Politics and Us

How many time have you said or heard 'I am not interested in politics'?

I don't know about others but this was a statement I believed and practiced whole heatedly right from school. I was not interested in new or any general awareness program until my master's !!
As a result I never used to read the news paper. My only assimilation and collection of current affairs used to be from forced news listen at 9am on DD-1 because of dad's or grandpa habit of following the news in TV or radio .. .

It was only when I started working in NE and started traveling there on my own, I started to take some initiative to know what was happening in the am planning to visit next. Entirely selfish motive. But that's how I started. Prior to this my news paper used to open and close in the last sports/cartoon/entertainment page only !!

Rape, Fraud and Murder used to be the headline always irrespective of which ever news paper you pick from anywhere on any day!!

Things haven't changed much even today. But I have changed. Today, politics is the only thing that is influencing me more directly in my personal and professional life than it has ever done. And this change happened only because of my stay in US and close encounter with US politics (national and international).

I became more aware of how international and national issue of a country are related. How it influences other countries, more so with respect to my field - Environment and Ecology.

And politics IS a very important dimension of this whole connection.
Why am I ranting about this now ?

Well, because finally with Barak Obama's presidency, US has taken a serious stand on issues of Climate Change, which the Bush and previous govt. have been ignoring. Ecologists have been telling the world about the dark picture's humans have been painting for years! No body heard them or listened to them. Today with the failing economy and reclining resources the Kyoto protocol, Global Warming, Sustainable Development and Environmental Issues takes a new stand inlight of the US declaration of the Climate Envoy.

The more I see Obama, taking his steps towards regain the US economy, I see a target becoming more and more clear infront of me. And its all related to how we are influened and connected to politics.

It does not matter, if you believe or follow politics or not! We all are effected by it, more directly than we actually think...

There is more to this story, but for now I will stop.