Harshal's pointless view

Rise of Naxalites (history)

2010-06-02T23:39:00.000-07:00

August 15, 1947 is certainly the day when modern India was born after getting freed from the clutches of British. We are really proud of it and will always be. In euphoria of independence we might have overlooked some congenital problems India was born with. India was gifted with external problems like Pakistan and Kashmir issue. We have paid too much attention to this issue which resulted on less attention on other important issues like naxalites, maoists, north-eastern issue, Telangana and Gorkha-land. If one takes a closer look at this issues they all have something in common. It is said that Naxalism arised from Telangana issue during 1946-51 when city based working-class rebellion resorted to the Stalin and Tito way. It was during same time that communist movement started growing in wake of Chinese revolution following the teaching of Mao. Oppressed peasants of Telangana revolted against Nizam and Indian government promised to abolish Zamindari, a promise that was not kept. Communist part started gaining power by taking over Kerala in 1957. At the same time the revolutionary ideology of Naxalites was born in Naxalbari of West Bengal where tribal people retaliated to goons of land lords which resulting in death of 1 police sub-inspector and 9 tribal people. This rebellion soon spread in West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu-Kashmir, lead by CPI(M). During this entire process communist party faced many internal differences which resulted into formation of CPI(MCC) and CPI(M-L) depending on people opposing violence and those supporting violence. A new movement was launched under the banner of "annihilation of class enemy" by Charu Mujumdar, known as Naxalite guru. The euphoric bubble of this moment was burst and the agitation died with the death of Charu in 1972. Naxalite movement saw many ups and downs with people changing side, some people accepting democratic way of struggle while some believing that violence is the only way of struggle. From annihilation of class enemy they continued with their guerilla attacks, underground agrarian struggle and to add extra muscle to their movement they added the dalit struggle by waging war based on ethnic, regional and ecological movement. The current Naxalism is based on philosophy of People war group(PWG) which believes in revolutionary violent measures are the only way to over throw the common enemies--feudalism, imperialism and comprador bureaucratic capital. Arundhati Roy once termed naxalites as Gandhis with Gun. Surely it has been inaction of Indian government all these years which have actually blown the entire issue out of proportion. Naxalites-Maoists have been able to capture locals mind by offering them with job. I think their issue is justified that people were oppressed but their actions are not justified. If they blame Indian government for not carrying out development in tribal area, then they are equally at blame for not helping the cause. Its easy to point finger and say corruption is wide-spread but there has been no effort from their side even to stop corruption when they extort money from land-lords and big businessmen under the banner of ensuring wages to tribal. Which tribal area has attained state of art infrastructure under their rule. The Dantewadi incident and the current Gynaeshwari train accident certainly suggest that PWG has lost its main philosophy of alleviating people's condition. If we observe that in this war between the Government and Naxalites its civilians, who have lost maximum lives. Dialogue seems the best option to resolve the conflict but if Naxalite does not leave the path of violence then army will only be the only way out. The issue has to be addressed soon as if this is kept up for later stages then it can act as great hindrance for the growing Indian economy. Also internal peace is far more important before resolving external issues. Naxalites resorted to aggressive guerilla attack during emergency in 1974, who knows they will resort to internal terrorism when we are talking about ending external terrorism.

Reference:
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/index.html
http://www.cfr.org/publication/12771/indias_internal_terror_troubles.html
http://www.defenceforum.in/forum/showthread.php/9309-Is-policing-a-solution-to-the-internal-problems-like-naxalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salwa_Judum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite

Honor Killing

2010-05-13T03:57:00.000-07:00

Recently a new angle of honor killing was attached to death of Nirupama Phatak. Nirupama's mother was arrested by police after the first postmortem report. This is not the only case where honor killing has come into picture. Every year thousands of men and women are killed under the banner of saving honor of family and religion. This is happens not only in India but also in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. According to United Nations Population Funds(UNPA) approximately 5000 people are victims of honor killing. These are the registered figures, but what about the un-registered numbers. Some of the reason for honor killing is improper dress code, wanting to marry on own choice, engaging in sexual acts or engaging into relationship with same sex. In India honor killing is very dominant in rural Haryana but Arushi case even exposed the ugly face of honor killing in urban area. The reasons for honor killing in India is out of caste marriages, cross-religional marriages, marriages within same gothra(specifically in North India), girl eloping without parents permission, pre-marital sex, rape victim and engaging into relationship with same sex. There has been some cases where a man and a woman of same village is not allowed to marry even when they are not related. So if a person breaks such illogical rule, he/she becomes vicitim of honor killing. Anyone violating rule of society or caste or religion is considered as trangression and the punishment the violator get is death. But why cann't people understand that killing human beings is much greater sin than what they are considering as sin. Most of the perpatrators of honor killing are set free as no-one files a complaint. In many incidents it has been observed that entire village was responsible for honor killing. There are some panchayats in Haryana, UP, Rajasthan and Punjab which are based on caste. These panchayats have taken decisions which were patriachal and casteist in nature, mainly insensitive towards people of lower caste and economically backward people. Government lax attitude towards the problem has also not helped the cause. Many times perpetrators of honor killing are set free with minor charges and sometimes the honor killing is done at the hands of a person less than 18 years of age taking advantage of juvinile laws. Though we talk about honor killing but we forget even female infanticide is one kind of honor killing. The moral policing which many of the religious or political organisation carry are milder form of honor killing. Its certainly killing freedom of expression and right to live. People have raised voices against moral policing, with most famous of those were the Boob-quake or the Pink Chaddi campaign. The recent of those was the Boob-quake campaign which was against remarks made by Iran clerics against indescent dressing of women responsible for earthquake in world. We have voiced against moral policing, now its time to remove the evil of honor killing from our society. But this cann't be done without society participation. There is need to educate the rural society which conducts such henious crime following their inhibitions. Things would remain same if government doesnot take quick action against such social evil, as every human life is precious. At the sametime active media participation is also required to help in abolish such practices. Every fight for justice in rural India against such crime should be treated as a symbol of change against such barbaric society rule. People going against tribal rule should be given protection, so that more and more young people takes right decision. Here government, political parties and NGO has a very important role to play to educate people at grass root level. If the mindset of people are not properly tuned we won't be able to address the other issues like skewed gender ratio which is again higher in these regions. Its only stricter rules and implementation of those rules by police can allay the degrading scenario.

India & future generation.

2010-05-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

It is not shocking for us as we all know India have been unable to win many Olympic medals. India has won 0.92 on average in 22 Olympic games it has participated as compared with China which has won 48.36 medals in their 8 participated Olympic games. There are 79 other countries which has better average than India. It is not only in case of sports but when we look in terms of global leaders we lack in it. Hardly 20% of educated of population is employable and McKenzie reports state that India will require more entrepreneurs. It is not that we don't produce sports hero or leaders or entrepreneurs. It is well said that an Indian can buy things from Jew and sell it to Scots, but what we lack is in numbers. When I went through many reports and research articles, I was able to arrive at four crucial reasons for this. They are genetics, nourishment, system and attitude. Lets begin with genetics. It is found that offspring of intelligent parents have higher probability of being intelligent, the probability factor is as high as 50 percent. Likewise off springs of physically strong parents are stronger in nature. As, when genetics plays important role in child's future one can observe that when parents are undernourished or were undernourished during their developmental stages had an effect on their children. This is how we link now nourishment with genetics. Approximately half of the children below five are malnourished even today. Under nourished children cannot certainly win medals at the same time it also affects the brain. A healthy brain exist only in a healthy body. So if we try to relate with situation we had during independence, we had around 70-80 percent poor people. Which means many under-nourished kids, this kids were responsible for the new generation in around 1967 which were responsible for newer generation in around 1990. So we compare with sharpness level of the first, second and third generation, we find that the third generation is much more sharper and taller than the first two generations. It is not just the change in genetic and nourishment which is going to help the future generations, even the change in system which will be very helpful for the children. When India was battling with population explosion, the only possible to convert this bane into boon was to make them an asset. Thus the government started stressing higher on education and helped in improving our standard of living. But during this process we forgot about standard of education provided to children. It was more academic oriented with low preferences on values like competitiveness, sports and creativity. This has resulted into many people end up into traditional streams of arts, science and commerce with traditional degrees. This was the main reason for India lacking in leadership. But with education reforms taking limelight nowadays, we can estimate that in near future children will not be prepared to survive but they will be prepared to rule. This brings us to the final step of attitude. During independence time main objective was survival and hence the best possible attitude was being moderate, avoiding risk and clear the smaller obstacles by taking smaller steps. Now the scenario is changing as the current generation being less concerned about security they can take steps which can result into their development which will ultimately benefit society on a whole. We can definitely say that our today's new generation kids are better than their predecessor, only because of these changes. One more reason that author of book "India Unbound", Gurucharan Das, has pointed is rise of feminism. When kids are brought up by weak hearted women, the kids are bound to be less courageous. But now the new generation mother's being able and self-made women has resulted into courageous kids. If we keep finding reason for development of India we would get many but genetics, nourishment, system and attitude will always be pillars of that development.

Decoding the code: GOD=??

2010-05-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I was discussing on topic of God created man or man created god. The question is very difficult to answer and it becomes even more difficult when you have no facts to prove either the existence or the non-existence. When the puzzle is as difficult as this one can only reason out things. God cannot be seen but can be felt is what my parents taught me when I was kid. I always try to feel god but was never able to do that. I used to think, how does god talk, what language does he use and how come he is so powerful. I was always interested in knowing why do people believe in god, even when we cannot see him. I tried to search reason behind it but was not able to find anything, but was able to observe something common. God in every religion is humanized so that we can relate better. It looks like human or some familiar animal, so that looking at other human beings and animals we have a sense of security about its existence. At the same time when it is given a physical form care is taken that it takes a form which is powerful and liked by all. I have never seen god in form of centipede nor in form of ants or in form of cockroaches in any of the mythology. I think the reason is these creatures are not respected in human society and hence we don't find any god related with these creatures. God has been allotted supreme power to do anything in world and hence we worship him, so as to please him. If we are able to please him he will help us in our difficult times. I think this relationship close to kingship or like a boss, where we try to do favors for them in-order to win their confidence. I am amazed at whether do God behave in that way or not. We always look for creator or actor of all processes or actions. So we make god responsible to all things which are not done by direct human efforts. But we forget one thing or one question then who created God. It seems like conflict in our mind when we talk about creator for the almighty creator itself. People believe that god existed always and there was no creator for him. Then I won't be wrong if I assume that the gaseous matter which was present during the big-bang be the god. As it was this gaseous content which was responsible for creation of entire universe. But when I give form to God people will start asking questions about who created that gaseous content and hence there has to be God. But haven't we accepted that god is created by no-one, it existed always.

Are women less corrupt than men?

2010-04-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

20th century saw the rise of women and 21st century might see them back as ruler. In entire animal domain its female dominant. Its only in case of human beings where the society is more male dominant. For centuries women were subjected to different kinds of oppressions and harassment, but thanks to education feminism is back on rise. So to further strengthen their case Indian government have launched a new bill, which will reserve 33% of seats in parliament. Doing so India will be joining 40 other nations who have women reservation provision in constitution. Some reasons which are said in favour of the bill is that it will help in increasing women participation, women being more sensitive, help in decreasing men-women gap and the most interesting I found was women being less corrupt than men. I personally feel there is not much a great difference between a man and a woman(apart from some physical differences) and hence would like to detail some of the points.

Few of the 40 other nations which have embraced women reservation are Pakistan, Srilanka, China, Nepal, Indonesia etc. Statistically it is found that corruption level in these countries have declined to some extent but researcher wanted to search whether this can be related to gender. It is said that men are more willing to pay bribes while women are more reserved towards paying bribe. But that doesn't mean that men are more corrupt than women. A survey shows that men and women almost think alike. So why are more inclined towards paying bribes? After a detailed study it was found that men are more inclined towards paying bribe because they are more in touch with system and compared to women are into situations and conditions where things won't work without corruption. Men have to deal with corruption more often than women. It has been also observed that when a women wants to pay bribe or take bribe it is en-routed through a man. Such indirect cases of corruption goes against the men. Therefore there is no such clear evidence that women are less corrupt than men. When I was discussing this topic with a girl, she told me it doesn't include different destructive schemes a housewife plans against other housewife. That is surely one kind of corruption but I won't buy this because all this behaviour decreases with good education.

The bill also targets increase in women participation in politics. Why cann't this be done voluntarily by political parties? Why do Congress, which has Sonia Gandhi has leader has only 10% women representation. In US, Germany and UK seats are voluntarily reserved by political parties, so why cann't that be done in India. Most of the 40 other countries which has women reservation are not doing good while countries like US, Germany and Europe where there is no reservation are going good. Alltogether the bill should be carefully studied and the flaws should be worked over. Reservation at the highest level will cause a crunch of credible leaders(that we already have) who will be responsible for countries future. This is because the male representative who have lost their seats will force in their wives, sisters or relatives into politics and be indirect ruler. There is also huge question mark over men being insensitive as no research proves that. Because had men been insensitive and not caring then definitely sensitive and care loving women would have never fallen for men(no proof for this but just worth thinking).

Right to Education: Whom are they fooling today?

2010-04-01T02:44:00.000-07:00

India adopted "Right to Education" today. Whom are they fooling? India is late by at least two decades as pledged by UN and almost half a century late as thought by UN. According to right to education, now education becomes a fundamental right for every children from 6-14yr of age. No one can deny this fundamental right based on social, economical and political grounds. If observed around 361 students are in 4-15yr of age but if we observed only 132million students are able to finish their studies up till tenth standard. The drop out rates are very high, with segment 8-10th standard having the highest dropout rate of 62%. There are around 1million schools in India with only 7% of those are private, which caters to 40% of student. Right to education bill was announced with an intention to increase attendance in the schools. But how will school attendance will increase when 66% of the school run only upto primary level, 70,000 schools have only one primary teacher and 7000 schools run without a teacher. Will this bill change the fortune? Government is asking for 25% seats to kept reserved in all private institution for the economically backward class and the state-center will share the cost of it. On an average on public school teaches only 146 students where a private school teaches to 1200 students. Government is overlooking some key glitches out here. One is what about teacher absenteeism? It is observed that though public teacher is paid well than the private teacher, public teachers are more absent. This is because no one is there to question them and there pay are not linked with the development of the students. Other problem is how is government going to raise that much money to facilitate free education when we are simply allotting 3.7% of GDP to education as compared to US where it is 6.1%. Right to education is definitely a good move, but there are many questions which are supposed to be answered. I hope this bill is implemented well as this can answer many of the future problems of India and help in solving many of the current problems. Along with free education we have to also work on quality of education as hardly 20-25% of educated population is employable. This can be a grave issue in future but if rightly addressed can be major driving force for India's growth, because as forecasted by 2020 India would have a surplus workforce of 47million when rest of the world will have a deficit of 56million workforce.

God of Cricket: Sachin Tendulkar

2010-03-01T04:50:00.000-08:00

"When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.

When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy.

It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will."

written by Charlton DCosta

Political racist grind

2010-02-05T20:50:00.000-08:00

" We won't allow any Australian player to play on Indian soil", this was the statement issued by the Shiv Sena supremo, Bala Saheb Thackrey. Isn't it hypocritical? I mean to say Shiv Sena should applaud Australian's for whatever they are doing as Shiv Sena is doing the same thing here in India. How can Shiv Sena ban Australian players? Shouldn't they be banning there own worker indulging into racist activity? It was good to see powerful people like Sachin Tendulkar, Mukesh Ambani, Shahrukh Khan and then many of the B-town residents attacking the parochialism of our demagogues. Shiv Sena attacking these people means attacking true spirit of Mumbai. Certainly I cann't just be critical about Shiv Sena when the cousin MNS also is sailing in the same boat. The recent crocodile tears over "Marathi Manoos" by Shiv Sena is also because of the election stinger it received from it's cousin, MNS. Congress and BJP came in support of the all the powerful people was great but still their silence when innocent people were beaten is questionable. Congress project's itself as a party of "Aam Admi" but what they did when railway aspirants were beaten even when they were in power. BJP with the vision's of RSS have always been brindled towards "hindutva" and with Shiv Sena losing ground BJP seeing MNS as better political opportunity for future. But why should we be blaming these political party when we are ourselves at blame. Silence is definitely a virtue but being a silent sufferer is a crime. What we all lack is attitude for change as we can just talk about change. Certainly if we want to save ourselves and our Mumbai we need to do something. 26/11 attack showed there is no difference between people and politicians as both can just shoot from lips. India has just started save our tiger initiative but looking at scenario in Mumbai we should start with save our Mumbai campaign.

GOA: The beach paradise.

2010-01-27T02:43:00.000-08:00

The "Goa" has many emotions and memories attached to it not only for me but for many many people. Being an avid trekker Goa is certainly not my kind of place but certainly I find it interesting and certainly worth exploring. Every time I go to Goa I find something new about it and carry back bundle of unique experiences. Goa is known for its clean beaches, night life, cheap liquor and where else in India one can drive bike or car on own even when one don't own a bike or car. Goa is a place where one can get drivers for two wheeler (who are known as pilots). Goa is the place where an Indian on beaches like Arambol and Palolem is foreigner and certainly Goa is the place where liqour is cheaper than juice and very close to price of mineral water. I would like to list down some of popular places in Goa.

1) Arambol Beach
Arambol is a very beautiful beach with white sand and blue water. Its can be considered as north most beach of Goa. It has a huge stretch, part of it is a private beach while the other is open to all. The available beach is broken in two parts where one part has a huge extent while other part is separated by rocky patch in between. The other part of beach is very small with a beautiful fresh water lake which has its source in the nearby hill. Most of the tourist out here are Russians, Israeli's and Portuguese speaking population. Paragliding is done near the lake here at Arambol. General rates of paragliding is Rs 1200 for 15min which is negotiable(I was able to negotiate it till Rs 800). Personally I rate it as the best beach of Goa.

2) Vagator Beach
Vagator beach is very peaceful beach with less number of foreigners as well as Indians. The chapora fort(famous due to Dil Chahta Hai) is very close to Vagator beach. Only few shacks are present here which are present only in one corner of the beach which is hidden behind the rocky patches.

3) Candolim-Calangute-Baga Beach
Candolim-Calangute-Baga is the largest connected stretch. Calangute is famous for its water sports. During non-peak season one can strike a deal for jet ski, para sailing, banana drive and bumpy drive for around Rs 300-350. But only fun is banana and jet ski, while others don't thrill you much. In the above package one get only a small round of Jet ski and that too is not self drive. One can get 8km Jet ski self drive for around Rs 400. Most of the crowd out here belong to UK and there is huge rush of Indian visitors on Saturdays and Sundays. Titos and Mambos are two happening clubs near Baga beach which is all alive in the night. People who are looking for night life this the place to be then.

4) Velsav Beach
Velsav Beach is close to Margao and a very isolated and clean beach. It has very few visitors and really nice place if you are with family. Near velsav beach the other beaches are Bogmalo beach, Majorda beach and Colba Beach. Bogmalo and Majorda are smaller while Colba is larger beach and if you are looking for good shacks one can find in Colba for dinner.

5) Palolem and Agonda beach
The south-most beach of Goa is Palolem. It is very similar to Arambol, foreigners being the majority, but the difference is that it has yellowish sand. The south most tip of the beach is known as Jupiter point which has very good lodging but sadly only for foreigners. 7kms from Palolem is Agonda beach. Its a small beach with very clear water. One can find foreigner living here in caravans.

Pricing:
1) Living near beach in huts will cost you around Rs 400-500 which can be negotiable.
2) We resided in Beach Classic near ice factory, Candolim. It was a very beautiful house. Rent was Rs 1200 for two people but it is negotiable 20-30%. For extra one person it will cost you Rs 200.
3) Bikes cost Rs 250-300 and small cars like Wagon R will cost you around Rs800-1000.
4) Mumbai to Goa railway Rs 350 and bus Rs 400-800
(most of the pricing is during the non-peak season, but still one can take it as base value and negotiate around this value)

Legalizing Prostitution?

2010-01-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

Last year witnessed India slowly shrugging off the effect of recession. It also witnessed change in wind on social grounds, high court directing for decriminalization of homosexuality, supreme court issuing orders that all religion should be open to criticism and then supreme court suggesting over legalizing prostitution. The last one, suggestion of supreme court, is really worth thinking about. Sex trade is the oldest trade in the world but still in most of the countries it is illegal. Many measures have been taken but no rule or no government has been able to stop sex trade. If we talk about legality of prostitution in India a prostitute (male prostitutes are illegal in India) can practice her trade in private but cannot solicit a customer in public. A women can use her body attribute's to gain money or favor but cannot advertise herself in public or carry prostitution within 200 yards of public place. Organized brothel, prostitution ring, pimping etc is illegal by law and is punishable with minimum of 3 months to 10 years in jail. Prostitution as an industry have around 3million prostitutes with around half a million people involved in it as handlers, dealers, suppliers, trainers and security. The complete sex industry is of around 400billion rupees industry, but if we look at the condition of prostitutes its worst. A prostitutes get around Rs100-200 on an average per client, handling around 5-6 customers per day and working for around 12 hours. Prostitutes are not protected under normal labour law but they posses all the rights as other citizen and if they want they have right to get rescued and rehabilitated. But what do we mean by legalizing prostitution? Why do we need to legalize prostitution? These questions cannot be answered until and unless we see the complete picture of the sex industry. Most of the women into prostitution are not into this business because of self will but because they were forced by someone or because of circumstances. People are trafficked from extremely poor area by giving false promises of job, marriages or help. Many of the women and children are forced into prostitution or commercial sex trade where they are treated as bonded labourer with no attention of health and hygiene. India have around 2.7 million people suffering from AIDS with prostitutes and their clients occupying the maximum share of this population. Advocates of legalizing of prostitution says that if prostitution is legalized one can keep a check on human trafficking but my point is if right now even when trafficking is illegal we are not able to check it how will it be done latter. India ranks 84 in most corrupt country list and certainly if prostitution is legalized, brokers will find it easy to legalize trafficked humans into prostitution because of involvement of police and powerful politicians in it directly or indirectly. Pro-legalization also advocates that it will help in providing health care and promoting proper precautionary measure against AIDS and other STD's, but if government is not able to provide proper health care to other citizens of India how will it ensure proper health care to all prostitutes. One thing that legalizing prostitution will help is that it will cover all prostitutes under labour law but that can be done even without legalizing it. The question is not about legalizing prostitution but the question is about how is it going to benefit the victims. It cannot be viewed as a tool which can be used to generate extra revenue but it should be viewed as tool to liberate victims, improve their living conditions and save them from all sorts of exploitation. Legalizing prostitution without proper thought process and implementation will be certainly like opening a Pandora's box.

Telangana: State meant of purpose?

2009-12-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

Democracy is for the people, of the people and by the people. But does democracy mean a person sitting for fast for some reason and then government accepting the terms, isn't it interesting? But certainly government doesn't listen to every person sitting on fast, take for example the students who went on fasting against reservation rule 4yrs back. Government accede to terms only when the fasting person fastens the process which are in accord with government's intentions. Telangana is one of the example. Mr Chandrashekar Rao of TRS party went on indefinite hunger strike for separate Telangana state after getting miffed with the indecisiveness of their detached political ally, Congress. Finally after 11th day home minister, P Chidambaram, came with a statement of initiating the process of Telangana state soon which was also in accordance with the Congress election manifesto. But few followers of late chief minister of India started statewide agitation against the move of formation of Telangana. They opposed splitting of state on the basis of patriotism and assuming that this would destroy the concept of statehood, but what they are forgetting about is the history of Telangana. Telangana was never a part of India, even during the pre-independence period Telangana was not under British rule but rather under Nizam rule while the remaining part of Andhra Pradesh was under Madaras Presidency of British kingdom. After independence when states were formed based on languages Telangana wanted to be a separate state but was merged into the coastal Andhra Pradesh. People of Telangana feared that their development would be sacrificed for Andhra Pradesh and hence they were reluctant to merge into Andhra Pradesh. Telangana was given assurance by 'Gentleman Act' but they soon realized that they were not given a fair treatment. Then after decades of struggle, sacrifice of thousands of students and formation of many parties 2004 came as hope for formation of Telangana but Congress backed out from their promise, so finally Telangana lover resorted to tougher stands for separate Telangana. Now though formation of Telangana has gained ground but it has also ignited the dying desires of separate states like Gorkhaland, Vidharbha, Kutch and many other to follow the suit. New states like Uttaranchal, Jharkand and Chattisgarh do demonstrate that formation of new states help in development but at the same time the 'Koda case' of Jharkand has put forward a very difficult code to be cracked whether formation of states is people's will or political greed.

Vidhan Sabha or Vidushak Sabha

2009-11-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

In the recently concluded "Vidhan Sabha" elections of Maharashtra the warring brothers INC (Indian National Congress) and NCP (National congress party) won against the other warring brothers Uddhav Thackrey and Raj Thackrey. Though the results were declared on 22nd of October it took a long time for the so called allies to decide over the minister seat distribution. At one moment they seemed to be in a deadlock which could have thrown surprise to the citizens of Maharashtra, but certainly the minister seat carries more magnetic power which was enough to bind the ruptured ties. Ashok Chauvan who was made chief minister after the 26/11 debacle of Mumbai, took over as a full time Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Mr R R Patil was once again given Home Minister-ship hoping he could be able to defend his tongue well this time. All this drama was simply a trailer as MNS had lot in its store. MNS and its "Marathi Manoos" dramaturgy got acceptance as MNS were able to win more seats this time. MNS continuing with its language based discrimination under the banner of language love threatened all party MLA's to take oath in Marathi only. All MLA's took oath in Marathi in order to avoid any buffoonery by MNS but our super intelligent Mr Abu Azmi started taking oath in Hindi, the language which people relate as national language (in reality India don't have a national language). It was a real treat for MNS as they were waiting thing like this to happen so that they can test their theatrical skills. The first timer MLA of MNS showed super exuberance to attack Mr Abu Azmi with mike and even slap him in public. MNS who is continuously striving for Marathi Manoos against the North Indian specially from UP and Bihar demonstrated uncivilized culture which cannot be matched by even illiterate rowdy people of any state. People who talk about themselves as striving for pride of Maharashtra maligned the complete image of Maharashtra in front of few delegates who came from USA to understand how the Vidhan Sabha of an Indian state is conducted. MNS honestly left the right impression of politicians of India on the delegates. Huge amount of drama followed this by SP and MNS supporters wrestling each other in public. This incident is a real eye opener and seems promising for many interesting in-sensibilities in near future. Jai Maharashtra!!

Modern Dynasties

2009-09-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

India had a tradition of peshwas, maharajas and badashahs, with the invasion of British it ended that tradition but once India got independence India witnessed the new tradition and that was of the modern avatar of rulers, the politicians. It was our first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru giving way to daughter Indira Gandhi followed by Rajiv Gandhi and now the fourth generation ruler is in making i.e. Rahul Gandhi. This is the easiest of all political dynasty I can recall, but how can one forget other examples like Murli Deora-Milind Deora, Madhavrao-Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sharad Pawar-Supriya Sule, Sheikh-Farooq-Omar Abdulla examples are countless. But why to pinpoint only politicians dynasties even exists in other powerful areas like Bollywood, business, sports etc. If we talk about bollywood dynasty everyone can easily remember Kapoors and Chopras being epitome of such dynasty with Khans, Deols and Bacchans are new addition. In business we have Tatas, Birlas and Ambanis while in sports we have often seen son or daughter following dads footsteps. So is it power that lead to dynasty or the reason is something else. It is actually the upbringing and the atmosphere in which you are raised plays are larger role in what future role you are going to assume. This is the reason why many times offspring of doctor is a doctor, engineer is engineer, journalist is journalist, musician is musician and the count is unending. People require extra effort as well as courage to break the dynasty chain which is easier when it comes on smaller scale like being an engineer or doctor or journalist but as we ascend to powerful dynasties it becomes difficult and difficult to break into the dynasty chain which is very true in the case of say film industry or politics which actually runs more on personal relationships. Times are changing though with people with non-dynasty link entering the dynasty chain leading to new families in dynasty but still the opportunities are low. Dynasties are basically outcome of genetics, upbringing, opportunities and lastly passion. It is basically passion of the initiator of every dynasty who was passionate to achieve his/her ambition which made their successors to follow the same successful path as well, because walking on ready made road is easy rather than making your own road to success.

Mumbai Potholes

2009-09-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Mumbai, the maximum city, the financial hub of India contributing 5% of Indian GDP, with a total population of around 19million considered as second most populous city in world. Local trains acting as spine for Mumbai transport and roads acting as circulatory veins. If we take India as a whole, it is the second largest road network in world covering around 3.314million kilometers. Around 80% of passenger traffic and 65% of freight traffic is carried by road. In Mumbai rail and bus plays a very important role by facilitating transportation for 88% of the passengers. Around 6.1million people travel daily by trains that will comprise of around 60-65% of total passengers in Mumbai so as compared to train very few people travel by roads. But if we only go by this statistics we will be missing out a very important point that every person has to catch a train from station which means every person has to travel by road to some extent everyday either by walking or auto-rickshaw or taxi or private vehicle. This means every person traveling in Mumbai has to use road every day and hence every person has faced the problem of potholes then let it be in Andheri, Dadar or Thane. Potholes are regular occurrence specially during rainy season and neither contractor nor the government is ready to take the responsibility of the pathetic condition of roads of the country's highest tax paying city, Mumbai. What is the basic reason of potholes? Why are they so frequent and who is at blame? These questions are in picture only during rainy season but as the rainy season is gone these questions are washed or they seep into the very roads we are talking about, so that it may arise the next year. Lets have a closer look at the problem. Mumbai automobile population would be around 1.53 million with most of the major roads being just 4 lanes and the suburban roads being just 2 lanes. No availability of space for car parking results in car and other automobile parking on roads and if the parked vehicle is big enough it seems a very promising candidate as cause of traffic jam. This is one side of issue, lets look at the quality of roads that are built. Road construction tenders are given to contractors which are private or having private relationships with the tender giver politicians. Most of the road are bituminous roads except very few length which is concrete road. If we look cost wise bituminous roads are cheaper but the self-life of these roads is very less as compared to concrete roads which can be built with variable self-life from 8yr to 60yr with maintainance required every 5-10yr. But the bituminous roads have a very small self life with maintainance required every 8-10months specially because of material being used and the way it is built. Certainly if the road is regularly maintained politicians can pocket money on regular basis and who is facing the brunt of this nuisance, we the common people. Inspite of many PIL's and court cases the condition remain same. My question is can we do something out here, if yes then I would like to know how? Because many people are happily taking joys of essel world on Mumbai roads on daily basis but the concerned one's are not complaining. Need to think in this direction before India sends a second space mission, this time not Chandrayaan but Pruthviyaan to study craters in India.

Global warning to global warming

2009-09-03T04:33:00.000-07:00

Global warming the most debatable issue these days and currently the hottest topic discussed. The issue is very important for the world and it is becoming more and more important for India. After the G20 meeting, the developed countries are trying to pressurize the developing countries like India, China, South Africa and Brazil to sign the agreement to reduce carbon emission by 2050. Its not just a simple reduction but a mammoth reduction in emission which is the main cause of concern for India. India and China are flexing their muscles to save themselves from stringent environmental clauses, as these might adversely effect economies of both the countries. But why is the world trying to pressurize so much and why is India not willing to accept the stringent clauses? In order to understand that, first we need to understand what is global warming and how it is going to affect everyone. According to IPCC, earth is warming at a faster rate for which the green house gases are primarily responsible. Carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, CFC, methane, nitrous oxide etc are termed as green house gases which actually traps the earth heat more as compared with other gases which results into abnormal heating of globe which is termed as global warming. India ranks 5^th in world in total carbon emission but it contributes to hardly 5% of the total carbon emission of the world. The entire world is pressurizing India looking at it as fifth major contributor towards carbon emission while India is looking at the issue in terms of per capita carbon emission where India ranks 113, among the lowest in all countries. It is expected that carbon emission of India might triple by 2030 but that will still keep India among the lowest contributors in terms of per capita carbon emission. The world is looking at opposition of India towards clause as insensibility towards the environmental issues, but the world is forgetting that in terms of CPIA policy and institutions for environmental sustainability rating, India ranks 9 in world which is proof of India being not only sensitive towards issue but also aware about the issue well before our global counterparts. India is indeed taking steps towards well being of environment and it has been working over various alternative resources like wind energy, solar energy, bio fuel from long long time. This can be further supported by the India's carbon saving being ranked 27^th in world, which is much better than any other country of similar magnitude. What India is expecting from world is to lower the clauses a bit as that might affect India's economic development which will indirectly affect the social development. India is truly in support of environmental issues but certainly decisions cannot be taken by keeping a uni -dimensional perspective. Finally UN has came in support of India and other developing countries blaming the developed countries acting like bullies who are major culprits of the current global warming. A collective effort is certainly the need of the hour but collective doesn't mean unjustified distribution of the responsibilities. Even many scientists have blamed the statistics provided by IPCC not being correct and prejudiced in favour of global warming. It has not taken care of many other factor which can also be the reason of global warming. Who knows that looking at current global warming we might be blaming the symptoms as the reason and not taking care of the real reasons behind it.

For more graphs and statistics

Rise of sporting heroes

2009-09-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

The national game of India, hockey, had no takers, the reason was rise of popularity of cricket. The nation which was one time crazy for hockey is now under the magic spell of cricket and cricketers. Its worshiped like a religion out here and the cricketers are treated like gods. Many people think that the money involved in cricket is basic reason of its popularity. But is that driving spectators to stadium. The money involved can only drive sportsmen but not spectators. So why people are attracted with cricket and certainly cheer girls is not the answer as this quotient was added lately. The reason I think is sporting heroes. Sporting superstars which performs regularly. Cricket is a team event and it has been continuous improvement of team performance along with consistent performance of sporting heroes which has been reason for crickets popularity. Cricket was not that popular in 1970's but 1980 marked the era of Gavaskars, Kapils, Binnys, Amarnaths which followed by Shrikants, Shastris leading to Tendulkars, Dravids, Gangulys, Laxmans which today is going into the next generation performers in form of Dhonis, Yuvrajs, Harbajans, Zaheers. Cricket has witnessed not single hero but an army of heroes leading India to consistent performance. At the same time if we look at other sports heroes has been rare we can count performers like Amritraj, Padukone, P T Usha, Gopichand but they too were not able to perform consistently. They were only able to rise the excitement but the bubble of excitement would use to burst quicker than the time it took to rise. But today that need of heroes is slowly filling up, with rise of heroes in different sports which are not only promising but also performing consistently. It was the consistent performance of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati which has inspired many kids to take up tennis and develop huge interest in it, this can justified by rise of Sania Mirza, Rohan Bhopana, Amritraj Jr and the new kid Somdev. Its the consistent performance of Saina Nehwal which is winning her all rewards and benifits. Vijender Singh boxing his way to success by winning the boxing championship and finally its the soccer fever that has hit India and that will further be catalyzed by the India's win over Syria in the Nehru Cup. Its not the money only which is main culprit for non-popularity of other sports but its also the drought of sporting heroes which was the major reason of backwardness for other sports. Today we can be more optimistic about other sports with rise of sporting of heroes.

F1 not a sport

2009-08-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

"F1 is not a sport", its not my statement but statement of Dr.M S Gill, Sports minister of India. Certainly F1 doesn't fit into definition of normal sport as it is not a normal sport where only physical ability of an athlete or the team is tested, its a motor sport where the physical ability of athlete is tested which has aid of motor equipment. Dr. Gill has rejected to recognize the venture by JKSP to lay F1 track in India by calling F1 a non-sport and just entertainment. He also called F1 as a huge business, today if we observe every professional sports is a business after all. Players do take pride in playing for the national or state or regional team but no one is doing it for free. According to definition of business it means, 'a legally recognized organisation designed to provide goods or services to consumers'. Sports are certainly designed to provide entertainment to the viewers. If Dr. Gill is talking about unusually high cost involved in F1 which is something around $3.073 billion, then he should also think about English premier league which has a budget of around $3 billion as well and what about Indian premier league which has registered itself in top 10 expensive sports and having around Rs 8000 crore involved in it. Dr. Gill's statement is either without basis or he had nothing else to say to reject the plan. Why is he rejecting this sport? Is it because he don't know rules of F1 or is it because there will certainly be more profit and none of the politicians will be able to pocket that or there are no politicians in the F1 committee as they too don't understand the game. Future of our F1 sport, Karum Chandok, is upset over this statement and says that, 'In India sports other than cricket is certainly not termed as sports'. This is very true, people don't encourage other sports much and the main problem comes directly from the sports ministry which is actually not so active and concerned about players. Sports ministry should rethink over their statement as F1 race will not only add one more feather to Indian sports but also will be an added tourist spot. Now its right time to change the face of Indian sports which is simply cricket blind as this will encourage more like V Anand, Gopichand, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Paes, Bhupati, Abhinav Bindra and Vijendra Singh which can now be simply counted on finger tips.

Taliban to Afghanistan

2009-08-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

11^th Spetember, 2001, changed many things around the world. The attack on America engaged the entire world in a third world war but this time the war is not among countries but the war is between humanity and terrorism. Shaken by the brazen attack of Taliban on the American pride, the Bush government launched an army action on the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. US government promised that their by product, Osama Bin Laden, the designer of 9/11 attack will be caught or killed within months. This October it will be 8 years to what the US government have promised and Osama Bin Laden is far away from captured. What has happened to Afghanistan in these 8 years? Taliban has been replaced by a democratic government presided by Mr. Karzai and this september Afghanistan is looking forward to firmly establish the hold of democracy as the results of second election will be declared. Should this be appreciated, applauded because it was successful in overthrowing the barbaric and insane Taliban rule or should be criticized and blamed for the much sorry plight of Afghanistan? Afghanistan comes in top five of the failed state list and the insecurity among the people is very high. Democracy has brought liberalization and education to people but has also brought high level of corruption. The literacy rate in Afghanistan is as high as 93% where people feel democracy will only make things worse. Inspite of 8 years of war Afghanistan is no where near peace and the question that remains unanswered is who is to blame? Is it Taliban, Afghan government, US, people of Afghanistan or Pakistan? It has been the geo-political placement of Afghanistan which was exploited not only by outsiders but also by feuding insiders. During the cold-war it was America and Russia who wanted to use Afghanistan for their own benefits, personal motives of the many tribes and growing insecurity of Pakistan which resulted into creation of Taliban. Today what we see is the side effects of the long exploitation, but what people of Afghanistan should think is what kind of future they want to give to their future generation. After American strikes UN had tried a lot to bring Afghanistan to normalcy but it has been the support of few tribes and Pakistan which foiled the motive of uprooting the Taliban. Pakistan has learned its lesson as genie they wanted to use for their own has turned into a demon for them. It seems to be doing its bit by destroying safe heavens of Taliban. Now its time for people of Afghanistan to stand up for their own rights before it becomes too late to react.

Swine flu and Fear

2009-08-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

Each year around 2,00,000 die due to tuberculosis but no one stops smoking or spitting in public. Around 5million people are infected with HIV virus but no-one thinks of condom. But whats this, masked people all over the places, schools and colleges all closed, curfew in theatre, what happened to Mumbai and its never say die attitude? It's not swine flu, its the fear of swine flu. The disease, swine flu, which started in Mexico soon became a pandemic disease as it started making its foot-prints visible all over the globe. It is actually not the disease but the number of deaths caused by this disease, the cause of concern. In US alone around 400 people died in last three months due to swine flu and many have been affected by it. Swine flu took the maximum airtime of all the news channels in India as it showed its ugly face with death tolls rising day by day. But is the situation really that bad or is it just another media ploy to make business during the recession times. To understand things better let me give you some information first and then we would analyze the whole situation.

What is Swine flu?
Swine flu, is an influenza caused by A H1N1 virus which was supposed to be caused by strain in pig and hence got the name as 'swine flu', it is basically more due to strain in humans that cause swine flu. Influenza by A H1N1 has been reported in 1918 which was know as Asian flu and also in 1976 when more people died not because of the disease but because of vaccination of the disease. A H1N1 can spread through air or direct contact with the person suffering from swine flu which is the main cause of this pandemic. Basically virus doesn't survive outside body but this can survive for around 2-6hrs on surfaces where the sneeze or spit of the swine flu patient has fallen.

Symptoms of Swine flu?
Symptoms are not different from that of common flu like temperature, sore throat, running nose, body ache and head ache. It has been found that in later stages of swine flu a person contracts pneumonia, resulting into multi-organ failure and has been cause of death in many cases in swine flu.

Is it incurable?
Swine flu once detected(in early stages) is completely curable. Medicine called as 'Tami-flu' is available which helps in curing the disease. But many side effects of the medicine have came into picture, normal side effects are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea while acute depression and suicidal tendencies are the dangerous side effects.

Is the situation that bad?
Symptoms of swine flu and normal flu is same and that makes the complete process tricky. Also swine flu spreads quickly through air or through direct contact with the person who has contracted flu. So if you have any symptoms of flu in this time you will always have fear of swine flu as there is no greater fear than death. So if you have flu like symptoms directly consult doctor and start medication immediately because many time people do not visit doctor in normal flu cases. If you have contracted flu, wear mask as precautionary measure and take complete rest for at least a week(if you are in Mumbai, people will be more than happy to take holiday and companies will also be more willing to give you one).

Is mask essential?
Mask is essential for those who have swine flu or those who are in direct contact with the person who has swine flu. Precautionary measure when you go out in public you can wear a mask but thats not that essential. One has to ensure that hands are cleaned on regular intervals by sanitizer which is some form of alcoholic cleaner.

Reality check:
Since the first death in Pune there has been around 28 deaths overall in India. Media is highlighting about the number of deaths but not highlighting number of people cured. People talking about more and more people detected with swine flu but no-one discussing the reason. It has been found that many people can be carrying swine flu in dormant stage as its very similar to common flu but at the same time people might have developed immunity against it. As the H1N1 virus effect is known since 1918, it is said that people above 65yrs have around 60-70% immunity, while people in age group of 20-65yr have immunity of around 20% while the children have no immunity against the disease. Swine flu is actually a wake up call for all of us in India where we give negligible importance to hygiene, though we might be caring about self hygiene but never care about hygiene of our surrounding. Swine flu is definitely controllable and curable disease, what we need to cautious about is the false information available in market through the media which has the sole motive of business. The situation has become direful because of mis-information and the idiot box acting not as medium of information but a medium of spreading terror by our mean NEWS channels against our ignorant population.

References:
Swine Influenza
2009 Flu Pandemic
Doctors opinion
Center of Disease Control and Prevention

My article in HT

2009-08-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

The following article was there on the front-page of Hindustan Times on 27^th July, 2009. The article was regarding teaching as option.

Open publication - Free publishing - More teaching

Atheist bus campaign

2009-08-10T02:07:00.000-07:00

Indian religious heads were head on with article 377 at the same time Pope Benedict statement made strong remarks against atheists. I found it bit funny when he mentioned atheism being unnatural, as if atheism is unnatural so is any religion and any other belief. Atheism means rejection of belief in deity and belief certainly never comes naturally. People basically believe in things which their parents tell them or grandparents teach them. Then there comes belief from knowledge by reading or understanding some new things. It was time when parents and grand parents were source of knowledge but today we all know that this knowledge is also prejudiced.
After the pope's remark the atheist community have been waging a verbal and demonstrative war against religion and theism. The latest is the atheist bus campaign which has got huge support and has been able to generate charity in quick time. "There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." reads one of the advertisement which are not only advertisied on buses but also on cars and T-shirts. The campaign was the brainchild of the comedy writer Ariane Sherine who wanted to counter what she saw as the “threatening” adverts bought on the side of buses by some Christian churches. Her unprecedented appeal raised £140,000 after winning the support of prominent atheist including the biologist Professor Richard Dawkins. Many found the advertisement objectionable but the Advertisement authority have not found the atheist bus campaign breaking any rule or code. So in retaliation the Christian party published an advertisement which read, "There definitely is God. So join christian party and enjoy your life."
Existence of God has been under scanner for long long time but this campaign brings that topic back to life. The most interesting puzzle is who made whom? It was God who made humans or it was humans who made God. The campaign started in London and spread out all around the globe. In India though there is no tussle between theism and atheism as most of the religion in India accepts atheism. When the Pope Benedict started verbal war against atheist Hindu society supported atheists. It was quite surprising as atheist are not only against god but also against many autocratic rules of religion which constitutes the so called society. Being an atheist I do not feel atheism should be promoted as belief should be left to an individual alone about what he/she want to follow and what he/she wish to do. Promoting one's belief is identical to religious extremism but what I certainly feel is that in this democratic world people should be left on their own rather than pressurizing them into following things. In India atheism is accepted but they have to live under banner of some or other religion, there is no provision of completely abandoning religion and embracing humanity. Many religions counter this statement by saying that person without religion will be unruly but why cann't they understand there is no need to bind a person by rules of religions an individual can be bound by rules of state as certainly inhuman behaviour is not accepted by atheist which few religion readily accept and implement on their followers. I do certainly accept atheism is unnatural as no human is born with tag or stamp of religion and belief along.

Tiger was our national animal

2009-08-03T04:33:00.000-07:00

Tiger is our National animal but if one looks at the way we are losing on the tiger numbers there will soon come a day when we will be saying that tiger was our national animal. At the start of 19th century India had around 45,000 tigers but the beauty and majestic appearance attracted poachers which decreased the tiger population to such an extent that in 1972 we were left with only 1400 tiger. Thanks to Late. Indira Gandhi that she encouraged "Project Tiger" and under the new rule tiger started growing in number. Area's like Corbett, Ranthambore, Bandhavgarh, Tadoba, Melghat, Kanha, Pench, Nagercoil etc became safe heavens for tigers. Project tiger helped in increasing the tiger number to around 4500 by 1992. But after that the number has been continously declining with the worst scenario last year as no tiger were left in tiger reserves of Kanha and Pench. The project tiger has been continously facing the problem of poachers but the ever increasing population of India and the depleting land posed one more problem of human encroachment into the tiger reserve area. Environmentalist and government are battleling with two problem i.e. declining tiger population and the welfare of the Tribal people near the tiger reserve. If today we look at the tiger number it tells a very sad story of tiger nearing extinction with natural calamity in Bengal adding to it. Sunderban has the highest number of tigers in India and the cyclone 'Aila' which hit West Bengal in the early Monsoon this year have increased worries of all tiger lover. Government need to give a serious thought over this issue before it is too late and we left in search of new national animal. Instead of spending money on bringing Cheetah back to India, govenment should spend every penny possible to save our existing national animal. It need to take poaching as very serious crime which can challenge the existence of our pride, tiger, and hence should ensure stricter rules implemented. Even the new adoption method used in zoo should be extended for wild animals in reserve as the option seems very interesting and bright. Lastly need to make sure that in future there is no human encroachment inside forest area by defining tiger area which should be strictly followed as we respect the LOC by world governing bodies.

Incredible India....??

2009-07-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

Five months and more than five serial blasts had ripped through cities leaving deadly trail across the country. I must say “HATS OFF” to the audacity of the terrorists who are continually proving themsleves as a constant source of terror in the mind of people. Interestingly, the inflation is rising but the cost of human life is depreciating with every bomb going off with a rising toll of casualties and maimed, first a Jaipur, then Bangalore, Ahmadabad, Delhi, Malegaon and so on. They are the perfect example of Guerilla attack on the integrity and dignity of nation having over more than 106 Cr. of people and highly hopeful to become a superpower in 21.India has been introduced with many cultures and religions because of continual invasion from outsiders who ultimately culminated it in a secular nation with flaunting cultural and religious diversities. But, today we are paying a heavy price of our suave secularism.

Earlier we had a notion that perpetrators of such heinous crime are illiterate, gullible and irrational, who can be easily persuaded by a radical or extremist group to commit mass-carnage and having dubious objectives in their lives in the name of “JEHAD”. But, the most disturbing thing is that recently whoever has been alleged linked or nabbed for such despicable efforts to topple down human confidence are mostly graduates, engineers and professionals. These are supposed to be corner- stones of this growing nation, but sadly they have been derailed from their paths

We should contemplate that why not a single terror attacks have been executed after 9/11 in US? Probably because they have taught a stern lesson to the global terror leaders,” You kill one American; we will kill hundreds of you”. Remember immediately after 9/11 attack, Bush brigade managed to get approval to demolish Taliban structure which was spreading its arms insidiously across the globe. In India we encountered attack on the heart of Indian Democracy “Parliament”, but we did not kill a single insect of terrorism unlike Americans. This is the real difference between a reigning superpower like US and a vulnerable country like India. We don’t have stringent laws and policies to counter-challenge these threats against the internal security of our country. Law makers are themselves are unable to elicit a consensus on such a boiling issue. They don’t have smacks of shame on their faces as they seem to be the authorized people to see these attacks and ignore them rather than taking actions. Recently, one news channel pointed out a Cabinet Minister for changing three dresses one after the other on the day of blast at Delhi. In reply Minister said, “Why are you people angry? I worked whole day, returned home in the evening, had a shower and changed the dress. What was wrong in it?” I say, Minister had been any of your family members victim of this blast, would you be having the time to change dresses in the same manner as you did??? With Great Power, comes Great Responsibilitiesand “U , ME aur HUM" cannot elude from our responsibilities by giving rhetoric justifications to the people. Can Minister answer, “How many terrorists they have convicted and hanged in retaliation of the mass-carnage except one encounter in Delhi by Delhi ATS??”

Deep inside India, secularism is a way of life. We have abandon festivals to be celebrated round the year that shows the great confluence of cultures from different communities, then why there is a fervent propensity to harm each other’s community for sake of minor gains?? We rational Indians must know that violence is a never ending process like AIDS which is non-curable. Today a person going out of home is uncertain about his safe arrival back to his place. So, either avoid it or remove it, Avoiding cannot be done in present scenario, so it is better to remove it.

We all believe in non-violence and hence in. But now such moral principles have been relegated to soft handling issues. This is not the time of pre-Independence where Britishers were ashamed of their atrocities and ruthlessness on Indians and finally decided to leave India under mounting pressure. This is the world of Digital technology where the terrorists are well-developed by knowledge and skills to leverage their actions. They are the germs in this healthy and advanced environment which must be wiped out from the surface. A Cancer can be cured by drugs until the tumor is Benign but when it turns into a malignant one, it has to be operated with the help of weapons. Similarly terrorism in India is taking a shape of malignant cancer and it has to be stopped here, otherwise the country will stall in panic

Internal security is a major threat to India today than any other from the outsiders. Today we are fervently inching towards nuclear enablement to fortify our position among nuclear advocators, but what will happen if one day, sooner or later, a nuclear bomb will be exploded to kill not only hundreds but lakhs of people. So, if political machinery can bear up to smoking in confinement, then why can’t we come out with utterly draconian laws against terrorism like “Kill the Germs”, “ Shoot at Sight”. You can have an example of Punjab Terrorism, in order to bring back lost confidence due to these terror sources, this is not the time to respond (that we have been doing since last two decades). This is the time to retaliate, to attack their roots from where they stem out like Terror Camps in POK (Pak Occupied Kashmir). Fundamentalism, Camouflaged organizations like SIMI or IM (Indian Mujahidin) and some Madarasas which are not properly used for their divine objectives

This is a difficult step but clear and focused strategy with determined execution will ensure the revival and revitalization of internal security in Human confidence. And thus, “Incredibility of India” will be sustained

Posted by Mahesh Toshniwal

Television, the new contraceptive

2009-07-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

UPA government has been breaking records, let it be by inducting young blood, first woman dalit speaker, effectively applying the public-private partnership and taking reforming steps for education or section 377. Gulab Nabi Azad, health and family welfare minister, joined the list of reformist by issuing a new statement for curbing the population explosion. The idea is really out of box and there is huge question mark over whether this should be taken as an intelligent statement or a humorous punch. Our dear health minister is stating that TV at everyones house will work as contraceptive and help in curbing the ever increasing population. First question is when more than 50% of Indian population live on Rs. 20 per day how can they afford a TV, second question is even if government gifts them a TV will a person be watching a bland Doordarshan, third question is TV won't work until and unless they have access to electricity all the time and final question is TV more interesting and satisfying than the original act. Gulab Nabi Azad has forgotten the bottom line and that is nothing but poverty and illiteracy. India's poor mainly belong to rural area which have no access to basic amenities and have no option of entertainment other than sex. Installing TV won't help the cause of curbing population explosion. One can learn that from the case of Haryana and Kerala, where the former is wealthy and the other is educated. Haryana's family development is not aligned with India's plan while the later ones, Kerala, is aligned with family development. Mr. Azad is talking about TV when he should be talking about sex education and should be working along with Mr. Sibal to ensure that everyone gets the most important education of life. Government should also be ensuring that everyone receives proper education and try to educate the poor about gains of small family. Government can even take steps to bring in new ways of family planning and can go beyond normal temporary and permanent contraceptives. It should convince the poor that if the men take the responsibility of family planning ensure safer and better family planning rather than women taking lion's share in family planning. One good thing Mr. Azad has done by commenting over family planning is that people will start thinking over the neglected topic. It will also ensure that though for the time being population is acting as boon for us but in future it can act as a greatest hindrance for the countries development. Thank god, Mr. Azad thought only of TV which is more democratic rather than going China's way.

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Rita vs Mayawati: Political fuzz

2009-07-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

Uttar Pradesh, already suffering because of political war received yet another blow yesterday. Rita Bahuguna, the Congress Chief of UP, was arrested for inflamatory speech against the BSP chief minister, Mayawati. Rita has been sent to 14 day judicial coustody under the law of atrocities against minority. Court is going to hear that case today to decide whether she will be jailed or bailed. If one goes through the speech given by Rita which is attached below doesn't give us clear picture about whether the speech was inflamatory or not. If you hear the speech one can only infer that Rita was saying that a compensation of Rs 75000 for a rape and murder of a minor girl is ridiculous. She was trying to point that where government is spending huge amount of statue development there a victim of such henious crime receives peanuts. It's very difficult to understand what is inflamatory in that. On the other hand the BSP activist set Rita's house on fire, now what should we call this justice or autocracy of BSP government. The story doesn't end here Mayawati in here press release made remarks over Rahul Gandhi and Congress which were really racist (I was not able to find that video which I have seen on television). In that press statement Mayawati said that Congress is purposefully sending Rahul to dalits house to woo dalit people. She also said that once Rahul returns to Delhi Congress bathes him with a special soap. I think people are wise to understand the real racist remark but it is generosity of the Indian government that only can book an upper caste person under minority law but what about this statement, isn't it racist?This is not first time she has made such intimidating comments over caste racism, similar comment were made by her when she was questioned for her statue spree. At that time as well her defence was no one questioned people when statues of upper caste people were erected and people are just question her because she is from lower caste. She is using the dalit card as weapon to attack Congress and gain ground which she lost during this present election. The judiciary of India should come into action by bringing people to justice and we also need to think in long term in order to stop politicians from playing caste game let it be BSP or the so called secular Congress.

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Mumbai after 26th July, 2005

2009-07-14T05:56:00.000-07:00

Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India, is also recognised as the 'Maximum City' or as the city that never sleeps. The city is well known for fame, Bollywood, vada-pav, local trains, largest slum–Dharavi, dabba-walas, terrorist attacks and the rainy season. Mumbaikar never stops, even the terrorist attacks effect are not lasting in front of the attitude of a Mumbaikar. The only power that has ability to put halt or breaks on Mumbai is the rain god. Mumbai is a tropical region and experiences very heavy rainfall each year. It has experienced many heavy rains but the rain that really changed the attitude of the people was experienced on 26th July, 2005. In entire Mumbai's history local trains had never stopped, generally they run late or slow and if they stop its just a momentary stoppage of 3-4hrs. But on 26th July, 2005, Mumbai experienced the heaviest rainfall of the century which was registered around 94.4cm in 24hr. It was this deluge which halted train operations for 2 days and it took around 15days to get back to normal. In many localities water level was above 20feet as compared with the ground level. Many people suffered heavy losses of their property and some suffered loss of their loved ones. Before this event people were never afraid of heavy rains as they knew that Mumbai is efficient enough to take them home safely, but after this event a continuous rain for half day terrorizes people. It was actually this day which exposed the chinks in the disaster management of Mumbai and it's inefficiency and unpreparedness before the monsoon. It exposed to people the outdated drainage planning and management. Mumbaikar used to enjoy heavy rains which used to give them the much needed break from their hectic schedules but today heavy rains reminds of the disaster and the unpleasant memories of 26th July. The low lying areas always used to get flooded very quickly even due to moderate rains but today that becomes a breaking news.

Indian Budget 2009

2009-07-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Indian Budget was declared last week, first was the railway budget, declared by Ms Mamta Baneerjee and then the Finance budget by Mr. Pranab Mukherjee. The budget was most awaited and people were expecting huge reforms with Left party left out this time around. Mr. Pranab Mukherjee were already marketing the budget would be a populist budget but as any other budget it created only mixed sentiments. The Finance budget was made keeping long term goals in mind while the railway budget appeared not as Indian rail budget but as West Bengal Rail budget. The budget seemed to be unimprssive when I read from newspapers point of view but when I read the highlights and details of budget I found it very interesting.

Finance Budget 2009-10 Highlights
Railway Budget 2009-10 Highlights

Teaching Ram preaching Ravana

2009-07-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Who is Ram? For Hindu's Ram is god but from an atheist point of view Ram is simply a good man. Hindu epic's do not teach about following a person but they teach about following the deeds. Ram, the Aryan, had many good qualities and its these qualities which helped him to conquer the bad man, Ravana. The epic teaches us to be a good person and need to have good qualities like humbleness, compassion, honesty, knowledge and need not force things upon others. He was not willing to use force against Ravana but it was Ravana who tried to force his views and opinions on others and finally Ram was left with no option but to use force. The stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata teaches us many things about living but its very sad that our religious people and basically the extremists rather than following the deeds follow the person. They blindly follow things and force others to follow them. Its a common problem of every religion but certainly I don't have authority to say about others but at least I can say about someone. Religious extremists are inconsiderate and they just try to teach about Ram but what they preach in day today life is Ravana. History is proof of all their illogical rules and regulation which they try to put forward as code of conduct of society and try to impose their thinking on others. They put forward this code of conduct under the name of 'morality'. India has witnessed many victims of morality in ancient times when a widow was supposed to go to 'sati' or when women were not allowed to study or when identical humans were termed as untouchable's & treated as animals. These were those victims who were lying outside the definition of morality at that time. Then the time changed, Britishers invaded India and the only good thing they did for India was they imparted education to Indian society. Education brought in change in society thinking which was confined to the thinking of these religious teachers. The boundaries of morality underwent expansion and new definitions were added. The Indian society has matured a lot and has been more liberalised than it was before but still the religious DNA sometimes overcomes our logical thinking. It blind folds people from accepting the truth and facts. The saying is 'Blood is thicker than water' but in India it is 'Religion is thicker than Blood'. {WTF - What's the funda}

Happy to help

2009-07-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

In the month of May it was not only the IPL 2 which swept the entire India but also the zoozoo adds which won many hearts. Advertisements have became an indivisible part of our life. Most of the times advertisements are the spoilsports during an interesting movie or tight situation in a match. But still some creative brains have been able to conquer viewers heart, which makes some advertisement worth watching again and again. These are the ads which are not only able to sell the idea to people but also able to connect with them better.

Ads that connect to people(Indian Consumer)

Vodafone (All Zoozoo)

FevicolAd

Fevicol Ad2

Iodex

Surf Excel

Tata-Sky

UNICEF Dreams India

Pink Panther 377

2009-07-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

It was last year when the sexual minorities of India i.e. gay, lesbians, trans-genders and eunuchs when they marched at Delhi to protest against the article 377. Again this year when Home minister, P Chidambaram and Law minister, Moily voiced a concern over article 377 a similar march was seen in Chennai and after a long battle finally SC has moved forward at decriminalization of homosexuality giving a new life to pink community. Article 377 was formed in 1860 during the British era and it reads as follows "Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine." The basic interpretation of against the order of nature can be many but people basically assume this as homosexuality and because of this not only gays and lesbians but also bisexuals and trans-genders fundamental right to live is curtailed which is violation of article 21 of Indian constitution. Article 377 is also in contradiction with article 14(equality), article 15(equality on basis of sex) and article 19(freedom of speech and expression). The movement for decriminalization was started by NAZ foundation in 2002 after an incident in 2001 in North-India were police filed case against people of NAZ foundation charged with sodonmy and possessing obscene material in a move to silence the human right activist. Police have been taking wrong advantage of this rule by harassing or blackmailing people who wanted to save their private life from other people. NGOs have presented many cases where lesbian couples were forced to marry due to family pressure and many of them committing suicide because there was no one to hear them. UN has also been supporting decriminalization long back as it is against person's choice to live and giving acceptance to homosexuality doesn't means changing one's own orientation or preference which is mistaken by orthodox and narrow minded religious heads. Police should certainly be stricter over public display of affection whether its from homosexual or heterosexual side. At the same time decriminalization does not mean freedom to child abuse or forceful consent, for that article 377 still holds which means jail upto 10 years. All together the move to decriminalize homosexuality is a welcome move which also shows that government is not only keen on economic development but also on social development.

References:
International Humanist and Ethical Union
NAZ vs Government
Stories related to Article 377

Tiger in coldwar with Dragon

2009-07-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

In times of global recession the entire world is optimistic about two Asian giants, India and China, who seems to be still going strong. As the power of dragon is increasing day by day and soon going to be the new big daddy, replacing USA. China has been more influential in major international policies and have gained ground in UN as well. But the motives of China are becoming more aggressive of which first sign came from Chinese media which has accused India being jealous of success of China. I think no one in India is jealous of Chinese success but we are proud that an Asian country is ready to take over the world center stage from USA. It is China who is getting scared of India gaining momentum. China is tried to obstruct the Indian development project of $2.9billion dollar which included a $60million project in Arunachal Pradesh, a state where we have land conflict with China. ADB passed that project and that was a lethal blow for China. Its not only this single issue, but Chinese navy spreading its wing in Indian ocean is also a sign of aggressiveness. China is looking to flex its muscle which seems most probably to gain geopolitical dominance. The fight and fear doesn't get over with this as recently India banned few Chinese products because of its sub-standard quality. China has taken this as offence and as protectionism in wake of global financial crisis. Chinese toys has been banned in many developed countries and India too is following that. If China is taking that as offence then it should also think about India's move to accept Chinese toys who pass and are certified according to International Standards. The move is to provide citizens of India with safer products and the intention is not to affect trade of China. Similar problem is faced in Chinese cell phones which are without identification numbers, which are required to track down any cell phone. So India has rejected all cell phones without identification numbers which means a loss of trade of around 8 lakh cell phones which adds a tinge of red to dragon. And finally India imposing a ban on dairy products which has been found of containing harmful chemicals. This has seriously infuriated the dragon to such a great extent that China is now looking a tit-for-tat treatment by banning Indian product. The amusing thing is that India do not import dairy products from China as India is highest producer of dairy products in the world. China is getting annoyed without any reason and India need to take care of that with proper dialouges, as India cannot afford to confront a Dragon who has its strong holding in our neighbourhood.

Obsession of statues and name

2009-06-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

If you read political news regularly the most common thing which a politician is obsessed with is useless things like statues, name, religion, language etc. They have no other work than coming in each others way and try to pull a person who is looking for progress or commenting something which will catch the attention of idle and hungry media. Supreme court slammed Mayawati for going on statue spree and the complete situation is so bad in UP but still she is obsessed with her own statue, a complete narcissist. When PIL was filed against her, in defence she says that when statues of high caste people were done no one objected but now as she belongs to dalit community everyone is objecting. According to Indian law if a upper caste person calls dalit a dalit that is termed as casteism and so if person is intimidating others about a caste discrimination should also be termed as casteism. Then came the Worli-Sea link road where the name obsessed politician on Congress side named the road as Rajiv Gandhi Road while the Shivsena sent sms about this to everyone because they wanted it name as Veer Savarkar. Politicians need to grow up, they are mostly into there 60+ and it seems that ageing effect is working is effecting the wisdom in reverse way. We have seen in past how people change names of cities, roads, bridges and monuments at their own will. Certainly there was no need to change name of Bombay to Mumbai and VT to CST its just fancy of this diseased politicians. There was no problem with the bridge named as simply Bandra-Worli sealink but every party wants its trademark over the name. Finally Balasaheb Thackrey commenting in favour of French President Sarkozy, supporting him for banning burqa in France and then blamed the UPA for doing vote-bank politics to appease Muslims in India for not banning burqa. I am truly with Balasaheb Thackrey for banning burqa because if burqa has to be justified then such laws should be applicable to even the males in the Muslim society. Its a restriction for the women. Instead of banning burqa the women should be given options whether they want to continue with burqa or they don't want it, as for some women take pride in burqa and certainly we cann't take away their pride. Coming back to vote-bank politics every political party do the same, if I am not wrong then wooing only Marathi speaking people doesn't fit into the politics played by some parties. Certainly people living in glass houses should not throw stones on others.

Book Review: Inheritence series

2009-06-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

'Inheritence Series' is the first series written by Christopher Paolini which includes books namely Eragon, Eldest and Brisingr. The series is going to get over with the coming book which be last part of this series. Christopher Paolini is just 25 year old and wrote his first book, Eragon, when he was 17. The series is about adventure of Eragon, the dragon rider, and his dragon, Saphira. The book Eragon is about how Eragon is distined to get a dragon and become the last of his race by becoming a dragon rider, who were killed by cruel king, Glabotrix. The entire book depicts various events where the teenaged rider, who have never seen world other than his village, going through chain of fights, mishaps and battle through all odds to reach to the Vardens, who are fighting against Glabotrix for years. The second book 'Eldest' is about Eragon maturing as a dragon rider and learning various skills which a dragon rider is supposed to know. The story eleborates more on dragon rider and their history. In the end Eragon faces the reality that he is not the only dragon rider when his brother too becomes a rider but joins the bad side Glabotrix. The build up of second part is carried in the third book, Brisingr. Brisingr is the first magical word learnt by Eragon when he becomes dragon rider in the first book. Unlike other books where the hero is very powerful and of same might of villain, here the hero is a lot weaker than the villain and now he is in search of things or skills which will enable him to defeat Glabotrix. Brisingr is completely high paced book and when the book ends you just wish for more but sadly that is only possible when the fourth book will come. The writting and story of Inheritance series clearly shows high influence of JRR Tolkein on Christopher Paolini. Characters in his book do resemble to that in LOTR but its definitely not a copy but its incremenatal innovation on existing idea. Language used is good and easy to understand with abundance in quantity and quality. I would say hats off to our rising star and may be JRR Tolkein of 21st century. It will be too early to compare him with anyone but surely if you are fantasy fan and you like LOTR, then you will ceratainly find this series interesting. I would suggest these as must read books for all fantasy fans.

Movie Review: Bolt

2009-06-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Bolt is really a cartoon movie worth watching not only for its animation but also for its story. The story is about a dog whose name is Bolt. The animation are very close to reality and the very first scene will remind you of how puppies usually do, if you have every seen dogs closely. The story starts as a thriller drama but then story changes when you find that the dog is actually a movie star who doesn't know that it is acting in a movie, very similar to 'The Truman show'. The dog thinks that he is super dog and the story completely revolve around the dog and how he finds that he is not a super dog. There are many funny scenes with mind blowing animation. The movie has tried to capture minute details of reality like how puppies happily come behind master, how pigeons move, how puppies run behind their tail and all possible silly things. Overall the movie is really entertaining. If you liked 'Ratatouille' then you will also like this. I will like to give this movie 4 out of 5. I have seen this movie on DVD two months back and its has released in India this friday, it will be more fun to watch it on the big screen and that too with that 3D special effects.

King is dead but the sound rulz

2009-06-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

26th June 2009 the world was stunned by the death of "King of Pop", Michael Jackson. A person who ruled the top chart busters maximum number of times went down when he was about to make his greatest comeback. Music gave Michael Jackson fame and all richness but that didn't saved him from being bankrupt. It was this comeback which was going to help MJ to regain the old royal status, atleast help him to overcome bankrupcy. Michael was declared dead when he stopped breathing after he was injected with painkillers as complained of exhaution due to the comeback rehersal. MJ has been to India only once but its his music, voice and dance which has made him a household name in India. Though MJ has been linked up children due various child molestation cases registered against him but its truly the teenagers and children who are among the majority of MJ's fan following. This songs have always brought something new and his earthly moon walking has been fancy of any dancer. MJ is truly into greats not only because of his popularity but also in terms of sales of his albums. He truly lived upto his name of "King of Pop" and even now when he has left us, its his voice which still rulz over the world of music.

Iran colored red and green

2009-06-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

Since June12 when the results of Iran's election was declared there has been huge protest against the result by the supporters of the loser leader, Mousavi. Mousavi is seen as their hope of change against the oppressive and restrictive government. In Iran the religious leader, Khemni, has the highest power followed by the president. It is the religious leader who is the inspector during the complete election process and there is some rumor that the present president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was favourite of the religious leader while Mousavi was viewed as person who gave importance more to liberalization than the restrictive religious rule. But the Iranian have showed that they are really willing for a change this time around and the protests they are conducting everyday by coming out in huge numbers wearing the green dress or green band which was sign of Mousavi, which reminds many of the great Iranian revolution in 1979. People are really fighting for their rights which have been curbed by the authoritarian government. The government which have taken away rights of expression is finding difficult to compete with the new fighting tool of people which Internet have gifted them. Iranian are continuously voicing at twitter and various other social sites. Everyday protesters are coming out in thousands and venting their accumulated anger and frustration out. They are using youtube wisely and making the world aware about their needs and how innocent people like Neda are killed by the government. The Iranian have filled the atmosphere with green effect and are even ready to shed out some red for the future of Iran. The power house of Iran is not ready to accept this change but they are finding it difficult to contain even after continuous threats which were given under label of caution. Even women of Iran, who are the most affected part of the chauvinistic Iranian society, are also riding the green horse of change. The clerics are blaming western countries for misleading people of Iran but in reality its upto them how they accept the change or keep on denying something which is evident to everyone.

Sibal rewriting bible

2009-06-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

On Thursday India's HRD minister, Sibal, came up with a plan of revamping the education system of India. He hinted towards only one board exam and bringing the complete education of India under one banner or one curriculum. The second move is really very interesting which can even help to settle all problems regarding admissions in junior colleges in Mumbai. It will also ensure that education standards all over India are same with slight variation factors like including state language or general awareness of regarding state to which the student belong. The former hint of discarding 10th exam to ease out stress of students really doesn't help anyone in this competitive world. If skills of students are not tested then certainly we are not preparing our future citizens appropriately as they will be not be strong enough to take up challenges and hence this kind of shielding will not really help us to be a global player. After announcement of Sibal UP's chief minister, Mayawati, came up with grading system for 10th standard students. Grading is also one kind of shielding which again can create many problems, one of the prominent problems that can be faced is how will the junior college decide which students are to be taken and which students are not supposed to be taken. This might eventually lead into catalyzing the process of seat selling in colleges. Distressing is what the main objective of all this moves and this can be done better by giving more choices to students in selecting subjects of their liking. Some of those subjects will be calculated while other will be graded depending on choices filled by students. Again the problem here which government will face is to bypass the protective parents and their perceptions which most of the times leads into forcing students taking subjects which they don't like. Hence the education revamp should also include novel techniques of educating parents and helping them to connect with their kids better. Finally there is also an urgent need to make our system more practical rather than theoretical, which has resulted into unemployable educated people. The prospects seems brighter that government is really willing to put forward reforms in more organized fashion and the nomination of Nandan Nilekani for the grand project of Unique Identification Card is feeler for that.

Zillionth synonym added millionth time: Politician = Irrational

2009-06-25T00:51:00.000-07:00

Government of Maharashtra has shown one more time that it lacks ability to take decision. The government came under scanner during the complete MNS issue and the Mumbai terrorist attack case. I have started believing in their supreme ability of complicating simple issues and get puzzled or create unnecessary chaos when things can be solved by simple ways. Last year government came up with some percentile method, which was atleast sensible to some extent as compared to this new quota, but got one tight slap from the court. And after that there was an year of inaction and then suddenly Vikhe Patil started attention seeking news, first by talking about implementing Marathi as compulsory subject for CBSE and ICSE board students and then attempting to implement some out of the box thinking by pulling out the old quota formula from his hat. There is surely disparity between the other boards and Maharashtra board in terms of syllabus. Syllabus of other boards are upto the mark setting high standards while the Maharashtra board syllabus have been just based on NCERT board but was never upto the mark. At the same time the marking scheme of other boards empowers them with good score as there mark-sheet takes into account of those 4 subjects where they scored highest. I really think something should be done for SSC students because I was among top fifty students of SSC in 2000 and was unable to make into the best college there reasons were not only the other board students but also the caste based reservation. Quota is really not a solution and if it is a solution it is only for a short term but the misery is that quota has become a longterm solution. Quota can do only one thing and that is further diversify the diversified Indian society. One of the solution is certainly percentile based system but need to look how we can accommodate students from all the board without any injustice and this will really be one tough nut to crack. Second option is give options to other board students to voluntarily select board before 10th standard and making a provision that only common subjects will be taken into consideration for scores. Third option is keep an entrance exam for all and end all fights. What we really expect from our dear education minister is that he does some research and some homework before he decides or arrives at some conclusion because his irrational decisions shows a need of management and decision making education for him.

Reservation: A generalized solution

2009-06-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

If we go around the globe people discriminate based on color, one will be termed as either black or white or brown. In India people believe that color is gods gift and so they don't discriminate based on color. But caste or religion is not a gods gift and hence they try to discriminate based on this parameter. In pre-independence period India was divided based on brahmins the self proclaimed upper cast and the shudras or dalits the people forced as lower caste and in post independence period the table has been turned thanks to the ingenious solution of 'reservation' which even Mahatma Gandhi objected. For Indians religion or caste is thicker than blood. People are ready to do any crazy thing for the sake of that and politicians being wise to understand this psyche of people. Politicians have used this as tool to accumulated votes for longtime, but election 2009 has turned tables on the politicians head. People have refused to accept atleast divide between Hindu and Muslims. But the caste still goes stronger, the reason for this has been the stronger incentives provided to lower caste people which is called as 'reservation'. Government is feeling reservation is solution for all problems based on discrimination. They are very soon going to release women's bill giving 50% reservation to women. Reservation empowers a crippled to some extent but there are loopholes in the system which helps the opportunist to wrongly use the reservation. Reservation should actually be for the poor people of all caste, creed and religion because this will avoid misuse of reservation. Let me explain you how. Todays form of reservation is based on caste and religion which doesn't change for descendants even when they have overcame poverty and hardship. But suppose the reservation is based on economic level, the person poor today can take help of reservation to be rich tomorrow and certainly will not be entitled to use reservation tomorrow because now he is not poor. This will ensure that the tool called reservation is not used wrongly. But before implementing this there is need to seal some loopholes where even a rich guy pretends to be poor and takes benefit of the loopholes in system. I feel women's bill is just another reservation to further divide the so called secular and united India into smaller fractions. I remember now the old saying “God made us identical”.

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Movie Review: X-men origins-Wolverine

2009-06-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

X-men origins is prologue of X-men series. The story is about how Logan becomes Wolverine. The story starts with Logan as kid who kills his father accidentally and for the first time becomes aware about his unusual ability. The story continues with bloody wars fought by Logan and his brother, Victor, who too has similar abilities as Logan. The story takes a turn when Strider takes them under his wings in his special team of mutants but Logan leaving the team in the end because of conflict of interests. Logan is now living a peaceful life with his wife who too is mutant which Logan doesn't know. The world completely changes for him when victor kills his wife and to take vengeance Logan accepts to be part of an experiment which gives him the metallic body and sharp metal coming out of his fist. Its completely action packed movie with very little scope for acting. The action reminds me of Die Hard 4 and the complete movie is a fast paced and keeps you glued to the screen. The animation is nicely done and this movie is really a treat to all fantasy and science fiction fans. I would like to give a 4/5 for this movie.

India tending towards a failed state

2009-06-21T22:32:00.000-07:00

In 2007 the Failed state index of India was 110, in 2008 the rank was 98 and now currently the rank of India is 87. Improvement in rankings means decrease in standards and this is sign of danger. But if compare our state with China there FSI rank has changed from 62 in 2007 to 57 in 2009, while the countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Srilanka and Nepal all are declared as failed states. Failed state indexing is done by organization called “Fund for Peace”. The indexing is actually based on three main parameters which are termed as Social indicators, Economic indicators and Political indicators. Apart from this there are overall 12 sub-parameters out of which 4 are for social indicator, 2 for economic indicator and 6 for political indicator. In comparison India has actually bettered its economic index but social and political index has weakened. The four sub-parameters of social indicators are mounting demographic pressure, complex humanitarian emergencies, legacy of vengeance and chronic & sustained human flight. India has maintained most of its value in social indicators except in complex humanitarian emergencies where it has changed its index from a larger margin i.e. from 2.2 to 4.9. Complex humanitarian emergencies checks about the forced uprooting of large community as a result of random or targeted violence causing food shortage, lack of clean water etc. The major change has been in political indicators which has been main reason of India gaining in FSI. Highest change has been observed in the sub-parameter related with security of state which has changed from 5 to 7.1 and in case of intervention of other states which changed from 4.2 to 5.1(here higher the value the worse condition becomes) . Actually the parameters in which India observed are directly or indirectly related with security of India. Hence we can conclude that India should be looking forward to strengthen the security. The other political indicators shows an increase in corruption level, misuse of political powers and communalism. Even in case of economic indicators alls not well. All these values are signs of caution and the new government has some tough task at hand because their decisions will decide the fate of India. Right now India is in warning zone of FSI now it depends on us whether we want India to be in the failed state category or out of the warning zone.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state

http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=366

http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=140

The 3 three lettered taboo words

2009-06-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

The three words which can generate huge drama around them is cow, pig and sex. This three words has retained for long time the high status of taboo. Cow for Hindus being holy and so eating beef is a taboo in Hindus. It was during Vedic times where during the times of drought or scarcity of food people used to slaughter animals and used to have grand feast. It was during that time reformers like Madhavacharya convinced the kings about the economics behind not eating cow meat. The reason was that people used to rely heavily on cows for dairy products, fertilizer, tilling the land and hence it was essential that cow was to be saved from slaughter. The kings were convinced by this and hence they made it rule in religion and this is how cow achieved the cow status. Following the same sentiment eating beef is taboo for Chinese Buddhist. In India if anyone doesn't follow this rule is considered as untouchable. People have tried to make sacred cow as a good political burger by politicizing slaughtering of cow and banning it across India. Similar such taboo comes for the Muslim counterparts, where food has been divided as halal and haram. Eating carnivore or omnivore like 'pig' is haram. At the same time drinking blood or alcohol is not acceptable. There are strict rules about animal slaughter that it should be done by Muslim or Person of Book(Christian or Jew) mentioning the name of Allah. Also animal cannot be killed by boiling or electrocuting and after slaughter it should be hung upside down to drip all the blood. Cow and pig are real religious taboo. One taboo more taboo word is “sex” which people don't try to take under the banner of India being a cultural country. There has been huge debate over imparting sex education to even the eight grader students. Reformers have ridiculed the syllabus defined by HRD where they try to put forward cultural myths in front of real sex education. In India its real need for sex education because of prevalent child marriages and around 14% of women getting married and pregnant in the age of 15-18 and with around half a million women getting pregnant around the age of 14. People just trying to enforce culture argue that sex education will activate children to have sex but the research conducted around the world shows a reverse picture. Sex education has brought positive impact in health and behavior like delaying the first sex by way of abstinence, reduction in frequency, decrease in change in partners and unprotected sex and increasing awareness about use of contraceptives like condom. The best way of giving sex education is by increasing the communication between parents and teens and also making information and clinical service to all children and youth. It should also be taught on neutral grounds rather than giving pointless religious reasons. It now only depends how people transform themselves and understand the real reason behind the taboo rather than blindly accepting anything done under the name of religion or culture. Every adult is wise enough to take right decision and certainly knowledge is power.

References
www.healthyteennetwork.org
www.advocatsforyouth.org
Wikipedia and some google search with key words as pig, cow, sacred cow, taboo beef, taboo pork.

Consanguinity in India

2009-06-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

What is common between Newton-Darwin-Einstein? All were scientists and all had consanguineous marriages. The word consanguineous is derived from Latin word where “con” means shared and “sanguine” means blood. Consanguinity means relationship between two people sharing same ancestors or same blood. In general relation with mother, father, brother or sister is termed as incest by law. But marriages between first cousins is accepted in many of the societies. In Arab Muslims marriage of man and it's fathers brother's daughter is preferred, in South India it's the man and mother's brothers daughter and uncle and niece union in Judaism. Such marriages are preferred because of various reasons like fear of marrying with stranger, increasing family bonding, restricting wealth in family alone etc. If one looks at consanguinity in India, 14% of marriages in India are consanguineous with maximum of 46% of marriages in South India being consanguineous. In Maharashtra as well 25% marriages are consanguineous. Consanguinity is faces the heat in terms of culturally in some places and medically in some other place. Like in North-Indian Hindus avoid consanguineous marriages under the banner of “gothra”. Lets see the medical aspect of this, in case of mother, father, son and daughter there are 50% of DNA in common, in case of uncle and aunt around 25%, for first-cousin its around 12.5% and that for second-cousin its 6.25%. According to research done the result suggests that for normal couple there are 98-99% chances of having normal baby while in case of consanguineous marriage its around 96-97% for having normal baby. Research do also suggests that consanguinity is one of the reason of genetic disorders but to what magnitude is debatable. It is said that if the family has a history of mental disorder then in case of a consanguineous marriage the likeliness of offspring having that mental disorder is more as compared to normal marriages. The question of consanguineous marriages being acceptable is still a cultural or medical issue in either case its still unanswered. The code to crack this puzzle is only with Einstein, Darwin and Newton.

References:
www.wikipedia.org and search of consanguinity, article on “Problems with consanguineous marriage” (The Hindu on 24th April, 2004 by G. Kumaramanickavel ), http://www.indianjpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2009/51/1/3/44897 (Indian journal of psychiatry), http://www.indianjpsychiatry.org/text.asp?2009/51/1/50/44906 and for others type “consanguinity” or “consanguinity in india” or “cousin couples” or “cousin marriages”

Voters registration

2009-06-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

Maharashtra State election are coming near and here is chance for those above 18 people who missed out of registration, get themselves registered before 22nd of July, 2009. Following links can be helpful:

http://ceo.maharashtra.gov.in/
http://eci.nic.in/forms/forms_Voters.asp
http://www.jaagore.com/faq.html

People register yourself as soon as possible and get yourself counted. If you don't perform your fundamental duty as a responsible citizen of India you don't have right to blame or ask questions to Government.

Indian sports

2009-06-10T03:41:00.000-07:00

Today if anyone goes through any newspaper or magazine there is a feel good factor about India. India growing on all fronts and so how can Indian sports be behind. Most of the post independence period of India have been monopolized by cricket with other sports existing only for the name sake and the national game hockey fading under the shine of cricket. In past few sports person have shown some hope like P T Usha, Prakash Padukone, Gopichand, Dhanraj Pillai etc but they were diminished to only human beings in front of aura of cricketing demi-gods. Then came a time when Indian attention was captured by tennis sensational duo Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati. They rising to fame was sign of changing India but the duo were not able to settle personal problems and hence the problem of Indian sports also remained unsettled. Their success helped in atleast addressing the problem to some extent. I am sorry for not naming the Indian Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand who has been the shining star even in the broad daylight of cricket. In past few years image of Indian sports has changed a lot with promising and performing sports person like Abhinav Bindra, Saina Nehwal, Vijendra Singh and along with them Leander and Mahesh performing even after splitting. Saina feat of bagging the most promising player award for 2008 from Badminton World Federation (BWF) by climbing the ranking ladder to the 7th spot which was once expected from the tennis sensation Sania Mirza. Its not only the performing stars but also the interest of government and world sports association to lift the image of other sports has helped Indian sports. The recent news that FIFA is going to invest in India to build world standard grounds is really going to breathe new life into the emerging sport of football. Its now right time to build stronger nation and stronger citizens in all respect so that tomorrow we can solve the puzzle of one billion population and just one gold.

Oz: The MNS downunder

2009-06-10T03:38:00.000-07:00

Last year Mumbai say the ugly face of racist attacks based on region led by MNS, part of India was moved but some remained unmoved. Now its the Oz who is playing MNS in the drama “Down Under”. This time around by just ten incidents people in Oz and India have moved completely. External Affairs minister giving strong warnings to Australia but what happened when MNS was on rampant. There is no difference between what is happening in Oz and what happened in Mumbai. But when it happened in mumbai many of the top ministers maintained their silence letting MNS on rampant. Indians in Oz are similar to North Indian in Mumbai. I think Mr. Raj should come forward now in support of Oz and give strong warnings to Indian government. Its actually sad to see the bad treatment given just on basis of race, caste, region or language and it really force me to think do I really live in the twenty first century or we have actually cracked the code of fourth dimension and going back in past.

India 2050

2009-06-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

Lets try to go in future and see what will be India in 2050. Todays date 9th June, 2050, Indian government has yesterday passed yet another justifiable reservation rule. According to this new rule now Mumbai air will divided in various percentages by using sophisticated tools imported from Germany. This machine is well automated and nicely designed which helps the government to implement the air reservation rule. First there will be 50% air reservation for women and 50% for the men. Any men taking away the women air will be sentenced capital punishment. He will be left in space devoid of air. Further in men and women there will be further 50% reserved for open category and 50% for the reserved category. In the 50% open category, 7% will be given to migrant population and 3% for the physically handicapped, the same rule will be applied for reserved category. In 50% reserved category, 27% will be reserved for OBC, 13% for SC, 13% for ST, 5% for NT1, 5% for NT2, 5% for NT3 and new castes will be added soon. Government is yet to arrive at a proper ratio and there are rumors that open category reservation are further going to decrease. After a grand meeting of finance minister and prime minister they have arrived a conclusion that any reserved category earning more than 38lakh per annum will termed as creamy layer. There have been nation wide agitation by some particular sect for demoting them from caste NT1 to NT3. Poor people are asked to leave the country as India doesn't have enough air for them and the rich people can get more air through management quota by paying 5times extra amount for the air access fee. India has been growing at a GDP of 20%, technologically advanced than any other country in world and certainly is the largest and finest democracy where we have diversity in unity which is finely manipulated by our super human politicians. I forgot to mention about the new language cess applied on air, which means if you are in Maharashtra and you don't speak marathi then a part of percentage of your air will be reduced. This is applicable to all 78 states and 30 Union Territories of India. WTF means whats the funda.

Corrupted roots

2009-06-04T22:17:00.000-07:00

Two medical college caught with pants down. It was found that this college was taking high donation fee for admitting students illegally. All news channel, newspapers, politicians, radio, everyone discussing about removing recognition of those two colleges. I was wondering that very soon if they continue to do so every college barring few will have to be shutdown as this practice is present from longtime. In case of medical seats one won't be getting admission in current year but will be paying for next year. This is known as advance booking. Lets see into economics of this. The admissions based on donation have a very high demand and thats why comes the supply side. If the government wants to stop this banning the college is not the alternative but it needs to address the issue at grass root level. Government should target people who takes admission via this system. Its because of this people colleges have management seats. Its because of this filthy rich guys who try to corrupt the system. If the pipe has choked don't change the pipe, try to clear the dirt that is causing the choke only then we can ensure an efficient system. Government is not acting on those people because majority of those are politicians, industrialists and those people who are just willing to throw money at all time. Government should take strict action against people who wants to take management seats. People should be stripped of their degrees which will be a good lesson for all those filthy rich guys. But as it is known that power runs from barrel of the gun, government is not willing to take such steps. This is known as curing the disease and not the symptom.

Fiction to reality

2009-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Human have an unique ability to imagine and its not only just imagination but they are also gifted with abilities to work over their imagination and convert it into reality. If I talk about examples there are many such examples like cars, electricity, trains, planes, computers, plastic surgeries, heart transplants, astronauts etc. The list is never ending as the moment we achieve something we start imagining something new. I think this is the only gift which keeps the man kind to move in the upward direction of development. Few recent news if you have read is about trans-genic animals or about breathing life in already extinct species. Trans-genetics is a very interesting topic and study over this in controlled environment should always be encouraged. But history shows that human ambitions and dreams play a very complicated role and often captures human mind, forcing it to do things which should not be done. Latest was about the wolly mammoth which was making news of scientists were able to regenerate 70% of the extinct DNA. The story is similar to that of Jurassic Park where scientists are able to regenerate the DNA of dinosaurs by help of part DNA of frogs. There it was ambition of making amusement zoo which lead into total destruction, here though mammoth are not dangerous carnivorous animals like dinosaurs but who knows wrong restructuring of DNA will lead into some dangerous monster. Its not only the danger of monster but also there is a possibility that recreating something by being god can lead into some disease like swine flu or bird flu. But certainly any kind of scientific development should not be stopped by just a mere possibility. Lets see in search of answers for unknown where will this wings of imagination lead human being.

When I am gone.....

2009-05-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

Philosophies are the tough nuts to digest. But lets assume a case when you will be gone. I assumed the case about when I am gone and I can imagine nothing but darkness. When you think about life you think about memories you cherish and the people around you and when you think of death its a long dreamless sleep from which you are never going to wakeup. If you keep on pondering over the question what after the death you have a cold chill running throughout your body sensing nothing other than blankness in mind. Life and death is not in hands of human being, only thing in human beings hand is how he can make his progress in life. Death is a painful phenomenon not only for the person who dies but also for people around the person. Losing a loved one is like losing a part of body but as it is said by everyone that life moves on, people overcome this pain and try to be like normal human beings. Death is inevitable but the time when you feel death is nearing by every passage of time is more deadlier than the real death. I hope noone undergoes that circumstance.

MNS – Maharashtra 'No'nirman sena.

2009-05-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

In this election MNS do surprised everyone with the amount of votes its candidate received in Mumbai. In most of the constituency MNS was second after Congress. Votes were an indication that Raj card of marathi manoos was taken nicely. When MNS was formed many new comers got chance and most of the candidates fielded by MNS were educated candidates. MNS really looked like party of future of Maharashtra. But one day Raj pulled up uncle's old thinking hat from the rusting trunk. Raj do have capability of being a people's leader but the old thinking hat has overpowered him. Our country has already been battling with various discrimination like caste, religion, gender and economic status and now sena has contributed for a new discrimination that is based on language. Language discrimination do exists in southern India, but no one there has used for political benefits. If we observe in India many cosmopolitan cities exists but the true cosmopolitan city was Mumbai. Yes, I am saying was because Raj has been successful in bringing disrepute to cosmopolitan image of Mumbai. “To whom do Mumbai belong?” is his question. This is really a very difficult puzzle to solve as the land was first discovered by Portugese, then raised by Parsi community and then came everyone slowly and steadily in search of jobs. It has also put me in one more dilemma, what is elegibilty criteria for being a marathi manoos? Is a person having non-marathi mother tongue, born and brought in Maharashtra, most of the ancestors also from Maharashtra, fit to be called Marathi Manoos?

Yeh hai youngistan meri jaan – Indian Cabinet

2009-05-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

Congress is riding on Rahul's image of young India. If one looks at the huge 79 membered cabinet one can see that the cabinet has a healthy mixture of oldies, middle aged and relatively younger lots. The average of cabinet has become 3 years younger as compared to previous year. The cabinet has not only been younger but also cleaner and more literate people included in it. Agatha Sangma became the youngest cabinet minister at age of 28. If you analyze the cabinet education wise most of the ministers are graduates sparing few ministers like Dinsha Patel (Minister of Small & Medium Enterprises) and Sriprakash Jaiswal (Minister of Coal Statistics). The cabinet was a formed keeping past performance and credibility of a particular minister. But at some point congress had to leave its agenda of performing and cleaner ministers due to ally blackmails and various others reason like regional and social representation keeping the next election also in mind. Altogether cabinet has been nicely engineered and looks promising enough to be a performing cabinet rather than just power hunger animals. PM has already sent strong message to his new cabinet that either you perform or perish by keeping review of every ministry on quarterly basis. Lets hope this new train of ministers will put the development engine back on track.

"Gold Bird" returning to glory

2009-05-26T04:29:00.000-07:00

Some hundreds of years back there was a bird that was known as “Golden bird”. It had a sparkling gigantic nest. The nest was so huge that many people used to live in it and in return used to improve the status of the nest. People all over the world were amazed by the richness of the nest. It was not only rich in terms of wealth but also in terms of natural resources, knowledge and culture. Many greedy people were eying this bird for long and then some strangers got a way to get into this bird's nest. It was humbleness of this bird that allowed this strangers to its nest. But it was never able to understand the true intention of these strangers. Slowly and steadily they started finding weakness of this bird and making small advances into the birds nest. The bird never realized that and suddenly was cornered by these strangers in its own nest. Bird was robbed and was left in miserable condition after ransacking its nest. The strangers robbed everything but were not able to rob its character, its attitude and its ability to pounce back. The strangers wanted to destroy the nest but luckily a person stood tall and was able to devise a wonderful weapon called “Satyagraha”. The weapon helped to save the nest in time but before it could have restored the old status the weapon creator vanished and along with him the power of weapon was reduced. But the vision of creator was strong enough to instill faith back among the people of the nest and the bird. Luckily an associate of the creator took charge and started channelizing people towards restoring the old status of the nest. The associate, his heirs and many other powerful people started working hard to revolve the wheel of fortune. The 'wheel of fortune' had all secrets of future and the people really wanted it start moving. They used different methodologies and were breaking there brains harder to move it at faster pace. But whatever they did it was not enough. People were growing impatient, but suddenly one day one of the aide of associate heir applied a trick which he actually learned from the strangers. That aide reworked over the trick and the 'wheel of fortune' started turning faster. Suddenly many people were gifted with trade brains, which was a symbol that 'wheel of fortune' was happier with the efforts of the people. Trade brains empowered people to acquire foreign help and enabled them to make friends with the same strangers in their lands. Proximity of this gifted people with the strangers managed to bring some change in the attitude of strangers. These strangers were none other than heir of those greedy strangers but these new breed of strangers too helped the people of the nest to restore the status of the nest and the health of the bird. People were actually losing hopes about the golden bird but it managed to survive and regain a bit. It has started soaring higher in sky like the old times. It is spreading back the goodwill and richness to all the people not only in its nest but also to the strange lands of strangers.

Age of acquiring each other

2009-05-26T04:28:00.000-07:00

In the biggest ever deal of around $23-29bn which is double than the $13bn deal of Tata-Corus, Bharti, India's telecom giant and MTN, Africa's Telecom giant acquire each other. In times of recession this idea to expansion seems wonderful. According to plan Bharti is going to buy 36% of current MTN's equity while MTN is going to buy 25% of current Bharti's equity, with the buying process going in parts. After this revolutionary swapping Bharti will hold 48.8% of MTN's expanded equity, while MTN will hold 36.4% of Bharti's expanded equity. Effectively Bharti would have to pay $4.14bn in the end. After this tag team of Bharti-MTN will become world's 4th largest telecom entity after the three telecom players all from China, with subscriber base of 200mn. By help of this deal Bharti will spread its wing in 21 more countries and will become India's multinational player. The deal also has good future when we see that India is set to have 1bn subscriber by 2014. It is the third largest deal in 2009 but rest all deals were pharma deals. The biggest deal of 2009 was of that of Pfizer and Weyth in January which was of $64bn. This deal of Bharti enables India to firmly imprint the footprints of Indian companies in global market.

DMK: 'D'rama for 'M'inister post of 'K'arunanidhi

2009-05-24T22:10:00.000-07:00

UPA came it to power with 261 seats and INC winning 201 seats. It needed only 12 more seats to make the government but sill UPA went with power of 322 seats to make the government. The question was why UPA went to president with a tally of 322, when it required only 12? Why it went with a multi factured coalition government when it could stand on its own with less factures?

The drama created by DMK justified the need to go with tally more than required. DMK had a tally of 18 and still the demands by DMK were great. Added to that Raja and Balu, who were ministers in the last government had a bad track record as either being corrupt or non-performer, which one was the main reason still not so sure. Congress was not willing to have a minister with tarnished image and for the first time in Indian politics, government is looking forward for clean imaged politician, while in the earlier government the eligibility criteria was reverse; a person who is corrupt, illiterate and have more criminal records was ranked higher when given the prestigious cabinet seat. But the present government is looking forward to change all the old rules. DMK were not only demanding seats for corrupt leader but were also demanding more than what they deserved. People in India, specially politicians are greatly influeced by the cinema in India. No political story will be settled without some drama involved in it. The next change we can expect till the next election that the politicians learn some lesson and put country before them. Atleast one person have taken some lesson and has started sacking non-performers in UP.

The race of dark horses♠

2009-05-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

IPL2 has thrown many surprises this time around. The first was after tussle with the government due to clash of IPL and election dates, the venue was changed to South Africa. IPL like the developing India became globalized. The second surprise was it was a great crowd puller even in South Africa. The third one was that inspite of recession the franchise owner went on shopping spree. Last but not the least last year champions are out and now the two dark horses, Royal Challenger Banglore and Deccan Charger Hyderabad, who were number 7 and 8 respectively last year are into the IPL2 finals. Both these teams have improved their performance by leaps and bounds and were also one of the reason for a very competative tournament this year. The team which was out of the competition was Kolkatta Knight Rider, but their performance in the last two matches added some flavour to the tournament. T20 is really an unpredictable game, first because it is cricket and second its the shorter version of cricket. Final is really anyones game. Who knows, Deccan Chargers might have kept one Manish Pandey in reserve for this day!!

UPA back in power

2009-05-24T01:53:00.001-07:00

I think UPA coming back in power is sign of maturity of Indian voters, voting for a stable government rather than voting for religion or region. This victory is of Dr. Manmohan Singh, who has changed the face of politics. A person who is nowhere related with politics is today the prime minister of India. He has set example to youth that a person with great qualification and clean profile, can get into the so called dirty politics and try to help India and its people in a very different way. His victory with such a majority is victory of his reforms. This is victory of his vision for India. Last but not the least, Rahul Gandhi is really maturing and many people have hopes pinned over him. It will be this coming 5 years that will decide wether the verdict of Indian citizens was justified and is really Rahul Gandhi coming of the age.