All in the family

Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
We're off to never never land

- Enter Sandman, Metallica

So, the President's son Rajendra Shekhawat will contest the Maharashtra assembly polls from Amravati. Earlier, the son-in-law of the Hon'ble Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had contested elections on a Congress ticket from Kerala and lost.

"Conflict of interest" does not even begin to describe the massive constitutional impropriety involved in these moves. But then again, this is not surprising given the track record of the secular party. This is part of their regular programming. You see, even the most rudimentary rules of democracy appear to cramp their style.

What we are heading for is a Hugo Chavez style autocracy. All the framework is in place, including indoctrination of school children. After the liberalization, there was a brief period of turbulence during which the program got interrupted. But the secular party has got its Nehruvian mojo back, only this time it will also include a feudal capitalistic structure at the top because socialism does not generate any money and IMF is not likely to indulge. They have been systematically usurping the power of all our institutions and centralizing it to the core, a shadow coterie surrounding the Queen who call the shots. Only recently they captured a vital institution, the Election Commission, by putting a trusted member at the top.

All this is well known to the group of people who call themselves variously intellectuals, human rights activists, journalists etc. But they are in on the game.

It is not like there was no coverage: Sagarika Ghose of CNN-IBN posed a question on her Fake the Nation show: Is dynasty firmly entrenched in politics now? Really? Is that the central issue here? This is how they hoodwink the unwashed masses, who have been sternly asked to behave themselves during the upcoming Commonwealth games.

Sheilaji's fashion

Sheilaji is wearing what appears to be a Keffiyeh with a Gandhi cap at an Iftar party. This year pictures were hard to come by because of restricted access to press people. But this gotta be the best, in terms of symbolism or irony, you can't really top that.

Minority Report

Happy Iftar to you all. Today's report is simply called the Austerity Edition.

Trouble has been brewing, the Batla House encounter has the potential to become a trigger for eventual Kashmirization of entire India - more on it later. There was also significant belated outrage regarding the Ishrat Jahan encounter case - fuelled by perhaps the most dangerous political conspiracy this year. Meanwhile, sops are raining down, the secular party is not yet done expressing their gratitutde - they are just getting started.

Police rescues eight girls
Eyes set on prime waqf property in city
Four persons arrested with fake currency
Sharp shooter of Atiq gang gunned down by rivals
Six held for conspiring to kill Sena corporator
Gangsters aide arrested for forcing builders to pay
Dispute over Rs 10 leads to murder
Drug racket busted 100kg charas worth Rs 8cr seized
Rape accused gets 7 yr RI
Man held for kidnapping minor
Three held for rape at Antop Hill
Miscreants throw acid on school teacher
Not too hard a nut to crack
Rejected suitor pals throw acid on 28 yr old principal
5 held for killing black magic victim
Man who raped niece planned to mislead cops
Rs 4 costs Dharavi man his life
4 held for Rs 83K credit card fraud
Woman slits rapists throat
2 held with fake currency notes worth 180 lakh
5 thugs arrested
Youth arrested for molesting 4 yr old
Two arrested for eve teasing
Three persons arrested for smuggling cows
Girl raped inside Gorakhpur railway station parcel house
Man gets 5 yr jail for rape of minor
2 more arrests in Rs 1cr angadia loot case
Two murders in a day in Surendranagar
State minority colleges flout rules sell seats
Spurned youth shoots at teacher kills self
Soccer clash Man killed resort burned
Accused duo went missing before cave in
Two years after man goes missing 3 held
Arrested LeT man may be linked to 2006 arms haul
Arrested LeT man did MA from LU
Travel agent accused of duping people
Tannery owners son fell into kidnappers honey trap
Let man held with explosives
Girl falls from 4th Floor survives
6 held on murder charges
7 Hizbul Mujahideen militants convicted in sedition case
Fake visa racket busted
Anatomy prof booked for lewd SMSes
Vedic official held for Gaffar links
Frightened girl dies after ghost prank
2 held in stalk shoot case
Congress MPs in Malda shrine pillage row
Convict gives cops the slip
Two Afghans held with fake documents
Mujib gets lifer in arms haul case
Raped by father of 4 minor becomes pregnant
Valsad gangrape case 2 held remanded for 13 days
ISI man behind influx of fake Indian notes into country
22 year old found hanging hubby arrested
Adnan Sami held granted bail in case filed by wife
22 year old found hanging hubby arrested
Ansaris house raided
12 year old repeatedly raped by security guard
Citys forsaken Arab children search for parents
Suspected jihadi held at airport
ISI agents son spills beans on Pak Nepal link to fake notes
LeT operative held in Delhi tried to lure Maharashtra youths Cops
Another grave found dug up 1 arrested
Cops look out for 21 Lucknow students after LeT suspects arrest
Man kidnaps neighbours child to seek revenge
7 arrested for blackmailing realtor
Gangsters relative held with revolver Rs 5L seized
Immigration racket busted three arrested
Vehicle lifter his wife and two chain snatchers arrested
Undertrial escapes from police custody
Now counterfeit dollars flood Indian market
Teenager raped
STF busts gang of auto lifters in Kanpur
Two taking cattle for slaughter held
Guns money a marred village idyll
6 held for hoisting Pak flag over dargah
Kerala ATS questioning Lashkar sympathiser
Bangalore blasts suspect arrested at Thiruvananthapuram airport
Cops to study evidence on Abu Jundal
Vedic Village land grab goon nabbed
Man slits wifes throat in Howrah thrashed
Two criminals held
NIA team in city to collect fake currency samples
Ali Bhai confessed to burglary plot Police
Moulanas family awaits his release from prison
Man rapes woman after job offer held
Suspected ISI agent nabbed in Uttar Pradesh
Jailed for 21 yrs man talks Gandhi
Cops solve Rs 2L robbery within hours
Man held for selling Mhada flat duping victim of Rs 2L
Valsad gangrape accused to undergo narco tests
16 year old beaten up raped by friend
Two arrested at Mumbai airport with narcotics
3 nabbed for big arms supply racket
Mira Road senior citizens attackers nabbed in MP
CRly employee suspended for misbehaving with woman staffer
Convict on parole held for stealing
Man held for duping NRI
Biggest ever haul Heroin worth Rs 48 cr seized
Court grants remand of ISI agent
Man gives away daughter in game of cards
9 Al Umma prisoners released

Previous:

Minority Report - August 2, 2009
Minority Report - May 10, 2009

Moily's Law

Veerappa Moily is obviously the most dangerous politican in the UPA II cabinet.

From what we know about the man, his concept of constitution is far at odds with most everyone. Moily is the classical socialist in the Hugo Chavez mold who believes that social justice trumps the constitution.

Actually, Moily goes one step beyond that. He is a believer in iterative justice, i.e. iterate till you get the desired outcome.

Two recent cases where Moily has heavily weighed in publicly are the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and the OBC count case. In the first instance, we are in the second iteration: Tamang report valid, but HC directive to stay the report is invalid. So, we are going to have another iteration - naturally at the apex court. Any guesses if SC upholds the HC verdict? Anyone remember Afzal Guru?

The OBC count has by now gone through several iterations, the recent one clearly going against Moily's desired outcome. Needless to say, Moily isn't going to stop trying.

The Times of India's lame cover up for one of their own

Well, one of their own in more ways than one. Here is the PTI version:

Senior journalist arrested for rape

Kolkata, Sept 11 (PTI) Senior journalist S N M Abdi, who was one of the first to bring to light the Bhagalpur blindings of 1980, was today arrested on rape charges.

Abdi, who is in his fifties and working with the South China Morning Post, was alleged to have raped a 29-year-old woman when she went to his flat at New Alipore area in South Kolkata yesterday evening. The woman in her complaint alleged that Abdi had asked her to come to his house for a job interview. When she went there, Abdi along with a friend, Saiful Islam, raped her.

Police arrested Abdi from his residence this morning based on the complaint by the woman. Abdi was produced before the chief judicial magistrate of Alipore court who remanded him in police custody till September 16 after rejecting his prayer for bail. [PTI]

Most newspapers published this version, while The Times of India massaged it:

Man rapes woman after job offer, held

KOLKATA: A middle-aged man was arrested on the charge of raping a housewife at his New Alipore flat on Thursday. Another accused, however, is absconding. The two allegedly assured the woman that they would get her a railway job and called her to the flat on Thursday, according to joint CP (headquarters) Jawed Shamim.

'Medical test confirmed that she had been raped,' he said. The woman told police that a few days back, she came in contact with Saiful, the arrested man’s aide who offered her the job. [TOI]

The man is not named, his profession is glossed over. The article is written in a strangely twisted manner - if you are not careful you will miss the fact that Saiful the aide is the absconder.

Abid's lawyer is pleading a pretty strange defense:

Abdi's counsel Tamal Mukherjee submitted that the woman's allegation was false and made with an ulterior motive. Stating that Abdi had a bypass surgery just five months ago, Mukherjee said it was not possible for him to commit such an act and also that he was a man of impeccable character. [DNA India]

It was easy to to find the South China Morning Post, the newspaper Abdi works for and search for articles written by him during the time frame he had the aforementioned bypass surgery (see image at the top of the post). According to the lawyer, he must have had his bypass surgery sometime in April. His articles were published on 14th March, 28th March, 4th April, 8th May, 12th June and so on.

It is possible to be able to write an article within 2 - 3 weeks of a bypass surgery. But then again it is quite possible to have sex within five months, especially if he had help from someone in restraining the woman. This is assuming of course there was indeed such a surgery performed on the man.

This is hardly conclusive evidence of guilt but suspicions remain. Given the current situation in our country, Abdi's best defense could be secularism.

Encounter killing suspected Hindus is Okay

Police issues shoot-at-sight orders in wake of church attack

BANGALORE: Shoot-at-sight was ordered by authorities in the wake of an attack on a church in the outskirts of the city. City police commissioner Sankar Bidary issued the shoot-at-sight order to police stations coming under city limits. [link]

Even as a firestorm rages in the secular media over the Ishrat Jahan encounter killing, they completely ignore it when a Police Commissioner of a major city orders "shoot-at-sight". This is a current event, we are not even talking about how it took them six decades to wake up to "encounter killings".

Sagarika Ghose, in her latest Face the Gullible Idiots show discussed whether Fake encounters are a result of anti-Muslim bias. Is it really? If we recall, there was a movie called Ab tak Chappan (56 and counting). Can we say "fake" encounters really reflect an anti-criminal bias in the backdrop of a broken justice system? Maybe there is an anti-terrorist bias?

Anyway, coming back to the current story, the order to shoot-at-sight (i.e. just kill, no need to even fake) was issued when there was another installment of Church vandalism. We heard those stories before.

Surely, encounter killing terrorists is a little less outrageous than encounter killing vandals? Or does it depend on the religion of the people getting killed in encounters?

The Immature Prince

Will our little Prince ever grow up?

I said, anybody wants to come into our system, is more than happy to come ... uhhh... as long as the person is not a criminal and I don't think Mr Rajinikanth is a criminal. He is most welcome to come. We don't ... we don't put any uhhh.. roadblocks ... [...] we are not reaching out to any particular .... to any particular person. [link][Our Transcript]

Reporters of the Royal Court re-scripted it to add a little bit more structure and coherence:

"He is most welcome to come. We don't put any roadblocks, I do not think Rajinikanth is a criminal. Our system is open to anybody who wants to enter it. The only barrier we put is the barrier of criminality, however, we are not reaching out to any particular person."

In our opinion, the court transcript took away the Royal flavor.

The Prince ventured out to dangerous territory here and that's why the handlers must never ever leave him alone. The reporters ask him to comment on the rumors of Rajinikanth joining the Congress and the first thing that comes to his mind is criminal records?

Of course, "baldfaced lie" is what comes to our mind:

3. BJP has maximum MPs having criminal cases - 42 MPs have criminal

cases against them, out of which 17 MPs have serious criminal cases against them. It has followed by congress - 41 MPs with criminal cases out of which 12 MPs have serious charges against them.

This is from the National Election Watch press release about the newly elected Lok Sabha. So, Congress does better than the BJP by 1 MP. One of the MPs who make the grade happens to be Varun Gandhi.

Additionally, about the 79 ministers of the 15th Lok Sabha, the NGO has this to say:

1. There are pending criminal cases against 9 ministers and 1 of them
has a serious IPC charge against him. INC has 7 such ministers; Trinamool Congress & DMK have 1 minister each with criminal records.

2. There are 47 crorepati ministers in the new Lok Sabha. INC has 38,
DMK has 5, NCP has 2 and JKN & AITC has 1 crorepati minister each.

These are just the most visible faces of Congress in the Central Government. People living in those unfortunate places where news does not happen could tell you a lot more.

It almost appears that one needs to have a criminal record to qualify for the secular party. Unless you are a crorepati, don't even think about it.

IMPACT: Gujarat HC strikes down Tamang report

Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, the "impact" part. We were just channelling CNN-IBN there.

Expectedly, the Gujarat High Court stayed the controversial Tamang report. All the major news websites are carrying a highly scrubbed PTI version:

However, the court has given liberty to Ishrat's mother to produce the report before the three-member committee constituted by the High Court last month to investigate the encounter. It further said the report can be considered as evidence by the committee.

This is merely a convenient rephrasing of:

Even while granting the stay, the High Court allowed the report to be submitted to the three-member committee of IPS officers. The panel would, however, to act on the report 'on merit', the court ruled. [link]

See, what a difference "merit" makes?

Meanwhile, the Central Government reiterated yesterday that Ishrat Jahan and her companions were indeed disaster causing individuals:

'We stand by our affidavit (claiming the four were terrorists)... we are not backtracking,' Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. [link]

Now, when Right Hon'ble Home Minister Shri Chiduji returns from his Amrikka tour, the Home Secretary may have a change of heart, we don't know. Why do we say this?

According to highly-placed sources in the Law Ministry, a decision was taken on Wednesday to remove the Standing Counsel of the Centre in the Gujarat High Court, who vetted the affidavit, dated August 6, 2004 filed in response to a petition filed by Ishrat's mother in the High Court.

Speaking to The Pioneer, Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily said, "I have no comments to make on this subject." However, it has been learnt through reliable sources in the Ministry that the law officer to face the axe was Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Pankaj Champanehri, who oversaw the filing of the affidavit. [link]

So, Moily & Co. are issuing all sorts of statements to the press yet he fires his own official who helped the Home Ministry file an affidavit that contradicts those very statements. His eloquence suddenly evaporates when confronted with this.

The CEC should take suo motu cognizance of this matter and order an investigation. Oh, never mind.

Congress kick starts its campaign for Maharashtra Assembly Elections

The family of Ishrat Jahan celebrates the release of a "probe" report

Almost every major election in the past few years was preceded by some "sting" or "probe", usually just a few weeks prior. The Maharashtra assembly elections, due in just about a month, did not buck the trend. We call this a major coincidence, although the collectively ululating seculars are calling it a "fake" encounter.

Fake Encounter or Fake Report?

On June 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan and three males were killed in a police encounter in Ahmedabad (as claimed by the police).

In May 2008, the central Government approved the 2006 amendment to the CrPC code 176. This law specifically deals with custodial deaths, witness interrogation etc. and a description of amendment can be found here (pdf).

On Aug 13, 2009, the Gujarat high court formed a committee to probe the Ishrat Jahan encounter killing. The deadline for this committee was set for Nov 30.

An article in The Hindu claims that on Aug 12, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Ahmedabab forwarded a letter to [Additional] Metropolitan Magistrate SP Tamang to conduct an enquiry in the case and submit a report ASAP. Tamang completes the report in a record 25 days. It is funny that the Hindu article was intially titled: Modi government caught on the wrong foot. It was then changed to Ahmedabad Crime branch police caught on the wrong foot.

The article tries to establish that the aforesaid amendment enables a magistrate to take suo motu cognizance of encounter killings. It is funny it took so long and just before a major election and while another high level committee was about to be formed by none other than the HC for this suo motu thing to occur in Tamang's head.

Mr. Tamang's report said the Crime Branch police "kidnapped" Ishrat and the others from Mumbai on June 12 and brought them to Ahmedabad. The four were killed on the night of June 14 in police custody, but the police claimed that an "encounter" took place the next morning on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. That rigor mortis set in between 11 p.m. and midnight the previous night clearly pointed to the fact that the police pumped bullets into Ishrat's lifeless body to substantiate the encounter theory. [link]

Mr. Tamang's so called enquiry consisted of reviewing the case documents and contains a bunch of wild speculations. It does not appear he conducted any major interviews or extended investigations. It is not clear what makes Mr. Tamang qualified to analyze forensic reports, which he apparently did on his own, with the help of a medico-legal book.

Since the actual report does not seem to be available, we have to go by the second hand bits and pieces. If the Tamang report really says that Ishrat and the others were "kidnapped" from Mumbai, the needle of suspicion unfortunately points to the report rather than the encounter.

More in the next post.

Left vs. Left

Arundhati Roy goes ballistic over a review of her book in the Economist magazine. Well, Ms. Roy, they are on your side!

Funny thing is, given her reaction, one would imagine the review to be highly critical, but in fact it is mostly positive. The author holds Roy in high esteem and applauds her work. This is no surprise, the leftist ideologues are essentially shills for fascist regimes, so in their minds, they can not accept anything other than complete obeisance.

Incidentally, after considering the available information, the US government has denied Mr Modi a visa. A handicap, wouldn't you say, for a potential prime minister? Incidentally, for more on the Tata's "ethical dealings" you could google "Kalinganagar" or "Singur".

It also mildly amusing that for an endorsement of their anti-Modi views they essentially cite the one decisive Government action so far: the visa denial by a country that is the focal point of their hatred!

Of course, the fact that the land dealings in question were done by a communist Government is not important. The Tatas have undergone a significant downgrade. Long time secular party supporters and donors, the Tatas indirectly funded the leftists through their research institutes. The social institutes, scholarships and other programs run by the Tatas have been exploited to the hilt. Now that the Government is flush with post-liberalization tax receipts, they are no longer needed.

Arundhati Roy should not get so upset when people call her on her factual accuracy. In her own words:

As a writer, a fiction writer, I have often wondered whether the attempt to always be precise, to try and get it all factually right somehow reduces the epic scale of what is really going on.

Her wild exaggerations about the fetus killing and the manufactured accounts of gratuitous rape of a Congress MP's daughters are well documented. We documented some of her embellishments in a recent post, from a single article!

It is also disingenuous on Arundhati Roy's part to constantly blame colonization on Africa's problems, when many Africans themselves do not believe so. Even if we are to take all her arguments at face value, just because a foreign Government wants to mine your country, you don't have to slaughter half your population. Naturally she will completely ignore the role of religion (both varieties actually) in Africa's problems.

For someone who seems to be so against colonization, the realization does not dawn on her that she is essentially a "foreign" element trying to colonize the minds of folks of another religion through nefarious leftist tactics. This is perhaps the biggest irony of the Arundhati Roy story.

Replace exams with lottery

If the idea is put to a referendum, we suspect it will actually pass with a wide margin. It also illustrates why a "republic" works and a pure democracy does not.

When Kapil Sibal started sending feelers to the press, we were not quite sure the dude was going to actually follow through with his plan. For one thing, something as significant as this can not be initiated without buy-in from the political spectrum and of course the high command.

In any case, for now, the mandate appears to be only for CBSE.

The nine-point scale will start from A1(with 91-100 marks, exceptional), A2(81-90, excellent), B1(71-80, very good), B2(61-70, good), C1(51-60, fair), C2(41-50, average), D(33-40, below average), E1(21-32, needs improvement) and E2(00-20, unsatisfactory).

"This is good system which will very well judge the potential of a student," Sibal said.

Frankly, we do not see how this solves the "suicide" problem. Absent any clear statistics, one has to rely on newspaper reports. Students at all levels commit suicide. How many of them commit suicide for purely academic reasons?

If anything, the new grade system has the potential to put more kids at suicide risk. A kid scoring 90 will be one full grade behind the kid scoring 91. Won't pushy parents insist their kids get the highest grade? Will the system make parents scramble for ICSE boards?

Of course, seasoned readers of this blog know that the "suicide solution" trojan horse will eventually morph into the big beast of "social justice":

Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system will be put in place from October this year for those who are completing class-X in 2011. The CCE refers to a system of school-based evaluation of students, covering all aspects of pupils' development. It will cover the co-curricular activities, besides the core areas of subjects being studied in the classes. The CCE system will have two components -- formative assessment and summative assessment.

The formative assessment will be based on whole range of tests like interview, quiz, project work and practical assignments. It takes care of scholastic as well as co-scholastic aspects of pupils' growth. The scholastic aspects include curricular areas or subjects specific areas, while co-scholastic aspects include life-skills, attitude and values, physical and health related activities.

Formative and summative assessment? Co-scholastic aspects? WTF!!?

There are only two possibilities:

(a) They are letting Kapil Sibal play social reformer: good for the news wires and socialist intellectuals, a talking point of no consequence and lot of hot air. Proposal stays limited to CBSE X board exam, to be forgotten in due time.

(b) A precursor to bigger things to come.

We suspect the secular party wants to do a deep re-engineering of the entire exam system based approach. Social justice requires obfuscation. Grades are better than numbers. Naturally the "co-scholastic" aspects of a student will also involve caste and religion.

Rewards for the Azadi boys

If Azadi continues to elude them, the Kashmir separatist leaders are being amply compensated in matrimony.

- Yasin Malik (36/40/42 according to various sites) (JKLF) recently got married to Mashaal Malik (28) (pictured above). The bride is a Pakistani painter and reportedly a post graduate from London school of Economics. Late father was a Pakistani defense official and an internationally renowned economist. Her mom is a leader of Pakistan Muslim League (women's wing). The marriage took place in Karachi and attended by the high and mighty.

- Earlier this year, Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq married Sheeba Masoodi, a U.S. citizen. She is now in Kashmir and running a Feminist magazine.

- People's Conference chairman Sajjad Gani Lone also married the JKLF chairman Amanullah Khan’s daughter Asma Khan at a highly publicised ceremony in Islamabad in 2000.

These marriages reflect several realities of the Kashmir situation.

Contrary to the popular image of being on the run from the law and down on their luck, these separatists enjoy a grand life, shuttling between Pakistani cities, London and Kashmir. They come from influential moneyed families. It also reflects a societal attitude, they are considered desirable suitors for well accomplished women from established families, much like Engish Knights in Victorian times.

The alarming part is, there could be an information asymmetry between what the Indian establishment perceives and what is believed in the Pak/Azad Kashmir circles. Perhaps these women believe they are not marrying dissident leaders frowned upon by law in the political fringe of a nation they essentially hate but future leaders of an independent country.

Azadi, like most political promises, is seldom about greater common good. The Kashmiri commoner knows this, but it does not mean the separatist leaders will give up because they stand to gain windfall. The marriages merely prove that at least in that circle, the odds do not seem that bad.

As we have stressed on this blog before, like it or not, we may have to eventually give up Kashmir. Recent changes in the international political situation has only bolstered this belief (more on this later). A good start would be to reflect on what went wrong during the first partition. The recent opportunity to discuss it was squandered by political opportunists trying to score a political point but with millions of lives at stake, at least we could do this with a lot less chaos this time.

A New Africa

A new breed of young African intellectuals are rebelling against the "aid" regime. Among them are Dambisa Moyo (videos) and Thompson Ayodele.

We have much to learn from them.

"Private" mid-day meals serve almost a million kids in Karnataka

The mid-day meal scheme, like most socialist schemes attracts mixed reviews. Writers like Chandrabhan Prasad are vocal critics while the elite socialist crowd loves it. The scheme suffers from pilferage like all other Government programs and occasionally we hear horror stories - e.g. scalding daal kills girl, snake in mid-day meal etc.

Mohandas Pai, the then chief financial officer of Infosys Technologies, was visiting the Krishna temple of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Bangalore. Pai wondered: What if the temple could make a little extra to feed the children in nearby schools? Pai asked a friend to introduce him to Madhu Pandit Dasa, head of ISKCON. Dasa immediately agreed to the proposal provided Pai could help distribute the food. Pai offered to donate two vehicles that could transport 16 tonnes of food each. They started in June 2000, serving 1,500 children. Thus began a simple partnership that would go on to become Asia's largest mid-day meal programme.

Akshaya Patra's achievement lies not just in this scale, but in the way it has forged a public-private partnership: It has brought together a religious institution, a state government and a number of corporate executives on a common mission to lift children from malnutrition and illiteracy. A December 2006 study by ACNielsen found that the scheme was indeed achieving that purpose. And a growing number of schools can’t wait for it to scale up and reach them.

In the three years to 2008, the number of children being fed by Akshaya Patra trebled to 900,000. [edited for brevity and suspense] [link]

That should make everyone happy, right? Well, try again. It does not quite work that way in secular land.

The president of the State unit of the SFI H.R. Naveen Kumar alleged that the Karnataka government was saffronising education by privatising the mid-day meal scheme. International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which supplied mid-day meal to many schools, was not using garlic, onion and eggs. Besides, children are asked to offer prayers to Krishna before consuming food, he alleged. On the other hand, thousands of poor women employed in preparing food are being rendered jobless as the government had chosen to privatize the mid-day meal scheme. [link]

Since then, ISCKON is being targetted by various secular leaders and activists. Among the allegations: land grab. Inasmuch as these meals cost a paltry Rs. 4.68 and half of which comes from donations, why in the name of Krishna would ISKCON not just use up the donations to buy land?

The answer is simple. ISKCON is eating into the meal ticket of the other type of religious charities, and we know who those are. The ones who grab land and souls at industrial scales.

This is not all, elsewhere the mid-day meals scheme by ISKCON have run into a different type of trouble:

Madrassas in Ujjain have boycotted the Madhya Pradesh government's mid-day meal scheme for students on the ground that the food is being prepared by Iskcon, the Hindu religious organisation spreading Krishna consciousness throughout the world.

The madrassas in Ujjain, 200 km from Bhopal, have demanded that raw materials for food, and funds be given directly to them so that they can prepare mid-day meals for students. Muslim clerics argued that food prepared by Iskcon is first offered to Lord Jagannath as 'bhog' (offering) before being distributed among the students. "We can't accept this as it hurts our religious sentiments," Ujjain Qazi Khaleeq-ur-Rahman told TOI . [link]

The trouble is, the "middle-class" folks in India believe that if the "Government" did not run these schemes and a folks of a certain religion did not do charitable work, poor kids would just drop like flies and die. Nothing can be further from the truth. Today, feeding a million children is fairly simple and within the reach of many organizations: Government, non-Gov, charitable, religious or otherwise.

The real fight is to grab more of the real estate within the charity landscape. We just saw the conclusion of one such struggle which reached its logical conclusion - in Kandhamal district in Orissa.

Religion of poverty

Under a new Goverment scheme, Surendar Thakur (pictured above) could score lower than Shah Rukh Khan on the BPL (Below Poverty Level) score card (Pic: OutLookIndia)

So, the middle class folks tend to knock themselves silly over how insensitive they are about Governance etc. This happens shortly after they browse columns by Arundhati Roy and shortly before they walk into a poll booth to push the button for the hand. Then .. all is forgotten. The silly buggers don't even care to look at the most basic issues such as how the Government computes the poverty list.

India's best public policy blog RealityCheck does some investigation:

Every instrument of dispensation of public goods are now being made to serve the grand interest. The Indian state will divide people even for completely secular purposes such as identification of the poor. The actual benefits that accrue to the BPL families from such divisions are not important. [link]

Yes, that's right. According to the new Saxena committee recommendation, Muslims and OBCs will automatically get a point on the BPL score sheet.

Of course, the water carriers of socialism are completely silent on the issue. What happened to the stats they used to throw around at the slightest excuse during the NDA rule? The scary headlines about India being worse than sub-Saharan Africa? Child malnutrition? Not required anymore?

Come to think of it, they could make it even more interesting. How about baselining the Sachar report on how many people qualify for BPL benefits as opposed to how many are actually poor?

The fecund shall inherit the earth

India's first quintuplets: Mumbai woman delivers 5 babies

MUMBAI: In the first case of successful quintuplets in India, a 24-year-old woman on Friday gave birth to five babies at a private hospital here. Sabeera Khan, a housewife from Mira Road, delivered male quintuplets at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in suburban Andheri.

"Its the first case of male quintuplets in India where all babies have survived. In earlier cases, not all the five babies have survived with some of them dying within hours," Dr Suchitra Pandit, Head of Gynaecologist department at the hospital told PTI.

The woman, who already has a 10-month-old baby boy, is doing well, she said, adding, "of the five babies, two are on ventilator and the remaining in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)." [link]

Will Sonia Gandhi allow the deification of YSR?

Well, YSR did not make it. The antiquated and ill equipped Bell Helicopter that carried him and four others splattered their mortal remains all over some hills in an impenetrable jungle in Andhra Pradesh. Thus, YSR became a victim of a system he probably espoused, at least publicly, and one which leads to inefficiencies such as this. Add to this the fact that the royal family (and now the subedarni) sucks up too much resources meant to protect political leaders. But we digress.

Naturally, the floor is now wide open for poring over details of the man's legacy. Some people perhaps rightly feel that YSR does not deserve the eulogizing. However, we feel that the main resistance to YSR's deification will come from unexpected quarters.

Historically speaking, the Congress party has always resisted big players from outside the family. As a matter of fact, when such a leader becomes too big, they tend to do the party harm since every bit of popularity of such a leader chips away a little bit of brand value of the family. In that sense, YSR had outlived his usefulness, having solidly secured the party's victory in both state and national elections (please note, we do not want to start any conspiracy theory). Also, a regional leader is perceived as threatening to competing regions, a disadvantage which the family does not suffer due to its aseptic image.

If there is one defining thing about Sonia Gandhi, it is how zealously she has been building up her late husband's legacy. HaindavaKeralam lists over 450 institutions, schemes, awards, roads, hospitals etc. named after the Gandhi family - note how many of them bears the Rajiv moniker. Does Mrs. Gandhi herself drive this or is it the sycophants? Perhaps a bit of both.

Only recently, they wanted to name an irrigation scheme after YSR, but as soon as the news spread, they quietly renamed it. As you can see, they do not want any brand dilution.

Soon they will run out of schools, colleges, Government institutions, roads, buildings, hospitals, awards etc. to name after Rajiv Gandhi. Perhaps they will have to start renaming places soon. There is a talk of renaming the Cuddapah district after YSR. Will Sonia Gandhi allow this? Actually she could, as it would set the precedence.

Socialism: Can't even protect a major political leader

He may not be our most favorite political leader, but the fact remains that he is a big deal for the country. YSR happens to be one of the most powerful chief ministers in the country, someone who runs a significant portion of the economy.

Sadly, like everything else, a socialist state is utterly ill equipped to protect even such a figure. Forget about the lesser mortals who perish in terror attacks and riots.

We hope YSR is alive and well. Hopefully YSR and his entourage consisting of his principal secretary Subramanyam, chief security officer A S C Wesley and the two pilots Capt S K Bhatia and Capt M S Reddy have survived and will make it back soon, they are in our prayers.