I don't know what terrorism means!!!!!!!

Ahmedabad: Army conducts flag marches, toll 45

The army on Sunday staged flag marches in communally-sensitive Ahmedabad where the death toll in the synchronised bomb blasts rose to 45 as several states went into high alert in the wake of terror strikes in Ahmedabad and IT hub Bengaluru.

Ahmedabad Blasts

An activist of outlawed militant outfit Students Islamic Movement of India, identified as Abdul Halim, was arrested in Ahmedabad in connection with the Ahmedabad blasts following a tip-off by the Gujarat police.

The police defused a live bomb found lying in a garbage can in Amraiwadi area in Ahmedabad where army columns conducted flag marches in vulnerable areas to instill confidence among its shaken residents.

In New Delhi, Home Minister Shivraj Patil chaired a high-level meeting to review the security scenario in the country and assured all possible help to the Narendra Modi government in its hour of crisis.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is likely to visit Ahmedabad on Monday, was briefed by Patil, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan and top officials of the home ministry on the security situation in the country.

In Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra Police's Anti-Terrorism Squad raided an apartment in the Palm Beach Road area and seized a computer in connection with the probe into the e-mail sent to TV channels purportedly by a little-known 'Indian Mujahideen' threatening more blasts in the country.

With seven more people dying overnight, the death count in the serial blasts in Ahmedabad rose to 45 on Sunday, Gujarat Health Minister Jainarayan Vyas said.

The number of injured was 145, he said after a Cabinet meeting presided over by the chief minister.

Several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, sounded red alerts heighting vigil in sensitive areas.

The army conducted flag marches in sensitive Madhupura and Asarva areas in Ahmedabad, which was still coming to terms with the multiple blasts that tore through crowded places in a span of 70 minutes.

"As a precautionary measure, the army has been called out and is conducting flag marches in vulnerable areas," Additional Commissioner of Police Mohan Jha said.

Right now, the situation was under control, he said adding the army had not been deployed anywhere in the city.

The Gujarat police conducted raids overnight and detained a number of people in connection with the serial blasts.

They said preliminary investigations revealed that ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive material in the bombs, adding LPG cylinders were also used to increase the impact of the blast at the Civil Hospital.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ashish Bhatia said the investigations had been handed over to the crime branch.

He said the bomb that went off at hospital's trauma centre was kept in a car.

Bhatia, however, said police had not found any evidence so far to suggest the involvement of a suicide bomber in the hospital blast.

On the searches at the Navi Mumbai flat this morning, a Mumbai ATS officer said, "We are verifying personal details of the individual living there."

Basic bug!!!!

TO(I)LET FACILITY :

Sanitation is India’s biggest problem. 700 million people have no toilets in their homes. In slums, there are no toilets. So a huge population has to use open areas to answer nature’s call. India today has nearly ten million bucket toilets that are manually cleaned by scavengers. We cannot let his continue. 700,000 children die every year due to diarohea and dehydration caused by poor hygiene. Many schools in rural India do not have toilets and this is one of the main reasons why girls dropout from school once they cross the primary level. Can we let this continue?

Gandhiji drew attention to the problem of sanitation, but we did not have the technology at that time to figure out how to go about building easy to build and maintain toilets in India. The British built the first sewerage system in India in 1870. After 130 years, out of 4,500 cities only 232 are sewer based. Only 20 per cent of the urban population has septic tank toilets.

The challenge for India is huge. The sewers in Delhi, for instance, were designed for a population of three million. Delhi now has a population of 14 million. The challenge is to provide appropriate, affordable and culturally acceptable toilets. It sounds difficult, but it is possible.

Sulabh has now come up with a compost flush toilet that has two pits. One can be used at a time. When one is full, the other can be used while the first one is quickly turned into fertilizer. It is built in such a way that it requires only two litres to flush it while a conventional toilet needs as much as ten litres. This is the best design for India. Instead of a septic tank, we have now come up with a biogas digester that will convert human waste to gas that can be used for cooking and also to produce electricity. The wastewater discharged from toilets contains nutrients like phosphorous and so if we pass this water through charcoal and ultra violet rays, it will be ideal for agriculture as there will be no coliform, no pathogens and no bacteria.

LOAD TEST THE SOIL!!!!!!!!

SOIL POLLUTON IN GUJARAT:
The Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) did several investigations in December 2000 and April 2001 in the industrial estates around the towns of Ankleshwar and Vapi. The map below shows the industrial corridor, the three round spots indicating, from top to bottom, the towns of Nandesari, Ankleshwar and Vapi.

PSS was formed over four and half years ago to highlight attention to the indiscriminate industrialization, dumping of hazardous industries that were being phased out of Europe and the US, in Gujarat and all over India, and problems arising therefrom. Creating awareness among affected people about the threat to human health and environment from such chemicals, and organizing them to assert their right to decide in matters directly affecting them and their children's future have been our focus and priority. Environmental concerns are no more limited to protecting wildlife or exotic plant species in the Pacific Ocean or Antarctica but have all to do with people's life and livelihood, the very resources life depends on.

Members of PSS are also involved in working with tribals for a sustainable lifestyle, on alternative technology, Gandhian movement and networking with other organizations.

The golden corridor in Gujarat extends from Vapi in the south to Ahmedabad in the north. While this is a golden corridor from the point of view of the industry (because of good transport and communication infrastructure, large pool of cheap and unorganized labor availability), it is a dark and dangerous corridor for the people living near the industrial estates. There are over 50 industrial estates in this region, most house over a thousand industries (some being chemical estates) and many are spread over a thousand acres.

People living inside the industrial estates and in villages surrounding the estate cope with extreme amounts of air, water and soil pollution as well as bad health infrastructure. Monitoring and regulation by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board is practically non-existent and availability of information about the pollution or its 2 health effects on the residents is scarce and whatever there is, is not shared with the affected communities.

PSS has been conducting investigations in and surrounding industrial estates to find pollution hotspots and look at the effects this is having on communities living around these estates. A preliminary investigation in communities living around Ankleshwar in 1998 had found over 65 polluted groundwater sources. This led us to do more detailed (though not exhaustive) surveys in these communities.

During an investigation around Ankleshwar industrial estate in December 2000, we found over 120 polluted ground water sources affecting a population of over 100,000 in about 50 communities. This was by no means an exhaustive investigation. Many communities often had to use polluted water since no reasonable alternative source existed or it was too far. A similar investigation in Vapi in April 2001 found over 60 polluted sources affecting a population of over 30,000 people.

Picture: Casual labourers wash themselves in an irrigation canal after a day at a dye factory in Vapi industrial estate. Such labourers have routine complaints of nausia, skin rashes, burning sensation, digestive tract problems, respiratory tract problems and other longterm diseases. They are the Red Men of the Golden Corridor. .

Red, Blue, Yellow or Green effluents flowing in open channels is a common sight in both the estates. Even men and women colored red or dark blue or green are easy to find. Hazardous solid waste dumped on common lands surrounding the estate is the way to get rid of substantial quantities of such waste (even though both estates have lined landfills). Amla khadi (a rivulet flowing through the industrial estate) in Ankleshwar carries extremely toxic, often acidic, dark brown or black effluents around the year. Bil khadi (a rivulet flowing through the estate) in Vapi mostly carries dark red acidic effluents (but sometimes green or black as well) almost all around the year.

There have been some investigations and effluent analysis done by other agencies. Gujarat Pollution Control Board does basic tests but does not share them with affected people at all. There have been no extensive studies to characterize the effluent or to find what harmful pollutants exist in contaminated ground water.

Down To Earth magazine (one of the respected magazines on environmental issues in India) did an analysis of groundwater and found high amounts of mercury, lead and zinc. Adjacent table is directly reproduced from Vol. 8, No 7 August 31, 1999 magazine. It can be seen from the table, mercury in Ankleshwar groundwater is 118 and 176 times the WHO standards and in Vapi it is 96 times!

Dr. Avnesh Sharma's doctoral thesis "Environmental Impact Assessment Along the Effluent Channel from Baroda to Jambusar and At Its Confluence with Mahi Estuary at the Gulf of Cambay with Special Reference to Heavy Metals" has found that grains like maize, wheat, millet and vegetables like tomato, cabbage, green peas, bitter gourd, green chillies, drumsticks, cauliflower, egg plants contain twice to 60 times more heavy metals (like copper, chromium, cadmium, zinc, nickel, lead, iron etc) than non-contaminated ones in the control area.

Greenpeace has done two investigations of the area. They found a lot of persistent organic pollutants including some carcinogens in the effluents as well as sediments of rivers.

A 1994 survey of [only] seven largest of the more than 100 industrial development estates estimated annual hazardous waste production to be 220,381 tons per year and projected growth to be more than 3.5 million tons per year over the next 15 years. If the pollution control board can not deal with the existing 0.22 million tons of waste, a rise by 3.5 mn tons every year will cause unprecedented problems. And the time to act is now.

It is obvious from all these reports and the following pictures that the Gujarat Pollution Control Board does not do good monitoring and probably does not test for all pollutants as well.
As an effect of this pollution, people are suffering skin ailments, respiratory problems, headaches and we are sure that there are other related illnesses, which have not been noticed, as they have not been investigated.