Media, Society, and a Tour

After a day of R&R, we were all refreshed and ready for another day of learning!  We had two guest speakers at the Laurie Baker Center.  Instead of a normal lecture, it was more of a discussion with the class.  We talked about the media Kerala a lot.  It was described as a first world media in a third world country.  The Indian media is still in a state of expansion, but Kerala media is close to saturation and may be close to a declining stage.  The state is saturated with media everywhere we go.  We have seen posters and billboards all over the place.  If a resident does not put a "stick no bills" sign on a wall that they own, posters or graffiti will be plastered all over it.  This society is an argumentative one.  We also discussed the media coverage of the rape case in New Delhi.  We were wondering why this case was getting so much coverage over the hundreds of other cases that occur daily.  A couple reasons were discussed.  We talked about Bollywood, Tollywood, and Mollywood.  Mollywood is the film industry in Malayalam and Tollywood is the film industry in the language Tamil, which is what they speak in Tamil Nadu. They have these different industries because most films from Bollywood are in Hindi.  We also talked about waste management in society, which I found interesting.  I have noticed since being in Kerala that people generally just put their trash in a pile outside their home and burn it.  Before plastics, there was a system of picking up organic waste and disposing of it, but that stopped when plastic came into the picture.  There were issues from the solid waste factory polluting the river with the waste they were not processing.  The problem has yet to be solved.  Obviously you are sitting there thinking "why don't they just build a landfill?".  A problem with that is that there is just not enough land for them to take away from either agriculture or housing to say "okay, this is where are going to bury our trash".  And this is where all of those Urban and Regional Planning graduates come into play!  Go do your thing!  After our discussion, we toured the rest of the campus at the Laurie Baker Center, which we for some reason had not done yet.  Then we toured one of the earlier houses built by Laurie Baker that a retired military Colonel lives in.  And I took lots of flower pictures to make up for not having any yesterday! :)

Touring the Laurie Baker Center Campus:

At the retired Colonel's house:

Kehla being a sassy pants.