support of the U.S. public and media, stated with reasons that we seem to be entering an era in the U.S. rather like the days of Senator Joe McCarthy, the man involved in part in the inhumane removal of the U.S. citizenship of the harmless scientist David Bohm, and of course with many other much more important atrocities. Scientists particularly should now beware of all governments, especially the U.S. and British Governments. But hasn't it always been so ? Ariana Huffington's paper recently commented, somewhat snidely, that now the U.S. government has a much wider choice, including waterboarding with beatings and various other methods of torture described in her online newspaper.

If the U.S. has lost the lead in many things like shipbuilding (to China), car manufacture (to Japan) and movies (Hollywood is now a poor third after Mumbai and Chennai), at least the U.S.A. still leads the world in murder and torture.

'Mumbai, November 5: Mumbai’s proposed water transport service from Borivali to Nariman Point may be stuck in bureaucratic hurdles, but another route is now being proposed, to run from CBD Belapur to Vasai.

Thane’s guardian minister Ganesh Naik in a public function on Monday spoke of the possibility of starting a water route from CBD Belapur to Vasai and that its services could be taken up to the Gateway of India and Mahagiri in Thane.

Naik said that he has spoken to the state government in this matter and expects the services to start between Belapur and the Gateway of India as soon as possible.'

IMO: Such a ferry could be operated by well-tried catamarans and be very fast. But a similar service in Sydney down the Paramatta river to CBD was found by me to be mainly frequented by holidaymakers AFAIK, and ran intermittently and seemingly unreliably, though Australians like ferries for transport. Mumbai conditions are different of course, but a ferry to the Northern Oberoi Hotel has been mooted as long as I can remember and nothing done, at first I believe it was even to be a hovercraft. Also load capacity, even in a cat, tends to be limited. Still, it is a good idea.

All the trains were running empty on December 10th, photos everywhere in the Press show it. Sorry I was too busy to take a photo. Some estimate a boycott by 3 million commuters on that day, perhaps correctly.

The Times of India says the demand is "run a train to and from Virar, the last of the stations serving Mumbai's north-western suburbs, every five minutes.

The death count this year has already crossed 2,900. WR, thankfully, did not use force against protesters on Monday. The last such people's agitation, on the same day in December 2005, ended in violence as police — adding insult to injury — lobbed tear-gas shells and cane-charged demonstrators."

There are more deaths PER YEAR than for the entire "troubles" in Belfast. Present demands are fair and reasonable. Having travelled on the Mumbai WR in the last couple of days, my view is that self-closing doors seem a "must", but would clearly lead to additional big problems unless there are dramatic improvements elsewhere.

As per Railways own estimate, in peak hour trains 16-17 people are compelled to huddle together in one square meter of floor space for an hour or more! It is misery forced on millions of people by a ruling establishment which just does not care for the safety, health and dignity of citizens.

On the requirement of a train every 5 minutes from Virar, one site says "It’s time to think where the system stays if 30 lakh commuters decide to travel without tickets beyond Mira Road up to Virar. We have demonstrated our unity today …We can do it again".
MP of the North Mumbai constituency said, “As a former railway minister, I am aware of the problems faced by commuters. Things have not improved over the years. All the political parties are in support of the protest.”

There appear to have been no incidents of violence by commuters, the demo being totally peaceful on the commuter side.

Chairman Mao still seems to be a big word over here. I'm afraid we thought of him as rather a 'Chairman Mo' (remembering the long past comedian Roy Rene - 'Mo McCackie' of McCackie Mansions) in view of his 'thoughts' which were somehat crude aphorisms, rather along the lines of a passe comedian's wisecracks - almost 'detournement', one could say - but OTOH in some ways I suspect I take him more seriously than the Chinese themselves often do.

Educated Chinese, who may feel they owe much from the country of China which they will never find a moral right to receive, openly suggest that whilst Chairman Mao was a great man and did much for the Chinese people, eventually he lacked the knowledge, ability and specifically the sophistication that was needed to run a modern China. I'm not so sure. I think that further revolutions may have been necessary for more than the obvious reasons. I look at the flea markets of Beijing today and somehow can't see most of the people working there ending up better off in the long term. China is a kind of Thatcherite leap forward. There is too much competition in those stalls and markets and Thatcher's redundant people basically never made a go it, but the 'small businesses' simply took a little of the sting out of the sack - and the UK could roughly afford all this, what with the other shenanigans going on. The whole of China probably cannot afford this sort of thing.

The tipping point may really be a war with the US - and in Australia I saw ore train after ore train, with half of Australia seeming to be carted away (with no firm future price guarantees) under the noses of Aussie 'Pig Iron Bob' (Menzies) types to turn into ha'penny knick knacks for deeply indebted Americans - and believe me, the USA is in hock up to the eyeballs with China and is in a 'can't pay - won't pay' situation. With liars like Bush being believed, a war may be the only way to get both countries out of the economic shambles they are in because of the lunacy of the homespun Marxist and Capitalist dogmas they each seem to hold so dear, and which are simply not good enough for modern conditions. Both America and China badly need an economic overhaul, and for US politicians the only way seems to be war or isolation.

I give China a marginally better chance than America - if the US turn their back on their own people - Gustavus Myers ("History of the Great American Fortunes") being just one classic example - the US still has hundreds and thousands like Donald Trump and call that "democracy" and "free speech". China at least had Chairman Mao, and hopefully others of that ilk now. That's not economics, and I have no way through. But what does look important could lie in educating the masses in China, by carefully committing to a reduction of censorship and improvement of chances of free speech and personal rights to individual assessment - without running the country in a way half way between Rupert Murdoch and Joe Stalin, which seems more likely.

Its all very difficult and when in NZ I felt that the whites over there seemed to be on their way to becoming no than poorly paid servants of a new Chinese wealthy upper-middle class - presumably 'refugees'. As one of my aboriginal friends put it to me many years ago "we don't want the Asian criminals over here in Australia too, the white criminals we already have are more than enough