Tag: Kolkata

  • Mother Teresa Missing Millions Inhuman Treatment

    Indian Government may glorify her, people might adore her thanks to media buildup of Mother Teresa.

    She has been beatified , that obnoxious ritual where some evidence is cooked on the Miracle having been performed and one is declared a Saint by a Corrupt institution.

    Please read my post ‘Mother Teresa Glorified Human Suffering, a Media Creation’

    Much murkier is the origin and the utilisation funds of the Missions established by Mother Teresa.

    One is appalled at the inhuman treatment to the inmates of the Charity Home.

    * Portions of the Citation from  (www.stern.de) , Germany. Translated from German.

    Mother Teresa .Image.jpg
    Mother Teresa.

     

    The organisation has 6 branches in Germany. Here too financial matters are a strict secret. “It’s nobody’s business how much money we have, I mean to say how little we have,” says Sr Pauline, head of the German operations. Maria Tingelhoff had had handled the organisation’s book-keeping on a voluntary basis until 1981. “We did see 3 million a year,” she remembers. But Mother Teresa never quite trusted the worldly helpers completely. So the sisters took over the financial management themselves in 1981. “Of course I don’t know how much money went in, in the years after that, but it must be many multiples of 3 million,” estimates Mrs Tingelhoff. “Mother was always very pleased with the Germans.”

    Perhaps the most lucrative branch of the organisation is the “Holy Ghost” House in New York’s Bronx. Susan Shields served the order there for a total of nine and a half years as Sister Virgin. “We spent a large part of each day writing thank you letters and processing cheques,” she says. “Every night around 25 sisters had to spend many hours preparing receipts for donations. It was a conveyor belt process: some sisters typed, others made lists of the amounts, stuffed letters into envelopes, or sorted the cheques. Values were between $5 and $100.000. Donors often dropped their envelopes filled with money at the door. Before Christmas the flow of donations was often totally out of control. The postman brought sackful of letters — cheques for $50000 were no rarity.” Sister Virgin remebers that one year there was about $50 million in a New York bank account. $50 million in one year! — in a predominantly non-Catholic country. How much then, were they collecting in Europe or the world? It is estimated that worldwide they collected at least $100 million per year — and that has been going on for many years.

    While the income is utter secret, the expenditures are equally mysterious. The order is hardly able to spend large amounts. The establishments supported by the nuns are so tiny (inconspicuous) that even the locals have difficulty tracing them. Often “Mother Teresa’s Home” means just a living accommodation for the sisters, with no charitable function. Conspicuous or useful assistance cannot be provided there. The order often receives huge donations in kind, in addition to the monetary munificence. Boxes of medicines land at Indian airports. Donated fountains and powdered milk arrive in containers at Calcutta port. Clothing donations from Europe and the US arrive in unimaginable quantities. On Calcutta’s pavement stalls, traders can be seen selling used western labels for 25 rupees (DM1) apiece. Numerous traders call out, “Shirts from Mother, trousers from Mother.”

    Unlike with other charities, the Missionaries of Charity spend very little on their own management, since the organisation is run at practically no cost. The approximately 4000 sisters in 150 countries form the most treasured workforce of all global multi-million dollar operations. Having taken vows of poverty and obedience, they work for no pay, supported by 300,000 good citizen helpers.

    By their own admission, Mother Teresa’s organisation has about 500 locations worldwide. But for purchase or rent of property, the sisters do not need to touch their bank accounts. “Mother always said, we don’t spend for that,” remembers Sunita Kumar, one the richest women in Calcutta and supposedly Mother T’s closest associate outside the order. “If Mother needed a house, she went straight to the owner, whether it was the State or a private person, and worked on him for so long that she eventually got it free.”

    Report of inhuman treatment .

    I first learned of the plight of the Kolkata children from two international aid workers, both qualified nurses and committed Catholics. They came to me after working as volunteers for the Missionaries of Charity last Christmas. Both made the comparison with images that emerged from Romanian orphanages in the early 1990s after television news teams first gained access.

    “I was shocked. I could only work there [Daya Dan] for three days. It was simply too distressing. . . We had seen the same things in Romania but couldn’t believe it was happening in a Mother Teresa home,” one told me. In January, she and her colleague had written to Sister Nirmala, the new Mother Superior, to voice their concerns. They wrote, they told me, out of “compassion and not complaint”, but received no response. Like me, they had been brought up in Catholic schools to believe that Mother Teresa was the holiest of all women, second only to the Virgin Mary. Our faith was unwavering, as was that of the international media for about 50 years. Even when the sister in charge of the Missionaries of Charity’s Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centre in Kolkata was prosecuted and found guilty of burning a young girl of seven with a hot knife in 2000, criticism remained muted.

    The most significant challenge to the reputation of Mother Teresa came from Christopher Hitchens in 1995 in his book The Missionary Position. “Only the absence of scrutiny has allowed her to pass unchallenged as a force for pure goodness, and it is high time that this suspension of our critical faculties was itself suspended,” he wrote, questioning whether the poor in her homes were denied basic treatment in the belief that suffering brought them closer to God. Hitchens’s lonely voice also raised the issue of the order’s finances, which in 1995 (and still in July 2005 when we were filming) seemed never to reach Kolkata’s poorest.

    Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. “The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens – it is God’s will.”

    The Kolkata police force and the city’s social welfare department have promised to investigate the incidents in the Daya Dan home when they have seen and verified the distressing footage we secretly filmed. Dr Aroup Chatterjee, a London-based Kolkata-born doctor, believes that if Daya Dan were any other care home in India, “the authorities would close it down. The Indian government is in thrall to the legacy of Mother Teresa and is terrified of her reputation and status. There are many better homes than this in Kolkata,” he told us..

    Citation.

    http://www.srai.org/mother-teresa-where-are-her-millions/

    http://indianrealist.com/2010/05/14/the-squalid-truth-behind-the-legacy-of-mother-teresa/

  • Devi’s Foot Fell During Dance Tripurasundari Temple

    Legend has it that Goddess Uma’s right foot fell during Her Dance competition with Lord Shiva.

    Lalitha Tripura Sundari.jpg
    Lalitha Tripura Sundari.Image credit.Sivanis kitchen

     

    The temple in Tripura, North East of India, dedicated to Tripurasundari is also one of the SakthiPeetas, where Sati‘s right foot fell.

    There are two identical images of the same deity inside the temple.

    They are known as Tripura Sundari (5 feet high) and Chhotima (2 feet high) in Tripura.

    The idol of Maa Kali is worshiped at the temple of Tripura Sundari in the form of ‘Soroshi’.

    One is made of kasti stone which is reddish black in colour.

    It is believed that the idol was Chhotima was carried by king in battlefield.

     

     

    This temple is also known as Kurma Pitha because it the temple premises resembles kurma i.e. tortoise.

     

    Goddess Parvati (also spelt as Partvathi) is worshipped here as Tripurasundari, Tripureshwari and “Soroshi” (a local variation of the name).

    The temple is a small, square edifice, measuring just 24 square feet (7 square metres) at the base with a height of 75 feet (24m approximately). The structure of the shrine resembles that of a tortoise, with a roof shaped like the humped back of a tortoise.

    For this reason, the shrine is also known as “Koorma Peetha” (Koorma meaning Tortoise).

    As in other typical Hindu shrines, stalls along the approach road sell flowers and baskets of offerings that visitors can buy and take up to be offered to Tripura Sundari and returned as Prasadam.

    A specialty here is the sweet, brown, condensed milk Pedas that devotees carry back from the temple, to be distributed among family and friends back home.

    The red hibiscus flower is also prized as an offering.

     

     

    How To Reach.

     

    Airport : The closest airport is at Agartala.

    Railhead :The nearest rail head is Kumarghat on N. E. Railway.

    It is 1475 km from Kolkata via Guwahati and 140 km from Agartala.

    From here you can pick a bus or taxi to reach the temple.

    Road TransportThe Temple is situated close to the capital city of Agartala in Tripura. NH 44 connects the state with many north eastern states by road.

    Agartala, the capital of Tripura, is connected by regular bus services with all sub-divisional towns of Tripura. Besides, bus service is also available from SilcharGuwahati, Karimganj and Shillong.

    Staying near the Tripura Sundari Temple
    The temple is very close to the state capital, Agartala. So, accommodation is not a problem for the tourists coming to visit the Tripura Sundari Temple in Tripura. Though not of very high class, you may find hotels, which may be convenient and comfortable for you.

     

    Citation.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripura_Sundari_Temple

  • Hanuman Collected Lotus Fullara Attahasa Shakti Peeta

    Atthas Peeta has the Devi‘s Lower Lip and She s worshiped as Fullara, Phullara Devi.

     

    The temple is in Labhpur,Birbhum Disrict West Bengal,India.

     

    Shakti Peeta, Fullara
    Fullara Devi,Labhpur

     

     

    Image of Devi and the Shiva temple is next to the Devi temple. It is a major pilgrimage and tourist attraction.

     

    From Birbhum to Ahmedpur to Labhpur (6.5 miles). Attahas is just East of Labhpur, around 115 miles from Kolkata.

     

    The temple of Bhairav is beside the temple of Maa Fullora or Phullara. A deity made of stone.

     

    It is so large that the lower leap of the Goddess is about 15 to 18 feet wide.

     

    According to mythology, when Mahadeva (Lord Shiva) danced around with Sati’s dead body cutting it to pieces, the lip fell at Fullara or Phullara.

     

    There is a big pond beside the temple.

     

    According to hearsay, Hanuman collected 108 blue lotuses from the pond when Sri Ramachandra required them for the worship of Goddess Durga.

     

    How to  reach.

     

    Labhpur is about 12 km from Ahmedpur on the Ahmedpur Katwa Railway.

     

    Citation.

     

    Fullara Devi

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  • The Delhi Jal World Bank Corruption Story

    I Just read a news story that Arvind Kejrwal is looking into the corruption cases in the JAL Board Delhi and a related news item that some engineers were suspended.

    Jal Board, Delhi
    Delhi Jal board

    I wondered as to why such a routine and insignificant(?) case is being attended to by the CM of Delhi.

    I did some search and found that the issue of Corruption in JAL Board Delhi is not as insignificant as I imagined.

    I seem to have missed out this altogether.

    Or is it that the Media has not covered it as the case deserves?

    I suspect so.

    Here is the take on Jal Corruption.

    This corruption involves World Bank , appointing consultants to Delhi Water Board.

    To the uninitiated, it is the practice of Governments to appoint consultant for a new Technology/Process.

    The operation involves floating technical specifications, Commercial Bid and final selection.

    To secure the business the competing firms appoint Liaison Officers, Project Consultanats.in plain language ‘The Fixers” who find out what percentage is to be given to whom, what to quote and in general facilitate the winning of the Contract.

    I have a post on this process.

    Now to Jal.

    In getting a Consultant for a Project of Rupees 168 Crore, the Foreign Consultants suggested by the World Bank would amount to 108 Crore, 60% of the project Cost.

    This came out during through RTI.

    “RTI documents revealed that the DJB had approached World Bank in 1998 for a loan to upgrade its water utility services to Delhi. The bank suggested that they hire a multi-national consultant who would ‘suggest’ basic reforms for the DJB to carry out. The bank offered a $2.5 million loan to DJB for hiring the consultant.  States Arvind Kejriwal, “Delhi has 21 water zones. The management of each water zone was to be given to four experts for each zone at a salary of Rs25,000 per month which is Rs11 lakh. The per annum cost of the salaries would come to Rs108 crore. The total budget of the DJB was Rs168 crore thus 60% of the money would be spent on salaries on foreign consultants. Roughly estimated, this would lead to nine times increase in water tax for Delhites.”

    RTI documents further revealed how the World Bank arm-twisted DJB to favour a particular multi-national company. The DJB invited tenders for which 35 consultants applied and six of them were to be short listed. An evaluation committee consisting of senior officials of the DJB ranked them in order of merit as per the World Bank guidelines.  PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) was curiously termed as a ‘desi’ company because it bid from its Kolkata branch but was ranked 10th. However, the World Bank arm-twisted the DJB to prop it up to the 6th position.  States Mr Kejriwal in a protest letter that he wrote to the World Bank after studying the documents, “This provision was misused to bail out PWC as it was treated as an Indian company because the branch of PWC which had applied is incorporated in India. Thus, PWC featured amongst the top six short-listed companies.

    Mr Kejriwal’s letter to the World Bank further states: “Thereafter, technical and financial proposals were invited from the six short-listed companies. A company needed 75% marks in technical evaluation to qualify. An evaluation committee, consisting of senior officials of DJB, evaluated the proposals on the basis of the criteria given in World Bank guidelines. PWC again failed. Only two companies, namely Deloitte of USA and TAHAL of Israel, got more than 75% marks.

    “The results were sent to the World Bank for their “no objection”. The bank was strangely dissatisfied with the results. It nevertheless blatantly displayed its interests in PWC. It demanded an explanation from the DJB as to why did they give such low marks to PWC.” DJB was stunned at this reply from the World Bank and in a note, the official placed on record that he strictly abided by the World Bank norms and no company procuring below 75% could be eligible for procuring the contract. If PWC is considered, the official wrote in his internal correspondence, it would go against the principles of transparency and would cause great embarrassment to the DJB.

    DJB opposed this arbitrary interference but the World Bank bullied it into revising the criteria, audaciously stating this was not the first time it had so intervened”

    Source.

     

     

     

    http://www.moneylife.in/article/rti-expose-of-how-world-bank-had-arm-twisted-delhi-jal-board-for-water-privatisation/23217.html

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  • Helpline Customer Care DHL Details

    DHL is the global leader in international express delivery, courier service and airfreight. DHL has set-up the most sophisticated network of customer support via Internet, Telephone and physical centers spread all over India. The following tips will help you to reach DHL customer care division easily and promptly.

    DHL Logo_jpg.
    DHL .

    Online: Status,Delivery,Tracking and Complaints.

    http://www.dhl.co.in/en.html

     

    Phone:

    Shipment related query. 1800 111 3,  30 300 345′

     

     

    Freight related queries:+91 22 6698 3400 .

     

    SMS: Tracking your shipment:  ‘DHL TRACK ‘ to 53456.

     

    Service Points in Major Cities;

    ‘DHL TRACK <waybill number.>’ to 53456.

     

    Delhi
    GROUND FLOOR, MERCANTILE HOUSE,
    TOLSTOY MARG, NEW DELHI
    Pin: 110001
    Telephone: 011-23737587/23352699
    Email: expressdelcpo@dhl.com

    Mumbai
    3 SANSKRUTI PRASAD CHS RAM MARUTI ROAD OPP. SHIVA PRASAD HOTEL,
    THANE W
    Pin: 400602
    Telephone: 022-25385194
    Email: express.bomtho@dhl.com*

    Kolkata
    9th floor Bells House 21,Camac Street,
    Kolkata
    Pin: 700016
    Telephone: 033-66115222
    Email: Expressccucmc@dhl.com

    Bengaluru
    148, IIIC, Ist Division,
    Mysore Road,
    Bengaluru 560026
    Telephone: 080-66209000
    Email: expressblrmso@dhl.com

     

     

     

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