News

Sand Castles in South Africa

2009-02-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Every year, Cape Town’s Design Indaba conference draws together high-profile architects from around the world to muse about the power of contemporary design. In 2007, Indaba’s organizers decided to use that concentrated creative energy to address a problem in their own backyard: the thousands of impoverished people living in makeshift shacks in South Africa’s townships. Looking to create low-cost houses that could serve as models for the future, they launched the 10×10 Housing Project, which paired 10 leading international architects with 10 local architects, and tasked each team with developing an appealing house that could be built for about $7,000.

Luyanda Mpahlwa, a partner in the firm MMA, and his team decided to build theirs with an unlikely but abundant source: sand. “African industry usually uses bricks and mortar, or clay brick, or concrete block, which is more expensive,” says Mpahlwa. “As architects and professionals, we should be leading the search for different ways of building. Not everyone can afford the normally available material.”

Husk Power for India

2009-01-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

Many of India’s cities have become bustling centers for high technology and heavy industry, but hundreds of millions of people in the countryside remain off the grid. Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. So after earning an electrical engineering degree at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and working for the Intel Corporation, he began exploring ways to turn farm waste into electricity, with the dream of building village-scale generators.

Last year at the University of Virginia, where he is studying for a master’s at the Darden School of Business, he and a fellow student, Charles Ransler, teamed up with another engineer from Bihar, Gyanesh Pandey, and Husk Power Systems was born.

Read more in The New York Times, Dec 24, 2008

How sex workers are buying cars, investing right

2007-09-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Malthy never thought loans could be issued in 30 minutes flat. Or that she could ever shop in a supermarket. Or own a car.

Her past experience of insult and ridicule created a sense of fear in Malthy. But now she walks confidently, deposits her savings and draws at will, asks for loans and gets them in quick time too. She’s also a partner in the supermarket business and will soon buy Tata Sumos to rent out.

Read more in the Hindustan Times, Sep 09 2007

The Inspiring Story of Suresh Kamath

2007-05-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Suresh Kamath, the managing director of Chennai based Laser Soft Infosystems Ltd is an unusual man. Unlike most other entrepreneurs, he does not aspire to create a business empire; his sole ambition is to provide employment to 10,000 people. He also plans to reserve 40 per cent of the jobs for the disabled.

Suresh started Laser Soft in 1986 with just Rs 200 and five people. Today, the company is a force to reckon with in the banking software arena.

In recognition of his commitment to the disabled, President of India A P J Abdul Kalam felicitated Suresh with the Best Employer award in December 2005. He also won the Best Employer award from the Tamil Nadu government. He has been awarded the NCPEDP shell Helen Keller Award for giving equal rights and gainful employment to persons with disabilities.

An Indian legend dies at 90

2007-04-02T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Briton who turned the canons of conventional homemaking on their head and became one of India’s greatest living architectural legends, is no more. Laurie Baker, 90, passed away at his Thiruvanantapuram home this morning after prolonged illness. He will be buried tomorrow.

Read more in the Indian Express (Apr 2, 2007)

Meet Inspirational Lal Muni Devi

2007-03-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

For Lal Muni Devi, the challenge was to survive on her farming skills without having any land of her own to plough. So the poor, uneducated woman from Azad Nagar village in Patna district used her dank, thatched house to grow mushrooms.

And now she is in a Mexican gallery of top farmers from Asia. A photograph of Lal Muni and the story of her achievement have been put on the website of CIMMYT (www.cimmyt.org/english/wps/news/ 2006/feb/whats_wheat.htm), a well-known Mexican institute engaged in research for improvement of maize and wheat crop.

Read more, in the Indian Express, Mar 07, 2007

Dr. Venkataswamy passes away

2006-07-07T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dr. Venkataswamy, known as Dr. V, founder of the Aravind Eye Hospitals network, passes away at 87.

Read more in The Hindu.

Low-cost lamps brighten the future of rural India

2006-01-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

KHADAKWADI, INDIA - Until just three months ago, life in this humble village without electricity would come to a grinding halt after sunset. Inside his mud-and-clay home, Ganpat Jadhav's three children used to study in the dim, smoky glow of a kerosene lamp. And when their monthly fuel quota of four liters dried up in just a fortnight, they had to strain their eyes using the light from a cooking fire.

That all changed with the installation of low-cost, energy-efficient lamps that are powered entirely by the sun.

"Children can now study at night, elders can manage their chores better," says Mr. Jadhav. "Life doesn't halt anymore when darkness falls."

Read more.. (The Christian Science Monitor, Jan 03, 2006)

Kenyan inmates fast over drought

2006-01-01T03:04:00.000-08:00

Tens of thousands of prisoners in Kenya plan to skip their meal on Sunday to raise money for fellow Kenyans affected by food shortages.

Prisoners in jails across the country are hoping that by diverting funds for their meal to the charity Food Aid, it will help the starving.

Some 2.4 million people are threatened by severe drought across Kenya.

Read more.. (BBC News, Dec 31, 2005)

(Submitted by Sumeet Bhatti)

From sex workers to beauticians

2005-09-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

Diana is beautiful. So beautiful that winning a beauty pageant should be easy. She was recently offered a role in a promotional film by TAI (Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative), an NGO working on the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Diana, 22, plays a contestant at a Miss Chennai pageant. She leads the race until the last round, where she has to answer some questions. Her answers, however, shock judges as well as the audience. They don't know how to react, because Diana speaks in a male voice.

Read More.. (in Rediff.com, Sep 02, 2005, Shobha Warrier)

Muscles wither away, but not smiles

2005-09-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

These days Sanjana Goel is working hard to launch disabled-friendly resorts and 25 diagnostic centres spread across the country, at a cost of Rs 1 crore each.

The 40-year-old founder president of the Indian Association of Muscular Dystrophy (IAMD)-with 10 chapters and 2,500 members-is widely credited with bringing muscular dystropy (MD) out of the closet. All from Solan, a small town in Himachal Pradesh, best known for its breweries and Salman Rushdie's ancestral home.

Read more.. (In The Indian Express, Sep 5, 2005)

In Maharashtra dark zone, village lights up

2005-09-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Come sunset and Nandurbar's Satpuda ranges, among Maharashtra's poorest swathes and non-existent for the state's power grid, begin their sink into a deathly darkness.

The only exception-the 11 hamlets that make up Bilgaon, an idyllic village of 300-odd tribal families settled on the emerald hillsides around the confluence of two of Narmada's tributaries, Udhai and Titwi.

A 15-kilowatt hydel power project built on Udhai's Bardhariya waterfall has meant that since January 2003, every single house scattered in the 3-km radius of Bilgaon can flick on a light at night for the first time ever.

Read more.. (in The Indian Express, Sep 02, 2005)

That's the sense of fulfilment... when you go back at night, to feel that you have done everything you can

2005-08-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

She is the niece of Nobel laureates C.V. Raman and Chandrashekhar. She chose medicine because she says the precedent in her family of mathematicians and physicists was too daunting to surpass. The winner of the Magsaysay Award in 2005, Dr V Shanta talks to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24x7's Walk the Talk programme, about 53 years of work in cancer treatment.

I'm in Chennai, this week, in what you might describe as the corridors of compassion. With me today is Dr. V. Shanta, chairperson of the Adyar Cancer Institute. Congratulations, first of all, for your Magsaysay Award: one of the very few, I believe, to go to a doctor.

Read more.. (Indian Express, Aug 23, 2005)

Telemedicine rides communication wave -- Links experts to rural heartbeat

2005-08-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

When a police constable was brought to Indira Gandhi Hospital at Kavaratti in lonely Lakshadweep, his condition was critical. Resident doctors at the hospital logged on to the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Cochin. A live ECG transfer to the mainland showed the constable had had a massive cardiac arrest and needed immediate treatment.

Read more.... (Daily Pioneer , 22nd Aug)

In heart of darkness, shining lights

2005-08-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

Srikrishna Jaiswal doesn't resent his job as an autorickshaw driver anymore. Now he knows his eldest son Anupam (17) will never have to follow his career path.

Through his son, the 45-year-old who has been a driver on Patna's roads for more than 10 years, can live his dream of being an engineer. His son cleared the IIT entrance examination this year.

Read more... (Indian Express, Aug 19, 2005)

India's Untold Story

2005-08-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

The road to the remote village of Kharonda winds around the gentle slopes of the Sahayadri hills in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Most of the road is well-paved, a black ribbon wrapped around hills washed a brilliant green by the abundant rainfall this year. Along the way, other small hamlets peep out of the misty hillsides, their red-tiled roofs flashing in the sun. The people of Kharonda and the other villages have a lot invested in this road. Through the seasons, even during the fierce monsoons, they use it to send the mangoes, guavas, and cashews they grow into nearby towns and distant cities for sale. They've got a new commercial activity, too, selling grafts of their flourishing mango trees to other communities in Maharashtra and the neighboring state of Gujarat.

Read more.. (In BusinessWeek)

A Brain Trust in Bangalore

2005-08-02T14:56:00.000-07:00

They call it the monkey incident. A couple of months ago, a handful of engineers at Sarnoff Corp.'s lab in Bangalore, India, were conference-calling with colleagues at the research-for-hire outfit's headquarters in Princeton, N.J. They were sitting around a table in a meeting room when they heard loud banging from behind an air conditioner cover on the wall. One of them lifted the cover, and a baby monkey leaped into the room and raced around underfoot.

Read More.. (in Business Week)

MIT engineers an anti-cancer smart bomb

2005-08-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that.

The dual-chamber, double-acting, drug-packing "nanocell" proved effective and safe, with prolonged survival, against two distinct forms of cancers-melanoma and Lewis lung cancer-in mice.

The work will be reported in the July 28 issue of Nature, with an accompanying commentary.

Home and Peace

2005-08-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

Using the ancient architectural secrets of Vedic design, you could possibly transform your house into a holistic home.

Len Oppenheim considers himself a skeptic. So the Wall Street trader can't say with any certainty whether his headaches came to an end simply because he and his wife, Dena, moved from the suburbs of San Francisco to a rural farmhouse near Fairfield, Iowa. Or if his health improved due to the fact that the house on 14 rolling acres was built following the architectural guidelines of an ancient Sanskrit text called Sthapatya Veda, which suggests there's a correlation between human harmony and the orientation, spatial, and material elements of one's home.

Read more.. (by William Kissel in American Way Magazine, Jul 15)

The Magic Word

2005-07-27T18:51:00.000-07:00

By Seth Godin

No, it's not "please."

It's "ego."

I meet a lot of confused marketers, and the primary cause of their confusion is that they believe that money equals motivation.

They believe that people will choose the best value.

That people will buy what they need.

That the best products and services will spread because they deserve to be talked about.

That employees can be persuaded to do things by paying them more and that consumers will buzz something if you reward them with cash.

This is true. Every once in a while.

It's true for people who deep down equate money to ego. This tiny subset of the population really and truly keep score via cash. They are rare indeed.

We're constantly on the lookout for someone's real motivation. We don't understand why someone would volunteer at a charity or take a lower-paying job or recommend a cool new CD or post something on their blog. "What's in it for them," we wonder. Here in the world capital of capitalism (yes, I just made that up...) Americans have fallen in love with the idea that money can feed the ego.

Almost all the time, that's wrong.

Since this is a post about ego, let's talk about... me. I smiled the other day when I read a review of my blog. It said (paraphrasing) "Like many authors, Godin blogs to sell more books." Wrong. Actually, I write books so that more people will read my blog!

I don't blog to make money. I don't run ads on my site. I don't even blog to win awards. I blog because it pleases me to see my ideas spread. I like it when I see people talking about one of my ideas--without even mentioning where the idea came from. That means it's the idea that spread, not my brand. Which is the whole point.

For me, anyway. Not for you or for her or for him.

And that's the tricky part about marketing to ego. Everybody feeds their ego in a different way. The art is in telling a story that matches the ego-outlook (what I've called a worldview) of your target audience.

The next time you're in a meeting and someone pulls out a spreadsheet, realize that you're about to hear about money/value = ego. That's fine. But what about everyone else? Ignore the rest and they'll feed their ego somewhere else.

Holy Cow!

2005-07-27T01:12:00.000-07:00

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Looking into the Divine Eyes of Spiritual Sculptures

2005-07-25T00:31:00.000-07:00

The opening of the eyes is one of the very last steps in the making of a Hindu religious sculpture. A priest will ritually scrape the eye with a golden needle, or add an extra flick of paint, and a figure cast in bronze or carved in stone, a work of "fine art" in our dry vocabulary, becomes something else: a divinity who returns our gaze.

Read more...

An Indian American cabbie's love for bhajans

2005-07-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Indian American Yogesh Surati could be just one of the many South Asian cab drivers in Chicago but for his multifaceted talents.

A self-taught singer, Surati loves singing 'bhajans' and has even penned the lyrics of a few.

Read more..