Describe what you know about life in the trenches.

Life in trenches is absolutely horrid. The soldiers will stay in the trenches, with plenty of mud and rats. Some of the soldier's feet will slowly rot away, and they can't do anything about it. Their friends will be shot down and the only thing they can do is watch them. The food provided is very sparse and they do not get enough nutrition. Occasionally they will be called to run forward and shoot, which is basically looking straight at death in the eyes. If they disobeyed orders that tells them to run to the enemy, they will get shot and be considered unworthy. They lived in the trenches for several weeks/months, in a horrible condition. Many soldiers were forced to run forward and sacrifice their lives for a few inches of battleground gained. Their commanders are living a very happy, healthy and content life in hotels while the soldiers themselves suffer from such atrocities and death.

Why do you think the idea of conflict is more prominent than peace in the world?

I think the idea of conflict is more prominent as it is human nature to disagree against a certain idea. As more people disagree against a certain idea, a conflict will happen. In terms of films and television, a movie that regards more about the subject peace than the subject conflict is often boring, and will not grab the audience's attention at all. With that in mind, many historical incidences are conflicts and only a few of them are regarding peace. This is because that conflict is a prominent subject in the human mind if they disagree with something. The major population of the world will not sacrifice a piece of their fortune or themselves for poorer people, and greed and jealously constantly plagues their mind. With greed, people will start to fight over almost anything, which causes conflicts.

What is conflict?

Conflict is a war or a civil war that is happening. Conflicts tends to happen because of disagreements that causes rebel groups to start a war and "create" atrocities. Conflicts can also involve other countries, which will increase the scale of the war. Conflicts are making MDG's more and more impossible to reach, because it will cause many violations of the UDHR and problems that the MDG's are trying to get rid of. Conflicts will make a country to become less developed as resources are used in a non-beneficial way.

Luharia's Disappearance Mystery

Luharia left his village and went to the city because the government was planning to build a dam to regulate the flow of the Narmada River and stop it from flooding. Luharia at first refused to leave but when he heard that the dam will help 40 million civilians to gain access to clean water and electricity. In reality, they were actually building a dam so that Gujarat, who is very strong on the chemical front, will gain more profit. We believed that the chemical producers bribed the government officials to create a dam so they can produce more chemicals and consequently gained more profit. The World Bank at first wanted to loan India 450 million dollars but when they found out that the river calculations were inaccurate, they refused to give them money and the construction of the dam was halted. In the end Luharia didn't need to leave his village but because of a government that is corrupt to the core, he was made to move by the government.

This exercise was quite hard at first, but as we slowly pieced things together, we started to find out the truth.

Fair Trade Mystery

After categorising the cards, I figured that Grace was extremely happy and excited because she got the privilege to attend school, which is quite rare in Ghana as only 1 out of 3 girls can get an education. She was able to attend school because her father joined Kuapa Kokoo, which ensures that Grace's father earns the amount of money he deserves. They teach her father to not get cheated by greedy buyers. The Fairtrade Foundation also supports Kuapa Kokoo and also ensures that they get paid the amount they deserve.

Measuring Development

          This is my group's ranking of the 10 indicators that will determine whether a country is a MEDC or a LEDC. We think that the most important indicator is the GNP (Gross National Product) as that will show how wealthy a country is. This statistic is extremely important because if we know how rich a country is, we will know whether it is a developing country or a MEDC. We think that the most unimportant indicator is the Population Density as it cannot really determine if a country is developing or not, for example: London is extremely dense in terms of population yet they are still one of the most developed cities in the world. We think that the Literacy Rate and the Infant Mortality Rate as the second most important as with these two statistics, we can determine how developed the country is education-wise and health care-wise. These two factors are extremely important factors in measuring development. We think that the Number of People Per Doctor, Percentage of Population with Access to Clean Water and Population Growth Rates are not that important as if we know about the Infant Mortality Rate, we will have an idea of how the health care is like. The Number of People Per Doctor is also not really effective if the doctor is not effective or does not have access to proper health care. The Percentage of Population with Access to Clean Water is quite important but it doesn't play such a big role as the Literacy Rates or the Infant Mortality Rate. Population Growth Rate is quite important as we will know whether the country's population is decreasing or increasing but we feel that it is not as important as the top few. We feel that Percentage of Population Living in Urban Areas and Percentage of People Employed in Agriculture aren't that important because even though they show how developed one country is, it doesn't show it as obviously as the GNP. We didn't use the Car Ownership indicator because we felt that there were better ways of saying how rich a country is. We think there are other important indicators, particularly Life Expectancy, Birth Rate, Death Rate and Food Consumption that will make a difference as they will measure whether the countries are developing or not. I felt that it was a bit hard to make decisions as a group as sometimes the group either have a lot of conflicting ideas or have no ideas at all, which makes it very sophisicated.

How do you think we can measure development?

I think we can measure development by finding out the key statistics of each country, for example: Literacy Rate, Birth Rate, Death Rate, GDP per capita etc. etc. and compare it with other countries and track its own development year by year. With this information, we can find out whether it is a LEDC, MEDC or NIC because every key statistic will determine whether it fits the role of a MEDC, LEDC or a NIC.