CURRENT EVENTS

CURRENT EVENTS AS ON 2ND JULY 07

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Veena Menon sang prayer at the beginning of the program and it was very appealing.

Thereafter A Narayanaswami, Former Deputy General Manager of Bharat Heavy Electrical presented his version of China and India by giving comparative facts and figures. He visited China very recently and could give realistic pictures of progress made by china in various fields. He said china is ahead of India in spheres of literacy,investment, infrastructure and GDP Growth. He further added that China is having 25000 Miles of Roads as good as road of USA. He pointed out that' The the public sector projects are not treated like holly cow in china 'and all manufacturing activities are labor incentive. Besides that even direct investments are welcomed and the overseas chines are investing substantially in the economy. It is apparent that china is very much in need of energy for its booming industries and in that context they have developed very good relationship with all the countries from whom can get energy resources. The china's finest relationship with African countries, and some of the Asian countries are glaring examples of their diplomatic success. China is also having fine relations then India with Bangladesh,Myanmar, and Pakistan which are having one or other form the source of energy. China is having strong central authority but states are given incentive for their better performances. There may not be political freedom in China but it has achieved economical freedom up to large extent. India is having democracy but we have to go long for economical freedom. The literacy rate of India is one third if China. The overseas Indians have recently started investing in Indian industries and its impacts on our progress will be seen in long run. He added that high amount of subsidiaries in various sectors of industries have also adversely effected the efficiencies and productions thereon. he acknowledged that India has now become conscious about the lack of proper infrastructure and that had led lot of developments in the spheres of Roads, Transport, and communication. The service sector is also improving gradually. Besides that India is having better financial and banking system. it has finest capital market. However India has to make more efforts to take High Tech to villages in order to increase the Agriculture production and to improve the standard of living in Rural Areas. In the absence of rural development the gap between rich and poor will go on increasing and it will come in the way of economical freedom of India. He found Chines are more dedication towards work then gossiping.

Dr V K Jotwani who was in charge of the VIP section of the Wellington Hospital, New Delhi, gave his few memories of fifties. He said it was a time when India has just become independent. The most of the VIPs were very humble, discipline, and good natured in those days. He observed that even from the President Rajendra Prasad to Prime minister Jawaherlal Nehru, and including ministers like Govind Vallabh Pant, B C Roy and Nurul Hasan were very polite with officers. However with the passing of time the standard was deteriorated and he found that the some of the VIP were very arrogant. They demanded some of the facilities outside the rules prevailing then. However there were then VIP like Morarji Desai, a former Prime Minister who was for rule of law and refused the facilities which are given outside the administrative rules.

Chittranjan Mukherjee gave his comments on ' The Rural India-Past and Present' wherein he mentioned regarding the increase of gap between urban and rural areas. He said while urban population of India is having privilege of enjoying all luxuries of life i.e. Automobiles, Consumer Durables etc while Indian Rural Population is still struggling to survives. Their debts are increasing and some of them are loosing even lands. He said we should not forget that 76.12% of Indian population lives in rural area which consist of 700000 villages. There may be less epidemic in village areas now but that does not mean everything is well therein. In this connection he quoted Amarta Sen, a noble price winner economist ' We are going to the top of the mountain within 20 years as per media but forget not we are enjoying picnic on a sleeping volcano and no one knows when the lava will wipe our existence'.
Bharat Desai presented few humorous Jokes thereafter.
Bharat Desai also introduced a guest artist of the day Seema Gupta and Tabla player Shakeel Avadhany before the presentations of musical program.
They both presented very melodious and pleasant music. Seema Gupta presented classical and semi classical devotional songs. Even Shakeel Avadhany was excellent on tabla.Seema presented Kabir's Bhajan in Yaman Raga. In short musical presentations were received very well.
Akur Srinivasan in his summing up praised fine presentations of various participants including musical artists. He also congratulated Bharat Desai for organizing such interesting and pleasant program and proposed vote of Thanks.
( The program was composed, coordinated and conducted by Bharat Desai)

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