a conversation between two indian politicians.

that could be the reason why they spare the fat & filthy rich and prey on the poor & hungry.

ONE OF THE WORLD'S longest, bloodiest conflicts is coming to a gruesome conclusion on the island nation of Sri Lanka. The United Nations estimates that some 6,500 civilians have died and 14,000 have been injured in the government's merciless offensive against the Tamil Tigers in the northeast of the country.

...governments, particularly India and China, should pressure both the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers to halt the fighting and permit trapped civilians to escape.

...humanitarian intervention would be more likely to succeed if the interveners make it clear that Sri Lankan government officials and Tiger leaders will be held responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Accounts from refugees leave little doubt that both sides have perpetrated such crimes. It was probably to hide those crimes that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Defense Minister Gotabahaya Rajapaksa, his brother, banned international aid groups and independent journalists from the theater of war.

At a time when 100,000 refugees need medical care, food, and shelter, and another 50,000 are under shelling in a five-square-mile war zone, the international community has proved impotent to live up to the UN's 2005 adoption of a "right to protect" civilians who are not protected by their government. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon deserves credit for announcing Thursday that he was sending a humanitarian aid team to the war zone. "So many lives have been sacrificed," Ban said. "There is no time to lose." Welcome as the UN chief's humanitarian initiative must be, the sad truth is that it comes woefully late, after too much preventable human suffering.

The Rajapaksa brothers have been able to get away with their no-quarter assault on the Tigers, with all the collateral damage that entailed, because they dressed it up as a war against terrorists. Their propaganda has been effective because it is grounded in a half-truth. The Tigers have committed terrorist acts. But the overwhelming majority of the victims in the Rajapaksa brothers' war have been Tamil civilians. For more than a quarter century, successive Sri Lankan governments have refused to grant ethnic Tamils in the north and northeast of the country some form of autonomy or self-rule in a confederal state.

The Tigers may be crushed in the next few days. But the anger and alienation of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka is more acute than ever. The ultimate solution for Sri Lanka's communal conflict can only be political, not military. If the Tamil populace sees no hope for autonomy within Sri Lanka, it may come to demand a separate state - after all, the secessionist goal of the Tigers.

[all emphases are mine]

a reminder that these are excerpts from an editorial in The Boston Globe, NOT from some rabid fanatic Tamil website.

it is sickening that tamil politicians who vie among themselves for the totally undeserved title of "leader of all tamils" do not have the moral courage to stand up for the rights of their brethren.

another reminder to all the well-meaning people in india (and abroad): support for the suffering sri lankan tamils DOES NOT EQUAL support for the murderous tamil tigers.

excerpts...

The new stoves cost about $20 and use solar power or are more efficient. Soot is reduced by more than 90 percent. The solar stoves do not use wood or dung. Other new stoves simply burn fuel more cleanly, generally by pulverizing the fuel first and adding a small fan that improves combustion.

That remote rural villages like Kohlua could play an integral role in tackling the warming crisis is hard to imagine. There are no cars — the village chief’s ancient white Jeep sits highly polished but unused in front of his house, a museum piece. There is no running water and only intermittent electricity, which powers a few light bulbs.

The 1,500 residents here grow wheat, mustard and potatoes and work as day laborers in Agra, home of the Taj Majal, about two hours away by bus.

They earn about $2 a day and, for the most part, have not heard about climate change. But they have noticed frequent droughts in recent years that scientists say may be linked to global warming. Crops ripen earlier and rot more frequently than they did 10 years ago. The villagers are aware, too, that black carbon can corrode. In Agra, cookstoves and diesel engines are forbidden in the area around the Taj Majal, because soot damages the precious facade.

Still, replacing hundreds of millions of cookstoves — the source of heat, food and sterile water — is not a simple matter. “I’m sure they’d look nice, but I’d have to see them, to try them,” said Chetram Jatrav, as she squatted by her cookstove making tea and a flatbread called roti. Her three children were coughing.

She would like a stove that “made less smoke and used less fuel” but cannot afford one, she said, pushing a dung cake bought for one rupee into the fire. She had just bought her first rolling pin so her flatbread could come out “nice and round,” as her children had seen in elementary school. Equally important, the open fires of cookstoves give some of the traditional foods their taste. Urging these villagers to make roti in a solar cooker meets the same mix of rational and irrational resistance as telling an Italian that risotto tastes just fine if cooked in the microwave.

In March, the cookstove project, called Surya, began “market testing” six alternative cookers in villages, in part to quantify their benefits. Already, the researchers fret that the new stoves look like scientific instruments and are fragile; one broke when a villager pushed twigs in too hard.

"the new stoves cost $20" - that's about Rs.1000 at current exchange rates, about one third to one half of the average monthly earning of millions of indian families.
don't believe me, the same article goes on to say "They earn about $2 (Rs.100) a day and,... have not heard about climate change."

In a country like India with its immense poverty and income disparities, the current tax rates seem inequitable and unjust. The maximum rate of 30 per cent for all income over Rs. 5 lakh needs to be reviewed, and a more realistic sliding scale of income introduced for those in higher income groups. It is absurd that the income tax rate for a person making Rs. 5 lakh or Rs. 100 crore a year is the same.

On top of this, those who play the financial markets are not required to pay any taxes on long-term (12-month) capital gains or on dividends, making the Indian financial market perhaps the most tax-free in the world. Even for short-term gains, unique tax exemption vehicles (via Mauritius and so on) have been ingeniously evolved. It is rules and regulations like this, specially crafted for the rich and affluent, which are increasing income disparities.

The Indian situation is that while we have increased the number of billionaires, the poor have become poorer and even the middle class is finding it difficult to make ends meet because of rising prices. This could lead to widespread social turmoil and social disturbances. It is unfair to the vast masses of our people and it will not be tolerated much longer.

Society owes subsistence to all its citizens either by enabling them to work on a reasonable wage, or ensuring a livelihood to those unable to work. The great French thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed in his Discourse on Inequality: “Nothing can be farther from the law of nature, however we define it, than that… a handful of people be gorged with luxuries while the starving multitude lacks the necessities of life.”

In Maharashtra, hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide and are still doing so, while one industrialist is reported to have built a 40-storey building for his residence. This state of affairs cannot continue much longer.

Unfortunately, most people are silent about this terrible plight of our people. Those who should be speaking out are mostly beneficiaries of the present system and hence do not want to disturb it. This is the time for patriotic intellectuals to break the pattern and speak out. They must study economic theory and read the books of economists such as Adam Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and Keynes, or at least some commentaries on them. This will enable them to better understand the economic crisis, so that they can propose measures to alleviate it.