Now I also hear that inspired from this, the police force of Tamilnadu and Kerala are to follow the suit. Brilliant. This could be a slow start, but in right direction. I really hope of a day, where caste became constitutionally illegal.

PS: I was in Bangalore when B.S. Yeddyurappa resigned as the Chief Minister of Karnataka and media was speculating the new man for the post. I haven’t found a single article on whole of Times of India on that subject without a mention of caste based merit. If one has to right a research paper on Kannada castes, they just had to go through that one day’s news paper.

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)

Once two shop owners in the town had a fight between them over some issue. When the verbal fight got physical, someone informed the police. A police constable was sent to settle the fight, and he did. One of the parties presented him with some bananas as a gift for settling the fight amicably.

Local reporter of a news paper who was present among the spectators, found some news value in there. He duly reported the news in next days paper, with the title.

“Police receives Banana as bribe for settling fight”

Some of the higher authorities in the police has read the news, and they felt it very disturbing. They ordered the police constable to return back the bananas, and he did. The next days news title read as,

“Police returns back bribed bananas”

The otherwise low-visible constable, who already was the hero of two news reports decides to use his power. He called local news reporter and warned him. Little did he expected the next days news,

“Police threatens reporter for reporting bribe”

Again higher authorities, who had enough of this issue, and wanted to settle this down already, ordered the police constable to apologize, to avoid further damage. He did. Well, that went news again,

“Police apologizes for threatening reporter over bribe news”

PS: The discussion was initiated after us watching us a news bulletin on Indiavision, where in the closure comments went like – “Good Night. If C. K. Chandrappan doesn’t shut Indiavision down by then, we’ll meet next week again“.

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/

Delhi airport scanners will find your ‘assets’ explosive

Article on the Front Page

So, silicon implants are more important than pacemakers. Or do ToI have more readers with asset enhancements than Ortho metal plates?

Page 7 does contain same article with a better reporting language and headline. What’s the point of having the masala version of the same news on the front page then?

News on Page 7

Is it just that ToI finds ‘Scanner to point out all surgical implants‘ too boring and Hinduish for a front page article?

Disturbing, Indeed.