It does not stop at 49.5 percent

Arunachal Students hand over a memo to Uttarakhand CM

Recently Rahul Gandhi said Arunachal Pradesh is "like any other Indian state". Well, it does appear that Arunachal Pradesh is just like any other Indian state in a way Kashmir isn't.

As a matter of fact, the two states present a startling contrast. One receives state patronage, massive funding (to be pocketed by vested interests and separatists, of course). The other remains neglected. A large section of the population of one state wants to get away and openly call for destruction of India - "Bharat Ragda" is their slogan. Ask your Kashmiri friend what that means and he will rub it in for you.

Perhaps more surprising is the coverage in the media. The newspapers and TV channels can not get enough of the Kashmir separatists state their point of view - usually a barrage of grievances. Human Rights Activists can not condemn the Indian state enough for holding the Kashmiris back without their consent.

Recently, a group of students from Arunachal Pradesh handed over a memo to the Uttarakhand CM, affirming their loyalty and pledging to shed the last drop of their blood for defending the nation against Chinese aggression. In a nation where patriotism is a bad word, it still manages to pull at a few heartstrings. This was not an isolated incident - over 100 students from the state courted arrests by demonstrating in front of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. The recent Dalai Lama visit had the state enthralled, they went out on the street in massive numbers. It was as much out of reverence for the spiritual leader as it was in defiance against our belligerent neighbor.

Why then, does the state receive such step-motherly treatment in the media? If Kashmir separatism is such a hot topic, logically speaking the converse should get at least equal attention. We are not even asking the media to run PR stories to help the country in international forums, we know that would be too much.

This in a way is really the sign of the times. Bad behavior is encouraged at all times. Those who cause mayhem, explosions and gunfire at public places are the heroes while those who protect and defend are annoying distractions. It is as though the whole world is running on a film noir script, actually make that a Bollywood gangster flick. At least in the classic film noir, the anti-hero dies at the end.

Given that this is the faithful Indian media, expect them to turn a story thus far favorable to India completely on its face. There is a story in the Outlook magazine provocatively titled On the wrong side of Geography? with a tagline With India having given them nothing but neglect, the Arunachalis wonder if they'd have been better off with China. As described earlier, there really is no sign of Arunachalis "wondering" or "looking" across the border.

If they really do look across the border, China does not present the unambiguous picture of milk and honey the media would have you believe. Just a couple of recent examples: China recently executed 9 Uighurs. India has been struggling to hang just one. China is also trying a Tibetan filmmaker for subversion.

If lack of development in Arunachal Pradesh is a cause for concern, the media does not leave much wiggle room for that either. In the Outlook story linked above, the "flashpoint 5" says influx of migrants for projects will wreck havoc, presumably hassle the locals etc. In other words, India can't win.

Recently, N. Ram, Editor-in-chief of The Hindu was in China on a propaganda trip hosted by the Chinese Communist Government.

We wonder if N. Ram will have the same point of view for Palestine or Kashmir. Funny thing is, India recently beat China on such a composite indicator. Don't expect the editorials to highlight that though.

Afghan students queue up at the Indian Embassy for visas

It is funny that Muslims the world over hold a far more favorable opinion about India than do the domestics. Is it Bollywood? Is it the grass on the other side effect? Maybe the wrinkles get smoothed in the view from a distance. Perhaps it is just a case of familiarity breeds contempt.

In any case, M's flock to India from all parts of the world. From Arab sex tourists to Afghan students to Pakistanis in need of medical treatment to wheeler dealers from the middle east to drug traffickers and email scam artists from Nigeria. Of course we have B'desh folks too. They are practically a state in the Indian nation.

The latest are the Uighurs:

Uighurs seek a passage to India

With Han Chinese flooding Xinjiang - a region struggling with ethnic strife - the demoralized natives seek refuge across the border to escape the
oppression...

[...]

"We want dignity, what is normalcy?" he asks as his friends lapse into Uighur, talking excitedly about reports of Tibetans living in India, free from the fear of persecution, free to speak against the oppression of their people "back home."

"We can do more from India. We thought of Pakistan, but they have returned Uighur refugees to China. India has welcomed Tibetans and we are similar," he reasons before turning back to the heap of coffeestained notes and maps with highlighted routes into India strewn over his keyboard and table. [link]

We say, let's throw the doors wide open, let's embrace one and all. Everyone will be accommodated and provided a suitable position in our caste system according to their aptitude and abilities. So, here is a Barbarian's guide to national integration, a quick and easy overview of some of the most popular castes and what they have to offer:

Politician: Indisputably the Brahmins of modern India, this class presents formidable entry barriers.
Human Rights Activist: This caste offers easy admissions but the field has become cluttered lately. Blame it on the laws of economics - any area that offers abnormal returns will attract investors.
Goon: No experience required, perhaps the only easy entry point (aside from having been born from a pedigreed vagina) to the politician class but runs the risk of encounter killing. If you so prefer, you can also pick from several subcastes like NSUI, YC, SFI, ABVP etc.
Minority: An increasingly popular caste, good Government benefits. Side effect: you may become perpetually constipated with all those grievances bottled up inside you. Plus occasional riots.
Naxal: If you like wildlife, Naxal may be the way to go. You will be required to worship a reportedly horny Chinese dude who mistreated his parents.
Jholawalla: Once upon a time everyone wanted to be lawyers. Then the preference shifted to engineers, doctors etc. The current rage seems to be "computers". We predict that in a few decades, every kid will have nightly wet dreams of donning that Khadi kurta over those dirty pair of jeans and slinging that trademark bag across his shoulders.

Coming from our smartypants Home Minister, this should hardly be a surprise. Earlier, he had made an even stranger statement:

Lay down arms vs. halt the violence - what's the difference? This is virtually conceding a parallel Government to the Naxals.

There is simply no reason for the Naxals to come to talks with the Government unless they find their movement under serious threat of attrition. The ringleaders are all underground, having propped up "tribal" faces to create a convenient image for the hard left to run with. Meanwhile Kobad Gandhy and overt and covert support from mainstream people clearly proves the movement is anything but "tribal".

There are ways to create pressures on the Naxals by sanitizing zone by zone but it is beyond the capabilities of our current political and economic framework. The secular party honchos are too busy looting the spoils of a virtually guaranteed single party rule for the foreseeable future.

PRIEST'S VOICE: Michael Francis Rizzi, do you renounce Satan?

MICHAEL CORLEONE: I do renounce him.

Given a choice and with no trade offs involved, all of us will readily vote for a peaceful society - like in the Government newsreels that accompanied 70s Bollywood pictures. Yet such a society has remained elusive so far, and how so!

Naturally we turn to our intellectuals for an answer, an honest answer. What we get instead is names. We are told that society is made up of Satan and Saints, or if you prefer, Devas and Asuras. It takes just a casual review of the the political discourse of the last decade to find out how the public sorts itself out into the two categories. We are also told that the necessary conditions for peaceful society comes from the heart. Apparently renouncing violence and giving up conspicuous consumption will lead us down the path to socialist Nirvana in no time at all.

Some intellectuals do not answer at all, instead they hit us back with a barrage of what they call "uncomfortable" questions and inundate us with anecdotes they find "disturbing".

Jarnail Singh, the journalist who achieved instant fame (or notoriety, depending on which side of the aisle you are) by throwing a shoe at Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has just published a book called: I Accuse: The anti-Sikh violence of 1984.

The journalist made some shocking revelations in an interview with Rediff. For instance, we find this rather shocking statement from the journalist's Rediff interview transcript:

I had always been following the issue and developments. When my publishers contacted me after the incident, I started conducting interviews with the victims and after researching the various committee reports, I have put together this book, which will clearly expose that what happened in 1984 was a state-sponsored massacre of the Sikhs, and not 'riots', when the issue got highlighted on April 7, I realized that there was nothing in media about this. I went back to the reports of that year, and again found that barring the Indian Express, there was no reporting of the incident. DD was interested only in Indira Gandhi's funeral when the capital was burning.

This distinction between the Gujarat riots and the 1984 carnage may seem like splitting hairs, but then again this hair splitting has been going on in our political discourse for the last decade or so.

Much has also been made of various statements issued by politicians. Yet, we found the following quite disturbing:

Mind you, this is our current, superstar Home Minister, uber intellectual Harvard graduate.

Jarnail Singh also expresses his sadness about the lack of concrete steps being taken to curb communal violence. This is a rarity, most writers and journalists are usually happy just to have made their point:

There is something wrong with the political system. The anti-communal law is still not in place. This in a place where the Pandits have been subjected to severe communal violence. Sikhs in Delhi, Muslims in Gujarat, Christians in Kandhamal. How long will this continue?

It took years and much prodding for our intellectuals to finally start adding a couple of obligatory statements about 1984 to their Gujarat riot stories (which is about all some of them write about).

Jarnail Singh's book may finally help our intellectuals find some answers to their questions so that in turn they can educate us better. Assuming of course they are sincere and really trying to solve the problem.

Now the coverage of the Madhu Koda scam completely eclipses the Spectrum scam. A headline analysis of The Times of India shows the spectrum scam received just about a few hours headline space in the last few months, that too in the context of "BJP raising questions" etc. The Madhu Koda scam features prominently on the site.

So, the Spectrum scam, easily India's biggest scam and most definitely planned and executed at the highest level that stole money from poor Indians is getting a casual go by. Meanwhile a tribal leader is being made a scapegoat even as various social justice water carriers are overcome with indignation about injustice done to tribal people.

The Wholesale Price Index, the figure that the Indian Government uses (and consequently the most quoted in the media) does not truly capture the stress on consumers. For some reason, the Government stopped publishing CPI numbers from last April. They still publish a monthly CPI figure for urban consumers. These figures were used to make the chart above (click the image for a larger version).

During the election season, the secular politicians went blue pointing out the grave injustice meted to them by the almighty in terms of energy and commodity prices. Well, that is no longer true, and consequently the WPI figures are running pretty tame.

The CPI numbers, which represent the true effect of prices on end consumers tell us another story. As we see from the chart above, the CPI is running very hot - almost 13 percent for all items and 15% for food. This is a direct consequence of NREGA and other inflationary policies.

The NREGA policy will hurt the economy grievously. If you take out 20% of labor force from the economy, you will get 20% less output. Short term gains for politicians, a true long term disaster in the making. Low end industries and labor intensive jobs get priced out causing a death spiral.

Right now it is hurting the poorest because food prices are going high. As an example, mid-day meal schemes in Hyderabad serve "plain rice and watery dal" because that's all they can afford. Of course, the public mid-day meal schemes suffer from other more serious problems.

Arundhati Roy's famous spat with historian Ram Guha is well known. Now even anti-Hindutva champion Harsh Mander has spoken out against Roy's openly batting for Naxals. One could easily see the discomfiture of TV personalities when they recently interviewed Roy. In an interview segment, CNN-IBN's Suhasini Haider called Roy out on her bald faced lie that Naxals never kill civilians - however it appeared Rajdeep Sardesai restrained Haider before it got too heated.

The same TV channels that happily endorsed and echoed Roy's views on Kashmir seem to be chickening out as far as the Naxals are concerned.

The answer can be found in the genesis of India's intellectual class and a key point where Roy differs from them.

The TV personalities, intellectuals who adorn the pages of The Outlook India and hog most of the editorial space mostly have domestic aspirations. Even if they do have international aspiration, it is strictly in the context of reporting for the country - maybe a Pulitzer or a Magsaysay etc. Roy on the other hand wants to break out into the international arena - she wants to play with the big dogs.

Thus, while Roy still favors the secular party, she is not under the inertial and territorial compulsion of the rest of the intellectual class. A Harsh Mander, for instance, will still bat for NREGA at the end of the day, although the program has done nothing for the most dispossessed of the tribals - the kind usually within the firing range of Naxals.

The second problem with India's opinion makers is accidental - you see, being concerned about poverty and misery was never part of the program. It is by sheer accident that BJP came to power and all the fake obsession with Human Development Index etc. started then. Otherwise, India would be a fully feudal single party society and according to TV channels, a land of milk and honey. The poverty part would be swept under the rugs like it was under Nehru. CNN-IBN and NDTV would be extensions of Door Darshan - running fancy ads on NREGA.

Anyone wishing to contest this view should check out the textbooks of the 70s and the 80s. They all but lamented that India is destined to be poor for lack of natural resources. As a matter of fact, even now the consensus view is that people actually want to be farmers. A quick recent example: Shekhar Gupta wrote a scorching article about Maharashtra (The Maha Crater) - a massive indictment of the ruling coalition - after the Maharashtra assembly elections.

So the line the media was almost forced to adopt is that India still remains poor but Government is doing "something". Now, doing "something" is simply not cool enough for the type of international anti-establishment street-cred Roy covets.

There is a reason the extended family feels nervous about the war on Naxals - after the first war, West Bengal completely switched over to the communists. This is also the reason they feel nervous about Roy. So, don't they care about the violence? Let's just say the set we have been talking about do not bring work to the cocktail parties.

The recent elections in Maharashtra which the secular parties won, brought out in full view the malignant tumor that is growing across the country. The poster above was used in election campaign by one Sayyad Abdul Qadir Aamir (Qadir Maulana) - who stood on a Cong/NCP ticket from Aurangabad. His message promises to bring back the era of Amanulla, erase the signs of Shiv Sena from the city (with "Hindus" in parenthesis to avoid any confusion). He also claims to have been sent by Allah to hoist the Islamic flag over the land of Aurang(abad) - perhaps the last point refers to the Mughal emperor after whom the city was named.

At this point the clueless types will ask: what was the Election Commission doing? The answer is elsewhere in the blog.

While Qadir Maulana did not win the election, another Imam did:

MUMBAI: The terror-struck Malegaon has rebuffed the overtures of the Congress. Mufti Ismail, the Deoband-trained chief imam of the Muslim-dominated textile town's Jama mosque won the seat by a handsome 17,000 votes, getting the better of Congress's Shaikh Rasheed and five-time MLA and Janata Dal (secular) leader Nihal Ahmed.

This is the first time an imam has won in Maharashtra. [link]

The electorate at Malegaon, terror struck or otherwise, certainly was not lovestruck with the secular party despite the party's constant overtures to them. Despite being Muslims, the candidates from two secular parties lost out.

Another way of looking at it is that the electorate chose a candidate who is fundamentally closer to religion, being an Imam and all that.

While the TV pundits etc. continue to peddle English press friendly analysis, the sad reality is that we may not really have the right conditions for the sort of secular society they have in mind. The secular party is just an interim arrangement of convenience - when they have the numbers, they will create a future they envision - not the one the TV Pundits want them to.

In any case, NGOs are slowly becoming a central feature of our Government. It is remarkable that our Government cheers on and cedes power to agencies that reflect its failure. Just how bad is the NGO "problem"? The Government's own portal of NGO Partnership system lists over 200,000 NGOs. They are categorized under different heads, for example: Minority Issues: 3609, Youth Affairs: 4806 etc. This does not however truly reflect the religious nature of a lot of NGOs - many of them as we all know are religious organizations in the guise of "development" and political groups in the guise of "human rights".

Now the Government is planning to outsource the NREGA scheme to NGOs.

It is clear that the UPA Government is anxious to bypass local and state Governments. Part of the reason is that they want to make sure the political advantage from the schemes accrue only to the secular party. It is well known that in states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat the electoral benefits appeared to accrue to the local incumbent parties. The second aspect to it is less savory - it reflects the command and control, central planning based approach the party has always favored, only to cede reluctantly to a more federalist approach post-liberalization.

NGOs do not reflect progress and the employment it generates is illusory. Adding Government to the mix will merely transfer a lot of productive human capital into non-functioning areas. Already we see that NGOs are everything about profit - political patronage abounds, and so does corruption and pilferage. NGOs have also allegedly diverted funds for Naxals and terrorists of other hues. Worse - they have actively participated in distributing cash on behalf of political parties during elections.

NGOs can completely skew public opinion and destroy public mandate. Imagine when welfare schemes are cornered by religious institutions. These organizations have a policy of denying their private services to people who refuse to convert - what are the guarantees they will change their ways armed with a booty of Government cash?

The NGO culture being unleashed on us reflects the pathologies of the secular party and its cheerleaders - the socialists. Nothing good will come of it except more social disharmony. Of course, that may be by design.

The Kabuki theatre that ensued when the dude was thrown into jail had to be seen to be believed. It had all the elements, including the obligatory letter signed by Nobel laureates. They made up a complete profile - an innocent Doctor who just happened to do social work and was at the wrong place at the wrong time when the wrong kind of Government happened to be in power. From this imagery one would think the bugger would head back home with his tail tucked between his legs and never venture out. Instead we have a folk hero of sorts in the making.

As a matter of fact, the Disaster Causing gentlemen (and women, sorry Ishrat) of the other variety could take issue with the fact that for them, mere association with certain organizations is incriminating. Here we have cheerleaders, but you couldn't do a thing to them.

Herein lies the big dilemma of Chidambaram's war against Naxals. There is no easy way to separate the grain from the chaff. In this war, Chidu walks alone. The Prince doesn't want to fight it, eminent historians do not want to fight it, the Church does not want any part in the war and of course the clever cats are saying the war is not going to be of help.

The fact is that the secular party does not want to fight any war against the Naxals. The Naxals exist in a complex ecosystem delicately balanced on one end by secularism of a certain type and the firepower of the leftist intelligentsia on the other, which proved to be so crucial for the secular party in fighting the "communal" forces. As long as this perception of electoral benefit does not go away, the secular party is not likely to do anything. So, we will see more cops lose their heads (literally), more tribals massacred, more tribal women gang raped.

(Click on image for a larger version)

The rape happened on September 10, the journalist was arrested and remanded in Police custody. The court rejected his bail.

As the article search (see image) on South China Morning Post reveals, Abdi is back in business. He has written another article on 22nd September. We do not know what happened, newspapers did not bother to provide any updates. The same newspapers that publish hourly updates on body fluids of 13 year old female victims did not consider this a sensational enough news.

But then again, in secular land, this is expected, isn't it?

Kashmir used to have a Hindu king and a largely Muslim population, which was very, very backward and so on at the time, because at the time, you know, Muslims were discriminated against by that princely—in that princely state.

But now, for—I mean, in 1990, after a whole series of events, which culminated in a sort of fake election, a rigged election in 1987, there was an armed uprising in Kashmir. And really, since then, it’s been convulsed by militancy and military occupation, encounters, disappearances and so on. Last year, there was a—you know ... [link]

The "you know" count of the entire transcript is a whopping 82. No, we don't really know.

These people have it really good. They hate us and make money off of us. Normal rules do not apply to them - they can make treasonous and traitorous comments, spread communal hatred and propaganda which often include grotesque and false stories. When it comes to their own cabal, they put their blinkers on. What has happened and still openly happening in Kerala, Andhra, Assam, parts of UP, West Bengal, Orissa etc. is nothing short of systematic genocide and ethnic cleansing. Yet these transparently evil and bigoted people never bother to speak about those victims.

Stranger still is their reading of history. Perhaps she gets her facts from Noam Chomsky & Co. Even if one were to stipulate that the Kashmiri Muslims, who are perpetually on a short fuse these days, actually accepted a brutal discriminatory regime of a Hindu king while help was readily available for liberation, why stop there? The history of Kashmir doesn't just extend to the Hindu kings and stops there. But for the likes of genocide Suzie, that's enough to rake in book sale percentages.

Forget history, aside from picking up her anecdotes (we suspect she makes up a lot of those), she has very little understanding of what is going on in Kashmir. If she did, she would have to conclude that India is no constraint for the Azadi issue.

Just a few days ago, a young Kashmiri woman retaliated and killed militants when they attacked her home to forcibly "marry" her. In her articles, Genocide Suzie has rhetorically considered whether Kashmiris would perhaps favor a theocratic society to Indian rule. Clearly that young Kashmiri woman does not. That is the essence of Kashmir situation today - there are simply too many undecided people.

Of course a bigger problem for Kashmir people is Genocide Suzie's favorite country Pakistan. It is a given that they will gobble up Kashmir as soon as it is liberated. Given the current geopolitical situation, they will get the full backing of China.

Genocide Suzie does not speak for Kashmiri people. She speaks against a certain people she hates. And it shows in each syllable she utters.

- Enter Sandman, Metallica

So, the President's son Rajendra Shekhawat will contest the Maharashtra assembly polls from Amravati. Earlier, the son-in-law of the Hon'ble Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had contested elections on a Congress ticket from Kerala and lost.

"Conflict of interest" does not even begin to describe the massive constitutional impropriety involved in these moves. But then again, this is not surprising given the track record of the secular party. This is part of their regular programming. You see, even the most rudimentary rules of democracy appear to cramp their style.

What we are heading for is a Hugo Chavez style autocracy. All the framework is in place, including indoctrination of school children. After the liberalization, there was a brief period of turbulence during which the program got interrupted. But the secular party has got its Nehruvian mojo back, only this time it will also include a feudal capitalistic structure at the top because socialism does not generate any money and IMF is not likely to indulge. They have been systematically usurping the power of all our institutions and centralizing it to the core, a shadow coterie surrounding the Queen who call the shots. Only recently they captured a vital institution, the Election Commission, by putting a trusted member at the top.

All this is well known to the group of people who call themselves variously intellectuals, human rights activists, journalists etc. But they are in on the game.

It is not like there was no coverage: Sagarika Ghose of CNN-IBN posed a question on her Fake the Nation show: Is dynasty firmly entrenched in politics now? Really? Is that the central issue here? This is how they hoodwink the unwashed masses, who have been sternly asked to behave themselves during the upcoming Commonwealth games.

Trouble has been brewing, the Batla House encounter has the potential to become a trigger for eventual Kashmirization of entire India - more on it later. There was also significant belated outrage regarding the Ishrat Jahan encounter case - fuelled by perhaps the most dangerous political conspiracy this year. Meanwhile, sops are raining down, the secular party is not yet done expressing their gratitutde - they are just getting started.

From what we know about the man, his concept of constitution is far at odds with most everyone. Moily is the classical socialist in the Hugo Chavez mold who believes that social justice trumps the constitution.

Actually, Moily goes one step beyond that. He is a believer in iterative justice, i.e. iterate till you get the desired outcome.

Two recent cases where Moily has heavily weighed in publicly are the Ishrat Jahan encounter case and the OBC count case. In the first instance, we are in the second iteration: Tamang report valid, but HC directive to stay the report is invalid. So, we are going to have another iteration - naturally at the apex court. Any guesses if SC upholds the HC verdict? Anyone remember Afzal Guru?

The OBC count has by now gone through several iterations, the recent one clearly going against Moily's desired outcome. Needless to say, Moily isn't going to stop trying.

Senior journalist arrested for rape

The man is not named, his profession is glossed over. The article is written in a strangely twisted manner - if you are not careful you will miss the fact that Saiful the aide is the absconder.

Abid's lawyer is pleading a pretty strange defense:

Abdi's counsel Tamal Mukherjee submitted that the woman's allegation was false and made with an ulterior motive. Stating that Abdi had a bypass surgery just five months ago, Mukherjee said it was not possible for him to commit such an act and also that he was a man of impeccable character. [DNA India]

It was easy to to find the South China Morning Post, the newspaper Abdi works for and search for articles written by him during the time frame he had the aforementioned bypass surgery (see image at the top of the post). According to the lawyer, he must have had his bypass surgery sometime in April. His articles were published on 14th March, 28th March, 4th April, 8th May, 12th June and so on.

It is possible to be able to write an article within 2 - 3 weeks of a bypass surgery. But then again it is quite possible to have sex within five months, especially if he had help from someone in restraining the woman. This is assuming of course there was indeed such a surgery performed on the man.

This is hardly conclusive evidence of guilt but suspicions remain. Given the current situation in our country, Abdi's best defense could be secularism.

Sagarika Ghose, in her latest Face the Gullible Idiots show discussed whether Fake encounters are a result of anti-Muslim bias. Is it really? If we recall, there was a movie called Ab tak Chappan (56 and counting). Can we say "fake" encounters really reflect an anti-criminal bias in the backdrop of a broken justice system? Maybe there is an anti-terrorist bias?

Anyway, coming back to the current story, the order to shoot-at-sight (i.e. just kill, no need to even fake) was issued when there was another installment of Church vandalism. We heard those stories before.

Surely, encounter killing terrorists is a little less outrageous than encounter killing vandals? Or does it depend on the religion of the people getting killed in encounters?

I said, anybody wants to come into our system, is more than happy to come ... uhhh... as long as the person is not a criminal and I don't think Mr Rajinikanth is a criminal. He is most welcome to come. We don't ... we don't put any uhhh.. roadblocks ... [...] we are not reaching out to any particular .... to any particular person. [link][Our Transcript]

Reporters of the Royal Court re-scripted it to add a little bit more structure and coherence:

"He is most welcome to come. We don't put any roadblocks, I do not think Rajinikanth is a criminal. Our system is open to anybody who wants to enter it. The only barrier we put is the barrier of criminality, however, we are not reaching out to any particular person."

In our opinion, the court transcript took away the Royal flavor.

The Prince ventured out to dangerous territory here and that's why the handlers must never ever leave him alone. The reporters ask him to comment on the rumors of Rajinikanth joining the Congress and the first thing that comes to his mind is criminal records?

Of course, "baldfaced lie" is what comes to our mind:

3. BJP has maximum MPs having criminal cases - 42 MPs have criminal

This is from the National Election Watch press release about the newly elected Lok Sabha. So, Congress does better than the BJP by 1 MP. One of the MPs who make the grade happens to be Varun Gandhi.

Additionally, about the 79 ministers of the 15th Lok Sabha, the NGO has this to say:

These are just the most visible faces of Congress in the Central Government. People living in those unfortunate places where news does not happen could tell you a lot more.

It almost appears that one needs to have a criminal record to qualify for the secular party. Unless you are a crorepati, don't even think about it.

Expectedly, the Gujarat High Court stayed the controversial Tamang report. All the major news websites are carrying a highly scrubbed PTI version:

However, the court has given liberty to Ishrat's mother to produce the report before the three-member committee constituted by the High Court last month to investigate the encounter. It further said the report can be considered as evidence by the committee.

This is merely a convenient rephrasing of:

Even while granting the stay, the High Court allowed the report to be submitted to the three-member committee of IPS officers. The panel would, however, to act on the report 'on merit', the court ruled. [link]

See, what a difference "merit" makes?

Meanwhile, the Central Government reiterated yesterday that Ishrat Jahan and her companions were indeed disaster causing individuals:

'We stand by our affidavit (claiming the four were terrorists)... we are not backtracking,' Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters. [link]

Now, when Right Hon'ble Home Minister Shri Chiduji returns from his Amrikka tour, the Home Secretary may have a change of heart, we don't know. Why do we say this?

So, Moily & Co. are issuing all sorts of statements to the press yet he fires his own official who helped the Home Ministry file an affidavit that contradicts those very statements. His eloquence suddenly evaporates when confronted with this.

The CEC should take suo motu cognizance of this matter and order an investigation. Oh, never mind.

The family of Ishrat Jahan celebrates the release of a "probe" report

Almost every major election in the past few years was preceded by some "sting" or "probe", usually just a few weeks prior. The Maharashtra assembly elections, due in just about a month, did not buck the trend. We call this a major coincidence, although the collectively ululating seculars are calling it a "fake" encounter.

Fake Encounter or Fake Report?

On June 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan and three males were killed in a police encounter in Ahmedabad (as claimed by the police).

In May 2008, the central Government approved the 2006 amendment to the CrPC code 176. This law specifically deals with custodial deaths, witness interrogation etc. and a description of amendment can be found here (pdf).

On Aug 13, 2009, the Gujarat high court formed a committee to probe the Ishrat Jahan encounter killing. The deadline for this committee was set for Nov 30.

An article in The Hindu claims that on Aug 12, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Ahmedabab forwarded a letter to [Additional] Metropolitan Magistrate SP Tamang to conduct an enquiry in the case and submit a report ASAP. Tamang completes the report in a record 25 days. It is funny that the Hindu article was intially titled: Modi government caught on the wrong foot. It was then changed to Ahmedabad Crime branch police caught on the wrong foot.

The article tries to establish that the aforesaid amendment enables a magistrate to take suo motu cognizance of encounter killings. It is funny it took so long and just before a major election and while another high level committee was about to be formed by none other than the HC for this suo motu thing to occur in Tamang's head.

Mr. Tamang's report said the Crime Branch police "kidnapped" Ishrat and the others from Mumbai on June 12 and brought them to Ahmedabad. The four were killed on the night of June 14 in police custody, but the police claimed that an "encounter" took place the next morning on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. That rigor mortis set in between 11 p.m. and midnight the previous night clearly pointed to the fact that the police pumped bullets into Ishrat's lifeless body to substantiate the encounter theory. [link]

Mr. Tamang's so called enquiry consisted of reviewing the case documents and contains a bunch of wild speculations. It does not appear he conducted any major interviews or extended investigations. It is not clear what makes Mr. Tamang qualified to analyze forensic reports, which he apparently did on his own, with the help of a medico-legal book.

Since the actual report does not seem to be available, we have to go by the second hand bits and pieces. If the Tamang report really says that Ishrat and the others were "kidnapped" from Mumbai, the needle of suspicion unfortunately points to the report rather than the encounter.

More in the next post.

Funny thing is, given her reaction, one would imagine the review to be highly critical, but in fact it is mostly positive. The author holds Roy in high esteem and applauds her work. This is no surprise, the leftist ideologues are essentially shills for fascist regimes, so in their minds, they can not accept anything other than complete obeisance.

It also mildly amusing that for an endorsement of their anti-Modi views they essentially cite the one decisive Government action so far: the visa denial by a country that is the focal point of their hatred!

Of course, the fact that the land dealings in question were done by a communist Government is not important. The Tatas have undergone a significant downgrade. Long time secular party supporters and donors, the Tatas indirectly funded the leftists through their research institutes. The social institutes, scholarships and other programs run by the Tatas have been exploited to the hilt. Now that the Government is flush with post-liberalization tax receipts, they are no longer needed.

Arundhati Roy should not get so upset when people call her on her factual accuracy. In her own words:

Her wild exaggerations about the fetus killing and the manufactured accounts of gratuitous rape of a Congress MP's daughters are well documented. We documented some of her embellishments in a recent post, from a single article!

It is also disingenuous on Arundhati Roy's part to constantly blame colonization on Africa's problems, when many Africans themselves do not believe so. Even if we are to take all her arguments at face value, just because a foreign Government wants to mine your country, you don't have to slaughter half your population. Naturally she will completely ignore the role of religion (both varieties actually) in Africa's problems.

For someone who seems to be so against colonization, the realization does not dawn on her that she is essentially a "foreign" element trying to colonize the minds of folks of another religion through nefarious leftist tactics. This is perhaps the biggest irony of the Arundhati Roy story.

When Kapil Sibal started sending feelers to the press, we were not quite sure the dude was going to actually follow through with his plan. For one thing, something as significant as this can not be initiated without buy-in from the political spectrum and of course the high command.

In any case, for now, the mandate appears to be only for CBSE.

The nine-point scale will start from A1(with 91-100 marks, exceptional), A2(81-90, excellent), B1(71-80, very good), B2(61-70, good), C1(51-60, fair), C2(41-50, average), D(33-40, below average), E1(21-32, needs improvement) and E2(00-20, unsatisfactory).

"This is good system which will very well judge the potential of a student," Sibal said.

Frankly, we do not see how this solves the "suicide" problem. Absent any clear statistics, one has to rely on newspaper reports. Students at all levels commit suicide. How many of them commit suicide for purely academic reasons?

If anything, the new grade system has the potential to put more kids at suicide risk. A kid scoring 90 will be one full grade behind the kid scoring 91. Won't pushy parents insist their kids get the highest grade? Will the system make parents scramble for ICSE boards?

Of course, seasoned readers of this blog know that the "suicide solution" trojan horse will eventually morph into the big beast of "social justice":

Formative and summative assessment? Co-scholastic aspects? WTF!!?

There are only two possibilities:

(a) They are letting Kapil Sibal play social reformer: good for the news wires and socialist intellectuals, a talking point of no consequence and lot of hot air. Proposal stays limited to CBSE X board exam, to be forgotten in due time.

(b) A precursor to bigger things to come.

We suspect the secular party wants to do a deep re-engineering of the entire exam system based approach. Social justice requires obfuscation. Grades are better than numbers. Naturally the "co-scholastic" aspects of a student will also involve caste and religion.

- Yasin Malik (36/40/42 according to various sites) (JKLF) recently got married to Mashaal Malik (28) (pictured above). The bride is a Pakistani painter and reportedly a post graduate from London school of Economics. Late father was a Pakistani defense official and an internationally renowned economist. Her mom is a leader of Pakistan Muslim League (women's wing). The marriage took place in Karachi and attended by the high and mighty.

- Earlier this year, Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq married Sheeba Masoodi, a U.S. citizen. She is now in Kashmir and running a Feminist magazine.

These marriages reflect several realities of the Kashmir situation.

Contrary to the popular image of being on the run from the law and down on their luck, these separatists enjoy a grand life, shuttling between Pakistani cities, London and Kashmir. They come from influential moneyed families. It also reflects a societal attitude, they are considered desirable suitors for well accomplished women from established families, much like Engish Knights in Victorian times.

The alarming part is, there could be an information asymmetry between what the Indian establishment perceives and what is believed in the Pak/Azad Kashmir circles. Perhaps these women believe they are not marrying dissident leaders frowned upon by law in the political fringe of a nation they essentially hate but future leaders of an independent country.

Azadi, like most political promises, is seldom about greater common good. The Kashmiri commoner knows this, but it does not mean the separatist leaders will give up because they stand to gain windfall. The marriages merely prove that at least in that circle, the odds do not seem that bad.

As we have stressed on this blog before, like it or not, we may have to eventually give up Kashmir. Recent changes in the international political situation has only bolstered this belief (more on this later). A good start would be to reflect on what went wrong during the first partition. The recent opportunity to discuss it was squandered by political opportunists trying to score a political point but with millions of lives at stake, at least we could do this with a lot less chaos this time.

That should make everyone happy, right? Well, try again. It does not quite work that way in secular land.

The president of the State unit of the SFI H.R. Naveen Kumar alleged that the Karnataka government was saffronising education by privatising the mid-day meal scheme. International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), which supplied mid-day meal to many schools, was not using garlic, onion and eggs. Besides, children are asked to offer prayers to Krishna before consuming food, he alleged. On the other hand, thousands of poor women employed in preparing food are being rendered jobless as the government had chosen to privatize the mid-day meal scheme. [link]

Since then, ISCKON is being targetted by various secular leaders and activists. Among the allegations: land grab. Inasmuch as these meals cost a paltry Rs. 4.68 and half of which comes from donations, why in the name of Krishna would ISKCON not just use up the donations to buy land?

The answer is simple. ISKCON is eating into the meal ticket of the other type of religious charities, and we know who those are. The ones who grab land and souls at industrial scales.

This is not all, elsewhere the mid-day meals scheme by ISKCON have run into a different type of trouble:

Madrassas in Ujjain have boycotted the Madhya Pradesh government's mid-day meal scheme for students on the ground that the food is being prepared by Iskcon, the Hindu religious organisation spreading Krishna consciousness throughout the world.

The trouble is, the "middle-class" folks in India believe that if the "Government" did not run these schemes and a folks of a certain religion did not do charitable work, poor kids would just drop like flies and die. Nothing can be further from the truth. Today, feeding a million children is fairly simple and within the reach of many organizations: Government, non-Gov, charitable, religious or otherwise.

The real fight is to grab more of the real estate within the charity landscape. We just saw the conclusion of one such struggle which reached its logical conclusion - in Kandhamal district in Orissa.

Under a new Goverment scheme, Surendar Thakur (pictured above) could score lower than Shah Rukh Khan on the BPL (Below Poverty Level) score card (Pic: OutLookIndia)

So, the middle class folks tend to knock themselves silly over how insensitive they are about Governance etc. This happens shortly after they browse columns by Arundhati Roy and shortly before they walk into a poll booth to push the button for the hand. Then .. all is forgotten. The silly buggers don't even care to look at the most basic issues such as how the Government computes the poverty list.

India's best public policy blog RealityCheck does some investigation:

Every instrument of dispensation of public goods are now being made to serve the grand interest. The Indian state will divide people even for completely secular purposes such as identification of the poor. The actual benefits that accrue to the BPL families from such divisions are not important. [link]

Yes, that's right. According to the new Saxena committee recommendation, Muslims and OBCs will automatically get a point on the BPL score sheet.

Of course, the water carriers of socialism are completely silent on the issue. What happened to the stats they used to throw around at the slightest excuse during the NDA rule? The scary headlines about India being worse than sub-Saharan Africa? Child malnutrition? Not required anymore?

Come to think of it, they could make it even more interesting. How about baselining the Sachar report on how many people qualify for BPL benefits as opposed to how many are actually poor?

India's first quintuplets: Mumbai woman delivers 5 babies

MUMBAI: In the first case of successful quintuplets in India, a 24-year-old woman on Friday gave birth to five babies at a private hospital here. Sabeera Khan, a housewife from Mira Road, delivered male quintuplets at Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital in suburban Andheri.

"Its the first case of male quintuplets in India where all babies have survived. In earlier cases, not all the five babies have survived with some of them dying within hours," Dr Suchitra Pandit, Head of Gynaecologist department at the hospital told PTI.

The woman, who already has a 10-month-old baby boy, is doing well, she said, adding, "of the five babies, two are on ventilator and the remaining in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)." [link]

Naturally, the floor is now wide open for poring over details of the man's legacy. Some people perhaps rightly feel that YSR does not deserve the eulogizing. However, we feel that the main resistance to YSR's deification will come from unexpected quarters.

Historically speaking, the Congress party has always resisted big players from outside the family. As a matter of fact, when such a leader becomes too big, they tend to do the party harm since every bit of popularity of such a leader chips away a little bit of brand value of the family. In that sense, YSR had outlived his usefulness, having solidly secured the party's victory in both state and national elections (please note, we do not want to start any conspiracy theory). Also, a regional leader is perceived as threatening to competing regions, a disadvantage which the family does not suffer due to its aseptic image.

If there is one defining thing about Sonia Gandhi, it is how zealously she has been building up her late husband's legacy. HaindavaKeralam lists over 450 institutions, schemes, awards, roads, hospitals etc. named after the Gandhi family - note how many of them bears the Rajiv moniker. Does Mrs. Gandhi herself drive this or is it the sycophants? Perhaps a bit of both.

Only recently, they wanted to name an irrigation scheme after YSR, but as soon as the news spread, they quietly renamed it. As you can see, they do not want any brand dilution.

Soon they will run out of schools, colleges, Government institutions, roads, buildings, hospitals, awards etc. to name after Rajiv Gandhi. Perhaps they will have to start renaming places soon. There is a talk of renaming the Cuddapah district after YSR. Will Sonia Gandhi allow this? Actually she could, as it would set the precedence.

Sadly, like everything else, a socialist state is utterly ill equipped to protect even such a figure. Forget about the lesser mortals who perish in terror attacks and riots.

We hope YSR is alive and well. Hopefully YSR and his entourage consisting of his principal secretary Subramanyam, chief security officer A S C Wesley and the two pilots Capt S K Bhatia and Capt M S Reddy have survived and will make it back soon, they are in our prayers.

India is also building a $5.1 Billion, 6000 MW gas fired power plant in Iran, for generating power for India.

Meanwhile the various Bhopal tragedy activists are strangely silent about the fact that private operator liability for Nuclear power plants is being capped at Rs. 300 crores. This is understandable since many of the plants will be built under partnership between FOC (Friends of Congress) corporations in India and their foreign collaborators.

"Impeccable taste", "connoisseur of high art", "grand personality", "elegant" - these are just some of the adjectives that are generously being used by the media about Jashwant Singh. His book is now getting rave reviews. Even Congress leaders would be envious of the treatment Singh is getting from the media. This is also the first time Jashwant Singh's name is being mentioned in a context other than the Kandahar hijack episode. Now that we learn Jashwant Singh is such a cool dude, maybe we can revisit the issue and give the way the situation was handled a different grade?

Jashwant Singh is as much a victim of the confusion and paranoia that must surround a national party post election defeat, as he is of a mercenary media. As soon as the book hit the stands, the headlines screamed: Jashwant has praised Jinnah! That is pretty much all you need to set the ball rolling so to speak.

As far as we can tell, the partition issue still remains an unfinished business. Hey, mi casa su casa, but in practical terms, does anyone really believe that .....

By any standards, we are hanging too few people for a country of this size. China executes thousands each year, they also have a rather efficient way of doing it.

No one is quite sure what exactly "rarest of rare" means any more. Violent crimes are on the rise at an alarming rate. We certainly can not structure it around frequency, even terrorism is not all that rare in India.

Clearly, putting a cap on the number of people executed per year can not be the stated goal of a legal system. Yet, no objective sentencing guidelines are forthcoming. Statistically speaking, too few hangings make each one them more likely to be unjust. Justice also means if Dude X got it for a certain crime, Dude Y must also get it for the same crime. Yet we are supposed to believe there was just one dude in India to rape and murder a minor since 1995!

So, from any objective POV, either we start hanging a lot more people, or we get rid of the death penalty altogether.

Yet, a Supreme Court bench stated that we must make the death penalty even rarer. This is a very disappointing stand. Coming on the heels of a recent case where the death penalty was waived, this also appears to be immensely suspicious.

We can clearly see where this is headed. Recently our Law Minister Shri Moily and Home Minister Shri Chidu introduced a peculiar spin to the Afzal hanging story. Apparently the death penalty is like a queue. If the mercy petition of one is pending, the next one in line can not be hanged. This is obviously absurd. A fair justice system gurantees a fair trial and objective sentencing - not an execution strictly according to order.

It should be obvious by now that we have an "activist" judiciary on our hands which wants to add another layer of social justice on top of the legislative and executive. The death penalty system is being redesigned to ensure only certain people hang or rather certain people never hang.

...We pleaded with them for help, but in vain," said Bhanage. She said one of the officers was Prabhakar Bargav, who was on an official motorcycle (MH 05 AN 1299). Realising that police were not going to intervene, Bhanage said, the butchers turned violent and assaulted her and Parinita Joshi, another PAWS volunteer. The duo was beaten by nearly 25 men, she added. The male volunteers were restrained from helping the women.

Joshi added, "To top this they strangled one calf in front of us to tell us that we would be treated similarly if we didn't back off." The drama lasted for half an hour and in the end, the attackers put all the calves in a truck and left. [link]

We are willing to bet the chat transcript will soon disappear, so grab it while you can.

There is only one Muslim in the whole world whose frisking would elicit that response from Sagarika Ghose, in complete contradiction with her usual position on the "racial profiling" issue. Ghose tried to put a unique twist to the issue, apparently she is against privilege seeking of our VIPs.

If that chat transcript wasn't bad enough in taste, Ghose repeated the same idea in a later blog post:

Our netas and top babus all send their children to the US for higher studies. Surely, when taking the SAT and GRE exams, these students submit to American rules. In applying for visas they also submit to US legal requirements. But when Kalam submits to US laws when traveling on an American airline, we are suddenly shaken to our foundations. The VIP culture of India is truly a slur on our Constitution. [link]

Well, talk about poor timing - Shah Rukh Khan got held up at a US airport for technical reasons for about an hour. Every news media is running headline stories on it, CNN-IBN's response has been muted.

Funny thing is, if there is one Muslim in India who could be exempt from frisking, it is President Kalam. Former head of the state and India is not Somalia. It is ok to knock Hindu fundamentalists over their false pride, but that comparison was potently absurd and disgusting.

Meanwhile, Khan's alleged harassment looks more and more like a made for media story. He way exaggerated the situation, which may have something to do with an upcoming film which incidentally deals with racial profiling.

Socialism is immoral