TATA's Nano – People’s Car

The world’s cheapest car is out in the market with plenty of great features. It’s Nano, TATA’s Nano. It will go on sale later this year. Tata chairman Ratan Tata has called this car as People’s Car at the Auto Expo in New Delhi. It has been designed will meet all safety norms and all foreign environmental criteria

The 4-seater Nano, with an engine around 625cc, will have a dealer price of only 100,000 rupees ($2,500), about half the cost of the cheapest car on today’s market, which is maruti 800.

However it didn’t happen in one night. Tata planned the car years ago as a safer and more affordable alternative for the millions of middle-class Indians.

These are some specifications of Nano :

·      Length: 3.1 metres Height: 1.6 metres Width: 1.5 metres

·      Engine: Rear-wheel drive, 2-cylinder, 623 cc, multi-point fuel-injection petrol engine. Engine is rear mounted. Tata said it was the first time a 2-cylinder gasoline engine was being used in a car with single balancer shaft.

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Safety: Tata said the Nano has an all sheet-metal body, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat-belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body. Tyres are tubeless.

• Environment: Tata said tailpipe emission performance exceeded current regulatory requirements, and the Nano had a lower overall pollution level than two-wheelers made in India. It said high fuel efficiency (20 km/litre) ensured low carbon dioxide emissions.

WHEN CHRISTMAS BECOMES A NIGHTMARE!!!

When Christians all over the world celebrated Christmas with joy, it was a nightmare for thousands of tribal-dalit Christians in Orissa, India. This affected not only the Christians all over the world, but specifically in India and particularly our diocese where over forty percentages of Catholics are dalits. The attack on the Christians in Orissa is a reflection of an execution of plans meticulously calculated and well planned by the Hindutva forces just a day after the announcement of election results in the state of Gujarat, the state where majority are Hindu fundamentalists.

The atrocities against Christians in India have increased in the past decade particularly in the northern states of India. It is important to note that Orissa is the only Indian state that has a law requiring people to obtain police permission before they change their religion – a move designed to counter missionary work. The Hindutva forces had similar strategies in Gujarat, which is considered to be their laboratory. After achieving a great degree of success over there, they intend to continue their experiments in other north Indian states, particularly where their party or their coalition parties are in power. And Orissa happens to be one of those states governed by their political party.

Our diocese (Archdiocese of Madurai), being the metropolitan see and having prime role in the state that has witnessed a great struggle of Christians, particularly the dalits, it is important to show our solidarity and concern to the poor, marginalized and traumatized Christians of Orissa. Christians all over India have protested strongly by organizing huge rallies, candlelight and prayerful processions and inter-faith prayer meetings. A massive protest rally was organized in Chennai (Madras). The persecuted and suffering Church in any part of the world must be comforted and strengthened by the universal Church. 

“The Human Family: Community of Peace”

Pope Benedict XVI has chosen "The Human Family: Community of Peace" as the theme for the World Peace Day message for 2008.

The Holy Father insisted that, “Every person, every population is called to experience and feel themselves part of the human family conceived by God as a community of peace”.  He also quoting from the council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World “Gaudium et Spes" said that, "Every group must take into account the needs and legitimate aspirations of every other group, and still more of the human family as a whole”.  Just as the dignity of the person created in the image of God is affirmed in the Old Testament, the idea of the unity of the family is also one of the original truths of Christianity.

In his message the Holy Father clearly explains the relation between family and peace by saying that, in a healthy family life we experience some of the fundamental elements of peace: justice and love between brothers and sisters, the role of authority expressed by parents, loving concern for the members who are weaker because of youth, sickness or old age, mutual help in the necessities of life, readiness to accept others and, if necessary, to forgive them. For this reason he insists that, the family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace.

The family is the foundation of society for this reason too: because it enables its members in decisive ways to experience peace. It follows that the human community cannot do without the service provided by the family. Where can young people gradually learn to savour the genuine “taste” of peace better than in the original “nest” which nature prepares for them? The language of the family is a language of peace; we must always draw from it, lest we lose the “vocabulary” of peace. In the inflation of its speech, society cannot cease to refer to that “grammar” which all children learn from the looks and the actions of their mothers and fathers, even before they learn from their words.

Through this message of peace the Holy Father invites every man and woman to have a more lively sense of belonging to the one human family, and to strive to make human coexistence increasingly reflect this conviction, which is essential for the establishment of true and lasting peace in this world.