Corporate Greed >> Human Life?

Since 2007, the drug company Novartis has been fighting to stop the production of affordable generic medicines in India. These medicines are used not just in India, but all over the developing world to help organizations like Medecins Sans Frontieres save millions of lives world-over.

Medecins Sans Frontieres is trying to stop Novartis from prioritizing corporate greed over human life.

 Even after Indian courts ruled against it, Novartis has continued its legal battle and now the Supreme Court is due to hear the case at the end of February 2012.

Of course, looking at recent judgements of the Indian Supreme Court makes me very hopeful that the court will rule in favour of life and not greed.

Praying for life ...

Eagle (a.k.a. cruel) Dad

My sense of outrage makes it very hard to make this a coherent blog post. Tiger Mom was bad enough, but Eagle Dad leaves me speechless with rage.

A "father" made his four year old run near-naked in the snow, even as the child cried to be rescued from the cold. Then he forced the near-naked child *lie down* on snow.

In what way are the adult's actions NOT sadism and cruelty? Hasn't daddy heard of people, *adults* at that, dying due to cold weather? What if the child contracted pneumonia or some other serious disease?

Why should a four year old be subjected to such cruel and unusual behavior, just because his (I'm assuming) biological father wants him to grow up into "tough" guy?

This happened in New York -- there are passersby in the video; why didn't anyone dial 911? Where were the child protection agencies? Why isn't the adult who did this behind bars?

Shocking and shameful.

Increasing Productivity the Apple Way

The New York Times wrote about the human cost of Apple's iPad.

Among the other horrors that the article documented, one particularly stood out.  Employees at a Chinese factory for Apple were at work polishing iPad screens, but owing to the tremendous demand for Apple products, weren't going fast enough. So the factory decided to "improve" productivity by replacing rubbing alcohol with n-hexane, which evaporated three times as fast. The catch: n-hexane is a toxic chemical that causes nerve damage and paralysis. In the race for greater productivity, safety was willfully abandoned.

More often than not, "increased" productivity is not the result of innovation but human cost. Want more iPad screens cleaned? Replace safe chemicals with hazardous ones that evaporate faster. Want a greater number of iPads per week? Make employees work back-to-back 12 hour shifts.

There would probably be more humane ways of getting the productivity Apple wants, if it gives suppliers a *little* more from it's hundreds-of-dollars-per-iPad profit. To quote from the article, “If you squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.”

The folks speaking on behalf of Apple essentially shrugged off responsibility because according to them, customers care more about a new Apple product than worker safety in China. That's akin to saying responsibility for ending slavery in America lay with the consumers of south cotton, which was produced by slave labour.

If I was an Apple customer, I would certainly think twice before buying their products.

Modernize!

I've been reading translations of Satyajit Ray's Feluda detective series with my eight year old. While the mysteries are interesting enough, what sticks out as a sore thumb is the fact that they have not been "modernized".

Let me explain.

Feluda thinks nothing of lighting a cigarette as he mulls over his case. At the time the story was originally written, smoking probably wasn't considered a health hazard and Satyajit Ray wrote what he did. Fast forward to the present where we now know all about the evil health effect of smoking, and guide our children away from the concept. Naturally the eight year old wants to know why Feluda is indulging in a smoke when we "all" know that's it's not good for health!

It would have made the books so much more acceptable if the translator had eliminated the bits around "puffed at his cigarette".

It isn't as if this has never been done before. In the Noddy series' created by Enid Blyton, the naughty black golliwog has been replaced by nice sweet Dinah Doll who is also black.

Why can't we do the same?

A Climber will not Creep

I've lived in a typical urban environment all my life, without much real contact with flora and fauna. The closest I ever came to nature while growing up was when I grew bean seeds for school. Of course, I studied botany in school and learnt about creepers and climbers, all the while scratching my head trying to figure out the difference by looking at grainy pictures in text books.

Fast forward to the present day, where I decided to grow a kitchen "garden". I planted beans and with the help of sticks, tried to get the plant to cover a grill. The bean plant was smart, it got the idea pretty quickly and latched onto the grill -- and kept climbing. It climbed till it reached the top end of the grill. That's when I thought it would start to grow sideways (you know, be a grown up and all that ;-)). Instead the plant, climbed all the way down and then back up again! Surely a climber, not a creeper.

That's when I really understood the difference between climbers and creepers.

Mint, on the other hand, never grew more than six inches tall; but began invading space horizontally. A creeper perhaps?

I'm looking forward to more such revelations as I get to be one with nature via my kitchen "garden"...