ISSUES AND CONCERNS

Friends We are well into monsoon mania. The devastation it has caused to Uttarakhand is to be seen to be believed. Nature’s fury was in full flow. Thousands have died. A full account of the dead may take months to know. The flow of the water, being so forceful must have swept  people away in many places with absolutely no succour coming their way. It was unprecedented. The loss of property could be very huge with townships being washed away. Surely it will take years for it to come back to what it was. It is a kind of national catastrophe, although that feeling has not yet sunk in southern parts of the country. So far rescue efforts have been inadequate compared to the need, partly due to the continued unkind inclement weather. An IAF rescue chopper had crashed with 19 aboard, with all feared to have died. Of course, with some 50000 stranded in different areas of the upper parts of the state, there has got to be huge rescue operation. Army is reportedly been exemplary in th...

MAHARASHTRA: There was this news in the media some weeks ago “From Rs: 21 lakhs to Rs: 5 crores, as commission to independent directors of Reliance Inds. Ltd.” In a society like India, inequity is the done thing. Accepted without any demure. The increase was a rise of about 24 times. Reportedly RIL has seven independent directors, consisting of a Mumbai senior lawyer and former bureaucrats from backgrounds that can help the RIL bottom line, including some professionals. They are all septuagenarians, since 75 years is the recommended age bar by CII. They have enjoyed the life at high levels of governmental and private sector engagements. They continue to crave for lasting comforts of life provided by the system and then speak inanities of equity on public forums, and there are enough media men and women singing praise for their utterances, they too are the ‘Champions of public causes’. Aren’t they!? Yes equity is an oft repeated word by everybody all over the place. Quite frank...

Nasty Naxals 25th May, 2013, would probably go down as one of the bloodiest day in the history of Chhattisgarh. 27 persons mostly from the Congress party having their ‘Parivarthan Yaatra’ wooing tribals for the ensuing elections were butchered at point blank range. Details of how they were killed may not be relevant. But it was barbaric by any standard. Kuldip Nayar, an eminent senior journalist tells “Liberal friends tell me – ‘understand naxals do not condemn them’. But for me the people who killed those 27 in Chhattisgarh and those two Nigerians who beheaded a British soldier some days ago in London, in full public view, are no different. They both are terrorists. One is from the Left and the other from the Right.” What Nayar said is certainly not far from truth. Over the years, naxal movement has grown crueller and their attacks have been dastardly, bereft of any logic. Going back to the evolution of Naxal movement which has a history of some 46 years, it is replete with ...

Do see your doctor when not well; never before! Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com “The best six doctors anywhere And no one can deny it Are sunshine, water, rest, and air Exercise and diet. These six will gladly you attend If only you are willing Your mind they'll ease Your will they'll mend And charge you not a shilling.”  Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990 Each one of us should have a family doctor who eventually becomes our friend, philosopher and guide. When one is feeling off colour, however trivial the symptom might be, one MUST consult her/his family doctor to discuss the problem with the doctor to be an intelligent partner in themanagement, should the need arise. Most of the time your good doctor will pat you on the back and boost your immune system by his two kind words which will be therapeutic. After all human body is immaterial-mental and spiritual. Matter is energy and energy is matter and so the mind and the body are but th...

INDIAN IN COWBOY COUNTRY THE FINAL EXAM Satish sat across from Kutty, whose face, with its luminous white teeth, began to brighten as he continued to expostulate about what was wrong with the education system in India, particularly at IIT. He ranted about how the IIT system had a top-class student selection process and a terrific curriculum, but his teachers had been misguided dictators who rewarded students for regurgitating what was taught and said in a class but crucified original thought. Satish disagreed about the quality of professors, but rather than debating, he listened intently. When Kutty’s intensity began to wane, he egged and prodded him on with a question rather than a contradiction, which would have veered the monologue to a dialogue. He wanted to get Kutty’s mind away from his recent thought of hurling himself off the terrace. He also wanted Kutty to keep talking until Johnny, the senior “mess servant” and a Keralite like Kutty, could make a quick cup of tea t...

Milk adulteration- caught in action Mumbai : The Versova police, busted a milk-adulteration racket and arrested six persons. The police seized 700 litres of adulterated milk, said an official. The Versova police said they raided a room at Bharat Nagar at Four Bungalows in Andheri West, following a tip-off. The police said the accused were caught red-handed while mixing water in branded milk packets. The police said that the accused were retailers and would sell the plastic milk packets of various brands after buying them in bulk. Their modus operandi, the police said, was to make very tiny holes in the plastic milk packets that are not visible to the naked eye. They would inject out the milk and inject water in thereafter. They would then seal the hole neatly with a candle. The police said that a few local residents had complained to them about the adulterated milk, following which the accused were arrested. Rs. 53000 crores worth projects stalled on minor issues New Delhi:...

Disabled friendly govt action Bhopal: Database of 8 lakh 10 thousand disabled persons has been complied under Sparsh Abhiyan in the state so far. Of this, government jobs have been provided to 1,006 disabled persons. As many as 14 thousand 595 disabled persons have been identified for self-employment while 3735 disabled persons have been employed by private institutions and industries.  Urination-US Marine to be tried Washington: A US Marine officer will be court martialed for his alleged role in the scandal sparked by a video that showed soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of three Afghans, the Marine Corps said, reports AFP. In a statement, the Corps said Captain James Clement “will be tried for dereliction of duty and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentlemen for failing to stop the misconduct of junior Marines.” He is accused of failing to prevent men under his command of desecrating the bodies of three Afghans, in a case that dates back to July 27, 2011, d...

Woman in US delivers in loo! New York: Home delivery! A woman in the US has managed to do the unthinkable by delivering her daughter with her own hands alone in a bathroom. 34-year-old Erica Bovino from Southington, Connecticut, thought she had plenty of time before the baby came. But then her water bag broke and Bovino realised she was going to have to give birth on her own.  She drew herself inward and did not panic. Summoning all of the relaxation and breathing techniques she knew, she chanted and moaned and stayed calm through the pain of labour.  Somehow, she managed to do what many would find unthinkable, Bovino delivered her daughter with her own hands in the toilet while her 3-year-old son lay sleeping in a room nearby and her husband Paul Sulzicki was rushing home from his overnight shift as a police officer.  "There was no time to be scared," Bovina was quoted by Today as saying. "You get into a primal mode. If I had an ounce of fear, I wouldn't h...

What kind of Prime Minister does India need? Dr. M. V. Kamath One wonders whether L.K.Advani has read Tennyson. In one of his great and oft-quoted poems wrote the British poet: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new and God fulfils himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world”. What Tennyson wrote in one context holds true in many others as well. The only thing permanent in life is change. And that is true of politics as well.  Often the old are pushed aside as if they have become a hurdle. Their time-tested values are no longer heeded. It is painful to watch. For Advaniji to say that the party he helped successfully to build has lost its vision may be technically correct, but it wasn’t that he was deliberately sidelined. It is just that the present has overtaken the past. How true it is comes through in Rajmohan Gandhi ‘s biography of his grandfather, entitled Mohandas. In 1946 partition of India was very much in the air but Gandhi was oppose...