Sunday, January 29, 2012

A Brilliant Idea by India Against Corruption

In 2011, 


from the site http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org
  • in spite of the majority of ordinary Indians wanting a strong anti-corruption bill
  • in spite of India Against Corruption (IAC) and hundreds of thousands of Indians out on the streets demanding one
  • in spite of the government promising one if Anna Hazare, the head of IAC, stopped his fasts
the government eventually came up with such a weak version of the bill that the ultimate decision of policing corrupt individuals in government and ensuring their accountability, remained in the hands of ..... you guessed it, the government.

Today, IAC knows exactly what it is up against – the deadly curse of endemic corruption in too many individuals in politics. It is a sobering thought that it won’t be easy to get rid of. But the IAC have come up with a brilliant plan.

They acknowledge they've learnt a lot from last year. For example, they would like the ability to be directly in touch with the masses. Often, last year, ordinary members wanted some of their doubts clarified and questions answered and the core team were dependent on the media to do so. Whilst acknowledging their gratitude to the media for keeping them in the news, IAC also realised that often, the media was unable to write or speak about their reports in their entirety.  These were drip fed to the public losing their impact and often, even the true meaning of what the core team had said was lost. The main issue, therefore, was to find a way to maintain direct contact between the public and the core team. 

This is what IAC have come up with:
  • ·       Volunteers to get groups of ordinary Indians together throughout India to listen to one topic a week.
  • ·       This topic would be a Youtube discussion between the core team members.
  • ·       This discussion would generate a lot of questions from ordinary Indians which would be noted by the organiser of their group.
  • ·       These questions would then be passed on to the IAC core team through the helpline 97185 00606 or through the email address, indiaagainstcorruption.2010@gmail.com, by the organiser of each group.
  • ·       The core team would then answer the questions they collect, to try and quell our doubts. 

If you'd like to be a volunteer, this is the site to visit:
http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/start-your-discussion-forum.html

All you'd be expected to do would be to get your group together, organise a meeting to watch the current IAC video, facilitate the discussion after and collect the questions that arise out of the discussion to pass on to the core team. You wouldn't be required to answer those questions. Those would be answered by the core team.

Another advantage of getting together with ordinary Indians like ourselves is the obvious one of discussing issues we care about firsthand - with other, like-minded people. Further down the road, we could easily come up with united action plans ourselves. Right now, once our doubts are clarified, the action plan would be decided by the core IAC team. 

Gives "social networking" a whole new meaning. 






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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Can We Prevent Unplanned Urban Development I?

This graphic picture is from Greenpeace, India.
Here's the link.
I used to be a fan of Tavleen Singh's columns in the eighties. Recently I’ve rediscovered her and have started following her on twitter.  One of her tweets baldly declares, "Unless we realize the vital need for planned urban development India will become the largest slum in the world. And, sooner than we think." A dire warning, if ever there was one.

Planning of cities and distributing resources has to be undertaken by the government. It cannot be left to individuals or corporate interest.  Take migration to our cities. In the eighties I remember reading something that stuck in my mind - that a thousand people migrated to Mumbai every day. That means one thousand more people used the same, unchanged resources of Mumbai daily - resources like water, electricity, land, our roads and footpaths. I don’t have the numbers for today. This is a huge burden on the city’s finite resources and there simply might not be enough to go around unless our government has plans to increase those resources. There will come a time when people will use any means simply to be able to get their hands on these fast depleting resources. Take land in our cities to build on. In the sixties and seventies there was enough for everyone. Then, as demand outgrew supply, our flats started getting smaller and more expensive.

If our builders had their way, they’d build wherever there is space. Take Gilbert Hill in Mumbai, for example. It is one of only two 65 million year old rocks on Earth. The other one is in the US and is declared a heritage site - protected and preserved by the government. The one in Mumbai is hemmed in by tall buildings and desecrated by humans, has a temple on top with a resident caretaker and builders are trying to get permission to build on it. Over 33,000 people have signed the petition to save Gilbert Hill.

What chance do the poor have to live in comfort? They simply put up shanty houses and now, we have shanty towns within our cities. They also encroach on our footpaths, railway stations and any public place – as long as they can remain in the city to eke out a living and feed their families.

Villagers come in their droves too as there is no proper infrastructure in their villages. I have written about their investing in wiring for their houses in anticipation of the government’s promise of an electricity grid. The government did not fulfil that promise in thousands of our villages. Thanks to private enterprise and having to re-invest again, they now have solar panels. (The post is here) I leave it to you to judge whether the government is short of funds or whether individuals in the government siphon off funds allocated for various noble sounding projects for the good of our villages.  And that is just one of their (the villagers’) problems. There’s the lack of pucca roads. No infrastructure and no connectivity? It is difficult to eke out a living under those circumstances. The obvious solution for many - why not migrate to our cities?

Cities like Mumbai attract the well heeled, villagers, farmers and the poor alike. Tavleen is right. Urban development in Mumbai is definitely unplanned. 

When they migrate, the well-off get assimilated more easily and their adding to the burden on the city’s resources is less visible. What problems do the poor face and how do they affect the city’s resources? Their living quarters are crowded and cramped. They either have relations in our slums or they encroach on our footpaths. They have nowhere to carry out their daily ablutions. It has to be public places. They can only afford coal or kerosene as fuel. These aren't good for the air we breathe. In crowded and cramped conditions with so many people breathing and going about their daily lives, coal lacks enough oxygen to burn efficiently. As a result, the end product is not only carbon dioxide but carbon monoxide. This is poisonous. The quality of the air they breathe suffers. Their health suffers. And to think they've had to leave their villages and farms where the air they breathe is much less poluted!


Part II discusses Garbage and what we can do. One of the most obvious outcomes of unplanned migration to our cities has been garbage.
Some known and unknown facts about this monumental problem...




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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Can We Prevent Mumbai's Unplanned Urban Development - II?

Picture from Greenpeace, India.
Part I discusses space being at a premium in our cities and why farmers, villagers, the rich and poor migrate to our cities. It concludes that migration to our cities is definitely unplanned.

Part II - One of the most obvious outcomes of unplanned migration to our cities has been garbage. This has reached monumental proportions.

The poor have no place to throw their garbage so it collects on our roads or clogs our waters. Come to think of it, our kachrawalis might take away our garbage from our flats but who knows where she takes it? In December 2010, when I was in Mumbai, I saw at least five huge MOUNTAINS of garbage in just one suburb, which were definitely not there the last time I was there. Our Municipality doesn’t clear it away. 

A Possible Action Plan: Perhaps we should all inundate them with phone calls or emails to come and clear it away from outside our homes. Perhaps we should get together, plan, organise and act unitedly to ensure it is done.Perhaps we should find out who's in charge of taking away our garbage and publish this person's contact details online.

Facts about garbage and its odours: Garbage in Mumbai includes spit, rubbish, urine and faeces. Everyone knows it is an eyesore, attracts rodents, roaches and other pests, is not good for our health and the environment and smells awful. Without being too conscious of it, we live with these smells in Mumbai. These smells badly affect our olfactory and other systems. As a result we have varied reactions like eye irritations and sore throats, coughs, drowsiness, asthma and even depression.

At the same time, most of us have learnt to stoically ignore and not complain about our symptoms of discomfort. 

Odours disturb concentration and diminish productivity as our disgust with our environment remains uppermost in our minds. Work force populations vary in levels of discomfort from odours because of exposure history and habituation. But whether we may, or may not realize the possible risks of consistent bad odours, they affect human health and well being. Productivity in such an environment goes down considerably. Our ability to perform tasks may decrease as our dislike for particular odours increases.

Garbage dumps shouldn’t be on our doorsteps to start with, but in designated places far away from where most of us reside. The municipality should take away our garbage regularly to these designated dumps. But it doesn’t happen. The garbage piles get higher and more densely compacted with their own weight causing all the above symptoms in our health.  Methane - a greenhouse gas that captures heat and causes global warming is one of the end products of these dense piles of garbage. This might be an appropriate place to mention how, with the advance of science, this methane from garbage is being used to make new energy. A very worthwhile investment once it is made. Hopefully, we'll see the last of garbage clogging our city streets yet. Whether the government and business get together to exploit the benefits of garbage to create new energy or not, garbage from our city streets has to go or we have to keep paying megabucks to doctors for our health.

Garbage is only one aspect of the unplanned migration to cities. Some more resources that get affected due to overcrowding of cities are
  • water (increased usage, increased pollution and a threat to marine life)
  • air – with so many more people sharing the air we breathe, with so many more households cooking, with so many more cars and trucks on our roads, the air we breathe gets polluted. There’s an increase in greenhouse gases that trap heat and make our cities hotter than ever before; there’s an increase in the emission of deadly dangerous gases like carbon monoxide (as explained above), carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide as also smog and acid rain (which I’ve written about here) This, in turn, pollutes the soil in which we grow our food.
 A Possible Action Plan: Walking, cycling and public transport whenever possible; shared rides to work; buying local goods that haven't used up too much oil to get to our shops; making informed decisions (for example - buying goods that aren't wrapped in too much plastic), reduce-reuse-recycle; composting our garbage...

Other Aspects Of Overcrowding Our Cities: There is an increase in noise levels; in energy consumption; various social problems due to shortage of space and other resources; perhaps crime because of the disparity in living standards and hunger as also, increased use of raw material and manufactured goods

As our cities spread, there's a loss of land that ought to be conserved - like wetlands, grasslands, forests – a natural habitat for so many different species. In fact, here’s something we need to be aware of right now.

"Green Dream Foundation" - an NGO started in India by two young Delhi men (Ashish Sachdeva and Abhishek Agarwal), consistently provides a lot of information on factors that affect our Earth. Green Dream's latest venture in association with Greenpeace, India who created "Why this Koyla Mining Di" informs us that corporates are cutting down our forests to mine coal. Here’s Devinder Sharma linking policies that take away community control over natural resources like water, forests and farmlands to hunger and migration to cities by our farmers and villages.

A Possible Action Plan: Want to get involved? Join Green Dream; Become a “citizen” of Junglistan to protect our natural resources from corporate interests. Watch this video by Abhay Deol who interviews farmers who’ve become landless and jobless.        

If there is one thing IAC - India Against Corruption taught us last year, it was that we've ignored "government by the people" and that the government has ignored, "government for the people". Getting together with other like minded people and speaking with one voice is one effective way to get our point across to the government. After all, whose voice is more effective? 

A billion lone voices or a billion strong force?



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Friday, January 6, 2012

Stories Affirming the Ordinary, Mainstream, Middle-Class Indians

There was a time, not too long ago, when a huge number of Indian authors wrote stories about people living on the edge of society, extreme poverty, degradation, male chauvinism, rampant corruption, bribery, superstition, religious extremism and courage in the face of all the above. Such themes were popular in India and abroad. In fact, they still very much are.

But now, there is another genre that is seeing the light of day. More and more Indian authors have started writing to celebrate and affirm the ordinary, mainstream, middle-class Indians. It is taking some people who haven't seen India in all her colours a bit longer than others to accept this change.

Indian authors today, more than ever before, write about the carefree and lighthearted years of college, friendship, young love, secular Indians, strong and independent women, loving and thoughtful family men...


The Indian publishing industry is flourishing as never before. Until the 90s, it didn't exist. I know because I searched the net for Indian publishers and could hardly, and with great difficulty, find a handful. Our only option was to try and break into the western market. So many authors tried writing stories that appealed to westerners. Take, for example, stories about the Indian middle class. Such few existed. Stories of poverty, degradation and people on the edge of society were more readily available.

Now the industry is blossoming - amongst the most successful today - and every genre is being explored. The target audience is the Indian reader. Other readers are a bonus.

This is thanks to an undeniably bold move by Rupa publishers in taking on Chetan Bhagat's first book. Established publishers realised they'd have to give up their traditional way of thinking as a huge Indian readership was thirsting to read something they could relate to. By the early 2000s, Indian publishers started mushrooming at lightening speed to keep up with supply - stories from new Indian authors, and demand - an ever increasing Indian readership.

The best thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that affirming and celebrating the ordinary, mainstream, middle-class Indians alongside stories of extreme poverty, male chauvinism and superstition helps to give a more fully rounded picture of India as she really is - in all her complexities.






 MORE POWER TO THE INDIAN PEN!









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Sunday, January 1, 2012

Jayaram - An Excerpt from Never Mind Yaar

Chapter 2
Billimoria’s office overlooked the gate. Some of the faculty were already at the window, highly amused as they watched the clerk at the entrance. With the familiarity of old colleagues, they smiled Dr. Naakwaa a quick greeting and shuffled to make room before turning their attention back to the gate. Not wanting to miss out on the action, Dr. Naakwaa hurried across to join them. 

Good old Jayaram. He had been with the college since its inception, almost thirty years ago. Thin, neat and small, with an ego inversely proportioned to his stature, he was their very efficient, one man admin department. 

Jayaram disliked students, tolerating their very presence at the college with grim determination. He found their exuberance loud and brash, unless they were quiet, when he labelled them dumb. As expected, he was being perfectly disagreeable with the new comers. Seated on a hard chair just outside the gate, he watched crossly as a queue of sorts approached him. To get a better view of what was transpiring at his desk, each student moved slightly to the left of the one in front. After a point, having reached the furthest distance from which they could see his desk clearly, the sideways queue of students doubled back on itself. Soon they were standing two deep in front of him. As the second row slowly started snaking out rightward, Jayaram glared with irritation. 

"Line, line," he yelled in his thin, reedy voice. 

The youngsters shuffled obligingly, almost aligning them-selves behind each other. He ignored the young lady standing at the head of the queue for as long as possible. Assuming a grave expression he fussed with his list. With great deliberation he removed the doily from his glass of water and sipped it before carefully replacing it. Bent in concentration he polished his glasses with a large handkerchief. His eyes fell on his watch. “Tch,” he said with an accusing glance at the young woman who tried not to look ruffled or guilty about wasting his time. Running out of things to do he finally deigned to look at her, barking out in Hindi, "Which line?" 

"What?" said the poor, baffled thing, darting a quick look at the line behind her and wondering if she ought to be in another one. "Arré Arts, Science, Commerce?" he said, enjoying himself hugely as he glowered at her. The four professors, safely out of sight behind the reflective glass couldn’t help laughing as the luckless sixteen-year-old mumbled, "Commerce". 

Jayaram, unable to resist a final well-aimed jibe, raised a bushy eyebrow high above the rim of his thick glasses and wondered out loud how she would go through five years of college if she couldn’t understand a simple question like his. Having scored his victory, he pretended to lose interest. Glancing at the young man behind her, his next victim, he cleared the formalities with the young woman and dismissed her.
The hopelessly disintegrated queue took one step forward en masse. 

And so it was for much of the next hour as Jayaram, eyebrows high, barked at the youth in his thin, high pitched voice. The new students shrugged off his mocking tones and disdainful superiority. 

Chalta hai yaar, they seemed to say, never mind. There isn’t much we can do if the man wants to extract full mileage from his moment by being rude and obnoxious. 

Within no time, at his insulting best, the impossible yet indispensible clerk had efficiently despatched six hundred new comers to their rightful classrooms. The faculty on the first floor breathed a sigh of relief.


Excerpt 1 from the book.
Excerpt 3
HOME

AT GYAN SHAKTI - An Excerpt from Never Mind Yaar


Chapter 1

Dr. Naakwaa of Gyan Shakti College couldn't help smiling to himself as he looked at the sea of eager, animated young faces. They all seemed to speak at once, or so it seemed to an old man like himself, their ceaseless chatter outdone only by sudden bursts of loud laughter. Even as they talked and laughed in their own groups, he saw their eyes covertly watching the others. An air of breathless expectancy hung about them, as if something momentous would sweep them up on a wing and fly them away to an unknown destination. Without exception, they all clamoured to go, even the ones standing at the periphery, hesitant and slightly lost though they appeared to be.

Without any warning a wild screech hit his eardrums. He turned, mildly reproachful, to look at the youngster responsible. Even as he tried coming to terms with the sheer pitch and volume of that awful, grating sound, a sudden whoop of joy caught his attention. Sheer relief written all over her face, a young lady dashed across the room, grinning and waving to someone she recognised in the roomful of strangers. The sudden flurry of action startled those nearby. Whatever they were doing suspended mid stream, they turned to watch the five meter dash and a very joyous reunion. Sweeping somebody completely off her feet, the young woman refused to put her down. Uncaring of curious onlookers, the two laughed, one a little helplessly, suspended as she was in mid air, and the other, in blissful abandonment. Suddenly noticing Dr. Naakwa in the doorway, they stilled. And following the direction of their eyes, so did everyone else.

This was the new batch of ‘99. They were the brightest in Mumbai, the crème de la crème. Dr. Naakwaa had every reason to feel satisfied. Like every other college affiliated to the University of Mumbai - good or bad, near or far – the college had to turn away more students than they enrolled each year. There just weren't enough seats. Gyan Shakti’s reputation ensured they had the pick of the herd. Their seats were blocked for the toppers, those who earned maximum marks in school …unless they were blocked for the progeny of families with connexions like the erstwhile politicians of Mumbai, their minions, doctors, judges, actors, producers and of course, the underworld.

The college was on the outskirts of Mumbai. Started in the early sixties by a philanthropist who named it Gyan Shakti – Gyan for knowledge and Shakti for strength - it boasted wide open spaces, plenty of resources and the very best faculty Mumbai could provide. The fees were hefty but parents, many of them middle-income, paid up happily. It was their sincere belief that an education was the only inheritance they could give their children. An education at Gyan Shakti was even better. The ones who gained admission through the clout of their parents' influence or money eventually passed too, knowing it gave them an advantage simply to say they'd studied at GS.

That reputation could have suffered a minor setback today. When Dr. Naakwa had reached the college early that morning Jayaram was in a flap. The list of new students and their respective classrooms had gone missing. It had simply disappeared. As they hunted around for the precious printout, he wondered what good it was to anyone except themselves. This had to be someone’s utterly juvenile sense of humour, unless whoever did this was trying to get at the clerk. It was too much of a co-incidence that even the backup from the front office had disappeared. Admittedly, Jayaram was insufferable with the students and deserved everything they gave back. But he wished they wouldn’t play their pranks at the expense of the college. Well, there was only one thing to do. Dr. Naakwaa marched through the corridors that were as yet quite deserted, to the computer room. Then, to add to his woes, the electricity chose that very moment to black them out as it did from time to time. He cursed his luck. How was he to get a copy of the list? It could take the Electricity Board minutes, or even hours, to locate and repair the fault.

A hundred and fifty gleaming new machines, 128 MB of RAM, 1 GB of hard disk, Windows ‘98 – the latest oper-ating system, 17” monitors, internet connection for the faculty.... All this technology brought to its knees in one fell stroke by the MSEB, (the Maharashtra State Electricity Board), he fumed, aware with a feeling of total helplessness that there was nothing he could do. Well, I had better do something pretty damn quick, he thought with a mounting sense of panic. I know, he decided in desperation, we’ll use the originals. No, he shook his head, dismissing the idea almost immediately. Jayaram wouldn’t thank me for having to sift through six hundred handwritten forms. At least they are in alpha order, he argued as nothing else came to mind. I must convince Bhathena, Reddy and other members of the Board of Trustees to get us a generator of our own, he thought crossly, getting set to hurry back to his office for the originals when with a flicker the lights came on.  


Jai-Sri-Ram, the heartfelt words of thanks burst from him. Jai-ya-ram, you are in luck, he thought, feeling quite chipper on the one hand and aware with slight self-disgust on the other, that he allowed his mood to be dictated to by the vagaries of the MSEB, Rushing to get his precious printout, he prayed there wouldn’t be yet another blackout. He knew from experience a second, slightly longer one might soon follow. Within no time, feeling decidedly upbeat, he hurried with as much dignity as possible to hand over the new list to Jayaram waiting impatiently at the entrance.

On his way back, he saw that the corridors weren’t quite so deserted anymore. An ever increasing trickle of students had begun to fill them. Much relieved to have averted that slight calamity, he was more receptive to the ‘good mornings’ and ‘hello sirs’ that came his way. He headed for the stairs, anticipating the pleasure of meeting up with some of the other faculty who ritually gathered in old Billimoria’s room at the beginning of each term.





Blending Cultures II

In Part I described what’s changed for ordinary Indians - some changes happened simply because we made conscious decisions and had more choices. Others were a necessity. The one change we should have the strength to resist is peer pressure or any pressure from others to change.

What was it about the other culture that so fascinated me? Why did my husband and I give up good careers, our home, our family and friends and a good life to move to New Zealand? Yes, it was the clean environment, the disciplined traffic, the (relative) lack of corruption, the ease of getting things done without jumping bureaucratic hoops,  and knowing everyone paid the same, fixed price for veges. It was also the fun of interacting with a different variety of cultures - Asians, Middle Easterners, Afrcans, Europeans, the English - to name a few. And a lot of it was rose spectacles. We've been here for over twenty years so the blinkers have come off. I can honestly say we are settled, familiar with the place and culture, with realistic expectations and reasonable optimism.

How has it changed me? I have learnt to be a bit more independent. To varying degrees so have my counterparts back home. Have I completely capitulated to the west? I don’t think so. I enjoy being Indian way too much. I was born Indian and although I live in another part of the world, I will always think of myself as Indian first. 

Diya by Zeimusu, free clipart
Introducing new elements in a culture should unite or blend the best of both worlds but doesn’t have to change a person completely. The ease with which we absorbed the best of both is something, to my mind, uniquely Indian. (see Mumbai's Psyche). If a person is confident of his or her core values, whatever they may be, no amount of outside pressure will make them give those up. If a person does give up certain traditions (with no outside pressures, overt or otherwise), it is only because they’ve always wanted to anyway.

As for becoming  a boring homogenous race, there is one unpredictable factor in all human beings that will never allow that. It is the variety of human emotions at any given moment. Humans, as such, might have made progress in leaps and bounds where technology is concerned. But we still have the same basic emotions - both positive and negative - that we had right at the very beginning of our existence. Our values are, and always will be, unique to each of us. On a day to day basis, each one of us feels differing emotions at different times. The permutations and combinations of these day to day emotions are numerous and seemingly contradictory. While some of us feel happy, others are sad or angry in similar situations; there’s generosity or envy; wile, guile or innocence; boredom or lively interest; and so on. And this is on any given day. On another day, it might be completely different. Besides, we are the sum total of our experiences and there’s too much out there for us to ever absorb in a single life-time. 

Christmas Carols, free clipart by Gustavorezende
Here’s a completely opposing viewpoint written by an American who travelled through India, witnessing the "erosion" of Indian traditions and culture. I do believe he has underestimated us Indians. Our American doesn’t have faith in Indians being able to resist the “buy-buy-buy” culture. Some folks will never give up on retail therapy whichever culture they belong to. For the rest, feverish consumerism, after a while, does slow down. Besides, there is a new reality in this day and age which forces us to think before we buy - how will buying this product impact our environment?

The American thinks capitalists have no regard for differences in culture. He thinks a market economy leads to unequal distribution of wealth, and therefore, of power. He may be right, I don't know.

What I do know is, given any type of economy, people compete for a piece of the pie – some by fair means and others by foul. I believe that in any system, people with more wealth exploit the ones with less, and people with more power exploit the ones with less. It isn’t the system per se. It is base human nature (read vices) that has created that system. And I can say with conviction that there's an even  sprinkling of every type of human (nature) throughout the world.

As the philosopher, William Pfaff, suggested, “Only if we recognise that base nature as well as what we are capable of by way of our highest ideals will we be able to scale heights as never before.” The exact words are here. 

Our American has also romanticised the clearly demarcated lines between the sexes that exist in India. He’s rued that it is blurring. But to my mind, the less we see people as different simply because they belong to a different sex, the more we simply see them as human beings the same as everyone else, the better relaxed we’ll learn to be with each other. The more lines are demarcated, the more someone determined to enforce those lines will allow, or even commit and justify, crimes against other human beings. (She looked at him - I'll teach her a lesson by pawing her. My lust isn't the issue here. It is the fact that she is besharam for casting her eyes on him and needs a lesson which I will give her. He spoke to her - stone him to death.)

If life is to be preserved as it is, we might as well live in a museum. Life is ever evolving as are cultures. They change with time, circumstances and necessities. It is our core values that we need to make every effort to preserve for they are what make us the person we are.



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