Internet Marketing ? Social Media | GetOnPageOne.org/blog

Sunday, August 26th, 2012 at 11:18 am ?

Internet Marketing (IM) is the procedure associated with generating traffic as well as driving it toward your website by making use of the powers of the online. Seo, Pay per click marketing (PPC) campaigns and link-building are to name just some of the efficient ways to increase the electronic footprint of your business. In the following paragraphs I am going to look precisely at Social Media Marketing and just how it can considerably increase your website marketing tactic.

Social Media is a wide covering phrase designed to supply interaction and communication among individuals on the web. The most frequent kinds of social media tend to be: blogs, community forums, social bookmarking, podcasts and media libraries. The most used instances of social media in use currently are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; all of which are generally of exceptional use for your Internet marketing activities.

Facebook is a social networking internet site which allows you to build up a group of your good friends, interests and connections. With more than 900 million members it can be a huge resource that numerous businesses are employing to propagate their corporate message. Creating a site for your enterprise as well as marketing it amongst your personal community of associates is an excellent first step in your IM targets. Facebook is very effective at driving traffic in the direction of your website and promoting the presence of your business; where I?ve personally discovered constraints within Facebook is that it does not supply targeted traffic with targeted interest. Leading friends and family to your site is ideal for traffic figures as well as subsequent link building efforts however is generally unsuccessful at converting sales. Facebook also offer a paid advertising plan, very like Google Adwords it enables you to promote your business site beyond the borders of your own group of friends and amongst the complete Facebook network.

Twitter is one other social networking service that uses micro blogging to connect the user neighborhood. As a member of Twitter you are able to post or ?tweet? data which is noticeable to anybody who subscribes to or ?follows? your account. As opposed to Facebook, Twitter incorporates a fairly open door scheme to its functioning. You?ve got the capacity to subscribe to almost any individual associated with twitter and examine the range of information in which they make accessible. Building up an extensive following in Twitter generally is a prolonged and time intensive approach; the advantages that this delivers with it can be that a better percentage of your following will be especially curious about your chosen industry.

YouTube is a online video sharing web site belonging to Google. YouTube isn?t really typically thought to be an Internet Marketing opportunity but offers an excellent facility to develop your website and draw in more prospects. By posting a video onto YouTube you are allowing ones business to be sought out and located by prospective customers. A fairly easy marketing video detailing the role of the organisation should go quite some distance in the world of Internet Marketing. YouTube also provides a monetisation scheme for your own movies; if you?re invited to sign up for the YouTube monetisation system there is a massive potential to generate a very good income stream.

Social Media Utilization

One of the first things I carry out as a web designer will be to check the availability of usernames and IDs within popular social media websites. I would perform this process well before I actually registered the particular website name and on a particular circumstance I?ve even changed the naming of a task in order that the Social Media component was consistent. Not really some thing I?d suggest for each project though this particular venture needed consistency right through.

Upon registration of my domain name I?ll go on to create accounts for my activity within Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Even though the web site will not be yet working it gives me the opportunity to build up a social network which I will then make use of at some point. Search Engine Optimization can be a very slow process so I view this as a tiny head start on issues; now when the website goes live I have already got a crowd.

I like to consider each individual social media site as a instrument; some are perfect for specific things but not for others. I aim to employ Facebook on websites in which I purely want web traffic. Advertising campaign abundant pages are extremely good landing pages for visitors that will not be thinking about your organisation products. I attempt to use Twitter as an easy way of establishing myself as an authoritative figure within a subject matter. Select your own market, follow a few of the ?big hitters? in that sector, after some intelligence and time you might develop your own personal following in that preferred niche. YouTube may not appear to be a feasible way to market you corporation but I guarantee it is less difficult than you think. Start small using a product advertising campaign or perhaps basic tutorial and you will be surprised just how many people you start to attract.

At worst, you will generate 3 accounts which give valuable back-links to your site.

Dedicate your time and effort in Social Media and allow the results speak for themselves.

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2. Ways To Optimize Your Google Internet Rating With Social Media Marketing Services
3. Offline Social Media Marketing Services ? Over And Above Internet Marketing
4. Why Social Media Marketing Is Impossible To Ignore For Successful Online Businesses
5. Social Media Marketing The Simple Way

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Source: http://getonpageone.org/blog/internet-marketing-social-media/

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New Chubb Insurance Solution for Health Care Organizations ...

WARREN, N.J., Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies has introduced insurance coverage to help small to mid-size health care organizations manage some of their biggest exposures.

ForeFront Portfolio 3.0(SM) for Health Care Organizations offers eight optional coverages, including cyber liability insurance for the costs associated with data breaches and directors and officers liability (D&O) insurance, which can respond to allegations of health care fraud and abuse. The six other coverage options include employment practices liability, fiduciary liability, crime, kidnap/ransom and extortion, workplace violence expense, and employed lawyers liability insurance.

"Many health care organizations are not adequately prepared to fend off a data breach, which exposes them to fines and penalties of up to $1.5 million per year under the Health Information and Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act," said Beth Strapp, vice president and health care product manager for Chubb Specialty Insurance. "ForeFront Portfolio's cyber liability insurance can provide customized coverage for crisis management and privacy notification expenses, data breach-related fines and penalties, and legal defense costs."

Increasingly, health care organizations also are being accused of filing fraudulent claims with Medicare and Medicaid, Strapp added. ForeFront Portfolio's D&O insurance may cover defense costs and certain fines and penalties as a result of an investigation, subpoena, search warrant or other types of inquiry into such an allegation, regardless of whether a civil lawsuit is filed.? "This is an important feature of Chubb's new insurance product since coverage is triggered under most other insurance policies only when a civil proceeding is brought," said Strapp.

Chubb's health care insurance solution also includes access to a variety of loss prevention services. The online Health Care Zone(SM) at ChubbWorks(SM)offers risk management information and tools to help reduce D&O, employment practices liability and fiduciary liability exposures.?

Cyber liability customers are able to access Chubb's eRisk Hub, an online cyber risk management platform. They also can obtain partial reimbursement for costs associated with hiring a Chubb-approved cyber loss prevention consultant. Similarly, employment practices liability customers can be referred to appropriate loss prevention experts and receive a partial reimbursement of those costs. Crisis management services are available to help manage a workplace violence, kidnap/ransom or extortion incident.??

The member insurers of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies form a multi-billion dollar organization providing property and casualty insurance for personal and commercial customers worldwide through 8,500 independent agents and brokers. Chubb's global network includes branches and affiliates throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia.

Chubb Group of Insurance Companies
15 Mountain View Road
P.O. Box 1615
Warren, New Jersey 07059
Contact: Jodi Dorman
(908) 903-2608
Email: jdorman@chubb.com

SOURCE Chubb Group of Insurance Companies

Source: http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/press_releases/new-chubb-insurance-solution-for-health-care-organizations-provides-coverage-for-data-breaches-and-h

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Why?s everybody so angry about Twitter ? and should you care?

14 hrs.

Thorin Klosowski , Lifehacker

People have different reasons for being upset with Twitter right now, and those reasons really depend?on what type of Twitter user you are. Here are the people Twitter's changes are going to affect the most, and why?they're angry about the new rules.

The crux of why people are upset with Twitter is pretty simple: Twitter is?changing its Application Programming Interface (API)and closing off how third-party apps communicate with Twitter. For casual Twitter users, this means that Twitter controls what information apps can access on Twitter, how they access it, and how the apps shoots out the data on their ends. On the surface, the main goal is to keep Twitter clients consistent, and push ads equally throughout all of Twitter.

The Twitter developers who are worried about what the changes mean for their Business
Developers who build Twitter clients like?MetroTwit?or?TweetBot?are the most clearly affected by Twitter's new rules. In Twitter's new?API Terms, Twitter states that Twitter clients need to keep in line with Twitter's layout rules, which require tweets to be displayed in a single way, with all their buttons in the right places. From a visual point of view, all Twitter apps should essentially look the same. However, in a?blog post?back in June, Twitter also stated that developers should not, "build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience." Essentially, this means Twitter doesn't want people building new Twitter clients.

Twitter has also instituted a user cap of 100,000 people for any app that uses the Twitter API, but they are giving a special allowance to any apps that already has over 100,000 users. When a new app gets more users that 100,000, it needs special permission from Twitter to continue on. This includes not just the Twitter clients that show your Twitter stream, but also apps that tap into the Twitter ecosystem like the aggregation tool?Storify?or the "what you did a year ago" webapp?Timehop. Essentially, if your app taps into Twitter for any reason, you're going to see changes.

From a strictly Twitter client point of view, the changes seem like they'll cut Twitter clients completely. However, in a blog post, Tweetbot developer Tapbots explains they'll?continue work their clients?(iPhone, iPad, and Mac), and the majority of the app will be unchanged. Twitterific developer Icon Factory?says the same thing.

Not all developers are so confident, and?several have sent letters to the FTC?requesting an investigation into possible antitrust issues that arise by Twitter forcing other apps out of the game.

Until we see how Twitter enforces these rules it's difficult to know exactly what to expect.

The Twitter power users who like third-party utilities

Twitter power users are going to see big changes in their Twitter clients, but many of the analytics tools they use will remain untouched. In fact, in Twitter's?blog post?on the issue, they specifically high-five the likes of?Crimson Hexagon,?Topsy,?Hootsuite, and others. In short, if you're using apps that are targeted at businesses, for data mining or otherwise, you're probably fine.

However, power users will likely see less customized clients built specifically for certain types of users. Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani sums it up on the?In Beta podcast:

I think the big thing people are upset about is that we're going to see fewer custom power user clients. Which really sucks for the power user who want the very specialized client who lets you mute keywords, or whatever.

The reason? With a new rules, developers might not put forth the effort to build specialized clients anymore. It could also mean that currently beloved clients will just give up. It's no fun playing in a playground with chains and locks on all the equipment. Since this hinges on how developers react, it's hard to judge exactly what the effect will be until Twitter starts enforcing these rules.

Twitter users who like services like Flipboard that plug into Twitter

The loudest outrage from most people is how Twitter's been tackling the way third-party services access Twitter. In a tiny way, this is about how?Tumblr, Instagram, and LinkedIn?users can't search for friends on Twitter any more.

More worrisome about the new API rules is how it might restrict apps like the popular social news app?Flipboard, which accesses tweets, but isn't a client itself. The worry comes from Rule 5a of the?Timeline display guide:

Tweets that are grouped together into a timeline should not be rendered with non-Twitter contents. Eg comments, updates from other networks.

Instapaper developer Marco Arment?talks about why this might matter in a blog post:

In other words, apps cannot interleave chronological groups of Twitter posts with anything else.

This is very broad and will bite more services and apps than you may expect. It's probably the clause that caused the dispute with LinkedIn, and why Flipboard CEO Mike McCue just left Twitter's board.

Closer to home for me, it affects Instapaper's "Liked By Friends" browsing feature, which will need to be significantly rewritten if I want it to comply. (If.)

Essentially, services that tap into your Twitter feed and regurgitate links into a new visual style could be blocked. This means magazine-style browsing apps like Flipboard?could?be cut off.

The likely reasoning from Twitter's point of view is simple. When you access links from who you follow on Twitter without ever going to Twitter itself, you can get the Twitter experience without ever looking at advertisements.

The optimistic Web nerds who want Twitter to be a platform, not a media company
When Twitter first launched, it was a wide-open, easy-to-develop-for platform that felt something like the wild wild west of internet communication. Now, Twitter is closing in on itself, and changing its overall approach from open platform for communication to media company. The reason? Money. (They're a for-profit company, so while the results are frustrating, it's silly to blame them for this.)?The Verge lays it out like so:

Creating a platform like Twitter is impossibly hard, but after years of fail whales, the company pulled it off. Monetizing a platform is harder still, and it looks like Twitter has taken the easier path: monetizing its social graph without sharing the wealth with the developers who helped build it.

The reason the social graph (who you follow/who follows you) is important from an advertising point of view is pretty simple: people use Twitter like they use a TV, they follow who they're interested in and that reflects a marketing potential. This makes direct advertising easy.

Twitter's original API was wide open, and out of it sprung all types of innovative apps and uses?the very same things that turned Twitter into the successful company it is today. The openness was the exact reason many of us started using the service in the first place. Twitter was a platform you could access in a variety of ways, and use for a number of different reasons. You could track celebrities, communicate with people, and share links with complete strangers. Users wanted to think of it as a platform similar to email as opposed to a media company (like Facebook). It's easy to see that Twitter needs to make money, but many people hoped (perhaps naively) that Twitter would still function as a platform. Not as yet another Facebook.

So, should you care?

Twitter's guidelines for some of these changes are still pretty vague, and interpretations of how Twitter will implement the changes are all over the place. Developers have six months to comply with the new API, and hopefully by then we'll have a better idea of how it's going to affect everyone.

So, should you care? That depends on how you use Twitter. The issues above effect different people in different ways, but even the casual user will see restrictions with the apps and clients they use.

More from Lifehacker

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/whys-everybody-so-angry-about-twitter-should-you-care-965306

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Two College Presidents Beg Parents to Hover Over Their Snowflakes?In a New Way (Theagitator)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/243548140?client_source=feed&format=rss

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No comments - Bezalel Books Blog and Banter

Bi-Locating and Other Necessary Motherhood Skills

I glanced at the clock when I heard my husband say to my oldest son, ?Call me when you get home.??Where is he?? I asked.When my husband replied, ?He?s on his way home from work,? my stomach began churning. Not the hunger-type churn but the worried-mother-type churn. Our son had purchased a home just months before and was still getting a handle on things but between work and other demands, it wasn?t easy. My husband and I?and his brothers?had all helped out with painting, cutting the lawn, some electrical and lighting things and so on.It took all our willpower (my husband?s and mine) not to completely take over, but to just be available to help if and as needed. We wanted to take care of our son, get him set up in his new house. Mostly, I wanted?needed, really?to know that he was ?okay? and that he wouldn?t be overwhelmed by the demands of new home ownership. The point of the call was to set up a date and a time that my husband would be able to come and help with another task. To hear that my son wasn?t yet home from work for the day brought me to full attention. My brain went into mother-calculation mode. It is the only time my brain can do any math. Okay, he started his day with the sunrise and will end it with the sunset. Given he needs to now cook himself dinner?that means he?s operating on five hours of sleep. By now my stomach is in full blown acrobatic action. I?m talking Flying Wallendas. I?m worried about what he will make himself for dinner and want to drive the 25 minutes away to greet him with warm food.Every cell in my body is aching to go take care of him. The show on the television in front of me no longer has meaning. I can hear the words but don?t understand them as my mind creates a plan to get dinner to my son. My body sits on the couch but it is imagining the scenario in which I will feed my son. I want to bi-locate like never before.Of course I know that this won?t happen?neither the bi-locating nor the actual delivery of food. I know that I have to let my son be and let him learn and grow. I know what my job is now?even as I ache to tuck him in just one last time.I am so proud of him that sometimes I find myself crying. They are tears that remember that little boy who loved to sit and watch Mr. Rogers and eat dry Cheerios. They are tears that recall the day he received his college acceptance letter. Tears rim my eyes when I think about my son going off on his first job interview. My tears are those of gratitude that God has allowed me to know this incredible young man?an amazing son, a giving brother, a loving grandson?and has allowed me to be part of his journey.

Source: http://bezalelbooks.blogspot.com/2012/08/bi-locating-and-other-necessary.html

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Refinery blast kills 19 in Venezuela, dozens hurt

Fire rises over Amuay refinery near Punto Fijo, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens, an official said. (AP Photo/Daniela Primera)

Fire rises over Amuay refinery near Punto Fijo, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens, an official said. (AP Photo/Daniela Primera)

Fire rises over Amuay refinery near Punto Fijo, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 25, 2012. A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens, an official said. (AP Photo/Daniela Primera)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? A huge explosion rocked Venezuela's biggest oil refinery early Saturday, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 50 others in the deadliest disaster in memoryfor the country's key oil industry.

Balls of fire rose over the Amuay refinery, one of the largest in the world, in video posted on the Internet by people who were nearby at the time.

Those killed included a 10-year-old boy, and at least 53 people were injured, Falcon state Gov. Stella Lugo said on state television. She said firefighters had controlled the flames at the refinery on the Paraguana Peninsula in western Venezuela, where large clouds of smoke were rising.

"The areas that had to be evacuated were evacuated," Lugo said, according to the state-run Venezuelan News Agency. "The situation is controlled. Of course they're still a fire rising very high, but ... the specialists tell me there is no risk of another explosion."

The blast occurred after 1 a.m. when a gas leak created a cloud that ignited, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said. Some nearby houses were damaged by the blast, he said on television.

"That gas generated a cloud that later exploded and has caused fires in at least two tanks of the refinery and surrounding areas," Ramirez said on state television. "The blast wave was of a significant magnitude."

Images in state media showed the flames casting an orange glow against the night sky. One photograph showed an injured man being wheeled away on a stretcher.

Ramirez said oil workers will determine what caused the gas leak and were inspecting the damage along with troops. He said supplies of fuel had been cut off to the part of the refinery that was still in flames.

Troops were securing the area at the refinery, Lugo said.

Vice President Elias Jaua said on his Twitter account that the military was deployed to the area and that air ambulances were dispatched to ferry the wounded. The defense minister was traveling to the refinery along with Ramirez and other officials, Jaua said.

Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refinery Complex, which also includes the adjacent Cardon refinery. Together, the two refineries process about 900,000 barrels of crude a day and 200,000 barrels of gasoline. It was unclear to what extent the explosion might affect oil shipments from Venezuela, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

_____

Associated Press writer Jorge Rueda contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-08-25-Venezuela-Refinery%20Explosion/id-4a50a2f46573454dbd70a8e1090444cc

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How did coal-rich India end up with power blackouts?

By Daphne Wysham, August 22, 2012. ?Source: The Nation

Workers walk on a heap of coal at a stockyard of an underground coal mine in the Mahanadi coal fields at Dera, near Talcher town in the eastern Indian state of Orissa March 28, 2012. Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

?If you work hard, and put your heart and soul into it, then you are allowed to steal some,? said Shivpal Singh Yadav, a minister for public works for India?s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). ?But don?t be a bandit.? Caught on camera, Yadav?s words were replayed in newscasts across India on August 9, 2012, nine days after a power failure left half of India?s population?one-tenth of the planet?s people?without power. Among the Indian states that suffered the blackout, twice, was Yadav?s home state of UP.

A preliminary government investigation into the cause of the blackouts blamed ?indiscipline of state electricity boards and faulty management by the northern grid operator Power Grid Corporation? for the blackouts. Yet two other simpler reasons, theft and climate change, should not be overlooked.

Theft and corruption have played a role in India?s power failures for decades. At every step in the supply chain, money is siphoned off via direct bribes or shortcuts. There is the theft of the politically connected?like Yadav. And there are special deals cut with farmers, large hotels and others who collect favors in the form of free or guaranteed electricity in exchange for bribes of powerful officials. Then there is theft of the Adivasis, or tribals, the untouchables and other disenfranchised people of India. More than a third of India?s households do not have enough electricity to power a light bulb, according to last year?s census. And so they steal it. In fact, as much as 40 percent of India?s electrical power is stolen.

June and July is traditionally the season for planting rice in the north. Rice is a staple crop for India, and India?s paddies provide a significant share of rice for export to global markets. Rice paddies require an abundance of water. With a delayed monsoon (yet another anticipated outcome of climate change), farmers in North India were using more power than usual to pump groundwater to irrigate their crops. This, together with the ongoing theft of power from the grid, certainly played a pivotal role in the northern grid?s power failure.

How did India, a country with plentiful coal reserves and a growing GDP, get into a situation of energy theft and such energy inequality? World Bank policies had a lot to do with it. Coal is India?s biggest and dirtiest source of power, providing over 57 percent of the country?s electricity. Yet, despite its abundance, it is increasingly hard to come by. One reason: unsettled land is in short supply in a country about a third the size of the United States but home to almost four times?or 1.2 billion?people.

For decades, the World Bank provided inducements to the government of India to expand its exploitation of coal. The bank also pushed privatization of the power sector and expansion of strip mining. Underground miners once had one of India?s most powerful labor unions. While dangerous and dirty, these jobs provided a decent living, and underground mining prevented the widespread environmental and social destruction that open-pit mines ushered in. At the World Bank?s behest, however,?strip mines replaced thousands of underground mines; miner?s unions were busted and replaced with a handful of workers driving large dump trucks.

Strip mines ravage the landscape and cause acid drainage, which kills fish and makes the water unsafe for drinking or bathing. They smolder in a constant state of combustion. As with large dams, another energy development approach favored by the World Bank (which are also proving unreliable as they fill with silt), thousands of India?s poorest tribal people have been uprooted to make way for strip mines and placed in resettlement camps where prostitution and alcoholism are endemic.

India?s coal is heavy in ash content, and population pressures on available land means ash disposal is also a problem. So, often, the polluting ash?with heavy metals and radioactive elements?is merely dumped in the already polluted rivers. Or it is dumped back in the empty mining pits, where it leaches into the aquifers.

Though the bank recognized a focus on privatization of the power sector and coal-fired power for the grid would result in power largely being provided for heavy industry and urban areas, where payment rates were highest, they rationalized this approach the same way they rationalized ?trickle-down? models of development elsewhere in the world: they assumed that energy services would eventually trickle down to the poor.

However, civil society groups, including ours, urged the bank to review this flawed assumption and instead focus on providing renewable energy to the poorest in rural areas.?At our urging, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn agreed in 2001 to conduct a thorough review of the Bank?s investments in oil, gas and mining to determine whether or not their loans were helping the poor. Their own hand-picked ?eminent person,? Emil Salim, a former board member of one of Indonesia?s largest coal companies, who headed up their three-year Extractive Industries Review,?urged them to uphold a moratorium on lending for coal and to get out of oil completely by 2008. The poor were ?worse off,? not better, Salim determined, as a result of the World Bank investments in coal and oil. Nevertheless, the Bank ignored his advice and?continued to provide billions?to one of the most polluting of fossil fuels, while ignoring its climate impact.

The World Bank once claimed it would provide an acre of land for every acre taken from those who got out of the way for the mines and dams they financed. But that promise was long ago watered down, then forgotten. The regions of India where coal is most abundant?including the newly formed state of Jharkhand, which means ?Land of the Forests??also happen to be the most densely tribal, where trees and other natural beings are viewed as sacred. And this is where resistance is the strongest. With a tribal government, Jharkhand has kept twenty-three proposed thermal plants and about twenty-two coal-mining companies from entering tribal villages and going online since 2005.

A primary rationale India and the World Bank gave for burning India?s coal was ?energy independence.? Yet two decades after the World Bank opened up India?s mines for rapid exploitation, as India runs into roadblocks and runs out of space for open-pit mines and ash disposal, it is increasingly turning to coal from abroad?which comes with lower ash content but at a higher price, from places such as Indonesia, Australia and even Appalachia.

And because of problems with coal and large dams, the government of India is increasingly trying to force nuclear power on the agenda. Yet, here, too there are obstacles: In the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns, in Kanyakumari Kundakulam, more than a thousand women have been protesting a nuclear power plant proposed for that rich agricultural area with regular hunger strikes.

Ironically, one region that did well during the recent power crisis in India was?Jodhpur, where, after a brief interruption, the windmills kept hospitals and households powered up while half of the country went black.

Had the bank heeded its own studies in the early 1990s, which showed that a more economically efficient way of handling the energy needs of the poorest in rural areas would have been to invest in renewable energy, many of India?s energy and environmental problems would have been solved. And had the World Bank focused on its mandate?providing energy for the poorest, rather than rich urban areas, and businesses?India might have ramped up its use of renewable energy to a level comparable to Germany?s, which, with far less insolation, recently derived 40 percent of its electricity from solar power.

Instead, the bank foisted on the largest democracy in the world a neoliberal trickle-down model?where unions were busted, wealthy corporations like Tata were given development assistance to build coal mega-burners, people were treated like pawns on a giant chess board, while they targeted the affluent and heavy industries first for energy delivery using some of the most environmentally destructive energy resources on the planet. Nearly two decades later, after billions in investment, one-tenth of the world sits in the dark, the planet is rapidly heating up, electricity theft consumes as much as 40 percent of India?s power, and the only thing trickling down to the poor is contaminated water or, if they?re lucky, enough water to keep their parched crops alive.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Source: http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/2012/08/how-did-coal-rich-india-end-up-with-power-blackouts/

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