Proposal for a Dwelling – An ecological gated community in Bangalore

I do not know if this is desperation, or if this is strategic thinking. I am writing this in a bid to gather like-minded people who respect nature and can plan on staying together on a common area along the lines of a gated community. Yes, I know we have the private gated communities and BDA complexes, and oh yes – we also have rental accommodation. But nothing lets us live in a sustainable, ecological, vibrant community that respects nature and enjoys it.

I and Jyostna have been looking for land in Bangalore for quite sometime, and the options are not yet perfect. In too many locations, we have seen that builders focus on “herd mentality”. Land changes hands frequently with people mainly aiming for profit and not really looking at it as a place that can sustain life. Living has become equivalent to spoiling nature and living against it. Gated communities boast facilities like swimming pools which one hardly ever uses; they are too small to be of any value. But most seem to replicate a different place and are totally out of place with our reality (My blog post on Palm meadows in a desert). While even the human species needs to survive like any other, we believe it is possible to organize our own place in this measly planet of ours.

A possible option we are looking at:
Gather together a few like minded folks and obtain property on the fringes of BLR; for example 4 people buy one acre and we have ~10,000 sq foot plots for each family. Each family builds a house on 2000 sq. foot of their land and leaves the rest open. Rely as little as possible on external resources, and share some resources such as wind energy, well, security, ground-water recharging. Not quite Navadarshanam, but regular 9-5 working people who want to be close to nature and lead a calm life. The goal would be to live in harmony with nature, but retain several urban comforts. If it becomes really feasible, we could implement a gobar gas plant and other such, but that would be a stretch goal.

What it would entail:
In terms of money:
One acre of land about 10-15 Kms from Bangalore costs 48 lakhs. I have some options that I can talk about. If four families share one acre, the cost will be 12 lakhs per family. For 1,400 rupees per square feet, it is possible to construct a house that will be ecologically sensitive, and have among other features, it’s own sewage disposal and water harvesting. I have some figures from firms that do ecological designs of homes. For a 2000 square foot home, that would mean about 28 lakhs. The total seems about 40 lakhs. But with registration, electric connection, size of house, delays and other factors minimum-maximum cost could be 45-60 lakhs.

In terms of personal commitment:
Mutual respect that we will not violate building standards and not succumb to selling our respective 10,000 sq. feet of property in the form of parcels when the surrounding areas “develop”.

Best case scenario to make this happen:
20-25 families will participate in this, and we shall have a very vibrant community.
4-5 families will participate in this and they will have a nice place to stay.

BTW, we are not real-estate agents, we do not have experience in doing this. We think this is very difficult, we have a whole bunch of optimism, but we think the outcome is worth the effort. This is a five-hundred foot idea; the exact details can be worked out if and when folks think this is feasible. Comments are welcome.

What are we planning to do if this does not work:
Get a 40×60 plot in a decent locality in Bangalore, have an independent house. We may even have to revert to a gated community :( .

Moving to wordpress

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Research on global warming.

Saw the following article in the Times of India, page 18, 25th March 2009....

Ocean test to fight global warming fails
Amit Bhattacharya | TNN

New Delhi: LOHAFEX, the Indo-German Antarctic scientific expedition that had triggered a storm of protests when it set sail in January to test a controversial method of fighting global warming by getting a huge amount of CO ² to sink deep into the ocean, has returned with disappointing results.
The team found that the amount of CO ² —a greenhouse gas chiefly responsible for global warming—eliminated from the atmosphere as a result of the experiment turned out to be far less then expected. This has led the scientists, 29 of them from India, to infer that the Southern Ocean near Antarctica may not be as good a site for ‘ocean iron fertilization’ as previously thought.
Iron fertilization is a method of seeding the ocean with iron to prompt the blooming of phytoplankton, a class of tiny plant algae which take up CO ² from the air and quickly die off, sinking deep into the ocean with the carbon. If conducted on a large scale, it was touted as a way of sucking millions of tonnes of CO ² , thus reducing the level of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The LOHAFEX team, however, found that though the algae mass doubled in size after four tonnes of dissolved iron was dropped in a 300 sq km patch of ocean, most of it was quickly eaten away by a crustacean zooplankton species. ‘‘This grazing resulted in most of the CO ² trapped by algae to be recycled into air,’’ said S W A Naqwi from National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, the co-chief scientist of the project.

Funny feeling I get - A few days ago, I had written about the one straw revolution, and how science cannot see all parameters. This article is another embodiment of that observation.

Interesting blog on individualism and socialism....

Saw these entries on a blog:
In defence of individualism


A Second Republic
Quotes:

== Begin Quote ==
To understand the pitfalls of the notion that collectively held property actually exists, the reader should take a walk around Lutyens' Delhi. All the bungalows there are public property: They belong to the state.

But does this mean that they belong to us, the people? Certainly not. If anyone of us were to try and enter one of these compounds, even if just to admire the flowers in the opulent garden (maintained at public cost), we would be turfed out pronto.

.....

So let us consider how the socialist state acquired these titles. It owns all these bungalows, all over the country, where its functionaries reside for free.

It owns all these enterprises which it leases out to its cronies. It operates a land monopoly in most cities, including the Capital. It owns all the forests, all the rivers, all the mountains, all the oil under the ground, all the minerals: It practically owns the entire country.

For the rest of us, property titles are extremely insecure. We really own nothing. Tribals get booted out of their traditional homelands, which are leased out to forest officials and contractors for private gain.

In Karnataka, the state government is passing law to take over temples: God is being nationalised!

At this point, let us pause to reflect on the fact that there can be some truly public properties which every citizen and even every foreigner is free to use like a public thoroughfare or a public park.

Liberal economists call these public goods and call for public investments in public goods alone. This is because businessmen will not invest in goods which everyone can use for free.

In India, although this is a planned economy, the state has not invested in these public goods at all. Instead of investing in roads, it invested in an automobile factory. It owns Scooters India. It owns oil companies. Hotels. Steel plants. Airlines. Should liberal jurisprudence hold these property titles to be valid?

Absolutely not. These are all criminally acquired titles. The taxpayer's interests have not been represented in this planned socialist democracy. Instead of investing in public goods, they have invested in private goods. This is planned theft.

== End Quote ==

Getting onto the electoral rolls

I checked from election commission's website that Koramangala falls under 172-BTM Layout. Relevant documents:
Electoral Registration Officers in Bangalore and
Electoral Registration Officer’s (EROs) of 21 New (Delimited) Legislative Assembly Constituencies of BBMP.
Folks from office also verified that my house falls under BTM constituency.

Next, filled out form 6, attached photocopy of passport and ration card and submitted at the ERO office at the BBMP office in Madiwala, next to ayyappa temple (wikimapia link) . The office timing was from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 4:00 to 8:00 PM; I was there at about 9:30 and it took around half-hour to submit the form. They gave me an acknowledgement and said that the name should show up in about one week. The BBMP office in Madiwala is not indicated as an ERO office on the pdf files. You can call the ERO office before you go and verify if there is another center closer to you.

Many are checking out jaago re to get their names onto the voters list. Jaago rey lets you fill out the information on form 6 directly as pdf. You have to hand over the form yourself. I did not use jaao rey, preferred to download the form from Govt site.

The Govt. websites themselves are not too bad. Karnataka has a website that shows wether your name is on the voters list or not.

Once your name gets onto the electoral rolls, you should be able to go to the local ERO office and get your voters ID card. Today, there was a huge crowd outside the BBMP office for getting the ID card; hopefully it would not be necessary to go to the BBMP office to get ID card. During election time, like right now, one can also get a voters ID card at local offices like at the Chinmaya school in Koramangala. The latter serves local communities and would be less crowded.

PS: This is the first time I am in India during General Elections as an adult, and I +vely want to be on the voters list.

Ration card zhaalaa...

I got my ration card today. It is India's version of social security. Subsidized gas, food, and a host of other services.

One needs the following documents:
"Deletion certificate" showing that your name has been cancelled from your father's ration card.
If you do not have a deletion certificate, they may want you to sign an affidavit saying that you do not have ration card elsewhere. They will also need an NOC from your native place.
Marriage certificate, if married.
Birth certificate, if you have any minors who need to be added to the list.
Proof of citizenship: Birth certificate/passport/voters ID card.
Copy of address proof: Phone bill, bank statement (Only nationalized banks),
Two passport sized photos.

Take all documents to the card office. For Bangalore, the office is located at coordinates: 12°57'25"N 77°34'3"E. It should not be a problem finding parking in one of the bylanes there.

Applying at the center (I had gone there on 10th Feb 2009):
Ask any one where you need to apply for ration card. There is a lady sitting in front of the "computer rooms". Pay Rs 10 as application fee. She will stick your photo in a registry, write an application number next to your name, and put that app # on a blank application, stick your photo on the application and return it to you.

You now fill out the application and take it to one of the officers. He will check the documents, and sign them.

Next, you return it to the lady, who will check the signatures, and will put a receipt number at the acknowledgement that is located in the bottom of the application. The acknowledgement receipt is returned to you with a date within which an inspection would be done. You should be present at home for the inspection. Some folks have said that if a visit is not needed, you would get the card on the spot. My application needed an inspection, so one month wait. She gave me a date of 10th March.

Visit by inspector:
A food inspector visited our house in about 3 weeks. The guy verified that we did indeed exist, but was concerned about our gas connection. We are using a gas connection from a friend, and the inspectors claim was that we could not get another one at the same address. Well, we said - if that is the law then it is fine (AFAIK, that is not the law - the connection has to be in my name for him to refuse); we would go without a gas connection and get the ration card alone. The dude said: "I will give favourable report only. There will be another officer who would come, and if you Request maddi to him, you will get gas also." I asked him if I could give the request in writing, and for good measure also asked the format in which the request should be written :) (In all likelihood, his request meant ghoos). The other officer never showed up.

Collecting ration card at center on 24th March:
You have to take all your family members with you. Minors under 1 year are exempted.
I did see one person have his picture taken for a new ration card. His wifes name was also added on his card; she had not come.

You show your acknowledgement receipt, collect your application form.

Go to the computer desk. Wait for your name to be called. They will photograph you, take a fingerprint, you pay Rs 45, your card is printed and laminated. You return home and enjoy your "social security"...

Both visits to the card office took me about 45 minutes. If you are not anal with these people, they will be quite friendly and help you with filling your forms. The fees are legit. There is also a tatkal scheme, where you can get it the same day; costs about Rs 100.

There are several Govt. run FAQ's which can be great resources:
[1], [2], [3].

I met "The One straw revolution"....

Sometimes, you read a book and feel that you have met in the author, a part of yourself. In my case, "the one straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka is one such book. Some quotes:

==== page 74.

Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts research that conforms neither with natural law nor with practical experiments.
...
Even if you can explain how metabolism affects the productivity of the top leaf when the average temperature is eighty-four degrees (Fahrenheit), there are places where the temperature is not eighty-four degrees. Moreover, if the temperature is eighty-four degrees in Ehime this year, next year it may only be seventy-five degrees. To say that simply stepping up metabolism will increase starch formation and produce a large harvest is a mistake. The geography and topography of the land, the condition of the soil, its structure, texture, and drainage, exposure to sunlight, insect relationships, the variety of seed used, the method of cultivation-truly an infinite variety of factors-must all be considered. A scientific testing method that takes all relevant factors into account is an impossibility.
==== page 87.
If one farm household or one cooperative takes up a new process such as the waxing of Mandarin oranges, because of the extra care and attention the profit is higher. The other agricultural co-ops take notice and soon they, too, adopt the new process. Fruit which is not wax-treated no longer brings so high a price. In two or three years, waxing is taken up all over the country. The competition then brings the prices down and all that is left to the farmer is the burden of hard work and the added costs of supplies and equipment. Now he must apply the wax.
====

In this chapter, Fukuoka indicates how physical deformities are not indicative of the nutritional value, but are still preferred.

====
It is the same with fertilizer and chemicals. Instead of developing fertilizer with the farmer in mind, the emphasis is on developing something new, anything at all, in order to make money.
====
The fundamental question here is wheter or not it is necessary for human beings to eat eggplants and cucumber during the winter.
====
I do not particularly like the word "work." Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think this is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive.
====
Why do you have to develop? If economic growth raises from 5% to 10%, is happiness going to double? What's wrong with a growth rate og 0%? Isnt' this a rather stable kind of economics? Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?
====

This book does not subscribe to escapism, or suggest that one should be lazy. Fukuoka makes it very clear that the life of natural farming is very difficult, that every plant has to be studied, and significant manual labor is involved.

As for me, the current definitions of development, and the behavior of science and business are quite irresponsible, and out of balance. The book says the same in the area of agriculture.

For example, the quote from page 87 (above) describes a "Waxing" phenomena that we can see happening at several other industries. The parallel is easier to understand in the IT business where margins have become razor thin as more companies outsourced and competition increased. IT companies routinely slave their workers. The loss of quality of life was not apparent initially, but is now being seen all around.

I do not think that one should stop scientific research; I believe however that large scale experiments with untested scientific research is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.

Market - and only market.

We had been to Satish's farm last Saturday. Their story is similar to that of Srikanth and Priti at vanashree: http://www.vanashree.in/Ourjourney.htm. I will not repeat the aspects of simple living and so on over here. It is better described at several other websites.

I wonder what would be the social implications if people take to such lifestyles on a large scale. Often, people say that such a simple life, or "the Gandhian way" is anti-development. I beg to differ. The way most "development" is designed right now, it is designed to only serve a "market". The larger the market, the better the development. This cannot be the best model that our economists, researchers, and industrialists can come up with.

There has to be a middle ground between crass commercialization, market economy principles, and the North-Korea/Cambodia style defeatist principles. As for a window into current "market development", it would help looking at a sample of the products that hit markets, I quote an article I saw on Onion:

== Begin quote ==
"Often, when we're assigned a new order for, say, 'salad shooters,' I will say to myself, 'There's no way that anyone will ever buy these,'" Chen said during his lunch break in an open-air courtyard. "One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless shit?"

"I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I've made for them," Chen said. "And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible."
== End quote ==

Of course, not all products are this bad. Some innovations are really useful. But much of it is junk, or given the environmental hazards posed, worse than junk :). The effect of a purely market economy can go deeper than creating junk. It subtly alters people to think that they are happy while indulging in products, and satisfying such an indulgence is most important for "life". BBC had a series called "The Century of the Self". It is a documentary about the understanding of human behavior vis-a-vis market economy and large businesses (Available on google video). The works of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud make for very interesting reading here.

This is where Gandhian living kicks in. It focusses on people satisfying their basic needs through their own hard work, and looking for external resources only when absolutely needed. A typical argument against this lifestyle is that it stunts progress; Science is like evolution and needs to be done in baby steps (I agree with this). If one ventures to science only when absolutely needed, there will be disorganized, slow, or stunted development. For example, if vaccum cleaners were never invented, the "roomba", an automatic vaccum cleaner would never have been invented. This is a very subjective argument for which a short answer is not possible. However, in the current era, it is easy to see that most science has been overtaken by a market phenomena. Too frequently, the fundamental technology, and even a study of its effectiveness at solving the stated problem gets much less importance than the buzz factor generated. It gets even more dangerous when profit becomes the prime driving force behind industry. A lifestyle that is focussed on only solving the most important problems will not let go of scientific advances completely. It may be a model that can eliminate mass-producing the "junk" that gets generated by intermediate results.

Bangalore getting hotter.

The Hindu had a post about how Bangalore temperatures are soaring. It doesnt need a rocket scientist to say that temperatures will be higher if we cut down trees.

We will need scientists, or maybe magicians to figure out a solution after enuff of those trees are cut.

To GE or not GE…

Got into a discussion with members at AID about Genetic Engineering; it was about whether one should support it or not. There were several aspects that were discussed; the question according to me is not about GE but about issues that NGOs have to pick up in general.

I will re-state a few salient aspects as points:


1. Science is often mis-aligned for profit. Science needs to have experimental
rigor and business ethics should be sound.
2. Science should have solutions that are reversible. Think harmful
gas leaks without medication in neighboring hospitals (Dow/Bhopal, industrial
effluents, Agent Orange).
3. Historically, when technology or a line of thought removes choice,
it is harmful.
This is not just about science. Its effects are more easily
understood in social problems. Think Mangalore - removal of choices for women etc.
4. No amount of testing is sufficient testing. Errors happen, and that is
acceptable. Hence, technologies must balance 1, 2, and 3 so as to
allow correctable and gradual acceptance.

As users of advanced technology, and more because we are NOGs, we have to
be aware of these aspects, and be clear about why a certain technology should,
or should not be supported. We cannot have ad-hoc approaches to each problem.

Generally, I am not against a particular technology, and that includes GE. But I would be most comfortable with a technology that supports these tenets.

Long time no see.

It has been a long time since i have posted. Several things have happened. The baby is awesome. We had a naming ceremony in eary Jan. I bought a car. Tata Indigo Marina VS; white color. Very basic to look at, but very nice on the road. I like it that way.

I have had two tickets. :) Both times, it has been for a no-entry offence. The traffic police has a black berry on which he enters your licence plate number, and he immidiately gets all your history. Then you pay the fine and you get a receipt. I have seen traffic policemen stand around with cameras - No, they are not taking family pictures. They take photos of licence plates, and send you a fine by mail. The system could be misused, and I have had colleagues tell me that it is misused. I do not yet know the veracity and extent of misuse though.

The fine system has been made very functional, but the traffic signs and training is pretty bad. The no-entry sign has a Blue background, Black arrow, and Red color mark on the arrow. Blue-Black-Red... Great contrast I must say, especially on streets where hajaar other useless things mess with every half-useful sign.

Attended a talk at Navadarshanam. It was started by a group of IITans in the early 90s. To cite from the group's mission:

* people all over the world today are caught in the dangerous, swirling, currents of the materialistic, urban industrial way of life.
* alienation of the individual from self, nature, and the Creative Power is going hand in hand with societal disintegration and ecological destruction.