I’m super lazy right now. A more detailed post whenever I not this lazy. You can read Me/Anna/Govt meanwhile.

Even though it sounds a very happy news when you hear that the Untouchability wall has been demolished yesterday after a campaign of protest, it is still deeply saddening to hear such news from 2011. And the fact that the wall remained in free India for two decades.

Tagore wrote in Gitanjali.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

What an anthem!

PS: This is doing rounds in the email forwards these days. I haven’t been able verify the authenticity of this qoute.

Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low caliber and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air and water would be taxed in India.

- Winston Churchill, 1947

The blood money of Dh3.4 million paid by Gurcharan Singh at Sharhah Court yesterday has the value of 17 lives.

From Anony Antony (Malayalam)

Scouts & Guides also wasn’t very popular. In fact I’ve heard of them for the first time, The very first I’ve heard of them was when a National Scout Jamboree happened in my town, when I was in high school.

Most of the schooling went uneventful, with very few interactions with police uncles and other uniformed folks (except for auto-rickshaw drivers, of course.) The first real chance for the social service was when we had a 10 day camp at a Juvenile prison as a part of our college NSS activities. And much followed after that.

Except for the annual picnics, there are very few chances that I and most of the students at my age had to interact with the society at large. Yeah, then there was this scheme where in students from schools volunteers for traffic control. This is a very successful model that Traffic Control Dept. has implemented to make use of unadulterated minds, probably the best ‘Catch-Them-Young’ program.

Now, Kerala police has gone one step forward with their ‘Student Police Cadet‘ Program. A real replicable model, this program is a collaborative effort of state Home and Educational ministries, being implemented in a selected few schools now. The first phase will be piloted in around 100 schools.

The idea of student police was first introduced in a Govt public program, in 2006. The pilot was done in 3 schools in 2008; Later Kerala School Cultural Festival, the largest of it’s kind in Asia witnessed the enthusiasm and effort of the kiddo police.

These kids will get formal training from Kerala police in an array of fields including First Aid, Bomb detection and diffusion, Fire handling, Traffic and crowd control etc.,

So next time, when you’re in Kerala, don’t be too surprised if you ran into one of those kids in uniform. Just give them a salute!

Almost everyone in India cried with ecstasy, when this man won us an Individual medal for the worlds second largest populous country after a gap of almost 44 years. He turned pro in 1991, after winning Wimbledon Junior title in 1990. 20 years later, he still is a winner. At the age of 37, he is the most successful professional tennis player in India, not to mention his amazing record in Davis cup for India.

While all the glamour of tennis belongs to the singles event, he intelligently changed his priority from singles (any one remember Leander Paes v/s Pete Sampras 6-3, 6-4 at New Port, 1998?) to doubles.  After the initial merry with Mahesh Bhupathi, he had moderate success for sometime. But he is not the giving-up kind. For the last two years, he’s on the winning track again, including his latest at Wimbledon 2010.

Dude, You are the awesomest! Keep on rocking for many more years!

K. M. Mani

This particular regional party is a classical case study for Indian party politics – the alphabet politics. Since it’s inception in 1964, the party has seen many splits. More than ideological differences, individual interests of leaders and external influences has contributed more to it. K. M. Mani, one of it’s leaders had made this interesting observation that party has actually grown strong through its splits. “A party that splits as it grows, and grows as it splits.” To an extend this must be true. In normal cases. when a party splits, it’s enemy should get benefited. But in case of Kerala Congress, every time it splits, both the parties will get a representation in the cabinet, and the overall count of cabinet representation will go up, even if the no of MLAs remains the same or less.

P. J. Joseph

Kerala Congress, itself was a result of a split in Indian National Congress. In 1964, the party was formed under the Leadership of K. M. George. Coming years, the Kerala Congress has suffered severe divisions and several parallel outfits have emerged, all claiming the name Kerala Congress.

Balakrishna Pillai

The first split came in 1979 by K. M. Mani forming Kerala Congress (M). Rest of the leaders followed the trend: Kerala Congress (B) by R. Balakrishna Pillai, Kerala Congress (Jacob) by T. M. Jacob, Kerala Congress (Joseph) by P. J. Joseph, Kerala Congress (Secular) by P. C. George, Kerala Congress (Socialist) by Sunny Thomas and Indian Federal Democratic Party by P. C. Thomas. IFDP was the first party to move out of the LDF/UDF and joined hand on hand with BJP, and gave NDA its first breakthrough in Kerala.

T. M. Jacob

Kerala Congress (Secular) which split from Joseph group, later merged with Mani group. IFDP which split from Mani group, later merged with Joseph group. The Socialist group, split from Secular group, later merged with Janata Dal (S) [The Janata Dal have a similar long and confusing split-merge history at national level]. A group of IFDP retains it’s own cadre from under M. P. George. Oh. Bloody Confusing! Somone who makes a chart of Kerala Congress history will sweat for sure.

P. C. Thomas

Yesterday, P. J. Joseph announced the merger of Joseph group with Mani group. And as expected a rebel group under P. C. Thomas (the old IFDP group) reacted, and expelled Joseph from Joseph group. Probably they will be known as Kerala Congress (Thomas), as there is one IFDP, or they might merge with IFDP or any of the existing groups.

The dream of an United Kerala Congress is still far away, as you get couple more new groups with every merger.

Here is an interesting list of Indian National Congress breakaway parties.

While there are some useful things about having an Unique Identity Card for every citizen, the problems surrounding the project outweighs it.

Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of UIDAI, with the newly launched logo of the UIDAI at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on Monday. Photo Courtesy: The Hindu

The UID Project seems to be against a number of rights given by the Constitution of India, to its citizens. An individual’s right to privacy, Article 21 of the Constitution of India, also mentioned in International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), seems to be questioned here by the very presence of a Biometric data card, which stores all of an individual’s personal information in one database. The possibility of corruption and exploitation of data is far greater.

Interestingly, neither the UID project nor the UID Authority of India (UIDAI) has any legal sanction and provision for judicial review.  It is a purely private project where MNCs are expecting some big returns at the cost of ultimate failure of the project.

The seemingly huge budget allocated for the project, without much public discussion around it, in a country where more than 42% of its population are still below international poverty line, can be termed only using one word – ridiculous.

In a country like India with a population of 1.2 billion, the possibility of simple clerical errors during data entry itself can make this costly project a big failure. We have seen this in Voters ID allocation. Apart from the errors in collecting data, and recording of incorrect data, there also exists the possibilities of Corruption of data, and unauthorized access and disclosure of personal information. Since the plan is to link the card with one’s personal information, financial data, property information and civilian data, possibilities of large scale ID Trade cannot be ruled out. Social discrimination based on the caste/religion/region will be much easier with this central database. The lack of established data protection laws such as the U.S. Federal Privacy Statute or the European Directive on Data Protection, just helps to make things worse.

The lack of a wide public discussion on the feasibility or desirability of the project, including the Parliament, is purely undemocratic. While the project as such might not be scrapped, clarification on the privacy protection and possibly a federal law supporting and ensuring it, and more transparency in the UIDAI’s operations are definitely desirable.

Read a more aggressive attack against UID at The Fish Pond, and endorse, if you like.

I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

- Voltaire (1694-1778), French Revolutionary, Thinker, Writer.

I’m happy that Supreme Court quashed the 23 defamation complaints filed against South Indian Actress Kushboo in various places in Tamil Nadu for her alleged remarks on pre-marital sex. [News from The Hindu, Times of India] Kushboo said that in a survey conducted by India Today in September 2005 on ‘pre-marital sex’, and expressed her views on the need for teaching the younger generation sexology either in educational institutions or by parents.

Not that I endorse her view or not. But that the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression has been saved.

Supreme Court makes several interesting observations in their verdict. It says:

“When two adults want to live together, what is the offence? Does it amount to an offence? Living together is not an offence. It cannot be an offence.”

It also asked to produce evidence of girls eloping, inspiring from Kushboo’s statement. Around a month back, while reserving its judgement, the bench had commented on the live-in relationship of Lord Krishna and Radha, adding to their point that Live-in relationship and pre-marital sex with consent is not a crime.

Now I seriously hope there will not be another defamation case filed against Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan.

Hope the Judiciary in India will do the same to numerous defamation and Public Interest Litigation cases – of Paintings and Cartoons, Sex Education, FTV, Valentines Day etcetra. In fact we should have a law to handle the moral police in India.

But everything went for a toss, when the Home ministry got intelligence information that Sohail Abbas, ex-Deputy Commissioner of ISI, has got relations with Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Malayala Manorama Chief editor Mamman Mathew is member of National Security Council member – is a noteworthy factor here. The 30 member Pak team supposed to attend the wedding at Kottayam was denied the visa. The Mallu-to-Mallu relations between Mamman Mathew and M. K. Narayanan managed to get visa for 8 close relatives, and the wedding happened without fuss around it.

Now, relate this with the recent wedding fiasco created by media, including Malayala Manorama.

Question: If Sania was to marry Roger Federer, would Bal Thackaray have had any issues?

Thought Courtesy: Ihsan [Malayalam]

Since his controversial visit to Saudi in Feb, Shashi Tharoor was so out of news in last 3 months. He’s back to what he does the best, but this time someone else did the job for him. Excerpts from Modi’s tweets.

“I was told by him not to get into who owns rendezvous.Specially Sunanda Pushkar.Why?The same has been minuted in my records”

“25% of kochi team is given free to Rendezvous sports for life.The same equity is non dilutable in prepetuity.What does that mean? Why ?”

“Who are the shareholders of rendezvous. And why have they been given this 100’s of million dollar bonanza ?”

“Kochi shareholders are: Rendezvous 25% free, Rendezvous 1%,Anchor 27%, Parinee 26%, Film waves combine 12%,Anand Shyam 8%,Vivek venugopal 1%”

“Rendezvous free equity – held by kisan,shailender & pushpa gaikwad,Sunanda pushkar,Puja gulathi,jayant kotalwar,vishnu prasad,sundip agarwal”

Sunanda Pushkar

This Sunanda, a Kashmiri beautician, who owns a spa in Dubai, supposedly have 18% of the Rendezvous’ 25% stake. She is believed to be Tharoor’s fiancée, even though his office denied this. If this is true, who’s the real owner of Kochi IPL team? As per her Linkedin profile, she is also the Sales Manger of TECOM Dubai, who’s involved in another controversy with Govt. of Kerala over the investment on the Smart City project in Kochi. This gives a new political dimension to the issue too.

So within weeks, they have managed to have a multi-crore deal, a controversy including a Cabinet Minister, an allegation against Gujarat Chief Minsiter, a new celebrity out in the block, a compliant to BCCI, a possible lawsuit against IPL/Lalit Modi. WOW! What more do you need?

Surprisingly, Tharoor is silent about all this, even on twitter, which is so unlike him. Or is he enjoying the game?

[Update] Tharoor did responded to the allegations, through an official statement at his blog early today, which I missed. I don’t think I have any reason not to believe him. He is so far the most transparent politician I’ve seen.

I’ve had enough. http://tharoor.in/press/official-statement-on-the-ipl-allegation/