News…………
Wildscapes.net product store is soon going to have some new VCDs from IndianWildlifeClub.com! These are,
1. Wilderness Nepal :
The film looks at the wilderness of the Himalayan region with special reference to Nepal .
While depicting the natural beauty of Nepal , the film also projects the 'community forests' concept in Nepal which has proved a success in maintaining the wetland area of "twenty thousand lakes", a paradise for bird watchers.
The evolution and extinction of species is looked at in the backdrop of the spectacular natural history event by which the Himalayan mountains were formed sixty million years ago. Digital animation techniques have helped visualize the
event.
Decrease in primary and secondary forest area is posing a question mark on the future of the Bengal tiger and in particular the Asian elephant in Nepal . Elephant migrations do not respect country boundaries. The future of the Asian
elephant in India is therefore closely linked with its fate in Nepal .
2. Seoul -Where Modernity Bows to Tradition:
The film is a travelogue on Seoul , the capital city of the Republic of Korea . The film is a study of the synthesis of the modern and the traditional that S.Korea has achieved. It depicts the natural beauty of Korea in the backdrop
of its violent and tumultuous history. S. Korea comes through as a Society which is truly at peace with its tradition, culture and modernity. The film also brings out parallels between India and Korea , two ancient countries striving to set a high pace of
development.
The film depicts Korea through the ages and has footage on
- National Museum and Folk Village
- Bukansan National Park
- Royal Palaces
- Incheon Port
- Modern Seoul City
3. Living With the Park- Ranthambore NationalPark
This short film looks at the popular tiger reserve as an integrated universe comprising its animals and people in the adjoining areas. The forest connects the two and neither one can flourish without the other. So is the policy of segregating
the park as a preserve for animals alienating the people who lived in harmony with the park for decades, helping the Park? There are no quick answers. The camera shows people around the Park voicing their pride in and reservations about the Park. Is the Park
management listening? For in the interest of preservation it seems foolish to ignore the distilled wisdom of people whose lives are in tune with nature.
And Views…………….
…poverty came to be defined across the world through a single metric-income poverty- and the solution to poverty was economic growth. The reality, we now realize, is that “standard of living” can actually be quite high in places where
GDP per capita is quite low. Bhutan, for example, where people still provide for many of their own needs and produce beautiful art and music, is considered to be one of the poorest countries of the world because its gross domestic product is virtually zero.
With GDP as the metric, no distinction is made between homeless beggars who live on the street and the Bhutanese or Ladakhi farmers. In both the case, there may be no income but the life behind the statistics is entirely different.
In this way, poverty has been used to define whole peoples not according to what they are or what they want to be, but according to what they lack-(income). This, it turns out is development’s fatal flaw. It has systematically failed
to recognize the wealth of indigenous resources and alternatives. ….As a consequence, we have committed the better part of 50 years to using one size fit all solutions to what are really complex, diverse and unique problems.
Traditional societies such as Ladakh have been systematically disrupted by the development process. As peasants, nomads and tribal people have been either lured away or driven from their land to urban slums in search of wage labour,
poverty is often the result not the cause.”
-- Stuart L Hart, Capitalism at the Crossroads