As much as I appreciate the efforts by the scientists to really know and understand what happened/happens in this universe, IMHO these experiments eat up way too much funds. When millions of fellow humans are dying out of hunger, poverty, thirst and malnutrition every year, spending billions of dollars on experimentation and research seems really weird. People who were ready to spend so much money just to know how universe was when it first came into existence are not ready to spend as much to make sure none in the world dies for the want of food. In a way, aren't these 'developed' nations responsible for the underdeveloped status of African and Asian countries? Isn't their past jingoism responsible for the extreme underpricing of the African, Asian currencies in the international market today? But I'd partly agree with people who say "Yeah! It's my buck. I decide how to spend it" because as much as it doesn't make sense in the humanitarian view, it does make sense at least from a commercial and practical point of view. So let me set aside the countries with surplus budgets for now.
India as everyone knows has never seen a surplus budget in the recent past and when I see that India has offered 1000+ crores (1 Crore = 10 Million) for this LHC, I was dumbfounded to say the least. We don't have sufficient power to keep our houses bright. We have a considerable chunk of the population that earns well below 10K a year. We are running deficit for the past 50+ years. The infrastructure is horrible to say the least. But we are offering 1000+ crores to know how the universe was when it came into existence!!! Reminds me of a comic quote in Tamizh - "Pullayaarae perucchaali la paoikirukkaaru... Poosaarikki bullettu kaekkudhaa!!". I guess you could make out what that could mean based on the previous statements! :)
4 comments:
yogesh, i had great respect for u but u have lowered urself by this post........
That too stating that the money could be spent on feeding needed people n all...is too much. Why dont u give the whole share of income from temples to feed the need???? why dont u stop building new temples and conducting functions for the old one and instead u can spend the same on feeding poor ????? why dont u join hands with other religions and spread peace ????
Just one experiment, a step forward to identify the truth...adu ungalukku pudikaliyaa???????
a step forward to identify the truth...adu ungalukku pudikaliyaa?
Well... that's not my point! I never said R&D is unnecessary. But if you are aware LHC is not the first time such an experiment is conducted and this is just a bigger version of what has been happening in the past. Billions of dollars have been spent in such particle accelerations experiments in the past which have not done much of a difference except for proving some of the old theories. Another point to this is that over 10% of the scientists in this experiment are from Indian origin. This is an excellent news and something that we all could be proud of. We have a lot of intelligent people and we could offer as much help as possible from the Human Resources front. What I'm against is the economic portion of it.
Western countries spending money on that is fine because as I said they have a surplus budget and they can do what they want with the surplus. Their people are not suffering and they can as well opt to be curious about other things. But in India, we are already struggling with a lot of internal economic issues that needs to be sorted out before being curious about such things. Remember Maslow's pyramid?
Why dont u give the whole share of income from temples to feed the need????
If you are not aware that is what is happening. Where to the funds for Annadhanam and ilavasa thirumanam come from? It is from the temple funds dude. The money collected is spent on temple infrastructure maintenance, the pay for its employees and all these charities.
why dont u stop building new temples and conducting functions for the old one and instead u can spend the same on feeding poor ?
Temples are built by individuals and not by Governments if you are aware. An individual who has surplus revenue opts to construct a temple and he is equivalent to the countries with surplus revenue. Secondly, he is not the Government to really be responsible about the plight of the needy. And third, he indirectly contributes to the cause by helping a small section of needy in that area. In fact, these days beggars in some localities have multiple bank accounts just FYI.
why dont u join hands with other religions and spread peace ?
Now that you've mentioned 'u' i assume u r talking bout Hindus. Hindus were never against other religions or spreading peace. Being liberal from time immemorial is one of the biggest positive and negative aspect of Hinduism.
All said and done, I honestly don't care about the way this impacted your respect for me. But I thought you should be able to understand this better since you call yourself a humanitarian atheist.
I completely agree maapi ... can understand the reason behind srini's comments ... it looked like you were criticizing the entire LHC project. If it was just about India's contribution, then it all makes sense. Yeah, with such high percentage of people BPL India is doing some incredibly insane things.
Smiles,
Vinayak
@Vinayak
The opinion is two fold maappi... First, we (humans) split ourselves into as many pieces as possible in the name of race, country, religion, etc; and we 4get to feel the pain of someone who is dying in hunger just because we don't see that person as a part of us! If the 'developed' nations can afford to spend 1/10th of this amount on helping the needy ones, things would've changed rapidly. But then there is always an element of choice and they opted not to do something which is justifiable from their perspective.
The second part, as you mentioned is the 'puliya paatthu poona soodu paotta kadhai'! :)
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