Oct

31

How God saved The Tamilnadu Congress party king

October 31, 2007 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

In the famous Bollywood movie ‘Deewar’, for superhero dock worker-turned-don Vijay (played by Amitabh Bachchan), a worker-ID bearing a particular number becomes a religious amulet (billa number 786), saving his life again and again, until the end when he loses it and loses his life as well.

Day before, a somewhat similar scenario happened with the Tamilnadu Congress Committee president M Krishnaswamy. As his car reached Keelakannicheri (near Mudukulathur in Ramanathapuram), a riotous mob attacked his car, pulled him out of the car, and one of the attackers stabbed him with a spear right through his stomach. Later, the police claimed that the mob was looking for another politician, but mistook Krishnaswamy for the other guy, and stabbed him.

Here’s the rest of the story, though. Krishnaswamy was wearing a gold dollar with a God’s image, a religious amulet that was pierced through by the attacker’s spear. He still suffered stab wounds, but the brunt of the force was absorbed by his amulet - the lucky talisman, and Krishnaswamy lived to tell the tale. Like the protagonist in Deewar, Krishnaswamy will now forever wear that gold dollar.

But now that his lucky talisman has saved his life, Krishnaswamy can take some time off to think about the talisman prescribed by Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest leader ever from Krishnaswamy’s Congress party. In one of his last notes before he died, Gandhi wrote,

I will give you a talisman.

Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him . ..

Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? …Will it lead to freedom for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?

Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.

Oct

30

Why I’m happier than Mukesh Ambani

October 30, 2007 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

I have many memories of growing up in a lower-middle class joint-family, and one of those is that of my grandmother waking all the kids up early in the morning every day, always telling us that early to bed and early to rise would one day make us healthy, wealthy and wise. My father, a government servant, always insisted on education and made us all promise him that we would always keep our hunger for knowledge alive. My mother, always told us stories of how money always spoilt relations and broke families, and how we brothers should never forget that.

I am a grown-up now, and all those little pieces of advice, all those warnings, are now sweet memories and reminiscences of a fantastic childhood, of times nostalgic, of beautiful times sharing a small space with people who loved me unconditionally. All of us turned out alright I guess, pretty healthy, somewhat wise, though a lot less wealthier.

No we didn’t skimp on our edcuation. Most of us did masters and beyond, if only to emulate my father who completed his doctorate after 50. But looking back on all that loving advice, I have often wondered about my family’s views on money and morals and whether those things might have held us back a little, economically speaking. Having gotten beat up for using my father’s government issued pencil and having heard mealtime sermons about how that small act of theft was akin to treason, we, in our household, took oaths never to do anything that would shame the family.

In his ‘The Wealth of Nations’, Adam Smith spoke of two major themes about the matters of wealth. One was the ‘invisible hand’, the external and balancing forces and equations that affected wealth. The second was ‘meritocracy’, a system that would allow people to thrive and prosper without external interventions that seek larger societal outcomes.

I don’t know what the ‘invisible hand’ would have meant for my family. The only hand I vividly and visibly remember was my father’s right hand coming strongly against my left cheek when I used his government pencil for my homework. As for ‘meritocracy’, I did manage to work very hard to get myself into the best professional institution that one could, though many of my deserving friends ended up giving up their seats to ‘castocracy’ - caste based quotas.

Yes, I too heard about the Indian who became the world’s richest man! Good for him! Yes, we did speak about Mr. Ambani’s great accomplishment. My brothers, my mother, our families. Grandma and Father have passed on now, but the rest of us call one another up and speak about things every day, still a close-knit, happy family that we are. I think we would probably do ok on grandma’s wisdom index, too.

Oct

29

Gap kids clothes - made in India by underage kids

October 29, 2007 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

The Observer undressed the clothing retailer Gap Inc. yesterday, exposing that The Gap used Indian suppliers or manufacturers who got their work done using poor underage Indian kids under threats, beatings, and hours of unwaged work. The clothes and apparel manufactured by India’s slave kids was meant for the American and European kids and was targetted for the coming Christmas shopping season.

The clothing company immediately turned on its PR machine which announced that The Gap was unaware of the illegal activities by its Indian contractors and subcontractors. The clothing giant’s website has a ‘Social Responsibility’ section where CEO Glenn Murphy makes a commitment to doing business in a ’socially responsible manner’. The detailed version of the ’social reponsibility report’ however remained unavailable at the website and came back with a message that ‘an internal Gap.com error had occurred’.

Ha! An internal error has definitely occurred, not just on the Gap website, not just on its Social Responsibility report, but on the very commitment CEO Glenn Murphy made to Gap’s customers and investors. Tell us, Mr. Murphy, is using India’s poor kids to manufacture the clothes of American and the European kids, your company’s idea of social responsibility? Will you and your company stand up and make it up to the poor kids who were threatened, beaten, and abused by your factories? Are you and your company ready to pay for educational expenses for the slave kids who have helped you build this season’s profits for the Gap?

Let’s see if and how Gap Inc. takes this matter seriously and promises a strict adherence to ethical and socially responsible apparel business. If not, there should be a call to boycott such companies that do not seem to mind putting underage Indians into slavery to raise their own profit margins. Indians have a huge voice on this planet, and if united, India can cut off one-fifths of Gap’s potential consumers in a matter of minutes. It will be a gap hard to bridge for even the world’s most successful apparel giant.

Oct

28

Can Shahrukh Khan smoke in public?

October 28, 2007 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

The National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE), an Indian NGO active in the anti-tobacco campaign, has issued a legal notice to Bollywood king Shahrukh Khan about his recent rendezvous with a cigarette. Images of Shahrukh smoking flashed across millions of TV screens all over the world during the recently concluded 20/20 Cricket match between India and Australia.

Dr Salkar, the secretary of the NGO told the press that NOTE was considering suing Shahrukh Khan for committing illegal acts under India’s Anti-tobacco law - sections Sections 4 and 5 (3).

Now let’s see what these sections from the Anti-tobacco act are:

Section 4:
No person shall smoke in any public place:
Provided that in a hotel having thirty (it’s thirty, not dirty) rooms or a restaurant having seating capacity of thirty persons or more and in the airports, a separate provision for smoking area or space may be made.

Section 5 (3):
No person, shall, under a contract or otherwise promote or agree to promote the use or consumption of—

(a) cigarettes or any other tobacco product; or

(b) any trade mark or brand name of cigarettes or any other tobacco product in exchange for a sponsorship, gift, prize or scholarship given or agreed to be given by another person.

OK. I think the NGO is going to have a problem with those sections.

It seems to me that the section 4 already discounts for places with seating capacity of more than 30 persons. The 20/20 Cricket match was played in open air, and the Brabourne stadium in Mumbai has a seating capacity of 20,000.

Section 5(3) doesn’t make a distinction between a person smoking for himself and a person smoking for an ad campaign. So, the question is when Shahrukh Khan smokes in public, is he advertising a particular brand by his public use of cigarettes or is he just smoking for his own addiction? My feeling is that unless Shahrukh Khan is seeing flaunting the cigarette brand prominently (as one would wearing a branded cap, say), he can always get the benefit of doubt since he is a well-known long-time smoker.

Now, the most important part. The actor-hero-star who rules Bollywood, and influences practically every Indian from newborn Indian babies to Indians on their deathbeds, having made a health statement recently by showing his six-pack abdominals in his new movie, is still not able to shrug his smoking addiction away. Having promised his fans that he would cut down on his smoking, the King Khan, it seems, is facing the classic battle universally faced by those smokers who challenge the God of Nicotine.

Oct

27

Red dust rising in India

October 27, 2007 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Maoist rebels killed dozens including the son of the former chief minister of the state of Jharkhand, , in the village of Chilkhadi, around midnight last night. This follows another high-profile killing by the Maoists, since the murder of the Jharkhan Mukti Morcha legislator Sunil Mahato earlier this year.

Anup Marandi, the son of former chief minister Babulal, was watching football with his uncle, and their entourage, when a group of 50 Maoist rebels surprised the spectators with a rapid-fire attack. The chief minister’s son escaped, but his son died at the scene.

Last year, India’s prime minister called the naxalite movement by the Maoists in north-east the ’single biggest security threat to India’. The communist rebels, backed by support and money across the border, have been strategising to build a compact revolutionary zone - red zone, a red corridor across India, a zone that has now stretched past nearly half of India.

The maoist /naxalite movement named after the 1967 uprising in Bengal’s Naxalbari village, had its roots in the peasant movement since independence. Over last fifty years, those uprisings have grown like the Chinese kudzu, have almost crossed over into urban borders. The red menace has now definitely become a red threat, almost equal to the threat from Pakistan’s ISI and its agents.

But it will heck of a lot more than peace initiatives or armed suppressions by India’s agencies to control this problem. Only when the fruits of economic progress trickle down to the support base of the naxalites, will it start an erosion of that base, a necessary pre-requisite before the armed insurgency can be permanently shut down. A lot of that effort will have to be started at the level of elementary education to the children amongst the naxalite support base. It will be a long and hard fight that will be permanently won only by winning the hearts of the distraught and the disenchanted.

Oct

26

The Unhindu Hindus

October 26, 2007 posted by indiatime | 17 Comments

Tehelka.com yesterday came out with a sensational expose about the truth behind the Gujarat riots of 2002, especially how elements and personalities within the so-called Hindu right, crossed any and all legal and moral lines of control, and perpetrated mass murders within the state of Gujarat.

It is not a secret that the Hindu right, at several times during last few years, has been subverted, hijacked, and even completely controlled by radical elements that don’t even have the faintest connection if any with Hinduism at large, but are purely gangs of goons and criminals out for revenge and cruelty. What the Tehelka sting operation is revealing, is that, such elements enjoyed most favorable and protected status under a state government which used government machinery and the public’s tax money to execute an agenda of mass murder.

During his interview by a news channel, Ashish Khaitan, the Tehelka reporter who went undercover for the sting operation, mentioned that the top leaders of the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv-Sena (and he had this caught on camera) confessed that the chief minister of the state of Gujarat gave them 3 full days to implement a reign of terror promising him and his mafia that the police won’t touch them. The almost surreal and shadowy confessions, several of them by the top leaders of local Hindu parties, point to a conspiracy instead of an impulsive riot scenario.

Nobody, I repeat, nobody who are involved in such unspeakable crimes, should remain in any public positions even for a minute, no matter how high those positions are. Narendra Modi can begin to prove his innocence first by resigning and then explaining to this nation why he and his cronies should be scot free after maligning the most tolerant religion on the face of the planet. The national leaders of the Hindu right need to take a long hard look at their party and come to a decision whether the worst kind of subversion of their founders’ ideology is reason enough to kick the butts of those whose deeds will put the rest of the nation to shame. BJP’s top leaders need to stop their wordsmithy, leave their self-absorbed oratory at home, and speak the truth. Because if they don’t, they stand to lose any moral ground when they speak against the criminal mafias within the other political parties. Wha tis worse, they also stand to lose any moral ground against the extremist Islamic fundamentalism which is where their main focus should be in the first place.

There is a majority of Hindus in this country that does not subscribe to the extremist agenda professed by an extremist minority. But that majority is usually silent and civil. Those Hindus who take pride in the world’s most ancient religion, need to stand up and outvoice the few bad apples who do a great disservice to the greater cause of Indianness.

Oct

25

The poor man’s space race begins

October 25, 2007 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

It’s been exactly 50 years and 20 twenty days that Russia’s Sputnik initiate triggered a space race between a communist country and a great democracy. Yesterday a mission to the moon by another communist country has probably ignited the space race of the 21st century. Just last month, Japan had launched its own moon mission as well, albeit after a 4-year delay.

That other great space race was won, hands down, by the Americans. It slowed down after the Americans walked on the moon and became history in another decade or two.

Will India’s space program be able to emulate the spacebreaking achievements of the other two agencies? A lot of the technology that both India and China claim to possess, has originally come from the same contestant in last century’s space race. And though, China definitely has had a headstart in some aspects of the satellite (or anti-satellite) technology, Indians have surprised the world before with their nuclear progress.

Besides the scientific background and the infrastructure, success in such programs has often depended on the national leadership, and mostly to its potential to inspire the nation. India’s former president had the background, the skillset, the oratory, the inspirational quality that could win space races by several light years. That inspiration scenario is probably not all that feasible with the new person in the top office, and it will take a lot more self-motivation and national pride for the Indians to leave the Chinese in the spacedust.

Oct

25

Remembering Turing and invariably, Ramanujan

October 25, 2007 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

A big prize in the world of Mathematics was announced on Wednesday. Stephen Wolfram announced the 2,3 Turing Machine Research prize to 20-year old Alex Smith, an engineering student from Birmingham, UK. Smith’s 55-paged solution describes how the universality of the Turing Machine can be proved.

The Turing machines that all this hoopla is about, are devices or rather thought-machines that manipulate symbols and are able to simulate computer logic - for almost any known computer! Essentially, these machines are thought experiments about the limits of mechanical computations.

That is an important news for Indians, because the man who invented the Turing machine - Alan Turing - the father of modern Computer Science - was conceived (but not born) in India! Yes, Alan Turing’s parents lived in Chhatrapur, Orissa. His father was an ICS officer at the Madras presidency and his grandfather was the chief engineer of Madras Railways. When his mother Sara was pregnant, she and her husband decided that their child should be born and brought up in England, so Sara returned to England where Alan Turing was born in June 1912. After a couple of years, Sara Turing returned back to India to rejoin her husband, and Alan was left in the care of relatives.

Within a few months after the fetus Turing went from India to England, another young mathematician called Srinivas Ramanujan sailed from Madras, the same place where Sara Turing had started her voyage. Within a matter of months between 1912-1913, two of the greatest mathematical minds of all times had sailed from Madras to England. Turing and Ramanujan, two Indian exports who, despite their very short lives (Ramanujan died at the age of 33, Turing at 42), changed the world we live in for better.

Oct

24

Yes, Home Minister!

October 24, 2007 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

For last several months, R. R. Patil, home and the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, is on a moral quest to police anything in his state that he deems vulgar, naked, dirty, or shameful. So far in his career as the deputy chief minister of his state, he has ordered the investigations of costume malfunctions at fashion shows, shut down Mumbai’s dance bar businesses, suspended a lower rank police constable for shaking hands with a convicted Bollywood star, and a lot more from his high horse.

Now, Mumbai’s prince of morality has decided to investigate the cheerleaders who cheered and danced at the recent 20 overs Cricket match between India and Australia. Patil is objecting to the cheerleaders wearing shorts or tight costumes, the kind that arouse hormonal hurricanes amongst the viewing public. But he asked for a special screening of the cheerleading squad to decide where they stood on his morality index.

Patil has so far not yet objected to the traditional Maharashtrian sari that reveals more than it pretends to hide or the traditional Indian saris that open up women’s tummies for public view. He hasn’t yet objected to the heroics of his boss’s son, Bollywood heart-throb Ritesh who routinely does dance numbers with half-naked item-ladies. He hasn’t yet objected to the stark naked hungry children on the streets of Mumbai or those who are forced to do their morning business in full public view along the railway tracks.

Patil’s gripe seems to be particularly against the westernised variety of moral ruination, the one that happens in the glamorised halls of the western and the wealthy. To me, that kind of grievance seems a bit phoney, far-fetched and fake. There is so much to be done on the streets of Mumbai and in the entire Maharashtra state. It seems awfully stupid for the number two man in the Maharashtra state government to be asking for a special screening of the cheerleaders’ dance to see if their costumes were just a bit too tight.

What’s next on this minister’s agenda? Someone just hissed in my ears saying that the moral police may be targetting breastfeeding mommies on the local trains, old statues and pictures of half-naked leaders or Bollywood actors who take their shirts off without anyone even daring them.

Oct

23

Harry Potter’s creator British author J. K. Rowling made buzz in New York a couple days ago, when she declared that Harry Potter’s teacher Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of the Hogwarts school, is a homosexual. Speaking on the occasion, Rowling teased the Christian groups which have criticised her work, adding that the headmaster turning out to be gay would bother the religious groups even further.

Normally, I wouldn’t worry about someone coming out of the closet, least of all a fictional character. What troubles me is this author, whose readers are members of the most impressionable age group on the planet, may be losing it. For the second time in a few weeks, she seems to have taken up arms against religious groups, without any real provocation.

Only a few days ago, Rowling, a billionaire, and her publishers Penguin Books, sued a small community group in Kolkata, celebrating Bengal’s most famous religious festival. Rowling’s contention was that the Hindu community in Kolkata had broken the copyrights law by building a model of the Hogwarts Castle in their religious pandal. Rowling and her publishers had demanded $50,000 in their copyright infringement lawsuit which was eventually dismissed by an Indian court.

Having reached the pinnacle of her writing career and having found a pot of gold at its top, children’s author J. K. Rowling, it seems, wants to try religious activism. With her penmanship and brilliantly creative mind now backed up by infinite wealth, she will most probably rouse and rile a lot of sentiments. But she should do everyone a favor and leave little children out of it.

Oct

23

Karunanidhi, the Tamilnadu chief minister, who has recently been in the news for his dopey tirades against the Hindu God Rama, has made yet another radically overt gesture in minority-pandering. Yesterday, the Tamilnadu state government passed a bill to enforce 7% reservations for Muslims and Christians. In doing so, the state government of Tamilnadu has now trashed and thrown into dustbins the constitution, the sacred document that declared this nation to be a secular democratic republic.

Seems that, Karunanidhi, the dim-witted opportunistic political rogue, will ignore, trample, and neglect any legal, constitutional, and civic rights of the majority and the minority, until he secures his vote-banks in the state and pockets the next state elections so his cronyism and corruption can continue.

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who otherwise did a fantastic job of writing India’s most influential book since the Bhagawat-Gita, forgot to put a footnote there that the constitution should not be tampered with by career politicians. For now, the only saving grace for those who believe in meritocracy and open seats, is that the political fools cannot push the laws of Mathematics beyond a 100% total seats. No matter how much reservation is brought in, there will always be a 100% cap to the travesty and the insult to India’s constitution, otherwise referred to as ‘quotas’.

Oct

23

Capital monkeys kill Delhi’s deputy mayor

October 23, 2007 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

Last Saturday, the day before Dussehra, a wild pack of monkeys killed S. S. Bajwa, the deputy mayor of New Delhi. Mr. Bajwa was a BJP corporator who was also the vice-president of its local party office. While strolling in his balcony, Mr. Bajwa was suddenly attacked by several wild monkeys, lost his balance, fell from the first floor balcony, later succumbing to his head injuries.

New Delhi’s residential buildings, temples, and government buildings are swamped by wild rhesus monkeys and the local court had reprimanded the city corporation for not doing enough to control the menace. A few years ago, governmental agencies came up with a plan to scare away small rhesus monkeys by employing larger monkeys - langurs. Some government offices use cages for the officials (not for the monkeys) so they can do their work in peace. Delhi’s local government had even planned to catch the monkeys and ship them out of states, but other states refused contending they had their own monkey issues.

A few years ago, there were sightings of a 4-feet tall ’smallfoot’ monkey-man in the streets of New Delhi, and the residents even beat up some fellow 4-feet tall Delhiites.

Since attempts to export monkeys to other states have failed, authorities should loook into exporting monkeys across international borders. It is well known and well documented that Pakistan routinely exports menacing terrorists across the Indo-Pak border. Maybe India should start reciprocating with exporting Delhi’s menacing monkeys back to Pakistan beyond the Line of Control!

Oct

22

Bobby Jindal’s time has come

October 22, 2007 posted by indiatime | 18 Comments

USA got its first India-American governor when Piyush ‘Bobby’ Jindal became Louisiana’s next governor. Running on the promise of cleaning up the politics of his state, Jindal is hoping to turn things around in a place, where several former politicians are doing jail time, and several others have been accused of inaction.

Over the past several decades, Indian Americans have made a name for themselves as a decent, hardworking, entrepreneurial, peaceful community. Though Indian Americans made some significant forays in politics before, this one is a biggie. This will be the first time a person of Indian origin will be the CEO of an American state.

What Jindal manages to do in the next few years, and how he does it will surely affect several other younger Indian Americans who are looking to venture into political careers and public service. The republican party is looking for young dashing individuals without baggage, especially those who can bridge the conventional voting block gaps for that party, and those who can bring in or attract new voting blocks. Though he has positioned himself astutely within his party, Jindal has a broader appeal across the board, and will most definitely be the first Indian American who will one day contest the US presidential elections.

Oct

21

Finally, Mona Suri rests in peace

October 21, 2007 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

New Delhi fashion designer Mona Suri who had been fighting for her life for a couple of months, passed away late last night, ending her tragic ordeal. A few months ago, two unidentified attackers had poured kerosene over her body and set her on fire outside her house. Mona, during the last two months, indicated to the police and her friends that her husband Naveen Suri or his girlfriend Rachna were behind the murder attempt.

The police investigation of Mona’s murder is a tale that compounds her tragedy even further. As in the case of Kolkata graphics teacher Rizwanur Rahman, New Delhi police, too, put the onus of her own death on Mona Suri, saying there were no outside attackers, but it was Mona Suri who set herself on fire.

So we now have two high-profile homicides during the last 2 months, where the police agencies of India’s two largest metros keep saying that the victims committed suicide! It’s an easy way out for the police who either cannot find the real perpetrators or have been pressured into protecting the ones who everyone else suspects.

What is the role and the use of these police departments when in almost every case, the victims’ family members have to beg and clamor for an independent investigation? Why do we pay the salaries of the police departments that go out of their way for the heavyweights, spend more time protecting goons and politicians, and build personal assets worth tens of crores?

And what is the role of our woman president who refuses to utter a single word about domestic abuse and crimes against millions of India’s helpless women? Will she speak up at all? Or does she not care about victims like Mona Suri who are at first victims of the spouses who cheat on them and then burn them to death, and later victims of the corrupt police who side with the moneyed?

Mona Suri’s pain is finally over. And she doesn’t have to worry about Delhi police pressing charges on her and hauling her to jail for an alleged attempt on her own life. She rests in eternal peace, in the arms of her Creator, far far away from a cheating husband, dishonest police, useless lawmakers, and a helpless society.

Oct

20

Ghaziabad’s bad apples

October 20, 2007 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

For the second time this month, Ghaziabad, also known as Garhmukteshwar, Uttar Pradesh, is in the news for its rogue doctors.

The first item has to do with Dr. Agarwal, an orthopedic specialist from Ghaziabad who a few weeks ago, was caught in a sting operation, where he offered to amputate limbs off beggars for a sum of money. The media sting operation claimed that Dr. Agarwal demanded Rs. 10,000 for his services telling the media operatives that ‘amputation was no big deal’. Since the sting operation was exposed, the doctor has come out swinging, and has himself accused the journalists of running a fake sting operation that entrapped him.

The second item has to do with another Ghaziabad doctor, who along with his son, blackmailed a schoolgirl and her parents into paying him Rs. 10 lakhs, under the threat of circulating the underage girl’s fake and morphed naked photo on the internet. The doctor’s son, a class ten student, took a mobile phone picture of the girl at some function, photoshopped it into a naked picture with this girl’s face on it, and started blackmailing the girl and her family.

Ghaziabad, otherwise known for the valor of its residents during the 1857 Indian mutiny, seems to be getting a new identity where some members of its medical community, seem to be involved in an array of extracurricular endeavors.

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