Indian Interests

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ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Rahul Mehta take a break and stop posting nonsense. Children upto age 7 cannot master alien languages. So if they can read write native language they get a leg up in education. Its not any ulterior motive to keep them deprived. Even great Rabindranath Tagore wrote his essay on education and advocated learning in native language and then join the river of knowledge. As to the activists have you thought if they are English eudcated folks then their children might be better off learning in English.

BTW with your arguements you are taking the best tactics of Commies and bring class warfare into every subject.
JwalaMukhi
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by JwalaMukhi »

Any civilization that invests in a single path and puts all its eggs in that one and only one basket risks being reduced to 'one trick pony'. Hence, it is extremely unwise to pursue “English only” as path to development for everyone; is a convenient tool preffered by vested interests.
What is needed is English has to be as any other language, in terms of opportunity to create, sustain and manage wealth, for everyone. Granted much of knowledge base these days is in English, but that does not have to mean that other languages have to be accorded secondary status.
For a well rounded civilization, the capacity to learn different languages has to be nurtured and not forced to brainwash that “English” as the sole emancipation lingua-franca. Focus should be on creating conditions that debunk this myth and allow natural course of development that creates opportunities based on necessity.
Grafting and forcing a template to one and only one structure, where have we heard that before. Capacity to learn different languages should not be killed for expediency.
brihaspati
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by brihaspati »

Two languages early on (before 6) are perhaps not such a bad idea - bilingualism from early childhood (2-3 years) appears to have positive role in prevention of brain degenerative diseases (well haldi does the job too! :D ). However, early exposure to many languages are definitely beneficial. Language, music should be the early food for intellectual capacity development. They represent dealing with complexity - that surprisingly are not such a load on young children, who universally appear to pick up languages at a much faster rate than older ones.

I guess, a lot of the difficulty being raised here concerns the medium and mode through which multiple languages are picked up. The anti-early-childhood school is perhaps basing their position on the "grammatical" approach - which always needs much more practise in systematic and logical development expertise, and therefore needs age-wise maturity - and the worst possible way to learn any language. Language is best picked up almost subconsciously, by hearing, trying to speak, and imitating, and when abale to read - through reading literature in that language. This is the method children anywhere use to pick up their "mother-tongue". If we expose them to one other language in a similar environment - they will pick it up as easily as the "mother tongue".
Raghz
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Re: Indian Interests - Indian Media

Post by Raghz »

Could not find the Media thread. Posting it here. Has a nice picture and the first comment is also interesting...

Attn: Acharya and others...

Image

http://anythingwise.blogspot.com/2009/0 ... indus.html
pgbhat
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by pgbhat »

Nilekani to have minister rank as Identification Project head
New Delhi (PTI): The Government on Thursday set in motion the process of providing a Unique Identification Number to India's citizens and appointed Infosys Technologies Co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani as head of an Authority for this purpose.

According to latest reports, Mr. Nilekani has stepped down from Infosys Board after the appointment.

The move to set up the UID Authority of India (UIDAI), under the aegis of the Planning Commission, is aimed at providing a unique identity to the targeted population :-? of the flagship schemes to ensure that the benefits reach them, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here after the Cabinet meeting.

As Chairman of the body, Mr. Nilekani will have Cabinet minister rank and status, she said.

"The Authority shall have the responsibilities to lay down plans and policies to implement the Unique Identification Scheme (UID), shall own and operate the Unique Identification number database and be responsible for its updation and maintenance on an ongoing basis," she said.
RamaY
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RamaY »

Do not know what to make out of it.

Looks like GOI is offering financial help (Rs 2Cr in 2009-10) for Manasa Sarovar travelers as well

June 25: Eenadu - Telugu News Paper
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

pgbhat wrote:Nilekani to have minister rank as Identification Project head
New Delhi (PTI): The Government on Thursday set in motion the process of providing a Unique Identification Number to India's citizens and appointed Infosys Technologies Co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani as head of an Authority for this purpose.

According to latest reports, Mr. Nilekani has stepped down from Infosys Board after the appointment.

The move to set up the UID Authority of India (UIDAI), under the aegis of the Planning Commission, is aimed at providing a unique identity to the targeted population :-? of the flagship schemes to ensure that the benefits reach them, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here after the Cabinet meeting.

As Chairman of the body, Mr. Nilekani will have Cabinet minister rank and status, she said.

"The Authority shall have the responsibilities to lay down plans and policies to implement the Unique Identification Scheme (UID), shall own and operate the Unique Identification number database and be responsible for its updation and maintenance on an ongoing basis," she said.
Good job. Finally in corridors of power.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Folks we have an Indian Education thread in the Tech Forum which hasa comprehensive discussion going on. Please continue there.

Thanks, ramana
RajeshA
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RajeshA »

I hope his mandate goes further to include the design and development of security of India's information infrastructure. We face threats from all over: Pakistanis, Chinese, Americans, Wahabbis, etc.

Latter's potential and sophistication can be gauged from a recent event:
On September 18, 2008, Wahhabi hackers attacked hundreds of Shiite websites including Shia Islam's most popular site of Sistani, hackers from 'group-xp', based in the United Arab Emirates and is linked to Wahhabi Muslims who follow a strict modified form of Sunni Islam have attacked 300 Shi'a internet sites including Al-Beit foundation of Ayatollah Sistani, the biggest Shi'a website in the world, it was the "largest Wahhabi hacker attack" in recent years.[citation needed]

Visitors to the targeted site see a banner bearing the slogan "group-xp" in red with a message in Arabic denouncing Shiite beliefs and officials and they placed a video of comedian Bill Maher making fun of Sistani and his advice to the Shi'a Muslims.
Gerard
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Gerard »

ramana wrote:Folks we have an Indian Education thread in the Tech Forum which hasa comprehensive discussion going on. Please continue there.

Thanks, ramana
The education related (exams) posts from the point shiv indicated have been moved there
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Thanks Gerard!

X-posted...
When Pigs Fly–and Scold: Brits Lecturing Sri Lanka!
By Gary Brecher


Key fact: in Sri Lanka heroes were allowed to get fat, another reason to like the place.

You see some pretty sick stuff when you do my job, but I just read something sicker than any Congo cannibal buffet. It’s an article by a posh little limey named Jeremey Brown condemning the Sri Lankan government for being too messy in putting down the LTTE, and demanding that we stop buying the cheap textiles the poor Sinhalese make their living churning out.

What’s sick about this is that the British establishment destroyed the Sinhalese people completely. Completely and purposely, sadistically. Stole their land, humiliated and massacred their government, made it Imperial policy to erase every shred of self-respect the Sinhalese had left. You can talk about the Nazis all day long, but for my money nothing they did was as gross as what you find out when you actually look into the history of British-Sinhalese relations. If you can even call them “relations”; I guess a murder-rape is a relation, sort of.

But nobody knows about it. Weird, huh? Nothing weirds me out more than the total news blackout the Brits have managed to put on all the sick sh1t they did to brown and black people all over the world. They had a system, and it worked. They’d grab some paradise island in the tropics, use the Royal Navy to wall it off from the rest of the world, and crush the local tribe. If the locals resisted, the Brits would starve them to death, shoot them down, infect them with smallpox or get them addicted to opium–whatever they had to do to gang-rape the locals so bad that they’d lose the will to resist.

And to this day, they don’t catch even a little bit of Hell for it. Everybody thinks the Brits are all cute and harmless. You’re all a bunch of suckers for those suave accents, you suckers! The truth is that compared to the Brits, the Nazis you’re always yammering about were a gang of eighth-grade stoners who ran around spraypainting swastikas on school property. The Nazis lasted one decade; the Brits quietly ran their extermination programs for three hundred years, and to this day they wouldn’t even think of feeling guilty about it. Wouldn’t cross their minds.

That’s what made me want to puke battery acid when I read Mister Jeremy Brown’s sermon on the naughty Sinhalese: this pig Brown has no clue about why Sri Lanka is so fu*ked up, no hint at all that it’s the result of British Imperial policy. Not “mistakes” or “a few bad apples” or “regrettable excesses” but clear, cold, ruthless British policy.

One of the funniest bits in Brown’s little Anglican sermon to the Sinhalese is when he mentions Arthur C. Clarke, the Brit sci-fi writer who moved to Sri Lanka. The reason that’s funny is that a few years back, when he was too senile and drunk to watch his tongue, Clarke admitted in an interview that the whole reason he moved to Sri Lanka is “for the boys.” As in, he liked to rape little boys, and they were cheap and pretty in the dear old ex-colony. The fu*king Brits wouldn’t stop raping the Sinhalese even after their troops were forced off the island.

Jeremy Brown wouldn’t know that, of course. To him, Clarke is a wonderful example of all the wonderful things British people have done for po’ little Sri Lanka:

“Britain has…helped to rebuild Sri Lanka’s tourist industry: Britons accounted for 18.5 per cent of the foreigners who visited the former colony’s famous beaches, wildlife parks, tea plantations and Buddhist temples last year. Only India sends more tourists. Many Britons also own property there, especially around the southern city of Galle, not far from where Arthur C.Clarke, the British science fiction writer who settled in Sri Lanka, used to love to scuba dive. [Is that what they’re callin’ it these days? GB]

So the question facing British shoppers and holidaymakers is this: should they continue to support Sri Lanka’s garment and tourist industries?

Don’t you love that last sentence: “Sadly, the answer must be no.” Anybody who can write a sentence like that without blowing his brains out at the monitor is a hopeless twit anyway, but let’s help Jeremy out a little bit, folks, let’s go back in time and take a quick look at all the wonderful things the Brits did for these rotten, ungrateful Sinhalese.

The pattern you see in the colonizing of Sri Lanka is a real familiar one, if you study the European naval empires: the Portugese, the greatest sailors and explorers, came to Sri Lanka long before the Brits, claimed the place, but couldn’t hold on to it. The Portugese lost the island to the Dutch, those up’n’coming Protestant go-getters, in the mid-1600s. That’s another pattern you see everywhere, the old Papist powers losing out to the Protestants, who were just faster and smarter.

The next stage was also totally by the book: the Brits, the canopy tree if you know what I mean, come along and force the Dutch out. There were times the Brits sort of liked the Dutch; they were Protestant, at least, and blonde/blue-eyed. But business was business, and the Brits realized, by the end of the 1700s, that Sri Lanka was worth taking. Of course they didn’t say that in public; the official reason was that they had to boot the Dutch to guard the island from the nasty radical Frenchies.

That way of stealing islands, making it sound like you had to take them for the greater good–that was classic Brit strategy. They always made it look like they were forced, against their will, to grab this or that colony. I dunno if y’all ever saw a movie called Erik the Viking, but it has a great scene with John Cleese playing this insane bloodthirsty warlord who orders people tortured to death in this tired, disappointed upper-class voice, and then whines, “It’s the stress that gets you”–all put upon and harrassed, like Attila the Hun meets The Office. That’s a perfect image for the way the Brits booted the Dutch out of Ceylon, tsk-tsking while they stole every shed, cannon and bale of tea on the island.

With the Dutch trade rivals gone, the Brits had only one problem left: the damned natives, the Sinhala, or “Kandyans” as they were called back then. That dumb name, “Kandyans,” came from the fact that their main city was Kandy, up in the highlands in the south of the island, the fat part of the teardrop. The Sinhala lived in the highlands for the simple reason that it was a little cooler, not as totally malarial, up there compared to the stinking coastal marshes.

By all accounts, the Sinhala/Kandyans were harmless slackers, who didn’t need or want much from the outside world. All they asked was for people to leave them alone up on their big rocky highlands to do their Buddhist thing. Unfortunately that wasn’t British policy. It irked the redcoats that Kandy still had a king, an army, all this impudent baggage that went with independence. The British decided to break the Sinhalese completely, crush the whole society.

You have to remember that by this time, the early 1800s, the Brits have perfected their techniques in little experiments all over the world. Those Clockwork Orange shrinks were amateurs compared to the Imperial Civil Service. They had dozens of ways of undermining native kingdoms.

British administrators were trained to do a kind of rough, quick sociological sketch of the natives, get a sense of the fault lines and then figure out how to exploit them. The Brits saw fast that the Kandyans were a sluggish bunch of people divided into rigid castes in the classic subcontinent pattern. That made it easy: the Brits made two big castes their official pets and shunned the others, setting up a violent hate between different parts of Sinhalese society. That guaranteed that if the diehard Sinhalese/Kandyan nationalists ever revolted, the teacher’s-pet castes would have a good selfish reason to help massacre them.

Then there was the Kandyan king himself. The Brits weren’t dumb in the way Paul Bremer was dumb, “de-Baathifying” Iraq. They loved corrupt local rulers. Much easier and cheaper to bribe one fat old degenerate on a throne than negotiate with all the commoners. So the Brits started playing with the nervous, dumb-ass Kandyan royals, scaring them with the threat of losing everything and then teasing them with the possibility of the safe, soft life of a Brit puppet.

This was the major leagues of Colonialism. To give you an idea of how important Ceylon/Sri Lanka was back then, try this on: in 1802, when French armies were kicking British and Prussian and Italian and Russian ass all over Europe (weird how nobody remembers that, huh?), the Brits were so terrified they tried to give Napoleon all their colonies except Sri Lanka and Trinidad. Those were the two they needed to keep.

And this is where another standard Brit policy came into play–a real smart one that we ought to be imitating: use native auxiliaries, not homeland troops, as much as possible. For all kinds of reasons, but here are the main ones:

1. If you bring in troops from some remote part of the Empire to do your dirty work, it’s those troops, those faces and accents, the locals will remember, and hate, for generations. So you, the sly little pink Brit administrator, can stroll in later and commiserate with the locals as they show you around their burned huts, bayoneted kids, etc., and even say with a straight face, “Oh my, those auxiliaries from wherever, what ruddy heathens, eh? Outrageous, I shall certainly let Whitehall know about these abuses!” Then, of course, you get in your sedan chair, close the curtains and chuckle all the way home to where your little bum-boy is waiting.

2. Nobody back in London counts casualties as long as it’s Malay mercs dying. You can lose a lot of them–and a lot of Malays did die fighting the Sinhala, especially in the total rout of a malaria-sapped Brit/Malay force at the Mahaveli River in 1803–but nobody is going to make a fuss in the Times of London (Mister Jeremy Brown’s paper, as you may recall). If you’re lucky they’ll pop off before payday and you can keep their payroll for that estate in Shropshire.

3. Dropping hot-blooded feisty Malay muslims with guns far from home and making them fight Sinhalese bleeds Malay society as well as Sinhalese. Left in peace, Malays could be trouble–a proud, warlike people. So by sending them to die in Sri Lanka, you’re diverting all that young, angry Malay blood away from SE Asia and using it to bleed Kandy (bleed Kandy–I like that!). Two birds, one bloodsoaked stone.

You see why I get impatient with you gullible suckers yammering about the fu*king Nazis? The Nazis were retards, a white-trash tantrum, an eighth-grade chem-class pipe bomb, a quick-fizzle flash in the pan, compared to the Brits, the scariest motherfu*kers ever to butt-f*(k the planet.

The mercenaries the Brits sent to crush the Kandyans were Malays, muslims from SE Asia who didn’t need a lot of pep talks to slaughter South Asian Buddhists (and steal their chickens). That was life for the Brits back then, at the top of their game: picking up pieces from one part of the world and dropping them where they’d do the most harm, half the world away. “Ah yes, let’s ferry some Malay mercs to Kandy, that should give the bloody idol-worshippers something to think about!”

Destroying Buddhism was a big part of Brit policy. The Buddhist routine, the temples, begging monks, long boring prayers–it was the glue that kept Kandy together. So the Brits decided to destroy it. They even said so, in private memos to each other. They weren’t shy in them days. Here’s the Brit governor in 1807: “Reliance on Buddhism must be destroyed. Make sure all [village] chiefs are Christian.”

Up to 1818, the Brits had a blast messing with doomed Sinhala rebellions, trying out CI recipes like Frankenstein guesting on Rachael Ray. A good time was had by all, except the Sinhalese. They had a very, very bad time, and it was about to get worse.

See, another constant you’ll find in Brit imperial policy is that although they’re very sly and patient, they have a very good sense of when to cut the crap and just wipe out a tribe that’s been annoying them for too long. They were getting sick of the Sinhalese, with all their bickering and intrigues; the redcoats just weren’t enjoying the Col. Kurtz game the way they used to. So boom: the “kill’em all” era begins.

But they did it smart, not like the idiot boastful Nazis y’all love to obsess on. I bet every one on the planet can name the Nazi death camps, but I’d be surprised if more than, say, a half dozen people outside Sri Lanka can name the policy the Brits used to destroy the Sinhala for good.

Anybody? Didn’t think so. See, here’s another little tip for up’n’coming genocidaires out there: always pick the most boring name possible. Those fu*king Nazis, with their heavy-metal jewelry and titles! Dopes! You want extermination programs with names that put everybody to sleep.

And that’s why in 1818 Britain brought “the wasteland policy” to Kandy. They could have called it what that Liberian wacko called his campaign: “Operation No Living Thing.” That’s what it meant: Brit-led troops “draining the sea” the Sinhala irregulars swam in by burning every hut, every field, and killing every animal in every village they suspected of harboring “rebels.”

Hey, that’s another key Brit CI techniques: that word “rebels.” Blows me away: how can a Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, fighting for the country his people have owned for a hundred generations, be a “rebel”? And the pipsqueak redcoat officer hunting him down, who was born and raised in fu*king London–he’s not the “rebel,” he’s the forces of law and order, the rightful authorities. Quite a racket if you have the sheer, sociopathic nerve to say it with a straight face. (I’m talking to you, Mister Jeremy Brown!)

What does “rebel” mean, anyway? I’ve noticed that in English press it’s a bad word. Here it’s different, because we were the rebels in 1775 and proud of it. But see, people who know the American revolution think that the Brit policy against the Yankees, where (give or take a Banastre Tarlteton or two), the redcoats tried to avoid killing civvies, was normal Imperial policy.

Bullshit. The reason the Brits let us go, didn’t try scorched-earth on us, was that we WERE Brits, as far as they could tell: white protestant English-speaking humans. If you weren’t all of the above, you weren’t human. The only other war where English troops had the same restraint was–take a guess. Right: the English Civil War. In England, they fought clean. But when Cromwell marched up to subdue the Scots, who were Protestant (good) but non-English (bad), a lot of POWs never made it back to the holding pens, and a lot of crofts were torched, and a lot of girls were raped. When he moved from Scotland to Ireland, where the filthy locals were filthy Papist as well as non-English, well, you don’t want to know what happened there.

So in places like Sri Lanka, full of brown heathens, Brit policy had nothing to do with fu*king Yorktown. More like Dresden, only lower-tech.

The “Wasteland” policy was smart and mean at the same time–another sure mark of the Brit Imperial Touch. It was designed to deny the “rebels” support in the short term, but in the long term it was pure punishment, taking away the land, livestock and other assets of all the Sinhalese who were even suspected of being “rebel”-lovers.

And it worked. To this day, 200 years later, the Sinhalese castes who backed the rebels are dirt poor, and worse: they’re hated by everybody around them and they even hate themselves. And nobody even remembers who did it to them, poor lab rats. They think it’s their own fault, that there’s something wrong with them.

There’s more, and worse, but to tell the truth, this is making me sick. I’ve tried to tell this story a dozen times and nobody wants to know. You just end up vomiting battery acid all night, and pigs like Mister Jeremy Brown of the Times of London never lose one second of sleep over all those bodies, and all those lies and sheer nastiness. What’s the use? I’ll just fastforward through a couple of highlight shots. Take reprisals. You know, like those bad ol’ Nazis used to do after a “rebel” attack? The Brits were there way before the Nazis. They took revenge for a half-assed Kandyan revolt by killing one out of every hundred Sinhalese. Like, at random. To keep it fair, you know, not play favorites.

And then the nastiest CI weapon of all, the demographic bomb. This was a Brit specialty all over the world (see Fiji for a weirdly similar case). The Brits ran India, so they had total control over millions of obedient Tamil peasants who were starving, desperate, and ready to go anywhere, just pile into the hold of a ship and get out to cut cane or plant rice in some place that may as well have been on the Moon for all they knew.

So along with the massacre/reprisals, the Brits came up with one of their classic two-birds-one-stone plans: to neutralize the Sinhalese, let’s import huge hordes of Tamils from India! They’re cheap and docile and they’ll give the Sinhala something to keep them busy even after we have to leave the island, haw! And meanwhile they’ll drive the price of labor down even further! Brilliant, chaps, absolutely brilliant!

And they did it. Worked so well it’s still working today. And when they were done totally destroying the poor Sinhalese, the Brits did what they do best, better than any other murder gang on the planet: they took that amnesia zapper from Men in Black and zapped everyone in Sri Lanka, then turned it on themselves and were suddenly so innocent, so damn virtuous and clean, that a pig like Mister Jeremy Brown can actually sit down at a computer and boast about all the wonderful times England has raped Sri Lanka, from olden times right down to Arthur C. Clarke buggering every little boy on the island. Heckuva job, Brownie! Satan himself is shaking his head, muttering, “Gotta give it to the fu*kin’ limeys, damn it….they got no shame at all, ya gotta admire that. Damn, even I wouldn’t have had the gall to talk like that Jeremy Brown. I’m putting him down for CEO of the Hell Propagandastaffel the minute his liver packs up and he lands down here.”

OK, done. Now you can all pass around that amnesia gun.

http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-a ... sri-lanka/
It applies 100 percent to India too.
vsudhir
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by vsudhir »

ramana wrote:Thanks Gerard!

X-posted...
When Pigs Fly–and Scold: Brits Lecturing Sri Lanka!
By Gary Brecher

...

OK, done. Now you can all pass around that amnesia gun.

http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-a ... sri-lanka/
It applies 100 percent to India too.
Wow. Thx for posting.

Next time you see the Ekhanomist mouth tut-tuts against PRC deriding its
extreme nationalism fueleed by a sense of victimization and historical grievance
know the Great $hits are on the backfoot and $hitting brix for a change.

China and India have good reasons to nurse a total lack of goodwill w.r.t UKstan. UKstan knows this and bows before displayed power - like when they last yr quietly signed away any claims on Tibet to PRC in exchange for a few billion USD in gilt purchases onlee.
Last edited by vsudhir on 27 Jun 2009 21:25, edited 1 time in total.
JE Menon
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by JE Menon »

Nice little reminder there from Gary Brecher... :twisted:

Don't forget. And learn. And get better than them.

Thx for posting ramana...
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Arun_S »

shiv
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by shiv »

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/104 ... rvest.html
Easy accessibility of drugs owing to proximity with Pakistan border and relentless habit of using a cocktail of drugs has made Sukhwinder pay a heavy price. An AIDS patient now, he buries his face in his hands: “I’ve nothing to look forward to in life. What will I do?”

Sukhwinder’s is a despairingly familiar story in today’s Punjab, that has been engulfed by the all-pervading malady of drug addiction. Vibrant Punjab, which once ushered in the Green Revolution, is today living in a dazed stupor, as 67 per cent of the rural households in the state have at least one drug addict, a survey conducted by the Department of Social Security Development of Women and Children reveals.

Once an affluent village in the heart of Amritsar, Maqboolpura has come to be known as a widow village, where almost every home has lost some of its male members to the menace of drugs.

Drug use-related infection of AIDS took its toll on Sukhwinder’s world as he lost his wife and second daughter due to complicated illnesses. His first son died two years ago. He lost all the six close friends who were constant companions of his dreadful revelries. “Now, I am awaiting my turn,” he weeps, regretting the doom he has brought upon himself and his family.

The quintessential scene of sturdy Punjabi munda (boy) sporting a bright pagadi (turban) with high-spirited life and charm moving in a tractor around lush fields in the village is, unfortunately, a picture of distant past.
For many long years, Punjab was only a transit point for drugs from Afghanistan, which were being routed to other parts of the world or metropolitan cities in the country. Punjab is no more just a transit point. “Drugs from Afghanistan are being sold in Punjab itself and the youth in large numbers have joined the cartel,” says the Narcotic Control Bureau official.

Drug trafficking has increased by at last 30-40 percent in the last year ever since cross-border civilian movement increased between India and Pakistan. Late last year in Phagwara, the Punjab Police recovered 50 kg heroin worth Rs 250 crore in the international market from a young brother-sister duo. “International drug cartel and terrorists operating from neighbouring countries are actively involved in drug smuggling,” says a police official.
Rahul Mehta
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Rahul Mehta »

Shame on us, that we need to depend on a small country to arming ourselves :(
Akshut
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Akshut »

Rahul Mehta wrote:
Shame on us, that we need to depend on a small country to arming ourselves :(

What?! Do size really matter that much?

We can see that tiny Israel's Hardware is no match to big-size Russia. It doesn't matter if one is big or small. What matters is that their hardware is of the quality to fulfil the needs.
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Please continue discussion on Repeal of Section 377 in the new thread.
Thanks, ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Avinash R »

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/104 ... rvest.html
shiv wrote:Drug trafficking has increased by at last 30-40 percent in the last year ever since cross-border civilian movement increased between India and Pakistan. Late last year in Phagwara, the Punjab Police recovered 50 kg heroin worth Rs 250 crore in the international market from a young brother-sister duo. “International drug cartel and terrorists operating from neighbouring countries are actively involved in drug smuggling,” says a police official.
“It is really frightening as he sometimes asks his mother to shoot him dead so as to save him from this misery.”
Worth remembering the long term effects of 'peace process' with narco terrorist state like pakistan and inform others who are brainwashed by jholawallas who preach this self destructive diplomacy.

'Cricket fans' from pakistan overstay their visa period and act as spies, and now this poison is being fed to a whole generation which will yield a wasted generation unfit to live and wanting to die.
R Vaidya
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by R Vaidya »

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/comment_i ... on_1269625


India's illegal wealth abroad is not just an issue of tax evasion
R Vaidyanathan
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 2:39 IST
Though not a part of the UPA government's agenda for the first 100 days, the issue of illegal money in tax havens like Switzerland has fortunately not been brushed under the carpet post-elections.The finance ministry has indicated it is taking steps to recover the amounts and also said the government of Germany has given a list of names of those whose money is lying in the LGT Bank of Liechtenstein. The response also shows steps have been taken in the case of Pune stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan's illegal transactions through the UBS Bank of Switzerland.
Interestingly, the response of the Union government in the SC indicates that tax demands of Rs 71,848 crore have been raised against the said person, his wife and other associates. If this were the tax demand, the income on which it is raised may be more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore, taking into account compounding, penalty etc. This is a mind-boggling figure, given that our national income for this year is about Rs 50 lakh crore. But something more interesting has been reported.
"Swiss authorities told an Indian news magazine that Indian authorities submitted in the case of Hassan Ali Khan, who has a Swiss bank account, a request in January 2007 for legal assistance to the Federal Office of Justice. Swiss authorities, upon domestic inquiry, found that the banking information provided with the request for legal assistance contained 'forged documents'. Swiss authorities want to provide further assistance in that case if the Indian authorities could satisfy the Swiss government's demand to establish dual criminality -- what is crime in India is a crime in Switzerland. The Swiss also wanted to know whether the offence was an object of Indian money-laundering. Since April 2007, the Indian government has not responded," it was reported.
The Indian government says it cannot disclose the names provided by Germany as they have been obtained under the Double Taxation Treaty but it has initiated proceedings against the accountholders under tax laws. This begs the question -- why did the government of India ask information under the Double Taxation Treaty when the LGT Bank issue doesn't have any link to that? Besides, where is the question of confidentiality when dealing with criminals? Germany has released its own list; how then is it asking India not to release it?
A report in a financial daily said out of 50 names in the LGT Bank list, 25 were from Mumbai, none being big industrialists or well-known individuals. Not surprising -- big industrialists and politicians will hardly hold these accounts under their names. They will be under benami names. Tax authorities have reopened the assessment of all the 25 tax evaders under section 148 of the Income Tax Act. This implies that the government is treating the case only as tax evasion and not as capital flight and corruption. These are international crooks that have deprived India of huge resources by capital flight. This can be equated with financial terrorism.
Tax havens are against transparency. There are concerns that a lot of money is being generated through bribery, receipt of kickbacks, drug-backs, drug-trafficking, insider trading, embezzlement, computer fraud, under invoicing, and other scams, all of which have a major impact on common people. Ill-gotten money can be laundered through companies floated in tax havens. If a terror outfits decides to transfer resources to India from Monaco or Luxemburg, or some of the islands in the Caribbean Sea, or some dot-like country in Micronesia or Polynesia, it can adopt a simple strategy. Its investment manager can structure some device or product for transferring resources into the target country, maybe through a subsidiary or a conduit company in a tax haven.
Some check was being done when income tax authorities investigated the cases of the non-residents to see the profile of the real operators and beneficiaries to prevent persons of the third states from taking advantage of bilateral treaties. The effect of Circular No. 789, issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes in 2000, is to subvert this check. The circular made the Certificate of Residence granted by a tax haven government conclusive for two things
(i) the authenticity of the fact of residency
(ii) the beneficial ownership of income
Due to the mandatory directive, income tax authorities won't be able to know the real operators and income earners. Terrorism can flourish under such circumstances. Those who issued this circular didn't seem to have thought they were unwittingly facilitating terrorism and anti-India activities. It was recently reported that Citibank was told to suspend retail sales over money-laundering in Japan. It was suspected that the bank has allowed 'anti-social' bodies to open several hundred accounts. Recently, the US media reported on Saudi money being used to finance terror outfits in Bosnia and Pakistan possibly using tax havens as conduits. These should make us much more alert as we are the worst-affected by terrorism.
India should move the UN Security Council and other multilateral bodies to close these tax jurisdictions. The sooner, the better.
The writer is a professor of finance and control at Indian Institute of Management-
Bangalore and can be contacted at vaidya@iimb.ernet.in. Views expressed here are personal and don't reflect those of the organisation
Jamal K. Malik
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Jamal K. Malik »

Govt may consider setting up SC bench in South India: Moily
http://www.ddinews.gov.in/National/Nati ... s/wqsq.htm
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Jamal, in the 60s the SC bench was mooted for Hyderabd. The Rashtrapathi used to be in Hyderabad for ~ 3 months of the year. In the 70s this died.

Meanwhile x-post...
brihaspati wrote:As a completely different angle to think of (compared to the recent posts), is the issue of rather surprising and dramatic publicity of IA increasing its visibility and presence in NE. If I trusted in my instincts, I would trust in the Chanakyan mind games that GOI plays from time to time, (shall we say inadvertently or innocently if no one minds for we must implicitly trust any GOI and never even express our doubts) on its own people, and that the GOI has planned some new initiatives in bringing Indo-PRC relationship to new and peaceful heights. Hence all the posturings of a tough line.

But there is a deeper alternative thinking, which I am sure the GOI is not thinking. Why do we still have to give the Silk Route on land through CAR the mythic status that the Europeans have given it? Why do we not define the new Silk-route through both land and sea from the Persian Gulf through India and along the coast and Indian Ocean on the eastern shores of Bay of Bengal to SE Asia? The importance of the Silk Route was primarily because it connected two sources, India and China on the east with sinks around the Mediterranean.

Why not create a much larger source and sink in the southern hemisphere? Connect the dots bewteen South America, southern Africa, India, and SE Asia? Massive increases in shipping technology and capacity, IT, both food and soft products and even skills as merchandise, can make the Silk Route a pale shadow of its reouted glory. In fact, India and Iran are currently uniquely placed to serve as lateral conduits, cross railways sidings if you say, to connect this much bigger potential Indian Ocean "gold route" and the older, necessarily limited Silk Route.

He is uing maths anology of source and sink.

Brihaspati, SA, Brazil and India do have a relationship. However until Indian economy grows to sustain such ideas its difficult. Whats needes is a ~$20B fund to finance this move.
BTW have you seen maps of ancient Tamils sea routes to South America? They go past South Africa.
Prem
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Prem »

Like they say, Paisa Phenko, Tamasha Dekho. Till India triple the size of her economy with Trillion $ in reserve , we must lie low and buy the time . South America to South Africa to South Asia route will require huge Navy to protect the Sea lanes .
shaardula
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by shaardula »

An attempt at a hatchet job by Tehelka. Just look at the number of digs.

Will be inaccessible in a few days...
A Strange And Bitter Crop
An ambitious RSS social engineering project is transporting children from Meghalaya to Karnataka to bring them up ‘the Hindu way,’ discovers SANJANA. Photographs by S RADHAKRISHNA
image

Culture by rote Sixyear- old Meghalaya children chant shlokas in Thinkabettu School

IN AN investigation spanning 35 schools across Karnataka and four districts in Meghalaya, TEHELKA has found that since 2001, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has embarked on an ambitious social engineering project to transfer at least 1,600 children from Meghalaya to RSS-friendly schools across Karnataka. The latest batch comprising 160 children arrived in Bengaluru on June 7, 2009. Thirty RSS volunteers accompanied the children on the 50-hour train journey down to the city.

Tukaram Shetty, the RSS organiser responsible for the programme, in conversations spanning three months, candidly admitted to TEHELKA that the children were part of a larger mission launched by the RSS and its affiliate organisations to ‘protect’ people from Christian missionaries active in Meghalaya. “We are committed to nurturing the Hindu way of life. There is a long-term plan envisioned by the RSS to defeat the Christian missionary forces active in Meghalaya while expanding our base in the region. These children form a part of that long-term vision. In the years to come, they will propagate our values amongst their own family members,” A childhood recruit into the RSS fold, Shetty hails from Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka and has spent close to eight years in Meghalaya – familiarising himself with the terrain and culture.

The RSS programme brings to the fore several concerns operating as it does within the demographic context of Meghalaya. The state is one of the few Christian majority states in India, with 70.25 percent of the population being classified as Christians in the 2001 census. In comparison, Hindus are pegged at 13.27 percent while a category of religious compositions pegged as ‘others’ – a possible reference to the indigenous tribal religions – is at 11.52 percent. The first Christian missionaries arrived in the mid nineteenth century to work amongst the Garo, Khasi and Jaintia tribes living in the region that now comprises Meghalaya. Despite the long entrenched history of Christian conversions in the state, there exists a significant minority population of tribals who have steadfastly continued to practice their indigenous religions – their beliefs often spliced with a thin wedge of resentment against those who have chosen to convert. The RSS plans of ‘expanding the base in the region’ capitalises on this wedge of resentment with children and their education being — as Shetty admits — the starting points of engagement.

The Thinkabettu Higher Primary and Secondary School in remote Uppur — nearly 500 km from Bengaluru — is one of the 35 schools in Karnataka where the children are studying. In 2008, 17 students between six and seven years were brought to this school from Meghalaya. Following instructions from the head of the school, the children of Thinkabettu School stand up, announce their names politely in Kannada, the local language, and sit down again on the bare floor. Ask the head of the school to introduce himself and he refuses, saying, “You have come to see the children, here they are. If I give you my name, you will use it against me.” The only details forthcoming are that he is a retired bank employee and that the school, which is a century old, was started by his father. A woman in the corner is revealed to be his wife, Nirmala.

Introductions done, the children are asked to recite the latest prayer that they have memorised. Hands folded and eyes closed, the children, with shorn heads and in ragged clothes, begin a Brahminical chant that is a tribute to the teacher — Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara. The children are sitting in the same hall that serves as their school and hostel. They live and breathe, eat and sleep and study on that same barren floor. A 30-watt bulb, a blackboard and a few books and slates neatly lined up complete the picture. An ancient fridge and a ramshackle sofa separate the children’s space from the kitchen area of the hall.

HARD FACTS

1,600 children brought to Karnataka from Meghalaya since 2001

The latest batch of 160 children arrived in Bengaluru on June 7, accompanied by 30 RSS volunteers
Siblings are always separated to ensure better discipline
Most schools where children are studying are in the communally disturbed coastal districts of Karnataka
While most children are from poorer backgrounds, richer families who are RSS sympathisers pay up to Rs 16,000 a year
Children often forget their native languages

Drawn from remote and often inaccessible villages across four districts in Meghalaya — Ri Bhoi, West Khasi Hills, East Khasi Hills and Jaintia Hills — the children taken by the RSS to study in Karnataka belong to the Khasi and Jaintia tribal communities. Traditionally, the Khasi tribes follow the Seng Khasi religion, while the Jaintias follow Niamtre religion. Ask Manje Gowda, Headmaster at the Sri Adichunchanagiri Higher Primary School in BG Nagar, Mandya district where 38 children from Meghalaya currently study, why students are taken out of Meghalaya and he echoes Shetty’s logic, “If the children had stayed on in Meghalaya they would have been converted to Christianity by now. The RSS is trying to protect them. The education that the children receive here includes strong cultural values. When they go back home, after their education, they will help propagate these values to their families.”

The cultural values that Gowda talks of imparting to children include familiarity with Brahiminical chants, Hindu religious festivals, and a weaning away from an overwhelmingly non-vegetarian Meghalayan diet to vegetarianism. How could this possibly help the RSS in expanding their base? Shetty told TEHELKA that indoctrination of cultural values and discipline was the first step. “It is important that children imbibe these values early on. It will bring them closer to us and away from the Christian way of life.

We teach them shlokas so they will not recite hymns. We take them away from meat so they will abhor the animal sacrifice that is inherent in their own religion,” he says. “Ultimately, when the RSS tells them that the cow is a sacred animal and that all those who kill and eat it have no place in our society, these children will listen,” he recounts calmly. Are these children being groomed to be the future foot soldiers of RSS? Shetty’s only answer is that they will part of ‘the family’ in one way or another and that time will decide.

As TEHELKA found, across schools in different districts of Karnataka, the cultural values imparted did not vary. The degrees of immersion into the RSS credo, however, depended on the schools the children were placed in. Children who came from financially stable homes were placed in schools with proper educational and hostel facilities since parents were able to pay for them. In these schools, the disciplinary regime imposed on the children was more relaxed compared to the schools where children from poorer families were placed. TEHELKA found that 60 percent of the children it met came from economically weaker families. Subsequently, the schools that these children were placed in resembled the Thinkabettu school in Uppur where both education and lodging facilities were free and dismal.

Most of the schools where the children have been placed are located in the coastal belt of Karnataka, the region that has emerged as the centre of communal violence in the state. The places include Puttur, Kalladka, Kaup, Kollur, Uppur, Deralakatte, Moodbidri in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Chikmaglur districts. Besides these, the children have been placed in schools run by influential ashrams such as the JSS Mutt in Suttur, the Adi Chunchanagiri Mutt in Mandya district and the Murugrajendra Mutt in Chitradurga district.

How do children from Meghalaya end up thousands of kilometres away in Karnataka? What is the modus operandi? Almost every child and parent that TEHELKA spoke with identified Tukaram Shetty as the man who proposed the idea of educating children in Karnataka, offered to take the children there and then ultimately accompanied the children to Karnataka.

A former Seva Bharati (an RSS-affiliated community service organization) worker, Shetty is the official face of the Lei Synshar Cultural Society, a shell organisation established to maintain the required official distance from the RSS. In fact, the Lei Synshar Cultural Society is utterly unknown even outside its own head office in Jowai in the Jaintia Hills district. Ask for Tukaram or Bah Ram as he is called in Meghalaya and there are instant flashes of recognition. Outside the capital city, Shillong, right down to the village level, people easily recognise the RSS as the organisation that takes children to Karnataka. The organisation runs three offices in the Jaintia Hills district – in Jowai, Nartiang and Shongpong. Besides, there are several spaces occupied by the Seva Bharati and Kalyan Ashram organizations which help in the identification and transport of children.
RSS organiser Tukaram Shetty candidly admitted that the children were part of a larger RSS mission to ‘protect’ them from Christian missionaries

YOLIN KHARUMINI, a teacher at a local Seng Khasi school and resident at Shillong’s Kalyan Ashram described the process. “We are asked to identify families that have not converted to Christianity and are firm in their belief in indigenous religions — Seng Khasi and Niamtre. Usually, these are families that nurse some form of resentment against Christians. Offers are made to these families to have their children educated in Karnataka. We always tell them that they will be educated according to Seng Khasi or Niamtre traditions.” Kharumini’s own niece, Kerdamon Kharumini, studies in Mangala Nursing School in Karnataka. Lists are drawn up based on the parents’ capacity to afford the child’s education and hostel facilities.

Continuing the narrative, Khatbiang Rymbai, a Class 10 student at Vidya - niketan School in Kaup, Udupi district described in detail how 200 children travelled to Bengaluru from various villages. “There were many young children. So when they divided us into groups of 13-14, the older children were put in charge. In Shillong, we were all given identification tags which had mobile numbers and the Jowai address of the Lei Synshar Cultural Society. From there, we traveled in Tata Sumos to Guwahati to take the train to Bengaluru,” she says. In Bengaluru, they were taken to the RSS office before being split into groups to go to their respective schools.
The children are taught to avoid meat so they will start to abhor the religious sacrifices that are part and parcel of their native religions

In a chilling admission, an RSS worker in Shillong, Prafulla Chandra Koch and the head of the Thinkabettu school told TEHELKA that care is always taken to ensure that any siblings are separated from each other. “It is easier to discipline them if they are not together. We have to control them if we have to mould them. The lesser the contact they have with home, the better it is, really,” he stated.

TEHELKA met with several siblings placed in different schools – Khatbiang’s brother Supplybiang Rymbai was placed in Prashanti Vidya Kendra in Kasargod, Kerala while she studies in Vidyaniketan school near Udupi in Karnataka. Yet another student at Vidyaniketan, Reenborn Tariang admitted to having a sister, Wanboklin Tariang, at the JSS Mutt school in Mysore. Bedd Sympli at the Abhinav Bharati Boys Hostel in Mandya district has a sister studying in Vidyaniketan, Udupi district; Iwanroi Langbang a student at the Adi Chunchanagiri Mutt school in Mandya district had a sister, Daiamonlangki, at the Vanishree school in Shimoga district. There is not one instance of siblings studying together. Ask the children why they were separated and there are no answers.

WHEN TEHELKA asked parents why they had chosen to place their children in different schools, they admitted they were only informed of it several months after the children had started school. Says Klis Rymbai, Khatbiang and Supplybiang’s older sister, “When they left home, all we knew was that they would go to Bengaluru. We had no details of the school they would go to – not even a name or address. Much later, we realised that Khatbiang and Supplybiang were separated and that they were not in Bengaluru. Khatbiang also told us she was repeating Class VIII after she got admitted into school. The RSS promised to take care of our children and we trusted them.” Klis admits that her family is attempting to bring Supplybiang back to Meghalaya. “He has not adjusted well and is still young so we want him to come back. Khatbiang has already lost a year so it is best she finishes school there,” says Klis. The Rymbais are extremely well off, having made their money through mining in the Jaintia Hills district. The father, Koren Chyrmang, is an RSS sympathiser, who, besides sending his own children, has helped convince other families to send their children across. “He used to be very active but has fallen sick of late This has prevented him from traveling to other villages in this area with the RSS,” says Klis.

The physical and mental impact of studying in school environments diametrically opposed to their culture, language, religion, and food habits has been devastating. In the schools that TEHELKA visited, hostel wardens, heads of schools and the children themselves admitted to having had serious physical problems given the differences in climatic conditions between their villages in Meghalaya and schools in Karnataka. In the Deenabandhu Children’s Home, Chamarajnagar, Karnataka, according to the Secretary, GS Jayadev, the six-year-olds from Meghalaya — Shining Lamo, Sibin Ryngkhlem and Spid Khongshei — had skin rashes for over a month as their bodies tried to acclimatise to the heat of Karnataka. Besides rashes, Spid’s eyes turned bloodshot. Doctors at the hospital where Spid was taken by school authorities told them that it was a natural reaction to the altitudinal differences.

In Thinkabettu school, too, children had severe sunburns on their faces, hands and legs though they had already spent three months in Karnataka when TEHELKA visited them. The situation was no different with the children studying in the Kalabyraveshwara Sanskrit College run by the Adichunchanagiri Mutt in Nagamangala. Of the 11 children from Meghalaya who were placed in this school, the oldest, Iohidahun Rabon (see box) told TEHELKA that the three of the younger ones — Sowatki Chulet, Tailang Nongdam and Perskimlang Nongkrot — were chronically ill since they had not taken to the food being given to them.
The physical and mental impact of living in environments diametrically opposed to their culture, language, religion and food is devastating

The psychological impact of the move was also obvious on several children. In all the schools that TEHELKA visited seeking information about children from Meghalaya, the school authorities summoned the children from their classes and instructed them to introduce themselves in Kannada. For the authorities, it was a matter of great pride that children who had no association with Kannada had been taught the language well. That students who did not know a word of Sanskrit earlier now recited Sanskrit prayers with great clarity. In the Sri Adichunchanagiri Higher Primary School in BG Nagar, Mandya district, the headmaster, Manje Gowda, flung a Kannada newspaper at a student from Meghalaya, ordering him to read it. Obediently, in a low voice, devoid of any expression, the boy proceeded to read a few sentences, before quietly folding and placing the newspaper back on the headmaster’s desk. Till he was sent away, the boy never looked up. In school after school, the same scene unfolded with variations in the demonstrations of skill and familiarity with Kannada and Sanskrit.

While the authorities claimed that the students from Meghalaya had integrated well with the rest, there was overwhelming evidence to suggest otherwise. A few minutes of conversation with the children brought out stories of how they were laughed at because their names were unfamiliar and because they looked different. Invariably, and especially amongst the older students, relationships were forged with others from Meghalaya. In classrooms, six or seven students from Meghalaya squeezed into a bench meant to seat four children. Speaking Kannada had integrated the children only so far. Faced with animosity, they have withdrawn into the familiar. In schools where this was not a possibility given the limited number of students from Meghalaya, they withdrew into themselves.

The locations of the schools did not help alleviate their isolation at all. Iwanroi Langbang, a Class IX student currently staying in Nagamangala (about 150 kms from Bengaluru), talked of her disappointment at not studying in Bengaluru. “We were only told that I would be studying in Bengaluru. It was only after I came here that I heard the name of the school and realised that it was very far from Bengaluru. Here, we are not allowed outside the compound wall. And even if we get away, there is nothing outside,” said Langbang. Her school is located off an isolated stretch of the state highway.

A consequence of completely immersing young children from Meghalaya in a Kannada-speaking environment was visible at the Deenabandhu Children’s Home in Chamarajnagar district. A caretaker at the Home described one child’s growing familiarity with Kannada, “Sibin [one of the children at the Home] has picked up a lot of Kannada in the two months he has been here. During a phone call from a relative back home, he kept answering questions in Kannada which obviously they did not understand at all.” In a shocking display of insensitivity, the caretaker burst into laughter at what she thought was a hilarious incident and added, “For 45 minutes, a woman, I assume his mother, kept trying. Sibin, of course, had no answers since he had forgotten his own language.” She giggled. The caretaker then proceeded to teach Sibin the Kannada word for dinner.

ACCORDING TO Sibin’s birth certificate, he is six. Yet another certificate issued by the village headman of Sibin’s village, Mihmyntdu, certifies that he comes from a poor family and needs help for his education. TEHELKA was unable to contact his parents.

The physical and mental consequences suffered by children from Meghalaya differ from the everyday story of children placed in several thousand boarding schools across the country. That there is a larger plan behind the transportation of these children is something that RSS workers like Koch, have no qualms admitting.

Why are parents willing to send young children aged only six and seven to a distant place? In the face of these overwhelming disadvantages to the children, during visits with parents across eight villages in Meghalaya, TEHELKA found that parents — mostly poor — handed over their children to the RSS in the belief that their kids would be well cared for, as promised. Often, the transportation of children followed kinship routes, with younger siblings following older ones. While this may seem to defy logic, examined closely, it speaks of the intricate web of lies that the RSS has managed to weave, webs that ensnare parents, school authorities and often the children themselves. There are multiple untruths that are the foundation of this entire process.

PARENTS HAVE GIVEN THEIR CONSENT IN WRITING
Why are parents willing to send their children far from home? The mostly poor parents believe the RSS’ promises that the kids will be taken care of

When TEHELKA approached schools in Karnataka seeking papers that legalise the transfers of children across states, letters signed by the village headman or the Rangbah Shnong attesting to the family’s poor economic condition were handed out along with birth and caste certificates. Across different schools that TEHELKA visited, not a single letter was produced with the parents’ signature that stated explicitly that the care of their children was handed over to that particular school. No parent that TEHELKA met in Meghalaya had copies of any signed consent letter signed. Under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 – such consent letters are mandatory for legal transfers of children.

The transportation of children, then, with no official papers sanctioning the move, is in clear violation of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000. Under this law, the RSS can be held guilty of child trafficking.

THE CHILDREN ARE IN SCHOOLS RUN ACCORDING TO THEIR SENG KHASI OR NIAMTRE RELIGIONS

Amongst the Khasi and Jaintia tribes, there is a tenuous relationship between those who have converted to Christianity and those who have not. The RSS carefully selects children from poor families who have not converted to Christianity. “I was told that the only way to protect my daughter from conversion was to send her outside. If I didn’t, the Church would take them away and make them priests and nuns,” said Biye Nongrum in Swer village. “I was afraid for my daughter and so I agreed to hand her over,” she says. Six years after her daughter left home, Biye has no details of the school that she is studying in. All she has is a class photograph. “I don’t have the money to visit my daughter and bring her back, even if I find out where she is. But I will never send another child away,” she says. Biye ekes out a living by selling sweet pancakes to richer families in the village. The ramshackle house that she shares with her mother and at least three other children further signal her poverty stricken condition. The socioeconomic status of the families are an indication of why it is difficult for the parents to ever bring their children back — they simply cannot afford it.

Several parents told TEHELKA that the RSS schools where their children were studying were schools that upheld their indigenous religions – a rationale that has many takers. In Jel Chyrmang’s home in Mookhep village, TEHELKA found a framed photograph of Jel’s daughter, Rani Chyrmang, being felicitated by the patron saint of her school, Sri Balagangadharnath. Ask Jel who the saffron-robed saint is and she blithely repeats what she has been told, a story that would be hilarious if the circumstances were not so sad. According to Jel, Sri Balagangadharnath is a Seng Khasi saint who runs her daughter’s school. There is no doubt in her voice at all. Jel’s ignorance, however, does not extend to others in the family. Her husband, Denis Siangshai, who contested the recent Lok Sabha elections, turns out to be an RSS worker. Using his daughter as an example, he admitted to having convinced others in the area as well. “People have a wrong notion of RSS. I always tell them that the RSS will give them good education and culture,” says Denis.
The transportation of children without clear consent letters from parents and guardians is a clear violation of the Juvenile Justice Act

Most parents have no idea that the schools chosen by the RSS espouse a different ideology. Besides the forced culturisation, even the libraries and books handed out to the students are RSS publications from recognized right-wing publishing houses in Bengaluru. In the JSS Ashram school, the library was stocked with publications of RSS ideologues published from Bharata Samskruti Prakashana (Indian Culture Publications). No trace of Seng Khasi teachings or Niamtre practices.

THE CHILDREN ARE ABANDONED AND DESTITUTE

For a non-tribal society like Karnataka, the notion of a father abandoning the family is seen as a social and economic disaster. Meghalaya, though, is a matrilineal society, where men move to live with women in their villages. Mothers continue to remain the primary caretakers. Even if the mother dies, the child is brought up by relatives and is never entirely abandoned.

THE CHILDREN HAVE ADJUSTED WELL

When children first leave Meghalaya, parents and children are not aware where the children will ultimately be taken. As direct communication between the children and parents is limited owing to the socio-economic conditions of the parents and the lack of facilities at the schools, the RSS is the main intermediary between the two. The RSS tells parents that the children are happy and well adjusted in their new environments. The reality is something else.

Raplangki Dkhar, a standard VI student at Vidyaniketan, was clearly waiting for his uncle to come take him home. “Only if people from home come and take us, we can go back. Every year when school ends, we hear that we will be taken back. But it has been two years already,” said a forlorn Raplangki. Only two of the children TEHELKA met had ever returned home to visit. Back in Raplangki’s hometown in Raliang, Meghalaya, when TEHELKA asked his uncle why he had not visited Raplangki, he is surprised, “I had no reason to doubt the fact that my nephew has adjusted well. At every RSS meeting in Jowai we are assured by them that the kids are healthy and happy.”

Direct phone calls between children and parents are dependent entirely on the parents’ finances. If the parents have not been able to pay for the child’s education, the schools that they are placed in are often the free orphanages run by the Mutts, where access to phones is non-existent, as is the case with the free hostel run by the Sri Adichunchanagiri Mutt.

For the RSS, these falsifications are part of a process. A process that is bound to add an additional layer of complexity amongst the people of Meghalaya, quite apart from the mental and social costs inflicted on young children.
Jamal K. Malik
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Jamal K. Malik »

Obama changing approach to illegal immigration
India and third nations interest.
RajeshA
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RajeshA »

On Illegal Immigration
Jamal K. Malik wrote:Obama changing approach to illegal immigration
India and third nations interest.
Jamal ji,
that's a good interesting catch.

This is also one way to get a handle over illegal immigration into India mostly from Bangladesh, but also from Sri Lanka, and Nepal. In due time, India could also expect a flood of refugees coming into India from Pakistan.

UIDAI under Nilekani would go a long way in getting a handle over citizen IDs. A similar effort should be made to get a grasp on illegal immigration:
1. Making our borders as impenetrable as possible, using appropriate barriers and newest surveillance technology.

2. Promise all illegal immigrants in India, that they will be made legal, and would be allowed to work, if and only if, they are come forward of their own volition, accept that they are citizens of another country, name the other country, and produce papers proving their nationality of the other country within the next 18 months.

3. Anybody found to have applied for the citizen Unique ID, who is not an Indian citizen, will be severely punished when found out. All his belongings and land will be confiscated, all children under 8 years of age will be taken away and put away in an orphanage, he may be punished with hard-work imprisonment or deported, if his family members can produce the papers for him to travel to his native country.

4. As is indicated by the article, any employer who is found out to be employing anybody, who does not have the citizen ID or a legal immigration visa, would be severely fined.

5. If some illegal immigrant is found to be self-employed then his tools, instruments and materials used in his work will also be confiscated.
brihaspati
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by brihaspati »

ramanaji,
yes, saw those maps on the other forum. Most interesting and very plausible. Not enough research done about evidence on the ground even now - for example domestication of certain agricultural products. Eastern India and Meso-America both appear to be simultaneous "hot-spots" of origins for certain items like the "chilli/capsicum" group, or "corn" etc.
NRao
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by NRao »

:?: :?: :?:
Both Israel and India, one Jewish, the other Hindu, are locked in deadly combat with Islamist extremists, and after the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai -- India's Sept. 11 -- that killed 165 people, including five Israelis, security cooperation between the two nations has skyrocketed -- literally.

On April 20 India launched its RISAT-2 satellite, built by Israel Aerospace Industries, the state-owned flagship of Israel's defense industry.
The Islamists attacked Mumbai in Sept, and, the satellite went up in April.

In seven months the two decided to design, build and toss a satellite into space

Jew+Hindu must be deadly combo.
brihaspati
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by brihaspati »

No discussion apparently on happenings at Mysore! Has it become taboo too?
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RamaY »

brihaspati wrote:No discussion apparently on happenings at Mysore! Has it become taboo too?
Brihaspati-ji,

Looks like it. I tried to record my thoughts in the Whines thread but was given the routine "cannot discuss religion" reason. I have proposed a new moderating approach. Let us see what the response will be.

Sometimes I wonder would BRF have allowed all those deleted threads not only to survive but also enhance in scope had BJP won the latest elections. The correlation between the election results and BRF moderation has become very obvious.

I hope BRF moderating team understands that the moment BRF behaves like any other media outlet, it will lose its purpose. Nowadays any discussion on majority interests has become taboo on BRF. The trend is too obvious to ignore.
chetak
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by chetak »

It can happen only in India!

Issue of special haj passports starts

The applicants are not required to be physically present. They can submit their applications in the office of haj committee through an authorised representative possessing an authority letter from the applicant. A regular passport of 10 years validity can also be used as a travel document for haj.

After July 15, passport office will start issuing the passport to those Hajis also who have not applied under special passport scheme. Passports will be issued without waiting for police verification report.
dipak
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by dipak »

Didn't know where to post exactly as couldn't locate the Indian Elections thread,
Mods, please delete or move as deemed fit.

EC officially takes up inquiry of EVM rigging charges
The Election Commission has now officially taken up the investigation of charges of rigging and fraud through the Electronic Voting Machines.

Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla [ Images ] is sitting over a major scandal of a possible massive rigging of elections by manipulation of software of the Electronic Voting Machines.

But for the charge levelled by a former Delhi [ Images ] chief secretary five years senior to him in the Indian Administrative Service cadre, Chawla would have rejected such claims of rigging.

Omesh Saigal, a 1964 batch IAS officer of the Union Territory, stunned him with a presentation to force him to order an inquiry into any possibility of such a rigging.

Chawla is himself a Union Territory cadre IAS of 1969 batch.

Deputy Election Commissioner Balakrishnan has been asked to conduct the inquiry on the basis of a report handed over by Saigal to the CEC, with a software he got developed to show how the elections can be rigged.

Saigal, who is an Indian Institute of Technology alumni, has demanded an urgent check of the programme that runs the EVMs used in elections since 2004.

He demonstrated with his software that its manipulation ensured that one has to just key in a certain code number and that will ensure every fifth vote cast in a particular polling booth goes in favour of a certain candidate.

In his letter to the CEC, Saigal alleged that the software written onto the EVMs has never been checked by the Election Commission ever since these machines were manufactured than 6-7 years back.

His contention is that the EC merely relied on the certificates supplied by the manufacturers, the government-run BEL and ECIL. He alleged that these government firms had subcontracted private parties who actually provided these certificates.

"A public software audit of these machines from time to time, especially after and before an election, was a must to retain the credibility of the elections," Saigal affirmed, demanding that for the sake of transparency names and ownerships of these private companies must be disclosed, as also the details of the factories where they were actually manufactured.

The records retained in the factories must also be immediately taken over by the EC to prevent any tampering and to facilitate an audit, he said.

He also pointed out how, after nearly two years of deliberation, Germany's [ Images ] Supreme Court ruled last March that e-voting was unconstitutional because the average citizen could not be expected to understand the exact steps involved in the recording and tallying of votes. Earlier, Ireland had given up e-voting for similar reasons.

In the United States too, after considerable controversy the Federal Election Commission has come up in 2005 with detailed voting system guidelines which run into more than 400 pages.

Saigal said that it is noteworthy that not a single safeguard mentioned in these guidelines are in place in India.

Saigal said he had gone into all the safeguards built into the e-voting system in India with the help of former colleagues and IT experts and finds it both 'possible and plausible' to rig these machines and get a crooked result.

"If the credibility of the electoral process is to be ensured, pre- and post-election checks of the software now fused onto the chips of the EVMs is a must," Saigal said.

It is not that all the 10 lakh odd machines used in the poll need to be checked. If we take only those booths where one of the candidates has received 75 per cent of the votes and in constituencies where the
margin of the winner is less than 15,000, not more than 7,000-odd machines will need to be checked.

Saigal argued in his report that "if we cannot do this we must revert to the paper ballot."

"The need for a fair, free and transparent polling system transcends any reasons anyone may have to the contrary," he added.
Here on BRF, we are generally dismissive of the EVM rigging allegations - however, as per above, now that Dy EC Balakrishnan officially taking up the enquiry - its has to be taken and followed bit seriously.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by derkonig »

^^^
It is good to see the EC investigate the allegations, but will any good come out of this? Will fraud be acknowledged?
RajeshA
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RajeshA »

At this moment, it has been shown that technically the EVMs can be tampered with, in theory.

It hasn't been proven:
1. Organizationally whether that was possible.
2. EVMs were proven to be tampered with.
3. Any people who did so, if at all happened, were named.

There is a long way between proving technical feasibility of a crime and proving a crime. So let's not start insinuating that any rigging happened until something more conclusive comes to light. Otherwise we are shooting in our own foot.
Muns
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by Muns »

Brihaspatiji,

Is it possible that i may be able to contact you off the site by email? A few questions i have that may need some answering. Thank you again...
brihaspati
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by brihaspati »

^^dikgajone at gmail dot com :)
ramana
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by ramana »

Muns wrote:Brihaspatiji,

Is it possible that i may be able to contact you off the site by email? A few questions i have that may need some answering. Thank you again...
If they are relevant please do post the questions and the answers on the forum.
RajeshA
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by RajeshA »

Film piracy funding terror: US thinktank by S Balakrishnan: Times of India
MUMBAI: The leading US thinktank, Rand Corporation, has confirmed what Indian intelligence agencies have been maintaining all along— Dawood Ibrahim has graduated to terrorism and is siphoning off millions of dollars earned from film
piracy
, drug-running and other crimes to finance his operations.
Identifying Al-Mansoor and Sadaf brands belonging to Dawood, the report says he has acquired extraordinary market power in the distribution of pirated films throughout the region. The report says the D-Company has got control of Sadaf Trading Company based in Karachi, and thus allowing it to manage distribution network in Pakistan and also acquiring the infrastructure to manufacture pirate VHS tapes and VCDs for sale.
Abstract of Original Rand Corporation Report (purchaseable)
Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism
By: Gregory F. Treverton, Carl Matthies, Karla J. Cunningham, Jeremiah Goulka, Greg Ridgeway, Anny Wong

Indian Government should put a lot more stress on coming down on these piraters. Now Bollywood has instead of becoming an engine of growth for the Indian Economy become a source of financing for terrorism and organized crime, and that too for every film produced in Bollywood.

I am not sure how far one can confront this problem in Pakistan itself, but there is no reason, why pirated Bollywood films should be available in other markets like USA, UK, Europe, UAE or elsewhere. India should pressure the local authorities to put an end to this piracy. USA can help in this endeavor, as it already has the clout and a process in these countries. Money made from this piracy also supports Al Qaida's activities.

Secondly, in every copyright message, the producers should include, that buying pirate copies may be supporting terrorism.
dipak
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by dipak »

It is good to see the EC investigate the allegations, but will any good come out of this? Will fraud be acknowledged?
Fraud acknowledged or not - it will be helpful to tighten the loose-ends in the system, put in proper checks and precautions in place, and thus enhancing the use of EVM as trusted and tested technology.
It will also put an end to any speculations of misuse of EVM etc.
There is a long way between proving technical feasibility of a crime and proving a crime. So let's not start insinuating that any rigging happened until something more conclusive comes to light. Otherwise we are shooting in our own foot.
Agreed - let's wait to finish the inquiry.
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Re: Indian Interests

Post by NRao »

Locked