Indian Interests

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JE Menon
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by JE Menon »

the classification "Sikhs/Khalistanis" is itself wrong in my opinion. And then the link from Ummah/Pakistan to Sikhs/Khalistanis is a bit of an own goal... Either just have it as Khalistanis, or just Sikhs with no link from Ummah to them. Now it looks like Ummah is influencing Sikhs... which they are not doing any more than they are influencing Hindus or Jains or Christians.
JE Menon
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by JE Menon »

Ramana,

Didn't see your post above earlier... Harbans link to India Today does not contain what Jhujar claimed is from CBSE. It is in the link to “guruprasad.net”, which claims it is from a “moral science” text book – a debatable statement, because there is no indication of that other than that guruprasad's assertion. Jhujar himself says it’s from some tweet…

BTW, nothing in any of the links Harbans posted appears to be from CBSE.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

Sikh/Khalistanio etc is a self goal and dont reflect the reality.Khalistani community in Videsh is minuscule, having no detrimental effect.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

I did some digging on Twitter. I followed the link posted by Juhjar for
@AUThackarey. Turns out he is a Shiv Sena Youth (?) leader in Mumbai.


In his followers on person DJ@SacchiMucchi posted the above picture.

It was he who said it was CBSE textbook.

https://twitter.com/SacchiMuchhi/status ... 20/photo/1

Jhujar in future please verify the veracity of such material.

The original link said moral science text book and the other person said CBSE and you followed his lead.
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

Thanks, but wodndering who is doing this piskology experiment behind Moral Science textbook stuff . Some one is testing the water and either want to know how deep is the rot or how far such crap can be pushed, e.g n past Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries as well many Non Congressi freedom fighters have been portrayed in poor light.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Philip »

http://newindianexpress.com/magazine/vo ... 853025.ece

http://newindianexpress.com/magazine/vo ... 853025.ece

Maoists are moving to plan, the aim is to capture state power

By Prakash Singh
Published: 27th October 2013

The Maoists have struck again. On October 17, they killed three commandos of the Maharashtra Police in Gadchiroli district and, the same day, they used an IED to blow up a vehicle in Aurangabad district of Bihar, killing seven civilians, including a Ranvir Sena activist. The Bihar attack was possibly an expression of anger over the acquittal of all the accused by the Patna High Court in the Laxmanpur Bathe massacre, which was allegedly perpetrated by the Ranvir Sena in 1997.

There has not been much of a ripple in the establishment and not much in the media even. Maoist violence at regular intervals is taken for granted. The lethargy, inaction and incompetence of the political class is being fully exploited by the Maoists to gradually augment their strength and spread their network.

Two areas in which the Maoists have lately spread their wings are matters of serious concern. One is their gradual penetration in the urban areas and the other is their steady infiltration in the Northeast.

“The final objective of the revolution” according to Mao Tse Tung, “is the capture of the cities, the enemy’s main bases and this objective cannot be achieved without adequate work in the cities”. It is in pursuance of this objective that the Maoists have been trying to establish their presence in the urban centres. The Minister of State for Home, in statement made on August 30, 2012, admitted that seven districts of Delhi have come “under the influence” of the CPI(Maoist). Jawaharlal Nehru University has significant presence of Maoist sympathisers. According to another report, three prestigious colleges of Maharashtra—St Xavier’s College and Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai and Fergusson College, Pune—are on the watchlist of the state’s Anti-Naxal Operations wing. There is a systematic effort to capture the hearts and minds of the youth.

The Maoists have also a blueprint for expansion in the Northeast. It is learnt that they plan to form a ‘strategic zone’ comprising the hilly terrain of Karbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts of Assam and the Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh. Kishenji, the politburo member, had, as far back as January 2010, said that the Maoists “unconditionally support ULFA’s struggle for self-determination in Assam” and that they wanted “ULFA, PLA and other such groups fighting for separate homelands or for self-determination to fight the exploitative Indian state alongside us”. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has admitted the Maoists setting up bases in the upper Assam districts of Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Jorhat, Lakhimpur and Dhemaji.

There is also information of Maoists’ nexus with the NLFT of Tripura and PLA of Manipur. The supplementary chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency in the CPI (Maoist)-PLA nexus case revealed that the Maoists were procuring Chinese arms and communication equipment from PLA via Myanmar and routing that to Kolkata through Guwahati between 2006 and 2011. The PLA also appears to have imparted training to the Maoists in the Saranda forests of Jharkhand. The peaceful state of Arunachal Pradesh has also witnessed Maoist activities, even though these are presently on a low key. Some youths were engaged by Maoists to spread disaffection among the local population against the construction of big dams.

The Maoist presence in the Northeast has serious strategic implications. As noted by a parliamentary panel, “it has potential trans-border possibilities of connection, activities and interaction”. It could also derail the development projects being undertaken in the region. According to an IB report, the Chinese are encouraging the Maoists and the militant groups from Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast to form a ‘united strategic front’ against the Indian State.

The Maoists are moving according to a plan, and their objective is to capture state power through a protracted people’s war. They have a well-organized People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army and they are expanding their influence territorially. They have also good support base among the intellectual class. What is Government of India’s plan to deal with the Left-Wing extremism threat? It is a simplistic approach—organise counter-insurgency operations and accelerate development in the affected regions. What is needed is a comprehensive strategic plan, which is nowhere in sight.
JE Menon
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by JE Menon »

Jhujar,

It is very simple. It is not a piskology experiment unless you participate. It could be anybody doing it. The objective is to separate people who may have a point of view from reason and easily established truth. They farther you are separated from these two the easier you, and therefore by direct and valid association your point of view, are ridiculed and disposed of in the arena of public discourse. If you have a point of view, and if you think it is reasonable and true, then there is no reason to depend on falsehood. It is not easy to do this, but it is necessary if you want to win in a mindspace where victory on a civilisational level is now only really possible through dialogue and discourse; the alternative is total mutual annihilation, which we are also prepared for.

Those you should allow to separate from reason and truth are your adversaries, not the folk on BRF who are generally guided by their love for our motherland like you are. Truth and Reason should be a mainstay of our civilisational arsenal. That is why Satyam Eva Jayate. The people who thought these up are not idiots with no love for the civilisation that spawned us, or people to be casually dismissed with one sarcastic phrase as less patriotic than those of us who post here.

Truth and Reason are force multipliers. Don't work against them, and more importantly don't let them work against you.
harbans
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by harbans »

Those who don't want International Madrassas popping up in Tirupati can sign a petition here:

http://www.hindujagruti.org/activities/ ... .php#drive
Sushupti
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Sushupti »

PMO unconcerned about scientist deaths

hile there has been substantial international media comment on the unnatural deaths of several scientists working in Iran's nuclear program, similar attention has not been paid to the (much larger) number of unnatural deaths that have taken place of scientists and engineers working in India's own nuclear program. The latest casualties were discovered on 7 October, when the bodies of K.K. Josh and Abhish Shivam were discovered near the railway tracks at Penduruthy near Vishakapatnam Naval Yard. The two were engineers connected with the building of India's indigenous nuclear-powered submarine, Arihant. They had apparently been poisoned and their bodies placed on the tracks to make it seem like an accident. However, they were discovered by a passer-by before a train could pass over the bodies. In any other country, the murder of two engineers connected to a crucial strategic program would have created a media storm. However, the deaths of the two were passed off both by the media as well as by the Ministry of Defence as a routine accident, with only the ordinary police officer tasked with investigations into the cause of death. The inquiries went nowhere.


http://www.sunday-guardian.com/news/pmo ... OA.twitter
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

It depends upon what were they working on and what were theri contacts?
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Vayutuvan »

Some of these lies about things that can be easily verified are tests to see the level of competence. Those who do not even do the minimum level of checking are those who can be easily riled up by vested interests if a situation arises where some kind of rioting or street fight is necessary so that those very vested interests can install people they want in positions of power.

Of course, the lying can become more and more sophisticated as the competency of the parties in the game go up till some kind of equilibrium is attained.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by devesh »

not sure if this paper has been reviewed on BRF before:

http://isis-online.org/publications/sou ... pacity.pdf

India’s Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Program: Growing Capacity for Military Purposes

David Albright and Susan Basu
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)
January 18, 2007
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/ ... lthy-kids/
The Doon School: Grooming Ground For India's Wealthy Kids
Some of India’s wealthiest families pack off their sons at a young age to a boarding school situated in Dehra Dun, at the foothills of the Himalayas, a 40-minute plane ride from Delhi. This bastion of privilege is the Doon School, a boys-only school established in 1929 in the Doon Valley, from which it derives its name. It was modeled on the British public school system, with the first headmaster, a certain Arthur E. Foot, hailing from the similarly privileged Eton College in the U.K.
grooming ground for the wealthy (Rahul Gandhi spent some time there, as did his late father Rajiv Gandhi), Doon is upfront about its goal: It aims to be “an institution of excellence, dedicated to producing leaders of the future.” Indeed, there is something about go-getting Doscos, as the Doon School alums are called, that seems to give them an edge–the Dosco network is well-entrenched in Indian business. “My time at Doon was a great grounding. It has turned out to be the best years of my life that prepared me for life. It was a well-rounded education where I remember picking up hobbies like photography and trekking,” says health care billionaire Malvinder Singh, whose brother Shivinder, as well as their late father, Parvinder, also went to the boarding school.
With a relatively small number of admissions each year, almost a quarter of the 500 students are children of alumni. “The Doon alumni is a very close and supportive fraternity, and several of them are my friends,” says Singh. One of his father’s school buddies, Eicher Motors’ Vikram Lal, who features among India’s richest, used to sit on the board of Ranbaxy, their erstwhile family firm.
Singh’s uncle Analjit, who controls his Max Healthcare group, is another prominent Old Boy, as is Murugappa Group’s chairman, A. Vellayan. Two-wheeler tycoon Brijmohan Lall Munjal of Hero Group sent his sons Sunil and Pawan to Doon; they now run his empire. Doon’s board of governors is chaired by Gautam Thapar, a former rich lister who controls the Avantha group, an engineering and paper conglomerate. This “Eton of India” is even on the itinerary of Prince Charles and Camilla’s upcoming trip to India.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by panduranghari »

Please move if inappropriate.

Hindu funeral pyres causing global warming
Holy smoke from Hindu funeral pyres, Muslim cemeteries (??) and Buddhist temples accounts for almost a quarter of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming on the Indian subcontinent and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, according to a new study.
Researchers have long suspected that the rituals of religious devotion in India, Nepal and South Asia, may be a factor in the level of brown carbon and soot which pollutes the air in the region, but until now little work has been done to quantify the size of the problem.
According to researchers from Nevada's Desert Research Institute and the Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla University in Chhattisgarh, South East India, the impact is "huge" - 23 per cent of particles from human burnt fossil fuels in the atmosphere and a major source of carcinogenic volatile organic compounds.
Much of this pollution is overlooked because it is shrouded by human loss and religious worship and identity, but the research team has warned the scale of its environmental damage demands further study.
Between 2011 and 2012, the researchers measured emissions from marriage ceremonies, funeral cremations, incense sticks in temples and graveyards, and found mango bark, cow dung, camphor, leaves, vermillion, and cow urine being burned. They identified fourteen "deadly" volatile organic compounds, including formaldehyde, benzene, styrene and butadiene, they told Nature magazine
What about wood fires in many houses in England? What about natural fires in Spain, Australia and US?
"There are three million religious places of worship in India alone and over 10 million marriages take place every year in this country according to the 2011 census. When these results were multiplied to fit these scales, the quantum of emissions was just baffling," said researcher Shamsh Pervez.
So dont get married in the Vedic ceremony. Give up on traditions and save the world?
Vayutuvan
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Vayutuvan »

Heard this on NPR a few months back. If it is a study in a scholarly journal, it should be rebutted with proper data. If these are ravings of a foolish British journalist, well what can one do given the (non)expertise of ELM in India.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Ashok Sarraff »

Re. panduranghari's post quoting Telegraph, "Indian-funeral-pyres-and-incense-melting-glaciers.html"

On the other hand, secular corpses buried all over the planet for hundreds of years help purify Mother Earth.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by nawabs »

SC asks govt to set up civil services board within 3 months

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/740rnD ... onths.html
In a landmark judgement on Thursday, the Supreme Court directed the government to free the bureaucracy from political stranglehold, asking the Centre and the states to constitute a civil services board with senior officers within three months.

The apex court said the board should be made responsible for decisions relating to appointments, transfers and promotions of bureaucrats.Significantly, the government will have to give reasons if it does not accept the recommendations given.

Proper guidelines should be introduced for ensuring security of tenure to all officers, it said. Discussing the trend of oral orders in such matters, the Supreme Court directed that proper records of such orders be maintained and that any oral order be followed up with written directions. The court was hearing a petition filed by former union cabinet secretary T.S. Subramanian.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Arjun »

Ashok Sarraff wrote:Re. panduranghari's post quoting Telegraph, "Indian-funeral-pyres-and-incense-melting-glaciers.html"

On the other hand, secular corpses buried all over the planet for hundreds of years help purify Mother Earth.
All-in environmental costs are 10% more for burial than for cremation: Do Your Bit Even After Death
He also adds that the long-term impact of burials is about 10% more than that of cremations. According to him, "Burial is a more labor and resource intensive process, consumes more fuels and produces larger quantities of waste than cremation."
Sushupti
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Sushupti »

Image
Sushupti
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Sushupti »

Opportunity 2016

The USA has apparently decided to mothball its base in Diego Garcia when the current lease expires in 2016. Details are still quite sparse but it seems the USA will move many of its air operations to the Australian Coco’s islands. The move is seen as part of the increased US focus on the Asia Pacific region. The Coco’s islands are significantly closer to the pacific allowing the USA to better focus on the South China Sea while still maintaining a foot hold in the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia has for a long time been seen as one of the most valuable pieces of strategic real estate in the world. The base allows for resupply of naval vessels anywhere in the Indian Ocean and the runway can allow aircraft to strike at areas from Singapore to Kenya.


Since 1971 the USA has invested significant amounts of money into the base building a very long runway and deep water anchorage.

The mothballing of the base now presents the United Kingdom with a golden opportunity. The base at Diego Garcia has long been an irritation to India which sees the base as being in the middle of its sphere of influence.

The United Kingdom could use the shutting down of US operations as a way to foster a military and diplomatic relationship with India. No doubt India would greatly value access to an airbase which could allow its aircraft much greater range into the central and southern Indian Ocean. The USA is likely to retain key facilities such as satellite tracking and GPS control so it’s unlikely we could simply swap out the lease and give the base to the Indian’s. Instead we could run it as a British base allowing both US and Indian aircraft to operate at our discretion.

The base could further serve to enhance British forces in the area in a post Afghanistan world. The bases isolation and deep waters make it ideal for the forward deployment of British SSN’s. This would allow the UK to maintain Submarines in the IO without the need to transit the Suez Canal or horn of Africa. Forward deploying even a small portion of British warships to Diego Garcia could further help the United Kingdom to rebuild military relations not just with India but also with FPDA nations such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia.

While we are currently broke we should not allow the present difficult financial situation to scupper a golden opportunity to once again weald some influence over one of the 21st Centuries most significant strategic theatres. Possibly asking both the USA and India to contribute to operation of a fully functional RAF Diego Garcia is a way to do this.

Even in our current difficult position we should be able to consider stationing a small force on the island.

This force may constitute

4 Typhoons
1 Voyager Tanker
1 Infantry company
2 SSN’s
1 Type 45 Destroyer
1 Type 23 Frigate
1 Oiler or Replenishment vessel

With much of the Royal Navy already operating in the Indian Ocean it should not be much of a stretch to base or at least supply one frigate and one destroyer from Diego Garcia. The two SSN’s may be more difficult however there is usually an SSN in the Indian Ocean and having two based there would give us greater reach. It may also help to alleviate the general shortage of such platforms alleviating transit times. For many years SSBN’s have been operated with Gold and Blue crews. I am not sure if it presents a significant difficulty to operate an SSN in the same manor however we really need to try and get the absolute most out of these platforms given their expense, capability and scarcity.

The Indians seemed particularly grateful when a Trafalgar Class conducted war games with them in 2010 as part of David Cameron’s visit. Showcasing British submarine technology as well ASW, AAW and MCM capabilities could give a significant boost to British exports to the world’s largest defence importer. The same might be said with Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia all of whom face significant challenges in countering Chinese Submarines.

Basing aircraft at Diego Garcia and removing a pure US presence on the Islands may even be enough of a sweetener to get India to reverse its decision on the Rafale deal. At the very least it should help us to get more nations onboard with the Type 26 project, not to mention other kit such as Type 2087 sonar, Merlin and even Seaviper.

If things work well with our increased presence in the region we may even consider building a greater presence in the future. The island would be the ideal location for the basing of a future 6th generation aircraft based on the Taranis UCAS. India has proven keen to work on a 5th generation fighter with Russia however the UK is the only nation other than the USA close to fielding a 6th generation capability. A joint project with India is likely to be relatively lucrative given the fact the UK would have to take the lead partner role, as opposed to joint partners with France or junior partners with the USA.

Maintaining such a force would not be cheap. Something along the size of Mount Pleasant would cost around £500 million per year. However if we can get contributions from both the USA and India we may be able to bring the cost down significantly.

Even at a cost of £500 million per year it’s likely to be a worthwhile expenditure if it can foster stronger relations with the nations of the Eastern Indian Ocean.

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/04/opportunity-2016/
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Rahul Mehta »

So next PM, which could be a NaMo , will get weak PMO

In addition of civil service board, there can also be 7-10 Lokpals to check every decision NaMo makes.
SC asks govt to set up civil services board within 3 months

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/740rnD ... onths.html

In a landmark judgement on Thursday, the Supreme Court directed the government to free the bureaucracy from political stranglehold, asking the Centre and the states to constitute a civil services board with senior officers within three months.

The apex court said the board should be made responsible for decisions relating to appointments, transfers and promotions of bureaucrats.Significantly, the government will have to give reasons if it does not accept the recommendations given.

Proper guidelines should be introduced for ensuring security of tenure to all officers, it said. Discussing the trend of oral orders in such matters, the Supreme Court directed that proper records of such orders be maintained and that any oral order be followed up with written directions. The court was hearing a petition filed by former union cabinet secretary T.S. Subramanian.
Philip
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Philip »

Another famous club embroiled in controversy.After the Delhi Gym war,we now have the Breach candy Club in Bombay in controversy.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... e-row.html
Breach Candy Club in Mumbai embroiled in race row

European trust members of Breach Candy Club register deceit and breach of trust cases against Indian committee member, as genteel calm of club is shattered
The swimming pool at Mumbai's Breach Candy Club
Dean Nelson

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi

3:03PM GMT 01 Nov 2013

One of India's oldest colonial clubs has been embroiled in a race row after its 'European-only' trustees sacked its Indian-led management committee amid suspicions of fraud and secret property deals.

The elite Breach Candy Club was established on one of Mumbai's most coveted sites overlooking the Arabian Sea in the late 19th century as a place for Europeans to escape the bustle of Bombay and swim in relaxed privacy.

After independence, it continued to be a haven for Europeans to sunbathe and rub shoulders with the city's Bollywood and financial elites.

But its genteel calm was shattered last week after European trust members registered deceit and breach of trust cases against one of the club's Indian committee members whose supporters retaliated by accusing the Europeans of "racism."

One leading trust member told The Telegraph that lawyers for Indian members of the club's management committee said their dispute was "the white people against the brown people, but that's nothing to do with it, we have a lot of brown people who are Europeans too."

The dispute began two years ago when trust members, who must be European passport holders under the club's constitution, began to suspect Indian management committee figures of trying to seize control and hive off a plot of land in the grounds worth tens of millions of pounds.

They believed they were plotting to transform the institution into an exclusive hideaway for the city's super-rich well beyond the budgets of the Europeans the club was founded for. Membership fees soared from around £600 a decade ago to more than £50,000 today.

Alon Mooleman, a Dutch trust member who has lived in Mumbai for 11 years and is married to an Indian, said a clique had tried to change the club from a relaxed place for Europeans to enjoy their weekends into a badge of status for wealthy Indians.

He said he and his supporters discovered that the chairman and others had secretly withdrawn the club's 'custodianship documents' from a local bank and had given an honorary club membership to a bank official who helped them do it.

"Once they had the custodianship papers and control of the management committee, they could do anything they want," he said.

European trust members, including himself, had lost control of the club and allowed it to be mismanaged because they were only interested in swimming and having fun, he added.

On October 21 however, he and around 47 other trust members, with the support of another 50 Indian members, held an emergency meeting to sack the management committee and reassert European control of the club.

Dipesh Mehta, the club's chairman, and his supporters held their own committee meeting a few days later and rejected the emergency meeting as illegal.

Mr Mooleman said he and nine other trust members had now been illegally suspended from the club.

Mr Mehta and his supporters are "playing really dirty" by presenting the dispute as a 'race' row, he said.

The dispute is now likely to be resolved in court. Mr Mehta did not return calls from The Telegraph and club officials declined to comment.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

Poisonous Gungadin Raise Its Hood; Budhi Ke Kumit Naam Ke Sumit
The End of India's Sovereignty Hawks?
With the exception of China, Russia, and perhaps Brazil, few regional powers of any consequence are as protective of their sovereignty as India. Its policymakers have expressed reservations about the emergent norm of the "responsibility to protect"; it abstained from voting on the 1998 Rome Statute, which led to the creation of the International Criminal Court, arguing that such a body would infringe on national sovereignty; it has mostly shied away from attempts to promote democracy abroad. That needs to change -- at least at the regional level, to start -- if trust, peace, and meaningful cooperation are to be established in South Asia, all of which are in the interests of both India and its neighbors. India's uneven performance on human rights, however, should not prevent it from advocating for their protection and for inclusive democracy in its neighborhood and beyond. Few countries that promote human rights abroad enjoy an unblemished record at home, whether historical or contemporary. And India's limitations, while real, are not so outlandish as to prevent it from embracing a vigorous human rights and democracy agenda. India has addressed its shortcomings through institutional measures, albeit fitfully. When faced with much international as well as domestic criticism while dealing with an ethno-religious insurgency in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, it created the National Human Rights Commission in 1993. Some critics were quick to dismiss this new entity as a toothless body at best and a sop to Cerberus at worst. However, to their surprise and to the delight of others, the commission quickly acquired a degree of organizational autonomy and sought to extend its writ.
Not content with simply addressing complaints of human rights violations on the part of security forces, the commission soon started to probe prison conditions, child labor abuses, and the like. It has no enforcement powers, so its capacity to effect change is limited. However, it does possess the ability to "name and shame," thereby deterring would-be abusers of human rights. Although a culture of rights and their consistent enforcement has yet to take hold across every sector of Indian society, an effort to create such a climate is clearly under way. Comparatively speaking, India has followed a nation-building strategy at home that is inclusive and accommodative in religious, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural terms. In contrast to others in its neighborhood -- in which there are four formally Islamic states (Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Afghanistan), until recently a Hindu state (Nepal), a Buddhist state (Bhutan), and an ethno-linguistic-religious majoritarian and unitary state (Sinhalese-Buddhist Sri Lanka) -- India is a secular, federal, multilingual, and multicultural state that institutionalizes power sharing among its various groups. Its constitutional and political experience, warts and all, can offer invaluable lessons in managing a diverse society.
Given South Asia's history of partition and secession (the 1947 Partition into India and Pakistan, the 1971 secession of Bangladesh, the 30-year civil war in Sri Lanka), all rooted in real or feared majoritarianism, inclusive and accommodative democracy and commitments to human rights are vital to cultivate the trust necessary to resolve regional conflicts and integrate minorities. This is because, in South Asia, perceptions of the intentions of neighboring states toward one's own country are shaped by the way that minorities that might be viewed as one's kinfolk are treated in that country. Such "kin" minorities -- religious, linguistic, and ethnic -- abound in a region of ethnic overlaps. Hence, it is in the region's interest, and in India's interest as the region's hub, to promote inclusive democracy and human rights as a way of calming suspicions, turning around hostile attitudes, and moving toward regional integration.
Perhaps it is time to rethink the exclusion of domestic issues from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the only regional forum designed to promote integration in South Asia, and move toward a normative regime that entrenches inclusive democracy, human and minority rights, and regional autonomy or federalism for minority regions. ( Man is A Snake) Even if these are not made membership criteria, as democracy is for the European Union, and even if there is no surrender of sovereignty over human rights to a supranational regional court, as in the Council of Europe, it is time to start thinking of a regional normative regime on democracy that builds trust about the intentions of each state toward kin minorities and hence toward neighboring states.

Given its institutional choices and social movements, India's political leadership should no longer seek to take refuge in tired shibboleths about sovereignty and instead willingly embrace the emerging consensus that states indeed have duties beyond borders. As a state that rarely tires of stressing its democratic credentials at home, it should now demonstrate that it can act on the courage of its convictions. To that end, it needs to take forceful stands when it witnesses the flagrant violation of human rights both in its own neighborhood and beyond, and promote a normative regime of inclusive democracy for the region.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by svinayak »

All of India's neighbors are struggling with the challenges of liberalism and the tasks of forging representative and inclusive governance in diverse societies. Sri Lanka, for example, is rapidly turning into an illiberal democracy in which the Tamil minority is systematically marginalized, and it still refuses to acknowledge the anti-Tamil pogrom that swept through Colombo in 1983. Pakistan has, at best, made a tenuous transition to democracy, and its military still bears the taint of the East Pakistan genocide of 1971. In Bangladesh, Hindus and Buddhists face routine discrimination. And Nepal has only the trappings of an electoral democracy after the overthrow of its anachronistic monarchy and confrontation with a Maoist insurgency.
All these neigbhours are the creation of the British who promised them new state and international status.
Now after 60 years they are unable to support these dictator countries and half baked countries and now want India to influence and change the region. They want India to support financially also since the funds from the colonial powers are going to dry up.

That is the real future which this article is keeping quiet.


Another stupid line. It is the same people with same family connection going back to hundred of years are being called as foriegners. By llowing genocide for over 60 years these people want to now promote human rights
This is because, in South Asia, perceptions of the intentions of neighboring states toward one's own country are shaped by the way that minorities that might be viewed as one's kinfolk are treated in that country. Such "kin" minorities -- religious, linguistic, and ethnic -- abound in a region of ethnic overlaps. Hence, it is in the region's interest, and in India's interest as the region's hub, to promote inclusive democracy and human rights as a way of calming suspicions, turning around hostile attitudes, and moving toward regional integration.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

Basically, he rather hand over Veto power to his favourite "minority" over India now that first time we are getting breather in millenia and he wants India to go back to middle ages. Charity begins at Home, Let him start this Soth Asian Inclusiveness by giving half of whatever he owns to the Minority man from South Asia.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by chaanakya »

The Prime Minister listened most carefully and said in a resigned manner that 'General saab, ab yeh to procedural problems hain' (these are procedural problems). We are trying
In his autobiography 'Courage and Convictions', the former chief said he had briefed the Prime Minister about his visit to Myanmar and told him "in no uncertain terms as to what was happening or rather, what was not happening".

"The Prime Minister listened most carefully and said in a resigned manner that 'General saab, ab yeh to procedural problems hain' (these are procedural problems). We are trying," the former chief says in the book.

"How many times I had heard this before. I lost count years ago. Here was the Prime Minister of India, expressing his helplessness in matters that should have been trivial," he says.

Giving details of his visit to Myanmar, he said the issues were related to handing over of road rollers to the Myanmar government for building roads there for which the expenditure was not more than Rs 20 crore.

Gen Singh said despite the 'Look East Policy' propagated by the Prime Minister, for 15 years, the oil exploration offered by Myanmar was "lying in someone's pending tray".
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Philip »

In a lighter vein,as our interests have now reached the Red Planet!

http://newindianexpress.com/opinion/Mar ... =complaint
Martian invasion

By Ravi Shankar

Last Updated: 10th November 2013

Scene: Rahul Gandhi’s official headquarters at 12 Tughlaq Lane. Election strategy meeting in progress. Sitting around Rahul with iPads and pocket calculators is his crack team.

RG: (rolling up his sleeves) What is this I hear about Manmohan sending rockets to Mars? Am I not the real space cadet?

Kanishka Singh: Boss, we prefer the term rocket scientist. The PM feels he could find coal there.

RG: Isn’t Mars the place they make Mars bars? How will he find coal there?

KS: He won’t. But we can include Mars bars in the Food Security Bill. There’s no mention of dessert.

RG: Good idea, I’ll tell Mama to get an amendment issued immediately.

KS: It will be perfect timing, boss. We could even claim that we sent the rocket to scout for Mars bars.

RG: Good idea! Are elections happening simultaneously on Mars?

Meenakshi Natarajan: (rolling up her sleeves; Rahul winces) Not that I know of, Rahulji, but the movement of ISI agents show Mangalayaan is not a secular mission.

RG: (perking up) Why? Are there Muslims on Mars? We can promise 30 per cent reservation for Martian Muslims.

(Everyone applauds the sagacity of their leader)

MN: Isro chief Radhakrishnan did a puja at Tirupati before the rocket was launched. Rahman Khan is hopping mad that Mangalayaan was worshipped. He says it is communal idolatry sponsored by BJP. He wants another one launched from Muzaffarnagar.

RG: This is serious. There could be riots in Mars-affarnagar over this.

Jitendra Singh: It must be a Narendra Modi gameplan. The CBI tells us that the Gujarat government is sending its own Mars mission to construct a statue of Sardar Patel on Martian soil. It would be the first outer space challenge to the dynasty.

RG: What do Sardars have to do with Mars? Don’t tell me they are going to bring up the Sikh riots issue there. It will damage Sheilaji in outer space. Maybe she could regularise some illegal colonies in Mars and win their votes.

MN: Er, chief, Sardar Patel was from Gujarat.

RG: I thought Modi was from Gujarat. Meenakshi, are you trying to make a pappu out of me?

MN: (blushing) No sir, both are from Gujarat.

RG: I didn’t know there were Sikhs in Gujarat. IB never told me. Now we have to arrange security for this sardar too.

Jairam Ramesh: Er, boss, Sardar Patel was a great Congressman, but he is dead.

RG: (leaping up in excitement) My god, this is an opportunity! Was he killed in the Gujarat riots or in an encounter?

MN: No sir, he was a freedom fighter.

(RG looks dispirited and sits back.)

JR: Don’t worry boss, let’s ask Dick Branson to lend us one of his spacecraft. We can go to the Red Planet and stay with the little red men.

RG: Red Planet? You mean, there are Naxalites on Mars? Mama will shed tears when she hears about the plight of poor Martians going without free food.

(Chorus of agreement. MN cries into her handkerchief and blows her nose.)

Digvijaya Singh: I know you guys are treating me like an alien, making me sweat for MLA ticket for my son, but opinion polls say Congress won’t win 2014.

JR: Don’t be a feku, Raja, they are manipulated by Modi and Arvind Kejriwal.

KS: Then let’s declare elections on Mars.

DS: But there is no proof of life on Mars.

RG: Even better. In which case, we would win hands down with nobody to oppose us.

KS: (muttering) Hand down is what I am worried about.

RG: So when do we go to Mars to campaign?

JR: The earlier the better, boss. Once you’ve finished campaigning for Modi in India, we can immediately start for Mars.

RG: Can I take Robert too? There must be lots of land on Mars.

ravi@newindianexpress.com
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24867914

What India's space scientists and street children have in common
(BritSpitKit)
As India launched a mission to Mars this week, I could not help noting some surprising similarities between the ingenuity of the country's space scientists and its street children - many of whom are creative small-scale entrepreneurs.When you see young children darting between lumbering locomotives to snatch up an empty water bottle or raking through the great mountains of reeking refuse for the plastic bags and broken cardboard boxes they gather together to sell for fractions of a penny, there appears to be an unassailable argument that social welfare should be put before any attempt to reach for the stars. But I was to discover that neither the plight of Delhi's street children nor the apparent extravagance of India's otherworldly ambitions were quite what they seemed.
The team of Indian scientists designing the delicate instruments made to sniff and probe the Red Planet is based in the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city.I had been expecting the kind of shimmering glass monolith you would associate with a Nasa lab or with the headquarters of one of India's world-beating IT companies. But the cradle of the nation's space research harks back to another, older India.There is a hand painted No Spitting sign in English and Hindi at the gate. Inside, the slightly shabby 1970s blocks are shaded by gracious tropical trees full of squabbling parakeets. Yet the scientists who work here confounded the world when India's 2008 lunar probe confirmed the presence of water on the moon - something every previous mission had missed."We have had to make a virtue of our limitations," says Professor Jitendra Goswami, the director of the institute and the man behind the discovery.He is proud that, at £50m ($80m), India's Mars mission is the cheapest in history by a considerable margin. The payload is tiny, just 14.5kg (32lbs). "Small enough to take on as cabin baggage", he jokes. "Our instruments may cover a very narrow range," he says, serious now. "But they are looking somewhere no-one else had looked - that is how we found water on the moon."He hopes his mission will help answer a key question - has there ever been life on Mars? - by testing for methane over the entire planet's surface. It will also be looking at how the Martian atmosphere has changed.I came away impressed by how India's space programme uses its tiny resources to do innovative and original science. The rocket carrying the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft launched on Tuesday But in some ways what the street children of Delhi do is even more impressive - they find value in something that is regarded as completely worthless by most people, in the city's rubbish.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by NRao »

Do we know if India is doing anything to help the Philippines? Not from an "interest" point of view - just plain, simple, immediate help?
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by harbans »

Rao Ji, we should have atleast 2 days ago! But there is silence from this GoI as always. From what i am hearing, is that entire villages and small towns are washed away and damaged. Maybe our remote sensing sats can provide some help in damage assessment and help coordinate help. Even now i think it would help to send some teams of docs, medicines. There's just nothing left in many areas.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Harbans, it may not be like that. Remote sensing sats have a definite orbit and specialise in coverage of India. They have to be tasked to take pictures while flying over the zone. Unless you know in advance its going to be a big storm how do you command your sats to take pictures?
And we might not know what help Phillipines wants. Massa approach is to rush stuff to poor starving folks in turd world.

here is Google news page on Phillipines

The toll is about 2000-2500 and not 10,000 as was earlier reported.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by chetak »

ramana wrote:Harbans, it may not be like that. Remote sensing sats have a definite orbit and specialise in coverage of India. They have to be tasked to take pictures while flying over the zone. Unless you know in advance its going to be a big storm how do you command your sats to take pictures?
And we might not know what help Phillipines wants. Massa approach is to rush stuff to poor starving folks in turd world.

here is Google news page on Phillipines

The toll is about 2000-2500 and not 10,000 as was earlier reported.
Not to mention reducing the life of the satellite by moving it frequently and in unscheduled orbits. There may be other satellites already covering that specific orbit.

Better to help by sending relief material, medical teams etc.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Only if they ask. Its not like Phillipines is unable to cope.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by NRao »

There are ample alternative sat resources - that will provide free services - so that is not an issue.

The problem seems to be one of assisting those that have survived the disaster. Such people will form the second wave of such disasters - death due to lack of water/food, disease, etc. It is this phase that India needs to help out. MMS has offered. But, I suspect that they need help manage the flow of aid - get it to the right places, etc. Perhaps a fleet of helos?
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/trave ... .html?_r=0
( New Kind of Tourism)
No R.S.V.P.? In Rajasthan, India, No Worries
We had been invited to an Indian wedding. As the hand-painted invitation put it: “You’re cordially invited to the wedding of Sau. Kan. Hanupriya Jodha (daughter of Rani Kiran Hada and Darbar Mahendra Vikram Singh Thi. Para) and Chi Kr Navdeep Singh (son of Shri Th. Sh. Rajendra Singh Ji Shekhawat R.P.S. Thi Khachariawas — Adopted by late Shri Th. Sh. Surendra Singh Ji Chauhan Thi Sihali at Govind Villa in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.” The newlyweds-to-be were not old friends from college, family members or even friends of friends. Truth be told, we didn’t know the bride and groom or any of their 1,000 other guests. We had been invited thanks to a New York-based tour agency called Micato Safaris, one of a handful of tour agencies that provide access to Indian weddings. Weddings in this region, which are mostly arranged, are a big deal — and for a tidy price, crashing them can be a great way to poke one’s head into a rich cultural window that you won’t get from a guidebook.

“Big industrialist weddings often have Bollywood actors perform for as much as $200,000 for a five-minute gig,” said Lisa Alam Shah, Micato India’s Delhi-based operations manager. “Theme weddings are also getting big; my daughter attended one recently where they recreated Egypt.” “Our hotel was hosting a two-night wedding while we stayed there,” said Amanda Dun, who traveled from London with Kensington in 2011, “so our guide arranged for us to watch a baraat” — a lively procession, led by the groom riding a horse, to the bride’s house — “which blocked the streets with musical processions. The colors, jewelry, striking outfits and sheer number of people were astounding.” Regardless of what province, the families come from, the rolling, rusty, dusty hills of Rajasthan remain a wildly popular wedding destination. And Udaipur’s Lake Pichola, festooned with Mughal palaces, is the pinnacle location, a crossroads of Indians from different castes and regions. Along its shores, a flush of lavish hotels one-up the others with fireworks displays, thumping bhangra music and Bollywood dancing. Guests wear elaborate wedding garb — Punjabis with brightly colored turbans and elaborately waxed mustaches and young women from Chennai in gold-embroidered zardozi gowns. All weddings are different, of course, but food almost always plays a central role. However elaborate the ceremonies, much of it is homemade and served communally. It’s vegetarian and delicious. Fragrant bowls of curries, stacks of nan atop silver plates, and savory biriyani in crockpots stretch over long tables. Bars are almost always free, and whiskey flows heavily. Men and women are separate for much of the ceremony. Women gather for ornate henna bodywork in one tent, while men exchange business tips and network over whiskey and cigarettes in another. Women may enter the men’s tent, but men are strictly forbidden from the women’s. I warily peeked into the women’s tent to check in on Dianne and witnessed women of all ages sitting in a circle painting one another with henna. Each day of the wedding is marked by a complex itinerary. Don’t miss the kanyadaan, when the groom promises to the bride’s parents to be just (dharma), to support her (artha) and love her (karma). The byaha haath includes the bride and groom purifying their minds by slathering themselves in uptan, a mixture of sandalwood, turmeric and rose water. After the ceremony, the groom’s family decorates the marriage bed with strands of marigolds and rose petals. If the idea of wedding crashing reeks of colonialism to you, keep in mind that many Indians are especially warm and welcoming to visitors and that many relish the chance to show off their English. You might, as I was, be complimented on your choice of sherwani color, asked about your profession and even be told which guests are local pariahs.
The one I visited was so big that it had other interloping wedding crashers: three 50-something blondes from San Diego with henna-swirled arms and sparkling saris were shepherded around by a handsome Rajasthan guide. I stayed at the wedding for only one night — and never met the bride or groom, which is not uncommon. Since they didn’t invite me personally, it didn’t bother me at all. Many travelers leave these weddings feeling more connected to Indian culture and surprised by how universal expressions of love and marriage are. One main difference is that Indian weddings eschew the sentimental for the celebratory. “The more the merrier” remains the golden rule.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by brihaspati »

On CD's and their tendency to change over time. Whether it is the INC or....

Under Army arrest for 16 months, TSD operative seeks bail
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/under ... /1185781/0
An Army jawan belonging to the controversial intelligence unit set up by General VK Singh has approached a military court for bail contending he has been under "illegal" arrest for the last 16 months on basis of "false" charges of trying to sell classified information.

Admitting the plea filed by Havildar Sham Das D, the Principal Bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal has asked the Army to file a reply in the matter. Contending that his arrest from June 8 last year was "most wrongful and arbitrary" on basis of false allegations levelled against him by officials of Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the Havildar claimed he is being "implicated" in the charge of sharing classified information with some unknown person who was source of the DRI.

The jawan has been facing a Court of Inquiry (CoI) since June 11 last year on charges of trying to sell classified information in a CD and a pen drive to some unknown person.

In his plea filed through his counsel Maj S S Pandey, the jawan claimed that he was put under close arrest with "sole aim of putting him under undue pressure to confess to such allegation which were totally wrong and also to implicate others in the process."

He claimed that during the CoI, it has come out that the CD was manipulated.

"The DRI Official Assistant Director Rahul R who came to depose in the CoI not only refused to divulge the name of the source whom he had allegedly handed over the said CD, but abruptly left the CoI without signing his statement probably due to lack of any justification about the discrepancy in the CDs for which he had no answer and role of DRI officials was about to get exposed," he claimed.

The former TSD operative urged the court to quash the Army order to put him under arrest and to grant him bail. The petitioner said he has not been allowed to meet even his family members including his wife for the last 16 months even after the CoI was completed on October 14. The jawan is "a victim of circumstances and there are enough material on record to show that he has been wrongly implicated by the DRI officials..."

The TSD, which was set up during the tenure of Army Chief Gen VK Singh, has been in controversy over the alleged use of off-the-air-interceptors to illegally monitor conversations of the top defence brass during the height of the age row. The unit was made defunct soon after the taking over of the present Army Chief Gen Bikram Singh and a Board of Officers was set up by him to look into its functioning.

The unit has also been accused by an Army report of making attempts to destabilise the Jammu and Kashmir government and carrying out unauthorised operations in and outside India.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

X-post from a few months ago in GDF.
matrimc wrote:
ramana wrote:Did you see the James Franco version of the "Planet of Apes"?
Ramana garu, that is cruel :lol:

Well it could reflect reality.

The British found ruling India is untenable after the 1857 war. So they created INC as a safety outlet for the elite to feel part of the ruling structures. At same time they suppressed violently all republican ideas and anyone who uses force to dislodge them. They propped up meek and docile leaders and lionized them. When the time came, due to the INA and RIN movements, they split the country and handed power to the INC.

INC along the way developed and perfected the tactics taught by the British: divide and rule, have a loyal opposition, suppress violent overthrow and above all prevent nationalism.

Divide and Rule:

The 3 Presidency regions were divided on linguistic identity: West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa; Andhra pradesh, Madras, Mysore and Kerala; and Maharastra and Gujarat etc.

Punjab was split into three states: East Punjab, Harayana, Himachal Pradesh

Now Andhra Pradesh is being split into two states.

Suppress Violent Overthrow

- Communist revolts in Andhra Pradesh, Naxalites, North East splits so on and so forth
- Art 355 to replace unfavorable state govts eg Kerala in 1956.
- IPC Section 144 invoked to prevent assembly of more thant three people

Prevent Nationalism
- Hindu Mahasabha banned after MKG's assasination. No overhaul of the police which failed to protect the "Father of the Nation"!
- Inculcating De-Racination and giving Jnanpith awards to scoundrels
- JLN Uty turned into a den of deracinated Indian elite (DIE) and a factory like the ORC factory in Lord of the Rings (LOTR)
- Creation of bogey of "saffron' terror
- Constant effort to ban RSS
- Promoting media culture of questioning values

Create a Loyal Opposition

- All regional parties except the Dravida Khazagham(which is British holdover from Justice Party) origin parties are INC splinters
- Uncompromising leaders are mysteriouly dead: Subhas Chandra Bose, Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, Deen Dayal Uphadyaya, LN Mishra, Rajesh Pilot, Madhav Rao Scindia etc.

Yet by the time of the economic crisis of 1990 INC had to face the writing on the wall. Unlike the East India Company (EIC) they could not cut and run. They had to hand over power to someone they could rely on. So PVNR gets the reins. He was expected to die in office as he had a double handicap: diabetic and a heart patient. He turned out to be different and was developing his own persona. So he was undermined and the party defeated in 1996 elections.

The United Front government that came to power was not representative of the nation and fell. Finally ABV instead of LKA became the PM. But instead of revolutionary change, he let things remain the same and by his ineffectiveness revived the INC. This is why I asked Atri if ABV was INC's Manchurian figure in BJP.

What I don't get is INC can't get out like the British, but its best option was to hand over power to its own types and still survive. Instead it made grab and took back power via SG and her son. And this has shown and exposed the venality of the system.

My allusion to the movie is INC is the colonial chain on the APEs to control them and this elections could free the chain that hold back the planet of the APEs.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Lilo »

When George Bush Jr and Kapil Sibal (the CongI cabinet minister) manage to make the same statement about Indian public, you know how far removed the dilli billi political elite are from the interests of Indian Nation.

X-post
Hari Seldon wrote:vinassh kaale vipreet buddhi.... these guys make the unreal times look tame.... and no, its for real!

Image

Headline Translation: Sibal: Inflation has increased as ppl have started eating two Vegetables with Roti.

#aakthoo to the dynasty psycho-pants.
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 5#p1545755
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-2 ... oilet.html
India Confronts the Politics of the Toilet.
On Tuesday, the United Nations marked its inaugural World Toilet Day, designed to draw attention to the fact that more than one-sixth of humanity still lacks indoor sanitation, and that the world needs new ideas and technologies to deal with one of the most basic human needs. If there is any one country toward which such initiatives must be aimed, then that is India, where a combination of ignorance, apathy, embarrassment, deeply ingrained cultural codes, ineffective policy, huge numbers and very different urban and rural sanitation challenges have meant that more than half of the population still doesn't have access to a proper toilet.
This troubling state of affairs has far-reaching consequences, for instance, in the realms of gender rights and freedoms and education -- and the perpetuation of the terrible Indian practice of manual scavenging. But it also creates a challenge that immediately compounds itself several times over: untreated waste usually remains within range of further human contact, and leads to a wide range of health issues from diarrhea to the contamination of water sources, even entire rivers. The attitudes toward and realities of human waste in India have allowed for great, visceral cinema that would be hard to do elsewhere. Take the scene of mingled disgust and laughter when the child-hero jumps with a huge splash into the fetid community pond in "Slumdog Millionaire."
The World Bank's recent study "Economic Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in India" estimated that sanitation deficits cost the country about 6.4 percent of its 2006 gross domestic product -- a kind of hidden toilet tax that disproportionately affects the poor and makes them even poorer. To put it another way, as much as better economic policies, a better tax system or more foreign investment inflows, it's the humble toilet that can be an engine of future Indian growth.
But what kind of toilet is needed? This is at least as great a conundrum as that of there being not enough toilets in Indian slums -- often there can be one for anywhere between 100 to 1,000 residents -- or why such toilets become unworkable, or the millions of "missing" or "dead" toilets that have allegedly been built by the government but don't exist or are out of use. It has become clear that in water-scarce and people-dense India, it's an impossible resource challenge to deliver the conventional flush toilet to more than 1 billion people and then treat the sewage water. The environmentalist Anil Agarwal coined the phrase "the political economy of defecation" to provoke policy makers to consider the many hidden costs and pro-rich biases of the current paradigm of flush toilets and sewage disposal. Agarwal's ideas were amplified by Sunita Narain in 2002, in an article in which she argues that what works in a Western context is "ecologically mindless" in an Indian one. After all, only 13 percent of piped sewage in India is currently treated. Lester Brown writes in a recent book on urban water policy:
As currently designed, India’s sewer system is actually a pathogen-dispersal system. It takes a small quantity of contaminated material and uses it to make vast quantities of water unfit for human use. With this system, Narain says, both “our rivers and our children are dying.” India’s government, like that of many developing countries, is hopelessly chasing the goal of universal water-based sewage systems and sewage treatment facilities -- unable to close the huge gap between services needed and provided, but unwilling to admit that it is not an economically viable option.
One notable, and successful, indigenous contribution has been the "compost toilet" that was invented and widely propagated by the Indian social reformer Bindeshwar Pathak and his organization Sulabh International. This toilet requires 90 percent less water than the conventional flush toilet, and it leads excreta into a two-pit system where it is converted into compost over an 18-month period. More than 1 million such toilets are in use in India. Even if you think of compost toilets as the concern only of radical greens in the West and the poor in the developed world, or that we're now too deeply invested technologically and psychologically in the flush-toilet-and-sewage-treatment system to think of radically reshaping it, it's clear that we should all think about how a reinvented toilet might work. (As the Sulabh International Museum of Toilets in New Delhi demonstrates, even our current systems are only a little more than a century old.) Last month, the Indian government announced it was partnering with the Gates Foundation to put up $2 million as source capital for the winner of the "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge -- India." The competition follows a similar one last year, won by a team from Caltech. It hopes to announce a winner March 22, 2014. It defines its goals in this way:Solving the sanitation challenge in the developing world will require radically new innovations that are deployable on a large scale....To this end, the goal of the “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge -- India” is to fund a portfolio of Indian-led pilot projects that seek to contribute innovations that can be incorporated into a next generation toilet that will reduce the burden of excreta-related disease and improve the lives of the poor. The aim is to expand the use of toilet and sanitation technologies that do not connect to a sewer, as this is by far the most common approach used by the poor.Can this be done without making the technology beyond the reach of the poor? That is what environmental engineer Jason Kass seemed to suggest in an op-ed in the New York Times, "Bill Gates Can't Build A Toilet." And Bindeshwar Pathak has reason to be displeased that his own efforts in this field have been bypassed for the sake of something more edgy.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Article in Centerright on Tamil and Sri Lanka:

Short post on Tamil nationalism in TN and Sri Lanka

A short post on the Tamil nationalism in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka

Editor / In Short Posts / November 15, 2013

The debate on India’s role in Sri Lanka, the civil war caused by Sinhalese-Tamil fault-lines and the spill-over into India has led to a discussion on the nature of Tamil nationalism. This is a short note on the topic.

Tamil Nationalism in Tamil Nadu had its genesis not in the Dravidian movement, as many understand it, but in the Tamil Separatist movement ( Thani Thamizh) movement of the landed Vellala castes who couldn’t reconcile with the rising profile of the educated Brahmin clerical class (Gumasta) under the British Imperialists. The works of missionary schismists like Robert Caldwell and their theories on linguistic difference, and fostered antagonism between Northern and Southern language groups gave impetus to this movement.

The movement was solidified by the coming to power of the non-Brahmin landlord class in the form of the Justice party. But, even proponents of this movement never advocated secession-ism or spoke against Hinduism. They only claimed that what passes of as Hinduism is nothing but native Dravidian faith which was usurped by the invading Aryan Brahmanas.

The real challenge to Dharma came much later in the form of the Dravida Kazahgam which challenged the very basis of the Hindu society and the South’s cultural, religious and social relationship with the North. It has to be borne in mind that this movement did not give a damn about Tamil language or society. If anything, Periyar wrote derisively about Thirukkural, Silappadhikaram, Tholkappiyar and other icons of the pure Tamilists and ran down time honored mores of the Tamils like the respect attached to chastity (“karppu”) etc.

At one level it was an out and out nihilist movement which was never destined to perform well at polls. After its initial delusions that it will find takers in other three southern states turned out to be a complete cropper, it was forced to become a “Tamils’ movement” As the Dravidianist scholar MSS Pandian himself once acknowledged DMK had to carefully calibrate a bit of “Hinduness” in some sense to even become a viable political force.

Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism

If this was the history of the Tamil Nadu based Tamil Nationalist movement, the one in Sri Lanka was far from anti Hindu. In fact, the first strains of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka were indistinguishable from the Saivite reformation ushered in by the orthodox Vellala Vidwan Arumuga Navalar.

One noteworthy point here is that right from its inception this strand of “Shaiva Tamizh Neri” didn’t have any strain of Anti Brahmin or anti Sanskritism. It was directed against the Christian missionary activity in Yazhpanam (Jaffna) The most plausible reason could be that unlike in Tamil Nadu where the Brahmins took to English education and soon monopolized the British services and gained ascendancy, in Sri Lanka, the non-Brahmin elite were both the religious as well the political elite. The Vellalas were the first to take to British education there.

Further, it must also be noted that savants of the Tamil movement, at least up until the late Amirthalingam never made the Aryan versus Dravidian argument with respect to the Sri Lankan conflict. On the contrary, this was the constant refrain of the Sinhala revivalists since the days of their pitAmaha – anAgarika Dharmapala. The Buddhist revivalism under Dharmapala had a Semitic spirit in it. In its quest to rid the island of Christianity, it semitized itself with respect to other belief systems in the island. For instance, the Pattini cult, centred on the worship of Kannagi, once had a massive following among the rural Sinhalese peasantry. The Sinhala Buddhists nationalists sought to negate these syncretic belief systems and attempted to build an island exclusively for the Buddha Dhamma, as they perceived it.

In their world view, Sri Lanka was to be preserved as a pure land of the Buddha, to that extent they saw the preponderance of deva worship not just in the Tamil dominated north, but even among their own rural folk with suspicion and contempt. This strain keeps recurring again and again in the Sinhala nationalist narrative. Scores of Sinhala hardliners have always teased Sri Lankan Tamils to “Go back to India, their original motherland – which has all their temples and speaks their language”. This establishes two things –

1) Sinhalas never prided too much on their obvious connection with India as it would negate their self-perception as the pure refugee of the Dhamma

2) Sinhalas suspected Sri Lankan Tamils of nurturing emotional ties with India centred on their religion.

The above was not entirely baseless as August 15th – India’s independence day was always celebrated in Tamil speaking areas while leaders like Netaji, Bhagat Singh et al were almost deified as demi-gods. Even today, it’s not uncommon to hear a Sri Lankan Tamil speaker speak of the “Sudhandira Porattam” (India’s) as if it was their own.

The Dravidification of the struggle happened during Pirabhakaran’s time and mostly under the influence of missionaries and the ultra-Tamil Nationalist groups and freelance ideologues from DK stable, as Pathamanathan clearly attests.

Here’s the thing with the Dravidianist element of the Sri Lankan Tamil Movement : it started off as a porattam (struggle) against missionaries and then changed course to being anti Sinhala (yet not anti Arya).

With LTTE being eliminated, it’s India’s duty to safeguard the interests of the vast majority of Tamils who are Hindus and their political leadership that is largely Shaivite or secular but definitely not anti-Hindu.

To recollect:

1) Tamil Nationalism in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka had different roots.

2) Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism started off as Saiva reformation. It never was anti India or anti-Hinduism until the late 1980s.

3) Sinhalas are necessarily not pro India. In fact, their self-identity as the island of Pure Dhamma precludes having any attachment to India.

4) While we don’t know how a Dravidianized Tamil Nadu country would look like, the nearest equivalent could be the Sinhalized Sri Lanka which constantly emphasizes its differences with India and seeks to perpetuate those differences.
Seems like hogwash mixed with some partial truths.
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