RoustAbout

Every time there is a discussion on a sustainable development or on environmental issues a discussion on population becomes inevitable. It would appear that these two issues are joined at the hip, at least in India. While the world debates environmental issues in far-off Rio, on the occasion of the twentieth year of the Earth Summit, citizen’s of Delhi are reeling from a very hot summer with huge shortages of electricity and water. This makes for a classic case for applying the environment – population logic with climate change neatly tied into the argument. The middle-class denizen of Delhi can additionally fume about the daily increments to the 20 million or more people already in the city, complaining of crowds, price-rise and population in the same breath. Population it may thus appear is the one BIG problem which leads to many of our middle-class woes.      India’s population is now over 1.2 billion and growing. Most would argue that alone should qualify ...

Street-side Vendors Lagos, Nigeria was the sixth African city that I have visited in the last one and half years. I did not get to do much sight-seeing or tourism on my three day flying visit but I was privileged to spend most of my time with Nigerians. Nigeria I knew was the largest African country, but I learnt that it was very fragmented. It has 36 states or provinces, 6 regions and over 250 ethnic groups with their different cultures and languages. English is the common language which binds the country together. The other common features, at least among the men seemed their love of football and their propensity to discuss politics. The car that took me from the airport had two football banners hanging from the centre of the windshield – one of Chelsea and other of the ‘Super Eagles’ as the Nigerian national team is known. This passion for football and politics reminded me of the Kolkata I had left behind in the 80’s when passionate discussions on these subjects would be st...

People from the sky Indigenous woman in Oaxacan village I was third time lucky in being able to visit Mexico. Even though a recent change in immigration rules allowed all Indians with a valid US visa an automatic entry into Mexico, I stood with a strained smile at the immigration counter explaining to the lady behind that my US visa was valid even though it looked quite old dog-eared and was in the fifth of my stapled stack of passports. With a short overnight stop in Mexico City I was off the next morning to Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The short flight over the mountainous country, with dawn breaking over the eastern sky was a spectacular sight and soon I was in Oaxaca – a historical and cultural hot-spot of Mexico, but unfortunately also a state which ranked among the bottom three states (along with the Chiapas) on all development parameters. Nearly 50% of the population in this mountainous state comprised of indigenous peoples and many modern amenities had yet to reach t...