World Water Day

World Day for Water, or unofficially World Water Day, occurs each year on March 22, as designated by United Nations General Assembly resolution.

This day was first formally proposed in Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Observance was expected to begin in 1993 and has grown significantly ever since.

The UN invited its member nations to devote this day to implementing UN recommendations and promoting concrete activities within their countries. Each year, one of various UN agencies involved in water issues takes the lead in promoting and coordinating international activities for World Day for Water. With the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) coordinating, World Day for Water 2005 also marked the start of the second 'UN International Decade for Action for Water', also referred to as the Water for Life Decade 2005-2015.

In addition to the UN member states, a number of NGOs promoting clean water and sustainable aquatic habitats have used World Day for Water as a time to focus public attention on the critical water issues of our era. Every three years since 1997, for instance, the World Water Council has drawn thousands to participate in its World Water Forum during the week of World Day for Water. Participating agencies and NGOs have highlighted issues such as a billion people being without access to safe water for drinking and the role of gender in family access to safe water.

Holi Hai, Happy Holi!

Holi, is a spring festival. It is celebrated in the month of Phalguna, as the lunar month is locally known. It is the month of March that corresponds with this time of celebration.Though originated in the northern part of India, Holi has assumed a national flavor over the ages.Despite being a Hindu festival, it is now regarded as a secular event. For,the entire nation takes the day off, as people, irrespective of race, culture and ethnic background,enjoy the spirit of Holi. Cities and suburbs, towns and villages all come aliveto catch the frenzy of March madness with a range of colors.

The Mood & Backdrop

Holi, the great Indian festival of colors, is a unique celebration of high spirits, when the new season is courted with a riot of rich colors. It is like a grand kaleidoscope that glorifies all the hues that tinge and renew the lives on earth.

It falls on the full moon day of the March, the month when the nippy north wind bows out to the refreshing and rejuvenating breeze from the south, heralding the onset of the ensuing summer in this part of the world. It is thus a festival of spring. The time when the seasonal cycle is caught on a transition. This is when nature starts donning new color. The new foliages start sprouting on the branches, dried and weary over a winter. It is also time when the harvests are reaped and bundled in sheaves. The air is filled with promises of warmth and new lives as the earth discards the wintry glum to greet the bright sun of summer. Beset with this exhilarating backdrop, Holi comes, flinging colors and verve into the landscape of India. As if to mark the renewal and rebirth of life. Holi is thus a celebration of life, the life of love, unblemished joy, and good spirits.

The spirit & significance of colors

Celebrating the mood of nature with a range of colors. This is what colors of Holi signify. The spirit of celebration is to showcase the shifting panorama of life, of sights, movement of feelings. The human hearts also feel the urge to be recharged with new colors to catch on the mood outside. And Holi gives us a wonderful chance to do this. For, it reminds us that the time is perfect to be colored, to renew love and recharge your vitality. All in sync with nature. And the color symbolizes the energy, the vivid, passionate pulse of life signifying vitality.

Origin of Holi

The celebration of Holi is very ancient in its origin. And by its very origin, it celebrates an ultimate triumph of the 'good' over the 'evil'. While, a feast of colors associated with the Holi, is the face of this celebration, the original reason of celebrating Holi, lies in its soul. And this gives us the 'why' of this ancient festival.

Literally "Holi" signifies "burning" in Indian language. But, how it came to be associated with 'burning', is a story. The reference is found only in ancinet Indian mythology. And It is the legend of Hiranyakashipu, to whom the celebration of Holi is associated.

Way back in the pre-Christian era, there lived a demon king named Hiranyakashipu in ancient India. He wanted to avenge the death of his younger brother. The brother, also a demon, had been killed by Lord Vishnu, one of the supreme trio, monitoring the life and death in the universe, (according to the Hindu belief). To take on Vishnu, the tyrant king wanted to become the king of the heaven, earth and the underworld. He performed severe penance and prayer for many years to gain enough power. Finally he was granted a boon.

Powered by the boon, Hiranyakshipu thought he had become invincible. Arrogant, he ordered all in his kingdom to worship him, instead of God. The demon king, however, had a very young son, named Prahalad. He was an ardent devotee of Vishnu. Despite his father's order, Prahalad continued to pray to Vishnu. So the demon king wanted to kill his son. He asked the favor of his sister Holika who, because of a boon, was immune to fire. They planned that Prahalad would be burned to death.

A pyre was lit up and Holika sat on it, clutching Prahalad. Yet, at the end Prahalad emerged unscathed by the fire, and Holika, the demon, was burned to ashes. The earnest devotion and complete submission to Lord Vishnu saved young Prahlad. Thus was the triumph of Prahlad, the representative of good spirits. And the defeat of Holika, the representative of evil. Later, even the demon king Hiranyakashipu was killed by Lord Vishnu. But that is quite a different story. It is from Holika, that the Holi originated.

This legend is relived even today on the Holi-eve when the pyre is re-lit in the form of bonfires. Even today, people celebrate this occasion. Huge bonfires are lit up every year on the eve of the full moon night of the Holi to burn the spirit of the evils. Hence the story associated with the soul of the celebration.

Holi and Colorful Face

Well, it is linked to yet another legend, the legends of Krishna. Though of much later origin, still, it was in the pre-Christian era.

According to the Hindu belief, Krishna was a reincarnation of lord Vishnu himself. It was Krishna, or, Krishn, the king of the ancient city of Dwarka, who popularised the tradition of Holi. The origin of the colorful and frolicking tone of Holi lies in the boyhood of Krishna. It all came up as part of his pranks, he used to play with his boyhood mates of Gokul and Vrindavan. Situated in north India, these are the places where he spent his childhood.

It was at this time of year, Krishna used to play pranks by drenching the village girls, with water and colors. At first it offended the girls. But they were so fond of this mischievous boy that soon their anger melted away. And, it did not take long for other boys to join in, making it a popular sport in the village.

Later, as Krishna grew up, the play assumed a new dimension. It added more colors to Krishna's legendary love life. The legend of Krishna's courtship with Radha, and playing pranks with the 'Gopi's. The girls in the 'dairy' village of Gokul were mostly milkmaids, and, hence locally known as the Gopis. The same tradition has transpired through the ages, turning it into a community festival of the masses. As time kept flowing, the culture spread roots to other regions of the country. The Holi play of Krishna is documented in hundreds of ancient paintings, murals, sculptures and scriptures found across the subcontinent.

Happy Holi! Holi Mubarak Ho!

8 March: International Women's Day

International Women's Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Women's Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for "liberty, equality, fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage.

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. Following is a brief chronology of the most important events:

1909

In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.

1910

The Socialist International, meeting in Copenhagen, established a Women's Day, international in character, to honour the movement for women's rights and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, which included the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament. No fixed date was selected for the observance.

1911

As a result of the decision taken at Copenhagen the previous year, International Women's Day was marked for the first time (19 March) in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, where more than one million women and men attended rallies. In addition to the right to vote and to hold public office, they demanded the right to work, to vocational training and to an end to discrimination on the job.

Less than a week later, on 25 March, the tragic Triangle Fire in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working girls, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This event had a significant impact on labour legislation in the United States, and the working conditions leading up to the disaster were invoked during subsequent observances of International Women's Day.

1913-1914

As part of the peace movement brewing on the eve of World War I, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. Elsewhere in Europe, on or around 8 March of the following year, women held rallies either to protest the war or to express solidarity with their sisters.

1917

With 2 million Russian soldiers dead in the war, Russian women again chose the last Sunday in February to strike for "bread and peace". Political leaders opposed the timing of the strike, but the women went on anyway. The rest is history: Four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. That historic Sunday fell on 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, but on 8 March on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere.


Since those early years, International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

The Role of the United Nations

Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.

Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society's most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world's women.

Triple Blasts Rocked Varanasi

At least 12 people have been killed after triple blasts rocked parts of Varanasi on Tuesday evening. Several others have been injured in the blasts, which took place between 6:15-6:30 pm (IST).

The Home Ministry has confirmed the blasts occurred at Sankat Mochan Temple and the railway station in the cantonment area. The third blast reportedly took place on the Shiv Ganga Express.

Area cordoned off

The injured have been taken to the SS Hospital in the Benaras Hindu University campus. Senior officials of the district administration have reached the spot and the affected areas have been cordoned off.

The Mulayam Singh Yadav government has announced a compensation of Rs five lakh for the dead and Rs one lakh for those who have been seriously injured.

Blasts rock Varanasi

The first explosion took place outside the temple just after 6 pm (IST) when a large number of devotees were present at the peak evening aarti time. Minutes later, another blast took place outside the room of the stationmaster of the cantonment railway station.

"There's been a blast in front of the stationmaster's room. We have no reports of any casualties yet. Injuries have taken place, but we are not sure of the figures," said Sanjay Goyal, PRO, Northern Railways.

The third blast took place on the Shiv Ganga Express, which was leaving for New Delhi. The blast at the temple set out panic and a near-stampede situation as devotees scrambled to rush out to safety.

The Sankat Mochan is situated on the Durgakund road and is among the country's most ancient temples.

Appeal for calm

Another bomb was also recovered from the Gadolia market in the city.

"Some sick mind must have done it. All communities must come together in this time of terrible tragedy," said Salman Khursheed, President, UPCC.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has condemned the blasts and appealed for calm.

A high level meeting of Home Ministry officials is currently underway and Home Minister Shivraj Patil is expected to visit Varanasi. A high alert has been sounded in Delhi and Mumbai.