An occasion to Commend UPA-II

The second anniversary of UPA-II just went by. And to celebrate the momentous occasion the government had a quiet coalition anniversary dinner on Sunday. It was also celebrated at Tihar in a more subdued manner where the other ‘stalwarts’ associated with the present UPA had their dinner.

And this pretty well sums up the overall scenario. Governance and corruption have always been complementary to Indian political system but never have we seen their public display of affection as openly as we see it now.

When Manmohan Singh took oath on May 22,2009 as the head of UPA –II one would have expected that he would go all out on improving governance because this time he didn’t have to deal with the tantrums of the Leftist. The more than comfortable majority that they UPA got was seen as the kind of political platform that government needed to further its political, social and economic policy.

Did they achieve those goals?

Time to introspect,we disappointed Rahul Gandhi

The ‘hope’ of India, Rahul Gandhi did a superman act today as riding pillion on a bike he managed to sneak into Bhatta Parsaul village of Uttar Pradesh where an intense battle of sort happened between farmers and police personnel a couple of days back.

Defying the imposition of section 144 he sprung a surprise and walked into the village at 5 AM in the morning and it’s been more than 14 hours and still he is sitting on a ‘Dharna’ with the villagers who are demanding better compensation for their land that has been acquired by the government.

That he has little regard for law as he exhibited by ignoring section 144 is something that need not be talked about, that is a minor issue in this whole political game that’s being played in the rural area of Uttar Pradesh.

But what needs to be discussed is his Lack of foresightedness and traces of political immaturity because if he actually wanted to help the farmers then he has surely failed. Media OB vans and reporters with mikes are no measure of  the involvement of 'genuine' intention, if any. Though if he had come their for political and TV mileage, he would be now happy like a child in a candy store.

Can anyone from the Congress party come out and say that this sudden early morning move has nothing to do with the assembly elections that are stated to be held in Uttar Pradesh the next year?

Or was it a genuine concern for the farmers that prompted the Gandhi scion to pay a visit to Bhatta Parsaul?

A case for a ‘Dalit’ in the higher echelon of the society

The Varna system that has plagued India for millennium still continues to rule roost in the country which is often hailed as the role model for emerging democracy in the world. We talk about a society for all, a compound where everyone despite and in-spite of his caste and creed gets an equal opportunity to rise and shine. But have we truly been able to break the chains of the Varna system that shackles our minds?

The Brahmins, the Khatriyas,the Vaishyas and the Shudras are the four pillars of our society,  rather the demarcation that still exist and continues to divide the society into four parts on the basis of birth. And it’s not that nothing has been done to dilute this demarcation.

The Constitutional forefathers tried hard to remove this demarcation by providing for reservations for the mass that had the misfortune to be born in this ‘low-caste’,a term that was defined many centuries ago  by those who were in the higher pedestal of the caste system.

Whether this reservation policy has worked for the 166,635,700 persons, Scheduled Castes population, constituting 16.2 per cent of the country’s total population can be argued upon for hours and yet when the talks will end there will be no concrete conclusion. And the same holds true for the merits of providing reservation, it’s hundred times harder to arrive upon a conclusion when it comes to the merits of reservation.

Reservation is something that tries to make the playground equal and fair for those who because of their birth have been deprived of quality living and education.

The question is whether providing for reservation enough? Is the policy of providing for empowerment at the bottom of the strata so that it can gradually gain strength and social acceptance as as it grows effective enough? Is this affirmative action not required at the higher level? 

हमारी और हमारे भोपाल की कहानी कुछ ऐसी है

एक शहर से प्यार होना थोडा कठिन है. पर हमे वो हुआ, और काफी जोरों से हुआ. 

सन १९९५ , फ़रवरी का महीना था वो शायद. हम  ने पहली बार हबीबगंज रेलवे स्टेशन देखा.उस समय वो काफी अकेला सा था. एक छोटी सा स्टेशन था वो और एक्का दुक्का ट्रेन ही वहाँ रूकती थी. उस समय हमने पहली बार भोपाल को देखा था और देखते रह गए.

फ़र्ज़ कीजिए फ़रवरी की ठंडी सुबह जो हलकी सी धुँध से नहाई हुई है और उस ठंढ़ में आप एक छोटे से स्टेशन पे उतरे जहाँ ५-१० लोगो कि ही भीड़ हो. कुछ ऐसा ही दृष्य था उस समय. अभी भी याद करते हैं तो रोएं खड़े हो जाते हैं. 

वो था हमारा पहला पल जब हमे भोपाल से प्यार हुआ. या यूँ कहिये कि हबीबगंज से प्यार हुआ. जो समय के साथ और गहरा होता चला गया.

The liberal retardism that they think we suffer from

I could not go to Jantar Mantar to be a part of the crowd that had gathered to support Anna Hazare in his stand against corruption because I was not in Delhi. Many of us who could not be present there had different reasons but Harsh Mander has come out with the most mind-boggling of all the reasons.

In todays Hindustan Times he writes that he didn’t go there because he was disturbed by the presence of  pictures of Bharat Mata on the stage and in the hands of the supporters which he thinks naturally points to the presence of RSS and the likes.

Secondly he was perturbed by the presence of godman like Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri RaviShankar during the whole movement. And then he goes on to say, as if he has got the bulls eye, that his presence of the saffron element in the whole movement was confirmed  after Anna Hazare praised Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi declaring him a model chief minister.

It's about us... not about them

Corruption has always been an issue. It was before you and I were born and it was present when our forefathers took admission in schools. And we have always wished that it should disappear, but never have we felt this feeling as strong as we feel now that corruption has to go this time.

There is no next moment or another movement for this.

The fast unto death taken up by Anna Hazare has moved the entire nation that has been sulking under the numerous scams that have happened at a amazing periodicity both at the micro and macro level. 

This has been a year of revolution and movements. Egypt,Libiya,Tunisia and many other countries have or are experiencing the evolution of thoughts that have transformed into actions. The unifying factor in each of this country is that the issues that have forced the mass to come on the street are issues that are basic to the daily life of a common man.

Unemployment, price rise, nepotism has ignited the fire inside the man that walks on the street to take notice of the condition around him. Conditions that were always present but were ignored and then neglected and allowed to fester.

Recently when asked whether any such revolution can happen in India, our Prime Minister replied in the negative and said that we are a democratic country where we have the means to redress our problems.  And he was so right.

A/S/L

18/male/Bhopal here. Looking for a good clean chat.

This was the time of 1999-2001. The time when the internet connection at home was still a big-ask. The only player providing internet connection being Satyam with packages of Rs. 3000 for 3 Gb download.

Me and my friends would go to one of the many a internet cafes and pay anything between Rs.60 per hour to Rs. 80 per hour to log into the world of the mythical internet. At that time having an email address was nothing less than owning a Blackberry today. Rediff was a rage then and so was 123india.com. Yahoo was still a rank outsider and most people were more content with having a desi address in indiatimes.com.

The failing of the Mahatma

Why is Mohandas Karam Chand Gandhi  a taboo subject to write on , especially if you are not supporting whatever he did. Critically evaluating his actions have never been a favourite subjects of commentators alike.

For me he has always been a leader, maybe a leader who was above his contemporaries but still a leader never the less. And he was no god, but a human being.

The more and more I read about him the more my feeling that he has been given a status of  demigod gets strengthened. Whether it was bestowed on him or he actually demanded is something that I cannot comment on. But I am forced to believed that we have ignored his fallings whenever we have thought about our Father of Nation.

As I have aged, my image of Mahatma Gandhi has also changed. First he was the Father of nation, someone who is immune to any wrong doings and as I write now I look at him as someone who was a mortal man who was swayed by his desires and carried his share of bias. He too like us was prone to love and hate and to success and failure.

I feel that his actions during the time period of 1915 when he jumped into the Indian National Movement and to his subsequent death should be studied with an open mind. Not with a preconceived notion that we are looking into someone who was always a god or as it turned out eventually, the father of the Nation. 


To bestow on him the title of Father of the nation is asking something too much from him. It’s best if he was not bracketed but left in the history for the coming generations to judge his actions and his success. Perhaps if he was alive he would never have agreed to his such a supreme position. More so when he would have been confronted with his repeated failings which he continued to ignore.

Kalmadi and Raja reunited

New Delhi : Suresh Kalmadi and Andimuthu Raja are long lost brothers who got separated at childhood when they were running away from a BSNL linesman after they had stolen copper wires from him and if it was not for their respective embezzlement in 2G and Common wealth they would not have been reunited again, a ‘We-leak’ cable has revealed .

A cable no 01010101 dated 20.01.2010 from Joginder Clinton, Field Director, India CIA ( Corruption India Accentuated ) to Shri.Lalu Yadav ( State Head, CIA, Bihar) has revealed that  Kalmadi and Raja were brothers who got separated while trying to hide reel of telephone cables that they had taken from a BSNL linesman when he had come in their locality to repair a minor fault.

The linesman, whose name is Sardar Mohan Singh, after discovering the embezzlement, gave the brothers a chase as a result of which Raja took a train to South and Kalmadi landed in Pune, all at the tender age of seven years. Surprisingly though the CIA was aware of this fact for the last few years yet it chose to remain a mute spectator to this meteoric rise and fall of the brothers rather than acting as a guardian.

According to sources if it was not for a loose mouthed ED officer who was a part of the team that conducted raid on Kalmadi’s house, both the brothers would have never met.

of Shaadma and her tale

It was 1.30 AM in the night and the craving for tea forced me to ask the driver to stop at a Dhaba on NH3 about 65 kms before Jalgaon in Maharastra.  I had a train to catch the next morning from Jalgaon and had more than ample time to do some badly needed stretching and catch up on some food and some tea and fag.

We, me and my driver had been driving for a couple of hours and had left Nashik long back. The dhaba was built in midst of a picturesque landscape. It was on NH 3 surrounded by tall mountains of black rocks and tree. 

I didn’t ask for the menu and simply told the waiter to bring Dal Tadka and Roti. And the driver too gave his silent assent to the choice of menu with a discreet smile. If you are at a Indian dhaba and you prefer vegetarian than rest assured the best  meal that you can have is Dal Tadka and Tandoori Roti.  With time  I have developed a strong reason to believe that The taste of Dal Tadka is virtually the same at every Dhaba, be it in Bastar, Koderma,Nangloi,Meerut, Vindhyachal or Solapur. It’s the best bet you can play without caring for how it will taste. The hardness and the elasticity of the Tandoori may differ but the Tadka in dal will always remain the same.

And Like many of us, I too have a kind of liking to sit on the charpai when having dinner at a Dhaba. And this Dhaba had nothing but charpai strewn all over, where one could sit with your legs folded or lie down and gaze at the stars which were shining like small moons on a clear March night.

I, Aruna Shanbaug

I was a nurse at a hospital in Mumbai, full of life just like a 24 year old girl. I had many dreams, countless aspirations just like all. I was about to get married to a handsome doctor. And then everything fell apart.

On the night of 23 November, 1973 I was sexually assaulted by a boy who was working in the same hospital where I was. And I lost my power to speak , I was paralysed and slowly I slipped into a vegetative state. That was 37 years ago. With time everyone left me, my family, my fiancé, my friends and my death too.

A vegetative state is a condition which arises after a patient suffers from severe brain damage. It’s a state of coma. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. I have been in this state for the past 37 years. This was before India won the world cup in 1983, or before the calendar turned 2000. I don’t know who is Sachin Tendulkar or who is Shahrukh Khan.

Still nationalist at heart

A letter to Sagarika Ghose in reply to her fear of the death of the liberal democracy

Dear author of ‘bloody mary’

I will be very honest to the extent of being brutal here as I write this to you. I have very occasionally read your column before. If my memory serves me right I read it some months back because you had written a piece on another idiot of the Thackeray clan, Aditya Thackeray. And I appreciated it, just like many others might have.

I have not put any effort to decipher why I don’t like reading what you write. Perhaps I am not attracted by the subject matter on which you write but one thing that I am sure of is the fact that I like your way of writing, the use of poets and poems etc. But that's where the appreciation ends.

Your recent write-up “Still old at heart” is something that I decided to read because I thought that it was something that was fresh and different from your too repetitive ranting for a ‘liberal’ Indian. And guess what, you proved me wrong. But then if only I had started from the last paragraph I would have been spared being ‘enlightened’ by your delightful thoughts.

As guilty as Rupam Pathak

The murder of BJP MLA Rajkishore Keshari by a school principal Rupam Pathak has brought back Bihar in news, albeit for a wrong reason.

The popular MLA was stabbed in full view by the lady when Kishore was receiving visitors at his home in Purnea. According to her, the MLA along with his associate had raped her earlier.

During the election campaign in the state earlier, she had filed an FIR against the MLA but later withdrawn her complaint saying that she had registered her complaint under the influence of political pressure from opponents of Kishore .

This crime in itself cannot be termed or seen as just another murder. For two reasons.

Firstly for a forty three old educated lady to kill someone that too in public without giving a damn to her life which she knew would be at perils once the supporters of the MLA catch her in itself speaks about the mental stress and pressure that she might be experiencing for a long period of time which finally burst out in open through the killing of Keshari. What prompted such a drastic step?

Binayak Sen – we a nation of hypocrites

The conviction of Dr.Binayak Sen for life by a Chhattisgarh court for supporting the naxalites has drawn expression of anger and sadness from many quarters. Which I dare to say was expected.

Sen was arrested by the the Chhattisgarh police in 2007 for allegedly acting as a courier between a jailed naxal leader and a businessman.

The reactions that have come from various sides of the globe have blasted the Indian judiciary, the Indian governing system and alike to all corners. Activists have till now organized many a rallies in support of the doctor. One such rally was organized in the heart of Delhi where the great “Arundhati Roy” too made her presence felt. Online petitions have already flooded emails of many an enlightened Indians asking them to register their protest. Amnesty too has joined in.

The charade of the 'intellectuals' is at full swing for the world to see and to mock the Indian democracy which according to them is trembling in fear of a doctor.

Media unbiased- A 'mythical shit'

The spotlight has never been as intensely focused on the media itself as it is now as the respected Fourth pillar find itself being subjected to the same questions that it showered all these years on the other three pillars of a vibrant democracy.

One after the other, incidents,leaks,expose have come out in the public sphere bringing out in open the dirt that was always present in the media but was very subtly swept under the carpet.

Journalism is about truth and spreading the information. But rare are periods where it was confined under these limits. Ethical and moral limits in journalism are loosely codified and very rarely followed.

Politics,Police,Paisa which ostensibly amounts to ‘power’ have always been a part of the media. And when these three walk with you side by side you are bound to enjoy the rise associated with them and equally share their disgraced fall.

Candle light- Mumbai's only way out

It will be exactly two years, two hours from now when the insanity that is called Jihad played havoc in Mumbai . And as we remember the innocent death due to the countless senseless bullets I am sure many of us will light candles at the busy squares of our cities.

Last year this lighting of candles happened in every city be it Mumbai,Delhi,Patna or Bhopal. At that time I was in Bhopal and I saw two radio jockeys standing under a pandal as they distributed candles to the curious guys that had gathered around them.

And like everyone I too noticed that the reason that so many candles were burning to death was not because of the cause but because of the girls who were distributing them.

I don’t have issues with it- lighting of candle nor I find forming of human chains a very senseless act of displaying oneness. But what troubles me is that why do we stop at such symbolic gestures. Why do we have this feeling of contentment and satisfaction after a hard night work of lighting candles.

Once there was a man called Lalu

Not long time ago Lalu chalisa was a very common thing in the streets of Patna. You could easily purchase it from the many a small shops that are lined up in front of the Patna railway station. These Lalu chalisa that were written by many of the faithful followers of Lalu Yadav would sometimes outsell the more original Hanuman chalisa.

And like his other predecessors from Bihar Lalu too had a fondness for the Indian railways.

Lalu Yadav and Indian Railway shared a very cordial relationship till he was the Railway minister. And both gained from each other. More aptly - it was the Indian railway that gained more. Not going into the economics, it was because of Lalu that the railway became a household name in Pakistan and world over. And it can be debated upon that whether the Railway as an institution gained any long term benefits during the tenure of Lalu.

Lalu Yadav was at that time Bihar and Bihar was nothing but Lalu. And even now that memory has not faded from the minds of many.

Why Barkha Dutt needs to be defended

I have been at the receiving end of highly critical words and statements for the recent post on my blog in which I have defended Barkha Dutt. Few of them have come through authentic source and they have attached their email address in case I feel that I should revert back to them.

Mostly though have been under the hood of anonymous. And I have no problem with the person being anonymous, since it’s me who has exercised this option of having anonymous comments. But I have been a bit disturbed by the use of language and words which to put it mildly is inappropriate.

All of the comments and feedbacks barring a rare few have said that I am acting as an agent of Barkha Dutt and I am one of those 'educated idiot' who has been recruited by Congress.

I am sure not many of those who have commented on the recent post of mine have gone though my previous posts. And I don’t expect them to do so. None of the commentators have been following my blog so it would be unfair on my part to expect them to know I am ‘what’ leaning. As in am I a Leftist, a Centrist or a bloody Rightist.

In defence of Barkha Dutt

I have never admired Barkha dutt. I found no reason to do so. I always see her as someone who has gorged on the self manufactured hype that she has attracted towards her. She went to Kargil and made sure that she along with India emerged as the sole winner. The focus I still remember shifted from the Bofors to her as she reported the war with dramatic effects that were meant to portray a picture of a woman who is risking her life to cover the war.

She made sure that the right visualizations were carried out to the viewers just like the way she did years later when she was reporting the Mumbai attack. She would cover her ears in articulated gestures as to show how near she actually was to the real shooting that was taking place. The intensely scared look on her face made sure that the viewers had to forcibly digest the fact that she was actually doing a very good job.

She did everything good, no pun intended. But when she tried to cash on it and tried to turn into a larger than life situation, she flunked. Exaggeration fetches and catches the ‘ooos’ and the ‘aahhs’ but modesty and humility makes sure that the real admiration stays forever.

And in the case of Barkha Dutt she has never stopped from making sure that the headline shifts from the news to the anchor.

Why I 'hate' India

A long list of people will come up if I start thinking of people who are Anti-Indian. (And what may be anti-Indian to me may be a patriotic individual to you, but that’s a subjective matter.)

But maybe then that list will appear peanuts if I start thinking about those who glorify such people who like to dislike India.

I pose this question to myself and search for answers that why we glorify those who de-glorify India? And for the starters I will make a disclaimer that No I am not a saffronwadi nor a Swaymsevak nor a BJP supporter.

The moment someone starts talking about people who propagate anti India feelings they are attached to an invisible tag of a fundamentalist, a dogmatic and an unsecular intellectual.

You blurt words against the professional dissenters like Arundhati Roy and you are called someone who is in cahoots with the people who perpetrated the terrible riots in Gujarat. The moment you call Geelani , both the Kashmiri and the Professor , anti Indian, you find yourself being measured on the scale of a Saffron promoter.