Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

In India, the state of Orissa is famous for its monuments, its beaches and its tribes. Unfortunately, tribal languages of Orissa are fast becoming extinct. While 62 tribal languages existed at the time of Independence ( in 1947), only 22 have managed to survive.
In some cases, the strength of certain tribes has decreased at an alarming rate. The population of tribes such as Chenchu, Baiga, Birhor, Mankidi, Ghara and Kerua ranges now from a mere 100 to a little more than 1000. The population of tribes like Bonda, Juang and Didayi is hovering around 5000 but they have stuck to their own languages.
Some tribes ( the Ho, Bhumji and Bhatudi) have discarded their own languages and adopted oriya, the language spoken by mainstream Orissa. One of the reasons why these languages have disappeared is that educated tribals have delibarately avoided to speak their mother tongue even at home. In…

Before every election, all the four hundred families residing in the Shastrinagar slum await the visit of the various political parties representatives of their area. Like other families living in other slums in India. To please the slum-dwellers, politicians offer them money and one meal. ” We are the cause for their victory : that is why politicians give us so much attention during elections” says a resident. His tone of self-importance shifts to one of helplessness when we ask about the moral responsibility in casting that crucial vote he is talking about. “We know it is not right…We do not worry whether the party once elected will give us the facilities we need.”

For many years now, the slum-dwellers have been offered money for campaigning for a political party and consequently to cast their votes for the same party. While few years ago, they were paid Rs 10 ( 0,1 euro, US$ 0,1)…

December 29, 2012 – SEATTLE– Tiny tremors, smaller than earthquakes, are shaking the Cascadia subduction zone deep beneath the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadia subduction zone is where two of Earth’s tectonic plates meet in an epic collision and one haltingly slides below the other. The Cascadia Fault stretches for almost 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Northern California up to Canada. The force required to shove a piece of ocean crust into Earth’s mantle can produce mega-earthquakes along the zone, as in Japan and Sumatra. But unlike its western Pacific cousins, the Cascadia subduction zone has not experienced a major earthquake since 1700, when an estimated 9.0-magnitude earthquake generated an enormous tsunami that killed trees in Puget Sound and traveled across the ocean to Japan. The slow-slip and tremors observed in the area are periodic, coming about every 15 months, said Stanford geophysics professor Paul Segall, and were first spotted…