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Sir, apologies for my impertinence, but I am curious to know what visionary technology Mr Nilekani unleashed on the world. Or for that matter any Indian who climbed aboard the IT gravy train. Actually, it does not even have to be visionary, as long as it qualifies as a technology product.
however which way one wishes to slice it, companies do not rise to become behemoths in less than a single generation without cutting many corners, kissing a lot of frogs and very actively "managing the environment".
the owners know how to play the system and where the grease is best applied to smoothen the wheels of their own progress.
expertly concocted pristine reputations, dexterously constructed brick by image building brick, hitherto protected by phalanxes of paid media managers and immaculately choreographed by page three publicists have all fallen by the wayside since they identified with a specific political dispensation.
radia played a big part in the deconstruction of such imperial imaging though she never intended to do so
Sir, apologies for my impertinence, but I am curious to know what visionary technology Mr Nilekani unleashed on the world. Or for that matter any Indian who climbed aboard the IT gravy train. Actually, it does not even have to be visionary, as long as it qualifies as a technology product.
Wow..really? India stack, UPI digital payments, AADHAR, and his recent efforts to build open platform for eCommerce. There is no other _Indian_ tech leader with a better pedigree than Nandan and he also was able to execute his vision. Bjp does not need to get him per se but get someone nearly as good.
george wrote:
Sir, apologies for my impertinence, but I am curious to know what visionary technology Mr Nilekani unleashed on the world. Or for that matter any Indian who climbed aboard the IT gravy train. Actually, it does not even have to be visionary, as long as it qualifies as a technology product.
Wow..really? India stack, UPI digital payments, AADHAR, and his recent efforts to build open platform for eCommerce. There is no other _Indian_ tech leader with a better pedigree than Nandan and he also was able to execute his vision. Bjp does not need to get him per se but get someone nearly as good.
Sir, none of the above is neither visionary nor purely technological; rather they are technology services built using tech platforms and products. None is visionary. All were done by others before. AADHAR is a sophisticated DB run on massa 'Technology'
Some may shout Finnacle, how many know the base platform?
I will not disagree with you if you said Nilekani is a good businessman/business leader or even a shrewd one(just ask mr phaneesh pocket billiards murthy) . But to call him a visionary technologist is too kind.
What the IT gravy train really did was provide an employment gateway to all and any type of engineer who would have been otherwise unemployed in an underdeveloped market like ours. In the process it also killed 3 decades of our best engineering talent pool as most prefer campus interview and safe jobs screening for bugs in code.
Nilekani deserves credit for driving the implementation of several large scale public IT projects to completion - Aadhaar, UPI etc. In the process, he's what I'd like in a minister, but I don't see him as a good minister - his skill set is in using COTS technology on large scale successful IT projects. Nothing wrong with COTS as there's no need to reinvent the wheel at every turn. A minister correspondingly needs to be an expert at harnessing the off the shelf babus to implement work. There's tons of work that are bread and butter tasks. For example there's less importance associated with visionary hyperloops and flying cars, and more important to build very simple slipformed concrete pedestrian areas on every major road across the whole country , with road crossing signal buttons etc. Doing simple things at scale is part of the minister's job, and more important than visionary stuff.
george wrote:
Sir, none of the above is neither visionary nor purely technological; rather they are technology services built using tech platforms and products. None is visionary. All were done by others before. AADHAR is a sophisticated DB run on massa 'Technology' Some may shout Finnacle, how many know the base platform?
Oh, I do. Infact know the bunch who did the earliest Bancs2k product since early 90s. Unassuming peoples. But still dont know what is your point in the above statements I quoted?
What Suraj is trying to say is the opposite of what you are saying - we need less visionaries and more executors who bridge the gaps that India has on certain basic infra including IT. Sri Nilekani brings in a certain acumen in that aspect. He has pushed lots of moribund departments and sectors to adopt unified frameworks. If the expectation is that he should come up with an advanced accelerometer based device for knowing when you are having naughty thoughts, a la the late Sri Jobs, he is not the chap and Indian government is not in that game.
Suraj, dont know if you watched yet, but was watching a Netflix series on Britain's 6 million odd CCTV based system. It seem to keep their manpower doing patrol/beats very frugal all right. But what caught my eye is that the series shows the cops chasing down people with expired insurance, based on their number-plate recognizing tech (IIRC first integrated by HCL for their London City parking fee project in the early 2000s). Some of these seem like good to have systems to reduce corruption in traffic enforcement and help traffic management in India. Not to mention providing security for working women who has to use public transport or late night eateries etc
But at the same time, makes one wonder why West is bleating against overpowering surveillance done by the Chinese - Uqistan already seem to use a facial recognition method for catching perps and 6 million cameras for a smallish population will make the alleged benchmark of a police-state, the KGB, look like amateurs. No wonder Banksy was targeting this CCTV system for his satire since late 90s
hnair wrote:But at the same time, makes one wonder why West is bleating against overpowering surveillance done by the Chinese
Hypocrisy is a virtue and an art that western nations have mastered. We seem to whenever it's displayed against us and the chicoms are even worse with their over the top r-rona. Canadians who everyone automatically assumes innocent like a kitten, forcibly neuter native women with impunity.
The funny thing is anyone who points out the hypocrisy is seen as a salty loser while nations who practice it get browny points for being "mother" teresa reborn
hnair wrote:Suraj, dont know if you watched yet, but was watching a Netflix series on Britain's 6 million odd CCTV based system. It seem to keep their manpower doing patrol/beats very frugal all right. But what caught my eye is that the series shows the cops chasing down people with expired insurance, based on their number-plate recognizing tech (IIRC first integrated by HCL for their London City parking fee project in the early 2000s). Some of these seem like good to have systems to reduce corruption in traffic enforcement and help traffic management in India. Not to mention providing security for working women who has to use public transport or late night eateries etc
But at the same time, makes one wonder why West is bleating against overpowering surveillance done by the Chinese - Uqistan already seem to use a facial recognition method for catching perps and 6 million cameras for a smallish population will make the alleged benchmark of a police-state, the KGB, look like amateurs. No wonder Banksy was targeting this CCTV system for his satire since late 90s
I have not seen that show, but yes they are quite pervasive in UK. Ditto for traffic speed cams and ALPRs (automatic licence plate readers). At least in the case of China (and perhaps UK) there's a further twist - a good fraction of the CCTVs are non functional . Not just broken, but decoys. The goal is to engender broad public compliance and good behavior by frequently pulling up people using the functional cameras, until people get the idea that they should just behave properly, even though many of the cameras are disconnected, unfunctional or are just dummies. It's an interesting form of public order management. It's also one reason why the cost of the surveillance equipment isn't astronomical - a lot of it is just for show, but they play a role regardless.
Pretty much every developed society implements such mechanism to engender compliant and well behaved public. Speed traps in the US (even in Calif with its 'can't hide' laws to tie the hands of cops) are an example. There are many such things. Humans are conditioned to adapt their behavior in response to conditions. Good public policy mechanisms just take advantage of it.
I've personally nothing against Nilekani. He may be various things from a political perspective, but fundamentally he was in charge of putting together a useful and scalable platform that is currently the world's biggest ID system. The Modi administration is generally not dogmatic and has no desire to throw away a good thing just because of who's behind it. As such, Aadhaar is central to his pet JAM framework. Ditto for the UPI interface. They may not be the pinnacle of innovashun, but they are functional, stable and ubiquitous, enabling a modern socio-economic and financial transaction framework to be built atop them. In the process, they've taken away billions in graft, and made more of the economic activity formal.
Administration is fundamentally a human resource management problem. Winning elections doesn't ensure the administrative system will work for the electors automatically. That is a function of the people management skills of the elected ministers. Most of it is unglamorous work, setting up scalable goals and tracking dashboards, eliminating bottlenecks and coordination issues, and generally empowering the babus to get things done.
One can see good administrative mechanisms in action in the Swachh Bharat Mission, Saubhagya Mission and now the Jal Jeevan Mission programs. I used to track the first two half heartedly between 2014-19, not quite sure how much of it was accurate. But GE2019 was a splash of cold water in my face - clearly an enormous number of people benefited from these basic schemes giving them the first taste of developed life. I was astonished on May 23 2019 - I've never seen an Indian GE ever return that kind of result. Sure there have been other admins with more LS seats, but the sheer number of states with >50% voteshare for winner, and a turnout of almost 68% - miles beyond the long term GE turnout ? Learned my lesson there - these unglamorous dashboards are a window to how rapidly rural India is getting access to basic utilities and necessities.
If the JJM dashboard starts showing mostly green as we approach GE2024, I expect another blowout win for the PM. He has connected with the mango person and understands they want to work their way up in life. Access to clean water for most people would be the kind of electoral tsar bomba that even electricity and toilets couldn't be. People can live by lanterns or poop in the forest, but clean water straight to the home ? That's 350+ LS seat kind of result if they are able to get 70-90% countrywide piped water cover by next GE.
As that JJM map shows, in 2020, with a $3 trillion dekho-no-money, $520 billion in forex reserves - only TWENTY FIVE percent have access to piped water. Almost all of us are part of that privileged 25% growing up. We don't know what it's like for the rest. Modi understands this. He bridged that for toilet access, electricity access, bank account access... and now is focusing on water. It's criminally poor that in 2020, we are so far back on basic utility supply to the poor. The west solved these basics by the mid 20th century. Developing Asia did so by turn of 21st century, but 30 years of liberalization and here we are. But Modi sees that as opportunity, and I think it's shrewd, because he has the skill of being able to focus on long gestation project continuously, like a good administrator.
This stuff is not glamorous or paradigm shifting. No one in Wharton cares about it. It's just metal and PVC tubes carrying water after all. But these basic infrastructure - something that developing Asia got done by the late 1990s or early 2000s, is what was the story of GE2019, and will be for GE2024 too. Universal access to water is the last big national basic utility development initiative, and this administration has shown the chops to track and get such basic things done at countrywide scale. I value this capability more than any other from an elected entity.
suryag wrote:I dont know what to say about this Chetak ji, basically if you start acting confident everyone will go away, they want us to act wimp and limp. I dont think the above person understands that this is a new chapter in India's progression and it will be like this going forward under this dispensation.
the pakis have picked up on this report and soon this piece will head west to appear as opinion pieces in various conmedia there.
NEW DELHI: A prominent newspaper of Bangladesh has said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did not meet India’s high commissioner despite repeated requests for a meeting in the last four months, one of several signs of strained relations with New Delhi and a shift for closer ties with Pakistan and China.
The Hindu on Saturday quoted Bhorer Kagoj, a prominent daily, as reporting that all Indian projects have slowed down since the re-election of Prime Minister Hasina in 2019 with Chinese infrastructure projects receiving more support from Dhaka.
“Despite India’s concern, Bangladesh has given the contract of building an airport terminal in Sylhet to a Chinese company. Indian High Commissioner Riva Ganguly Das tried for four months to get an appointment with the prime minister of Bangladesh but did not get it. Bangladesh has not even sent a note of appreciation to India in response to Indian assistance for the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the newspaper’s editor Shyamal Dutta in an article.
The Hindu said it showed a recent tilt of Dhaka towards Pakistan and China. A similar move was recorded in Iran recently, which has decided to go ahead without India in a Chabahar Port railway project that the two countries had agreed to undertake together.
The Bhorer Kagoj report also follows a widely noted unusual call by Prime Minister Imran Khan to his Bangladeshi counterpart on Wednesday.
The Bangla paper said the Beijing Urban Construction Group (BUCG) has received the contract for building a new terminal in MAG Osmania Airport of Sylhet that borders India’s northeastern region and is, therefore, considered a sensitive area for New Delhi.
A diplomatic source from the Bangladesh High Commission here confirmed to The Hindu that the Indian envoy had sought an appointment with Ms Hasina but it did not materialise. However, neither India’s High Commission in Dhaka nor the Ministry of External Affairs responded to questions from the paper.
A diplomat from the Indian mission said Ms Ganguly Das has gone out of Dhaka on a tour.
The comments about the state of bilateral ties are timely as Ms Hasina received a phone call from Prime Minister Khan on Wednesday.
Though Dhaka refused to give details of the conversation between the two leaders, Pakistan’s official news agency reported that Mr Khan informed Ms Hasina about the situation in occupied Kashmir and sought “resolution” of the dispute.
India, in response on Thursday, appreciated Bangladesh saying that Dhaka considers Kashmir an internal matter of India, The Hindu said.
Kudos to lawyers B Singh & K Shukla 4 filing very IMP PETITION in #SupremeCourt seeking removal of 'Socialist' & 'Secular' words 4m Preamble, added during Emergency. Petition also sought 2 quash the words 4m Section 29A(5) of Representation of People Act!
Ex-RAW officer alleges Deepika Padukone went to JNU on instructions of Pakistan’s Aneel Mussarat
OpIndia Staff | 29 July, 2020
Former RAW officer NK Sood on his Youtube Channel, he alleged that Deepika Padukone has connections with Aneel Mussarat. He claimed that Padukone visited JNU on instructions of Mussarat.
Sood, in his video released earlier this year, said that Mussarat, who is a Pakistan National, has deep connections in Bollywood. 51-year-old Aneel is currently based in Manchester and mainly deals in real estate. He is in good terms with Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan. He also invested in election campaigning of Imran Khan. Sood alleged that Mussarat is assisting Imran Khan in his housing project of over five million homes in Pakistan.
HomepageNews Reports
Ex-RAW officer alleges Deepika Padukone went to JNU on instructions of Pakistan’s Aneel Mussarat
Ex-RAW officer NK Sood alleges Deepika Padukone went to JNU on instructions of Pakistan's Aneel Mussarat
Former RAW officer NK Sood on his Youtube Channel, he alleged that Deepika Padukone has connections with Aneel Mussarat. He claimed that Padukone visited JNU on instructions of Mussarat.
Sood, in his video released earlier this year, said that Mussarat, who is a Pakistan National, has deep connections in Bollywood. 51-year-old Aneel is currently based in Manchester and mainly deals in real estate. He is in good terms with Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan. He also invested in election campaigning of Imran Khan. Sood alleged that Mussarat is assisting Imran Khan in his housing project of over five million homes in Pakistan.
NK Sood alleged that Deepika Padukone received two calls before she visited JNU. One call was from Karachi, and the other was from Dubai. He said that either Mussarat himself or one of his associates urged Padukone to visit the university.
In January this year, during film promotion of her film ‘Chhapaak’, based on an acid attack survivor Lakshmi’s real life story, Deepika Padukone had visited JNU campus amid the protests where in leftist students organisations had taken the varsity on ransom not letting students register for winter semester. Deepika Padukone even got endorsement from former JNU student turned politician Kanhaiya Kumar, who allegedly mourned the death of 2001 Parliament Attack terrorist Afzal Guru on JNU campus in February 2016. Moreover, her PR stunt also found resonance in Pakistan.
Sood further added that Mussarat has deep connections with many celebrities in Bollywood. He was seen in the wedding of Sonam Kapoor in May 2018. Anil Kapoor has family relations with Aneel’s wife. Sood said that the film industry runs mainly on financing from investors. Though it is not an illegal practice, but if they take money from anti-India forces, it will be against the country’s interests.
Strong connections with Bollywood celebrities and Pakistan army officials
In another video released on 24th July, Sood again talked about Mussarat. He said that Aneel’s net worth in November 2018 was 300 million pounds. Aneel regularly hosts officials from Pakistan in London. In September 2017, Anusha Mussarat, daughter of Aneel Mussarat got married in London and Manchester. Imran Khan and other Pakistani officials were present during the wedding. Many celebrities from Bollywood also attended the wedding. Anil Kapoor, Karan Johar, Sonam Kapoor, Hritik Roshan, and Suniel Shetty were among the prominent names who participated in the marriage. Sood alleged that Karan Johar has strong intimate relations with Aneel.
Sood, in his video, said that Aneel played a vital role in financing Anti-CAA activities in London. Mussarat actively finance films that project anti-India and anti-Hindu sentiments. When Deepika attended the protest in JNU on Aneel’s call, General Asif Gafoor, official spokesperson of Pakistani Army, also praised her in a tweet. Sood said that the statement against CAA posted by Sonam Kapoor was allegedly made after Aneel’s request.
Sood alleged that he also manages the tickets and stay for Pakistani army officers and their children in London. British authorities have questioned him several times in connection to money laundering and terror financing.
Wikileaks on Mussarat
Sood said that, in some documents released by Wikileaks, it was evident that the firm owned by Aneel Mussarat is involved in Hawala transactions. Wikileaks called him a small part of a larger conspiracy around money laundering and claimed that if he is questioned, may reveal the names of bigger fishes. It was also revealed that Aneel Mussarat provides support to Bollywood celebrities in building connections with prominent personalities across the world. In his video, Sood urged the government not to issue Aneel Mussarat visa, and in case he managed to visit India, he should be arrested and questioned for his role in anti-India activities. Sood also urged to government to take strict action against the officials in the embassies that issue Indian visa to such people.
Bollywood’s connection with ISI puppets like Aneel have surfaced several times. Netizens have demanded strict action against those who are associated with Aneel or seen with him.
Australia is likely to be invited to join the annual Malabar naval exercise later this year with India, Japan and the US. Besides denoting Australia's return to an exercise from which it withdrew in 2008 to propitiate China, it will mark the first-ever Quad military drills.
I studied in an English medium school during my primary education. I can read in Hindi with a some effort and in another local language with a lot of effort if forced to.
What that means in real life is that IFFF I have competing book in English and Hindi on a subject, say Indian history or Ayurveda or Ramayana, I tend to gravitate towards the English book/translation. I am more comfortable picking up an English novel over a Hindi novel. Infact, I have spent money on English novels but never a dime on Hindi novels. Effectively, I have been cut off from my roots.
Cabinet approves NEP or New Education Policy formal Presser at 4pm could see sweeping changes. Medium of instruction mother tongue or local language. No English till 5th grade. English optional upto 8th grade. push for bharateeya bhashayen. Course content cud change too - Sources
I am all for teaching English as a secondary language from grade 1 itself BUT I always felt that the medium of education should always be an Indian bhasha/language. This is a step in the right direction.
Recently, when I read that Andhra pradesh had decided to change the medium of education to English for all government school, I told someone offline that in 2 generations, Telegu literature would just fall off the reading list of Andhra people. This is the most subtle form of brainwashing.
Two things need to be done ...
1. We cannot have medium of education in private schools as English vs Local language in Government schools else everyone will just migrate to the private schools.
2. We need massive fund/effort to get the latest science/maths books translated to local languages to get the quality of education in local languages at par with English medium schools especially in Maths and Science. From my school days, I remember feeling that the local language medium school Math/Science being weaker than our ICSE board syllabus.
shahid siddiqui is a demented communal mofo, he edits a rabidly communal urdu rag called nayi duniya, and as every jehadi does, he desperately tries to portray a moderate and sickular image in public, especially when he is on a tv show.
he really needs to make up his mind about whether he wants to take the lootyens line or the nayi duniya line on this social media.
and, does he think that his jehadi ancestors destroyed the Ram Mandir for charity
but why only Modi & BJP.......
A huge part of the 130 cr population is with them.
shahid siddiqui@shahid_siddiqui
Let Modi & BJP go to Ayodhya and enjoy their great victory over a helpless mosque. They think by this act they have defeated Mughals and proved their bravery. Let them enjoy their moment of victory. This was never for Shri Ram it was for power it remains so.
10:02 AM · Jul 29, 2020
I’m simplifying things quite a bit when I say that our elected politicians are puppets of the bureaucracy, but as I will show presently, this is a fair comment given our institutional arrangements. Our bureaucracy – taken as a whole – is not only more powerful than any elected chief minister, it is more powerful than the Prime Minister.
This situation is a complete violation of the principles of liberal political theory. In a democracy, the executive should be checked and balanced by the judiciary and parliament. The idea that the unelected machine of government (the bureaucracy) will itself check the executive by exercising independent power was never intended by any theorist of political science.
This huge power of the bureaucracy in India – much greater than the power that even the British Indian bureaucracy wielded – came about during the haste of the 1947 partition and Constitution drafting. Sardar Patel made a strong case in the Constituent Assembly to continue with the colonial bureaucracy. There was no time to think about alternative models. He asked: “Is there any Premier in any province who is prepared to work without the services? He will immediately resign. He cannot manage.”
This panic led to not only the Constitutional inclusion of the all-India services (India is unique in having the public services form part of its Constitution) but the way Part 14 of the Constitution was drafted, enormous restrictions were imposed on the sovereignty of the executive and the People of India. In all democracies, the executive is supreme, with almost unlimited discretionary powers to hire and fire public servants. Not so in India. Article 311 massively dilutes this power and makes it virtually impossible for the executive to remove public servants.
As a result over the past 70 years, even the PMs of India haven’t been able to easily remove corrupt IAS officers, leave alone the incompetent ones. A PM’s entire tenure can go by in chasing up a single case through the courts. There are cases in the Modi government where even compulsory retirement has been insufficient to get rid of bad officers. Our bureaucracy thus sits on a pedestal well above elected representatives. Effectively, it is the IAS that is sovereign in India, not the People.
There is a widely cited but spurious argument that has enabled the IAS to hold on to their powers: that Indians trust their politicians less than they trust IAS officers. The people perceive the IAS to be incompetent, self-interested and arrogant but they trust their political leaders even less. Further, many honest IAS officers, in their genuine concern for India, want the IAS to continue so it can block corrupt politicians. But their remedy does not address the cause of the problem. Fixing the problem of corrupt politicians requires a different approach (which I’ve elaborated elsewhere) and we should not use the existence of bad politicians to justify the world’s most powerful but incompetent bureaucracy.
The main puppet-master in the IAS is the Establishment Officer (EO) in the Ministry of Personnel, about whom most people do not the slightest clue. The EO’s sole purpose is to defend (and expand – to the extent possible) the powers that Patel gave to the IAS. The EO operates behind the scenes, manipulating and controlling (mainly frustrating) the elected government. He dramatically reduces options for the elected representatives on almost all major appointments. And of course, the Cabinet Secretary plays a crucial role in defending the IAS empire directly at the Cabinet. This itself is a huge anomaly. In genuine democracies, a bureaucrat must not have a seat at the political table. In Victoria, an elected MP serves as Cabinet Secretary.
Such is the clout of the EO and Cabinet Secretary that Ministers and Chief Ministers need to send their emissary to the lowly EO to try to influence his decisions. This clearly shows where power lies in India. Our elected politicians have no real powers to deliver their election commitments. Our democracy is thus being choked from within – by the unaccountable and ultra-powerful IAS.
The IAS is unfit for the task of taking India from the Third World to the First World. From my personal experience (and I continue to have good friends within the IAS), no IAS officer comes even remotely close to the competence of middle-level managers in the Australian government. If the pool of administrative leaders in India is so poor, how can India possibly succeed? We need to urgently broaden the talent pool for each job and ensure the right incentives and systems of accountability. The function of EO might have worked for the colonial British government but it simply can’t work in a modern democracy.
This hugely powerful Indian bureaucracy (of which I was once a member) contrasts with the situation in Victoria where the Premier (Chief Minister) of Victoria is the unquestionable boss. He appoints Secretaries, who then appoint other officers down the line. No one can tell the Premier that he can appoint officials only from a “shortlist” prepared by a petty bureaucrat. And if a Secretary doesn’t perform, he is fired without notice. The Premier is fully empowered to get the job done. The link between the voter, his taxes and the performance of the government is direct and unambiguous. No EO sits behind the scenes, stymying the elected executive.
The saving grace for India is that the PM does have a few powers to shop outside the IAS. The recent lateral entry program has been one such rare instance. Some people have questioned the Constitutional power of the PM to do so, but I believe the Constitution allows such limited powers.
The State governments, on the other hand, are in really bad shape. Their freedom to appoint outside the IAS is almost completely circumscribed. In particular, all important posts in the states have been captured by the IAS through IAS cadre rules. These include senior positions in local government bodies, such as municipal corporations. While the IAS system doesn’t, of course, control precisely who is appointed, it ensures that only one of them can hold these posts. In that sense, the Chief Ministers of the States have even less flexibility than the PM.
As a result, IAS officers are able to thumb their nose at State governments. They can go to the EO and get themselves posted to another state or to the Government of India or even abroad. Everything depends on the officer’s relationship with the EO and Cabinet Secretary. That’s why the IAS is such a cosy and exclusive club.
It is high time to bring this dysfunctional and undemocratic system to an end. Within two years the BJP government will have the opportunity to amend the Constitution. IAS is the first thing that must go.
Bypassing Parliament, ignoring opinion of state governments and rubbishing opinions of all stakeholders, Modi government is unilaterally destroying our education system.
After Canada, UK rejects Khalistani extremism. British Govt says "we consider the Indian Punjab to be a part of India.”. This days after canada foriegn ministry rejected the so called referendum by outlawed Khalistani extremist group SFJ.
UK govt on Khalistani outlawed extremist grp SFJ calling for referendum: This is a matter for the government and people of India, not foreign countries or overseas organisations. We consider the Indian Punjab to be a part of India.
1. बिहार मूल के युवा बालीवुड अभिनेता सुशान्त सिंह राजपूत की मौत का मामला रोज नए तथ्यों के उजागर होने व उनके पिता द्वारा पटना पुलिस में एफआईआर दर्ज कराने से लगातार गहराता जा रहा है। अब मामले की जाँच महाराष्ट्र व बिहार पुलिस द्वारा होने से बेहतर है कि प्रकरण की जाँच सीबीआई ही करे।
Translated from Hindi by Google
1. The case of the death of young Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput of Bihar origin is getting deeper every day due to new facts being exposed and his father filing FIR in Patna Police. Now it is better to investigate the case by CBI than Maharashtra Police and Bihar Police.
NEP is the most impactful reform done by NaMo sarkar, though it has taken 6 years and will take at least few years to fully implement. BJP needs one more term to ensure that the reforms are fully entrenched and cannot be rolled back.
This trumps even GST in terms of its long term impact. Lot more needs to be done including eliminating special status of minority institutions (or changing definition of minority to something reasonable).
Pokriyal can claim his place amongst the best performing ministers if he can drive the implementation of NEP smoothly and generates postive PR and support for things such as mother tongue medium schools till 6th grade. It is a mammoth undertaking.
Security arrangements have also been beefed up in Ayodhya after central intelligence agencies alerted the state police about possible attempts by terror groups to disrupt and sabotage the bhoomi pujan ceremony.
As one with a long history of additional involvement in ed. institutions too ,both at school and college level,wearing many hats for 3 decades on, I am rather sceptical of some aspects of the NEP. We love to boast about how many desis now run top MNcs as CEOs,etc. in the west. But when did these top CEOs study? How many decades ago? What was the school and collegiate ed. system at that time in comparison with that of today? Insisting that kids for 5 years learn subjects only in the mother tongue is a recipe for national DISINTEGRATION.It will produce in the future rabid linguistic chauvinism.All our cities today are cosmopolitan with so many employed in govt. and pvt. service being transferred every 3 years. Students in school come for a plethora of linguistic backgrounds. What is needed is national integration and here I applaud the emphasis on greater knowledge of Indian history,history in general which should be a subject until leaving school.What is a better solution is to make it compulsory for all kids to study the regional language as a second language whatever the medium of instruction. In a country as diverse as India with dozens of languages and dialects,uniformity is impossible.Instead what should be aimed at is producing "good citizens of India", patriotic,with a love of their countrymen and women whatever their background,religion,language,caste,whatever.In my school days,every morning at Assembly, after singing the national anthem,we recited the pledge which included the lines .." all Indians are my brothers and sisters..I love my country and am proud of its rich and varied heritage.."
I give you just one example.The Sri Lankan language policy disaster.Here too the emphasis post-Independence and after SWRD Bandaranaike came to power on the language platform, divided the Ceylonese into Sri Lankans ,Sinhalese and Tamil,education in your mother tongue.Getting admission into top pvt. Eng. schools was v.tough depending upon domicile address,etc.Earlier,Ceylonese from all backgrounds mixed freely in so-called "public schools" ,these schools laying great emphasis on sports and games,building up lasting friendships and a common national identity.We know what tragically happened after 1956 and the arrival of JR Jayawardene in the late '70s. A 3 decade old ethnic war that devastated the country. One of the ironic fallouts of the language policy was that the most popular English teaching institute in the island today is that of the British Council where dozens of young Brit. expats teach English to the thirsty Lankans of all ages.eager to get ahead of the crowd internationally. The Empire has struck back!
In the era of the Internet,a global village linked online,whether you like it or not ,English is the international lingua franca. Knowledge of it gets you employed and opportunities to migrate and better yourself as millions of Indians have done in the past ,are doing in the present and will do in the future,visas depending. A recent article showed that in the Hindi heartland,knowledge of Hindi was slipping with more Eng. words appearing in Hindi in general. The demand for an English medium school even of average standard in the "cow belt" was v,high. At the same time,knowledge of the native,regional language is imperative to do business locally and interact with locals.Thus both a native and international outlook is required in our ed. system. Repeated tinkering with the ed. system going back to Std, XI,abolishing the Plus-2 is yet another "back-to-the-future" gambit. We should let water,or rather language preferred find its own level and concentrate upon ensuring the highest quality in teaching of subjects and ensuring that students come out of the ed. system well-adjusted,confident,possessing good communicative skills with high morals,excelling in sports and extra and co-curricular activites,both at the school and collegiate level.
The era of "useless" degrees where after years of swotting all that degree holders can find are jobs with Swiggy or Zomato or Uber,must end. After school a wide range of technical skills available in 3 yr. diploma courses that find ready employment for our youth must proliferate instead of meaningless degrees.
Courses offering degrees must be clearly focussed with upto-date content especially with respect to scientific and professional courses. We must never forget the fundamentals of the 3 "R"s," Reading,Writing and 'Rithmetic"!
Last edited by Philip on 30 Jul 2020 23:02, edited 1 time in total.
Twitter suspends account that exposes lies and hypocrisy of left-liberals without giving any reason, restores 2 weeks later following outrage https://www.opindia.com/2020/07/twitter ... r-outrage/
In yet another incident arbitrary restriction on Twitter users by the social media company, the Twitter account PoliticalKida has been suspended without citing any reason. @PoliticalKida is known for posts exposing lies of politicians and media houses. Their side-by-side videos showing the hypocrisy of left-liberals are very popular among social media users.
Twitter use Ankur Singh, who is behind the team that runs the account, informed that initially, Twitter had restricted access to the @PoliticalKida. When they tried to log in to the account, they didn’t receive OTP from Twitter for doing the same, and now the account has been suspended.
Ahead of Eid, actor Irrfan Khan’s son Babil turns ‘Dara Hua Musalman’, wants to be ‘free’ https://www.opindia.com/2020/07/babil-k ... instagram/
Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan’s son Babil on Wednesday took to Instagram to express fear of not being afraid to post anything on social media against the ‘people in power’ as it may ruin his career. In a series of posts on his Instagram stories, Babil said that having a holiday for Raksha Bandhan and not having one for Eid is against the secular fabric of our nation.
darshan wrote:Babil said that having a holiday for Raksha Bandhan and not having one for Eid is against the secular fabric of our nation.
Since when ? Through my school days it was the other way around. It wasn't like anyone WANTED Raksha Bandhan to be a holiday. Boys wanted to sport rakhis from the girls, after all. There was one guy who used to walk around sporting 5-6 rakhis looking ridiculous.
The Maharashtra Home Minister, Anil Deshmukh, took to Twitter on the 29th of July to openly ask the Mumbai Police to ‘monitor’ BJP WhatsApp groups. In a tweet posted by the NCP leader, he wrote, “Please keep a close tab on WhatsApp groups if they are in use to mislead people & spread rumors”.
In his tweet, he had linked a Jansatta news report that spoke about BJP launching a campaign to connect with the voters in Maharashtra over WhatsApp. Quoting the news report, Deshmukh said, “There is no harm in connecting with citizens over #WhatsApp & I am hopeful that this #campaign will not result in #WhatsAppUniversity. @MahaCyber1 Please keep a close tab on WhatsApp groups if they are in use to mislead people & spread rumors”.
“WhatsApp university” is a pejorative term used by many in the Left and by several members of the opposition parties to essentially further the trope that the BJP often spreads fake news and derives its knowledge from fallacious WhatsApp forwards.
CRSji, remember the flak we were getting for the use of homeopathic Arsenicum Album as a preventive? Well I have it from good sources that the ayush ministry had been recommending it in Delhi for the same. Hope it worked for you, I still go to it if I feel funky.
https://health.economictimes.indiatime ... y/73738453
CM,the RSS have been distributing it gratis in many cities.Lakhs of bottles to various neighbourhoods . I think sev. states too have recommended it after the Ayush Min's nod.
Philip sir, you cannot be more wrong on NEP. Education in the mother tongue in elementary school is the need of the hour if India were to have any shot in realising it's potential and truly educate it's population. Till 70s majority of Indians only had local language education until private English medium schools spoiler it.
Comparing Sri Lanka to India is apples and oranges. Sri Lanka didn't disintegrate because they had mother tongue based education. It came close to getting disintegrated because it tried to suppress one language and ethnicity and tried to move to a unitary state.
Last edited by schinnas on 31 Jul 2020 00:27, edited 1 time in total.
schinnas wrote:Philip sir, you cannot be more wrong on NEP. Education in the mother tongue in elementary school is the need of the hour of India were to have any shot in realising it's potential and truly educate it's population. Till 70s majority of Indians only had local language education until private English medium schools spoiler it.
Comparing Sri Lanka to India is apples and oranges. Sri Lanka didn't disintegrate because they had mother tongue based education. It came close to getting disintegrated because it tried to suppress one language and ethnicity and tried to move to a unitary state.
Or for that matter why did Pakistan break into two we should ask Phillipji to enlighten us
Maharashtra Govt is not transferring this case to the CBI because if the names involved in this incident come out, the wheels of Maha Vikas Aghadi will fall: @Shehzad_Ind, Lawyer tells Rahul Shivshankar on INDIA UPFRONT. | #SushantMysteryDeepens
Maharashtra Govt is not transferring this case to the CBI because if the names involved in this incident come out, the wheels of Maha Vikas Aghadi will fall: @Shehzad_Ind, Lawyer tells Rahul Shivshankar on INDIA UPFRONT. | #SushantMysteryDeepens
whenever it's displayed against us and the chicoms are even worse with their over the top r-rona. Canadians who everyone automatically assumes innocent like a kitten, forcibly neuter native women with impunity. 
