Current Initiatives

1. Tree Plantation Initiative, a Partnership With BBMP: Free tree plantation has been arranged for the roadsides of large areas in Bangalore. This has been done with the help of BBMP. The saplings will be provided free of cost with barricade and transportation. The minimum requirement is 50 saplings per area.

2. Survey on "Best Practices at IT Companies Towards Environment Conservation" with Climate Project India: We have partnered with Climate Project that has Nobel Laureates Al Gore and IPCC Chairman, Dr. Pachauri, as their patrons. The objective of the initiative is to undertake a survey on IT companies to understand the best practices in environment conservation implementations. The key dimension of the survey would cover areas of e-waste recycling, water re-cycling, power management and transportation. Large IT houses and data center operations will be a part of this survey. The insights gathered from organizations, will be publicized to contacts in several media outlets.

3. Symposium on "Implementations & Opportunities in Large IT Organizations to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions": Project GreenCredit in collaboration with "The Climate Project, India" and a few companies will sponsor a two-day workshop that has two-pronged objectives of sharing of best practices across these companies and will help them to collaborate with internationally acclaimed subject matter experts(SMEs). These SMEs will participate as program committee and in panel discussions, and will be experts in the areas of power management, e-waste recycling, water management, and health-cum-safety management.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Publish E-Annual Reports

We have seen the companies registered in India coming up with a bulky annual report at the end of their financial year. This report is sent across to all eligible shareholders of the company irrespective of the holdings. The company in return spends a hefty sum in preparing, printing and individually sending this glossy document to the shareholders.Have any of us wondered as to how many of the shareholders read it page by page for the financial analysis? I suppose (though no statistical data is available) the probability might be just about 5% of those who receive it. For the rest 95% of the shareholders it goes out as a garbage and lands up with the 'Raddhi paper wala' as you call it.I feel pity when I see those annual reports lying in those stack of old newspapers. Does it not make sense for the companies or the regulators to amend the law or atleast have an option where the shareholder can opt to get his Annual Reports by way e-mail? If all the registered companies adhere to this probably we may reduce the consumption of paper. It does make sense for the companies to publish their reports as they are governed by the Regulators to comply with the law. For most of the companies, they already have it in their web-site, hence I strongly feel that the hard copy which is being sent to the shareholders can be fully avoided.
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1 comment:

Rajeshwari G said...

I think it is happening. Infosys has made available the quarter ending June 30, 2008 results in a PDF. However, I continued to get hardcopy as well. Don't know how to specify that I don't need the hardcopy.

July 24, 2008 at 8:31 PM

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Inspirational Incidents

True Story from the Bishnois

We all have heard about the sensational news coverage of the Bollywood actor Salman Khan being jailed for killing a blackbuck in some remote village of Rajasthan and Bishnois were agitated and angered with his action. I had somehow internally framed in my mind that these Bishnois must be one of those tribal communities living in remote villages of Rajasthan.

Recently I was reading a book called Forest Tales by Meena Raghunathan and Mamata Pandya published by Center of Environment Eduction(CEE). One story in the book narrates the true incidents involving the Bishnois. I understood that Bishnois meant “Twenty-Niners” and these were a group of people who followed the 29 tenets on “Protecting Nature” laid down by their founder, named Jambaji, who lived several hundred years back.

The history narrates that this region in Rajasthan faced severe drought due to complete de-forestation. A youngster named Jambaji realized that the only way to bring relief to the situation was by recreating a healthy living environment and planting trees was one main aspect of it. He started preaching 29 simple tenets to achieve this. Some of these tenets were:
Do not cut any living tree; do not kill a animal or a bird etc. This way he dedicated himself to preaching these tenets to all the nearby villages. This started a revolutionary movement and his followers started calling themselves “Bishnois” or “The 29ers”. This community has made amazing sacrifices for conservation of Environment. One of those incidents is when a King of the area wanted to build a palace and had ordered his soldiers to get timber for the palace by cutting down the thickly populated forest in the Bishnoi area. Bishnoi villagers protested this by hugging the trees as and when the soldiers came to cut them. The story reports that 363 people were axed to death by the soldiers before the King himself intervened. King was touched and inspired by the dedication that the Bishnois showed and passed an order that no tree should be ever cut or an animal be harmed in any Bishnoi village. Today there are many blackbucks that roam freely (well almost! :-)) in the tree abundant Bishnoi villages.