Took a guy who had been staying with us for a few nights out to Old Delhi station and put him on the train to Raxual. That station really is a sea of humanity. So hot too. Took a while to work out what platform his train was going from, the enquiries people said platform one whilst it was actually 2 (There are 18 platforms). Caught the Delhi metro back home.
A bit sad now that his gone it was nice to have a bit more company.
For various reasons the past week or so has been rather difficult. I hope good comes from it.
I am really lucky to have a global support network like I have.
I had a really good talk to a friend in Ireland today as well as a nice chat to some people back home.
I pondered today in the back of an auto-rickshaw whilst reading The Road Less Travelled how many people may have read that book in the back of an auto. I don’t think it would be that high…
Just read the TAX Office overview of the latest budget out of Australia.
I am very ashamed to be an Australian today and very glad to be far far away from the men who are running my homeland.
Where do I start?
The tax cuts are worth $37 billion dollars?
Did you know that we provide less then 1/12 of the Tax cut (about $3 billion) to overseas aid and development each year. I’d love the government to give me a smaller tax cut to fulfil our commitment (which I believe is rather theoretical) to the MDG’s.
I had a look through the overseas development and assistance budget and as far as I can see it’s a lot less then it would seem. They have put in all kinds of things that don’t belong there.
We start off with a budgeted figure of $2946.3 million for 2006/2007 budget year.
We are kindly giving Iraq $334 million in debt relief. Wonder how this compares to the cost of the military invasion of Iraq we supported. Or how it compares to the value of the infrastructure we helped destroy. The total $357 million being spent on Iraq should be moved to the Department Of Defence. So that’s 12% gone there. Leaving us with $2589.3 billion.
By the same reasoning I take out Afghanistan’s 33.9 million another 0.9% of the budget disappears and it’s $2555.4 million.
Ok now lets go through and remove some of the one offs. We are giving $136.2 million as a once off for debt relief. Which is 5% of the budget. That brings it down to $2419.2 million. I’ll keep Tsunmi AID as another disaster will come soon enough.
I am going to leave it to you to decide if the AusAid Governance programs are worthwhile, they do take up 26% of our ODA budget. That is $766.04 million, now most of this money we spend on things in our best interest like economic management at 25%. To me it’s like a bank giving you financial planning so you can pay back your loans. Most of the advice we give I am sure is in our own best interests. I am going to be kind to the government and just take out that. So that’s another $191.51 million that doesn’t belong in this budget. Bringing my revised budget figure to $2227.69 million.
I could go on but I think you might be getting my point.
But one more thing I want to talk about is that these millions dollars I am talking about could be saving lives. It doesn’t cost much to feed a person, or to provide a person with a treatment to cure TB. Everyday people die because we do too little.
I feel depressed, and disappointed. I can’t help but feel like Make Poverty History and the MDG’s are going to fail, with countries like Australia not giving what they promised at the UN. I am wondering whether it is time to move beyond nation states and their broken promises and commitments. I am wondering if we as individuals can be selfless, disciplined and charismatic enough to raise the money that is needed ourselves. I don’t know how it would work. Could I give up some luxuries in an attempt to halve extreme poverty?
I am talking about raising billions of dollars here, the kind of money that multi-nationals and governments have and some rather wealthy individual.
References:
AusAid Budget information
Budget Overview
And remember to checkout Bens blog over the coming days for a much better analysis then I have provided.
We have cable tv now. No TV just using out computers to watch it. Very funny watching childhood cartons in Hindi.
This morning I dreamt that I made it back to community dinner. I miss commie stuff.
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Drug dealers |
Software developers |
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Refer to their clients as “users”. |
Refer to their clients as “users”. |
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“The first one’s free!” |
“Download a free trial version…” |
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Have important South-East Asian connections (to help move the stuff). |
Have important South-East Asian connections (to help debug the |
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Strange jargon: |
Strange jargon: "SCSI", "ISDN", "Java", "RTFM" |
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Realize that there’s tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market. |
Realize that there’s tons of cash in the 14- to 25-year-old market. |
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Job is assisted by industry’s producing newer, more potent mixes. |
Job is assisted by industry’s producing newer, faster machines. |
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When things go wrong, a “fix” is just a phone call away but may be expensive. |
When things go wrong, a “fix” is just a phone call away but may be expensive. |
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Often seen in the company of pimps and hustlers |
Often seen in the company of marketing people and venture capitalists |
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Their product causes unhealthy addictions. |
DOOM. Quake. SimCity. Duke Nukem 3D. ‘Nuff said. |
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Customers in trouble are given NO ASSISTANCE. |
Customers in trouble are told to call TECH SUPPORT. |
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Do your job well, and you can sleep with sexy movie stars who depend |
Damn! Damn! DAMN!!! |
Got a UPS yesterday for our flat. Now when the mains power goes out my Internet stays on. Too bad about the lights and fans. We were meant to get an inverter but that hasn’t happened yet :-(. So here I sit blogging in our dimly lit room.
A depressing report came out from UNICEF this week. Looks like the Millennium Development Goal for having number of under weight children.
Things are not looking good for children in India but things are looking up in China at least.
A group in PNG acheived a 90% TB Cure rate acording to this news story. It just goes to show how good the DOTS program is.
To be hard or soft.
Living in Delhi is difficult.
It is not so much difficult due to an absense of creature comforts. For a reasonable price I can get most of the sorts of things I liked at home. I can even go to see English movies. I can eat most of the food I would like to eat from back home. (For some reason I can find any t-bone steaks around the place like back home). I spend a reasonable amount of time in cafes.
The hard bit of Delhi though is the harshness of it sometimes. The many people around the place who would dearly like to take me for every ruppie they can get. It’s also a rather aggressive and people can be rather pushy sometimes. I would like to be able to trust everyone including rickshaw drivers, I would like to listen to everyone, I would like to be able to do something for the beggars. Sometimes it all really gets to me.
So I harden my heart and get a bit pushy myself. Almost as soon as I get that way I find myself being aggressive to someone who is more or less harmless. Like today I was very sceptical of a guy doing market research, who was actually legit. I began to soften my heart a bit. Then I got into an auto and got ripped off.
So what do I do?
Should my heart be hard and soft?
Can it be both?
How do I switch?
Are defences necessary?
How can I make sure I strip the defences as soon as the threats are over?
I brought the Road Less Travelled yesterday when I was at the Defence Colony markets. I have only read a few pages so far but they were good.