Award-shaward

So this year the Padma* awards went to some of those who wagged their tails most vigorously. This was expected and this has been the norm, as we discussed earlier. Yet the media took the opportunity to take pot shots at Advani. A Tehelka article was particularly vicious in tone. It went so far as suggesting that by proposing the Bharat Ratna for Vajpayeeji, Mr. Advani was setting a bad precedence. This is an astonishing spin. If anyone set the trend of giving awards to sycophants, it was Congress, which had a firm lock on Indian politics for decades.

Come to think of it, Barkha Dutt's Padma Shri was justified because of her Kargill war coverage. You have to give her the gender advantage too. Rajeep Sardesai on the other hand is merely one among many leading media chiefs. He is yet to differentiate himself as a journalist. Arguably he has shown great managerial skills and entrepreneurial acumen in bringing CNN-IBN to the forefront of the Indian media scene.

So, the top national award was not conferred on anyone this year. Sonia Gandhi could not be given the Bharat Ratna simply because it would provide fodder for BJP, although many Congress politicians lobbied for it. Vajpayeeji had practically no chance of getting the award for obvious reasons. The only way he could get it was through a personal grand gesture of the PM. Unfortunately it is not easy being a Congress politician, one has to straddle political advantages with a show of obeisance for the dynasty.

Perhaps they thought that no award was better than a controversial one. Unfortunately at least in this case that logic will not work. Mayawati is already eating away into a Congress vote bank. By not giving the award to Kanshi Ram or Babu Jagjivan Ram, Congress handed it on a platter to Mayawati. Now it is up to her to exploit it.

Obscene?

It was bizarre to watch Kanimozhi pan PMK's "hypocrisy", after all PMK (Dr. Ramadoss' party) and DMK are joined at the hip. CNN-IBN characterized the PMK politicians reacting to actress Shriya's dress (above) as "protests by Hindu groups". Kanimozhi wasn't asked hardball questions. PMK has a history of intolerance, they dragged actress Khushboo to court earlier for her comments on premarital sex. This is how CNN-IBN edits a video when they report an unfavorable incident about UPA allies, of course on the rare occasions they report them at all.

Is Karunanidhi's health so poor that he can't even get up for a photo-op with a lady? This happened in the same function where Shriya wore the offensive dress. Watch how awkward the award ceremony was.

Turkish grass

The current lead story on The Outlook website is the transcript of a speech Ms. Arundhati Roy recently delivered in Turkey. The subject of the speech is genocide and the occasion death anniversary of the slain Armenian journalist named Hrant Dink.

After a brief prologue on the said Journalist and the Armenian massacres, Arundhati proceeded to introduce the concept of genocide, wikipedia style. There is nothing wrong in setting out a framework, except that if you twist the data to fit the framework, it starts getting a little weird.

Arundhati Roy deeply feels for American Indians. Her version of the story is as simple as those jerky moving images that passed for motion pictures prior to the invention of talkies.

• White people invaded America
• They slaughtered all Indians
• They occupied the land
  

She should really fast forward to at least the 1940s and 50s and watch some John Ford classics.

The fact is much more complex than that. Even if you completely ignore the American invasion part, the Indians were hardly a homogeneous and peaceful tribe. Perhaps there were hundreds of different tribes, scattered all around. Their men lazed around (while not hunting) and smoked pot while the women did plenty of housework and child rearing. The chiefs kept a lot of women to themselves. They would start working on the girls of the clan as soon as they attained puberty. There was disease, often not much to eat, no TV, no AC. Most importantly, they fought bitter battles among themselves. Some of the tribes were particularly fearsome. After massacres, they would brandish skulls of enemies on their spears (almost like Gujarat!). If there are one set of people who love genocide, it is the tribes and primitive people all over the globe. Right now we have several going on in Africa, perhaps elsewhere too.

Yet, Arundhati perhaps advocates leaving them as they were.

These facts should be sobering for the Arundhati Roy and the band of renegade intellectuals that make rounds of the lecture circuit and constantly express deep resentment at the state of the world. If they assume themselves as intellectuals with some higher ability to define and create a new world, what difference do they have with the white people of their own fables?

Arundhati expresses disgust at genocide denial while stating this:

As genocides go, the Gujarat genocide cannot compare with the people killed in the Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia, where the numbers run into millions, nor is it by any means the first that has occurred in India. (In 1984, for instance, 3,000 Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi with similar impunity, by killers overseen by the Congress Party.) But the Gujarat genocide is part of a larger, more elaborate and systematic vision. It tells us that the wheat is ripening and the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India.

Was the Sikh riots really the first genocide to happen in India? Really Ma'am? Who is in denial here?

Come to think of it, it is pretty amazing that we still have a town called Aurangabad and a city called Ahmedabad. Recently there was a demand for the Bharat Ratna for the last Moghul emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Meanwhile soon after the Brits left, we fell over each other in our haste to rechristen every English name of cities, monuments and streets. We renamed Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata and more recently Banagalore to Bengaluru. But we do have Aurangabad, certain people will continue to have their first claim on resources and Arundhati will continue to chastise us.

Arundhati takes huge poetic liberties with facts and data in her lecture but we can't question her. She has run up the hill in her romanticized fantacy land where tribals gather around fire at night and have roasted roots of dead plants (no killing, see?). From the top of her hill she shouts profanities at us.

The question remains that if all of us are evil and this is all a mirage, how do we trust her intentions? Is she really what she claims to be or merely an agitpropagandist hell bent on destroying a certain set of people?

Come to think of it, there are a lot of people on the secular brigade whose behavior raises such suspicions.

Wrong Medicine

One imagines that Dr. Ramadoss, Hon'ble Minister for Health, has too much time on his hands these days. After his successful campaign for the ouster of Dr. Venugopal from AIIMS, he has embarked upon a high profile mission of putting scary pictorial warnings on Cigarette and Bidi packets. Ironically most of the resistance is coming from within Congress itself. Watch this Devil's Advocate show to find out where that is going.

Incidentally the alleged link between some AIIMS doctors and the recently unearthed kidney transplant racket didn't get much media coverage. While Dr. Venugopal was the director, secular media was covering every piece of medical malpractice case at AIIMS.

To summarize the AIIMS coverage timeline in the secular media:

Prior to the reservation fiasco: What is AIIMS?
During the reservation fiasco: AIIMS is a hotbed of casteism and urgently requires social justice
During the height of Venu-Rama duel: An AIIMS doctor again left a scalpel inside a patient's bowel
After Dr. Venugopal's ouster: AIIMS? What?

But fear no more, the good Doc is going to fix everything. Once he moves his ass from the CNN-IBN studios and actually goes to work that is.

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss' obsession with the affairs of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the Capital is proving to be a bane for the six new hospitals proposed to be set up on the lines of the institute. The slackness of the Ministry in executing such a high profile project reflects in the poor utilisation of funds. In the current financial year, the Ministry has utilised only Rs 46 lakh against the actual allocation of Rs 150 crore under the plan head.

Even last year only Rs 6.27 crore was spent against the allocation of Rs 75 crore. The Ministry's Super Speciality Hospital (SSH) Cell, that handles all the projects, had utilised only Rs 2.52 crore against the allocation of Rs 256 crore in 2005-06. Given the pace of physical progress, one wonders if the Ministry would be able to meet the deadline of 2010 to complete all new super-speciality hospitals. Even the detailed project reports (DPRs) have not yet been prepared.

The Centre had planned to spend Rs 2,541 crore during the 10th Plan ending March 2006-07 on the projects conceived and announced by the NDA Government in February 2004. Less than Rs 10 crore has been utilised so far. "There is conspicuous delay in the project. The deadline would not be met. The new deadline would be decided only after the DPRs are approved by the Ministry's expert group and is referred to the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC). The total cost would also go up from earlier estimation of Rs 4,l58 crore," a Ministry official said. [link]

Happy Republic Day

It is never too early to introduce kids to the idea of nationalism.

Hopefully, it's not too late.

The lurid case of fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander

It is yet to be seen whether the MEA throws its weight behind would be celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander, who is facing 50 plus serious charges of sexual assault on dozens of females, many of them under aged, in the US.

It is futile to argue whether our Government agencies go way beyond their brief on these types of cases. The temptation to look like Robin Hood for minorities must be almost irresistible for the secular party. As we saw with the Dr. Haneef case, the overarching logic for Government intervention appears to be directly proportional to the potential political benefit and nothing else. There was a time when no one could be sure if Dr. Haneef was indeed unambiguously innocent. Yet during that time our PM lost his sleep and the MEA went on overdrive, exerting pressure on the Aussies. Luckily for the MEA and the politicians who went out on a limb on that case, Dr. Haneef was subsequently absolved of all charges.

Meanwhile the fashion designer's sister Sanjana Jon is in India, trying to work up a grassroot level support for her brother. She is also meeting with politicians and Government officials. She has already met with Rahul Gandhi, who has promised to look into the matter. Overseas Indians Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi is itching to jump into the frey. The media response is meanwhile muted, which is understandable given the recent attention and public outrage at violence against women in India. Therefore, no TV shows or SMS polls so far.

The charges against Anand Jon are very serious in nature. The fact that there are so many - several dozen cases involving dozens of females from 14 to 23 in more than half a dozen US cities - lends a certain amount of probabilistic credibility to the charges. The most damning fact is that this isn't the fashion designer's first brush with the law in sexual assault related cases. He was charged with similar crimes in the past on which he took a plea bargain in exchange for a lesser charge of misdemeanor. He also completed a three year probation, which included an order not to associate with under age women. It is clear he didn't pay much attention to the order, even during the probation period he actively sought out young females, often through networking sites such as myspace.

Given these circumstances, the MEA should tread with extreme caution on this case.

You just can't make this stuff up!

Bharat Ratna for the masses

According to Sagarika Ghose, the "furore" over Bharat Ratna began when a CNN-IBN reporter proposed Sachin Tendulkar's name for the award. Of course, the secular journos can never write a simple article without putting a bizarre spin on it. Google search reveals that the "furore" over Bharat Ratna is pretty much an annual ritual. Every year there is intense lobbying for the award. The award is withheld on those years a politically viable candidate (meaning politically convenient for Congress) is not found.

What really started the "furore" this year was a letter from Mr. Advani to the PM, recommending Vajpayeeji for the award. It is not clear if the letter was released to the press from BJP or leaked by the PMO.

Sagarika Ghose's article is full of misinformation and pedantic assertions that we have come to expect from her. For instance, the plain vanilla knighthood is not the highest British civilian honor, hence the reasoning that since Bob Geldof got knighted, Sachin Tendulkar should get Bharat Ratna - does not work. Sachin already got the Padma Shri. She laments that in India we can never expect to have a 42-year old cabinet minister. This is very surprising, Dr. Ramadoss' name immediately comes to mind. She places the number of awardees till date at 41, although it looks like the actual number is 40. Of course she could be counting Netaji, that's another story.

These bloopers aside, she manages to display her extreme contempt for BJP in a few lines. Apparently Advani wrote a thundering letter to the PM. Since we don't have the text of the letter, we have no way to judge if the letter was thundering or humble in tone. Also, the letter had 11 points justifying the award for the ex-PM, not just for being the longest serving parliamentarian.

Sagarika Ghose pretends that she is making an impartial case for rewarding merit and aspirational factors and thus has a better moral case than the lobbyists. Unfortunately it is pretty obvious that she is not really making a strong case for Sachin Tendulkar in that rambling piece as much as trying to preempt Vajpayee. This sentence is a dead giveaway:

A day after the reporter's story, came Advani's thundering letter to the prime minister: A Bharat Ratna for Vajpayee please.

Actually the sequence of the events would have been somewhat different.

• CNN-IBN, being privy to inside sources, learns that the dynasty is considering the Bharat Ratna
• The New Delhi Political grapevine wisens up pretty fast, such things can't stay hidden
• Several groups start their lobbying process
• CNN-IBN hastily starts a campaign for Sachin
• Co-incidentally Advani's letter is sent the day after
• Sagarika Ghose writes a cringe inducing article, spewing venom on political lobbying

The fact that Mr. Advani chose to write a personal letter to the PM with 11 thoughtful points shows that this was a genuine and personal appeal to the goodness of Mr. Manmohan Singh. This is the dignified way to do such things. He didn't first announce it in a press conference amid cheering supporters.

There is a very strong case for Vajpayeeji for the award. Before his tenure, we just didn't have a viable opposition that could provide good governance and make our country take strong leaps towards modernity. He put together a coalition that actually provided solid governance and stability, in addition to launching several reforms, economic as well as social. We would argue that Vajpayeeji was instrumental in completing our democracy. Prior to him we really had no alternative (as some socialists still claim we don't have), opposition Governments quickly degenerated into circus like performances.

Perhaps the best contribution of Mr. Vajpayee to the Indian people is the injection of a sliver of objectivity into our mind numbing politics of horse trading. When the BJP Government came about, commies started churning out numbers, stats and data they had never deemed was necessary for decades prior to that. For the first time people were actually looking at poverty statistics and various human development indices seriously. Before that poor people were supposed to sing Raghupati Raghava and feel happy under the designated monarch.

Mr. Vajpayee truly deserves the award for this paradigm shift in our democracy. Actually, conferring the Bharat Ratna on him would really be rewarding the masses for their willingness to venture away from decades of personality cult and dogma.

Confusing one's religion?

BANGALORE: It was an unlucky fourth time for this self-styled pastor who ended up in police net after his new wife discovered his 'much-married' status. Vijay Joseph (40) was arrested on Thursday after his fourth wife Pamela, whom he married last September, discovered he had three other wives.Vijay used to visit houses to offer prayers claiming he was a pastor and after getting friendly with them, offer himself as a prospective groom to their girls. [link]

Greenpeace, PETA, Blue Cross and other assorted loonies

Call them ultra-liberal organizations, enviro-nazis, environmental terrorists - what you will, the fact remains that these are extremely powerful organizations. These are not your neighborhood lost-puppy lovers club.

Perhaps you can recognize the Blue Cross logo from recent news reports. Yes, this is the organization that spearheaded the ban on the ancient Tamil sport of Jallikattu. Fortunately this ban was subsequently lifted.

PETA is also no stranger to us, mostly because of pictures of Bollywood stars in weird costumes that occasionally adorn the magazines. Right about now PETA is engaged in a protracted high profile campaign against Japanese whaling ships. Things are getting really twisted over there. Apparently a PETA vessel attempted to obstruct a Japanese whaling ship which resulted in the Japanese crew capturing a PETA activist and holding him on board. He is being offered whale meat for food. All this drama is accompanied by the usual visuals, young women drenched with fake blood (and wearing not much else) making protests at prominent Japanese landmarks.

Greenpeace is relatively unknown, but it is making its presence felt in India. Greenpeace has a huge ship which they use to travel around the world and terrorize oil companies. They often storm oil rigs and wage protests. The most famous case involving Greenpeace was the Brent Spar fiasco. Long story short, it eventually turned out that Greenpeace had way over-estimated the residual oil on the rig and their suggested method of disposal would have caused much more environmental damage.

Such is the fearsome reputation of these organizations that business schools offer special courses to counter their effect on business operations. Case studies of the Brent Spar case is often part of the curriculum.

These organizations are largely self-sustaining, i.e. they are run by volunteers. They receive donations from supporters. They are extremely well organized outfits and run with the efficiency of the best of MNCs. Their moves are hardly ever random, they are guided by the best in strategy and economics. Their tactics border on blackmail and people are often left wondering about their true motives. Nudity seems to be a favorite form of expression.

So far, the activities of these organizations were limited to North America and the Eurozone, occasionally Japan. This is for two reasons, these countries offer the most vulnerable shakedown targets. Also, these countries have a much higher tolerance for free speech or activities in the guise of free speech. You are not likely to see Greenpeace in the Middle East or China. Similarly you are not likely to see PETA demanding mandatory stunning of animals prior to slaughter - for obvious reasons.

India is emerging as a soft target for these terrorists. So far the economic potential was not strong enough to get the attention of Greenpeace & Co. Now they have arrived and they are here to make trouble. Already they have Amarnath pilgrimage etc. on their radar. Of all forms of animal cruelty, they targeted Jallikattu! One wonders why!

Musharraf bans bloggers

Give Bharat Ratna to Afzal Guru

Union Information and Broadcast Minister Dasmunsi often appears to broadcast from the wrong end.

Government on Thursday sought to make light of BJP leader L K Advani's letter seeking Bharat Ratna for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee saying such issues are not raised in public. In a sarcastic vein, Information and Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi said it would have been better had Advani honoured him within the party. "It is not in the tradition to communicate through letter on such matters," he said when asked by reporters to comment on Advani's letter. [link]

He also uniquely lacks an understanding of how information works in the modern world. Someone ought to tell him that such assertions can be easily fact-checked. So, let's see if such issues are indeed not raised in public:

Congress CMs vote for Dhirubhai's Bharat Ratna
RLD wants Bharat Ratna for Charan Singh
Call to confer Bharat Ratna on Ghantasala
Sunil Dutt seeks Bharat Ratna for Sivaji
Jayalalithaa for awarding Bharat Ratna to Balamurali
Bharat Ratna for Jyoti Basu, but not Vajpayee?

And of course:

Sonia deserves Bharat Ratna: APCC meet

A quick look at the list of awardees shows just how arbitrary the selection criteria must be. The only consistent rule seems to be that Congress Prime Ministers who are also members of the dynasty will get the award. Dr. Ambedkar got the award posthumously, several decades after his death. It is not as though he missed out because there were no slots. The award wasn't conferred on several years. No one received the award in the past seven years. On many years more than one person received the award.

Meanwhile several newspapers are running opinion polls on who should get the award. Sachin Tendulkar is the number one favorite of Congress mouthpiece CNN-IBN.

Congress suddenly realizes that the award wasn't conferred in the last seven years. Let's drop the pretense, shall we? Everyone knows the award will be a huge political statement.

We propose the Bharat Ratna for Afzal Guru. No other candidate can be as popular as Afzal as far as seculars go. Afzal fired up secular passion like none other. Articles and editorials flooded newspapers, special shows hosted on TV, even books written and published. Just for getting his sorry ass captured for terrorism charges, Afzal must have added several hundreds of crores to the national GDP. We say, just give it to him. It also fits the UPA Government's social sector policies well.

Of course this is assuming when the flunkies ultimately propose Madam's name, she will feel shy, just like she did after the 2004 elections.

Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta a possible perv?

We always knew there was something funny about Outlook editor Vinod Mehta, maybe something in his eyes. Something creepy. Shekhar Gupta, Indian Express editor-in-chief, narrates an incident:

Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta happened to be sitting to her [Benazir Bhutto's] left and as the conversation got more animated, he, as his friends and TV audiences well know, leaned forward to make his point, often touching her by now ample arm in a wonderfully warm gesture of informality. Benazir stopped me for a five-minute tattle as we were all leaving. She talked about this and that, and then said: "I did not know your Delhi journalists get so familiar with leaders. Tell me how would Sonia Gandhi handle that?" [link]

Well, in buses and commuter trains it often starts out as a warm and innocent gesture of cordiality. Of course this one incident doesn't prove anything. Perhaps we should ask female staffers of Outlook magazine.

Democracy killed history

Finished reading Ramachandra Guha's India after Gandhi a few weeks ago. This is a long overdue post, meanwhile there has been excellent coverage on the blogosphere. Confused's take on the book is highly recommended - a very comprehensive and fair coverage of the book.

For a most succinct take on the book, here is an excerpt:

And it's bad. Really, really bad.

Basically, this is a work of hagiography (of Nehru, specifically, who deserves better by dint of having been an actual human being, and a quite shrewd one at that) that reflects an intensely partisan outlook: Guha is a partisan of the India's bien-pensant upper-middle left. You'd be far better served by reading anything by Ayesha Jalal or the Marxist intellectual Aijaz Ahmad. Amazingly, given that Guha is a serious scholar and (supposed) left intellectual who has considerable spent time outside India, he offers a Attenborough-esque portrait of a dastardly Jinnah and he demonizes Pakistan. [link]

Prof. Amardeep Singh reviewed the book chapter by chapter. Indeed, our intellectual circle, basically the Tehelka types, welcomed this book with open arms even before it had been published.

History tends to throw men into violent feats of partisanship. This was not always so. It used to be really simple in the old days. Country A invaded Country B, killed their leader, looted their gold and abducted their women (perhaps did some conversion too, but that isn't really as important). This was based on a cardinal principle of nationhood - a nation as an entity of a group of people and lead by one man. Under this principle, all actions were due to the leader and only to the leader. History texts were mostly written as actions of nations in the first person. As far as we can tell, no detailed account of debates in the cabinet of Mohammad bin Tughlaq exists. All his disastrous actions are solely attributed to him.

The advent of the modern democratic republics has obviously thrown this system completely out of gear. How do you think history would remember US President George Bush's tenure?

This modern system brought about two changes, one is integral to it and the other perhaps incidental. The first one is the creation of political parties and democratic institutions. This ensures that there are always agents to defend and often modify past actions of leaders. The second one is the increasing global economic prosperity and the high stakes game of modern economics. This one is increasingly leading to violation of the very basis of a democratic republic - which is one set of inviolable rules (constitution) that everyone agrees to and swears to uphold at the time of formation of the nation.

How would Nehru be evaluated today? Clearly a Congress supporter will see Nehru's tenure through rose tinted glasses just like a detractor will constantly attempt to bring attention to irrelevant details of the leader's personal life. Guha goes one step beyond all this - Nehru for him is Maryada Purushottam, the perfect man who could do no wrong.

All that is considered good in modern India is attributed to Nehru. All that was considered good at the time (such as big nationalized factories) and are coming under scrutiny are described with a sense of nostalgia - as an example, Guha quotes a journalist waxing eloquent about the beautiful town of Bokaro and feeling emotional at the sight of the Bokaro steel plant reflected on a lake. Likewise, the opposition is squarely blamed for anything bad that happened. If Nehru didn't succeed in doing something he should have done, it was again the opposition that thwarted his good intentions. Sometimes it would be detractors within Congress itself, but rarely.

Despite an overwhelming majority, Congress had trouble in the Parliament. This is hard to pin on "opposition" alone. Nehru did have the opportunity to push through many reforms, if he were serious about them. The ultimate blame must lie on Nehru for his lack of vision and mistaken ideas of economics and international relations, not to mention a rather simplistic notion of nationalism which resulted in the often violent events of the linguistic movement. In no place it is clear if Nehru had a strategic road map for a solution. The only deliberate thing he does is talks with Vinobha Bhave! Why invite Chou Eun Lai? This was inviting trouble, already had bad experience with Chinese reaction to Indian protest and desecration of the Mao picture which was a diplomatic fiasco.

The idea that India was a special challenge to bring together a diverse nation may also be an act of Nehru-aggrandizement. Many other nations in history have undergone similar troubles and they had no less complicated situations. But many of them handled their international relations and economy better and came out much better off eventually. India on the other hand was all bark and no bite, literally, with less than 50% of people with food on their table on a regular basis. Praising Nehru as the sole force that brought India together is grossly unfair to the people of India as it is to our other leaders and visionaries, who must be credited with identifying and embracing good ideas.

Guha is also very unkind to some of Nehru's detractors. At one place he describes Vajpayee as a terrier. At another, he talks about "Congressmen" in jail while Ambedkar served Brits etc. He manages to implicate Vajpayee and Jan Sangh for the Chinese issue while never making it clear what Nehru wanted or if he had any plans at all for settling the disputes. The Bombay Plan for him was apparently a good thing while it must be seen in light of later events. Clearly this is what led to the crony socialism in today's India - a trend that started much before independence, more on that later.

Guha's book is a difficult read, he strings together hundreds of quotations on each page, meticulously providing the references. In that sense it seems like more of an edited history rather than a written one. It is instructive to note that Guha's source material comes from editorials of newspapers like The Hindu and articles of such eminent personalities as Teesta Sheetalvad.

To be fair, Guha has done a reasonably good job of compilation and as one prominent blogger commented, one does feel moved by this book. Guha's book will be very useful as a ready reference and we will quote from it extensively in the near future.

Previous:

Ramachandra Guha's violent assault on history
Historical Blindness

Just another orphan news item

KATNI: A church priest was arrested for allegedly raping a woman on January 1 in the Majhgava forest area near Katni, police said. The priest of the local Gayatri Nagar church was arrested and produced in the court on Friday after which he was sent to jail, Katni Suprinendent of Police (SP) Renu Shukla told reporters.

The incident occurred when the woman's husband, a truck driver, went to Indore for some work. Taking advantage of the situation, the priest Kaushik Nayak took the woman on his motor-cycle with a promise to get her a job of a nurse.

However, after reaching Majghava forest area he allegedly raped her and fled from the spot, the SP said. The woman later narrated the incident to her husband who reported the matter to the police following which the priest was arrested. [link]

Have a Safe New Year 2008

Hope our readers have survived their respective New Year parties, bashes etc. unscathed. As you must have heard by now, the new year didn't start very well for a lot of people.

Terror kept relentlessly stalking us - a CRPF camp was attacked in UP on New Year's eve, leaving 8 jawans dead. The big international incident of New Year's eve happened in Kenya which erupted into an orgy of ethno-religious violence. Some 300 dead, innumerable properties destroyed. The Indian disapora has taken to flight, some are stranded.

Of course the unsavory incidents that happened across the country got the most attention. A couple of women were molested right outside a big Hotel in Bombay by a crowd as large as 70 - 80 people. This was an action replay of last year's incident at Gateway of India.

Apparently seven people were apprehended, no further info on the case available. Last year too, some men were arrested. It is not known if the authorities were able to pursue the case:

Three persons, including two minors, were arrested on Thursday in connection with the alleged molestation of a woman by male revellers at New Year-eve function at the Gateway of India. The only adult among the three arrested has been identified as Rizwan Shaikh. "The police came to our house early on Thursday morning and took them away by giving us incorrect information regarding where they were being taken," Rehana Khan, mother of one of the accused, alleged. [link]

A Similar incident happened in Kochi, where a teenage female tourist was groped by a group of men right next to her father while the father was actually being interviewed by a reporter on his great experience in India!

Local revellers molested a Swedish tourist's daughter at Fort Kochi on Monday night. The father of the girl said that he would now have to think twice before bring his children to India. "I was talking to someone and this man was grabbing my daughter from behind me. The girls are friendly and that is something which can be mistaken in India. I will have to think twice before bringing my children to India again," said the father.Though no complaint was lodged by the Swedish family, the local police has registered a suo moto report and arrested the alleged offender - a 17-year-old boy named Shafique. [link]

Various other reports of similar assaults on women came from Pune, Patna, New Delhi etc. Perhaps this was the most interesting of them all:

Two sons of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad got into trouble for allegedly indulging in eve-teasing on New Year's eve and were beaten up by unidentified youths in south Delhi. In the scuffle, a personal security officer accompanying Yadav's sons - Tarun and Tejpal - lost his service pistol, for which a complaint has been filed in the local police station. [...] On their return, they allegedly passed some remarks at girls who were partying at a farm house near Mehrauli. However, this time they ran short on luck when a group of youngsters decided to thrash them. The PSOs, sensing the gravity of the situation, did not reveal the identity of the two, the sources said. [link]

Tarun and Tejpal, why does that sound familiar? Hmm. Needless to say, people are desperately searching for a pattern in these cases. Various theories are being put forward.

Meanwhile, life must go on while they figure out the root cause of these incidents. We recommend carrying any weapon or deterrant that you can carry legally in your district.

Be Happy and stay safe.

2007: The year of the Panda

In the history of mankind, no beast has received as much attention as the Giant Panda. No species is so completely inept at survival. What kind of species is that which has no interest in procreation? So much so, that in some zoos in China, they even attempted showing them Panda porno tapes to encourage them into mating. Apparently the scheme had limited success.


What a year 2007 was, with days to spare it gave us a huge political event, one that will continue to occupy headlines for the foreseeable future.

Massive scale terror attacks continued unabated as did Maoist disturbance. Yet India seemed as calm as a monastery in early morning compared to its neighbors. The OBC reservation bill came to a screeching halt, although there is no reason to believe that was the last we heard of it. We also had the Nandigram fiasco and close at its heels came the Taslima episode with which the secular establishment's house of cards came tumbling down.

The year was particularly bad for the Global Hindu. They were persecuted from Kazakhstan to Malaysia. The experience at home front was particularly bitter. Their religious symbols came under terrible indignity and attack. Minorityism reached new lows this year. The PM declared that certain groups had first claim on resources. Religious reservation came into existence for the first time. The venerated St. Stephens college increased its Christian quota. There was a brand new Tehelka sting, which unfortunately proved to be as venomous as a grass snake. The year also saw the coronation of our new Crown Prince. The UPA Government foisted an amazing woman of a President on us.

This was also the year a new term entered the Indian political lexicon - liberal, which nominally means anyone who supports Congress and is comprised of the erstwhile socialists and seculars. This is also the group which used to call themselves nationalists at one point of time.

If you go back about a year to a year-and-a-half in time, the UPA Government and by extension Congress seemed quite confident. During this time frame, there was a massive explosion in media reach, dominated by secular English channels. The channels gave assorted loonies of the UPA ample face time and they were able to thunder their boiler plate catchphrases such as social justice, inclusive growth, historical oppression etc. Little did they know that by the end of the year they would be forced to whimper like a slapped schoolboy.

Why did it happen? Try utterly dismal and abject failure of the UPA Government on ALL fronts. Let us not regurgitate all the facts, just google "Dysfunctional UPA Government", without the quotes. A year ago the leftists were shoving statistics at our faces (which is quite funny given this). After India dropped two ranks in the Human Development Index, we haven't heard back from them. UPA also suffered humiliating election losses, first to Mayawati who was able to better UPA at its own game by building a more viable social engineering model and then to an incumbent BJP Government in Gujarat and to a BJP opposition in HP in quick succession.

Under the current circumstances, it looks like the elections will happen in 2009, as they are scheduled to happen. This is further reinforced by Mr. Karat's latest flip-flop.

Almost nothing is working for Congress at the moment. Sonia and Rahul haven't proved to be vote magnates in not one but three states. There is a desperate attempt right now in the media to hijack Pakistan's tragedy and project it onto Congress. There is no socialist scheme they can boast of. Even the much touted NREG scheme has been effectively hijacked by the respective state Governments. If the development plank didn't work in 2004 for BJP, it is not going to work in 2009, even more so for Congress.

The Congress is ultimately left with few choices. There is very little time left really to make a difference on the developmental front. The group targeted benefits route, i.e. quotas is a virtual minefield. Any new scheme will attract lawsuits like shit attracts flies.

Therefore, it is almost certain that Congress will make another left turn, like it did under Indira Gandhi. With the Global growth projected to slow next year and a possible recession in the US, in any case Congress is going to get blamed for growth slowdown. It will lose middle class votes. The only way out is the tried and tested Garibi Hatao.

The trees were blocking the view

Hon'ble President of Secular Socialist Democratic Republic of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, has been busy. She has been making trips, lots of them. Increasingly these trips are beginning to look like taxpayer funded expensive five star plus holidays at exotic locations for her extended family.

As Patil and her family land in the Andamans tomorrow for what is billed a three-day "official tour," a few things have been brushed under the red carpet: at least 60 trees have been cut to prepare a helipad for her so that she and her 10-member family entourage don’t have to take a 40-minute road trip.

And two Government-run tourist resorts have issued notices to all tourists cancelling their bookings - the Christmas-New Year's Eve is the peak holiday season for the islands - to accommodate her delegation. [link]

The husband, one understands. Is it really necessary to take the entire cabal along?

President Pratibha Patil's scheduled Boxing Day helicopter-hopping across Andaman and Nicobar has cost the islands a few hundreds of trees. [...] More than 400 trees have been chopped down, among other things to create a 'funnel area' for the presidential chopper to land and take off, in Port Blair, Havelock Island and Vandur. "The authorities told us that some of the trees are too old and may fall any time, endangering the President's motorcade. Not even a branch has fallen on the road till date," said Thomas Thenalil, a resident.

"Trees as old as 100 years were cut down. At least 60 trees between the airport and Raj Nivas were cut down. There is nobody to question and nobody to answer," K Ganesan, editor of Andaman Express, a Port Blair newspaper, said. In Havelock, 60 km from Port Blair, where the President will be visiting for a day, trees were cut down since they blocked the view of the beach from where the President would be sitting. "Havelock island has a helipad, but the trees were cut because the VVIP cannot see the beach from the designated place," said Johnson, a social worker. [link]

CNN-IBN calls this "alleged" chopping of trees. What is an "alleged" chopping of a tree? A tree plus saw equals a dead tree, or a chopped tree. How hard is that to conceptualize? Also, no comments from people who get panic attacks thinking about lost puppies and murdered pink Flamingoes.

We understand the problem the secular media has with Patil. They need to understand what Patil represents and put things in the right context. Patil belongs to a bygone era and lives in it. She and her entire ilk. There must be many people like her in India. No, not the colonial era, but the Mughal one. In those days there was no concept of honorary posts. They handed you a Suba, you became a subedar. In your Suba, you are the supreme ruler and the people must pay you obeisance, plus taxes.

By electing Patil as the President, in effect we handed over the entire India as a Suba to her family. She is now effectively a Subedar of India and indeed is acting like one.

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Vote secular for a return to Gandhian values
Pratibha Tai's Family Values

Hopes and Prayers

Destiny finally caught up with Benazir Bhutto, fulfilling a cruel prophecy she herself had reiterated several times in the past.

After a particularly successful rally at Rawalpindi, she was being driven away in her armored vehicle, when elated by cheering bystanders Bhutto stuck her neck out, literally. She stood up inside the vehicle to alight from the roof and wave back at her supporters. The assassin's bullets greeted her. [Ed. Updated below]

This was the fourth major attempt on her life in this trip to Pakistan alone. The first one was a high intensity blast that killed about 150 people. In the second one, a baby was used as a tactical weapon. Another one, just a day before, employed a 15-year old with a sack of nails.

As expected, our political leaders have gone into anaphylactic shock upon hearing this news. We sincerely hope that they recover soon and do the needful, which is to protect our citizens from any possible fall outs that might occur.

Update 1: What killed Bhutto?

Well, they are still figuring out the "who" part and it is likely that theories and counter-theories will be endlessly put forth, discussed and dissected as different parties try to color this incident with their respective political agenda. While Indian media is still catching up and reporting a day old theory of shrapnel inflicted injuries, it is now quite clear that Benazir didn't die from gunshot wounds nor was her life cut short by shrapnel. She died when her head was violently thrust against a lever of the sunroof by the intensity of the blast. She sustained severe skull injuries which ultimately proved fatal. For more details, please read this.

Update 2: A large tree falls across the border

As expected, large scale violence broke out in Pakistan following the assassination. You can find glorious pictures of burning vehicles, buildings etc. on flickr. Indian media didn't report this but there were violent protests in Kashmir. You can catch some photos on this slideshow. Looks like when a large tree falls on that side of the border, some rumbles are unavoidable this side of it.

Right now there is a pretty bizarre blame game going on in which details of Benazir's demise is being disputed. An aide claimed she saw bullet wounds on Benazir's head. These details do not substantially alter the facts of the event. Whether she ultimately died of gunshot wounds or shrapnel or even a sunroof lever, the fact remains that she was assassinated by a terror group.

The Lord is thy shepherd, thou shalt not want

Suppose you are an average person. Your life hasn't changed one bit, neither for the better, nor for the worse - since the last elections. How are you likely to vote? Add to it that there are no ideological factors involved.

Actually this is a complex question. New market entrants typically have to spend three times as much as the incumbent in order to make a sizable dent in the market share. In election terms, it boils down to credibility. A party that couldn't even name a chief ministerial candidate prior to the elections was actually hoping to buck the trend. It doesn't help that Gujaratis are used to seeing the haggard and forlorn faces of migrant laborers from other states every season. It doesn't help that the antics of Ministers like Ramadoss occupy the front pages every day. Add to it the following:

There were some stunning facts to go with it. Value of farm-output had grown four times. School drop-out rate was down to 3% from over 40%. All villages, without exception, were getting 24 hour, 3 phase power for homes. Besides, the pipelines and canals fetching Narmada water, more than 140,000 check-dams and village ponds across the state had solved the drinking-water and irrigation problems in a state that was perennially drought-prone, arid and dependent on water-tankers ferrying expensive water.The number of registered unemployed in Gujarat had actually declined by over 15%. Almost a lakh rural-poor expecting mothers had delivered, assisted by private gynaecologists, all paid for by the state. To top it all, the past five years were riot-free, curfew-free, and despite being targeted by several terror groups from across the borders, terror-strike-free.

The above summary was by none other than Sushil Pandit, a BJP campaign manager, a hired gun, a man from the ad world. This is the person who was involved with the Shining campaign. Perhaps lucky for him, "vibrant" doesn't rhyme well.

Contrary to what the media would have you believe, there wasn't really a strong ideological factor in this election. The media got it wrong on almost every count and that perhaps is the saddest part in the whole affair. The CNN-IBN exit polls, presided over by Yogendra Yadav came so far off the mark that you couldn't fare much worse tossing a coin. It is not just a matter of getting the worst numbers among all exit polls, Yogendra Yadav was way off the mark in his regional analysis. This is sad because our national policy is held hostage by such intellectuals. The fate of our hundreds of million of poor depend on the competence of such men.

This election was really a victory of facts and data over rhetorics, as blogger RealityCheck pointed out. Actually modify that to "raw data" because by the time the data reaches you through the secular prism, it is bent beyond recognition. The truth is that the secular media went so far in its relentless carpet bombing that the public became thoroughly disengaged. This must be the wet dream of any incumbent chief minister, a fact not lost upon his campaign manager when he conducted his own surveys (which were far more accurate than the CNN-IBN exit poll, to say the least):

One face and name that summed the contrast with a pan-Gujarat appeal was Narendra Modi himself. Our opinion polls confirmed that Modi's approval ratings, among the cross-section of voters, were a double-digit more than that of the BJP.

The high impact campaigns were run mostly on Gujarati channels and local dailies. Congress meanwhile concentrated on the likes of CNN-IBN and NDTV and of course, Tehelka. So, why did these channels alienate Gujaratis so much? Simple, a lack of respect.

MR MEHTA told me a simple and quite stunning thing: To understand Gujarat, understand Gujaratis first, there is nothing that matters more to them than dhando and dharma, business and religion. Would it be in that order, Mr Mehta? Quite, he said, what dharma are you going to do on an empty stomach? But please understand this carefully because a lot of you don’t, Gujarat is what Gujaratis make it, not what people like you want it to be, don’t fit our image to the requirements of your frame. [Sankarshan Thakur, Tehelka]

It is clear why people like Thakur can not respect anyone and must necessarily judge the world by the stereotypes and cliches they know. They do not even respect themselves.

Congress wins: Gujarati good
Congress loses: Gujarati bad

This has been the pattern endlessly repeated for 60 years. You can't win them over? Go ahead, insult them. The problem is, economic liberalization has taken away much of the stick factor. A very antagonistic Central Government can't do much damage to Gujarat, the way it did to some other states. Bihar comes to mind (yeah the whole Jayprakash Narayan - Emergency incident).

Believe it or not, some seculars actually said that it was time Kashmiri Pandits stopped playing the victim and that all their problems were related to bad governance. So, that is what you get when you elect the secular party. On two fateful days in December, Gujaratis decided that they wouldn't play the victim. As a bonus they also got good Governance! Two for the price of one! It was an offer no one can refuse, let alone a Gujarati!