Round-up regional news
Ominous
Year Ahead?
If you have any respect for Tibetan astrological predictions: and the views of Jhampa Gyaltsen Drakton, Chief ::::: Astrologer at the Tibetan Medical and Astro Institute in DhararnsaJa, you would let sleeping dogs lie during the coming year. According to Professor Draktori, the Earth-Snake Year of the 17th. Rabjung Cycle, which begins on 7 February and ,goes on till 25 January 199
According to Professor Drakton, he had predicted Jndira Gandhi´s assasiriitfion to within five days. He had forecast that 1978 would be a bad year for Hua Kuo Feng, and that was in fact the year Hua was toppled as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.
Professor Drakton´s predictions for the rest 1989 and the first Few months of 1990 are, on the whole, quite gloomy:
"In India, there will´be shortage of rainfall from 7 April to 4 June, followed by a period of internal strife. However, there will be no acute shortage of food nor any serious harm to religious or cultural institutions. In China, the beginning of the year will be good for ´cultural developments´. Early 1990 will see the
Professor Drakton
beginning of troubles in the Sotuh-Eastern regiotis´.´. The country v/ill be beset with internal problems throughout May, June and July, and this will be followed by a period of low rainfall.
"South-East Asia will be in a continuous state of war between April 1989 and April 1990. It wil! be especially tense in July and August and there will also be food problems. Europe will suffer bad harvest for a year starting April 1988 and some parts will face famine conditions in November, December and January. North America and the Soviet Union will face no serious problems in 1989, although there will be scarcity of rain in the first three months of 1990."
The Professor says that the Earth-Snake Year: has always : been considered a "black year" in Tibet. Apart from a ; general warning to be cautious, there was no big problem indicated for Tibetans both inside and ´. outside Tibet in terms of livelihood and religious activities. "In other aspects, however, this year might bring Us a big loss -an irreparable loss, it Seems to me. There is also some sort of complication indicated in women´s ability to: bear children:" The professor would not elaborate further, stating that his team was computing more specific predictions. – Tsering Wangyal, Tibetan Review
Foster Homes InHiamchal
Orphans and other children without support in Himachal Pradesh no longer have jo livein cold, impersonal, ill-managed orphanages and other way stations; The state : Government has just introduced a Foster Care Service in which children "bom of unwed: parents, emotionallydisturbed, oi" socially disorganised families" can be placed with foster parents.
; Himachal´s Director of; Social and Women´s Welfare, who has been charged with implementing the new: service, is required to ensure that foster parents are eligible to bring up a child by scrutinising their health, residential space, social beliefs and financial status. The parents: should be between 25 and 60 in age, with an anmia! income of over JRs 10,OC>0 and not have more than: three unmarried children. Preference will be given to those without offspring. The foster parents must belong to the state.
According to the scheme,, foster parents will be paid IRs 500 per month for a ;child´s Upkeep. They are not to deniand unreasonable domestic service from their charges. The Director is authorised to sanction special financial aid, such as for long term medical treatment, vocational training or higher education.
The Ginkgo Roundup
Continuing Hiniat´s Himalayan search for the Gitikgo, the oldest species of tree in the world, we have a sighting in Kathmandu. TraveJ executive Tek Chand Pokhrel reports thai a Gingko tree stands on the Western perimeter of Tudikhel, next to the Royal J4epa! Airlines building. The tree is said to be one of several brought back by four Nepalis who were sent to Japan for engineering training by Raria Prime Minister Chandra Shmrishere in the 1920s.
Jadibuti Centre For UP. Hills
The Utrar Pradesh Government´s Hiil Department has decided to establish a centre for survey, research and training on mountain herbs. Making the announcement at a workshop organised by the High Altitude Pi an I Physiology Research Centre in Srinagar, Garhwal, a Government spokesman said the centre will be fully operational within six years, with branches in Tehri, Llttarkashi, Pauri, Ranikhet, Pithoragarh, Almora and Chamoli. He said the centre would promote the conservation and commercial use of Himalayan herbs.
Chancellor of Garhwal University, SJP, Nautiya), said that while the Himalaya are a huge storehouse of herbal plants whose utilisation should benefit the local inhabitants. Krishna Chandra Chiinekar, former head of Banaras Hindu University´s Ayurveda Department, said that the "urbanisation" of medicine had undermined the importance of medicinal plants from the forest. Ayurvedic texts contained a wealth of medicinal information and must be studied.
The Srinagar workshop recommended that work on herbs presently being carried out in the three U.P. hi!) universities be consolidated within the new herbal centre.
Dam News
* Like Chukha Dam in the case of Bhutan (Nov/Dec fiimal), the Nam Ngum high dam is now the greatest foreign exchange; earner for Laos. Its hydroelectric!ly is exported to Thailand. Despite the dam´s devastating impact : on Laos´ unique wetlands, reports the World Rivers Review, the Government is anxious to build many more like it, which would submerge almost all of the country´s major river valleys, A World Bank, UNDP and Government sponsored study concludes that another high dam woultj bring the country art additional U$ 45.8 million per year.
* The opposition to high dams in the Nannada Valley has forced the World Bank to look again at its commitments, according tb WRR. In 1985, the Bank had; approved a U$ 450 million loan for the first of 30 major dams in the valley. Following protests by n on-governmental organisations in India and the support of international groups, the Bank has now made funding of the project, Sardar Sarovar. conditional upon the quality of the programme to resettle the 80,000 tribal people who would be uprooted. The Bank has also delayed until early 1990 its decision on a second project, Narmada Sagar, which involves a US 350 million loan.
* When the Pong Dam was being built in 1962 in Himachal Pradesh´s Kangra District, it displaced 16,100 families, who were promised 2.25 lakh hectares in Rajasthan, in an area to be irrigated by the dam´s bounty. So far, reports the Indian Express, only 500 families have been allotted land in Rajasthan. While the authorities of Himachal and Rajasthan bicker over who´s to blame, a lifetime has passed for the "development refugees" of Kangra.
HIMAL
BANGLADESH
Between The Mountain And The Sea
While many Bangladeshis have been looking to the Himalaya for a solution to their flood problem (Nov/Dec Himal), the Washington DC based World Watch institute warns that they should also be looking the other way — to the rising sea. If the computer simulations at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts are correct, the wanning of the global atmosphere will melt enough polar ice to raise ocean levels in a manner that would be devastating for the populous Ganges Brahmaputra Delta, much of which is ´; barely above sea level.
According to the Woods : Hole researchers, Bangladesh will probably experience ihe "really worst case scenario". The Bay of Bengal could rise by as much as 82 inches by 2030, in which event 18 percent of the habitable land would go underwater, displacing 17 million people. By 2100, in the worst ease scenario. 38 million Bangladeshis would have been forced to relocate. "The Sundarban coastal mangrove forests, upon which 30 percent of the country´s population depends to some extent for its livelihood, will be the first victim of advancing seas. Where will those displaced by the rising seas go? asks World Watch.
A Dhaka street last September. Will it just get
worse and worse?
When the then ruling Namgyai family opened the Institute in 1958, they decided not to discriminate between Gelugpa, Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma — the four Mahayana sects. Because of this enlightened policy, SRIT soon gained an edge over its rivals, the Toyo Bunko in Tokyo and Leningrad´s Institute of Oriental Studies. Today, SRIT collection of Tibetan literary works is said to be among the most comprehensive in the world.
There was a time when SRIT was well supported. It was Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who directed that the mortal remains of the Buddha´s apostles Madhyam and Kasyapagotra, when retrieved from London´s Victoria and Albert Museum, he housed here: The Dalai Lama, though a Gclugpa, made valuable gifts when he came to staunchly Nyingma Sikkim for SRJT´s inauguration.
Tibetology Centre Running Dry
The Sikkim Research Institute of Tibetology (SRIT), marking an unremarkable thirtieth anniversary, is struggling to maintain its pre-eminence as an academic centre for Tibetology, reports UNI. The Central Government funds for this Gangtok-based centre have been drying up, crippling its research acquisitions and publication programmes.
?..And
The Maldives
Too
In 2100, cartographers will likely be redrawing the coastlines of many countries, including Bangladesh says World Watch. They may also make an important deletion: by that year, if current projections are borne out, the Maldives will have been washed from the earth: The small nation, niade up of a series of 1,190 islands is nowhere higher in elevation than six feet. With a. three foot rise, well within the expected increase of the next century, a storm surge would be "catastrophic and possibly fatal", in the words of President Maumoon Abdul Gayodm.
"Few Cavities in Nepal11
A Japanese dentist visiting the West Nepal village of Simikot found that although the 440 villagers he examined had never used a toothbrush in their lives, they had pearly white teeth free of cavities, reports the newspaper Asahi Simbun.
Dr. Reiko IwaLsubo believed that the villagers had healthy teeth and jaws because their meals consisted mainly of cereal and nuts; they used of rock salt instead of sugar in tea; and babies were breast fed.
About 50 per cent of the Simikotans in the 25 to 50 age group had complete sets of wisdom teeth, compared to 10 per cent for an equivalent group in Japan. The energetic use of jaws while eating provided the space needed for wisdom teeth, says Dr. Iwatsubo. The new generation in the developed countries have smaller jaws because
was the most auspicious day far a holy dip because that was when the key configuration invoiving the sun, the moon and Jupiter with Capricorn arid Aries took place.
On the ciawn of the February new moon, Mdwii Amavasya, the ash-clad Nagas, led the procession from their temporary tenteci ´-ashrams" to the tongue of sand that sits be tweeti the Gaiiga and the
Naga Babas take a dip at Prayag.
BRIEFS — ¦;;¦••;;;¦:;¦
food is processed and soft, requiring less strenuous chewing.
Clearly, this is something for the Export Promotion Centre to chew on. it might market chhurpi, the rock-hard cheese of the Himalaya, in the West and in Japan so that those underused developed country jaws can be rehabilitated.
Dehra Dun´s Hindi weekly Yugvani reports on a tardy canal project near the town of Tehri in Garhwal. Plans for the Kothiyara Canal were made in 1952, meant to carry water 20 km from villages of Sitakot to Saraas. 36 years later, only 16 km of canal have been built and reportedly the water does not even travel that distance because of a "reverse slope". The villagers of Saraas, Gangar, Bahedi, Kothiyara, Khola and Kot complain that the "big officers" from the headquarters are shown the canal at the source and go away with the impression that the water is following. Even the fact that Chipko´s Sunderial Bahuguna ´s ashram is in the area does not seem to have mattered, nor that the Deputy Development Commissioner for Garhwal is a local lad.
KumbhMela
About 30 million devotees will have bathed at the Kumbh Me!a at Prayag by (he time the massive "bathing festival", which began in January, ends on 6 March. In this last 12-year me la of the tnillenium, the Naga Babas from lonely caves and mountain retreats at the headwaters of the Ganges were out in force. 7 February
Jamuna rivers. 150 feet away from the water, the naked sadhiis burst into excited sprints, joyfully yelling Shiva´s name as they cast away their marigold garlands, and likewise, their worldly karma, A 58 year old Naga Baba was quoted in the local Allahabad daily, "Nakedness ends all dichotomy in human life. There are no dualities in universal reality." – Kevin