Delhi- Jaipur Express way Toll Gate
When it rained at Guragaon, on 15th July, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
When it rained here.....awesome
Delhi- Jaipur Express way Toll Gate
When it rained at Guragaon, on 15th July, 2009
Sunday, July 12, 2009
A tale of two encounters: Dehradun and Batla House
Manish Sethi and Adeel Mehdi
Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group extends its heart-felt condolences to the family of Ranbir Singh, the youth who was killed in a police encounter in Dehradun last week. This encounter again brings to the fore the trigger happy ways of the Indian police who kill and torture for medals and promotions. We demand exemplary punishment for the guilty policemen.
However, the manner in which the Indian State and the mainstream political parties have responded to the encounter in Dehradun is in striking contrast to the reaction to the shooting down of two young men in Batla House in Delhi last September. Both encounters were followed by mass anger and upsurge which spilled onto the streets of the capital cities of Uttarakhand and the country. While the `secular' Congress has put its weight behind the agitation in Uttrakhand, joining the peoples' demand for fair probe and crying foul over human rights violation, the BJP not to be left behind in the Human Rights race sent its emissary in the form of BJP President's and Ghaziabad MP's son to the family of the slain youth to reassure them that the probe into the encounter would be fair and independent, without the involvement of the accused Dehradun Police. A CB-CID enquiry has already been ordered and all police men involved in the shootout have been charged for murder.
Recall now the jingoist hysteria created by Congress and BJP alike, aided by a section of pliant media, in which all calls for independent and impartial enquiry in the Batla House encounter were branded as unpatriotic and downright insulting of the bravery of Special Cell cops. The Congress, which today preens on the retrieval of its minority vote, persistently bulldozed all demands for a probe into the Batla House `encounter'. So much so, that even the simple, procedural requirement for a magisterial enquiry was subverted through the Lieutenant Governor, who refused to grant permission for an enquiry on flimsy grounds. The post mortem reports of the deceased—the killed boys as well as Inspector Sharma—have been accorded the status of State secret.
So, what could be the reason for this speedy demonstration of justice for Ranbir Singh, and the obstinate refusal to concede to the widespread demand for an enquiry into the killings of Atif Ameen and Mohammad Sajid? Except that Atif and Sajid fall in that unfortunate category of `encounterables'— those whose killings can be justified, explained, and remain unmourned by our society and polity. It is all right to snuff out the lives of young men as long as they are drawn from a certain demographic and reside in areas identified as ghettoes. What we are being told here is that Atifs and Sajids cannot claim the framework of democratic rights—the only framework that they must exist in is that of national security.
JTSG reiterates its demand for a judicial probe into the Batla House incident, and the application of the same standards of justice for Atif and Sajid as those applied in the unfortunate and tragic case of Ranbir Singh.
(The authors teach at Jamia Millia Islamia, and are attached to Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group)
Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group extends its heart-felt condolences to the family of Ranbir Singh, the youth who was killed in a police encounter in Dehradun last week. This encounter again brings to the fore the trigger happy ways of the Indian police who kill and torture for medals and promotions. We demand exemplary punishment for the guilty policemen.
However, the manner in which the Indian State and the mainstream political parties have responded to the encounter in Dehradun is in striking contrast to the reaction to the shooting down of two young men in Batla House in Delhi last September. Both encounters were followed by mass anger and upsurge which spilled onto the streets of the capital cities of Uttarakhand and the country. While the `secular' Congress has put its weight behind the agitation in Uttrakhand, joining the peoples' demand for fair probe and crying foul over human rights violation, the BJP not to be left behind in the Human Rights race sent its emissary in the form of BJP President's and Ghaziabad MP's son to the family of the slain youth to reassure them that the probe into the encounter would be fair and independent, without the involvement of the accused Dehradun Police. A CB-CID enquiry has already been ordered and all police men involved in the shootout have been charged for murder.
Recall now the jingoist hysteria created by Congress and BJP alike, aided by a section of pliant media, in which all calls for independent and impartial enquiry in the Batla House encounter were branded as unpatriotic and downright insulting of the bravery of Special Cell cops. The Congress, which today preens on the retrieval of its minority vote, persistently bulldozed all demands for a probe into the Batla House `encounter'. So much so, that even the simple, procedural requirement for a magisterial enquiry was subverted through the Lieutenant Governor, who refused to grant permission for an enquiry on flimsy grounds. The post mortem reports of the deceased—the killed boys as well as Inspector Sharma—have been accorded the status of State secret.
So, what could be the reason for this speedy demonstration of justice for Ranbir Singh, and the obstinate refusal to concede to the widespread demand for an enquiry into the killings of Atif Ameen and Mohammad Sajid? Except that Atif and Sajid fall in that unfortunate category of `encounterables'— those whose killings can be justified, explained, and remain unmourned by our society and polity. It is all right to snuff out the lives of young men as long as they are drawn from a certain demographic and reside in areas identified as ghettoes. What we are being told here is that Atifs and Sajids cannot claim the framework of democratic rights—the only framework that they must exist in is that of national security.
JTSG reiterates its demand for a judicial probe into the Batla House incident, and the application of the same standards of justice for Atif and Sajid as those applied in the unfortunate and tragic case of Ranbir Singh.
(The authors teach at Jamia Millia Islamia, and are attached to Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Lost mercy of of monsoon
The lower than expected seasonal rainfall, or what is fondly called the monsoons, is casting gloom not just on the faces of those looking for a respite from the heat, but in a country where the rains are the only way to irrigate crops, agricultural output could falter and the economy could start sputtering.
Satya Bansal, CEO of Barclays Wealth, India, said, "17 per cent of India's GDP still depends on the agriculture sector and 60 per cent of agriculture remains rain dependent. A weak monsoon would mean lower agricultural output."
Apart from the economic impact, a weak monsoon could also put pressure on corporates by denting India's rural consumption story, but for now corporates find little reason to worry.
As every major report on climate change has alarmingly pointed out, the impact of global warming will be most felt by developing countries. In a final injustice of geography and imperial history, the world's developing countries are by and large also the world's warmest and most densely populated. Of all the emerging economies whose fortunes are rising, India is one of the most vulnerable to climate change.
Little wonder India is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh in anticipation of a wave of climate-change refugees. At 4,000 kilometers in length, the Indo-Bangladeshi Barrier will rival the Great Wall of China. One can only imagine what rising sea levels will do to the millions crammed onto reclaimed land in Mumbai or in India's new auto manufacturing hub of Chennai, around which one trusts the government of India has no plans to build fences.
Climate change is also already causing the glaciers of the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate, the rivers they feed are receding. Some scientists are predicting that the sacred Ganga, whose waters have nourished the great grain-producing Gangetic plains as well as the souls of untold millions of Hindu faithful through millennia, is in danger of simply drying up. Three billion people - half the world's current population - depend on the Himalayas for water. The impact of that water dwindling away is terrifying.
If temperatures rise in India by even a couple of degrees Celsius, which they are already well on track to do, the very viability of food plants will be threatened. Yields will plummet in plants simply not evolved to thrive in higher temperatures. More immediately, climate change causes predictable weather patterns to become unpredictable. This is not good news for a country where the vast majority of agricultural production depends on the regular arrival, duration, and bounty of the monsoon rains.
Climate change is a weapon of mass destruction. Mitigating global warming by whatever means necessary should be the new Indian government's priority number one.
The government should make a major push to develop low-cost alternative energy technologies that don't require finite, toxic fuel sources (which means both fossil and fissile energy sources).
India must embrace a new path to equity and sustainability, without which democracy will merely be one casualty among many too terrible to imagine
Satya Bansal, CEO of Barclays Wealth, India, said, "17 per cent of India's GDP still depends on the agriculture sector and 60 per cent of agriculture remains rain dependent. A weak monsoon would mean lower agricultural output."
Apart from the economic impact, a weak monsoon could also put pressure on corporates by denting India's rural consumption story, but for now corporates find little reason to worry.
As every major report on climate change has alarmingly pointed out, the impact of global warming will be most felt by developing countries. In a final injustice of geography and imperial history, the world's developing countries are by and large also the world's warmest and most densely populated. Of all the emerging economies whose fortunes are rising, India is one of the most vulnerable to climate change.
Little wonder India is building a fence along its border with Bangladesh in anticipation of a wave of climate-change refugees. At 4,000 kilometers in length, the Indo-Bangladeshi Barrier will rival the Great Wall of China. One can only imagine what rising sea levels will do to the millions crammed onto reclaimed land in Mumbai or in India's new auto manufacturing hub of Chennai, around which one trusts the government of India has no plans to build fences.
Climate change is also already causing the glaciers of the Himalayas to melt at an alarming rate, the rivers they feed are receding. Some scientists are predicting that the sacred Ganga, whose waters have nourished the great grain-producing Gangetic plains as well as the souls of untold millions of Hindu faithful through millennia, is in danger of simply drying up. Three billion people - half the world's current population - depend on the Himalayas for water. The impact of that water dwindling away is terrifying.
If temperatures rise in India by even a couple of degrees Celsius, which they are already well on track to do, the very viability of food plants will be threatened. Yields will plummet in plants simply not evolved to thrive in higher temperatures. More immediately, climate change causes predictable weather patterns to become unpredictable. This is not good news for a country where the vast majority of agricultural production depends on the regular arrival, duration, and bounty of the monsoon rains.
Climate change is a weapon of mass destruction. Mitigating global warming by whatever means necessary should be the new Indian government's priority number one.
The government should make a major push to develop low-cost alternative energy technologies that don't require finite, toxic fuel sources (which means both fossil and fissile energy sources).
India must embrace a new path to equity and sustainability, without which democracy will merely be one casualty among many too terrible to imagine
Thursday, June 4, 2009
'WalaikumAssalaam': Indian muslims to Obama
MUMBAI: President Barack Obama's "new beginning'' seems to have sown seeds of hope among large sections of the Muslim community in India going rom initial reactions to his much-awaited speech to the Islamic world. Opening with the traditional greeting of `Assalaamu Alaykum', Obama made several references to Quranic verses and spoke both articulately and with feeling, and referred to the conflict-torn areas of Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The American Centre in Mumbai organised a post-speech discussion of Muslim scholars, clerics and lay Muslims. The collective sentiment seemed to be that Indian Muslims should cooperate to isolate the extremist fringe and promote peace.
Urdu commentator Hasan Kamal, who led the discussion, sounded quite overwhelmed when he said, "I have heard and read speeches of many world leaders. But I can honestly say that I have never heard anything like this before. I listened to Obama as a Muslim, and must say that he has given the Muslims and the world a new hope.''
Many were touched by Obama's "Assalaamu Alaykum'' and his quoting from the holy book. "By quoting the Quran in the right context, Obama has reiterated that Islam stands for peace and reconciliation. He reminded the Muslims of the Quranic commandment about being truthful when he quoted `be conscious of God and always speak the truth','' said Zeenat Shaukat Ali who teaches Islamic Studies at St Xavier's College. She was also happy at the way in which Obama upheld the rights of women and women's educations. The American president said he had no problem with the hijab but did have a problem with a woman being denied the right to education andequality.
Even the orthodox section welcomed Obama's effort to debunk the "crude stereotypes' ' that the community has been labelled with.
"His speech will help reduce hostility between the USA and the Islamic world. It will open a new chapter of reconciliation between the largely aggrieved Muslim world and the West,'' said Qasim Rasool Illyas of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an influential Muslim body. Illyas also lauded the venue of the speech. "Cairo, with its rich Islamic roots and its two major institutions which co-sponsored the address-Islamic seminary Al-Azhar and Cairo University-was the right platform to reach out to Muslims. Muslims must welcome it,'' he said.
The most widely appreciated point in the speech was the roadmap to solve the festering Palestine-Israel conflict. Prof Mushirul Hasan, historian and vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, called it a "laudable initiative'' . "He has openly talked of Palestine's genuine right of being a separate nation and Israel's right to exist. This is the best possible speech one could have expected from him,'' said Hasan.
The American Centre in Mumbai organised a post-speech discussion of Muslim scholars, clerics and lay Muslims. The collective sentiment seemed to be that Indian Muslims should cooperate to isolate the extremist fringe and promote peace.
Urdu commentator Hasan Kamal, who led the discussion, sounded quite overwhelmed when he said, "I have heard and read speeches of many world leaders. But I can honestly say that I have never heard anything like this before. I listened to Obama as a Muslim, and must say that he has given the Muslims and the world a new hope.''
Many were touched by Obama's "Assalaamu Alaykum'' and his quoting from the holy book. "By quoting the Quran in the right context, Obama has reiterated that Islam stands for peace and reconciliation. He reminded the Muslims of the Quranic commandment about being truthful when he quoted `be conscious of God and always speak the truth','' said Zeenat Shaukat Ali who teaches Islamic Studies at St Xavier's College. She was also happy at the way in which Obama upheld the rights of women and women's educations. The American president said he had no problem with the hijab but did have a problem with a woman being denied the right to education andequality.
Even the orthodox section welcomed Obama's effort to debunk the "crude stereotypes' ' that the community has been labelled with.
"His speech will help reduce hostility between the USA and the Islamic world. It will open a new chapter of reconciliation between the largely aggrieved Muslim world and the West,'' said Qasim Rasool Illyas of All India Muslim Personal Law Board, an influential Muslim body. Illyas also lauded the venue of the speech. "Cairo, with its rich Islamic roots and its two major institutions which co-sponsored the address-Islamic seminary Al-Azhar and Cairo University-was the right platform to reach out to Muslims. Muslims must welcome it,'' he said.
The most widely appreciated point in the speech was the roadmap to solve the festering Palestine-Israel conflict. Prof Mushirul Hasan, historian and vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, called it a "laudable initiative'' . "He has openly talked of Palestine's genuine right of being a separate nation and Israel's right to exist. This is the best possible speech one could have expected from him,'' said Hasan.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Kamala Surayya or Kerala's own Madhavikutty
Kamala Surayya (March 31,1934- May31,2009)
The sad demise of the writer was an irreparable loss to the world of letters, not only to Kerala but the whole world.Kamala's language was the ''language of love'' which she penned both in her novels and poems, he recalled that she had courageously announced that women were not weak or slave, but equal to men.she had made lot of fans across the world.
India's foremost poetess Kamala Das born on March 31, 1934 at Punnayurkulam in the Malabar area of Kerala. She born in the great Kerala literary household Nalapattu, as the daughter of M.K Menon and well-known Malayalam poetess Balamaniyamma. She acquainted with the great writers in Malayalam literature at a tender age and had enough exposure due to her stay at Calcutta and Kerala. The young Kamala read the Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables by Nalapattu Narayanamenon at a tender age of eight. This ancestral house and the love of her grandmother influenced the young 'Amy' to grow into the Malayalam writer Madhavikutty as well as English poet Kamala Das.
Kamala Das' first poetry collection Summer in Calcutta promised the rise of a revolutionary woman poet in India. Her writings mainly reflected woman's longing for love and her restrictions in the society. Her stories and poems were greatly misunderstood and criticized by a section of Indian critics. Her poems like An Introduction, The Descendants, Alphabet of Lust and Only The Soul Knows How To Sing were open voices of restricted women in an orthodox society. Her autobiography My Story, published in 1976 put her on the centre of controversies. When this confessional work has been translated to more than 15 languages, Inadian critics accused for spreading the idea of unmarital relationships.
Controversies have always dogged the writer, who created a storm when she published her autobiography My Story and later embraced Islam in 1999 and adopted the name Kamala Surayya. She began wearing a veil, saying it offered dignity and comfort to women and continues to do so even now.
The poet who always wrote about Lord Krishna and imagined to be his Radha suddenly started to address Allah. Her statement "I converted my Krishna to Islam" evoked much opposition from conservative Hindus in Kerala. However she was bold in her decisions and continues her life according to Muslim beliefs.
And the ripples set off by the conversion were visible even on Sunday as her death certificate was made in the name of Kamala Madhava Das and the accompanying smasan parvana was filled with the venue for funeral at Vaikunth (city crematorium) and the date for the funeral as 31/05/09. Clearly, the decision taken in the morning was changed later in the day.
“My mother was a Muslim for many years and died a Muslim. She had converted to Islam happily and of her free will. It doesn’t matter what I or my brothers want. It was her wish (to convert to Islam) and we will respect it and abide by it. There is no way a posthumous reconversion can be held. So her funeral will have to be as per Islamic norms. It was also her wish that she be returned to Kerala,” Monu Nalapat, Madhavikutty’s eldest son, said.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
some writings from somebody!!!!
What is there to be scared about?
Growth should be equitable even if a percentage point lesser! All the growth that has happened in the last one decade is at the top end segment of the society which benefitted the rich and the upper middle class! The rural poor have only seen organic 2-3% growth and not beyond that.
This kind of growth is benefitting only the Western World to market their luxury products to the rich and upper middle classes like top end wrist watches, other consumer products etc. Gucci, Armani likes are allowed to open single brand outlets so that rich and upper classes income can be swallowed by selling exorbitant priced products because of brand names while qualitatively they may not be proportionate to their price tags!
Even Manmonhan Singh is aware and facilitated this. That is why he even asked the private sector to reduce the salaries and perks to its top executives because the gap between the rich and poor is widening too fast. The problem is not just economic; it is social as well; you are seeing more and more people adopting western culture in dress and celebrations of festivals like Valentines day which is getting the goat of those who follow even Hindu values. Raising incidents of violence is the direct result of this distorted economic boom. You need economic boom but not lopsided one. If India allows that it will fall prey to the western countries and revolution is imminent as it happened in Iran and other places.
At the same time, because of renewed economic growth, working class young men had growing purchasing power, which enabled them to spend more on beer. These are probably the main causes of heavy drinking and heavy violence.
Growth should be equitable even if a percentage point lesser! All the growth that has happened in the last one decade is at the top end segment of the society which benefitted the rich and the upper middle class! The rural poor have only seen organic 2-3% growth and not beyond that.
This kind of growth is benefitting only the Western World to market their luxury products to the rich and upper middle classes like top end wrist watches, other consumer products etc. Gucci, Armani likes are allowed to open single brand outlets so that rich and upper classes income can be swallowed by selling exorbitant priced products because of brand names while qualitatively they may not be proportionate to their price tags!
Even Manmonhan Singh is aware and facilitated this. That is why he even asked the private sector to reduce the salaries and perks to its top executives because the gap between the rich and poor is widening too fast. The problem is not just economic; it is social as well; you are seeing more and more people adopting western culture in dress and celebrations of festivals like Valentines day which is getting the goat of those who follow even Hindu values. Raising incidents of violence is the direct result of this distorted economic boom. You need economic boom but not lopsided one. If India allows that it will fall prey to the western countries and revolution is imminent as it happened in Iran and other places.
At the same time, because of renewed economic growth, working class young men had growing purchasing power, which enabled them to spend more on beer. These are probably the main causes of heavy drinking and heavy violence.
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