fair trade & modern day slavery

The other day I took my daughter for her choir practice where they meet two or three times every week to rehearse for an hour. I was strolling in the school corridor looking at various displays, notices and bulletin boards while they were busy inside.

The fourth graders of this Swiss school had prepared a bulletin board based on their self-research and it was very impressive. I am glad that I stood there for few minutes as it made feel more about the plight of the farm workers. Being enlightened early in life about “Fair Trade Practices”, I am optimistic that these children will grow up to be a more socially responsible generation.

They have noted down the following for the banana plantation workers who gets the lowest reward for their efforts as per the banana split.

• Work for 14 hours a day in harsh weather conditions
• Have poor working condition
• Spray fertilizers and pesticides
• Cut down the bananas
• Carry heavy loads of bananas for washing
• Wash the bananas
• Cannot usually join a union

Banana Plantation is only an example but disparity exist in all types of export oriented trade, be it farming or manufacturing. The incident of Rana plaza in Bangladesh in 2013, had shocked the entire world but there are still thousands of other businesses where workers continue to endure hardship to maximize profits.  

I looked up on the Wikipedia for information about Fair trade. Fair trade is an institutional arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries achieve better trading conditions. The philosophy and the core principles are very good. However, what is lacking is its implementation on ground. Licensing unfortunately doesn't help the farmers much, although it provides significant marketing advantage for the business owners.        

Fair trade is grounded in three core beliefs:

1. Producers have the power to express unity with consumers.
2. The world trade practices that currently exist promote the unequal distribution of wealth between nations.
3. Buying products from producers in developing countries at a fair price is a more efficient way of promoting sustainable development than traditional charity and aid.

Being a part of the CIOB, we take sustainable construction development very seriously. Construction is by far the largest industry in this world and we ensure that the supply chain selection process is rigorous. The message to the manufacturers is clear and unambiguous. Exploitation of their workforce will not be tolerated.

Will you be joining hands to stop this modern day slavery!  

Lives that Inspire us through books

This week Indi-blogger inspires us to ponder whether “we think inspiration books are really useful?”

I need to get the ambiguity out of my way and therefore the first question I ask myself is “How do we define the genre Inspirational Books in this context”?  Let me adopt the simplistic path and consider those to be a subsection of wide variety of inspirational literature that are promoted aggressively by the marketers.

Let me start with the books that made their authors not only very famous but rich as well. This genre include books like following along with their prequels and sequels.

• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Think and Grow Rich
• You Can Win

I believe those became bestsellers for a reason and that being marketed differently. People have either fallen for celebrity endorsement, followed their peers or impulsively got motivated to buy it. As we understand sales make books a best seller while reading those doesn’t. Reading would have got them "The Man Booker Prizes" or something similar!

I am quite sure we will be shocked if know how many proud owners of these, actually managed to travel cover to cover or for that matter crossed the halfway mark.

My repeated attempts of motivating myself to foray into the depth of those, whether thick or thin has failed and story of my peers were not too different. Me and my friends by the virtue of being average people with ordinary brought-ups, occupy the mid region of the bell curve of population’s standard statistical distribution.

The exceptional occupy the spaces in the fringes and they managed to derive great mileage by competing the books. They shinned brighter than we average souls while others excelled and went on to create more of such inspirational books. The picture is captured well in the info-graphic.

Info-graphic 

Maybe the question is “if books that inspire people are really useful?” The would be a thumping YEAS.

Books that narrates stories of real men and women with lot of empathy, really inspires us. The story of Robert Bruce and the spider, I can vouch has inspired generations to keep trying and never to give up till we succeed. It’s the book on Gandhi’s life that taught every human being to be the change that they want to see. (Really! It Did?)

The life of Nelson Mandela taught us that “the greatest glory in living lies not in falling, but in rising every time we fall” and when we are faced with an uphill task, we hear the whisper “it always seems impossible until it’s done.”

During his lifetime, Steve Jobs has been a phenomenon of innovation and endurance which we knew without reading his biography. In his end, Jobs inspired us not to fear death with his final words “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.” Which in my view is quite similar to Om Shanti. Om Shanti. Om Shanti.

P.S. there are many souls that inspires us and built our characters. There are no particular reason why I selected some over other although there is a definite reason why I did not mention the holy books or religious scriptures.

It’s true that stories within every religion inspires their practitioners like no other but I did not want my argument to be constricted by personal beliefs.

And finally please do not pay much attention to my info-graphics, it’s made up to drive the message home.

We Walked Along

Through the barren meadows,

Hand in hand, we walked along!

With birds shunning our trees,

Undeterred still, we sang along!

Trees around were shades of grey,

Your laughter, brought color along!

A sight to cherish it is today,

Thousand birds, came along!

Flowers sprayed resplendent hues,

Colors the leaves too, brought along!

With trust we walked unknown paths,

Love always stayed along!

The day I told her that I was leaving Google search

Two weeks back, once I switched on the laptop in the evening, I made an important announcement at home. My daughter could not believe her ears when she heard, I was not going to use Google any more.

“What do you mean?” 

“Henceforth I shall not use the Google search engine”.

“But you are still using Google” a bit perplexed.

“I shall abandon only the search engine, while I shall continue to use chrome, Blogger, YouTube as usual”, I clarified.  

“Aren’t both chrome and the search same!” still confused.

“They are not the same although it is designed to have that look and feel.” I told her and further explained,

“Chrome is a web browser similar to Internet explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Safari while Google Search is a search engine that could be used with any of the browsers. 

There are other search engines available such as Yahoo search, Bing search, DuckDuckgo search, SwissCows search, DogPile search etc.

“I have started to use DuckDuckGo”, I declared .

“The name is so funny and doesn’t sound real” she commented.

“Google too didn’t make any sense as a name when it started”

 Finally she asked “Why are you changing?”

"Google was less of a search company and more of an advertising company"

I told her that anything that we search are mined by Google and sold to the advertisers. Then the advertisers follow us all over the internet and those annoying banner ads keeps popping into our eyes.

If we search for pens for example, we will be bombarded with advertisements from pen companies. I reminded her how we have been followed by hotels, airlines etc. before we went for vacation. We feel that we are being followed, watched and monitored on our life in the internet.

DuckDuckGo promises us freedom from the prying eyes and let us search with privacy. I still have to get used to not using Google search Apps on my phones too.

Will you be joining me?

My Gmailophobia

Business Insider

Google mail started on 01 April 2004 and along with other early adopters, this time #metoo started using this. In those early days an account could only be registered via invitation and I was so much impressed by the service and progressively increasing storage space that by 2006, Gmail became my principle email address.

By launching Gmail on the 1^st of April, Google have their conscience clear! It was poor me who missed the cryptic message. I ought to have realized the fact that if something is too good to be true then most probably it’s not!

Today, all my important emails are stored within the limited storage space of 15 GB available in the Google’s mail server. The good news is that there is an option to purchase additional storage space although I am not sure who benefit more from this option. Moreover the storage space is available till one putting up the rental fees and there is nothing tangible that one can take home.

I am having a fear that is growing in strength with each passing day my intuition warns me that the day is not far when the user will be asked to pay a fees for using Google’s email service. Until that time, instead of paying the levied fees, the mail users have to be prepared to pay the price. Yesterday’s news headline is a good example of such price.

“Google is scanning your Gmail inbox to keep a detailed list of your purchases, and there’s no easy way to erase it”

Today they are scanning for purchases and soon it may expand to banking, finance and everything else. The trouble is that are we in a position to move out of Gmail….. We are already too vulnerable even to think about that!

Google ka kya kare!

Window Shopping Online

Window shopping is one common colorful thread that ties human being across the cultures. The internet has made this pleasurable experience even more fun.

What is that one odd stuff that you looked up recently at the eBay or another online shopping portal? Something that you searched for, with absolutely no intention to make a purchase.

I request you to share your experience via a blogpost and let the fun flow though the blogosphere! If you decide to make the post then please link your post to this one.

The queerest thing that I had searched at the eBay store happens to my spookiest one too. I looked for a “haunted mirror”, not for buying though but to verify if such items were offered for sale.

One variety available are “black glass mirrors” that witches use for ritualistic spell or scrying. With the correct incantation these mirror would be the medium to connect with the dead or the Satan himself....at-least, so they claim!

I was looking for another variety of haunted mirrors which unfortunately nobody was selling on that particular day. Those are the mirrors that has association with spirits, mostly evil. We have heard of many peculiar experiences that people had while looking at the mirror.

A woman once gazed at one such mirror and saw her corpse. 
There was another mirror that freaked out a woman who stood in front. 
Believe it or not, her reflection would move despite her standing still. 
Many people has seen eyes in the mirror and those eyes didn’t belong to them. Sometimes the eyes look directly at the soul and sometimes it appears they cannot see. 
I once read of a woman who saw the face of an ugly old man staring back at her and was haunted for more than a year.

One theory is that something awful happened in front of the mirrors and the negative energy got absorbed in those mirrors. Some researchers think that the spirits try to torment people as causing distress releases emotional energies from us and they feed on this.

I am not sure, I would be willing to hang one of those in our bedroom!

Newspapers – When going gets tough

During our school days internet did not exist in the form that we know it today. Newspapers and Radio was the only two source of news and views in addition to Chinese whispers. While the radio was predominantly the governments’ mouthpiece, newspapers were free to side either with the party in power or the opposition. Most of us kept a tab on both the perspectives. A breath of fresh air was however the programs aired by BBC and VOA.

Newspapers had the freedom of opinions, although it wasn’t free of costs for the readers. For the price paid the papers were a great source of inspiration for the English language proficiency, writing style and trove of new words.

As we approached the new millennium, the internet gained in popularity forcing the newspapers to go online. The digital version was an additional feature while to the printed version was their mainstay. It was a welcome move as they had their eye fixated on a slice of the online advertising pie while the printed ones remained unchanged. Unfortunately for them, the good times did not last as sales of printed version dwindled.

We then inadvertently ushered in an era of instant news as readers took over the responsibilities for breaking as well as distributing all types of news over the social media. The consumers got lost in the labyrinth of fake news, breaking news and news that are utterly stupid.

Majority of the erstwhile readers went on to devour the analysis that came via WhatsApp and based on those formed their opinions on issues ranging from current affairs to world history. The editorials and feature articles that we grew up reading lost its importance to a great extent.

The newspapers that were not state sponsored propaganda outlet or a tabloid feared extinction. One major newspaper dared to challenge the status quo in 2002 by instituting a paywall. By doing that the Financial Times made a reversal of fortune.

The FT had faith in their high-quality work and made the audacious decision to charge the consumer who valued quality of contents and recently crossed a million paying subscribers. The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and many more followed suit.

Now my question to you is should newspapers charge for content online?

A poll in the US indicated that 86% of the participants are against it. Paying for news might be a new concept for the population growing up in the era of free internet, but for us who has subscribed to printed newspapers ever since it’s a different view point.