Sadhguru on why we need to save our rivers

Sadhguru - Jaggi Vasudev ..

Great video.

Great civilizations around the world have thrived and survived on rivers. The Egyptian civilization around the river Nile, Mesopotamia civilization around the Euphrates Tigris, Indus Valley civilization around the river Indus, Chinese civilization around the river YangTseKiang etc.. 

Human civilization all over the globe over the past 10,000+ years have been interwoven with rivers, thriving on river banks .. 

Indian rivers in a single generation have from being perennial, become seasonal .. shocking ..

We need to save our rivers for survival of mankind on planet earth .. !!

https://youtu.be/u7HliAsgKH0

GE..

Will Indian politicians allow the US game plan to disrupt Asia ?

Has the Indian political establishment fallen to CIA designs and plans to disrupt Asian economic growth ? Yes, there are all indicators for that ..

By pitting India against China, US intelligence has managed to push both countries not to worry about their economic growth, and instead concentrate on the nationalistic pitch, gain cheap publicity for the leaders to find an excuse to fight and distract from productive growth. 

Indian political leaders have clearly fallen to these destructive plans, looked outside their economic growth and derailed the economy in the long run.

The present Indian PM instead of playing to the gallery should be smart enough to see through this US game to continue their economic and political domination of the world. The former Indian PM was intelligent and smart enough to understand this, understood the priorities and acted accordingly. 

Present Indian PM Modi should realise that it is quite easy to ruin the economy, but it is very difficult to build it to greater glory and prosperity.. 👍👍

GE..

Kochi metro sustainability initiatives ..

For the first time in the world - Each of the stations on Kochi metro are Platinum certified GREEN BUILDINGS , the highest ratings for sustainable buildings across the world granted by the Indian Green Buildings Council. 

E Sreedharan's contribution to Kochi metro has been phenomenal ..

This recognition is besides the already existing reputation for Kochi metro as

1. the most advanced metro in terms of signalling systems, connectivity etc 

2. the cheapest one in the country (at Rs 220 crore/km compared to Rs 337.3 crore per km for Bangalore Namma Metro, a clean Rs 107.3 crore more per kilometre !!) and  

3. the fastest executed metro in the country in just three and a half years compared to Bengaluru Namma metrro which has been struggling to cover an additional . 

To cover phase I of Bengaluru Namma metro (43 km) which is 60% more than Kochi Metro distance of 26 km, Bengaluru Namma metro has incurred INR 13,800 crores over Kochi's INR 5200 crores, a clean 150 % more. Inefficiency or corruption whatever it be, this is shocking..

When we talk of green buildings, we have to say that all the Kochi metro stations are built using locally available materials ensuring least transportation of building materials and storage, least disrupting natural streams and wetlands, ensuring best use of natural lighting eliminating expensive unnecessary indoor lighting,  best use of natural ventilation,  maximum use of renewable energy - almost 25% is solar energy and recycling of water, ensuring very healthy places to gather and travel to. 

Click here for the Economic Times link showing how highly efficient has Kochi metro been in comparison to Namma Bengaluru Metro.

The surprise never ends ! 👍

LED lighting across all stations, water efficient toilet fittings and rainwater harvesting in stations makes the Kochi Metro a greatly renewable energy type of ecosystem, recycling the precious resource of water, unheard of anywhere in the world ! 👍 Even every fourth pillar of the metro is an enviable hanging green garden full of flowers and rejuvenating the environment with Oxygen.

In short, the Kochi metro has the lowest Carbon footprint among all the 200 metros of the world !! 🙏, making Kochi leaping towards being recognised as the green capital of the world, with the world's first and only 100% solar energy powered and energy neutral International airport in the world, competing along with the Kochi Metro.

george.

Byju's coaching classes.

Turning a coaching business to a mammoth online education venture worth $600 million in 2017, generating revenues of Rs. 260 crores, headquartered in Bengaluru in just 10 years from 2007 is a mammoth task.

Especially the organisation when it gets featured as a Harvard case it raises many an eyebrow. It is just great to read how this Malayalam-medium student from Azhikode, Kannur, Kerala is leading Byju's to be  India's first edu-based unicorn ..

Running the organisation, exhibiting great leadership

Byju's has already been valued at $600 million and set to be India's first edu-tech unicorn (>$ 1 billion valuation), It has already been financed by venture capitalists Sequoia Capital and Sofina, Chan Zuckerberg initiative and so on.

Byju, an Engineer by profession was already giving coaching to his roommates on how to crack the Indian Institutes of Management Common Admission Test, already having cracked it twice with 99.9 percentile, he loved the teaching profession. Both his parents are teachers.

Even though Byju's started initially as a classroom coaching class, it spread to classes in huge two thousand seater halls and later to recorded sessions in other cities of India, to Tab based teaching and from 2015, it has moved to Smartphone app based teaching (Android and iOS based) .. www.byjus.com ..

Today Byjus caters to a whole lot of competitive entrance exams in the country starting from UPSC exams, IIM entrance exam CAT, IIT JEE, NEET for medical entrance, GMAT management aptitude exams for foreign Management Institutes, +1 and +2 preparations..

We wish this largest great edu-tech venture which is exploiting the power of technology to scale up in volume and to grow large.

Here is a very short management casestudy prepared on the challenges faced by Byju's at scaling up, how to overcome them and look out for innovative ways to make the learning ecosystem bright and colourful all over the world... May be useful to business school students to understand the challenges faced by educational startups from any part of the world and why they find it difficult to scale up.

george..

World's first carbon-neutral village - Meenangaadi in Wayanad, Kerala ..

Ponds help raise watertable and charge wells

In 2006, the English village of Ashton Hayes of 10,000 people tried to become the world's first Carbon neutral community. Over the last decade they could reduce their emissions by 23% but is still to be a carbon-neutral community. 

When the all-polluting US and the Western world is struggling to live up to their  promises to build a greener world, Meenangaadi village in Wayanad district in Kerala has already taken the great steps to become by 2020 the world's first carbon-neutral village ..

With the active cooperation of the supporting government, public and the local administrators, the village of Meenangaadi is becoming a model to the whole world !!

A pond of the 467 new ones dug to catch water and grow fish ..

The Finance Minister of the state of Kerala in India Dr Thomas Issac went to UN HQ in Nov 2015 to present a paper on Waster Disposal at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, He came back with an audacious plan - make Meenangaadi, a village of 34,000 people in Wayanad district as India's first (and world's first)  Carbon-neutral village by 2020.

Nestled in the quiet and pristine Western Ghats this village of 34,000 people of over 54 sq. km area has been facing the worst implications of climate change, with drop in rainfall precipitation and lowering of water table, a decline in rice production and spices like cardamom, pepper, tea, coffee etc.. By 2050 AD, the average rise in temperature around this area is predicted to be around 2.5-3 deg C

Beena Vijayan, Meenangaadi gram panchayat president
taking soil samples to find the Carbon content in
Meenangaadi soil. Courtesy - The Hindu. 

The villagers are well aware of the ills of pollution, they have been well informed of the benefits of a carbon neutral environment for their children and grandchildren and together they sincerely desire the town to be carbon-neutral. Not to forget, the impact they would be making globally as the first Carbon neutral village of the world !!

"To bring the town’s net carbon dioxide emissions down to zero, we will conserve and expand our forests, plant more trees, reduce carbon emissions from households, promote self sustenance through organic farming, and recycle our waste.” - Beena Vijayan, Meenangaadi gram panchayat President .

Scenic views around Meenangaadi ..

In their greening spree, the villagers have planted on 38 acres of land (the area of 20 football pitches)  which includes public and private land, 4,50,000 coffee plants, 32,500 cardamom trees and 20,000 other shade trees which were provided to the villagers for free by the panchayat. Free organic vegetable seed and buds belonging to cabbage, cauliflower, tomato, beans, bitter gourd, ladies finger, tapioca and chilli were also provided to the villagers to help imbibe a sense of awareness of organic farming practices among the villagers.

The crematorium in the village now runs on LPG saving precious wood which was earlier used to burn dead bodies. The town has completely shifted to LED bulbs and in even envisaging starting an LED bulb manufacturing firm in the village to meet the needs (the problem of having to offset the carbon emissions from the plant would be the next problem for them).

Getting ready to get global attention ..

Of the 467 ponds newly dug in the village to help raise water table and charge the wells in the town. almost 420 of them are fish rearing bringing extra revenue for the people of the village and for owners of private compounds where some of these ponds have been dug. The village has also set up an aerobic composting plant, that converts the organic wet waste in the village to manure that could be used for the vegetation. A bio-gas plant to convert organic waste to energy and a solar park that will feed electricity to the energy grid of the state are other ways by which the village is planning to go carbon-neutral.

The MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) Chennai is helping the village authorities along with a group, Thanal from Trivandrum to do a soil audit and energy consumption audit in each of the houses in the village to find out how much Carbon the village emits and then offset it by their innovative actions as outlined above.

Click here for a copy of the presentation I gave at Alliance University, Bangalore in Jan '18.

George..

Ref : 1. Balachandran Manu, The world's first Carbon neutral town could end up in the planet's most polluted country, qz.com, Last visited 24 June 2017.

         2. www.thebetterindian.com, Kerala village to be the first Carbon-neutral panchayat, , Last visited 23 June 2017

        3. Manoj, E.M., Meenangaadi marches to Carbon-neutral tag, The Hindu, March 2017..

Yoga - India's contribution to the world !!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3P_fJFwJNOdZEc5ZHZLdkY4cE0/view?usp=drivesdk

Brilliant Rifath and a mediocre Indian education system.

The smartest kid in India as accepted by the world and developer of the 64 g KALAMSAT, would not even get a chance to study with the less intelligent dumbos in IITs and other Engg. colleges, but would go with a heavy scholarship to MIT.

What a messed up, screwed up and useless higher education system we have ! To make more idiots !!