schinnas wrote:amit,
Having worked with Greenpeace enthusiasts and volunteers I can say that majority of them are very well meaning "Mother Earth" devotees that genuinely care for environment. The best way to handle them will be to use their passion in constructive ways. Make them empowered partners in green initiatives that need people participation such as Ganga river cleaning and efforts to improve ground water level by de-silting lakes and ponds and towards projects aimed at increasing green cover.
I'm sure you've read Pied Piper of Hamelin. Need I say more?
And I'm sorry you've not thought this out properly. You say the "best way to handle them..." Who is going to do the handling?
You see the problem is simple. The contours of the "green initiatives" that so enamour these "well meaning" Greenpeace activists have been set by folks whose agenda is different from what is good for India.
Let me give you an example. If you watch the Arnab show that's been linked a few pages back the Greenpeace spokesperson (or was it someone else but
choro that's not important) said that India has to do its part to save the global environment.
I suspect you also think the same way. But can you tell me who created the environmental situation that the Earth faces now? If you do some analysis and estimates from the time of the Industrial Revolution to today, Europe is by far the most heinous contributor to pollution than any other nation/geography in the world.
Now here's the funny part. They created the problem and now they want somebody else to sacrifice and help clean up or at least minimise the damage. WTF?
If you look at every single developed economy, they went through a period of sustained growth in which they had all manner of polluting industries. It's only after they reached a level of development that they paused and started cleaning up.
You don't need to look at Europe, just look at South Korea. Today Seoul is a nice clean and chic city. But in the 1980s it was polluted as hell. It's only after reaching such a level that they paused to clean up the mess.
And what about China? What are Greenpeace and "well meaning 'Mother Earth' devotees that genuinely care for environment" going to be able to do about the pollution being emitted by China? Do you know that China
is building 3 new power stations every week? Who's going prevent that? Is Greenpeace and "Mother Earth" devotees in India going to start a "candle light" vigil on the Himalayas to prevent the pollution from drifting in?
Greenpeace is against Nuclear energy, against coal-fired thermal plants and against hydel. Since you know some of these "well meaning 'Mother Earth' types" can you ask them how they plan to generate low cost power with a high base load factor? By praying to the Sun God?
You know what, Germans are trying out 'clean coal' technologies for power generation. This is state of the art tech which the Germans and the Japanese are researching on. If Greenpeace genuinely wanted to clean up India's environment they would have agitated to make sure that this tech was available to every developing nation at a nominal price? Do see any of that happening?
Sorry you're "well meaning 'Mother Earth' devotees" and their admirers are nothing but a bunch of idiots who think it's fashionable to be associated with a "cause" without thinking through the consequences.
Are you aware of NGOs that do great work...
Oh yes I'm very aware, more than you think. I also know of some Western NGOs who do excellent work as well. In fact I have a gora friend who runs an NGO with his own money which just specialise in building women's toilets in rural schools because he realised that lack of toilets are the single biggest reason for girls dropping out of school.
But the point is even though I haven't read the IB report, as far as I can glean, it has never said all NGOs are bad - this is an insertion that Barkha Dutt types are making - it said a few are very bad. IMO, the entire purpose of the report and leak is to let everybody know that they are under notice.
For starters I would like to follow up on what happens to the Greenpeace initiative for monitoring e-waste from India's ITES sector. Why do I get a feeling that this "initiative" is going to see a quite burial?