Death on the way to Europe

Since 1992, United compiled reports from journalists, academics, government sources, and NGOs. According to United’s work, there has been over 14,000 casualties within the “Fortress of Europe” since 1988.

The majority of these deaths – well over 11,000 – occurred before they even entered European territory (4,696 deaths in Africa alone). Nearly 10,000 drowned in the Mediterranean due to their ship sinking. These boats fall to the ocean floor from attacks either in open waters or near the coast, or from trying to flee from the police seeking to take the migrants in for questioning.

864 died from thirst and hunger. The majority were either lost in the desert or drifting at sea;

Nearly 300 died from suffocation in a truck;

254 were murdered;

More than 250 were crushed while either attempting to cross highways or by falling off a truck;

215 died from frostbite;

Between 138 to 335 committed suicide by hanging, 4 died on hunger strikes and 33 by other means of suicide.

via owni.eu

Some of the countries which, in the long term, will be in most need of a young, able, work force is ones in which a lot of the people fitting that very profile is dying while trying to reach to.

http://owni.eu/2011/03/04/app-fortress-europe-a-deadly-exodus/

Thank to Madhura for sharing the link.

Pang, boom, mr Cool!

via youtube.com

Swedish music is quite nice!

Recipe for being allowed to stay in India

See the full gallery on Posterous

One month
Two brown envelopes (NOT TO BE OPENED)
Three copies of everything
16 passport photos
40 hours at the FRRO and MHA (across 9 visits)
1000 Rs in auto fairs

Mix it all with a large dose of frustration, required patience and random queue number systems and what do you get?

One visa extended.

No toilet, no bride – but what happens after the party?

If you don’t have a toilet at home, you might not get a bride in India. In a silent revolution of sorts, Indian women across the country, especially in rural and semi-urban areas, have a single condition before they agree to a match – the groom must have a toilet in his home.

The “No Toilet, No Bride” campaign, initiated by the government, is co-opting young women to bring in much-needed social change. Across the country, more people have access to mobile phones than to toilets.

Ranjana Kumari, director of Centre for Social Research, one of the NGOs involved in the campaign, says it has succeeded in certain areas. “Lack of basic hygiene at present is very much a marginalised farmer’s practice,” she says. “There are affluent communities with land and concrete houses who are now building toilets.”

An interesting campaign, but question is what happens after the bride’s purchasing power is greatly (completely) reduced, ie. after marriage? Installing toilets (especially where central plumbing is not available) is not a one-off thing, but requires a long-term construction and maintenance (of course you could argue the same for marriages, but well, that’s not what happens all the time)…

Read the full article at guardian.co.uk

Buying plants

Taken at Bhogal

My backup plan in case my visa got rejected

via youtube.com

Ethnic cooks are exempt from India’s visa rules requiring somebody working here to earn more than $25 000 per year.

Thanks for the visa – however FRRO this is how you made me feel today

via youtube.com

After receiving my message of renewed visa at 9:45 am, I had to stay until 1:30 pm only to know that I had to come back another day with more papers in order to get it actually stamped.

8:30 am at the FRRO part 2

The Afghans clearly “own” the FRRO. They have divided the seats of the waiting section into a male side and a female side (there is no such official division as far as I know), and they are trying to enforce it stringently.

One of the ladies has been talking about moving me (in pushto) for the past 5 min. Not one being big on such appropriation of public space by any group I am stubbornly remaining in the seat I sat in when I came.

8:30 am Foreigners Regional Registration Bureau

I am glad I am not a national of Afghanistan – then I would be number 100-something, being “other national (non-Afghan)” I am just number 18.

Nanos, communal tension and kites

I’ve always been quite fond of kites. I remember that I used to think it was a pity that there seldom was enough wind where I grew up to really support any intensive amount of kite-flying. That’s a problem that Ahmedabad in Gujarat definitely didn’t have. In fact, Ahmedabad (as many places in north India) has a holiday (as in day off work) completely dedicated to kite-flying. I decided that this couldn’t be missed.

Arriving with the night train from Delhi, I was met by a big sign saying that this was the home of the Tata Nano – you know that car of cheapo-fame that the Tata group set out to produce a couple of years back. The factory was originally to be constructed in Singur in West Bengal, however after farmer’s started protesting due to what amounted to a forced landgrab by the West Bengal state government, the Tata’s decided to move the factory here to Gujarat. Farmers and workers in Singur, having been displaced, had their land & livelihood taken away for a pittance, as well as been ditched on promised jobs never created, are still facing the fall-out of these incidents.

The Tata factory is not the only industry to open in Gujarat, indeed, it’s one of the richer states in India, and it’s something that can certainly be felt in Ahmedabad. Outside of the older areas of the city stretches great boulevards with restaurants, clubs and manicured parks. One person who’d like to lay claim to these “achievements” is Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat. This jet-setting politician has been heavily courting foreign investment and has become a bit of a poster boy in for “industrializing India” in investor’s eyes. When I was there he was just about to host “Vibrant Gujarat” a conference bringing together politicians, businessmen and investors from all over the world in Ahmedabad. Even the Economist gave him a rosy sheen recently.

However, Modi also represents the very darkest side of this supposedly friendly and manicured place. Gujarat, home-state of Gandhi and the place where his ashram was located, have seen some of the worst ethnic tensions in recent years in all of India. In 2002, over 1000 people (mostly muslims) were killed in religious riots. Modi, who represents the far-right party BJP party and have been linked to paramilitary RSS, oversaw these horrific events and seems to have not only let it happen but sometimes even incited and/or facilitated these events. He has since taken measures to fudge the as of yet unfinished inquiry into the events. This is a picture of Modi that you might miss if you’re reading foreign press – and while it might be comfortable to look straight ahead at the well tended avenues and “developed industries” you don’t have to go very far to find slums of displaced people (again mostly muslims).

So, what about the kites? Well, I did do quite a bit of kite-watching, but I must admit that tracing the strict separation between Hindu and Muslim districts and slums, as well as imagining the tensions and destruction that must have been there while visiting mosques and muslim meat-markets had me a bit distracted.

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