cuddalore online information

An excerpt from Frontline

Fresh incentives and a series of policy initiatives from the Ministry of Textiles have brightened the growth prospects of the textile industry.

…….The scheme, which welcomes public-private partnership, targets industrial clusters and locations with high growth potential. It envisages engaging a professional agency for project execution. So far, nine projects have been sanctioned under the scheme - at Cuddalore, Perundurai and Palladam in Tamil Nadu, the Surat and Mundra Special Economic Zones in Gujarat, Kohlapur, Ichalkaranji and Thane in Maharashtra and Kishangarh in Rajasthan fullstory>>

Dear Viewers,
Browse through the Photos section of the CuddaloreOnline group for desktop wallpapers(800×600) taken in Silver Beach,Cuddalore.

Hope you will love these wallpapers. Also share it with your friends.

–
Jean Claude Brisseau.

Last month Bhopal gas victims marched from Bhopal to Delhi on foot.They reached New Delhi by the end of the March and started indefinite hunger strike till their demands are being met.

Victims of the disaster filed suit against Union Carbide and its former CEO, Warren Anderson, in federal court in New York. The leak has killed over 5,000 people immediately, and death toll rose to around 20000 due to various related illness.

After a long legal battle the court has ordered for a compensation of Rs.1500 crores.This is a measly small compensation for an accident in which 5,73,816 people were affected.Many lost their entire livelihood and homes due to ill health.Money from the compensation would be the only source to support these families. bhopal.net reckons this amount will get just Rs.3.40 for a person/day, which will not even be sufficient for a meal.

The site around the former Union Carbide factory in Bhopal remains severely contaminated, even after two decades.More than 20,000 people are being forced to drink water contaminated by chemicals leaking from the abandoned Union Carbide factory. The levels of mercury found in a sample taken inside the factory were between 20,000 and six million times higher than the background levels to be expected in uncontaminated soils according to Greenpeace.It also reports the presence of organochlorines, a class of chemicals which includes DDT(which travels up the food chain causing genetic damage in some organisms) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).The ground water of the contaminated site also contains trichlorobenzene, chloroform and carbon tetrachloride, a carcinogen.

According to law, polluter must clean-up the contaminated site, but the Dow Chemicals fails to adhere to this.What is shameful is that, Indian government instead of holding Dow Chemicals accountable and pressurizing the company to clean the contaminated site, its is facilitating the Dow Chemicals to invest more in India. Prime Minister, who had no time to meet padayatris who came all the way from Bhopal on foot, had time to meet Andrew N Liveris the present CEO of Dow Chemicals twice earlier.

After lots of protest, and days and days of hunger strike, PM finally agreed to meet the representatives of the victims.Out of six demands four were met.

Among the demands agreed are
*a time-bound plan for the delivery of safe drinking water to communities affected by contamination of water,
*scientific assessment of the depth and spread of toxic contamination in and around the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, and
*funds to address all health issues related to contamination.

Visit http://bhopal.net/march which has well documented the entire course of events.The page also has truck loads of photographs.

Bloggers and Internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, according to a report by a technology research company. Its study suggests that although “active” web users make up only a small proportion of Europe’s online population, they are increasingly dominating public conversations and creating business trends.

More than half of the Internet users on the continent are passive and do not contribute to the web at all, while a further 23 per cent only respond when prompted. But the remainder who do engage with the net — through messageboards, websites and blogs — are helping change national conversations.

“We’re seeing this growing,” said Julian Smith, an online advertising analyst with Jupiter Research and author of the report. “The strongest part of their influence is on the media: if something online suddenly becomes a story in the local press, then it matters.”

Although unprompted contributors are generally younger and more vocal than the wider online population, they are increasingly important as opinion formers and trend-setters. Mr. Smith says businesses, media organisations and advertisers reading blogs should be wary of making assumptions about their wider significance, but that their muscle cannot be ignored.

“They’re not representative of the larger audience, but what they’re saying does matter,” he said. “It’s a good straw poll — a snapshot of the verbal conversations going on that we can’t measure.”

“That’s exactly right,” said Glenn Reynolds, author of An Army of Davids, which explores the explosion in web punditry. “Bloggers and blog-readers are `influentials’ — the minority that pays attention to events outside of political and news cycles. They also tend on average to be better off, better educated and, more importantly, employed.”

There are now more than 35 million blogs around the world full story>>

A large number of people from all around the district come to General Hospital, Cuddalore for treatment. Many of these people rely on public transport system to reach and leave from here. But the bus stop near the hospital is too small to accommodate the number of people the hospital handles.Many of those waiting for a bus have stand in hot sun.This makes the people to find an alternate location by themself.

Many have choosen to wait in front of the Gate 2 of the hospital instead of making their way to the bus stop.They use parapet of the nearby roadside park to seat themselves.Result, they break the parapet so often.I have written Park outside Cuddalore General Hospital earlier.After a few days the parapet was repaired and reconstructed (probably by municipality),but now again the wall is broken.

Recently when CM arrived Cuddalore as a part of election campaign municipality was proud to display boards written ‘Cuddalore Municipality’ on the road side parks.Even the parapet of this park was repainted without rebuilding the broken parts of the wall.The municipality wanted to send a signal to the visitor as if they are being maintained properly.But the truth is that the plants here were not watered for atleast past one year.

Fifteen months after the tsunami, reconstruction of the South Indian village of Pudhupettai in the district of Cuddalore has been completed. At a festive ceremony, Deutsche Welthungerhilfe (German Agro Action) and its Indian partner organisation Life Help Centre (LHC) officially handed over the village to its inhabitants on 17th March. 45 new houses, a school and a community building have been erected.

A net-mending hall and a fish-drying facility have also been created. 58 fishing families were provided with new or repaired boats and appropriate equipment. After the terrible events of the flood disaster, a degree of normality has been restored to the lives of local inhabitants.

Today, there is little evidence of the extent of devastation caused by the flood in December 2004. Fishermen resumed their work several months ago and are now able to support themselves and their families again. From 17 neighbouring villages, children meet for lessons in the newly erected school. Actively involved in the reconstruction work were the city of Bonn and the daily newspaper Bonner General-Anzeiger, which entered into a partnership with Deutsche Welthungerhilfe under the motto “Bonn helps Cuddalore”.

Over 500,000 euro were raised for flood victims in numerous campaigns organised by local citizens and companies “‘Bonn helps Cuddalore’” is not just a slogan that appears on banners. It is a genuine declaration of solidarity which has found its way into the hearts of the people here in Pudhupettai,” claims Axel Weiser, who supervised the reconstruction project for Welthungerhilfe in Cuddalore.

At the handing-over ceremony, the inhabitants of Pudhupettai celebrated with music and a firework display. Hundreds of people came to express their joy. “It is a miracle that so much has been reconstructed in such a short time,” said Gagandeep Singh Bedi, senior government official in the district of Cuddalore.

Recently I have come across this post about Cuddalore and I like to share it with you Cuddalore Periya Kuppam

Here is a A Great Story Of Caring ,which really moved me.

Here is an excerpt from NEWS TODAY’S news item ‘Report paints a a gloomy picture‘.

A report titled ‘Is SIPCOT Safe?’, a scorecard on the environment that documents at least 45 incidents of environmental pollution and/or workplace incidents involving environmental damage, and/or injury or death of workers and residents in the last 17 months, from October 2004 to February 2006 was released in Cuddalore yesterday.

And the report debunks the government’s claim that conditions in SIPCOT Cuddalore have improved. The report has been compiled by SIPCOT Area Community Environmental Monitors (SACEM).

Shweta Narayan of SACEM said there were at least 17 incidents of illegal effluent discharge, eight instances of gas leaks, 10 instances of industrial accidents that killed two and injured nine, and seven instances of illegal dumping of hazardous waste in the area full story>>

Water Wars and Bottle Battles
By Nityanand Jayaraman

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