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Once again the Judicial system in India has proved that when it comes to punishing the Rich and the powerful their famed blindfold does come off for a little while.

While the sessions court sentenced the owners of the Cinema hall and some civic officials to a mere two years and even readily set them free on bail they sentenced a mere gatekeeper, the lowest person in the chain and hence not in a position to hire the best lawyers to defend him to seven years rigorous imprisonment and promptly sent him to prison.

Now in what way is a mere Gatekeeper more culpable than the owner of the building who built the hall flouting all norms, bribed civic officials to look the other way, maintained the building in a poor shape and finally hired him, a thoroughly incompetent gatekeeper, and others, the managers and supervisors to run the whole place?

The buck in this case clearly stops at the very top. And the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy are clearly right in expressing their dismay at the verdict and seeking to approach the High court.

The poor quality of the infrastructure and public facilities and the woeful safety record in the country is a direct result of the people in charge the builders, the civic officials etc… not being held to accountable for their actions and unless the justice system starts taking stringent action against the powers that be such tragedies will continue to happen on a regular basis.

The riots that followed a Radio Jockey’s comment about recently crowned Indian Idol Prashant Tamang has lessons for everyone involved.

First it is time(it is 60 years since independence for heavens sake) that we Indians from all over the country start addressing each other by their own respective names and stop using slang to describe each other. that means no more talk of madrasis, bhayyas, chinkies, banias etc… full stop to that.period.

Second, learn to take it easy. going on a rampage because someone said something that you do not like is so futile in this day and age. It is a globalised world with 6 billion people around and not everyone is your fan.

Third, The Indian state should seriously start pursuing and convicting Rioters/vandals/lynch mobs etc… At this point the impression has become widespread that the long arm of the law will not catch up if the crime is committed during public disturbances such as Riots, strikes and hartals etc…That impression should be changed forthwith and the authorities should start by throwing as many rioters as one can identify by means of eyewitness accounts, camera recordings etc… behind the bars for good. That should put the fear of the Gods in the sub-continental mobs for all time to come.

Tarun Vijay’s recent alarming report on the problems in the North-East of the country is nothing new. There have been many, many such columns on a regular basis and even a high quality documentary by a TV channel about the problem. And they go along the same line- “The North-East is burning but the nabobs in Delhi couldn’t care less, All the money that is earmarked to go to the north-east for developmental purposes is diverted into the pockets of the corrupt netas, babus, contractors and assorted middlemen etc…”

And the Big one- “Bangladeshi illegal immigration is going on unchecked but the politicians are standing in the way of tackling this problem because of their perverted vote bank politics etc…”

But is it enough to just stop at blaming the government of the day? Or is it a much more deep rooted problem? Even the supposedly patriotic NDA govt which was in power for six years didn’t do anything much better than the current corrupt and anti-national dispensation.

Infact during the NDA rule the BDR even got away with the brutal murders of the BSF jawans in cold blood!

So what is it that keeps India from responding appropriately to the Bangladeshi problem? A peep into the thinking of the Indian establishment with regard to Bangladesh can be had in B.Raman’s recent book “The Kaoboys of R&AW” where the author laments about the Bangladesh issue thus.

“Bangladesh which brought glory to the R&AW in 1971, became an embarrassing millstone around its neck. It watched helplessly as there was one surprise after another and as Bangladesh once again became the hub of anti-Indian activities directed against India’s North-East.The spread of insurgency to Tripura and Assam in the 1980s from sanctuaries in Bangladesh and the seeming Indian helplessness in dealing with it strengthened India’s image as a soft state”.

“In India one doesn’t often realize the constraints imposed on Indian policy making in Bangladesh, the like of which one does not face in Pakistan. Bangladesh still has a large number of Hindus and has substantial pockets of friendly feelings for India. Any unwise and hasty use of the big stick against Bangladesh could have negative consequences for the Hindus and the pro-India sections of its population.The resulting Indian reluctance to use the big stick is exploited by the anti-Indian elements in the local administration and political class to further step up their anti-India activities. We have not yet found a way of breaking out of this vicious circle.”

It is said that for the Americans Iranian history doesn’t go before 1979. A similar mental block seems to afflict Indians in the case of Bangladesh who cannot see that country without the prism of 1971 not one year before not one year after.

We Indians seem to have collectively forgotten what pre-1971 Bangladesh was. We seem to have forgotten that before the events of 1971 today’s Bangladesh was East Pakistan and it chose to secede from its mother country and join Pakistan willingly with even a referendum to boot and also it did more than its share to make the Pakistani dream come true. Have we forgotten that some of the worst riots, massacres and cases of mass ethnic cleansing designed to make Pakistan a reality happened in the East? What about the Calcutta direct action day? Noakhali? etc… The slaughter in the East was just as worse as that in the West which gets much of the attention in the chronicles of the partition.

1971 therefore was just an internal problem between the two wings of Pakistan where we merely intervened to safeguard our own interests. As simple as that. But instead of seeing that reality in the right perspective the Indian side naively expected that East Pakistan will be replaced by a grateful and friendly Bangladesh. The disappointment and bewilderment that it did not happen is palpable in the above quoted paragraph written by one of the long time insiders of the Indian establishment.

Even the remote possibility that Bangladesh will somehow buck its own chosen destiny and evolve into a friendly state went bust in 1975 with the overthrow and execution of its founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Since then Bangladesh has steadily reverted to the path that it had chosen for itself when it became East Pakistan in 1947 but had been temporarily forced to pause by the events of 1971.

The Bangladesh of today is therefore the heir of the East Pakistan of 1947 and not the Bangladesh we helped found in 1971. Hope we start admitting that to ourselves before we can begin to deal with the challenges posed by this rogue state in sheep’s clothing.

Barkha Dutt in an article on Mayawati’s victory in the UP elections has besmirched the entire blogging community as

Log on to the Internet, and you will be stunned to discover how many bloggers — anonymous, or otherwise — have worn their obvious bias on their computer screens. Some even write about wanting to “leave India if Mayawati ever became Prime Minister” — all this without a trace of irony or shame. Their delusion is not just offensive; it’s positively frightening.

Barkha dutt is plain wrong. There is no such unanimous hostility among the bloggers towards Mayawati that Barkha dutt refers to. On the other hand this was one of the many blogs which welcomed Mayawati’s election victory either cautiously or wholeheartedly even taking into account all her faults and along with the realisation that she won’t be any better a politician than most of her counterparts across the rest of the political spectrum. A balance Ms Barkha towards the end of her article hopes that her own journalistic fraternity will be able to strike. Thus her generalisation of all bloggers as anti-Mayawati falls flat right here.

Perhaps Ms Barkha Dutt would do well to specifically say who are the ones she considers to be at fault. Like any blogger worth his/her salt it would be nice if she actually links to the posts of those she is critiquing. Otherwise such “hit and run” type of yellow Journalism where she makes a sweeping generalisation of such a vast and varied group of individuals simply doesn’t reflect well on her either as an ethical person or professionally as a journalist.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Ms Barkha dutt has tried to smear the entire blogging community with no evidence to back up her claims and this probably might not be her last. But this latest antic of hers has only strengthened the widespread public perception that the Indian mainstream media is already ploughing the depths of depravity and simply cannot be trusted to provide objective coverage of any subject whatsoever. This is one of the reasons for the continuing rise of the blogs as an alternative medium to the 24/7 drivel dished out by the mainstream media and could well be the beginning of the end of the mainstream media’s monopoly on shaping public opinion which they have enjoyed till recently. The sooner that happens the better.

Update- Prasanna Vishy has tracked down the person who made the comment which Barkha dutt found so offensive. Here it is in all its glory.

Priyanka Gandhi is far away. Rahul Gandhi has failed. Manmohan Singh is a puppet. I am aware that were a Lalu or a Mayawati were ever to become PM, I would have to choose to leave the country.

And this one does not come from any random blogger who in Barkha dutt’s own words is either anonymous or otherwise but a well known journalist from her rival channel CNN-IBN. His name is Hindol Sengupta and he wrote this article titled ‘Why I’am afraid of Mayawati’ in his signed blog hosted on the CNN-IBN website.

Looks like Barkha dutt is trying to kill two birds with one stone. She gets to hit back at her professional rival and also at the same time tries to malign the entire blogging community. Smart girl.very, very cunning i must say.

What does Mayawati’s sweeping victory in the UP elections mean for the dalits? Nearly a week later it is clear that all that euphoria about a so called great “social revolution” caused by her bringing together of a rainbow coalition of upper castes, dalits and muslims was nothing but meaningless and premature.

And so were any hopes of her giving a better administration to that much misruled state been dashed by her partisan behaviour in the past week when she immediately stayed all the decisions of the previous government, transferred officials who she did not see eye to eye with and threatened to launch enquiries into alleged wrongdoings of the previous government. Added to that her party and government has the same problem of having alleged and convicted criminals in its rolls as any other previous or current governments and political parties across the country.

So what has really changed? According to Mr Chandra Bhan Prasad, a noted Dalit intellectual.

The only thing that has changed is the arrival of the dalits as a strong political force on the national stage on their own steam.They call the shots in this government and for a change it is the others who play second fiddle to them now.That’s a huge revolution in a country where for thousands of years they had virtually no voice.

Analysts will debate over the spectacular success of Mayawati’s Dalit-Brahmin thesis, and make predictions on India’s political equations.But what we must ponder over is: what does this victory mean for the larger Dalit mass?

Critics will have their day. ‘Few thousands Dalits will benefit individually, they will say. Many more Dalits will become ministers, Dalit bureaucrats and mid-level officers will get plum positions, and a host of new policy packages will be unleashed for Dalits,’ they might sneer.

‘Can State-engineered public policies reach each household in any society,’ they will ask.’At best, Dalits will have satisfaction that their own person is at the helm of affairs,’ they will whisper.

Such possible criticisms deserve attention.Fact: No State policy, howsoever big, can reach all citizens.

The Mayawati government too, therefore, cannot reach out to every Dalit household and uplift it. That is the truth. But, Mayawati’s ascendancy to power can do much more than what we generally can comprehend.

Read the rest…

This week saw three events in quick succession involving India’s accursed communists, the first was the beastly act in Nandigram in West Bengal where the communists are in power and using the machinery of the state butchered the common man in the dozens with all the accompanying claptrap, gaudy red rhetoric that it was for their own good in true classical Soviet-Chinese-Khmer Rouge style, the next in Chhattisgarh where another more “purer” and virulent strain of the same gutter virus, this one known to toxicologists as the ‘Naxalite(Maoist)’ strain murdered more than 50 policemen in cold blood because they were agents of the state, and ofcourse the one involving the more domesticated, scotch and soda sipping, suave, but always obstructive and a no do-gooder “mainstream” political outfit which this time contented itself by “merely trying” to assault and manhandle a minister of the Union government in the very heart of Indian democracy- the hall of the parliament itself!

As repulsive and disgusting as the above incidents are the response of the so called watchdog of democracy, the mainstream media and the self appointed “secular” conscience keepers of the country, the “intellectuals”, assorted NGO’s and the human terrorist rights mafia is even more disgusting. Their one line excuse on behalf of their comrades for each one of the above incidents -It is the other guy’s fault.

Read the rest…

Finally something is being done to atone for the idiocy of the partition era politicians who foolishly agreed to give away even non-Muslim majority areas like Chittagong port and surrounding areas (and ofcourse Lahore in the west) to Pakistan so that it could be “economically viable”, leaving India’s own North-east region landlocked, resulting in its isolation, the disruption of its traditional trade routes and subsequent plunge into the vortex of insurgency and terrorism. Now the decades of callous neglect of the North-East region is perhaps on the way to be rectified.

Myanmar port to bypass Bangla transit hurdle(Link via Shadow Warrior Blog)

GUWAHATI, MARCH 11: Come 2009, and India will no longer have to worry about not being allowed river transit between the North-East and the rest of the country through Bangladesh. Sittwe, a port in Myanmar, being developed with India’s support, will provide sea link to the North-East through Kaladan, a river in Mizoram.

While work has already begun in Sittwe, the crucial three-day meeting of the North-Eastern Council, which ended here on Sunday, focused on speedy development of the river so that North-East gets its sea outlet as early as possible. “The North-East cannot wait any longer. Once Sittwe is developed and Kaladan becomes fully navigable, we can forget about looking at Chittagong for a sea route,” Aiyar said.

This is what India should be doing and the Government should be commended for this move. It is not India’s business to decide on what kind of Government other countries should be having. It is also not prudent for us to take our foreign policy cues from some Western country or the leftist NGO/intellectual mafia on what our policy towards any other country should be. Our foreign policy should be based on our own national interests.

And it is worthwhile to observe that we are getting this crucial lifeline from an Myanmarese military junta which was sought to be isolated at one point even by the Indian Government alongside the West because of the internal political turmoil there. thankfully some better sense prevailed before it was too late. it is not that one should not be concerned about restoration of democracy in Myanmar. But we should realise that Myanmar is a sovereign country and we have no choice but to deal with those who are in power especially when there is so much at stake that we do not have the luxury of sitting on judgement on others.

On the other hand an Bangladesh which owes its very existence and survival to India plays dirty by allowing its soil to be used as a sanctuary for anti-India terrorists and at the same time refusing to give India permission to use its territory to transit to the North-East.

Bangladesh has turned down several requests by India to allow river transport transit from the North-East to the sea, compelling India to explore Sittwe in Myanmar— 160 km from Mizoram—situated at the mouth of the Kaladan river.

Union Minister for Development of Northeastern Region Mani Shankar Aiyar said Bangladesh’s refusal to permit transit facilities to India and its turning down repeated requests to use the Chittagong port for North-East will be history. “The focus is now on developing Kaladan and by the time the Sittwe port is ready, Kaladan will also become fully navigable,” Aiyar said.

While it is sadly true that the Dalits have historically suffered a lot because of the caste based prejudice against them and everyone agrees that this legacy remains a shameful blot on our society as a whole. Nevertheless it is disingenuous for any one, no matter how aggrieved they feel, to make up some baseless theories not grounded in facts.

One such example is this interview of a Dalit activist and Ex-Naxalite member Mr Chandra Bhan Prasad. He claims that the Indian languages carry the legacy of centuries of Caste prejudice within them and hence the Dalits should give up all the Indian languages and adopt English instead.

Perhaps Mr Prasad has not yet realised that if one extends his own theory, even the English language too will be found to carry the legacies of slavery, genocide, colonialism and racism within it. Or perhaps he feels that since all that happened to somebody else like native Americans, Black Africans and Australian Aborigines, one can conveniently overlook it.

In Hindi, to greet somebody we say pranam. The person bows down and there is a kind of body coordination like the folding of hands and bowing down of the head when he or she says pranam.

According to Indian tradition, Dalits don’t have the right to receive pranam . Because the receiver of the pranam had the right to bless, so Dalits never received pranams. In response, the person responds with ‘khush raho (be happy).

I want to emphasis the fact that how Indian languages — be it Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil or Malayalam — all of them carry the legacy of caste. But if you replace Hindi or Tamil by English you will greet by saying ‘good morning.’ The other person will respond saying ‘good morning’. Both will look into the eyes and equality is established.

If that was even remotely true then surely Blacks, native Americans and Australian Aborigines would have attained equal rights centuries before in their own societies. But sadly that has not been the case even to this day. One has to understand that Language whether it is English, Chinese, Zulu, Hindi or whatever is merely a means of expression. It does not have an existence on its own and hence blaming it for the crimes of its speakers is incorrect.

There are too many caste-based abuses in India. People say chori-chamari na karna. (Don’t steal like the chamars, who are the lowest caste amongst the Dalits). In the countryside these abuses are quite common, even now. “I’ll make you a bhangi(sweeper caste)!” — is quite often used as a threat.

In Hindi films and television serials they have slightly modified these age-old abuses. They now say chori-chakari na karna. It hurts us. Analyse it with a little sensitivity. These abuses are meant for us only; it reflects the mindset of Indians.

In that case even the English language has racist epithets for nearly every ethnic and religious group in the world.So would he advise all those affected groups to follow his example and give up speaking the English language? That they should cut themselves off from all the opportunities for advancement it offers in today’s world, which he himself goes on to describe in the rest of the interview

When you speak English it so happens that you dress up differently. I get invited to parties and when I speak in English people talk differently and are even ready to listen to me.

What I speak, if spoken in Hindi, doesn’t make an impact at all. I am dismissed but if I say the same things in English, I am heard and applauded. Also, you may have noticed that English-speaking people tend to wear suits and matching shoes. Better dressing elevates your position and makes you heard.

If he had instead made a case that more and more Dalits should aim to get Higher education to move up the social ladder and for that a good, fluent working knowledge of English is most essential in today’s world, he would have made better sense than by baselessly claiming that all Indian languages are vehicles of caste prejudice and hence should be shunned entirely.

Read the rest…

Five years after the horrific Godhra incident and its aftermath, there has been created according to Mr K.P.S. Gill, a virtual ‘Gujarat Riots industry’ consisting of left leaning politicians, NGO’s, the Media and assorted “intellectuals” who indulge in whipping up flagging passions at every opportunity, and manufacturing a range of ‘products’ that are marketed principally to foreign ‘buyers’. He says that

During and after the Gujarat riots, the role of political actors, non-governmental organisations and ‘activists’, was nothing short of shameful. There was a lot of posturing, a great deal of tamasha, but little was done to bring relief to the victims. Group after group flew into Ahmedabad, went through the motions of ‘investigation’, held press conferences and brought out ill-informed reports, but nobody stayed long enough to deliver concrete services and succour to those whose lives had been shattered and dislocated. In certain political quarters, there was almost an implicit hope that the violence would continue, so that it could be exploited electorally.

All this while the incident that started it all, i.e., Godhra train burning which killed nearly 58 Hindu pilgrims, including 35 women and children is sought to be played down or denied by this very same actors. But why is one set of victims given all the attention and sympathy while the suffering of the other set is sought to be played down, denied, glossed over or even vilified? One such politically motivated report by the Banerjee commission was ruled illegal by the Gujarat High court.

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A little lesson in the need and the usefulness of decentralized local governance, private enterprise and public-private partnership in solving the problems of people from the mother country of UPA’s Chairperson Mrs Sonia Gandhi who currently oversees a government following appallingly short sighted socio-communal policies.

Viganella is a tiny village in the Alps situated on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It had a small problem and this is an incredible story of how the people of that village went about solving it against all odds.

Viganella is situated in a valley, the hill to the southern side of the village rises to a sheer height of 1000m towering over the village. The result is that between Nov 11 to Feb 2 the Sun disappears behind that hill and the village is plunged into pitch darkness for that cold winter period. It has been this way for all these centuries since the town was founded and there was no reason to believe that things would be otherwise.

Read the rest…