Musharraf the Out-smarter

Re: # 160

I think Matlock was being polite and diplomatic since Russian ambassador was sitting right next to him.

these hindus talk day and night about India shining, this one thing but how immoral they are can be read from this article, only a people like them can spend billions on weapons while not paying even 10 rupes to a garbage picker ya allah laanat hai in kamzarf mardoodon pey:

September 27, 2007
New Delhi Journal
Picking Up Trash by Hand, and Yearning for Dignity
By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
NEW DELHI — After a bad day at work, Manorama Begum can hardly keep from vomiting. After a good day, she is merely disinclined to eat for a few hours, until the stench has receded from her nostrils and her fingernails have been scrubbed clean.

A garbage collector in India’s capital, Ms. Begum is one of 300,000 little-seen workers who perform a vital role for the city: rifling through the detritus of modern life, recycling anything of worth and carefully disposing of the rest.

More than 95 percent of New Delhi has no formal system of house-to-house garbage collection, so it falls to the city’s ragpickers, one of India’s poorest and most marginalized groups, to provide this basic service. They are not paid by the state, relying instead on donations from the communities they serve and on meager profits from the sale of discarded items.

But after centuries of submissive silence, the waste collectors are beginning to demand respect.

On Oct. 2, Gandhi’s birthday, the Delhi state government will make a small but significant concession. In response to pressure from a ragpickers’ union, it will supply about 6,000 with protective gloves, boots and aprons.

For now, though, they still pick through refuse — shards of glass smeared with the remains of yesterday’s dinner, broken shoes mixed in with rotting meat — with bare hands.

This is the first time the government has made any effort to recognize this band of essential workers, and the moment will be marked with a celebration near the city’s Gandhi memorial.

“Looking after rubbish, anywhere in the world, is not dignified,” said J. K. Dadoo, the secretary of Delhi’s Environment Ministry. “The very fact that we have acknowledged that we need to look after their health is a tremendous acknowledgment of their dignity.”

The waste collectors are underwhelmed by the move. They do not want gloves, they say. They want wages, pensions, health care, uniforms that they hope will discourage police harassment, education for their children and decent housing.

The waste disposal system here is informal yet highly organized. Its capacity to recycle plastics and paper is efficient beyond the dreams of the most progressive recycling nations in the West. In a society where hundreds of millions live in desperate poverty, everything has a value and nothing is redundant. Most strikingly, the city’s neglect of those who perform this service is typical of a much broader blindness toward those excluded from India’s blossoming economy.

Ms. Begum, 35, learns much about humanity during her daily rounds of 350 government apartments occupied by low-ranking state employees in south Delhi. Sifting through the onion peels, chickpeas and half-eaten chapatis, she can tell which families are struggling and which are feeling flush. From her fleeting encounters with them every morning, she knows which households consist of good people and which she would rather avoid.

There are the hard-up families, who save their plastic milk cartons to sell to passing dealers for a few extra rupees. There are the generous ones, like those who recently donated money for Ms. Begum’s 16-year-old daughter’s wedding. There are the mean-spirited, who never give the expected monthly donation of 10 rupees, or 25 cents, she needs to feed her four children.

“If everyone paid me, I’d earn 3,500 rupees,” she said, about $88. “I never even get 1,500,” about $38.

She has other ways of gleaning a return for her work. Finding good food discarded among the litter, she transfers it to a separate plastic bag. Later she will give it to one of the dairies whose cows wander the streets of Delhi, in exchange for milk for her younger children.

The work is exhausting, but she said that after 14 years she had developed stamina.

Her husband, Muhammad Nazir, who works in a more affluent area, said he could see the city’s transformation in the trash he handled. “People are earning more, they are spending more, they are throwing more stuff away now that Delhi has got rich,” he said.

But it remains hard to scrape an existence from the refuse of middle-class life. The couple separate the vegetable matter from plastic bags (about 2 to 3 cents per 2.2 pounds), newspapers (2 to 3 cents) and glass bottles (about 18 cents), then take the salable items for sorting in their nearby slum, where the middleman is based. On average, they each earn 30 to 50 rupees a day, about 76 cents to $1.26.

In a home made from items salvaged on their rounds (the walls lined with flattened cardboard boxes; the ceiling patched with automobile floor mats), they express bitterness about their lives. “It is the poverty that makes us do this work,” Ms. Begum said. “If I had an alternative, I wouldn’t be doing it. Who would like to collect garbage?”

At a meeting of ragpickers organized by a support group called Chintan, the government’s plan was met with little satisfaction. Several people told of beatings by police officers suspicious of their presence in residential areas in the early morning. Some said the city authorities refused to grant them space for sorting recyclable goods, and constantly harassed them to move on.

“They are providing us with gloves and boots just so we don’t get sick and stop working,” Mr. Nazir said. “If we stop, who is going to do this work instead of us? They know they won’t find other people who are willing. Within two days the whole city would be stinking and filthy.”

maulana urstruly:

if your mighty jihadis were responsible for the soviet union's demise and now, according to you, they're going to do the same to the US, why isn't the paki flag on srinigar? kashmir kab banega pureland? surely india is nothing compared to the FSU and the US...

As a Pakistani, it is my biased opinion that Urstruly, and Borivili_Express have outsmarted Arjun, MaxwellCoffee, ModiForPM in the Great Race to the Bottom.

Pakistan Jindabad (as Zang would say).

If the choice is between mian, bibi and sahib, then Mush is OK, no ifs buts and thens.

Re: # 164
tahmed32, why do you have me in the race to bottom? This was my first interact after couple of months.

I am all for Pakistan Jindabad.

#166 so sorry. friendly fire accident.

asfand #166 I have good news for you. The choice is not mian vs bb vs mush. The choice is democracy vs dictatorship. So vote for Wajihuddin, who is the candidate of those on the forefront of the good fight for democracy in Pakistan.

Re: # 161
Urstruly, its hard to argue wheter someone was polite and diplomatic or not. If you want to hear certain POV (Point of View) you will hear it even if the other person is saying something else.
You and Reganities want to subscribe to certain POV even if the evidence does not support that then you are welcome to have your POV.

hamidm2 mian: "..... i think we should drop a couple of bombs on india just to get rid of arjun ...."

i don't think you really mean this.....do you......with george bush's credibility in the trash can, and arjun bombed, you would not have anyone left to quote.......the above two being the main individuals whose words you have, repeatedly, relied on to make your points......hence their survival is of great importance to you.....

P.S. ......i must say your loyalty is quite fickle....one day you quote arjun, the next day you want him bombed......how about a middle ground.....neither quote him, nor bomb him.......

bulleya 114: "More and more army guys are being brought to court (not necessarily justice). It is not enough"

....armies of any country, in general, do not want to fight civilians....it is a no-win situation for them......they don't know whom to kill and whom not to kill......there is no well-defined enemy.......someone might spring out of a crowd and shoot you, and you may shoot someone who is totally innocent.......the pressure on soldiers in such a situation must be unbearable.......

hence the first blame for such a situation should not be placed on the soldiers......it should be placed on the leaders who sent them there.......soldiers simply follow orders, and eventually break down under the immense pressures and start killing everyone.......

"....Toys are being bought, produced and advertized. Sections of the population are jumping up and down in glee and sorrow like bozos......."

......this is the tragedy of south asia......it has the second lowest living standard in the world, and is the world's biggest importer of arms.......

the interesting part is that it is, now, useless for india and paksitan to import any arms......they are in a nuclear Mutually Assured Destruction.......what are they going to do with conventional arms?.......it doesn't matter how many weapons india buys, it will never be able to attack and conquer china, or have a strategic deployment capability like usa........and it already has a credible defense against china through nukes (i doubt china will ever attack india, anways)........and it has a much larger military than pakistan, bangladesh, sri lanka and nepal combined......

similary, it doesn't matter how much arms pakistan buys it cannot attack and conquer india.......and it already has a credible deterent against india, in the form of nukes......not to mention the fact that china is not going to sit around if india actually attacks pakistan and is on the verge of defeating it........

so why purchase so much armament.......it is getting ridiculous now.......usa sells f-16s to pakistan and may now sell them to india!.....india and pakistan are, both, one of the largest purchasers of france's mirage aircraft!.....the same company is selling aircraft to both countries!!

bulleya #170.

Come on, now. Hamidm2 was quoting *you* indirectly (i.e., he was quoting arjun who was quoting you on your now-famous t-shirt advice.... reproduced below.)

+++++++
#44 Posted by Romair on September 17, 2001 2:42:50 am
IMPORTANT:
---------
Advice to all Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, Arabs and Muslims in general, in the USA: If you want to feel safe and not have anyone attack you on the street, wear a shirt with a Pakistani flag on it.
++++++++

pakis outsmarted...bombing of pakis to continue

#172 Posted by kalyan on September 27, 2007 2:44:08 pm

capt clueless thinks we'll forget how he, giddy in anticipation of uncle sam's wind in pureland's sails, was telling people how was ready to put on a uniform and "help" in the invasion of afghanistan...

now that the jihadis are attacking pureland and with pureland's soldiers surrendering without firing a shot, wonder what he thinks of his t-shirt with paki flag business? you think the shirts will sell in the tribal areas? I mean...the soldiers of pureland's army have already been told not to go out wearing their uniforms...a tshirt with a paki flag should be the perfect outfit for a rendezvous with their favorite sheep..

i think pakistan will need large army (that is infantry, sappers, engineers etc) for a while to come due to afgnistan and may be in future iran, not because of india. china cannot help there and nuke detergent arm and hammer would be useless in these cases.

bulleye #170 to Hamidm: "how about a middle ground"

bulleye outsmarts Hamidm with enlightened moderation!!