Bharat Rakshak

Tuvaluan wrote:deleted OT

matrimc wrote: The cycle continues because the reaction is going to be in Syria by ISIS and in Nigeria by Boko Haram.

LokeshC wrote:The sad part is, it does not seem to go down. Only keeps increasing with every day. Small town cops in my county have humvees, and APCs with heavy machine guns and high caliber guns.... Who are they fighting against? The Chinese military?

Alabama itself has a reputation as a poor, racist, underdeveloped state. Its intolerance is in the news right now on account of many of its local officials defying a federal ruling legalizing same-sex marriages, a situation worthy of a presidential lecture on forbearance.

ramana wrote:


And get to retire at full pension at age 50. And police union lobbies against mayor.

Madhusudhan wrote:I don't praise TOI often but this is very well done.. Perfect coverage of this incident exactly like the condescending Atlanticist rags would cover anything about India.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 205592.cms

WASHINGTON: Sureshbhai Patel was walking on the footpath outside his son's home in Madison, Alabama, when patrol cops accosted him because someone called the police to report a suspicious character in the neighbourhood.

Patel, who came to the US only two weeks ago to help his son and daughter-in-law with their 17-month-old child, was roughed up, shoved to the ground, and cuffed — a standard operating procedure that usually involves excess force if the suspect is coloured.

The incident, which occurred last Friday, left Patel temporarily paralyzed and hospitalized for surgery.

On Monday, the Madison police issued a statement saying the department had suspended the officer concerned and were investigating the use of force in the case. The police also wished Patel a "speedy recovery", while suggesting there may have been a "communication barrier".

Apparently, when the police officer attempted to frisk Patel, the 57-year-old grandfather attempted to pull away, following which he was "forced to the ground, which resulted in injury". The police also said they were responding to a call about a man looking into the garages of people in the neighbourhood.

Patel's son Chirag acknowledged that his father speaks mainly Gujarati and Hindi and has limited English, but he maintained that his father was not looking into other people's garages, and he clearly told the police his house number when he was stopped. "There is nothing suspicious about Patel other than he has brown skin," said Hank Sherrod, the attorney retained by the family told the local media. "This is just one of those things that doesn't need to happen. That officer doesn't need to be on the streets."

While the family plans to sue the police, the incident underscores the well-chronicled police brutality against minorities and coloured people in America even as its president goes around the world delivering lofty lectures about tolerance, human rights, and civil liberties.

The US has the largest number of incarcerated people in the world, far more than the dictatorships and totalitarian regimes it chastises (and also patronizes), and it hardly seems embarrassed about its awful record.

On Tuesday, the MacArthur Foundation announced an initial five-year, $75 million investment that "seeks to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails".

The foundation said its safety and justice challenge will support cities and counties across the country "seeking to create fairer, more effective local justice systems that improve public safety, save taxpayer money, and lead to better social outcomes".

According to the foundation, there are nearly 12 million local jail admissions every year in America. Nearly 75% of the population of both sentenced offenders and pretrial detainees are in jail for nonviolent offences like traffic, property, drug, or public order violations. Local jurisdictions now spend $22.2 billion annually on correctional institutions.

Alabama itself has a reputation as a poor, racist, underdeveloped state. Its intolerance is in the news right now on account of many of its local officials defying a federal ruling legalizing same-sex marriages, a situation worthy of a presidential lecture on forbearance.

Shreeman wrote:^^^ And you get to command salutes, free tickets and discounts. Not to mention the newspaper articles calling civilians names for not obeying orders properly.

Cosmo_R wrote:... just velcro an American flag epaulette and you too can define the bad guys.
The new gauleiters.

that question was certainly on the minds of many Indians. Obama had recently returned from a visit to India, where he received a hero’s welcome. Alas, India’s love for Obama appears to be unrequited.Krauthammer strongly defended India’s honor:“Here he is essentially insulting [India], and it’s because it’s a Hindu country. It’s not Muslim. I mean, he’ll say [people committed terrible deeds] in the name of Christ. He won’t say in the name of Muhammad and in the name of Allah. He won’t use those words. And then he goes after India, which is probably our strongest, most stable, most remarkable, democratic ally on the planet, considering all the languages and religions that it harbors. It has the second-largest Muslim population on Earth. And yet he goes after it as a way of saying hey, everybody here is at fault. They are not at fault.”
It’s good that India is on Krauthammer’s radar. Krauthammer is probably America’s most respected conservative opinion leader. With a weekly column in the Washington Post and a daily platform on Fox News’s excellent Special Report panel, Krauthammer continuously injects his wise insights directly into the political discourse.Krauthammer is also a strong supporter of Israel. He may not be aware of a rather counterintuitive conclusion that I reached in a recent column: No country has more supporters of Israel than India. That includes the U.S. and, in terms of absolute numbers, it even includes Israel. To be sure, the Islamist and leftist brands of anti-Zionism are predictably well represented in India. But the widespread affinity for Israel in India, especially among the Hindu majority and most particularly within Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s base, is something that’s not sufficiently appreciated in the U.S. or in Israel. Much of that affinity derives from India’s shared experience with Israel as a prime target of Islamist extremism. With its large population and burgeoning economic clout, India will be a key ally to both Israel and the U.S. in the coming years. For Israel in particular, Modi’s India can provide an enormous exception to the Jewish state’s isolation in the developing world.
In his National Prayer Breakfast remarks, after talking Christendom down from its high horse, Obama turned his attention to his recent hosts. After paying condescending lip service to the fact that India is “an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity,” Obama proceeded to his actual purpose: calling out India for religious persecution, “acts of intolerance that would have shocked” Mahatma Gandhi.Had he been so inclined, Obama might have added: “Many of those acts of intolerance have been perpetrated by missionaries and NGOs from our own country.” Few Americans are aware of the coercive, deceptive and abusive tactics used by some American missionaries, funded by stateside religious groups, to convert Indian Hindus to Christianity. The worst offenders go well beyond the open exchange of religious ideas, and are appallingly disrespectful of Hinduism and Indian culture. This is perhaps the primary sticking point in what I believe is a natural alliance between the GOP and the BJP (Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party). However, it is a sticking point that can be overcome with education: I am certain that most Christian conservatives in the U.S. are not aware of the abuses committed by some American missionaries and would not approve of them. (This, by the way, is another bond between India and Israel: Jews and Hindus generally do not proselytize, and generally do not wish to be proselytized.)When Obama lamented the supposed “acts of intolerance” in India, of course, he did not have American missionaries in mind. According to the narrative of espoused by Indian leftists — who, in an ironically colonial way, crave the validation of Western leftists — Hindus are oppressing India’s minority religions. I would bet that certain Indian leftists have Team Obama’s ear. Many Hindus, for their part, feel besieged by Muslims and Christians aggressively trying to increase their numbers through conversion. If you think it implausible for Hindus to feel besieged in a Hindu-majority nation, consider the case of the Pandits, a Hindu community from the Muslim-majority Indian state of Kashmir. Islamists drove them out of Kashmir a quarter century ago with a murderous terror campaign. They now mostly live in internal exile in other parts of India. (There are poignant commonalities between the Kashmiri Pandits, a very learned and accomplished community, and the Jews.)

Washington, Feb 11, 2015,


While US officials refrained from comment on Aam Aadmi Party's massive victory in Delhi elections, the New York Times saw "A Defeat for Prime Minister Modi" in the results.

"Fresh from the diplomatic high of a successful summit meeting with President Obama, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been brought down to earth by domestic politics," the influential US daily said in an editorial. "Ordinarily, elections in New Delhi would not draw international attention," the Times said.

But since sweeping to power last year with the biggest national election victory in three decades, Modi and his BJP have generated "an aura of invincibility" winning a succession of other state elections, it said.

"The election won't affect Modi's hold on the prime minister's office and the federal government," the Times said. "But it will increase the enormous pressure to deliver on his economic and governance promises even while making that harder."

Some Indian analysts also saw the defeat as a rejection of the anti-minority biases and violence spurred on by extremist allies of Modi's Hindu national party, it noted.

"After imploring Americans, Japanese and Chinese, as well as Indians, to believe in his vision, it is a good bet that no Indian federal budget will be more scrutinized for what it may, or may not, deliver on building infrastructure, reforming taxes and making a tangled, stratified system more efficient than the one Mr. Modi is expected to make public by the end of the month," the Times said.

Many other major US newspapers like the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal chose to carry an Associated Press story about "Upstart party wins big in India's capital, in blow for Modi."

"While the results from last weekend's elections will not have any bearing on the structure of the federal government, they sent a clear message to Modi that he was not invincible," it said.

"They were also an indication of voters' frustration with endemic corruption," AP said.

Analysts, it noted viewed "the scale of the defeat of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party was a wake-up call for the government."

The State Department spokesperson declined comment on the Delhi elections calling it "an internal matter for the people and the Government of India."

"We don't engage in endorsing individual political candidates, so I would refer you to the Government of India and the people of India," Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday in response to a question.

Obama's visit to India and the Delhi elections were two "separate things," she said.
"As it relates to our relationship or partnership or the President's visit, as you know, we certainly see our relationship with India as one that is growing, that has great potential," Psaki said.

That is reflected by the fact that the Secretary of State John Kerry and the President of the United States both visited India within the first month of this year, she said.

"So that speaks for itself, but I don't have any particular comment or analysis on the election results."

Richard Verma has urged companies to assess the fine print of the nuclear deal

Private companies have the onus of taking advantage of the “breakthrough” in the civil nuclear cooperation between India and the U.S., whose governments are committed to operationalising the agreement, U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma has said.

Mr. Verma said the companies had to assess the fine print of the deal and “make sure” that they were comfortable with the “legal environment” binding under international treaties and practices.

He was answering questions from the audience at a function organised by the Asia Society’s India Centre to welcome him on his first visit to Mumbai after taking charge six weeks ago as the first Indian-American U.S. Ambassador.

Hailing the second visit to India of a U.S. President in a short span as “the dawn of a new era” in bilateral relations, Mr. Verma, whose family hails from Jalandhar in Punjab, said the relationship between the two largest democracies was based on shared democratic values, mutual economic prosperity, social inclusion, and a shared vision for South Asia.

On Barack Obama’s repeated references to religious intolerance in India during his visit and after, Mr. Verma said the remarks should be seen in the context of the personal troubles the President had faced on racial issues and they were part of an “honest conversation two friends can have with each other.”

Underlining India’s role as the provider of security in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region, Mr. Verma said U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific and India’s Act East policy were “complementary” to each other in developing bilateral cooperation and development in the region.

Dispelling China’s fear over U.S. engagement with India, Mr. Verma said: “Our partnership should stand as a role model for emerging democracies worldwide. However, this should not be seen as a strategy confrontational to our relationship with China.”

He said the U.S. welcomed a stable, peaceful and prosperous China; but at the same time, it would use its “position of strength” to ensure that Beijing adhered to international rules and norms on maritime security and human rights, including cyber security. Mr. Verma said the U.S. would work with India and Pakistan to promote dialogue, combat terrorism and advance regional economic integration in South and Central Asia.

While the government may continue to say that the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act remains untouched, it’s the government’s reading of that law which is problematic, especially as it is around an issue which concerns every Indian: as an energy consumer, a taxpayer, and a potential victim of a nuclear accident

In an unusual move this week, the government sought to clear the air over the India-U.S. nuclear “breakthrough understanding” announced by U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with a detailed press release on the subject. The move was prompted by several questions being asked over how the two leaders had been able to announce a breakthrough in issues that have held up nuclear trade for five years. The bottom line, the government said, was that the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage (CLND) Act of 2010 remained untouched. However, it is the government’s reading of that law that is problematic, especially as it concerns an issue which touches the life of every Indian: as an energy consumer, a taxpayer, and a potential victim of any untoward nuclear accident.

The energy basket

Let’s be clear. The problem is not with the India-U.S. civil nuclear deal. After all, nuclear energy is something India has made a conscious move towards since 2000 in a bipartisan manner, with both the United Progressive Alliance and the National Democratic Alliance governments pushing ahead with it. By 2035, India’s projected energy demand is expected to grow by 132 per cent and India will surpass China as the world’s highest energy consumer according to the latest BP energy outlook report. Given India’s projected population growth, and the worldwide push for clean energy, it is clear that nuclear energy, with its low carbon content, and centralised land requirement, will form a key component of our energy mix. As a result, just last month, the government has tripled its target to 63,000 MW of nuclear energy by 2032, more than 14 times what is produced today.

The problem is also not about making special concessions to the United States. If it hadn’t been for the American administration led by President Bush, India would have had few options to build its nuclear energy programme, and access fuel and nuclear supplies from other countries. After the U.S. did the “heavy lifting” in getting India a legitimate place in the international nuclear regime, it would seem churlish to suggest that India should cut out U.S. businesses like GE and Westinghouse from the market simply because they demand more favourable terms than Russian or French ones do.

While the prospect of better relations that the nuclear breakthrough will engender between New Delhi and Washington is indeed a worthy cause, its worth must be weighed against the cost. In essence, in order to assuage U.S. supplier concerns over Indian liability laws, the agreement will end up being billed to the consumer multiple times, and ensure that the supplier pays virtually nothing at all.

Liability and cost

To understand this conclusion, one must break up the “breakthrough understanding” Mr. Obama referred to, into two silos: liability and cost.

At every stage of the nuclear process, the government has negotiated to minimise the liability of the supplier (who could be U.S., foreign or Indian). To begin with, the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act of 2010 itself capped all liability to 300 million Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) ($420 million or Rs.2,610 crore). The figure was arrived at in 2010 after much debate, but it would have been far higher today, given two events that followed.

“The answers to frequently asked questions supplied by the Ministry of External Affairs seem to be deliberately aimed at easing the concerns of the suppliers, and not the concerned Indian consumer”

First, in March 2011, a tsunami off the coast of Japan led to a technical fault and a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear reactor plant. To date, nobody knows just how many people were affected by the leak, as officials didn’t categorise the casualties by “cause of death or injury” as that would affect the immediate compensation they received. In 2014, various estimates put the damages and clean-up between $100-$250 billion. Second, in September 2011, the U.S. government’s joint investigation team on the BP “Deepwater Horizon” oil spill off the coast of Mexico found that not only was the “operator” BP liable for the damages, but also Halliburton, that carried out the construction of a faulty well, and Cameron, the company that designed and manufactured a “blowout preventor stack”, that had malfunctioned. The investigation team’s report in 2011 was path-breaking and got the supplier, Cameron, to pay a settlement of $250 million. Given the experiences of the costs of a nuclear accident in today’s times, and how much liability every part of the process chain must bear internationally, Parliament and the Indian government may have revised the proposed cap to a much higher figure than the $420 million it is and made the CLND Act more stringent than it did then. In the unthinkable event of a nuclear blowout, it will be near impossible to get close enough to the melted core of a reactor to ever know just who was responsible for it; so the fault of the supplier will also be much more difficult to prove than in the BP case.

More questions than answers

It is curious, then, that after the last round of negotiations, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has put out an explanation that only seeks to reduce the liability that suppliers will face. The answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) supplied by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) seem to be deliberately aimed at easing the concerns of the suppliers, and not the concerned Indian consumer. Under its explanation of section 17 (question 9), for example, it says the law “permits but doesn’t require an operator” to make the supplier liable in its contract for a nuclear reactor or part. It also says that a supplier can be sued for damages only “if it is expressly provided for in a contract in writing.” (question . What supplier would feel obligated under the circumstances to sign for liability in a contract, when it isn’t “mandatory” according to the government of the day? While the FAQ mentions that the state-run operator, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd., “would” insist on such a clause, it doesn’t answer this basic question.

Nor does it answer what would happen in case the nuclear industry is privatised and the operator is no longer a state-owned entity.

Next, the MEA release does away with the right of recourse of a victim to sue the supplier in India directly (question 7) as well as in a “class action suit” in foreign courts (question 13) where it says that section 46 on tort law “does not create the grounds for victims to move foreign courts.” All of this is done under the cloak of conforming to the International Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC 1997), but it doesn’t explain why the government is going to such great lengths to exclude the supplier for a law that had been debated so hard in the Indian Parliament only so that it would include the supplier. The contrast between Arun Jaitley’s article of September 2013, as Opposition leader, where he referred to the “hidden hand of nuclear vendors” and insisted on making liability for the vendor or supplier “mandatory” and just 15 months later, when as Union Finance Minister, he was a key part of the nuclear contact group meeting that hammered out this agreement, could not be more distinct.

Mounting costs

Finally, we come to the cost of the breakthrough to the Indian consumer/potential victim. As a sweetener for suppliers, the MEA has spelt out a “nuclear insurance pool” for the Rs.1,500 crore that is the minimum required (questions 14 & 15) to be set aside by law. Curiously, while one tier of the pool will cater to operators, tiers 2 and 3 are meant for the same suppliers who have largely been insulated from any liability. The pool will be made up by the government and state-owned insurers administered by the General Insurance Corporation of India. In the unfortunate event of any incident, this pool would be used to pay damages immediately to the victims, the government would be liable for an additional Rs.1,110 crore, and after which the International CSC fund would bear residual damages (applicable only once India ratifies the CSC). The supplier, it is made amply clear, will pay nothing but a nominal premium to the insurance pool, which no doubt will build into the cost of supplies.

To make it simple, the Indian consumer/taxpayer will pay for the following: the cost of land allotted to the nuclear reactor, the costs of building and operationalising the reactor, the cost of the insurance pool run by state-owned companies, the costs of half the pool that the Central government will provide, the cost of electricity per unit (expected to be at least double that of existing reactors), the immediate damages disbursed by the insurance fund in the terrible event of an accident, the subsequent damages paid for by the Central government, and not to mention the legal costs if the government or operator decides to sue the supplier!

Confusing the consumer

The real problem, then, is that nothing is “simply put” in the nuclear debate. Instead, clever, complicated and arcane language has been used to obviate the real meaning and obfuscate its consequences for the consumer. Such simplicity may also explain how the same set of Indian officials, negotiating with the same U.S. administration for more than five years over the same law, were able to produce a new and unique consequence, now being called the “breakthrough” in the nuclear deal.

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Yagnasri wrote:As I have written other thread, we are slipping. US just beats up an Indian of 57 years old while he was walking on the streets in front of his son's house and MEA do not even call it a racist attack. Just seeking details etc???

While I expected nothing from our Minister D4 lady SS, I expected immediate response from MEA under new Sec. NM is also keeping quite.

How does this silence will be played out with if it continues for long? Why we should give a hoot for what US thinks all the time. Is the fear of US, China still continuing in GOI ??? They come here and spit on our face and beat up a old man because of the color of his skin and we say nothing???

Karan M wrote:

Yagnasri wrote:As I have written other thread, we are slipping. US just beats up an Indian of 57 years old while he was walking on the streets in front of his son's house and MEA do not even call it a racist attack. Just seeking details etc???

While I expected nothing from our Minister D4 lady SS, I expected immediate response from MEA under new Sec. NM is also keeping quite.

How does this silence will be played out with if it continues for long? Why we should give a hoot for what US thinks all the time. Is the fear of US, China still continuing in GOI ??? They come here and spit on our face and beat up a old man because of the color of his skin and we say nothing???

At the very least Modi in some random event should talk about colored folks and their treatment in the US..

To be sure, India and the U.S. have made considerable progress in recent months on resolving the sticking points, although a final deal has yet to be clinched. Progress has come mainly due to Indian concessions.

The Modi government has yielded ground, even at the risk of facing criticism at home. For example, it has agreed to reinterpret domestic law so as to effectively transfer reactor vendors’ nuclear accident liability risks to Indian taxpayers. Indian law allows suppliers to be held liable in case of an accident. The government is also reinterpreting another provision of the law to bar victims of a nuclear accident in India from suing for damages in the U.S.

"Larry Muncey, the Madison City Chief of Police while apologizing to the victim Sureshbhai Patel, who was wrongfully assaulted by two police officers, without any provocation just because he did not know English and was unable to answer to their questions, informed that Federal Bureau of Investigation will also be conducting a probe into the matter. "

"Additionally FBI would be conducting a parallel inquiry to ascertain if there were any federal violations," Muncey said after he released audio and videos related to the incident.

"As a result of the investigations, I found that Mr Parkers's actions did not meet the high standard and expectations of the Madison City Police Department," he said, adding, that he (Muncey) has proposed termination of officer Parker, who has now been arrested for third-degree assault. {Wow... not many places one would see this kind of accountability}

NEW DELHI: A day after news broke out that a 57-year-old Indian had been left partially paralyzed after he was brutally assaulted by police in Alabama, the government here summoned senior US diplomats to register a protest over the incident.

"We expressed concern at what appears from media reports as the excessive use of force by police," MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said. "Consulate general in Atlanta is in touch with Madison police chief and is providing all necessary consular assistance," he added.