Folk arts means of sustainable rural economic development?

I was told about a toy town called  called Channapatna by my friend some time back. A visit to the Cauvery emporium in Brigade road, ignited my curiosity and I decided to pay a visit. I took one amongst the plethora of buses available from KSRTC bus stand.My friend had given me the contact details of  an artist there. I had seen some of the artecrafts in the cauvery emporium. But the sheer variety and beauty of some of the items in his workshop blew me away. The variety and ingenuity of the some of the toys is unbelievable.The toy making process ensures minimal  wastage of wood. The colours are made of vegetable dye and perfectly safe for children.Recently I read a report that most of the toys sold in India have lead paint on them. Even toys from well known manufactures like fisher were known to have them. Rather than buying such toys we would be better off  exploring such handicrafts. It would be environmentally and economically safer. The toys cost very little as compare to toys from fisher.

Apart from toys the workshop also contained many utlity items like fruit baskets, key holders etc.
The most intriguing craft work were the wooden inlays. These are wooden portraits. But instead of colour they use pieces of wood  cut into various shapes to form the portrait. Imagine visiting your sister for raksha bandhan next time. Gift her a wooden inlay of your childhood photo. She would be thrilled to receive this instead of a box of Celebrations from Cadbury.  It would also be cheaper.

India is filled with such artisans. Many of these arts are dying a fast death. These arts can form unique gifting ideas. Patronising these art forms will help us sustains these arts, as well as create more jobs in rural India. If people in villages/small townships can find sustainable jobs, they will not have to come to the cities and we wont have parties like shiv sena

An Elixir for ODI's

One day cricket is in news again, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I am not in favour of abolishing it.
For crickets sake we need to Ensure the primacy of Test cricket and need to make it elitist. Restrict it to 8 nations. Use T20's as a tool to popularize cricket and use ODI's as a bridge between Tests and T20's. Cricket should follow a 4 year calendar. The bottom two of the eight nations be relegated. To make ODI's more interesting it is imperative to make changes and bring the bowler back in the game. I don't agree with the concept of 2 25 over innings. Shane warne had proposed this around 5 years ago. At that time it looked interesting, but not any more with the advent of T20's.

Some of the changes I propose:
1. Introduce a min cap for bowlers and abolish the max cap. I suggest, make it compulsory for 4 bowlers to bowl 10 overs each. No restriction on max no of overs a bowler can bowl. This eliminates the need for bits and pieces players. The bane of ODI cricket.
2. Abolish the concept of runners for batsmen. It's equivalent to chucking by bowlers. No substitute fielders either. This will ensure only genuinely fit players will play.
3. Better ball which will last 50 overs. This will bring back reverse swing into play.
4. Increase the bouncer limit to 2 per over.
5. Reintroduce backfoot no ball rule. If the non striker can leave the crease before the bowler delivers then the bowler too shall be allowed some lee way.
6. Restriction on boundar dimensions. The bounday ropes need to be atleast 75m. We need to give the spinner a chance to take wicket. Entice and deceive the batsman. I was aghast to see Hayden beaten in flight hit a 6. Modern bats and short boundaries are a sure shot death sentence for spinners.

Adelaide Dilemma

Indian cricket bids to do tomorrow what few teams have managed to do. So great has been the dominance of Australian cricket over the past few decades that not losing is an achievement in itself. The euphoria created by the Perth victory may well be forgotten if Australia get off to the way they did here four years ago. The Indian has to make a few brave decisions. The news papers are abuzz with who is going to open and Harbhajan's chance of playing. If things where left to me, I would have gone for both Harbhajan and karthick. But then who do we drop. Not an easy choice, but to me it should be Saurav Ganguly. Agreed he has been probably the most consistent batsmen over the past year. But he has failed to get going in the series. For all the brouhaha created over his dismissal in sydney few manage to see the poor shot played at a crucial juncture of the game. Its not that we would be weakening our batting. Harbhajan is a decent bat. The Indian tail has improved a lot more than the Indian top order over the past few years.
To me the Indian line up would read
Karthick
Sehwag
Dravid
Laxman
Tendulkar
Dhoni
Sehwag
Kumble
Harbhajan
RP Singh
Ishant Sharma