Socially Relevant S&T Projects for College Students of Kerala

I have been thinking of writing about this item for a long time now. This is regarding an initiative that I had played an active role in initiating, along with many KSSP friends. The idea of compiling a list of socially relevant projects stemmed from the idea that Dr. Achuthsankar raised in an article in shaasthragathy regarding how technology could help the society. The broad idea was to leverage the enthusiasm and plantiful availability of time among the science and technology students in the state, to develop technologies which could potentially make a difference to the state of affairs in Kerala (for good, obviously). Further, the idea was to focus on problems that only we would be able to address; i.e., problems that are special to Kerala and not to other parts. I should say we were successful in coming up with a bunch of such problems, and we used a wiki for the compilation. The wiki is open to all, and anybody can post ideas to the same. The live wiki is available at http://srprojects.wetpaint.com . Please feel free to update the same.

At some point of time, we thought that we would take a snapshot of the wiki and make a distributable version of it. Such a version is available here. This is a PDF that we are thinking of distributing to various colleges in Kerala; engineering colleges to start with. I had written up an article on the same with Dr. Achuthsankar and I would rather choose to paste it here instead of re-writing all the stuff again. Hope that you would find the compilation to be of some use. Signing off now.

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Socially Relevant Student Projects in Emerging Technologies for Kerala

Introducing a KSSP Initiative for encouraging Student Projects with Societal Benefits

Deepak P & Achuthsankar S Nair

“Engineers use creativity, technology, and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.” –Wikipedia

Kerala has traditionally been in the forefront of research in India, with the large number of research centers such as RRL, TBGRI, RGCB, CESS, KFRI, KAU, CDS, VSSC, CTCRI, CIFT, NIO etc, some of which were setup during the Achutha Menon era. The tremendous amount of socially relevant innovation in centers in Kerala led to very interesting developments such as developing hybrid verities of crops, high-yielding cattle and so on. But surprisingly, we have not been able to catch up with the progress happening in the other states regarding developing technologies in the modern fields of science and technology such as Information Technologies, Computer Science etc. This is not to belittle the efforts which are on at centers such as C-DIT, CDAC Tvm, IIITMK, OSSICS etc, but the progress has been much slower as compared to the other neighboring states. The recent advancements in Information and Communication technologies have revolutionized the whole world of late, and the flood of opportunities that have been enabled by them can be harnessed to provide more value for our local society to make them world-class in whatever they are doing. The engineering academia in Kerala has not yet ramped up to grab the opportunities to make a difference to Kerala and her people; which is gravely unfortunate. Undergraduate engineering projects are being seen as opportunities to learn the “hot” technologies and build “cool” web-apps rather than contributing a reusable component or technology. This shift of focus has led to a situation wherein innovation at the student-level has become close to non-existent at engineering colleges in Kerala, especially in emerging technology areas such as Computer Science and Information Technology. To address this problem, Kerala Shaasthra Saahithya Parishad has been working on popularizing Socially Relevant Projects among undergraduate engineering students (and is to be broadened to beyond engineering students), and this article is to briefly make explicit the plethora of areas where innovation in computer science and information technology can make a difference to Kerala and her people. The following couple of paragraphs summarize certain ideas compiled as part of the initiative.

Language Computing in Malayalam

The Web is practically shielded from people who know only Malayalam. Although there are websites in various languages including Malayalam, the larger chunk of the web is still inaccessible to the above mentioned class of people. Automatic translation of web pages from English to Malayalam is one way of opening up the web to those said class of people. Further, computing in their own language would be much more preferable to a large chunk of people who are currently constrained to use English. There have been numerous efforts on enabling computing in Malayalam, notable among them being the Kaveri suite and the efforts at C-DIT and CDAC. But, there are areas where student projects could make a difference including
Automatic Machine Translation from English to Malayalam and vice versa
Text-To-Speech system for Malayalam
Voice Recognition System for Malayalam
Optical Character Recognition Software for Malayalam text
Some of the notable efforts to this end include those by C-DIT and OSSICS such as
WebDarshini – Malayalam Web Browser
Aksharavidya – Malayalam Editor
It may be noted that Kerala lags much behind its neighboring states in the development of such technologies. IIIT Hyderabad, Anna University, IIT Bombay, IBM Research etc have been contributing to the development of language technologies in various regional languages and in Hindi by making various frameworks and holding conferences for fostering research in the said area.

Technologies for Kerala and her People

Kerala is unique in many aspects, due to various reasons such as high density of population, high emigration, large forest area, a long coastline etc. All these present unique challenges in the emerging engineering disciplines. Some ideas include things such as the following
CocoPistol: Tender coconut stalls often have no idea of the tenderness of the coconuts until they cut open and until the buyer tastes, some times we get totally un-sweet water, sometimes the tenderness is not there, it is almost mature coconut. Maybe even when they pluck, they are not very clever at identifying the lot which is just ready (or is it that they cheat once in a while). Coco Pistol would be a small hand-held pistol which could be held on the husk and shot, wherein radar like operation in it will find out the ripeness in months and display it as a digit somewhere on the pistol. This could be used before plucking the coconuts, or be provided by the sellers to the customers to choose the nut they want.
Understanding and Predicting “Chakara”: Chakara, the unique phenomenon of fishes coming close to the coastline in Kerala has not been well-studied. Currently ocean researchers depend on costly buoys to monitor ocean parameters. Satellite data is available for certain extent, however not suitable for micro level analysis. Often the costly instruments and metal parts are stolen from buoys placed in the ocean. Another way of data collection is through cruises, whose costs are very high and require human presence in the ocean. The unique challenge would be to utilize a neural network or related mechanisms to take these incomplete data and use it to predict Chakara. NIO is associated with efforts in this regard.
Telephone to VoiceMail Services for contacting the Pravaasi: With the increasing number of pravaasy malayalis in various parts of the world, esp. the Gulf, the need for cost-effective frequent communication arises. The disparities such as much better internet accessibility among the pravaasis and special conditions such as very high density of telephone connections in Kerala and the high number of calls from Kerala to certain areas such as the Gulf pose some interesting challenges in this regard. The idea is to enable one-way communication from Kerala to places like the Gulf from the telephone lines in Kerala to the Internet Access Centers in such areas (thru the recipient's mail boxes).
Wireless Connectivity in an Undulated Terrain: Wireless connections currently work by using hot-spots, which are hubs enabling people within a certain distance of the hotspot to login to the internet. These have been shown not to work well in an undulated terrain such as what Kerala has, and thus, an effective solution for this problem would immensely benefit Kerala and its society.

Future Directions

These and many other ideas have been detailed at the page for the KSSP initiative at http://srprojects.wetpaint.com . The page contains details about the various projects listed therein too. The reader is welcome to go through it and contribute further ideas. The intent is to bring out a book on “An Invitation to Socially Relevant S&T Projects” as the next step of fuelling the Socially Relevant Projects initiative. We exhort you to contribute further project ideas in this regard, implement some of these as your own projects or point out efforts in similar directions so as to make this effort a truly collaborative effort in utilizing and exploiting the emerging technology areas to deliver value to Kerala and her people. The bottom-line is “efforts on addressing such Kerala specific issues can be initiated from nowhere apart from the Kerala academia itself”.

Acknowledgements: All KSSP members and friends who contributed to and encouraged the Socially Relevant Projects initiative.
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Plastic Ban and Waste Management

The recent Plastic Ban (on carry bags less than 30 microns) by the Government of Kerala has evoked a mized response from the general public and traders. During my recent visit to Ekm, I thought that the ban was effective. When I went to a medical shop and bought some stuff including a packet of chips, the guy packed evrything in a paper bag and tied it with thread before giving it to me. But, more than a month later, there are reports say that all is not well. The report says several things, and stresses on lack of instruments to measure whether the bag is below 30 microns; and seems to suggest that some inspectors use the unavailability of instruments to ask for bribe. But, on the whole, the ban in Kerala seems to be much more effective than the one in Maharashtra in 2005 although efforts to beat the ban with an extra micron is not totally ineffective. A year after the Maharashtra ban, the media largely suggested that the ban was ineffective and that it even had negative consequences. Although there is a HC stay on the ban on plastic bags between 30 and 50 microns, the government is exploring methods to expand the ban to the 50 micron limit. This suggests that the ban is here to stay. A detailed report on the status of plastic waste management in India is available at the Central Pollution Control Board's Website.



To effectively get the ban to the masses and to ensure that the ban achieves the desired results, the government has to answer the following simple questions:

1. Why only plastic carry bags? Why not other plastic items?



2. What is the logic behind banning bags below a specific micron limit?



3. Is there no effective way of recycling plastic waste? Cant we explore better recycling rather than banning plastic bags as they are very useful to the common man?

I am not sure whether the government has answered these questions effectively, and whether the media has played its part in getting the answers to the masses. I talked to some people while at Alappuzha, and none of them seem to understand the answer to the second question. And the third question, many people have taken for granted that plastic waste cannot be recycled effectively. I devote this post to aggregate various kinds of answers for the above questions.

(1). Other plastic items are as difficult to manage because of the not-easy-degradability. Such items include plastic tins and boxes too. Wikipedia says, "Plastics are durable and degrade very slowly. In some cases, burning plastic can release toxic fumes. Also, the manufacturing of plastics often creates large quantities of chemical pollutants." But, carrybags are considered to be a major problem because they rarely get reused and clog drains (This was the specific reason cited for the Maharashtra ban on plastics).

(2). As the problem with plastic bags is that of less reuse, one natural solution to the problem is to increase reuse. Thus, allowing usage of only thick plastic bags is naturally expected to enhance reuse.

(3). Now, the big question. Don't we have the technology to recycle plastics effectively? Or don't we have the technology to create degradable plastics? Although most people believe that the answer is "no", there are strong clues on the net which say that the answer is "yes". The rest of this post is devoted to summarizing the content on the web and from elsewhere about what alternative measures of plastic manufacturing and plastic waste management.

Novel Methods on Plastic Manufacturing and Plastic Waste Management

A. BioPlastics - Unlike the traditional plastics which are manufactured from petroleum, bioplastics are derived from plant sources such as hemp oil, soy bean oil and corn starch rather than traditional plastics which are derived from petroleum. This is generally regarded as a more sustainable activity, because it relies less on fossil fuel as a carbon source and also introduces less, net-new greenhouse emissions if it biodegrades. The Wikipedia article goes on to say "Because of their biological biodegradability, the use of bioplastics is especially popular in the packaging sector. The use of bioplastics for shopping bags is already very common. After their initial use they can be reused as bags for organic waste and then be composted. Trays and containers for fruit, vegetables, eggs and meat, bottles for soft drinks and dairy products and blister foils for fruit and vegetables are also already widely manufactured from bioplastics". I am not sure why bioplastics are not popular here. I must confess that I dont know whether bioplastics were "tried and tested" in our environment though.

B. Plastic Recycling - Alka Zadgaonkar: Alka Zadgaonkar claims that her's is the "world's first continuous process for all manner of waste plastics". Infact, although this seems like somebody's imagination, they have already implemented the technology. The article goes on to say "Alka and her husband Umesh, are buying in 5 tonnes of plastic waste everyday in Nagpur at prices attractive to rag pickers. They are making money right now, and are about to scale up and buy in 25 tonnes of plastic waste a day. That production too is booked. As Nagpur generates only 35 TPD of plastic waste, they will shortly run out of raw material to grow bigger." It is unfortunate that we, in Kerala, who claim to be very forward looking, are hardly paying attention to such efforts and to study how we can replicate such efforts in our own environment.

C. Plastic Recycling - Dr. RK Raina: An institute in Delhi has been conducting extensive research on plastic waste recycling and converting plastics to solid waste. Dr R K Raina says : ‘What we have done is to explore ways to improve upon the properties of plastic as fuel. We prepared different types of fuels by simply adding wastes like sawdust, waste paper, leaf, and coal dust. All the blended fuels showed marked improvements in ease of burning. This is because wastes help to increase the porosity of plastic that traps oxygen, helping it to burn’. A report says "The end product is a readily saleable fuel brick. The Institute says the process is so simple that villagers can recycle plastics by mixing them with bio wastes at 110 deg. C. and earn sizeable incomes".

D. Plastic Recycling - Jim Garthe: Jim Garthe, a professional engineer at Penn State University, has developed a technology to convert plastics to plastofuel nuggets. The report says: "About 9 years ago, he built a small table-top machine which would compact rudimentarily shred mixed plastic waste and extrude them into well compacted sausages. These are then sliced by a hot knife into 'Plastofuel' nuggets. The nuggets may then be stored forever and transported economically. Sizable markets are emerging for Plastofuel and other plastic derived fuels [PDF]. Cement and steel majors are conducting trials using plastic waste as fuel adjunct, with a view to reduce energy costs. Cement giant LaFarge North America, Pa has begun trial burning waste plastic as a fuel supplement. These trials are being conducted with a close eye on emissions. The company is keeping local people informed and involved ".

E. Plastic Waste for Laying Roads: There have been multiple efforts within India to use plastics for laying roads. I remember having seen a report on Indiavision or Manorama News which reported that the local people were satisfied with plastic roads in the area where it was tried out. The reporter said "Plastic Road ivdem vareyaanu lay cheythittullathu. Plastic Road ivde theerunnu, kundum kuzhiyum ivde muthal thudangunnu". Although I cannot find a link for the article, it seems that the plan reported earlier has materialized. Plastic roads have been tested elsewhere in TamilNadu too. An article which talks about the technology aspect says "One promising solution tp the problem is from Prof. R Vasudevan of Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai. He thought up the idea of shredding plastic waste, mixing it with bitumen and using the polymerised mix in road construction. Chennai Corporation reacted with commendable speed. In Nov, 2002, it laid out a short stretch of road to test the idea. It has now declared itself satisfied with the trial. Chennai generates close to 150 tonnes of plastic waste everyday. If the Corporation buys, as it says it will, the plastic-waste-for-road-laying idea could be a win-win situation: better roads, money for the poor and cleaner environment. " Mr Ahmed Khan has achieved a lot of success using a similar technology.

The usage of plastics for laying roads has been utilized in Kerala too.

F. Street Lighting with Plastic Waste: There is a recent effort within our own state to explore BoT options of using plastic waste to operate street lights on a BoT basis, leaving considerable amount of the decision making process to the local governing bodies. The report says, "Kerala Builders Forum and Plastic Manufacturers Association have offered to set up a common plastic recycling facility in Kochi. ‘We’ll invest. And the revenue can be shared with Kudumbasree women self-help groups, who collect segregated houshold waste,’ says PJ Mathew, president of the association. ". This seems to be a very good step in this direction; lets hope it materializes.

G. Waste to EcoFriendly Products - Zero Waste Kovalam: The project on recycling waste at origin at Kovalam aims at recycling plastic bags and introducing more eco-friendly products. The solution for non-biodegradable includes creating Resource Recovery Parks. Although this project at Kovalam doesnt introduce any new technology, I include it as a separate bullet here as it has been widely cited.

H. Power Generation From Plastic Waste: Although it seems to be a very preliminary effort, the Local Administration Minister Paloli Muhammed Kutty recently hinted at plans on power generation from plastic waste. The report says "The State government is considering generation of electricity from plastic waste with German technical support. Talks are being held with two German companies, Local Administration Minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty said." I am not sure whether there are plans to link this to the efforts by Sajidas on Biotech which won the Green Oscar Award.

I. Plastic To Floor Tiles: There has been a recent news report about converting plastic to floor tiles. This is about a person by name Joy, in Thrissur, who has developed a technology to convert plastic to cheap floor tiles. The article says "Everyday the solid waste innovator from Thrissur collects plastic bags from a garbage dump, shreds them, and through a combination of simple procedures, uses them to make floor tiles. " Another report on the same person appears here. Such tiles cost just 12 Rs. as against Rs. 30 - which is the manufacturing cost for cement tiles.

Although the list above is - by no means - comprehensive, I hope that this list would serve to give a glimpse of plastic waste management efforts.

It may be noted that there are good avenues to display research efforts and results in the direction of plastic waste management. PlastIndia is a conference to be held in 2009 at New Delhi. Further, there was a recent conference focussed on plastic recycling early in 2007 also in India.

Going Green with "Ente Maram"

The World Environment Day is annually "celebrated" on June 5th. Celebrations include essay writing, pledges, poster competetions and the like. None of these end up having long lasting efforts. Its just another ocassion to get some political attention towards the burning environmental issues. But the World Environment Day of 2007 would be memorable to most school children in Kerala - This was because June 5 was chosen for the launch of the "Ente Maram Paddathy", the afforestation initiative by the ruling LDF in Kerala. It involves the planting of 25 lakh saplings by school children, and encouraging them to love the environment. I read somewhere that the LDF was targetting increasing forest cover from 24% to 33% over the next few years; although I am not sure about the exact figures, the government is certainly doing something in this regard.

Although "Ente Maram" is given enough popularity through newspapers, there is no official site maintained by the Government for the Project. Hence, I decided that I would blog about this collecting all information that is available from the web, mainly to ensure that pravasi malayalis do know about this fantastic initiative.

The project is a joint initiative by the Education Department and the Forest Department. One among the main motivations, as the Government puts it, is to have a green coastal belt to protect them against natural hazards such as Tsunamis (I am not sure about whether a green coastal belt would resist the Tsunami, but I heard that some Tsunami fund is being used for the Project). The project involves distribution of 25 lakh saplings of 24 species to selected 5095 schools all over the state to be planted by students in classes 5th-9th standard. Hindu says, "As many as 24.46 lakh saplings are to be planted in a single day, making it one of the most intensive afforestation programmes ever taken up."

The project was inauguarated by Medha Patkar by planting a sapling at a school in the State Capital in the presence of some ministers and Sugathakumari. Reports on the project appear here and here. Sadly, this was the only place in the government domain which speaks about the project.

The eviction drive, especially in Munnar where the encroachments were mostly on the forest area, along with such afforestation initiatives would definitely make some difference. It is encouraging to see that the Government is spending energy and money on such initiatives.

On Lotteries and Kerala

In 2005, when Oommen Chandy was the Chief Minister, there was a huge campaign against Online and Other-State Lotteries. If I recollect the incidents correctly, the Government first tried to ban online lotteries, and then tried to ban all the other-state lotteries. The move wasnt approved by the Supreme Court and thus, there were two options

• Allow uncontrolled operation of lotteries in the state OR
• To ban all lotteries

Quite obviously, the government thought that Option 2 was the way to go. And thus came the ban on lotteries in the state (Ref: Kerala Bans All Lotteries) in early 2005. I thought that it was a positive move (as lotteries promote the habit of speculative investment among the masses and hence has to be discouraged), and that the LDF and other organizations would welcome the decision. But, that was not what happened.

• The expected: Lottery agents, Vendors take out protest rally.
• The UNEXPECTED: Ban on lotteries: Opposition plans stir . Achuthanandan raised three reasons for the stir (1). The Lottery ban leaves thousands of people jobless (2). The Lottery ban causes loss of crores of rupees yearly to the state government (3). The ban shows the inability of the government to limit the other state/online lotteries.
• Joseph said that the Government should not have banned the Kerala State Lottery and should have resorted to other measures to gain the upper hand over other state lotteries. Read report here
• RSP supports Lottery vendor's stir
• Lift Ban on Lotteries: Kodikkunnil : This was an unexpected news as nobody expected the KPCC general secretary to talk such

And there were reports on the Effects of the Lottery Ban

• Lottery Ban Claims one Life in Kerala
• Kerala Lottery Vendor driven to Suicide

Indeed, some consequences of Lottery ban were bad, although expected. For instance, the Kerala State Lottery which had started in 1967 (under the EMS Government) had resulted in thousands of people (mostly handicapped people) earning their daily bread out of it. The concern was genuine, what would those people do? But, I expected that the LDF would have been more constructuve and would have come up with recommendations for alternative sources of employment to the handicapped.

Let me draw your attention once again to one of Achuthanandan's reasons for protesting against the lottery ban. That it causes an annual loss of 100s of crores to the Government. I can hardly think of a person like him talking in those lines. The customers of the Kerala State Lottery are mostly from the lower strata of the society, as those are the people who easily get attracted to these forms of gambling (I have seen long queues of autorickshaw drivers before the online lottery office at Edappally Toll). Let us assume that there are around 50 lakh people who buy lotteries. Thus, the government is in effect getting 200 rs extra from those people by getting them to indulge in gambling. Thus, for me, the lottery ban is a gain of 100 crores to the lottery buyers which include the autorickshaw drivers and the like (which infact, is a wonderful thing to happen).

And at last, the Kerala Lotteries resumed functioning :(

Let me draw your attention to what lotteries are, and what their effects are, on the society. Although the undesirable effects of lotteries are quite evident and obvious, I use three articles to pull information about lotteries from:

• Wikipedia: A lottery is a popular form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. Lotteries are most often run by governments or local states and are sometimes described as a regressive tax, since those most likely to buy tickets will typically be the less affluent members of a society. The astronomically high odds against winning have also led to the epithets of a "tax on stupidity", "math tax" or the oxymoron "voluntary tax" (playing the lottery is voluntary; taxes are not). They are intended to suggest that lotteries are governmental revenue-raising mechanisms that will attract only those consumers who fail to see that the game is a very bad deal. Indeed, the desire of lottery operators to guarantee themselves a profit requires that an average lottery ticket be worth substantially less than what it costs to buy. After taking into account the present value of the lottery prize as a single lump sum cash payment, the impact of any taxes that might apply, and the likelihood of having to share the prize with other winners, it is not uncommon to find that a ticket for a typical major lottery is worth less than one third of its purchase price.The fact that lotteries are commonly played leads to some contradictions against standard models of economic rationality. However, the expectations of some players may not be to win the game, but the thrill and indulgence in a fantasy of possibly becoming wealthy become the goal. Even ignoring the thrill factor, there is the theoretical possibility that the purchase of a lottery ticket could represent a gain in expected utility, even though it represents a loss in expected monetary value, thus making the purchase a rational decision. Insurance, for instance, represents negative expected monetary value but is not considered to be a tax on stupidity because it is generally believed to deliver positive expected utility to the individual.
• Lenin on Lotteries: With their honeyed words they deceive the peasant in the same way as people are deceived by a lottery. I shall tell you what a lottery is. Let us suppose I have a cow, worth 50 rubles. I want to sell the cow by means of a lottery, so I offer everyone tickets at a ruble each. Everyone has a chance of getting the cow for one ruble! People are tempted and the rubles pour in. When I have collected a hundred rubles I proceed to draw the lottery: the one whose ticket is drawn gets the cow for a ruble, the others get nothing. Was the cow “cheap” for the people? No, it was very dear, because the total money they paid was double the value of the cow, because two persons (the one who ran the lottery and the one who won the cow) gained without doing any work, and gained at the expense of the ninety-nine who lost their money. Thus, those who say that lotteries are advantageous to the people are simply practising deceit on the people. Those who promise to deliver the peasants from poverty and want by means of co-operatives of every kind (societies for buying cheap and selling profitably), improved farming, banks, and all that sort of thing, are deceiving them in exactly the same way. Just as in a lottery where there is one winner and all the rest are losers, so it is with these things: one middle peasant may manage to get rich, but ninety-nine of his fellow peasants bend their backs all their lives, never escape from want, and even sink more deeply into poverty.
• Truth About Gambling: Lottery is one of the most senseless and speculative "investments" on Earth. It promotes the spending of real money for a highly elusive product (the win). It is deceitful in that the real product delivered reportedly 14 million times to one (14,000,000:1) is FALSE HOPE. It encourages the diversion of capital from reasonable investment vehicles which yield reasonable returns to a senseless investment which reportedly has been mathematically calculated to yield a significant return only once out of every 14 million times. From a local economic point of view, it has a highly negative multiplier effect. It promotes a harmful practice: unwise investing. It uses miseducation to promise education: People are encouraged to participate in this "investment" fraud, and are then told that the money gained from such an "investment" will be used to "educate" them. Lottery siphons money from the community but provides neither a comparable good nor service in return. (An honest tax could better benefit the community and would be more sound in moral, economic and psychological character. A tax called a tax is an honest tax. A tax called a chance is a fraud). It promotes psychological instability by encouraging individuals to commit real, hard-earned assets to mostly unreal, highly improbable trade activities. To grant a fair return to all would kill the lottery. It lives and thrives by consuming the hard-earned resources of losers. Its very life depends on the losses of many. Its best customers must be losers. It robs so many to pay so few. If it is a tax it is an unfair tax because it succeeds only in collecting from the gullible. Its negative impact is doubled: 1. It (by siphoning funds) weakens the regular economy; and 2. It creates a wholly defective side economy. It's one of the worse budgeting lessons a child could ever be taught. It exploits the weak and seeks to weaken the strong. It destroys soundness.

Given all these effects of lotteries, the LDF can be expected to be "lottery-haters". But, what has been happening in Kerala is just the opposite. To cite a few examples,

• EMS Government in 1967 started the Kerala State Lottery, which declares on its web page "Indiayil Aadyam, Ennum Munnil"
• The LDF protested against the Lottery Ban by the UDF in 2005
• The Kerala Sports Super Bumper was launched by the LDF in 2007 to mobilize 200 crores for infrastructural developments at the Grass-root levels of the state

How the Kerala State Lottery is presented to the people is another interesting thing to note:

• Kerala State Lotteries webpage has the following text in it (It talks about development, the prize money, development, poverty and what not.. bah): Have you ever noticed a Lottery agent walking through the road with lottery tickets in his/her hand? Well we may not notice him/her at first. But think, he too plays his part in re-sourcing money for the development of roads, bridges, hospitals, schools and much more. Channelising ones money for the development of the state is the success behind the Department of Lotteries. More than that, it is the sole income-source for many a downtrodden public in the society. Today, with more than 35,000 authorised agents and over 100,000 retail sellers; spanning over 14 districts, it is a major benefactor to the development of the state, self-employment for the poor and the common, and poverty eradication. The lottery department gains importance in this context, with much opportunity in front of it to conquer. Its social commitment towards the poor and needy hasn’t brought down the amount of prize money it disburses. The department gives away lakhs of prizes a week, through its four weekly lotteries and through its six bumper lotteries.
• Description about Kerala Lottery and it's history talks about alleviating poverty through lotteries!!!!
• The Onam Bumper Lottery has its caption as: Aishwaryapoornamaaya Thiruvonathe Varavelkku, Onam Bumper Lotteryil Pankedukku!!!!

Hope we do start realizing soon that Lottery is an evil and that Kerala would become a Lottery-free state sometime soon.

Women and Sabarimala

"Temple reforms" is a hot topic these days, and the people and the government have been trying to get kshethrapraveshanam for the non-hindus. Thinking about discrimination by temples, the first thing that comes to mind would be Sabarimala; the most famous pilgrimage center in Kerala.

As we all know, there is gender discrimination in temples (against women). Sabarimala goes another step (backward) and says that it wont allow women aged between 10 and 50 to visit the shrine. I did a quick web search to try to understand the "logic" behind this issue and did a quick web search. This post is to share the info that I got from the pages that Google pointed me to.

The most interesting one is the countercurrents article by Raji Rajagopalan which can be found here. It has a list of "reasons" as to why Sabarimala disallows women. They are as follows:

1. The eight kilometer trek to the temple along dense woods is arduous for women;
2. Ayyappa is a bachelor God and his bachelorhood will be broken if he sees a woman;
3. The forty-one-day penance for the pilgrimage, where one must live as abstemiously as a saint, cannot be undertaken by women - they are too weak for that;
4. Men cohorts will be enticed to think bad thoughts if women joined them in their trek;
5. Letting women into the temple will disrupt law and order;
6. Women's menstrual blood will attract animals in the wild and jeopardize fellow travelers;
7. Menstruation is a no-no for God.

If the bullets (1) & (2) are to be believed, women above 50 also should not be allowed. There are other temples which allow women, and thus even (5) is invalid. So, we are left with (3), (4), (6) and (7). Yes, and these are reasons that people speak of in the 21st century!!! In the most literate state of the country. But yes, people have questioned these reasons. (I was unaware of the incidents listed in Raji's posting, but I assume that they are true).

• A mother of two ill children wanted to enter the temple; and she was *arrested* before reaching the sanctum and this ban was upheld by the Kerala High Court in 1990 !!!!
• A bunch of women supposedly tried to enter the shrine in December 2002. And the Kerala HC ordered a probe to see how that happened !!!!!!!!

This Indiavarta article says that this is the only temple in India where women between 10 and 50 are not allowed. A blog entry that I found raises an important point. An extract from that blog is as follows:

• Does the state (centre or state) give any funds to Sabarimala temple or the board? Is the government a board member? Is the government providing security at the temple?
  If they are - then it’s the taxpayer’s money that is going to support an institution that discriminates on the basis of sex. Against the constitution, isn’t it? Especially because it’s not a minorities institution. (I could be wrong here - but am venturing into murkier waters.) That, is not acceptable to me. Cut state funding. Make sure it becomes totally un-cool to go to a temple that is discriminatory.

Time for us to reconsider whether things happening around us are right. I hope that the second set of reforms, which, I believe, is due, would address all these issues.

Towards Temple Reforms, at last

It has been a big issue for ages. Kalamandalam Hyderali wasnt allowed entry to many temples, and Yesudas was never allowed to enter Guruvayoor and many other temples (although Harivarasanam in his voice is played at Sabarimala on a daily basis). I had always believed that temples and their authorities would have to embrace reforms some day or the other. The earlier the better. Every year, in Kerala, this issue keeps coming up. I had blogged on this a year or so back here and that was when the Srilankan delegation entered Guruvayoor and the "purification" exercise was undertaken.

Whether it be due to G. Sudhakaran, or due to Vayalar Ravi, we have started talking about this issue again. And it seems that something concrete would come out of it this time, hopefully. We are definitely inching towards the second temple entry proclamation.

At this juncture, shouldnt we start thinking about the temple reforms at large, rather than just the issue of temple entry to non-hindus. The temples of Kerala do not allow entry to women during "certain" periods, and do not allow women in the age bracket of 10-50 to enter Sabarimala. Even a 4-month old kid's urine is so bad that punyaham has to be performed. All these definitely sound primitive.

G Sudhakaran's words threatening to bring in legislation if the priests do not address the call for reform is definitely the way to go. "Adapt to the changing times voluntarily, or the Govt will see to it that it happens" - a brave move indeed.

My opinion is that the Govt should initiate the second set of reforms, of which the Temple reforms are just a part. Ban on Lotteries and many other things which I will write about later should be part of the second set of reforms.