The heading will tell you why the blogging is lagging!

We’re burning up the phone lines, talking to every association in Toronto trying to pull off this event…India’s greatest rock band in a benefit for India’s farmers!

If you stop by and read this…please, please get the word out to your peeps in Toronto!

Why we’re doing this concert: more than 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India in the past 9 years. Even today this crisis continues, as farmers remain devastated by droughts, floods and predatory loan sharks in India’s suicide belt.

The proceeds of this concert will go to AidIndia, an organization that works with these farmers’ families to find sustainable agriculture solutions. They have thousands of volunteers from the US and India who spend time with the farmers in their villages for months training and working with them on new farming solutions. We are supporting AidIndia with this concert because of their transparency in how they work and the measurable results their projects yield.

And AidIndia is a 4-star rated charity…so you (and us) can’t go wrong!

Date/Time: September 11, 2010 at 8:00pm

Location: MacMillan Theatre, University of Toronto, Faculty of Music (north), Edward Johnson Building, 80 Queen’s Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C5

For More info: 877-945-7177

Ticket prices: $35, $45, $50 & $75

Tickets available at http://www.yehhailife.com

Dear YHL readers,
Please help spread the word of this amazing event to benefit AidIndia’s Projects working with families and farms of farmers who have committed suicide.

Together we can make a difference, and we need your help.

Peepli [LIVE] to Toronto Live!, INDIAN OCEAN rocks for hope on Sept 11, 2010 from Yeh Hai Life on Vimeo.

According to Mark Juddery, an Australian writer and journalist, who offers this explanation for trashing Gandhi:

But the Indian independence movement was a strong force well before Gandhi entered the scene. The nation’s freedom would have happened within a few years of 1947 even if Gandhi had spent his life meditating in a cave. He was a figurehead for the cause, while various other leaders were doing most of the work (and if you say “I’ve never heard of anyone else,” I won’t be remotely surprised). In true Thomas Edison fashion, he was happy to take the credit.

By his twisted logic pretty much every public figure in any arena is overrated. And just because Mr. Juddery doesn’t know of other Indian freedom fighters doesn’t mean that millions of Indians are as stunningly ignorant in believing that Gandhi was solely responsible for India’s freedom.

“Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one,” is one of our favorite quotes. Mr. Juddery’s just happens to be an especially uninformed and attention seeking one with a book to plug.

Read more about Gandhi’s choice of making salt his campaign symbol in the historic Dandi march at the Hindu.

If someone could explain all this to the Khap Panchayats, they might change their minds?

Read a comprehensive article at Discover (excerpt below)

If the allele is “good,” that is, totally normal/wild type, not associated with any pathology, then we’re in the clear. That’s why most first cousin marriages don’t produce children who are monsters. What a first cousin marriage does is change the odds. How you present these odds matters a great deal in how scary they sound. If I told you than the chance of first cousins having children with a birth defect is 4-7%, vs. 3-4% for a non-consanguineous couple, it might not sound that bad. But if I told you that the odds of having a birth defect is ~50% greater, then it sounds worse. Additionally, the costs of congenital illness are born by the offspring, and society through health insurance premiums. If you compared a society which had a tradition of universal first cousin marriages vs. one which didn’t, you’d see 50% more birth defects in the former society in the aggregate, all things equal.

The map below shows the distribution of consanguineous marriages around the world.

Politicians and officials having to cover their faces with masks while ‘investigating’ the deaths of 23 beggars in the Government run shelter called the ‘Beggars Colony.’ Another 4000 beggars who are swept up in raids and kept in the dehumanizing and deplorable conditions live in this shelter in Bangalore that is now being called ‘The Auschwitz Of Bangalore.’

Picture and full story at BBC