Five steps to a green home

It doesn’t really take much effort to convert your home eco friendly. Neither does it cost you a huge amount. All you need is some positive thought and a little bit of motivation. Here are ten simple steps to make your home a green home

      1)   Make the most of sunlight – Sunlight is one resource that we have in abundance and that too for free. Make the most out of it. Don’t blind your windows with heavy drapes especially in the winter. Let the sunlight in. It is not only comfortable for your eyes but also helps reducing your electricity bills. Use solar water heaters instead of geysers. You will have hot water in almost any season, irrespective of the power cuts. Use other solar products like emergency lanterns, fans, lights etc. You can get them on subsidized rates through NEDCAP

2)      Consume less energy – Switch off the fans, lights and any electrical or electronic devices when not in use. Devices consume power even in stand by mode. In the summer paint your rooftops with cool cement. This reduces the room temperature by atleast 2 degrees. Cover your windows with heavy drapes to beat the heat. Use the cooling pads made of KhasKhus (vattiveru) wherever possible. They are not only environment friendly but also give nice fragrance. Pair the AC with a ceiling fan. This increases your AC’s efficiency.

3)      Conserve water – Use water judiciously. Don’t let the tap running while your brush or shave. Do not take tub baths frequently. Use shower instead. Don’t use your washing machine just for a pair of clothes. The minimum water required for 1 pair and 4 pairs would be the same. Same rule goes with your dish washer. Don’t drain the water used for cleaning vegetables. You can water your plants with that. Most importantly, you can dig a water harvesting pit close to your borewell. Divert all the rain water to this pit. These pits are a tremendous success in many areas which were once identified as drought prone. All you need is a 4 sqft land. I will talk about the construction of water harvesting pits in detail in my next post.

4)      Minimize plastic – Plastic is an inevitable part of our lives. But the damage it does to the environment is phenomenal. Try and reduce plastic usage as much as possible. Carry a cloth or jute bag for shopping instead of getting a polythene cover each time. Avoid unwanted packaging. Don’t bin the polythene covers after single use. Reuse them. And most importantly, never burn down plastic or tyres. The fumes they emit when you burn are really dangerous. Instead send them for recycling or dispose them responsibly.

5)      Recycle the waste – Nothing in this world is a waste, including the waste J. Recycle the dry and wet waste from kitchen separately. You can use the vegetable waste to make your own compost in your garden. Dispose responsibly those electronics, batteries etc that went bad. Use rechargeable batteries rather than alkaline batteries.

Do your bit to save the environment. No one needs to acknowledge your deeds. Sometime down the line when you look back at what you have done, the feeling is awesome. Don’t miss it !!

Money Sharks

In the recent past there has been an uptrend in resigning and re-contesting of the political leaders. The resignations are often being done under the name of pride – may it be personal, family or regional pride. There has been a number of such instances during the Telangana agitation, Jagan’s family fude etc. Each time a leader resigns there definitely will be a re election. In most of the cases the resigned leader contests again and gets elected. If someone is protesting for something and resigning from a post to achieve that, what is the point in contesting again for the same position in the re election, without achieving the purpose? Also, if you cannot achieve something while you are in power, how the hell are you going to achieve it when you shed it?

Each re-election is a burden on the economy. Crores of rupees of the public money go down the drain. It also gives a way for the politicians to make their black money white. Crores of rupees are being distributed to the voters during every election. This is nothing but pumping money into the system. This results in inflation.

The electronic and print media have lots of fun during this period. This is a good time to increase the TRP ratings and circulations. They get to cover hot stories and visuals of cock-fights between the contestants, galli leaders distributing money to voters, foolish supporters of each party quarrelling with the other party supporters. All these people never understand or acknowledge how big an impact these elections have on our economy. The country is facing much bigger problems than a Jagan’s family pride or a KCR’s Telangana pride.

There should be strict laws forbidding a resigned leader from contesting the polls for the next 5 or 10 years. With such laws, the politicians realize how big a loss it is. Not for the country but for them. That deters them from resigning their posts for any silly reason. If this cannot be done, the leaders of other parties shouldn’t contest in re-elections, at least when they know that the defeat is inevitable. We had a similar instance in the recent Kadapa elections. The sentiment for Jagan was so strong that any sane person would have predicted the defeat of the Congress and TDP in the by election. After the election result both the parties expressed a similar view – ‘we know we would lose, because money and the power played a bigger role there’. If these guys knew they would lose, they shouldn’t have contested in the first place. The election of Jagan would have been unanimous and this would have saved a lot of public money. Unfortunately we will continue to see or forced to see such incidents just because our law makers are the law breakers. The situation can be changed only if the voters become strong enough not to accept bribes and use their heads properly.

Obama bin laden

Yes, you read it right. The US has once again proved that its foreign policy is flawed and biased. Osama was found and killed in the back yard of Pakistan's military head quarters. For now lets leave aside how can the US or Pakistan not know that the world's most wanted terrorist is infact sitting right under their nose. But the question that arises is why was the body disposed off without showing it to the world. Did somebody actually verify if it was Osama? What is the credibility of any DNA tests that were performed? And on top of all why is the US not questioning Pakistan on this?

The timing of Osama's killing also raises questions. It is surprising that it took more than 10 years for a country like the US to get hold of a terrorist. This is inspite of knowing where he was hiding all this time. US has the largest fleet of spy satellites capable enough to capture images of even very small objects on ground. The US and and its allied NATO armies are much more capable than the performance they have shown in the recent past.

All these ten years the US was busy selling arms worldwide, procuring oil reserves and interfering in the sovereignty of different countries in the name of fight against terrorism. And the armies of this world police were busy molesting women, torturing and killing the civilians and other hideous activities in Iraq and Afghanistan rather than in fighting the terrorism. The world knows how many civilian lives the US armies has claimed so far in both the wars. This blood thirstiness of US is once again proven by the attacks on Libiya. Hundreds of civilians were killed in the NATO air strikes. The civilian unrest in Libiya is its internal problem. Why should US or for that matter any other country interfere in this? I am neither supporting the dictatorship of Gaddafi and Saddam nor supporting their barbarism. All I am saying is US is behaving no different. If the US always fight for justice, why didn't they interfere in the Egypt's civilian unrest?

After all the fiasco of killing THE TERRORIST LEADER neither the US, nor our impotent leaders are capable of questioning Pakistan on the terror activities they were breeding so far. If the US has right to attack a country just on the grounds of suspicion of holding bio weapons, why can't India have the right to attack Pakistan when there is concrete proof of Pakistan breeding terrorists and they are the ones who are responsible for 26/11 attacks? This is just because our leaders are impotent and are afraid of much more bigger world terrorist, the US. With his biased foreign policy and threatening behavior, Obama is no less than Osama. So he is Obama bin laden !!