US companies can play major role in India infra sectors: FM
As PERIYARISM is LOST in Tamil Film Industry Brahaminical Galamour and Corruption all ROUND, Dynasty rule, Matua Movement in Bengal lost way since PR Thakur was made Matua Head. since Ambedkar was Elected form SC quota in Bengal, PR Thakur felt DEPRIVED and the Matua Movement herefrom led by descendents of Great Harichand Thakur Guruchand Thakur had a TURNAROUND to be LOST in Brahaminasation and ANTI AMBEDKAR emotions which undermined the greater ineters of SC, OBC, ST and Muslim communities specifically in Benagl and beyond. Now, pathetically Matau Movement has become the INSTRUMENT in the Tug of war between two Prominent Brahaminical factons led by One Bhattachary and One Bandopaddhyay!Diversion of Matua Movement has led to nationwide deportation Drive against resettled bengali Sc and OBC communities on the one hand and on the other, DISINTEGRATING MUSLIM SC ST OBC UNIFIED Peasntry it has HELPD the Maoist and CORPORATE LPG Mafia Menace to take over the ABORIGINAL Humanscape countrywide, where US Operationfor GOLD RUSH in AMAZON River zone all over in Latin AMERICA is mercilessly REPLICATED!
Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time -FIVE HUNDRED EIGHTY Four
Palash Biswas
http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/
http://basantipurtimes.blogspot.com/
Periyarism is dead in Tamil Nadu! I have already dealt with this issue. I have been talking to Tamil Intellectuals including Brahmins. I have been in the suthern states Tamilnadu, Kerala and Karnataka in last November.
As PERIYARISM is LOST in Tamil Film Industry Brahaminical Galamour and Corruption all ROUND, Dynasty rule, Matua Movement in Bengal lost way since PR Thakur was made Matua Head. since Ambedkar was Elected form SC quota in Bengal, PR Thakur felt DEPRIVED and the Matua Movement herefrom led by descendents of Great Harichand Thakur Guruchand Thakur had a TURNAROUND to be LOST in Brahaminasation and ANTI AMBEDKAR emotions which undermined the greater ineters of SC, OBC, ST and Muslim communities specifically in Benagl and beyond. Now, pathetically Matau Movement has become the INSTRUMENT in the Tug of war between two Prominent Brahaminical factons led by One Bhattachary and One Bandopaddhyay!
Diversion of Matua Movement has led to nationwide deportation Drive against resettled bengali Sc and OBC communities on the one hand and on the other, DISINTEGRATING MUSLIM SC ST OBC UNIFIED Peasntry it has HELPD the Maoist and CORPORATE LPG Mafia Menace to take over the ABORIGINAL Humanscape countrywide, where US Operationfor GOLD RUSH in AMAZON River zone all over in Latin AMERICA is mercilessly REPLICATED!
I stayed for three days in Coimbtore in Tamilnadu where I met Dr. V.V. SUBRAHMANYAM once again. We have been meeting for last few years. In Coimbtore and Durgapur, West bengal where we did attend National Convention of Mulnivasi Bamcef, we dealt with the issue with other intellectuals of the Dravidnadu.
Now, Dr. V.V. SUBRAHMANYAM has shifted to his home state in KURNOOL, Andhra and has written an article on the same topic in Dalit Voice! It is a burning Problem as Aboriginal Indigenous Dravidian Negroid Mulnivasi Brotherhod of Eighty Five Percent Majority Population of Bonded Enslaved Mulnivasi Bahujan Communities are NOT only EXCLUDED from Economy and Polity, but they are under Monopolistic Aggression!
India is ruled by the Governement of Extraconstitutional elements, Washington Super Slaves, India Incs, MNCs and LPG Mafia with as Open Glorified Agenda of Mass Destruction powered by Strategic Nuclear Zionist Brhaminical Alliance in US and Israel lead!
Operation Amezon has been launched in Indian aboriginal Indigenous Humanscape whereas our Mulnivasi Brotherhood is Uprooted, Displaced, Defaced and Demonised and does suffer continuous EXODUS and Ethnic Cleansing and HOLOCAUST since Power Transfer to Brahamin Bania Corporate Corrupt Raj!
In Bengal, Guruchand Thakur, folowing his Great Father Harichand Thakur who launched Anti Brahaminical Matua Movement, did UNIFIED BENGALI Untouchable communities and launched NAMOSHUDRA Movement demanding Abolishion of Untouchability, Annihilition of caste, TEBHAGA, Land Rights and Land Reforms and moreover, Separate ELECTORATE for Untouchables.
This movement created leaders like Mukund Bihari Malick and Jogendra Nath mandal who backed by strong Peasantry of Muslims, Tribals and SC OBC Demography of more than NINETY Percent Population in Bengal,not only did succeed to oust Caste Hindu Brahaminical Class out of Political Power in Bengal but also did ELECT DR BR Ambedkar to the Constitution Assembly to ensure Constitutional safeguards for SC, ST and OBC communities!
The Mulnivasi Movement shaped in National Geopolitics with Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra along with South India being the strongest bases.
Thus, the Mischief Master, Gandhi and his zionist Clan led by Kashmiri Pundit JL Nehru partitioned India and DIVIDED Bengal as well as Punjab to kill the stings of Mulnivasi National Movement.
The followers of Matua and NAMOSHUDRA Movement and DR Ambedkar were EJECTED out from their Homelnad and Scattered countrywide and made DEPRIVED of Citizenship, Reservation, Mother Tongue, civic and Human Rights.
Bengali SC OBC refugees were resettled in Tribal areas countrywide and Brahamins pitted SC OBC Bengalies and later the Tamil Refugees following Periyarism Anti Brahamin against the MOST Militant ST Communities.
Only in the FIVE States ANDHRA, MAHARASHTRA,MP, ORRISSA and CHHATISHGARG no less than TWENTY MILLION Bengali SC OBC Refugees are Resettled in Tribal areas.
Now, under OPERATION AMOZEN undeclared, all the Natural resources and Mines and Minerals, water and Land have to be handed over to India Incs and MNCs, systematically MAOIST menace Inflicted in the ABORIGINAL Humanscape to accomplish the agenda of EXODUS, Holocaust and Military ACTIONS.
Only in CHHATISHGARGH THREE Hundred Sixty Thousnad bengali refugees mostly NAMOSHUDRA have been resettled under Dandakarany Project! In Malkangiri and navrangpur distrcists of ORRISSA, HUNDREDS of Bengali Colonies are established under the same Project. Garchiroli, CHANDRAPUR and GONDIA districts in Maharashtra, Shadaul, Panna and Baitul districts in M.P. have refugeee colnies and so the ADILABAD Subdivision of ANDHRA undre Dandakarany Project!
Mind you, these seettlements are PURELY Refugee Settlements and the so called Illegal bangladeshi Migrants concentrate in mostly Bengal and METRO cities of India.
But the Deportion DRIVE is launched in DANDAKARNYA States to clear decks for FREE and INDISCRIMINATE land Acquisition for Urbanisation, Industrialisation, Infrstructure, SEZ, PCPIR, Nuclear Plants and Big dams, NOT and NEVER in Bengal or in any of the METRO cities. Thus, Citizenship Amendment act as well as UNIQUE Identity Project Target the TRIBAL Aboriginal World where the SC OBC Bengali and Tamil refugees are resetlled ! Hence Periyarism and Matua Movement MUST be the MOST Relevan and mandatory forces of RSISTANCE!
Meanwhile,The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Sunday summoned Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Telecom Minister Arun Shourie, in connection with its probe into the 2G spectrum scam!On the other hand,Stepping up her attack on DMK's first family on 2G spectrum scam, AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa today demanded that Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, his daughter Kanimozhi, wife Rajathi and all others who had "maintained close contacts" with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia be interrogated by CBI to bring out the truth behind the scam.
"This has to be done immediately, for, the nation – the people -- have a right to know the whole truth," Jayalalithaa said in a statement here.
Inviting the US investment in India's infrastructure sector, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said American companies can play an important role in the sector by setting up joint venture entities here.
India requires $1 trillion investment in infrastructure, of which it expects 50 per cent from the private sector, in the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17).
"... we need large investment in infrastructure sector projects in which US companies can play a major role through export of equipment and establishing joint venture companies," Mukherjee said.
The visiting US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke called upon Mukherjee to discuss relationships between the two countries.
Mukherjee further said there was a large potential to expand relationship between the two countries, mainly in the economic and financial sector.
"India and the US have strong strategic partnership especially in the field of defence, space and nuclear science among others," he added.
The Indo-US trade during January - November 2010 is estimated at $45 billion.
He appreciated the US leadership for supporting India's claim for permanent membership in UN Security Council. Mukherjee said that institutional and regulatory framework helped both the countries in further strengthening their relationship in civil nuclear cooperation.
Locke said that both the countries can mutually benefit from further expanding their trade and economic relationship.
He mentioned about various steps taken by US administration to further strengthen their strategic partnership. He specifically mentioned about removal of ISRO and DRDO from its entities list.
The US had recently removed Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) from its restricted entities list.
"India and USA can further expand their relationship in agriculture, weather forecasting, multi combat aircraft and economic and financial sector among others," Locke added.
The various conversations that Radia had with different members of the Karunanidhi family could not be dismissed lightly, she said, adding, they all knew that Radia was in a osition to "deliver" what she took up.
"If the truth behind how the Prime Ministerial prerogative of appointing ministers was usurped by outsiders had to come out, Karunanidhi and his family members should be interrogated by the CBI," she said.
Former telecom minister Arun Shourie will appear before the CBI next week in connection with the agency's probe into possible criminal aspects in the telecom policy since 2001.
The CBI approached Shourie last week asking him to appear before the agency in connection with the Preliminary Enquiry registered by the agency following a direction from the Supreme Court.
The PE was registered against "unknown persons" with an aim to ascertaining as to whether the "first-come-first-serve basis" provision passed by the then Cabinet led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee was followed or not, officials said here.
Shourie, however, said that someone had called his home when he was away and that he later conveyed to the agency that he will appearing before it on February 21 after his return from Kolkata.
The CBI was likely to go into the minutes of the meetings held by successive Telecom Ministers which included late Pramod Mahajan, Shourie and Dayanidhi Maran.
Periyarism is dead in Tamil Nadu
Dr. V.V. SUBRAHMANYAM, 87/705-MAHAVEER COLONY, KAMALA NAGAR, B CAMP-2, KURNOOL - 518 002
Beneficiaries of Periyar E.V.Ramaswamy have conveniently forgotten Periyar. Because of Periyar millions of people belonging to SC/ST/BC, minorities and women are benefitted and leading a decent and respectable life. But the educated elite, the employed people of Tamil Nadu, however, slowly moved away from Periyarism. Private, public institutions, industries, schools, colleges, state and Central Govt. offices in TN have built temples for Aryan gods. Each table in all these offices is decorated with devi-devatas.
Police guard Periyar statue: Popular newspapers are vying with each other to bring minor and major religious functions to the people. All the religious events have become front page news. Cinema and TV are also playing a decisive role in reviving Aryan culture.
Periyarism is completely wiped out from TN. As Periyarism became weak and toothless, the enemy camp became strong. DMK and AIDMK rule did not help sustain and nurture Periyarism.
The conditions have become so serious that Periyar statue is guarded by the police. What is the use if Periyarism is in the hands of good-for-nothing people and confined to libraries. It was never taken beyond the boundaries of TN. The Tamil masses are confused and misled in the name of Tamil language and Tamil culture.
Aryan-Brahmin culture: In the name of Tamil culture, our leaders are supporting and strengthening the Aryan-Brahmin culture instead of the Dravidian culture. Today's Tamilian speaks Tamil language but lives in Aryan-Brahmin culture. All the educational institutions are conducting lectures and training on yoga, dhyana, "positive thinking" etc. etc. A DMK minister wants to introduce yoga in all educational institutions.
Periyar never depended on yoga and he never recommended yoga. The reactionary elements are injecting poison into the young minds. The struggle of Periyar and the Dravidian culture is being pounded and trampled under the feet of these religious fundamentalists.
Right thinking people should come forward to stop the anti-Periyar reactionary activity and dedicate themselves to propagate and establish Periyarism.
This task is very essential in the interest of SC/ST/BC and women of the Tamil Nadu in particular. If we do not discharge our duty now we will have to pay a heavy price in future. Take care and act now.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/feb2011/articles.htm
Eye on polls, Mamata joins Matua sect
Express News Service
Tags : trinamool congress, polls
Posted: Sun Dec 06 2009, 04:05 hrs
Kolkata:
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The Matua Mahasangha (a religious sect of Dalits) today inducted Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in its organisation as a life member at a ceremony at Thakurnagar in North 24 Parganas, about 50 km from Kolkata.
Political circles described the move by Mamata as another step towards consolidating her "vote bank" as the "Motuas" has a large following of about three million people in two districts of Bengal. The sect members are known to follow its chief's diktats during elections.
On Saturday, after attending several railway programmes in North 24 Parganas, Mamata landed at the sect's headquarters at Thakurnagar in the evening. There, she was given the honor of a life-time membership during a ceremony that was attended by a large number of people, mostly disciples.
The Trinamool chief
has been cultivating the community ever since her agitations in Nandigram and Singur, where hundreds of people belonging to the backward class were hurt by the state government's plan for land acquisition. Since then, the Trinamool has maintained a close relation with the "Matua" community.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/eye-on-polls-mamata-joins-matua-sect/550520/
Buddha lays foundation of college to woo Matua community
31 January 2011
Barasat, 31 JAN: In a bid to woo the Matua community ahead of Assembly polls, the chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee laid foundation of a new college named after Matua patriarchs, Harichad and Guruchad Thakur, in Chandpara of North 24-Parganas today.
The college is going to be built up on 5 acres of land given by the state agriculture department. After the Left Front suffered electoral set backs in the successive elections held in the past two years, the CPI-M led state government launched several efforts to woo the community, which could emerge as a deciding factor in some Assembly segments.
As a part of its effort to woo the community, the chief minister had promised to set up a new college in the area dominated by the community. During the programme, the chief minister said: "Motuas requested me for a college in this area and I requested the agriculture minister for the land required to set up the college. I have already urged the higher education minister to arrange the required funds for the new college building. We would start work for the college building soon. Students of this area who belong to the backward classes would get the benefit of the college."
Meanwhile, a few Trinamul activists staged a demonstration near Nagarukhra More in Habra protesting against acquisition of agricultural land. sns
http://thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=357471&catid=72
Telengana & "nationality question"
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Bangalore: Whatever the ruling upper castes may say, India is not a "nation and never a nation". It is a sub-continent of hundreds of warring "nations".
The moment India got "independence" (1947), Muslims got separated to form their own nation. But the Bengali-speaking Muslims were not happy with the Urdu-speaking nation and got themselves separated.
Nationality struggles are going on in different parts of India. The latest to erupt are the Kashmiri Muslims who are forcibly kept within India.
Now comes yet another explosion of Telengana which once again proves that a language does not make a nation.
Caste — A nation within nation: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is India's only philosopher who scientifically dealt with the nationality question in India. We wrote on this question of what constitutes a "nation" elaborately in our book, Caste — A Nation Within the Nation (Books for Change, Bangalore, 2002, Rs. 140), concluding that "caste" comes nearest to the concept of a nation.
The Hindu terrorist outfit, Abhinav Bharat, says that in its proposed "Hindu nation" only the Brahmin caste will hold the power, governed by the constitution of Manu Dharma. In other words, the Brahmins have endorsed our view that "Caste is a nation".
India will break into pieces: What is the implication of this Abhinav Bharat (AB) resolve? It means the already divided India will break into pieces if the Brahmins in the Army were to capture power by staging a coup with the help of their sympathisers inside.
The states reorganisation took place giving each language a state of its own. Telugu-speaking areas from 2-3 states were merged and AP was formed but now the Telengana Telugu-speakers are demanding a separate state — thus proving language does not unite a people.
Brahmins form a nation: What comes closest to the "nation" is the caste. That the Abhinav Bharat has brought together all fascist Brahmins but rest of the Brahmins did not denounce AB proves that Brahmins do constitute a nation.
That India, a boiling cauldron of hundreds of castes and communities, is in for a violent bloodbath is evident from the Telengana outburst and the AB decision to clamp Manuwadi Brahmin dictatorship.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/feb2011/reports.htm
Shaken by the CBI's claim that it had received funds from an under-scanner firm owned by an alleged beneficiary of the 2G scam, the DMK's official channel Kalaignar TV denied any connection between the controversial spectrum allocation in 2007-08 and the loan extended by a Mumbai-based company to it.
In a signed statement, the managing director of the channel, Sharad Kumar, denied any connection "between the spectrum allocation made in 2007-2008 by the Department of Telecom and the loan given by the Cineyug Communications to Kalaignar TV in 2009".
The Rs 200 crore Cineyug gave to the channel was as an advance for shares, it said. "But due to differences in share valuation, Kalaignar TV assumed it as a loan till August 2009," after which the money was returned with an interest of Rs 31 crore.
The details of transactions were provided to the Income Tax department and tax had been paid, claimed Sharad in the statement. "Everything was done within the legal framework. It is an open book," he said.
Matuas given 20-cottah plot to set up research foundation
TNN, Feb 3, 2011, 05.40am IST
KOLKATA: The Matua Mahasangha was handed over 20 cottah at Rajarhat New Town on Wednesday to set up the Harichand Guruchand Research Foundation.
Around 3,500 to 4,000 members of the Matua community were present on the occasion. Their spiritual head Boroma, however, was not present.
Housing minister and Hidco chairman Gautam Deb said he did not initially know much about the Matua community and their history. "The Matuas have 300 years of history behind them. I did not know much about them. It was Biman Bose who told me that a Matua conference was to be held at the city. It was then that I contacted former education minister Kanti Biswas to know more about them," he said.
Deb brushed aside any political motive in handing over the plot. "Many are asking me why I am entering into a matter of the Matuas. I am feeling proud at helping them. What politics is in this? Why is such a big issue being made about whether Boroma could be present or not on the occasion? It is a huge occasion for all of us and there is no party or politics involved in this," Deb said.
Deb added that in matters of vote shares, the Left Front has always got "cent percent" votes from the tribal communities. "The government has given plots to 56% people from the OBCs in the state. It has also been decided that people from the tribal communities will get pension after 60 years of age and tribal students will get subsidy in education," the minister said.
Kapil Krishna Thakur, Boroma's elder son, said there has been a "conspiracy" to prevent this research foundation from coming up. "There have been conspiracies in making this research foundation happen but we have overcame the troubles," he said.
Boroma sent a letter to Deb, in which she said that she was very happy that a plot has been handed over to the Matuas for setting up the research foundation.
Read more: Matuas given 20-cottah plot to set up research foundation - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Matuas-given-20-cottah-plot-to-set-up-research-foundation/articleshow/7415211.cms#ixzz1DqvcouQS
Votebank bait blurs enemy lines
TNN, Dec 29, 2010, 06.01am IST
KOLKATA: The Matuas - a subaltern religious sect, comprising mainly lower caste, poor Hindu refugees from East Pakistan/Bangladesh - achieved the near impossible by getting top CPM and Trinamool Congress leaders on the same stage at Esplanade on Tuesday, along with those of the Congress, the BJP and the Forward Bloc.
It's proof that the Matuas are a force no party in Bengal can ignore. The community, a 5-lakh-strong vote base, first made its presence felt in the Bongaon assembly bypolls in 2006 when it rose against the CPM and handed the ruling party a crushing defeat.
This is why CPM leaders Gautam Deb and Kanti Biswas could not refuse the Matua Mahasangh invite for a mega rally in the city to place their chief demand - citizenship rights to Bangladeshi refugees who moved to India after 1971. There were no slogans or political banners. The Matuas announced their might with conch shells and drums and "horibol" on their lips.
While the mega rally choked the heart of the city, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee entertained a Matua delegation at Writers' and assured he would take up their demands with the Centre.
On the dais, Pradesh Congress chief Manas Bhuniya promised to speak to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, PM Manmohan Singh and home minister P Chidambaram by the second week of January.
Former BJP state chief Tathagata Roy repeatedly pointed out his party had all along been sympathetic to Hindu refugees fleeing Bangladesh even after May 25, 1971. Trinamool MP Mukul Roy, the Union MoS for shipping, also showed along with party MP Gobinda Naskar and MLA Jyotipriya Mullick (both representatives of Matua-dominated areas).
Roy and Deb shared the dais for a few minutes before the Trinamool leader got a call on his mobile and climbed down. He spent the rest of the afternoon at a nearby tea stall.
Deb congratulated the Matua organizers for being able to rally all mainstream parties. "It makes me happy to see Congress, CPM, Trinamool and BJP leaders on stage. You have a valid point. Let all MPs from Bengal set aside their political differences and take up with Delhi the plight of the refugees.
When it comes to the interest of state, we should not stick to narrow politics. My department did not hesitate to hand over 72 acres of land in Haldia to Kolkata Port Trust although Trinamool's Mukul Roy is the minister of state for shipping," the Bengal housing minister said.
Read more: Votebank bait blurs enemy lines - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Votebank-bait-blurs-enemy-lines/articleshow/7182271.cms#ixzz1DqvtGcQ1
Tug Of War Over Matua Millions
Jayanta Gupta, TNN, Mar 26, 2009, 05.17am IST
A huge cutout of CPM candidate from Bongaon Asim Bala greets the unending stream of devotees on their way to Baruni Mela in Thakurnagar. A few hundred yards down the narrow road, a gate bears photographs of Mamata Banerjee, paying her respects to Barama the religious leader of the 50-million strong Matua community in the country.
Over 10 million of them (read voters in election season) live in Bengal alone. What's more, in the Bongaon Lok Sabha constituency the Matuas are more than a force to reckon with. They may be the deciding factor.
The number is enough to understand why transport minister Subhas Chakraborty and Left Front leader from Tripura Anil Sarkar went all the way to Thakurnagar. Chakraborty touched the feet of Binapani Devi (the Matua guru) on Tuesday evening and made many promises.
Mamata was not to be left out. "Barama ke amar sotokoti pronam (My deepest respects to Barama)," says one of her banners. Apart from Mamata, it bears the names of Trinamool Congress candidate Gobinda Naskar and Gaighata MLA Jyotipriya Mullick. Another Trinamool gate welcomes the devotees and has photographs of Mamata, Barama and the mela grounds.
No politics here, apparently. Save for a banner on one of the pillars of the gate, dedicating it to the memory of Singur's Tapasi Mullick. After all Tapasi was a Scheduled Caste girl and so are the Matuas.
Even Bahujan Samaj Party has put up banners on the way to the mela ground in Thakurnagar, some 75 km from Kolkata, close to the India-Bangladesh border of Petrapole.
The week-long Baruni Mela attracts 2.5-3 million devotees every year but rarely has the Thakurbari, where the mela is organized, been a popular destination for political parties. Party banners and gates line the roads. Shelters with drinking water facilities have been set up. Elsewhere, political workers guide devotees and help them find parking spaces or a place to spend the night.
Ever since the mela started on Tuesday, Jyotipriya Mullick and Forward Bloc MLA Haripada Biswas have set up camp at Thakurnagar. At the Trinamool rally held at Gaighata on Monday evening, both Gobinda Naskar and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar candidate from neighbouring Barasat were seen sporting badges of the Matua Mahasangha.
The Matua community is not particularly pleased with this fawning by political parties. "Everybody can come here and seek Barama's blessings. We know that this huge gathering looks very attractive to all political parties. After all, people from across the state congregate here. However, we shall not allow any political party to use this platform for their own purposes," said Rabi Haldar, vice-president of the advisory committee to the Mahasangha and joint secretary of the mela committee.
"Gates and banners have been put up without the knowledge of the Mahasabha. We also do not like Barama's photographs being used by parties. We cannot prevent anybody from coming here but we can request political leaders to get in touch with the Mahasangha before trying to get in touch with the devotees."
The Matua community primarily consists of the lower castes who migrated from Bangladesh. They follow the teachings of Harichand and Guruchand Thakur. The latter's grandson Pramatha Ranjan Thakur gave up his practice as a barrister at Calcutta High Court to become the president of the Mahasangha. On March 13, 1948, he founded Thakurnagar after purchasing the land from one Janad Kumari Dasi.
Parties are falling over each other to woo the Mahasangha as the Matuas are one of the best organized communities in the country. The community is divided into registered groups of 500 in all districts, each having a dalapati (group head). Every group has to have a membership of at least 11. In villages where Matuas are fewer in number, heads of families are allotted membership cards with the names of family members. Every family has to pay Rs 5 per month or Rs 50 per year as membership fees. In this way, the Mahasangha keeps stock of all members of the community. No wonder, those in the Mahasangha wield considerable influence over the members.
"The Mahasangha does not have any political affiliation. We do not tell anybody to vote for a particular political party. However, the Mahasangha has the power to call upon all members and ask them to rally behind us for any cause that affects the community. This is why political parties find us so powerful," Haldar adds.
Matua leaders say that Trinamool MLA Jyotipriya Mullick has been by their side for years. In the last few months, others have joined in and extended largesse for development of the Thakurbari. Former MP Debabrata Biswas and MP Subrata Basu have donated Rs 15 lakh each towards setting up of an old-age home in the complex. Mamata has donated Rs 33 lakh towards renovation of the Thakurbari pond (known as Kamanasagar) where devotees take a dip. She has promised Rs 60 lakh more for the renovation.
The Matua leadership do not mind donations whether they are from politicians or community members. However, they firmly believe that today's politicians are a far cry from the likes of P R Thakur, who had been an MLA as well as an MP during his lifetime. There are problems of development within the community that no political party has been able to address. It seems that mere chin-wagging during the Baruni Mela will not suffice to woo the Matua voters.
Read more: Tug Of War Over Matua Millions - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata-/Tug-Of-War-Over-Matua-Millions/articleshow/4316358.cms#ixzz1Dqw8REC0
DMK out of two crucial cabinet panels
TNN, Feb 12, 2011, 12.29am IST
NEW DELHI: M Karunanidhi's DMK is out of crucial cabinet committees on economic affairs and infrastructure, a development reflecting the Tamil Nadu outfit's reduced weight in UPA after the 2G spectrum scam authored by former telecom minister A Raja.
But the cabinet panels are also the tale of return of Dayanidhi Maran as the key DMK interlocutor in Delhi, finding membership in cabinet panels on political affairs, parliamentary affairs and WTO affairs. MK Alagiri, strongman from Karunanidhi family and Union minister, is a member of the cabinet committee on prices.
The committees redrawn after the ministerial reshuffle in January bear the mark of the 2G scam. Raja, who was sacked from the Union cabinet, has left a void in the economic affairs and infrastructure panels.
The DMK's absence is conspicuous because it dominated the heavyweight infrastructure ministries in UPA regimes. Raja was only DMK minister left in these ministries in UPA-2, a far cry from the previous regime when the party ruled shipping, highways and transport, and telecom.
The emergence of Congress as a stronger coalition core in 2009 reduced the clout of DMK and the Prime Minister vetoed its claim on shipping and highways, the fief of TR Baalu.
There is little likelihood of telecom ministry reverting to DMK now but much would depend on the outcome of the April assembly election which has more than chief ministership at stake for the ruling party in Tamil Nadu.
Dayanidhi Maran's, however, is an interesting story. The Union textiles minister, who was out of favour in DMK in the latter part of UPA-1, has regained some muscle with membership in key panels as his party's representative. Maran was blamed for instigating the feud between brothers Alagiri and deputy chief minister MK Stalin and had to resign from the Union cabinet. He regained the ministerial berth in UPA-2.
The political affairs and parliamentary affairs panels have lost clout after the marginalisation of allies in UPA-2 but Maran is the DMK man for party inputs on key issues. These panels give representation to all allies like Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee and Farooq Abdullah.
DMK sources said the suave former telecom minister gained ground because his bete-noire and Union fertlisers and chemicals minister Alagiri is focussed on state politics.
Maran's slot in the committee on WTO affairs is on account of his ministerial responsibility because textiles forms a big part of the multilateral regime. Alagiri is in the prices panel because of his ministerial role in chemicals and fertilisers.
Read more: DMK out of two crucial cabinet panels - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/DMK-out-of-two-crucial-cabinet-panels/articleshow/7478187.cms#ixzz1DqpTCnMc
'A Raja made Rs 3,000cr in bribes'
Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN, Feb 11, 2011, 01.37am IST
NEW DELHI: The CBI and Enforcement Directorate investigations have estimated that former telecom minister A Raja could have got bribes to the tune of Rs 3,000 crore, and have put the loss to the exchequer due to selling of spectrum at undervalued rates at Rs 40,000-50,000 crore.
The two agencies have linked bribes Raja allegedly got to his order on January 2008 bringing forward the cut-off date for applications for spectrum from the initial October 21, 2007 to September 25, 2007. The deadline switch eliminated many applications, enabling Raja to favour a few with spectrum. In the process, he allegedly became richer by some Rs 3,000 crore.
These are initial estimates of Raja's alleged new-found wealth as well as the loss to the exchequer and are not part of the progress report submitted by the CBI and ED to the Supreme Court on Thursday.
In their report, the two agencies said some companies who got the licences had got drafts for licence fees ready even before the revised cut-off date of September 25, 2007, implying they were aware of the plan to change the deadline. The companies that have been accused of collusion with Raja include Swan, Unitech, Videocon, S-Tel and Aircel.
The new licencees got huge foreign investments. One of them brought in share capital worth S$625 million. CBI counsel K K Venugopal told the court the licencees attracted investments in US, Japanese, and Mauritian currency.
Read more: 'A Raja made Rs 3,000cr in bribes' - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/A-Raja-made-Rs-3000cr-in-bribes/articleshow/7471835.cms#ixzz1DqpgIkTv
Another turn in 2G-Spectrum Scam: Ratan Tata's personal letter to Karunanidhi handed over by
The big industrialist Ratan Tata's personal letter praising tainted minister A Raj was handed over to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi by political lobbyist Neera Radia in 2007.
Full text of the letter Ratan Tata wrote to Mr Karunanidhi in 2007 commending the performance of the then Union Telecom Minister A Raja published by New Indian Express on Saturday.
"...I therefore requested Ms Nira Radia to personally carry this to you and to explain to you the public perceptions...While concluding the letter, Mr Tata mentioned.
Full text of Tata's letter:
Dear Mr Chief Minister, I am taking the liberty of writing to you on the subject of the telecommunication sector which has been in the news these past few weeks and where there has been much public controversy mainly created by powerful vested interest groups within the industry.
Ever since Mr Raja took over as Minister, there has been a rational, fair and action-oriented leadership in the ministry. On the issue of spectrum also, his stated policies, for most part, have been legally sound, rational and well-reasoned. Part of the existing controversy revolves around one approval, which is being contested in the courts. In all other cases his stated polices appear fair and he deserves everyone's support.
The telecom industry is the fastest-growing sector in this country's history and the leadership to this sector is with your party.
It is essential that history praises the vision, creativity, and high growth achieved by you and your Minister. Our industry is in the viewing glass of the entire world, because our market is so large. If done well, the DMK can possibly claim telecom to be its greatest achievement and most significant contribution to the nation's growth.
This growth would need to come from rational and fair polices without favorites and without pandering to vested interest groups who are only interested in serving themselves.
I have the highest regard and respect for you as a person of great equity and great vision. I would like to see you derive great kudos for the visionary growth in this sector, which I believe can be delivered under your leader under your leadership by Mr Raja.
I have therefore requested Ms Niira Radia to personally carry this letter to you and to explain to you the public perceptions, the orchestrated misinformation and they are seeking to de-rail vested interest that are seeking to de-rail the process of growth through technological and spectrum battles, rather than seeking national gain.
I hope you will take this letter in the spirit in which it has been written.
With regards Yours sincerely Ratan
- Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/02/12/another-turn-2g-spectrum-scam-ratan-tatas-personal-letter-karunanidhi-handed-over-po
'2G money flowed into Kalaignar TV'
Stating that MK had shown "remarkable consistency" right from his first term in indulging in "scientific corruption", she quoted extensively from the Sarkaria Commission report.
She drew parallels to an alleged transaction over a house by the CM's wife Rajathi Ammal in 1969 and flow of kickbacks from the spectrum deal into Kalaignar TV. She said Rajathi Ammal, then known as 'Dharma', bought a house in Raja Annamalaipuram and sold it to T K Kapali, her security guard. Kapali then sold the house to Ammal's mother Sivabhagyam, who bequeathed it to her daughter (Rajathi Ammal) and granddaughter Kanimozhi.
In her tax returns of 1973, Ammal claimed she had borrowed Rs 40,000 from Kapali to buy the house. In his returns, Kapali indicated that he borrowed Rs 20,000 as loan from Sivabhagyam to pay Rs 40,00 to Ammal. In short, the guard borrowed money from Sivabhagyam to lend money to her daughter Rajathi Ammal, Jayalalithaa said.
In a "similar exhibition of scientific corruption," A Raja sold spectrum to Swan Telecom, a company floated by Dynamix Balwa, a Mumbaibased real estate company, at a throwaway price of Rs 1,537 crore. He then sold 45 per cent of its holdings to the UAEbased Etisalat for Rs 4,200 crore.
"For facilitating this highly profitable sale, Balwa pays a kickback to Raja's lord and master, Karunanidhi," she said.
But the payment was not made directly to avoid the attention of tax authorities. Balwa transferred funds totalling Rs 209.25 crore from 11 different companies controlled by him to Kusegaon Fruits and Vegetables, owned by Asif Balwa and Rajiv Agarwal.
"Kusegaon transferred Rs 206.25 crore to Cineyug Films, owned by the Balwas and Morani. Cineyug's balance sheet for 2009-10 showed an unsecured loan of Rs 206 crore was given to Kalaignar TV, in which MK's second wife Dayalu Ammal and daughter Kanimozhi, jointly hold 80 per cent stakes."
Stating that the parallels between transactions quoted from the Sarkaria report and the scam money dealings were striking, she quipped: "Confusing data, same convoluted accounting patterns and the devious and difficult to track money trails, obviously devised by the same brain."
http://expressbuzz.com/states/tamilnadu/%E2%80%982g-money-flowed-into-kalaignar-tv%E2%80%99/247287.html
Karunanidhi charges Jayalalithaa with avoiding court
Chennai, Feb 11 (IANS) Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK Chief M. Karunanidhi Friday charged AIADMK General Secretary J. Jayalalithaa with trying to escape from appearing in a Bangalore court hearing a disproportionate wealth case against her, feigning ill health.
Speaking at a function at the DMK headquarters, Karunanidhi said the resolution passed by the Tamil Nadu assembly exempting Jayalalithaa from attending the house has been cited as a proof for her not being able to appear in the Bangalore court.
On Monday, the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a resolution exempting Jayalalithaa from attending the house on health grounds. The resolution was silent on the nature of ailment affecting her.
Karunanidhi said the disproportionate wealth case was filed against Jayalalithaa around 15 years back and more than 50 adjournments have been obtained in the case.
BJP slams government on Devas-Isro deal
IANS, Feb 13, 2011, 05.33pm IST
MUMBAI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday attacked the Congress-led central government for the deal by the Indian space agency giving S-band spectrum to a private company without competitive bidding.
"I want to ask the Prime Minister, how do you run the government if you did not know (regarding the deal)," BJP national secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad said here.
The government has denied that the nation suffered revenue losses in the allocation of space spectrum using S-band - high value and scarce radio waves - in the deal between the Indian Space Organisation's commercial arm Antrix and private company Devas.
"This is a scam and no competitive bidding was held before granting the band to Devas Multimedia in 2005," Prasad added.
Prasad also took on Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, alleging that the latter did not look in the irregularities of the 2005 agreement while he was a minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office.
"What was the then minister of state in Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Prithviraj Chavan, doing for five years when such irregularities were staring in the face of the government?" he said.
Prasad also alleged that the government was ignoring the issue of the black money stashed away in the Swiss banks.
He alleged that the government the misleading the entire nation on the Hasan Ali case and that it is protecting those with unaccounted wealth.
Prasad pointed out that the Supreme Court on Thursday asked the central government to tell it where was the country's top tax evader Hasan Ali, who has allegedly stashed away a huge amount of money in foreign banks.
Prasad, who is in the city to attend 'Uttar Bharatiya Sammelan' (north Indians' conference) also released the correspondence between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former telecom minister A Raja regarding 2G spectrum allocation.
Read more: BJP slams government on Devas-Isro deal - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BJP-slams-government-on-Devas-Isro-deal/articleshow/7488168.cms#ixzz1DqpvhZQ5
9 FEB, 2011, 06.30PM IST,IANS
Karunanidhi will be jailed soon: Subramanian Swamy
NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi would be jailed soon for his involvement in the 2G spectrum scam, Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy said on Wednesday.
"Karunanidhi and Raja are equally involved in the telecom scam. We are starting a kind of revolution in Tamil Nadu demanding stringent punishment for the culprits and you will see the results soon," Swamy said during an interaction with Delhi University students.
The session, titled 'The significance of fighting against corruption', was organised by the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) and the NGO Sahbhag at the Faculty of Arts in the north campus.
The former union minister said DMK chief Karunanidhi and party MP Raja had got the backing of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the money divided between the three.
"These are the big fish in the case and I have filed a case against Karunanidhi who would be in jail soon," said Swamy, adding that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a mute spectator.
"I am not questioning his integrity but it is a fact that when the country is being robbed by criminals from every corner, our PM is silent and it seems is not interested in punishing the guilty," Swamy said.
It was Swamy's public interest litigation in the Supreme Court, filed in his personal capacity, that brought the 2G spectrum allocation auction to the political centrestage.
Raja resigned as telecom minister Nov 14 after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reported that the faulty auction process in the allocation of second-generation telephony had led to a notional loss of Rs.1.76 lakh crore.
He is in the custody of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged role in the scam, billed as the country's biggest corruption scandal to date.
11 FEB, 2011, 06.16AM IST, SRUTHIJITH KK & JOJI PHILIP THOMAS,ET BUREAU
PM knew about deal: Devas CEO
NEW DELHI: Germany's foreign minister Guido Westerwelle discussed the deal between Devas Multimedia and government-owned Antrix Corporation when he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in October 2010, Devas CEO Ramachandran Viswanathan told ET. The deal was also raised with the PMO by the US State Department separately.
The Prime Ministers' Office did not respond to a request for comment late on Thursday night.
The officials at the Indian Space Research Organisation, including chairman K Radhakrishnan, had repeatedly claimed that the Cabinet was not aware of the deal. In a statement, Isro said on Thursday that the Space Commission, comprising key officials of the PMO and the space establishment was not aware of the deal prior to July 2010. Devas' Viswanathan says the commission has been in the loop all along and the deal itself was approved by it before it was signed.
"I don't know what they discussed, but this deal was specifically brought up by the German foreign minister and we were given to understand by the Space Commission that all concerns have been satisfactorily addressed," Viswanathan said.
The German government directly and indirectly owns a 32% equity stake in Deutsche Telekom , which in turn owns about 17% in Devas Multimedia. The US State Department had intervened on behalf of investors based in that country, namely Columbia Capital and Telecom Ventures.
13 FEB, 2011, 01.43PM IST,ET NOW
India needs a policy framework which is credible: Jeffrey Sachs
ET Now caught up with Jeffrey Sachs , Professor, Columbia University , for his views on a number of issues facing the world economy today, including governance issues, macroeconomic and financial issues apart from inflation, unemployment and other such things. Excerpts:
Are governments around the world underestimating the complexity of the problem they are faced with and where are we really headed in this decade?
It is a complex set of challenges and in many ways an unprecedented set of challenges. The world economy has become very big. It is actually growing quite fast despite the global crisis. The developing countries are growing so fast that the average economic growth in the world is between 4 and 5% per year, which means that the whole world economy at that rate would double in about 17 or 18 years. So we are pressing against the world's limits now in ways that we never have before and we are feeling it in typhoons and massive storms and massive droughts and derangements of rainfall patterns. That's a challenge that we never faced at a global scale before.
But how do you see the situation really panning out, let's say, over the next five years or perhaps even by the end of this decade? Will we be worse off than where we are today or will things improve over the next five years?
I cannot help but to be an optimist. I have been an optimist all my life and I will remain an optimist. We are on a trajectory of improvement, but I am constantly waving my hands that manage this, manage this, this is not going to happen by itself. You need the private sector moving ahead, but you need an effective government that can steer also.
Steering means making sure that people are not falling off the cliff, not falling into extreme poverty, not falling into desolation, not falling into disease. You need a government that says 'enough' on the environmental destruction that puts certain guidelines, regulations or market incentives to move towards a sustainable economy. So without government steering together with the private sector, the world economy – that we have right now - will spin out of control, whether it is financial crisis, whether it is environmental crisis, or whether it is social crisis. We will not get through this.
In your new book that you are writing, you essentially argue that we have to understand and solve some of these macroeconomic and essentially financial issues that we have are not robust enough. That's a rather sweeping statement to make. Why do you say that?
I am writing primarily about the US this time because I spent a lot of time writing about the world economy and about the challenges of poverty. I decided to come home to my own economy this time because we are in a crisis. It's partly an economic crisis and it's partly a social crisis with huge divisions between the rich and the poor. It's partly a political crisis where a political system is not working, but it is also a moral crisis. We really have a kind of legalised mass corruption right now where big money steers the political process.
So government does not work because it is controlled by large companies that pay for the campaigns of the politicians. That's legal, but that's no way to run a country - to turn it over to powerful private businesses. It is a danger for the world if big oil and big coal dominates Washington as it does, if it really buys the Senate as it does. If we do not get any action on climate change, then it's India that ends up with the droughts, that ends up with the massive climate change that has come from halfway around the world. That's why governance and ethics in the end is so essential and we are in a pretty deep crisis.
Black money: Switzerland willing to share Indians' Swiss bank account details
Switzerland is willing to share information on Indians holding secret bank accounts there as part of New Delhi's effort to bring back an estimated $1.4 trillion black money in tax havens abroad, the country's envoy Philippe Welti has said.
"We now have an agreement with the Government of India. Under it if the government sends us a request, we will comply and provide the necessary information, which is asked of us," Welti told media in an interview.
"Now there is awareness in my country that people in India think that our country is used to hide tax-evaded money. That's why Switzerland has decided that whenever a request for information is sent, it would be provided under tax fraud and evasion," he added.
"I do understand this is a sensitive case in India, and Switzerland is ready to fully cooperate within the legal framework of our signed agreement," he said, adding that a reworked treaty with India on double taxation will help further after ratification.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said last month that secrecy clauses in India's treaties with other countries were preventing the government from disclosing the names of Indians with black money abroad, estimated at $462 billion to $1.4 trillion.
The government, he said, had also submitted the names of some suspected offenders in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court, which had asked the executive to be more serious on black money, as it constituted a "plunder" of the nation's wealth.
Mukherjee also said notices were served on 17 Indians suspected of having black money abroad, but ruled out revealing their names. He said their names will be out only when prosecution starts.
The Swiss envoy, while speaking to IANS, also said that the issue of black money had no impact on the country's image, which remained one of the most favoured and picturesque travel destinations in the world.
"Switzerland's image is not impacted in any way. If private individuals from India have been banking there, it does not necessarily mean that are stashing away money or not. I don't know! All I know is my country was providing a service of banking," he said.
Sanctions off; NASA lab asks ISRO to partner for moon mission
With the US lifting sanctions on ISRO, a top NASA laboratory has approached the Indian space agency with a proposal to collaborate for a moon mission aimed at getting back a kilogram of rocks from the lunar surface.
The iconic Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which has sent missions to Mars and Venus, wants ISRO to put a satellite around the moon which will be a link between its lunar lander probe and the earth.
"The mission is similar to the Chandrayaan-I mission. JPL has asked ISRO to put a satellite around the moon," ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said here.
The Space Commission, India's apex space policy body, has given ISRO the go-ahead to partner with JPL for the project named 'Moon Rise' which could be launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under its New Frontiers Programme announced in 2009.
As part of the project, JPL plans to drop a robotic lander into a basin at the moon's south pole to send lunar rocks back to Earth for study.
The mission, if selected, would be launched in 2016. The 400-500 kg satellite is being planned to have a life of up to five years and could also carry some scientific experiments of ISRO, Radhakrishnan said.
He said the proposal was an outcome of India-US cooperation announced during the visit of President Barack Obama to India last year.
He said India's contribution to the project could amount to about 150 million dollars.
The mission is part of a joint proposal with JPL which will be put up before NASA.
"We will take forward the proposal and work out a detail plan once NASA selects the proposal," Radhakrishnan said.
Govt to strengthen coastal roads in Gujarat under NHDP
The government today said a sizeable portion of about Rs 30,000 crore to be spent in Gujarat under National Highways Development Project would go towards strengthening coastal roads to boost trade and investment.
"We are focusing on strengthening coastal highways in Gujarat, needed for development. Of the Rs 29,835 crore projects under NHDP , a sizeable portion will be spent on it," Minister of State for Road Transport Tusharbhai Chaudhary told PTI.
These include two new projects involving upgradation of about 800 km stretches on Ahmadabad-Bamanbore-Samakhiali & Bamanbore-Rajkot section and Bhavnagar-Pipavav-Porbandar-Dwarka section.
Survey work for the projects are on and based on feasibility reports, bids will be invited, Chaudhary said, adding that the project cost was yet to be assessed.
Also, survey work is going for Rs 2,000 crore project for four-laning of the 262 km stretch of Bhavnagar-Swaminath section, he said.
Besides, the NHAI is set to award a Rs 2,124 crore project on Baroda-Ahmadabad section for six-laning in the next fiscal, Chaudhary said.
While some projects under NHDP, including that relating to Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) involving 485 km of highways in the state have been completed, 4.7 km stretch under North-South corridor is under implementation in the state.
GQ is a highway network in India, connecting all four metropolises -- Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, thus forming a quadrilateral of sorts.
Besides, a number of projects are also under implementation.
Gujarat, he said, annually received about Rs 125 crore from the Central Road Fund ( CRF )), which will be spent on strengthening arterial network in rural areas.
200-acre industrial zone to come up in Kaithal, Haryana
KAITHAL: Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) is searching for a suitable location in Kaithal district to set up a 200-acre industrial zone, a top state official said today.
In addition, the Haryana Urban Development Authority plans to set two more plots in Kaithal district, Haryana Public Works (Building and Roads) and Industries Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a function organised at the BRDM School here today.
He said those farmers whose land fell inside the zone will be fully compensated and will also get alternate plots.
He said that a rail over-bridge being constructed in the district at a cost of Rs 28 crore will be completed within the next two months.
In addition, a new by-pass will be constructed in Kaithal, which will have three over bridges, he said, adding that an over-bridge will also be constructed on the Kaithal-Karnal road.
Furthermore, two new parks will be set up in Kaithal city with statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. These parks will be developed on the pattern of Pinjore Garden, he said.
Innovation can make India food basket of world: Scindia
A second Green Revolution, involving technical innovation, increased investment in agriculture and proper infrastructure for food processing can make India the "food basket of the world", Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jyotiraditya M. Scindia said Sunday.
"Agriculture sector is critical for our economy as 60-70 per cent of our population is dependent on it for livelihood. We require 4.5 to 5 per cent growth in the farm sector to uplift our economy in rural areas," Scindia said at an award function organised by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) here.
Scindia emphasised on the need for a second Green Revolution.
Increased use of fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation facilities and introduction of high-yield varieties of seeds, collectively called the Green Revolution between 1965 and the early 1980s, nearly quadrupled the production of rice and wheat in the country. It made India almost self-sufficient in production of foodgrain.
"With proper investment in agriculture, technical innovation and infrastructure for food processing, India could well become the food basket of the world," Scindia said.
On exports of agricultural goods, Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar said Indian farm products needed to move up the value chain to achieve the target of $15 billion exports in the next three years.
Khullar said the main challenge for the farm sector would be to deal with an emerging range of non-tariff barriers.
Budget 2011: Efficient infrastructure required in agriculture sector; says, ASSOCHAM
Apex industry body ASSOCHAM has called for an efficient infrastructure in the agriculture sector. In its pre-budget memorandum, it has given the following recommendations for the agro sector:
Weighted deduction for crop development and agricultural extension
Section 35(2AB) of the Act permits a weighted deduction of 200% of expenditure on Scientific Research, in-house Research and Development facility in specified industries. This facility should also be extended to expenditure on agricultural extension and crop development being done by all industries. By this, all companies engaged in extension of services/research will be encouraged to invest in the up-gradation of cultivation/Agricultural practices for improved returns to the farmers.
Section 33A of the Act which permits Development Allowance for Tea plantations should also be extended to Crop Development of other cash crops like coffee, tobacco etc. with a weighted deduction of 150%. By this, those engaged in Crop Development/extension services/research will be encouraged to invest in the up-gradation of cultivation for improving returns to the farmer and enhancing export competitiveness.
Similarly, assistance given to farmers by the Industry towards modernisation of cultivation practices, e.g. Solar Barns, Seedlings, Irrigation Equipment, should be given weighted deduction in the year it is incurred.
Weighted Deduction for Oilseeds Extension Programme
The industry is conscious of the fact that there is need for pro-active approach and enters into Oilseeds Extension Programme to provide to the farmers the necessary agricultural inputs to achieve higher productivity level.
It is suggested that weighted deduction of 200% be granted in computing the taxable income to companies undertaking Oilseeds Extension Programme.
Involvement of private sector in oilseed extension Programme will supplement Government's efforts and will go a long way in increasing oilseeds production and productivity in the country.
Incentivizing investments in respect of agricultural infrastructure
According to ASSOCHAM to provide boost to the agricultural infrastructure, tax incentives can take the following forms:
• Deduction of proportionate profits for the total value of turnover arising from such computerized infrastructural facilities (in line with the provisions of section 80IA read in conjunction with section 80HHC) for purposes of simplification and avoidance of disputes.
• Deduction of 150% of the total expenditure incurred, both capital and revenue, for creating such infrastructure (similar to the provisions of section 35).
11 FEB, 2011, 06.32AM IST, AMITI SEN,ET BUREAU
Bring in BPOs, KPOs under PF net: Labour ministry
The labour ministry has called for tightening of rules governing the employees provident fund to ensure that no industry in the organized sector, including those offering BPO and KPO services, are able to elude coverage.
The ministry has proposed that the Employees Provident Fund and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952, be amended to delete the schedule of industries covered under it. The Act should instead name specific industries that are exempt.
"The first thing that employers challenge when they are hauled up for not making EPF contributions is the applicability of the Act on them," an official with the Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) told ET. The negative list will help remove any ambiguity on that count, the official said.
The proposal to amend the Act will be placed before the Central Board of Trustees at its meeting next week. The Central Board of Trustees is the top policy making body of the EPFO. It has representatives from both employer and employee organisations. At present, the EPF Act has a schedule of 186 industries.
Although the government updates the list from time to time, it finds it difficult to keep pace with emerging industries. This gives new age industries, like BPOs and KPOs, a chance to argue that they are exempt.
"We have to keep chasing BPOs, KPOs and IT industries. There is also unnecessary litigation," the official said. If the changes in the Act were approved, there would just be a small negative list of industries that the labour ministry may want to exclude from provident fund obligation. "Only those sectors that feature in the negative list can get exemption from their PF obligations," the official said. Some organisations avoid making PF payments as it allows them to make compensation packages appear more attractive with a bigger cash component. It also saves administrative hassle.
While workers would welcome the initiative, some trade unions say it is not enough. The government should also do away with the ceiling that allows an enterprise with less than 10 employees to be exempt from the provisions of the Act. "There are employers, such as transporters and taxi operators, who may employ just one or two drivers. They too need to be covered under the Act," said Kashmir Singh Thakur of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions . He said just by removing the ceiling, crores of workers falling outside the ambit of EPF will be covered.
13 FEB, 2011, 06.32AM IST, RAVI TEJA SHARMA,ET BUREAU
Indian companies on restructuring drive to build new people strategy
It is time for Indian industry to look in the mirror. They have witnessed phenomenal growth over the last 15-20 years; they have thwarted foreign competition; established themselves globally and made money in the process. Now, India Inc is turning a new life, and is putting its focus on organisational restructuring .
Major changes are on, or are in the offing , in some of the biggest business houses of the country—Larsen & Toubro, Wipro, Infosys, Godrej, Birla and Tata, among others. Engineering major L&T recently announced that it is going to create nine separate units that will work independently within the holding company . Wipro is going in for a mid-level structural and management makeover that will see its IT services business being split vertically into six strategic business units based on industry domains. Future Group recently restructured to create a pure play retail business in Pantaloon Retail and bring other non-retail businesses together.
"The core competencies of these companies have over the years evolved into newer core competencies," explains Dr Amit Mitra, secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), giving the example of how L&T has evolved. "L&T might have started with infrastructure but now they are also part of India's nuclear submarine programme."
With India's growth came new avenues of business and most of these companies went out to grab the opportunities and grow their businesses. In the process, most did not bother to create proper structures. "Many of them today can reinvent themselves and take advantage of future growth potential," says Mitra . Industry body FICCI itself is restructuring . What started with a few people is now a 600 people organisation. Its budget has gone up from 3 crore to 120 crore today. "Like India Inc, we too were busy grabbing opportunities. Now the question is how do we restructure to meet new demands?" Mitra asks. So FICCI hired Booz and Company to assess and suggest a plan.
Wipro's case is the most recent. "As the next decade beckons upon us, we are re-purposing ourselves to build a bolder, simpler and leaner Wipro, which will meet the current and future needs of our global customers,"says Rajan Kohli, chief marketing officer at Wipro Technologies. In the new structure, six separate SBUs will be more accountable and will operate as independent profit centres.
Companies in India today are at different stages of their evolution and as businesses evolve, there will be a need to find ways to align interests vertically. At Future Group various divisions have their own agenda and that needed to be clearly brought out. "Business and management bandwidth are the foremost reasons for our restructuring," says Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer, Future Group. The move to restructure was also to usher in more clarity for investors.
Investor and shareholder interests are a key consideration for companies. This is forcing a number of companies to look internally and make changes. "Demerger of a business making new companies improves valuation significantly. Most of them will eventually get listed creating additional value," explains CG Srividya, partner, Specialist Advisory Services at global accounting firm Grant Thornton.
A great example of this was the demerger of Reliance Industries in 2005. Both brothers, Mukesh and Anil headed different businesses and five listed companies emerged as potential investment opportunities for investors by March 2006, the share prices of which were quoted differently on the Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange.
Gold rush in the Amazon
A 21st-century gold rush has brought lawlessness and destruction to the once pristine Madre de Dios region of Peruvian rainforest
By Alfonso Daniels 9:00AM GMT 28 Jan 2011
26 Comments
We sped across the jungle along a narrow manmade path. 'Quick! Hide the camera! If they see this, they'll beat us up,' shouted the motorcyclist who was driving me.
Visitors are not welcome in Guacamayo, one of the biggest illegal goldmining sites in the world, so large it is visible from space. Above the noise of the bike we could just make out a distant rumble of machines.
A sharp turn of the wheel later and the trees vanished, replaced by a vast desert dotted with shacks covered in blue plastic sheets where thousands of miners live. We were at the heart of a 21st-century gold rush that, environmentalists warn, is rapidly destroying the Amazon's Madre de Dios (Mother of God) region in south-east Peru, 33,000 square miles of low-lying, dense rainforest containing the richest biodiversity on earth.
As we crossed endless sand dunes, groups of men became visible among the filthy swamps. They were busily keeping diesel generators going, powering pumps that suck up mud, then spew it down carpeted ramps where gold particles are trapped. They work round the clock, only pausing at dawn to wash out the carpets and extract the gold that ends up in the markets of London or Zurich.
It was scorching hot and humid and the driver stopped to scour the horizon, trying to find his bearings. Next to us, leaning against a bare trunk, was a simple white cross bearing the name Julio Cesar Zabala, aged 29, together with his birth date and the day he died – a reminder to those passing that deaths caused by landslides are a daily occurrence here; most workers are inexperienced and take no basic safety precautions.
Half an hour later, we reached the thinning line of trees marking the edge of this wasteland. We met Marco Suarez, a miner from Moquegua in southern Peru, who arrived here two years ago hoping to make a quick buck and return to his village to buy a plot of land.
'This is hell,' he said. 'We've been in this spot a week and work sometimes 24 hours a day depending on how it goes. We find five, six, seven grams of gold a day, and I make up to 100 soles a day [£25]. We're simply trying to survive. I wish there were other jobs.'
As he spoke, a couple of goldminers approached suspiciously, asking the motorcycle driver what I was doing there.
'People here don't like to speak,' Suarez resumed, wiping the sweat from his brow with his shirt, and pouring out the brownish water that had accumulated inside his green rubber boots. 'I know we're destroying the forest, there were only trees here before, but what are we supposed to do?' He smiled faintly, and then turned around and went back into the swamp. His colleagues looked on from below but no one else wished to talk and the driver began to get nervous so we drove on.
Suarez is one of about 10,000 miners working in Guacamayo (no one knows the exact number), an area that already occupies nearly 60 square miles, despite being little more than three years old.
This is the largest illegal goldmining operation in Madre de Dios, though countless other sites have sprung up elsewhere in the region. This is in addition to the legal mining concessions, whose numbers, according to miners' unions, jumped from 500 in 2004 to more than 2,600 today. Record-high gold prices are fuelling the fever, doubling in the past two years to more than £800 per ounce, a rise caused by investors' fears over the global economic crisis.
Enabling all this activity is a new road that has cut a huge swath across this once inaccessible territory. The 1,600-mile Trans-Oceanic Highway links the Amazon river ports of Brazil with the Pacific ones of Peru. After 40 years of planning and construction, the road was finally inaugurated in December 2010, and in January the achievement was marked by a Peru-Brazil car rally (although structural problems found in a bridge in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Madre de Dios, mean the highway won't be fully finished until April).
The £570 million highway is viewed as South America's infrastructure project of the century. But it sounds the death knell for the local environment, and has unleashed a tidal wave of land exploitation and corruption.
Every day, using this road, some 300 people arrive in Madre de Dios from neighbouring dirt-poor highlands, seeking work and the promise of a better life. Two thirds of them head to illegal goldmining sites such as Guacamayo, accessible only by motorcycle from bustling Wild West-type shanty towns several miles away, which sprang up almost overnight along the highway.
The Trans-Oceanic Highway has made it so much easier to bring in the key supplies required for goldmining: petrol, bulldozers, heavy diggers and the mercury used to separate the sand from the precious metal. The highly toxic mercury, which miners handle with their bare hands, is imported from the United States and Spain and sold openly in stores. Environmental organisations estimate that more than 40 tons of it are dumped every year in the region, polluting rivers to the point that the fish are now inedible and can be sourced only from small fish farms.
Illegal goldmining in Peru has grown into a £390-million-a-year industry, employing 100,000 people nationally (it was only a few thousand some years ago), mostly in Madre de Dios where, according to the government, more than 2,000 square miles of forest have already been destroyed (environment groups say this figure is three times higher). 'Madre de Dios is the most biodiverse region in the world because it was so remote and inaccessible,' the botanist Oliver Whaley told me from his office at Kew Gardens in London. 'The Trans-Oceanic Highway is like putting a knife into the last large area of rainforest left on earth.'
Previously, much of the Madre de Dios region could be reached only by boat or not at all. Whaley believes the new road will leave the same trail of destruction that it wrought in Brazil, when that section was completed in the 1980s. But he warns that the effects in Peru will be starker. 'Madre de Dios is the source of the Amazon, the upper watershed, so everything knocks on from there. The way seeds are dispersed, the fish moving upstream to this region to find breeding grounds, they're the base of the nutrient cycle. If Madre de Dios collapses, everything will collapse.'
Despite the scale and potential consequences of the destruction, this issue only hit the headlines in November 2009 when a Peruvian national newspaper ran a front-page story vilifying illegal goldmining that provoked an uproar in the country. President Alan Garcia went on to call it 'a savage form of mining because it's completely unregulated and doesn't pay taxes'. His environment minister, Antonio Brack, a German-trained agronomist engineer and former television host, called it a 'cancer' and one of the most important environmental problems facing Peru.
Last April, the authorities moved to establish a mining exclusion zone in Madre de Dios. But they backed down following three days of violent demonstrations by thousands of miners who blockaded the main coastal road, the Panamericana, leaving six people dead and bringing the whole south of the country to a standstill.
Luis Alfaro, the head of Peru's National Parks, insists that there is more control than there used to be. 'For example, in Peru as a whole we now have 40 inspectors for each national park compared with 10 in 2008. But the problem is not a lack of inspectors, it's the current high price of gold and the ease with which illegal goldminers and loggers can purchase and bring in their supplies, especially fuel, made worse in Madre de Dios by the new highway. Until now we've largely managed to protect the five national parks in Madre de Dios, but the threat keeps growing. Our strategy now is to try to prevent the invasions of land around the national parks but we're fighting an uneven battle. The government isn't doing enough to tackle this problem.'
Brack maintains that they are taking measures to combat all this. 'We're preparing a law to forbid pumps used by miners from being operated in rivers,' he told me. 'We're setting up police checkpoints and working on a new legal framework to limit the transport of gas and diesel used by illegal miners, though applying these measures will take time.'
Massive deforestation is not the only consequence of illegal goldmining. Every year an estimated 1,200 girls aged between 12 and 17 are drafted into child prostitution rings operating in the area. They are brought from all over the country to brothels that have sprung up in the middle of mining camps, lured by the promise of jobs paying 10 times more than they would normally earn – jobs that turn out to be non-existent. Most arrive with no money at all. The miners warn brothel owners about any girl trying to escape, so, with no authority or police around to complain to, the girls are trapped.
Not so Teresa, a 14-year-old I met who had escaped a couple of days earlier from the brothel she had been taken to. She had arrived in Guacamayo under the impression that she was going to work in a restaurant, and she refused to become a prostitute.
'I was brought to the jungle,' she said. 'I had no money, nothing, at most 70 cents. They took me to this bar, a brothel; it was horrible. It had tables, chairs, lights, a pole in the middle with loudspeakers, and a room on the side where girls slept. After a few days, when everyone was asleep I ran and ran until I found a man who took me away.'
She was speaking from a refuge, the only one of its type in the area; only 72 girls have made it here since October 2008. It is a simple wooden building on a side street in the chaotic town of Mazuko, the main entry point into the Madre de Dios region, a couple of blocks away from the highway. It was late in the evening and Teresa was waiting impatiently for her parents to arrive from Lima to pick her up.
'I was lost, I didn't know where I was,' she continued. 'At night everything is dark, there are no lampposts or anything. The policeman told me that it was a miracle that I had escaped because no one can usually; they rape you and throw you in the jungle.'
Teresa had explained to the owner (ironically, a woman brought to this region as a girl years ago) that she was underage, but the owner replied that even younger girls worked in the other brothels and that police never came. 'She told me that if I tried to leave, her husband would kill me. He had a gun; I saw it.'
Ana Hurtado is a Peruvian sociologist who arrived in the region in the 1990s and set up the refuge after seeing the children's plight. Hurtado recounted the case of a 16-year-old girl who also had refused to sleep with miners. The brothel owner's husband raped her and left her pregnant, forcing her later to have an abortion.
I had seen some of these girls in one of the many miserable tent villages dotting Guacamayo. When I arrived there the air stank of open sewers, and blaring salsa music drowned the noise of passing motorcycles. A few barefoot children were playing outside, next to a place offering a payphone service and another announcing 'Se lava motos' (motorcycles cleaned here). There was a row of brothels with suggestive pictures of naked women painted across the outside walls. As I sat down on a wooden stool to drink a beer, a couple of clearly underage teenage girls ventured outside one of these brothels.
I had asked Hurtado whether the police ever took any action, but she just made a resigned gesture. 'We're trying to encourage police interventions and sometimes we succeed – last February, 12 victims were rescued. But there are informers in the police who warn the brothel owners of any operation, so almost nothing happens. What we do is just a drop in the ocean.'
When I phoned the ministry in charge of dealing with child trafficking, a spokesman told me he recognised the scale of the problem but that only nine cases were reported in the region in the whole of 2008. He added that the jungle regions are virtually lawless, with no state presence, and that children who fall into these child trafficking rings tend to disappear, never to be seen again.
Senior government officials I spoke to admitted that illegal goldmining was getting out of hand. But they were keen to highlight the advantages that the new road will bring: an estimated 160,000 tourists, mostly Brazilians, are expected to arrive here every year on their way to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. They added, rather optimistically, that current talks with mining associations to legalise mining and resolve environmental and child prostitution problems are expected to bring about 'immediate' results.
Almost no one shares this optimism, however, especially not mining leaders. This is partly because of the influence that the mining sector exerts inside the government. Sixty per cent of Peru's exports are minerals, and it is the sixth largest gold exporter in the world, which explains why mining extraction takes precedence over any other land use in the country.
Amado Romero, the head of the all-powerful local mining union, Fedemin, told me that part of the problem is the ease with which anyone arriving here can become an illegal miner, and that there is no political will to stop this. Anyone can buy a Chinese-built pump for about £420, and with £1,600 (to pay for fuel, food, transport costs, mercury) can head to the forest and set up their own personal mining operation. Those who own several pumps are given loans from regional banks almost immediately. Provided you have some simple equity or a friend who will act as guarantor, the whole process generally takes a week.
'The state is completely absent here,' Romero said. 'They don't care about the environment or try to legalise goldmining. If you check the regional government website you'll find only three lines dedicated to mining – three lines when it's responsible for 80 per cent of the economic activity in the region. It's madness. If the state doesn't take the necessary measures now, this will get out of control.' He went on to elaborate on the danger that the national parks face, and accused journalists of focusing only on goldmining when other activities such as illegal logging and agriculture are equally destructive, having already wiped out hundreds of square miles.
He is right. This became clearer as I travelled along the highway north towards Brazil, where whole stretches of smouldering forest extended on both sides, broken from time to time by Brazilian nut palm trees that provide one of the few sustainable products to indigenous communities living in the area. This land, which multiplied in value as the highway neared completion, will probably make way for cattle ranching; or African palm oil plantations that are being introduced to feed the growing biofuels market; or, in the future, soya plantations – that is, as soon as Brazil discovers a genetically modified crop that can adapt to this humid area.
But along with the indiscriminate goldmining, it is illegal logging that is the most immediate danger exacerbated by the highway. Nowhere is this clearer than in Alerta, a small town a few miles from the border, where Jose Cahuana, a local leader elected to represent the indigenous communities, lives. 'I oversee 700,000 hectares [2,700 square miles] of forests and they're destroying 40-50 per cent of it; they're emptying everything,' he said. 'As soon as they complete the bridge in Puerto Maldonado the flow of wood will be unstoppable.'
Sitting in the wooden shack where he lives, he complained about receiving death threats, and a year and a half ago he narrowly missed being killed when the area's vice-governor was murdered after confiscating a truckload of illegal wood. 'We were unloading the logs and the owner's son-in-law arrived with a gun. He found the vice-governor at the office and shot him eight times. I had left just a couple of minutes earlier. Since then we've stopped patrolling – there's no point risking our lives. His widow hasn't received any compensation from the state – nothing, nothing.'
Cahuana, 47, does not receive a salary and just manages to make ends meet thanks to sporadic carpentry jobs. 'Corruption is the norm here,' he said. 'The police demand bribes from anyone transporting logs, legal and illegal. Everyone has to give them £12 per truck. If they know that wood is illegal they ask for £60; if it's quality wood then they want £120. I'm going to resign this year, this is really hurting me. I've served for four years and had enough.'
With us stood Angel Gabriel Felix, 34, who had a similar brush with illegal loggers five years ago when he became the manager of the nearby Alto Purús national park, which covers 8,000 square miles of forest. He explained how illegal loggers operating deep inside the jungle initially offered him £1,100 to ignore every raft of logs leaving the area.
'When I refused and continued to stop their shipments they sent me beautiful young women. When this didn't work they threatened to kill me,' he said. He was saved only when the newly appointed local army captain turned out to be an old school friend – when the officer heard what was happening he placed an armed bodyguard at Felix's door until Felix changed jobs two years ago to join the Environment Sustainability Centre, a Lima-based NGO that tries to raise awareness on environmental issues and provide experts and scientists to support sustainable projects.
Not only did the police not do anything, Felix added, but his bosses in Lima kept pressurising him to turn a blind eye to illegal logging too. Things then got worse. When loggers finally managed to bribe one of his park rangers, they used this to denounce Felix in court with the connivance of a local judge. 'I still have a trial hanging over me,' he said. 'Here, if you try to follow the law you end up either in jail or dead. Unless the government steps in soon, Madre de Dios will become a desert like Saudi Arabia.'
Later, I crossed the border into Brazil, leaving the new Trans-Oceanic Highway behind. Endless pastures extended on both sides of the road, created decades ago, interspersed by scattered peasant shacks and the odd carbonised tree trunk – offering a grim glimpse of what the future holds for Peru's formerly pristine Madre de Dios region.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8284407/Gold-rush-in-the-Amazon.html
Mining
Perenco takes its hunt for black gold to the depths of Peru's rainforest
The mosquitoes carry malaria – but the sand flies are even worse. If one of these flying horrors bites you, there's a strong chance of catching flesh-eating bug leishmaniasis – and you really don't want that.
By Garry White 7:45PM GMT 21 Dec 2009
6 Comments
Even worse, it's 95 degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity is stifling, but the disease-carrying insects mean you have to dress head to toe in thick, impenetrable clothing to be sure you don't end up as lunch.
Imagine having to work a 12-hour manual shift at a drill rig under these conditions, seven days a week for six weeks in a row. This is the reality of oil exploration today. Most of the world's easy oil was pumped long ago and energy companies have to go to the frontiers of human endurance in order to get the job done.
From the deep oceans off Brazil, to the frozen tundra of Siberia – oil companies are testing the limits of engineering and project management to sate our unquenchable thirst for black gold. But, as can be expected in the oil industry, none of this is without controversy.
Deep in the Peruvian Amazon, Franco-British oil group Perenco is drilling three wells in an area that could produce up to 100,000 barrels of oil a day.
The Amazon has become synonymous with environmental destruction all over the world and any sort of activity will stoke the ire of even the mildest of environmentalists. Oil exploration is near the top of the eco-warriors' hit list. It's dirty, requires masses of equipment and any spill or mishap can cause significant and long-lasting environmental problems. So should it be allowed at all?
"Europeans should concentrate on reducing their own CO? emissions instead of telling Peru what to do," says Antonia Brack, Peru's charismatic and plain-speaking environment minister, echoing the view of other developing nations expressed in Copenhagen last week. "It is our forest and we can look after it ourselves.
"There are activities that are more damaging than oil exploration, such as migratory agriculture and alluvial gold mining." This, he says, destroys 150,000 hectares of forest a year, compared with the 7.5 hectares that have been cleared for Perenco's drilling.
The problem for Peru is that it has to import almost 150,000 barrels of oil every day. The costs involved in this are a massive strain on its fledgling economy. After the 2008 oil price spike, energy security is high on the agenda for every country in the world, so why should a country remain impoverished if it has the resources to meet its own needs and generate those
all-important petrodollars to fund its growth? That is the clear message of the Peruvian authorities.
Perenco's operations are in the Loretto region of Peru. This vast area is mostly rainforest, with its administrative centre in Iquitos on the Amazon River.
Ivan Enrique Valera is president of the Loretta region. From his offices in Iquitos he pays close attention to all the companies operating in the area.
When The Daily Telegraph met Mr Valera late one evening, he had just returned from inspecting a drilling programme in the south of Loretto to make sure all water was being injected back into the well and not being discharged into the environment. He is vocal about the importance of drilling for oil in region.
"The Amazon should not be maintained as a museum," he argued. "Those who think it should can come over here and pay for the development of the people."
The royalty revenues generated from licences and oil production are going to significantly help the country develop. In Iquitos alone, Mr Valera plans to completely rebuild the City's sewerage system and rebuild all its roads with the money it generates – and 90pc of the funding for this plan will come from oil revenues.
The oil industry is also becoming a major employer in the region. Of the 900,000 people who live in Loretto, Peru's largest administrative region, about 10,000 are employed directly by the oil industry. With an average family of five people, about 50,000 individuals rely on the oil industry for their income.
Iquitos is said to be the largest City in the world that is completely inaccessible by road. You have to fly in from the capital Lima or spend weeks sailing up the Amazon tributaries to reach it. This has created a logistical nightmare for Perenco.
To protect the forest, no roads have been constructed to the site. All of the equipment is shipped on the Amazon and its tributaries to a logistics base cleared at the side of the river. A fleet of helicopters is based at the site to ferry all personnel and equipment to the drill sites. The logistics have to be timed to perfection as it takes about a month to get equipment shipped up the river. Company staff are flown in on a seaplane.
Each of the three drill sites has been cleared of trees, but they are not much larger than a football field, at 2.5 hectares each. The forest floor has been lined with heavy duty plastic to prevent potential spills leaking into the ground and the company will inject any water that is pumped from their operations back into the reservoir.
The company is doing all it can to prevent any environmental problems, but as Shell has learnt in Nigeria, if the indigenous people feel their home is being exploited it can lead to conflict.
Father Ricardo Alvarez, a Dominican friar now living at a monastery in Lima, has spent more than half a century living with indigenous communities in the Amazon, working more than 20 years ago as a liaison between local communities and oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and Total. He is cautiously positive about the future of the forest and its people. However, he believes that oil companies need to learn from past mistakes in order to keep local people on side.
"When oil companies first came to the Amazon more than 20 years ago, no politicians were involved and Shell dealt directly with the local people, says Fr Ricardo Alvarez. "Engineers came in and built schools for the local people and taught them all about the local oil industry."
This then stopped as politicians started to get involved in the process. "In my 57 years in the forest I saw indigenous people marginalised," says Fr Alvarez. "The key to the future is exploration not exploitation."
He believes oil companies need to establish a dialogue with native people, eliminate their marginalisation by helping to provide social services and education. He also believes engineers from large cities need to make sure they are fully briefed on the history and cultural aspects of the people in the local area. "A lack of proper community relations is what creates the problem," he says.
Perenco has certainly learnt lessons from the priest. It has rebuilt and refurbished a hospital boat for the area that will constantly sail around the Amazon tributaries in the area and provide medical and dental care for communities.
As oil companies generate profits local people need to feel the benefits too. "That's the only way it will work", says Fr Alvarez. Perenco's model appears to be working well, with government ministers, the regional president and the local community fully behind what they are doing.
Of course, it is early days. A pipeline needs to be constructed to take the oil out and there is plenty of scope for an accident that could be environmentally destructive. But the development of fledgling economies will not stop – and, as Fr Alvarez says "rich Westerners with their polluting ways are in no position to lecture the people of Peru over what they can do."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/6860101/Perenco-takes-its-hunt-for-black-gold-to-the-depths-of-Perus-rainforest.html
THE AMAZON RIVER
The Amazon River in South America is the second longest river in the world after the Nile. It is 4,080 miles long and runs from the Andes Mountains in Peru through Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. It contains more water than any other river in the world- more than the Mississippi, the Nile and the Yangtze combined. In one second the Amazon pours more than 55 million gallons, or 600,000 cubic meters of water, into the Atlantic Ocean, which dilutes the ocean's saltiness for 100 miles from shore.
This river system is one of the world's most important river systems. The Amazon River makes up for 1/5 of the earth's fresh water. Each year the Amazon River empties tons of solid particles into the Ocean. This contains lots of fish food.
The Amazon is the widest river in the world. Many kilometers from its mouth it can be as wide as 11 kilometers, and 40 kilometers in the wet season; at the place where it meets the Atlantic, it is as much as 325 kilometers. It is interesting that it is widening by as much as 2 meters a year due to waves from ships breaking down the banks. Compare the Amazon to the width of the Bow River in Calgary, which is only 350 feet, or 107 meters wide, as it leaves the city limits. This means that the Amazon is from 100 to 3,000 times wider near its mouth than the Bow River in Calgary!
The Amazon got its name from the Spanish explorers. Female warriors called "Icamiabas", meaning "women without husbands" attacked Francisco Orellana. Orellana named the river "Rio Amazonas" after these women whom he compared to the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology.
The Amazon River basin is the home of so many animals- especially "extreme" creatures, like catfish which, in the U.S., grow up to 40 lbs., but in Brazil have been measured up to 200 lbs. There is also the anaconda, the largest snake in the world and the piranha, the most ferocious fish in the world. The Amazon River has 2,000 different species of fish, an extreme number for any given area.
The Wealth of the Rainforests
The Amazonian Rainforest covers over a billion acres, encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia and the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world.
The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recyling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.
More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.
One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.
At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefuit, bananas, guavas, pinapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.
At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.
Rainforest plants are rich in secondary metabolites, particularly alkaloids. Biochemists believe alkaloids protect plants from disease and insect attacks.Many alkaloids from higher plants have proven to be of medicinal value and benefit.
Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest
Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, Periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.
In 1983, there were no U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers involved in research programs to discover new drugs or cures from plants. Today, over 100 pharmaceutical companies and several branches of the US government, including giants like Merck and The National Cancer Institute, are engaged in plant research projects for possible drugs and cures for viruses, infections, cancer and even AIDS.
The Amazon Rainforest...
The Last Frontier on Earth
If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world. The Amazon Rainforest, the world's greatest remaining natural resource, is the most powerful and bio-actively diverse natural phenomenon on the planet. It has as been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is estimated that over twenty percent of earth's oxygen is produced in this area.
The Amazon rainforest covers over 1.2 billion acres representing two-fifths of the enormous South American continent and is found in nine South American countries: Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and the three Guyanas. With 2.5 million square miles of rainforest, the Amazon Rainforest represents 54 percent of the total rainforests left on the planet.
The life force of the Amazon Rainforest is the mighty Amazon River. It starts as a trickle high in the snow-capped Andes mountains and flows over 4,000 miles across the South American continent until it enters the Atlantic ocean at Belem, Brazil where it is 200 to 300 miles across, depending on the season. Even 1,000 miles inland, it is still 7 miles in width. The river is so deep that ocean liners can travel 2,300 miles inland, up its length. The Amazon River flows through the center of the rainforest and is fed by 1,100 tributaries, seventeen of which are over 1,000 miles long. The Amazon is by far the largest river system in the world and over two-thirds of all the fresh water found on earth is in the Amazon basin's rivers, streams and tributaries. With so much water its not unusual that that the main mode of transportation throughout the area is by boat. The smallest and most common boats used today are still made out of hollowed tree trunks, whether they are powered by outboard motors or more often by man-powered paddles. Almost 14,000 miles of Amazon waterway are navigable and several million miles through swamps and forests are penetrable by canoe. The enormous Amazon River carries massive amounts of silt from run-off from the rainforest floor. Massive amounts of silt deposited at the mouth of the Amazon river has created the largest river island in the world, Marajo Island, which is roughly the size of Switzerland. With this massive fresh water system, it not unusual that the life beneath the water is as abundant and diverse as the surrounding rainforest's plant and animal species. Over 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than the entire Atlantic Ocean.
The Amazon Basin was formed in the Paleozoic period, somewhere between 500 and 200 million years ago. The extreme age of the region in geologic terms has much to do with the relative infertility of the rainforest soil and the richness and unique diversity of the plant and animal life. There are more fertile areas in the Amazon River's flood plain, where the river deposits richer soil brought from the Andes, which only formed 20 million years ago. The rich diversity of plant species in the Amazon Rainforest is the highest on earth. Experts show that one hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants and it is estimated that one hectare of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tons of living plants. Altogether it contains the largest collection of living plants and animal species in the world. The Andean mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna and one in five of all the birds in the world live in the rainforests of the Amazon.. To date, some 438,000 species of plants of economic and social interest have been registered in the region and many more have yet been cataloged or even discovered.
Once a vast sea of tropical forest, the Amazon rainforest today is scarred by roads, farms, ranches and dams. Brazil is gifted with a full third of the world's remaining rainforests and unfortunately, it is also one of the world's great rainforest destroyers, burning or felling over 2.7 million acres each year. Today, more than 20 percent of rainforest in the Amazon has been razed and is gone forever. This ocean of green nearly as large as Australia, is the last great rainforest in the known universe and it is being decimated like the others before it. Why? Like other rainforests already lost forever, the land is being cleared for logging timber, large scale cattle ranching, mining operations, government road building and hydroelectric schemes, military operations, and the subsistence agriculture of peasants and landless settlers. Sadder still, in many places the rainforests are burnt simply to provide charcoal to power industrial plants in the area.
Permaworld Help Save The Amazon!
http://www.freshwateraquariumplants.com/amazonbiotope/amazonriverfacts.html
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Corporatocracy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Corporatocracy, in social theories that focus on conflicts and opposing interests within society, denotes a system of government that serves the interest of, and may be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and business. Where corporations, conglomerates, and/or government entities with private components, control the direction and governance of a country, including carrying out economic planning notwithstanding the 'free market' label.[1]
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Concept
The concept of corporatocracy is that corporations, to a significant extent "own" or have massive power over governments, including those governments nominally elected by the people, and that they exercise such power not by back-room conspiracies but by their enormous, concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms (lobbyists, campaign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc). Oliver Stone captured "Wall Street, you know, you could say..runs the world. Wall Street, the pharmaceutical lobbies, the oil lobbies, they run our government"[2]
[edit] Usage
- U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself argued against the strengthening corporatocracy in the form of a military-industrial complex that sets national and international financial, economic, political and military policies due to a permanent war economy.
- In his 2004 book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins writes; "corporations, banks, and governments (collectively the corporatocracy)".
- The concept of a government run by corporations or instances where governments are actually weaker (politically, financially, and militarily) than corporations is a theme often used in both political fiction and science fiction. In these instances the dominant corporate entity is usually dubbed a megacorporation'.
[edit] See also
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[edit] Notes
1. John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," page xiii, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (November 9, 2004)
- ^ Understanding Social Problems. Cengage Lerning. 2009. p. 256.
- ^ Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Oliver Stone Tackles Latin America's Political Upheaval in "South of the Border", US Financial Crisis in Sequel to Iconic "Wall Street"
[edit] External links
- John Perkins (author) lecture on Corporatocracy
- Dave Johnson, Huffington Post, Monopoly Corporatocracy Replaces Democracy
- Keith Harrington, Huffington Post, The BP Spill: Corporatocracy Ground Zero?
- John Perkins (author), Huffington Post, Battle the Corporatocracy by Demanding Sustainability
- Andy Webster, New York Times, Thoughts on a 'Corporatocracy'
- Prop 14 is 'Corporatocracy' says Green Party candidate, Linda Piera-Avila for Santa Monica City Council on issues
- Understanding Social Problems by Von Linda A. Mooney, David Knox, Caroline Schacht
- Teaching for Democracy in an Age of Corporatocracy by Christine E. Sleeter, Teachers College, Columbia University.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaFor other uses, see Gold rush (disambiguation).
Sailing to California at the beginning of the Gold Rush
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of dramatic discovery of gold. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Oceania, Brazil, Canada (especially the Yukon), South Africa, and the United States (especially Georgia, California, and western states), while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were several major gold rushes. The permanent wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself was unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and the merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes.[1]
Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in the California Dream.
Gold rushes helped spur a huge immigration that often led to permanent settlement of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American and Australian frontiers. As well, at a time when the world's money supply was based on gold, the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields.
Gold rushes presumably extend back as far as gold mining, to the Roman Empire, whose gold mining was described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder, and probably further back to Ancient Egypt.
[edit] Life cycle of a gold rush
Panning for gold on the Mokelumne River
A man leans over a wooden sluice. Rocks line the outside of the wood boards that create the sluice.
Gold miners excavate an eroded bluff with jets of water at a placer mine in Dutch Flat, California sometime between 1857 and 1870.Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. They may also progress from high-unit value to lower unit value minerals (from gold to silver to base metals).
The rush is started by a discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic meters, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. (See placer mining for details.) Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organization. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations.
After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organizations, and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing, hydraulic mining, and dredging may be used.
Typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore more quickly. As the miners dig down, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals, which will require smelting. If the ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining.
Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve, the focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world's largest copper producer.
[edit] Gold rushes by region
[edit] Australian gold rushes
Ballarat's tent city in the summer of 1853–1854 oil painting from an original sketch by Eugene von Guerard.Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over the second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the Victorian gold rush in 1851, and the Western Australian gold rush of the 1890s. Both were highly significant to their respective states' political and economic development as they brought in a more diverse range of people, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support the new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming.
Gold rushes happened at or around:
- Ballarat (VIC)
- Bathurst (NSW)
- Beechworth (VIC)
- Bendigo (VIC)
- Canoona (QLD)
- Charters Towers (QLD)
- Coolgardie (WA)
- Halls Creek (WA)
- Hill End (NSW)
- Kalgoorlie (WA)
- Queenstown (TAS)
[edit] North America
See also: Gold mining in the United StatesThe first significant gold rush in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine.[2] Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–52 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans and the rapid entry of that state into the union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, and led to new rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland.- Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America, moving north and east from California: Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. Resurrection Creek, near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush more than a century ago, and placer mining continues today.[3] Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome and the Fortymile River.
[edit] Klondike
Main article: Klondike Gold Rush
Miners and prospectors ascend the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold RushOne of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory (1898–99), immortalized in the novels of Jack London, the poetry of Robert W. Service and Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush. The main goldfield was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds.
[edit] South Africa
In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers.
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.[4]
[edit] Mining industry today
There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around the world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo, 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone, and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana, with millions more across Africa.[5]
[edit] Notable gold rushes by date
[edit] Rushes of the 1690s
- Brazil Gold Rush, Minas Gerais (1695)[6]
[edit] Rushes of the 1800s
- Carolina Gold Rush, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, US (1799) [2]
[edit] Rushes of the 1820s
- Georgia Gold Rush, Georgia, US (1828)
[edit] Rushes of the 1840s
- California Gold Rush, California (1848)
[edit] Rushes of the 1850s
Nerrena Fossickers in Nerrena Creek outside Ballarat- Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, British Columbia, Canada (1850); the first of many British Columbia gold rushes
- Victorian Gold Rush, Victoria, Australia
- Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, British Columbia (1858–1861)
- Rock Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1859–1860s)[clarification needed]
- Pikes Peak Gold Rush, Pikes Peak, Colorado (1859)
- Northern Nevada Gold Rush (from 1850–1934)[clarification needed]
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
[edit] Rushes of the 1860s
- Idaho Gold Rush, also known as the Fort Colville Gold Rush, near Colville, Washington state (1860)
- Cariboo Gold Rush, British Columbia (1862–65)
- Stikine Gold Rush, British Columbia (1863)
- Big Bend Gold Rush, British Columbia (1865—66)
- Omineca Gold Rush, British Columbia (1869)
- Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1860s),[clarification needed]
- Black Hills Gold Rush, Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming (1874–1878)
- Eastern Oregon Gold Rush (1860s–1870s)[clarification needed]
- Kildonnan Gold Rush, Sutherland, Scotland (1869)[7]
- Central Otago Gold Rush, New Zealand (1861)
[edit] Rushes of the 1870s
- Cassiar Gold Rush, British Columbia, 1871
- Palmer River Gold Rush, Palmer River, Queensland, Australia (1872)
- Pilgrim's Rest, South Africa (1873)
- Black Hills Gold Rush, The Black Hills, South Dakota (1874)
- Bodie Gold Rush, Bodie, California (1876)
- Kumara Gold Rush, Kumara and Dillmanstown, New Zealand (1876)[8]
- Hungen, Hessen, Germany (1877)
[edit] Rushes of the 1880s
- Barberton Gold Rush, South Africa (1883)
- Witwatersrand Gold Rush, Transvaal, South Africa (1886); discovery of the largest deposit of gold in the world. The resulting influx of miners was one of the triggers of the Second Boer War.
- Cayoosh Gold Rush in Lillooet, British Columbia (1884—87)
- Tulameen Gold Rush near Princeton British Columbia[clarification needed]
[edit] Rushes of the 1890s
- Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush, Tierra del Fuego, southern Chile and Argentina[clarification needed]
- Cripple Creek Gold Rush, Cripple Creek, Colorado (1891)
- Westralia Gold Rush, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia (1893, 1896)
- Mount Baker Gold Rush, Whatcom County, Washington, U.S.A (1897–1920's)
- Klondike Gold Rush, centered on Dawson City, Yukon, Canada (1896–1898)
- Atlin Gold Rush, Atlin, British Columbia (1898)
- Nome Gold Rush, Nome, Alaska (1898–99)
- Fairview Goldrush, Oliver(Fairview), British Columbia Canada
[edit] Rushes of the 1900s
- Fairbanks Gold Rush, Fairbanks, Alaska (1902–1905)
- Goldfield Gold Rush, Goldfield, Nevada[clarification needed]
- Cobalt Silver Rush, 1903-5, Cobalt, Ontario, Canada
- Porcupine Gold Rush, 1909–11, Timmins, Ontario, Canada – little known, but one of the largest in terms of gold mined, 67 million ounces as of 2001
[edit] Rushes of the 1930s
- Kakamega gold rush, Kenya, 1932
[edit] Rushes of the 1970s
- Upper Amazon Gold Rush, Upper Amazon region, Brazil and Peru[clarification needed]
[edit] Rushes of the 1980s
- Amazon Gold Rush, Amazon region, Brazil[clarification needed][9]
- Mount Kare Gold Rush, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea[10][11]
[edit] Rushes of the 2000s
- Great Mongolian Gold Rush, Mongolia (2001)[12]
- Apuí Gold Rush, Apuí, Amazonas, Brazil (2006);[13] approximately 500,000 miners are thought to work in the Amazon's "garimpos" (gold mines).[14]
- Peruvian Amazon gold rush, Madre de Dios (2009); gold prices are at record levels, creating a gold rush in Peru.[15]
[edit] References
- ^ Keir Reeves, et al. "Integrating the Historiography of the Nineteenth-Century Gold Rushes," Australian Economic History Review, July 2010, Vol. 50 Issue 2, pp 111-128
- ^ a b "The North Carolina Gold Rush". Tar Heel Junior Historian 45, no. 2 (Spring 2006) copyright North Carolina Museum of History.. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4374.
- ^ "Resurrection Creek Restoration Phase II Project Environmental Impact Statement". Environmental Protection Agency, US. 2008-01-17. http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2008/January/Day-28/i347.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-31.
- ^ Micheloud, François (2004). "The Crime of 1873: Gold Inflation this time". FX Micheloud Monetary History. François Micheloud: www.micheloud.com. http://www.micheloud.com/FXM/MH/Crime/Gold.htm.
- ^ Soaring prices drive a modern, illegal gold rush, International Herald Tribune, July 14, 2008
- ^ "Gold rush". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.. 2008. http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-237388/gold-rush. Retrieved 2008-08-31.
- ^ The Baile an Or project– Scotland's Gold Rush Retrieved: 2010-03-31.
- ^ Dollimore, Edward Stewart. - "Kumara, Westland". - Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966).
- ^ Marlise Simons (1988-04-25). "In Amazon Jungle, a Gold Rush Like None Before". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D91038F936A15757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2008-08-31.
- ^ Mount Kare gold rush : Papua New Guinea 1988 - 1994 / Dave Henton and Andi Flower
- ^ Black bonanza : a landslide of gold / Peter Ryan
- ^ The Great Mongolian Gold Rush The land of Genghis Khan has the biggest mining find in a very long time. A visit to the core of a frenzy in the middle of nowhere., money.cnn.com, December 22, 2003
- ^ Gold Rush in the Rainforest: Brazilians Flock to Seek their Fortunes in the Amazon
- ^ Brazilian goldminers flock to 'new Eldorado'
- ^ "Rising prices spark a new gold rush in Peruvian Amazon". The Washington Post. December 19, 2009.
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gold rush - Object of History: the Gold Nugget
- PBS' American Experience: The Gold Rush
- The Australian Gold Rush
- Off to the Klondike! The Search for Gold — Illustrated Historical Essay
- California Gold Rush; diggers in Mazatlan on their way to California
- Article on the California Gold Rush from EH.NET's Encyclopedia
- The Independent (7 May 2007): Ulster's Gold Rush
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