HOLLA!

Media Executive. Tennis, Golf & Squash Player. Travel & Adventure Enthusiast. Part-Time Cook & Poet. Vegetarian Foodie. News Junkie

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
#puzzle #1110
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Perfect😎

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1103
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1086
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I only post when I nail it with a bit of effort. In this case the author connection was the voila moment

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1081
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One of the toughest that I have solved 😎

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1076
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1068
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1065
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1056
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

We are not heading toward a crisis.
We are already in one.
The air is harder to breathe.
Seasons are losing their rhythm.
Water is becoming scarce.
Heat is becoming unbearable.

We need to hold this regime accountable for the sake of our children and future generations

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1045
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1042
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1039
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When u figure out the easier group in the end!

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

Connections
Puzzle #1037
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Thrilled to have got this one 😎

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

Wordle 1,759 4/6*

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Didn't know the word. Took a chance🫣

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Connections
Puzzle #1036
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

Connections
Puzzle #1032
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One of those days 😎

[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

#Wordle 1,743 2/6*

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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

The blatant loot and plunder of our tax payer money is for everyone to see yet I in this group and other groups,educated class getting agitated when you point out the crimes of this regime
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

Prime example of hypocrisy and selective silence... Thread

@TheVijayMallya in a sealed envelope had committed to the Supreme Court that he would repay the principal amount and just needs the compounded interest waiver.
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[HOLLA! @AshokaHolla]

The banks have recovered every penny and more by auctioning his assets yet he is not being pardoned.

On the other hand every crony of this regime has received a 75-98% haircut on their loans (principal +interest).
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