Indian Women twice as obese as Men !?!

That's the heading of an article on page 9 of the Times of India, Bangalore today. And the accompanying graphic which shows a lady about 4 times the size of the man standing near her sure startled me enough to make me read the article in detail.

What they actually want to say is "Twice as many Indian women are obese compared to number of men!" or that's the best I can make of it - that of course doesn't sound as catchy a headline does it ?!! And even for proving these numbers (I mean, twice as many - really!?) the kind of statistics provided are sketchy at best. They say 1.3% of women aged 20 and above were obese in 1980 and 2.5% in 2008 - for men apparently this percentage stayed at 1.3% all along.

Quoting from the article - "In absolute numbers the number of obese men in India increased from 2.3 million to 4.4 million between 1980-2008" - so how did that 1.3% of men stated above stay constant? The extra 2.1 million obese Indian men were under 20??

I'm sure there's a way to structure the statistics to explain away the article, but does such a sweeping statement really make sense at all? Where do these statistics come from - I understand that it has to be a cross-section and they can't actually take everyone into consideration - but is it really an accurate cross section? Considering100 people in each of 10 metropolitan cities hardly gives a picture of India's women as a whole!!

There are quotes from the senior author of the article who's based in London (of course if it's a study from abroad it has to be right isn't it?) so it would be really interesting for me to know where he and his team got these statistics from. It just irritates me to read these kind of generalizations which just want to sound dramatic and may not really mean anything at all! And the actual headline - it's just wrong - I can't even say its a grammatical error - it's just an error, period.

P.S: Another one on page 15 - "Children of working moms gain weight" - Don't even get me started on that. It's apparently based on a survey made in 10 U.S. cities!!

Passport woes again..

Now it's time to renew my dear daugher's passport which is due to expire this May. I decide to try the famed PSK(Passport Seva Kendra) method, since that seems to be the only channel available now. BangaloreOne may still be accepting, but after my last experience ( Passport for Minor, Passport Saga contd, Passport here at last! ) thought should try the direct method this time.

Steps:

1. Go to http://www.passportindia.gov.in/ and register to create an account. Once this is done, you can download the form, fill it online and upload the generated xml into your account.
2. Time to make an appointment. Found to my surprize and disappointment that the next available appointment would be about 1.5 months away at Lalbagh PSK and about a week less than that at ORR PSK!!
3. You can also upload all your supporting documents - I assume this would save time when you are at the PSK so they don't have to scan all the stuff again.
4. Decided to try the walk-in option - I was told by their call centre that walk-ins are not allowed any more. Heard from a friend by chance that she had just walked in (at 9:30 am) and got her passport done last week! Yippee I thought - I have inside info so will try to get it done now.
5. Yesterday (3rd Feb) reached the Lalbagh PSK at 9:05 am. The queue already had about 100-150 people in it and was snaking around one corner of the building. Went and joined it only to find at 9:45 that they give out only limited number of tokens (80 on that day) so to all the rest - bye and try again tomorrow!!
6. This morning (4th Feb) reached the PSK at 7:00 am. They were just opening the outer gate of the compound and the queue which had already formed outside was making its way inside. Joined at the end and tried counting as I passed the ones in front of me - only to find there were already atleast 200(stopped counting!) people in the queue which now extended upto the back of the building. Some kind of weekend rush maybe :(..
7. We are so used to being hopeful aren't we - even knowing that there was literally no hope - just had to stand there upto 10 or so when it was announced the tokens for the day were done!

All this done with my 5 year old daughter in tow! Found out that the first person in the queue had apparently been standing from 9 pm the previous night (don't know if that was an exaggeration - i sincerely hope so!).

Have taken the next appointment at the ORR PSK on 11th March. Am still making up my mind whether to give this walk-in thing another go next week - probably might try at 5 am and see if that's good enough atleast! Maybe ask hubby to bring D there by 8:30 so she'll not get tired out atleast.

P.S: The urgency is because we were hoping to go for an overseas vacation in April. I realized too late that the passport needs to have a 6 month validity for getting the visa :(. So the later I get this done, the more our plans are delayed - or we end up paying more of a premium for the tickets! If anybody has a solution - please let me know.

Especially for you Forever Mother - first step to getting the passport - make that appointment as soon as you can!! I will let you know how the process goes through the appoinment method if I go through it that way.