The scale of migration would be equivalent to the Partition ten times over. It would displace 375 times the number of people needing rehabilitation from the Sardar Sarovar project.About 75 million people from Bangladesh would migrate to India as climate change, rise in sea levels, drought, shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability takes a toll on coastal states and regions.

(Hindustan Times)

75 million extra Bongs! The horror! They will vote for the CPI-M, go on Bangla bandhs, and swamp quizzes with unworkoutable questions. This must be prevented. The problem is:

One study estimated the minimum cost of protection against one metre sea level rise would be about $500,000 per km but even that wouldn’t be able to protect 20-50% of the vulnerable population.

$500,000 per Km of coastline is an obscene amount. And with 580 Km of Bangladeshi coastline, the total cost works out to Rs. 1160 crore, and there’s still no guarantee it’ll work.

Fencing the border, on the other hand, takes only 440 crore rupees. The trouble is that fences are notorious for not working. They can be cut. Fence guards can be bribed. People can tunnel under them. For the fence to work, you need to reinforce it.

The ideal way to reinforce it would be with motion-sensor-equipped rocket launchers that would fire rockets with HE warheads every time someone came near the fence. Unfortunately this is expensive. It would also require uninterrupted power supply to the fence, something the eastern states of India are notorious for not having. No, reinforcing the fence will require something more low-tech and more low-cost.

Landmines suggest themselves. After all, NGOs are always going on about how the terrible thing about landmines is that they’re so cheap that laying a minefield costs practically nothing. This sounds excellent and most promising. Unfortunately, it turns out that landmines aren’t that cheap. Each landmine costs $3.

Three dollars doesn’t sound like a lot. But consider the calculations. Suppose you lay minefields along the entire border. And the minefield is at least 250 metres deep. And you keep a mine in every square metre. That means, protecting a kilometre worth of border works out to $3 x 250 m x 1000 m, or $750,000 a Kilometre, much more than the cost of protecting the coastline. To make things worse, there’s much more border than coastline. The cost just doesn’t work out. And knowing the Bangladeshis, they’d just send cows or donkeys or babies across the minefields until all the mines exploded and then they’d stroll across. No, mines aren’t worth it.

The inescapable conclusion is that it just works out cheaper to fortify the Bangladeshi coastline. Much as my racist nature delights in the thought that one day it will be possible to go to the Bangladeshi border, and point and laugh while Bangladeshis on the other side of the fence go ‘glub glub glub’, my free market fundamentalist instinct forces me to realise that it’s a waste of money. It’s tragic that racism and free market fundamentalism have to come into conflict, but such is life.

But honestly, you can’t get away from the fact that the Bangladeshis will invade no matter what if global warming happens, and we will then be stuck with all the Bongs without the Bongland. This is the exact opposite of the ideal situation - Bongland without the Bongs.

I have a plan to achieve this. It runs like this:

1. Marwaris buy plantations in Africa with their substantial capital
2. Marwaris also use their substantial capital to invest in building dikes all across the West Bengal and Bangladesh coastline, turning Bongland into a twenty-first century Netherlands
3. Marwaris send all Bengalis (East or West) to Africa to work as indentured labour on plantations
4. Banga is turned into the Marwari homeland, and becomes a paradise

Global Warming is not a disaster. It is an opportunity for the Maadoos to abandon their dry and barren ancestral home, and move to a new homeland which is rich and fertile. The Marwari nation shall triumph, and South Asia will finally gain an international financial centre.

I realised only today how easily that slogan lends itself to LOLspeak.  It becomes ‘Atal Bihari had a mother… but he eated it.’

The movie also enforces the stereotype of people from UP being uncultured and evil criminals. This is excellent. Only when the popular consciousness turns against the Allahabadi elites will we be able to overthrow the oppressive Indian state and replace it with a loose federation of Saivite neo-Edwardian empires.

Also, due to a makeup fiasco, there is a scene in which Kareena Kapoor has a white face and a pink nose.

Finally, the second half approaches action-movie all-time greatness. Akshay Kumar fights ninjas! On an electricity transmission tower! In a UP don’s lair! Which makes the songs and the first half unnecessary diversions that should have been dispensed with. Such is life.

Two lesbian lovers, one who drank blood as part of a vampire culture, were sentenced to life in prison on Friday for what an Australian judge said was the “evil” killing of a girl they bludgeoned to death with a concrete block.

Jessica Stasinowsky, 21, and Valerie Parashumti, 19, pleaded guilty to murdering 16-year-old Stacey Mitchell in Perth in western Australia in 2006 because she was annoying, reported Australian Associated Press form the court in Perth.

(International Herald Tribune)

There is no possible smartarse comment I can make about this that can match the story itself.

Next, on silklist, I discover this story about a couple fighting… over which gang their child should join:

A couple arguing about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father’s arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday, reported KMGH-TV in Denver.

…

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, told authorities she is a member of the Crips, police said. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman told police.

(TheDenverChannel.com)

I will make smartarse comments about this story. We now know what would have happened if West Side Story had had a happy ending after all - five years later, Tony and Maria would be arguing about whether Tony Jr. should be a Jet or a Shark. This would be interspersed with many many songs and throwing of dishes.

Time and Date: 8 a.m., on Sunday 27 April
Venue: K R Road, from K R Market to Gandhi Bazaar

All are welcome, regardless of city, caste, or camera. You can show up if you have a cameraphone, a DSLR, a point-and-shoot, or even if you just want to hang around and listen to Wimp put fundaes on Bangalore history. This is a photowalk. So there are no admission fees. No entry charges. No registration formalities. However, do leave a comment at this post or Skimpy’s, so that we know if you’re coming or not. It’ll make co-ordinating the walk simpler on Sunday.

But I have not altogether lost hope of a sensational revival of knuttery. Already one sees signs of a coming renaissance. To take but one instance, the butler is creeping back. Extinct, it seemed, only a few short years ago, he is now repeatedly seen in his old haunts like some shy bird which, driven from its native marshes by alarums and excursions, stiffens the sinews, summons up the blood and decides to give the old home another try. True, he wants a bit more than in the golden age, but pay his price and he will buttle. In hundreds of homes there is buttling going on just as of yore. Who can say that ere long spats and knuts and all the old bung-ho-ing will not be flourish­ing again?

Now, via Chan on facebook, I discover support for another buttling renaissance:

Demand for the buttling arts is rising in London, where Russian oligarchs and hedge-fund billionaires are employing servants in displays of status unrivaled since Victorian times. Across Chelsea, Mayfair and Knightsbridge “gentlemen’s gentlemen” are decanting claret, ironing creases out of newspapers and even standing ready to pilot airplanes.

“The old-style butler and old money are both few and far between these days,” said Sarah Dawkins, who runs the Guild of Professional English Butlers. “What we’re seeing is the ranks of the super-super-rich coming through, and that is a whole different ballgame.”

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has led to the butler revival. One hopes it will also turn Burberried chavs into spatted knuts.

More toilet humour: that story also features a quote from ‘the Vatican’s number two’.

In South India, New Indian Express reads you!

For the second time in less than a week, China has briefed India on the Tibet issue and said New Delhi has assured it that it would not tolerate any political anti-Beijing activities by Tibetans on the Indian territory.

 Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi spoke over phone to his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee and exchanged views on bilateral relations, explaining Beijing’s “principled stand” on the Dalai Lama issue, the state media said on Thursday.

 ”Mukherjee said the Tibet Autonomous Region is part of China’s territory and India will never tolerate any political anti-China activities by Tibetans on the Indian territory,” official Xinhua news agency reported.

 (IBNLive)

The best thing that can be said about this is that Xinhua is cooking up fundaes or exaggerating wildly. But if it’s true, it shows the craven nature of the UPA administration.

Since when is anti-anything politics a crime, leave alone anti-Beijing politics? Not tolerating military insurrections is understandable. Not tolerating anti-India politics also, though a free-speech libertarian like me would be cool with that too, as long as actual acts of treason weren’t being carried out. Hell, given the response so far to Naxalism, it seems as if the government doesn’t even care about anti-India civil war.

But where does the Indian government get off carrying out Chinese repression of free speech on Indian soil?

I hope somebody makes a stink about this. It should be interesting.

Rihanna jokes have already been used by almost everything that post links to, so we’ll stick with Daisy, Daisy.

Also, this reminds me that I have to speak to my good friend Boris.