Climate change - Greenland

I recently came across this episode on discovery.com - Wrapping Greenland. Although I always believed climate change is a real danger to the world, this episode literally scared me.

75% of earth water is locked as ice sheets on the polar regions.! And when you hear that those ice sheets are melting rapidly, you better be scared about it. I think the situation has gotten so worse that prevention is not an option now, and its going to be a gigantic challenge to just be able to slowdown the climate change.

For billions of years, nature has found its ways to maintain the balance. But in the past century we have done everything possible to disrupt this balance, and consistent with Newton’s Third Law, for every action (by us) there is an equal and opposite reaction (from nature). We know that climate has always kept changing and humans (and many others) have evolved to adapt with change – as Darwin explained. And we could do that because the change in climate was slow enough to give our bodies/genes time to evolve to adapt. But with all the actions in recent century, the climate has been changing so rapidly, that we mostly would not have enough time to adapt and hence would fail in “survival contest” – not with fellow earth mates, but with the nature itself.

Everyone in the world seems to be taking the current economic downturn/recession very seriously. And its encouraging to see the world come together to avoid further damage to economy. However, I believe climate change is a much much larger problem as compared to the recession. And yet, unfortunately, the world doesn’t seem to be taking it very seriously. This must change. The clock is ticking and with every second spent we are putting mankind in a grave danger. The world has to come together, work on “stimulus package” to revive nature’s balance and slow down climate change.

So what should be done? Well here are some steps I would suggest:

1. The world needs to acknowledge climate change as the biggest challenge and danger. May be the G-20 needs to meet again, and chart out an action plan – similar to the way they are doing currently for economy. Accept the fact that Climate Change is a higher priority than Economic Development.

2. This is not a problem of Rich or Poor, powerful or weak nations, its a global problem that touches every life. So every life in the world needs to be aware of the problem. We need a mass information campaign – first to spread awareness about the problem and then to let everyone know what they can do to help in this effort.

3. Bring out strong legislation in all countries to promote clean technologies and punish harmful ways. Even if this means slower economic growth.

4. Chart out ways to quantitatively measure the progress.

5. Spend on R&D to find out ways to avert this problem.

Mr Obama has really talked a lot about clean technologies during his election campaign, but I hope he walks the talk and leads the world in acknowledging climate change as the first priority.

In the 21st century we have to make up for the mistakes we have made in 20th century. If we don’t who know if there will even be a 22nd century..!

I have pledged to do make conscious effort to learn what I can do as citizen of the earth, put it into action myself, and also spread the word at every possible channel at my exposure.

CAPITALISM MUST NOT BE AT WAR WITH NATURE, ELSE IT MUST BE DUMPED.

Negative Voting

Negative voting is an option for voters to reject all candidates in a particular constituency.

Certainly this should be an option for the voters. Here are some reasons why:
1. Each voter in India is above the age of 18 (adult) and as for any other matter, an adult should be considered to be taking the decisions consciously and wisely.
2. When the Ministers of Parliament has an option to vote "ABSTAIN" in Lok Sabha, why not give the same option to India voter who elects these Ministers.
3. At the end of election this data can actually indicate how people feel about the leaders of the country at an overall level. Also over the period of time, lets say 25 years, when we have this data for several elections, it can actually be a barometer for the community of political leaders.
4. Today many people do not go to vote because they do not want to vote for any candidate, but by introducing this option we can draw more people to voting booths on the election day.

Although, this can also turn to be negetive for our democracy as a huge number of current voters may end up choosing this option (considering current image of politicians). But for this I propose this solution:
Introduce this option on the EVMs, but for initial few years/elections it can only be used in combination with other voting options.
This will give us an idea of how many people vote for one candidate or the other just because there is no other option. So we will still have The Barometer. :)

"Nuclear" explosion by Satyam

Phew..! What a day it has been for India Inc. There been many groundbreaking days in recent past and today was yet another one, yet on a totally opposite sentiment than the other ones..!

Satyam Chairman and Managing Director Mr Ram Raju writing a bold letter to The Board confessing all the wrongdoings and inflated accounting books. Here is a piece from an article on Business Today:

"Here are the reported facts. Satyam is a publicly listed company in India and in the US. Its promoters, led by Mr Ramalinga Raju, own 8.74 per cent of the shares of the company. The public owns almost 72 per cent of the stock, of which 48 per cent is held by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) and 12.9 per cent by Indian public financial institutions (FIs). This is what Satyam's management and promoters proposed. A group representing only 8.74 per cent of the stock, wanted to use $1.6 billion of Satyam's free cash to buy 51 per cent of Maytas Infra for $1.3 billion, and 100 per cent of Maytas Properties for $300 million. Maytas is Satyam spelled backwards; and over 36 per cent of Maytas is owned by Raju's family, led by his sons Rama Raju and Teja Raju. Let's assume that the valuations were right. Even so, this was a massive related party transaction. In effect, persons representing a mere 8.74 per cent of a listed entity were proposing to transfer a whopping $1.6 billion of the company's cash to pay related promoters (i.e., themselves) of another company."

There has been lot of questions raised about the Independent Directors as well.But above all the question I have is how a leader of the company can get away with such huge manipulations without the knowledge of senior management? What is the credibility of the clean-chit given by Mr Raju to all members of senior management? I am no expert in these matters so I can't answer these questions, but would seriously like to know the answers.

What I can say is its a big blow to the India Inc and especially IT industry as the credibility and trust that they have won over long time is in question. I hope SEBI and other regulators take serious actions and made required regulatory amendments to prevent this from happening again. However, I am pretty confident that this will happen and will happen quickly.

Above all, I think the most important thing for all of us to look at is the ethical and moral grounds on which we base our corporate growth. We certainly don't want to be another USA where there are so many people for whom all that matters is bottom line figures, and not how that is achieved.