The statements, opinions, or views in the articles may not necessarily reflect that of the Goan Voice Canada.

Views on India and Indians
A view on India and Indians by a traveling journalist.
http://thedawn.com.pk/2009/12/14/reflections-on-india-by-sean-paul-kelley/
Some of the comments from all over including of Indians.
http://open.salon.com/blog/sean_paul_kelley/2009/03/26/reflections_on_india
April 5 2010 | By Dr . Ferdinando dos Reis Falcao

Is not Goa going the Indian way???
Reflections on India
By Sean Paul Kelley | http://thedawn.com.pk/2009/12/14

If you are Indian, or of Indian descent, I must preface this post with a clear warning: you are not going to like what I have to say. My criticisms may be very hard to stomach. But consider them as the hard words and loving advice of a good friend. Someone who’s being honest with you and wants nothing from you.

These criticisms apply to all of India except Kerala and the places I didn’t visit, except that I have a feeling it applies to all of India, except as I mentioned before, Kerala. Lastly, before anyone accuses me of Western Cultural Imperialism, let me say this: if this is what India and Indians want, then hey, who am I to tell them differently. Take what you like and leave the rest. In the end it doesn’t really matter, as I get the sense that Indians, at least many upper class Indians, don’t seem to care and the lower classes just don’t know any better, what with Indian culture being so intense and pervasive on the sub-continent. But here goes, nonetheless.

India is a mess. It’s that simple, but it’s also quite complicated. I’ll start with what I think are India’s four major problems–the four most preventing India from becoming a developing nation–and then move to some of the ancillary ones.

First, pollution. In my opinion the filth, squalor and all around pollution indicates a marked lack of respect for India by Indians. I don’t know how cultural the filth is, but it’s really beyond anything I have ever encountered. At times the smells, trash, refuse and excrement are like a garbage dump. Right next door to the Taj Mahal was a pile of trash that smelled so bad, was so foul as to almost ruin the entire Taj experience.

Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai to a lesser degree were so very polluted as to make me physically ill. Sinus infections, ear infection, bowels churning was an all to common experience in India. Dung, be it goat, cow or human fecal matter was common on the streets. In major tourist areas filth was everywhere, littering the sidewalks, the roadways, you name it. Toilets in the middle of the road, men urinating and defecating anywhere, in broad daylight. Whole villages are plastic bag wastelands. Roadsides are choked by it. Air quality that can hardly be called quality. Far too much coal and far to few unleaded vehicles on the road.

The measure should be how dangerous the air is for one’s health, not how good it is. People casually throw trash in the streets, on the roads. The only two cities that could be considered sanitary in my journey were Trivandrum–the capital of Kerala–and Calicut. I don’t know why this is. But I can assure you that at some point this pollution will cut into India’s productivity, if it already hasn’t. The pollution will hobble India’s growth path, if that indeed is what the country wants. (Which I personally doubt, as India is far too conservative a country, in the small ‘c’ sense.) More after the jump.

The second issue, infrastructure, can be divided into four subcategories: roads, rails and ports and the electrical grid. The electrical grid is a joke. Load shedding is all too common, everywhere in India. Wide swaths of the country spend much of the day without the electricity they actually pay for. With out regular electricity, productivity, again, falls. The ports are a joke. Antiquated, out of date, hardly even appropriate for the mechanized world of container ports, more in line with the days of longshoremen and the like. Roads are an equal disaster. I only saw one elevated highway that would be considered decent in Thailand, much less Western Europe or America. And I covered fully two thirds of the country during my visit. There are so few dual carriage way roads as to be laughable.

There are no traffic laws to speak of, and if there are, they are rarely obeyed, much less enforced. A drive that should take an hour takes three. A drive that should take three takes nine. The buses are at least thirty years old, if not older. Everyone in India, or who travels in India raves about the railway system. Rubbish. It’s awful. Now, when I was there in 2003 and then late 2004 it was decent. But in the last five years the traffic on the rails has grown so quickly that once again, it is threatening productivity. Waiting in line just to ask a question now takes thirty minutes. Routes are routinely sold out three and four days in advance now, leaving travelers stranded with little option except to take the decrepit and dangerous buses.

At least fifty million people use the trains a day in India. 50 million people! Not surprising that waitlists of 500 or more people are common now. The rails are affordable and comprehensive but they are overcrowded and what with budget airlines popping up in India like Sadhus in an ashram the middle and lowers classes are left to deal with the overutilized rails and quality suffers. No one seems to give a shit. Seriously, I just never have the impression that the Indian government really cares. Too interested in buying weapons from Russia, Israel and the US I guess.

The last major problem in India is an old problem and can be divided into two parts that’ve been two sides of the same coin since government was invented: bureaucracy and corruption. It take triplicates to register into a hotel.

To get a SIM card for one’s phone is like wading into a jungle of red-tape and photocopies one is not likely to emerge from in a good mood, much less satisfied with customer service. Getting train tickets is a terrible ordeal, first you have to find the train number, which takes 30 minutes, then you have to fill in the form, which is far from easy, then you have to wait in line to try and make a reservation, which takes 30 minutes at least and if you made a single mistake on the form back you go to the end of the queue, or what passes for a queue in India.

The government is notoriously uninterested in the problems of the commoners, too busy fleecing the rich, or trying to get rich themselves in some way shape or form. Take the trash for example, civil rubbish collection authorities are too busy taking kickbacks from the wealthy to keep their areas clean that they don’t have the time, manpower, money or interest in doing their job. Rural hospitals are perennially understaffed as doctors pocket the fees the government pays them, never show up at the rural hospitals and practice in the cities instead.

I could go on for quite some time about my perception of India and its problems, but in all seriousness, I don’t think anyone in India really cares. And that, to me, is the biggest problem. India is too conservative a society to want to change in any way. Mumbai, India’s financial capital is about as filthy, polluted and poor as the worst city imaginable in Vietnam, or Indonesia–and being more polluted than Medan, in Sumatra is no easy task. The biggest rats I have ever seen were in Medan!

One would expect a certain amount of, yes, I am going to use this word, backwardness, in a country that hasn’t produced so many Nobel Laureates, nuclear physicists, imminent economists and entrepreneurs. But India has all these things and what have they brought back to India with them? Nothing. The rich still have their servants, the lower castes are still there to do the dirty work and so the country remains in stasis. It’s a shame. Indians and India have many wonderful things to offer the world, but I’m far from sanguine that India will amount to much in my lifetime.

Now, have at it, call me a cultural imperialist, a spoiled child of the West and all that. But remember, I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I’ve seen 50 other countries on this planet and none, not even Ethiopia, have as long and gargantuan a laundry list of problems as India does. And the bottom line is, I don’t think India really cares. Too complacent and too conservative..

Opinion: Crises in the Vatican
http://www.daijiworld.com/chan/exclusive_arch.asp?ex_id=1262
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gulf-goans/message/29149
By Capt. Mervin John Lobo

Capt. Mervin John Lobo (Master Mariner) who has studied Sacred Scriptures in Jerusalem and contributes articles on various topics for different magazines around the globe.

April 3, 2010

“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd. Strike the Shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered.” - Zechariah (13:7)

Pope Benedict XVI is facing one of the gravest crises of his pontificate as a sexual abuse scandal sweeps the Church. There have been calls from Germany, England and Ireland for him to resign. Some are even calling for his arrest.

Are these calls fair? Or are they part of a frenzied campaign to smear his name with false accusations?

His implicit faith would give him the courage not to be intimidated by critics. The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one “towards the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.” An old adage says “paper does not refuse ink, it can write a load of nonsense”. The world media is hyper exaggerating and misleading and above all inaccurate.

Why did the victims permit this to happen and get up from their sleep after several decades? There is an ulterior motive behind this to claim enormous compensation. They are under the shadow of Satan to darken the church and make its believers lose their faith as it was in Da Vinci Code movie. This scandal is exploited by the latent enemies of the church who are within the church and who are looking to see the down fall of the Pontiff and the church.

The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a Global Plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by Teachers to Rape by Uncles.

Scripture states that Jesus only got really angry on two occasions: when he whipped the money-changers out of the Temple court, He said "they have made my Father's house into a den of thieves" and then he denounced the abuse of children, crying out: "Whoever shall offend one of these little ones, it would be better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
Yet, much of our modern culture tolerates, even condones, the sexual exploitation of children. It is time for our culture to have a millstone hung around its neck.

The sexual abuse crisis has now led to calls for Pope Benedict to resign the papacy, precisely on the 5th anniversary of John Paul II's death and his own election. The goal, it seems, is to “strike the shepherd.” Why? To silence the voice of the Church. But the Pope made it clear, on Palm Sunday, that he would not abdicate.

What of the role of Pope Benedict?

When he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he made important changes in church law: the inclusion in canon law of internet offences against children, the extension of child abuse offences to include the sexual abuse of all under 18, the case by case waiving of the statue of limitation and the establishment of a fast-track dismissal from the clerical state for offenders. He is not an idle observer. His actions speak as well as his words. Pope Benedict moves swiftly in these matters of sexual abuse, so how can it be conceived that he has kept silent on the matter which the world and those with vested interest are now slandering his name.

In his address in Subiaco Italy, on April 1, 2005, the day before Pope John Paul II died, Benedict (then still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) spoke, in a way that not a single other leader of the Church has spoken, of the imperative to cleanse the Roman Church of "filth. .”

Benedict is a modern Pope who has sought most energetically to cleanse the Church of corrupt tendencies and practices which, from various sources — some known, some unknown or only partially known — took root within the Church decades ago, under other Popes... Benedict XVI is the Pope who is modernizing the church keeping the old tradition intact and thus leading the church in the way, the truth and the life.

The great Irish saint Bishop Malachi had prophesized in the 12th century that the Pope who will take the name Benedict will straighten the Church put it on its right course. There is no iota of doubt that Pope Benedict is harnessing all efforts and will restore back the glory of the Church as it existed before Vatican II.

Pope Paul VI expressed that view when he said, "Paternity cannot be resigned." Discussion of a resignation is ridiculous! the sex scandal accusations " are a pretext for attacking the Catholic church."

"A Pope is never forced to resign, not under the current canon law," "A Pope can voluntarily resign, but it's interesting... Who would take his resignation?"

The Catholic religion is the only religion that has withstood the test of time from Peter the fisherman to today’s Pope Benedict XVI. In the world today, man has decided that he no longer needs God; Priests betray Christ like Judas Iscariot, It is not the Catholic Chruch that commits the crime, its the person, an individual. It is the Catholic that takes the insult and slap on one cheek and then turns the other.

For many years, whenever some one within the Church did wrong, the media puts the blame squarely on the Church and blows the incident out of proportion; the Catholic Church makes up of 1.3 Billion souls. Its just a hand full that commits a crime. If within the government, a person working for it commits a crime, does that mean the whole government should be condemed? Speaking of the Media and New York Times, the USA government should be comdemned for the invasion of Iraq where thousands of innocent lives were lost; Oil being the cause and the greed for the invasion.

It is high time to rise up and defend what belongs to God and the let those who dare to condemn the Church fear the wrath of God.