ANI – Fri 27 Jan, 2012 (from Yahoo news)
Nevada (US), Jan 25 (ANI): A school in New Zealand has a 'Sanskrit Language Studies' program and claims that learning Sanskrit accelerates a child's reading ability.
Ficino School in Mt Eden area of Auckland (New Zealand), calls itself a 'values-based academic institution' and offers education for girls and boys from year one to eight. It says about Sanskrit: "It has a wonderful system of sound and grammar, which gives the child an excellent base for the study of any language. Children love its order and beauty."
Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed has applauded Ficino School for fostering universal virtues and encouraging Sanskrit studies and adds that Sanskrit has a close relationship with other classical languages like Latin, Greek, French, German, etc.
According to Peter Crompton, principal of this school founded in 1997, where curriculum includes "food for the mind, food for the spirit, food for the body", "Sanskrit with its almost perfect grammatical system...provides children with a roadmap for understanding English." Sanskrit not only gives young learners a clear understanding of the structure of language, it also heightens their awareness of the process of speech, creating a greater understanding of and ability to, enunciate words clearly, Crompton adds.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, pointed out that Sanskrit should be restored to its rightful place. It needed to be brought to the mainstream and hidden scientific truths in ancient Sanskrit literature should be brought to light, he said.
Rajan Zed strongly criticized India Government for not doing enough for Sanskrit language. He asked India Government to do much more for the development, propagation, encouragement and promotion of Sanskrit in India and the world, which was essential for the development of India and preservation of its cultural heritage. Sanskrit also provided the theoretical foundation of ancient sciences.
Besides Hindu scriptures, a vast amount of Buddhist and Jain scriptures were also written in Sanskrit, which is known as "the language of the gods". According to tradition, self-born God created Sanskrit, which is everlasting and divine. The oldest scripture of mankind still in common use, Rig-Veda, was written in Sanskrit, Zed added.
Mahatma Gandhi said, "Without the study of Sanskrit, one cannot become a true learned man." German philologist Max Muller added, "Sanskrit is the greatest language of the world." (ANI)
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
MYSTERY OF CHINA'S WHITE DESERT LINES SOLVED?
A space researcher has offered what he believes is the correct solution to a mystery that's been flying around cyberspace for the past week: A strange tangle of white lines in China's Gobi desert discovered in Google Map images. Military pundits, armchair investigators, and conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the strange set of lines.
It's a UFO landing strip!
It's a mockup of the streets of Washington, D.C., constructed for nefarious military purposes!
It's a top-secret military installation doing experiments in controlling the weather!
It's a nuclear testing range!
It's a hoax: the Google Map images themselves are fakes, and the lines are not actually there!
A previous Discovery News piece concluded that it probably had some military connection (such as target practice range, based in part on the fact that other similar sites in the area had airplanes sitting in them), and now a NASA scientist thinks he’s got it figured out.
NEWS: The Ethics of Revealing Secrets
According to a story on Fox News the latest (and most plausible) theory is that “they are almost definitely used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA’s Mars missions.”
The satellite calibration target solution seems as good an answer as any, and better than most. China, like many countries including the United States, is known to have spy satellites in orbit.
There's been no official explanation from the Chinese government—which is not surprising, since China doesn't need to "explain" some white lines in its desert to anyone, including NASA and President Obama. Of course even if Hu Jintao, the President of China, publicly offered a clear and complete explanation of the mysterious lines, conspiracy-minded folks wouldn’t believe him anyway.
It's a UFO landing strip!
It's a mockup of the streets of Washington, D.C., constructed for nefarious military purposes!
It's a top-secret military installation doing experiments in controlling the weather!
It's a nuclear testing range!
It's a hoax: the Google Map images themselves are fakes, and the lines are not actually there!
A previous Discovery News piece concluded that it probably had some military connection (such as target practice range, based in part on the fact that other similar sites in the area had airplanes sitting in them), and now a NASA scientist thinks he’s got it figured out.
NEWS: The Ethics of Revealing Secrets
According to a story on Fox News the latest (and most plausible) theory is that “they are almost definitely used to calibrate China’s spy satellites. So says Jonathon Hill, a research technician and mission planner at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University, which operates many of the cameras used during NASA’s Mars missions.”
The satellite calibration target solution seems as good an answer as any, and better than most. China, like many countries including the United States, is known to have spy satellites in orbit.
There's been no official explanation from the Chinese government—which is not surprising, since China doesn't need to "explain" some white lines in its desert to anyone, including NASA and President Obama. Of course even if Hu Jintao, the President of China, publicly offered a clear and complete explanation of the mysterious lines, conspiracy-minded folks wouldn’t believe him anyway.
NRI woman delivers 'Jhatpat' on US train
TOI (PTI | Jan 18, 2012)
NEW YORK: An Indian-origin woman gave birth to her first child during the train ride from New Jersey to New York, in what would be her most unforgettable journey.
At first, Rabita Sarker, 31, of New Jersey said she thought she was experiencing false labour pains as she boarded the train run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in Jersey City. But as the Manhattanbound train entered New York, Sarker knew her baby could nor wait any longer.
As she went into labour, few passengers helped her panicked husband deliver the baby boy they nicknamed "Jhatpat" - the Hindi word for "fast", a report in the New York Daily News said.
"He decided to come and that was it. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could keep him inside for longer," the report quoted Sarker as saying.
She was later admitted to a New York hospital. "I don't think anybody could actually dream of such a delivery," she added. Sarker and her 30-year-old husband, Aditya Saurabh, were already on their way to the hospital for a medical check-up.
"We were coming here to check if it was false labour or not," she said. "I was like, 'Okay, I'm just doing it for peace of mind'". Wanting to avoid the always-crowded Lincoln Tunnel, they decided to take the commuter train 'PATH' that runs from New Jersey to New York.
----------- ---------- --------------- --------------
Interesting chain of comments follow the online news item.
reproducing a few:
"Both are intelligent and rich people. Rabita Sarkar is from IIT Kharagpur and MS from Rutgers University. Aditya Saurabh works at Amazon and is from University of Texas."
"congratulations my friends, May God be with you and my Best Wishesto you both and family. Do come to california as my guest -Air tickets are on me 408 621 3314..Best of Luck"
"something else happened which tells u how US treats its ordinary residents/citizens. It was instantly decided by the train driver as soon as he was informed of this to make this an EXPRESS train..this is actually a kind of mumbai local but this was considered an emergency and the train stopped only at Manhattan hospital stop where there were scores of ambulances and cops waiting to greet and take care of them! (of course with everything computerized-i am sure the trains control center had approved this instantly)"
"Also please tell everybody about the $900 bill for each ambulance that is on the way to the new born's family. lol"
"We heard about ‘it’s happen only in INDIA’ really right INDIAN will do everything possible anywhere everywhere........hahaha"
"NRI will go to any level for saving $$$ enjoy ur life in USA"
"There should be Free for Life pass to this Child Jhatpat on this Railway rout !!"
"Haha .. While going through the comments I forgot the about the actual news... funny/ Crazy ppl... BTW congrats to the new mommy and dad .."
NEW YORK: An Indian-origin woman gave birth to her first child during the train ride from New Jersey to New York, in what would be her most unforgettable journey.
At first, Rabita Sarker, 31, of New Jersey said she thought she was experiencing false labour pains as she boarded the train run by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in Jersey City. But as the Manhattanbound train entered New York, Sarker knew her baby could nor wait any longer.
As she went into labour, few passengers helped her panicked husband deliver the baby boy they nicknamed "Jhatpat" - the Hindi word for "fast", a report in the New York Daily News said.
"He decided to come and that was it. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could keep him inside for longer," the report quoted Sarker as saying.
She was later admitted to a New York hospital. "I don't think anybody could actually dream of such a delivery," she added. Sarker and her 30-year-old husband, Aditya Saurabh, were already on their way to the hospital for a medical check-up.
"We were coming here to check if it was false labour or not," she said. "I was like, 'Okay, I'm just doing it for peace of mind'". Wanting to avoid the always-crowded Lincoln Tunnel, they decided to take the commuter train 'PATH' that runs from New Jersey to New York.
----------- ---------- --------------- --------------
Interesting chain of comments follow the online news item.
reproducing a few:
"Both are intelligent and rich people. Rabita Sarkar is from IIT Kharagpur and MS from Rutgers University. Aditya Saurabh works at Amazon and is from University of Texas."
"congratulations my friends, May God be with you and my Best Wishesto you both and family. Do come to california as my guest -Air tickets are on me 408 621 3314..Best of Luck"
"something else happened which tells u how US treats its ordinary residents/citizens. It was instantly decided by the train driver as soon as he was informed of this to make this an EXPRESS train..this is actually a kind of mumbai local but this was considered an emergency and the train stopped only at Manhattan hospital stop where there were scores of ambulances and cops waiting to greet and take care of them! (of course with everything computerized-i am sure the trains control center had approved this instantly)"
"Also please tell everybody about the $900 bill for each ambulance that is on the way to the new born's family. lol"
"We heard about ‘it’s happen only in INDIA’ really right INDIAN will do everything possible anywhere everywhere........hahaha"
"NRI will go to any level for saving $$$ enjoy ur life in USA"
"There should be Free for Life pass to this Child Jhatpat on this Railway rout !!"
"Haha .. While going through the comments I forgot the about the actual news... funny/ Crazy ppl... BTW congrats to the new mommy and dad .."
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Captain of capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia “cried like a baby”
Paris, Jan. 21: The captain of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship “cried like a baby” as he hugged its chaplain just hours after the boat hit rocks, the luxury liner’s priest revealed.
Father Raffaele Malena said he was among the last to leave the ship at around 1.30am local time last Saturday and then stayed “close to the injured” in the tiny harbour of Giglio.
“I descended on the rope ladder. I was picked up by a little lifeboat,” he said. Around an hour later, the captain, Franceso Schettino, appeared.
“I spoke to the captain. He embraced me for about a quarter of an hour and cried like a baby,” Father Malena told French magazine Famille Chrétienne.
“Of course, it’s a case of human error because shouldn’t have been so close to the island,” he said of the disaster, in which 11 people died 21 are missing. “But it’s not for me to judge. The experts will see to that.” But he staunchly denied some reported claims that the crew had been incompetent and unhelpful in helping terrified passengers escape to lifeboats.
“These boys, my boys, are not only heroes, they are super heroes,” he said. “My boys knew they were going to die but they didn’t abandon their posts.”
“There were heroes of all nationalities… They were shaking with fear. They were threatened. They were telling people to stop boarding lifeboats which were full but people were getting in anyway,” he said. “(The press) can throw as much mud as they want on their faces, but they can’t say the boys didn’t work, that they weren’t trained.”
At one stage, he saw a little girl fall down. “I took her in my arms, reassured her and returned her to her mother further back. They got into a lifeboat.”
Recounting the crash, he said that he was returning to his cabin after dinner when “I felt a big shock, a noise. I fell to the ground, as the boat rocked from side to side … The electricity cut out”.
A few minutes later the boat turned violently. “The captain cast the anchor,” he said. “Some — who consider themselves experts — say he made a mistake; for others, he did the right thing as the boat turned on itself and thus we didn’t hit the rocks.”
Body found, toll 12
The body of a woman was found on board the Costa Concordia today, bringing the total death toll to at least 12 people, a spokesman for the rescue workers said. Twenty people are still unaccounted for.
(The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sunday , January 22 , 2012)
Father Raffaele Malena said he was among the last to leave the ship at around 1.30am local time last Saturday and then stayed “close to the injured” in the tiny harbour of Giglio.
“I descended on the rope ladder. I was picked up by a little lifeboat,” he said. Around an hour later, the captain, Franceso Schettino, appeared.
“I spoke to the captain. He embraced me for about a quarter of an hour and cried like a baby,” Father Malena told French magazine Famille Chrétienne.
“Of course, it’s a case of human error because shouldn’t have been so close to the island,” he said of the disaster, in which 11 people died 21 are missing. “But it’s not for me to judge. The experts will see to that.” But he staunchly denied some reported claims that the crew had been incompetent and unhelpful in helping terrified passengers escape to lifeboats.
“These boys, my boys, are not only heroes, they are super heroes,” he said. “My boys knew they were going to die but they didn’t abandon their posts.”
“There were heroes of all nationalities… They were shaking with fear. They were threatened. They were telling people to stop boarding lifeboats which were full but people were getting in anyway,” he said. “(The press) can throw as much mud as they want on their faces, but they can’t say the boys didn’t work, that they weren’t trained.”
At one stage, he saw a little girl fall down. “I took her in my arms, reassured her and returned her to her mother further back. They got into a lifeboat.”
Recounting the crash, he said that he was returning to his cabin after dinner when “I felt a big shock, a noise. I fell to the ground, as the boat rocked from side to side … The electricity cut out”.
A few minutes later the boat turned violently. “The captain cast the anchor,” he said. “Some — who consider themselves experts — say he made a mistake; for others, he did the right thing as the boat turned on itself and thus we didn’t hit the rocks.”
Body found, toll 12
The body of a woman was found on board the Costa Concordia today, bringing the total death toll to at least 12 people, a spokesman for the rescue workers said. Twenty people are still unaccounted for.
(The Telegraph, Calcutta, Sunday , January 22 , 2012)
Barack Obama and Steve Jobs argued over outsourcing
Economic Times, 22 JAN, 2012, 10.13PM IST, ANI
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama and the late Steve Jobs had a terse exchange last February, over Apple out-sourcing the manufacturing of its famous products.
The New York Times had reported on this matter last February, and had said that when Jobs was about to give an answer, Obama interrupted him with a query and asked 'what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?'
It wasn't long ago that Apple used to brag about its products being made in America, but nowadays almost none of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products sold last year, are made in America.
According to an insider, Obama had asked, "Why can't that work come home?" and Jobs' reply was clear-cut, "those jobs aren't coming back".
That wasn't the first time that Obama and Jobs had a standoff. Jobs' biography says that the Apple founder had told the US President that he was "headed for a one-term presidency", mainly due to his administration's business policies, the Politico reported.
According to the biography, written by Walter Isaacson, Jobs was an admirer of Chinese business practices and was a critic for the US regulations as well as labor rules.
WASHINGTON: Barack Obama and the late Steve Jobs had a terse exchange last February, over Apple out-sourcing the manufacturing of its famous products.
The New York Times had reported on this matter last February, and had said that when Jobs was about to give an answer, Obama interrupted him with a query and asked 'what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?'
It wasn't long ago that Apple used to brag about its products being made in America, but nowadays almost none of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products sold last year, are made in America.
According to an insider, Obama had asked, "Why can't that work come home?" and Jobs' reply was clear-cut, "those jobs aren't coming back".
That wasn't the first time that Obama and Jobs had a standoff. Jobs' biography says that the Apple founder had told the US President that he was "headed for a one-term presidency", mainly due to his administration's business policies, the Politico reported.
According to the biography, written by Walter Isaacson, Jobs was an admirer of Chinese business practices and was a critic for the US regulations as well as labor rules.
In 1988, a rising novelist penned an open letter to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
The following are excerpts from the open letter, published on October 19, 1988 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), from Salman Rushdie to then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi:
Dear Rajiv Gandhi,
On Oct. 5, the Indian finance ministry announced the banning of my novel, The Satanic Verses, under Section 11 of the Indian Customs Act. Many people around the world will find it strange that it is the finance ministry that gets to decide what Indian readers may or may not read. But let that pass, because at the end of the notification of the ban, an even stranger statement appeared.
The ministry — I am quoting from The Press Trust of India’s report — “added that the ban did not detract from the literary and artistic merit of Rushdie’s work”. To which I can only reply: Thanks for the good review.
The book was banned after representations by two or three Muslim politicians, including Syed Shahabuddin and Khurshid Alam Khan, both members of Parliament. These persons… have attacked me and my novel while stating that they had no need actually to read it. That the government should have given in to such figures is profoundly disturbing.
A further official statement was brought to my notice. This explained that The Satanic Verses had been banned as a pre-emptive measure. Certain passages had been identified as susceptible to distortion and misuse, presumably by unscrupulous religious fanatics and such. The banning order had been issued to prevent this misuse. Apparently, my book is not deemed blasphemous or objectionable in itself, but is being proscribed for, so to speak, its own good!
This really is astounding. It is as though, having identified an innocent person as a likely target for assault by muggers or rapists, you were to put that person in jail for protection. This is no way, Mr Gandhi, for a free society to behave.
Clearly, your government is feeling a little ashamed of itself and, sir, it has much to be ashamed about. It is not for nothing that just about every leading Indian newspaper and magazine has deplored the ban as, for example, “a Philistine decision” (The Hindu) or “thought control” (Indian Express).
It is not for nothing that such eminent writers as Kingsley Amis, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard have joined International PEN and India’s association of publishers and booksellers in condemning the decision. The right to freedom of expression is at the foundation of any democratic society, and at present, all over the world, Indian democracy is becoming something of a laughing stock.
The question raised by the book’s banning is precisely whether India, by behaving in this fashion, can any more lay claim to the title of a civilised society.
Let us try to distinguish truth from falsehood in this matter. Like my zealous opponents, you will probably not have read The Satanic Verses. So let me explain a few simple things. I am accused of having “admitted” that the book is a direct attack on Islam. I have admitted no such thing, and deny it strongly.
… I have tried to offer my view of the phenomenon of revelation and the birth of a great world religion; my view is that of a secular man for whom Islamic culture has been of central importance all his life.
Can the finance ministry really be saying that it is no longer permissible, in modern, supposedly secular India, for literature to treat such themes? If so, things are more serious than I had believed. From where I sit, Mr Gandhi, it looks very much as if your government has become unable or unwilling to resist pressure from more or less any extremist religious grouping; that, in short, it’s the fundamentalists who now control the political agenda.
You know, as I know, that Mr Shahabuddin, Mr Khurshid Alam Khan and their allies don’t really care about my novel. The real issue is the Muslim vote.
I deeply resent my book being used as a political football; what should matter to you more than my resentment is that you come out of this looking not only Philistine and anti-democratic but opportunistic.
Mr Prime Minister, I can’t bring myself to address finance ministries about literature. In my view, this is now a matter between you and me. I ask you this question: What sort of India do you wish to govern? Is it to be an open or a repressive society?
Your action in the matter of The Satanic Verses will be an important indicator for many people around the world. If you confirm the ban, I’m afraid I, and many others, will have to assume the worst. If, on the other hand, you should admit your government’s error and move swiftly to correct it, I will be the first to applaud your honourable deed.
Dear Rajiv Gandhi,
On Oct. 5, the Indian finance ministry announced the banning of my novel, The Satanic Verses, under Section 11 of the Indian Customs Act. Many people around the world will find it strange that it is the finance ministry that gets to decide what Indian readers may or may not read. But let that pass, because at the end of the notification of the ban, an even stranger statement appeared.
The ministry — I am quoting from The Press Trust of India’s report — “added that the ban did not detract from the literary and artistic merit of Rushdie’s work”. To which I can only reply: Thanks for the good review.
The book was banned after representations by two or three Muslim politicians, including Syed Shahabuddin and Khurshid Alam Khan, both members of Parliament. These persons… have attacked me and my novel while stating that they had no need actually to read it. That the government should have given in to such figures is profoundly disturbing.
A further official statement was brought to my notice. This explained that The Satanic Verses had been banned as a pre-emptive measure. Certain passages had been identified as susceptible to distortion and misuse, presumably by unscrupulous religious fanatics and such. The banning order had been issued to prevent this misuse. Apparently, my book is not deemed blasphemous or objectionable in itself, but is being proscribed for, so to speak, its own good!
This really is astounding. It is as though, having identified an innocent person as a likely target for assault by muggers or rapists, you were to put that person in jail for protection. This is no way, Mr Gandhi, for a free society to behave.
Clearly, your government is feeling a little ashamed of itself and, sir, it has much to be ashamed about. It is not for nothing that just about every leading Indian newspaper and magazine has deplored the ban as, for example, “a Philistine decision” (The Hindu) or “thought control” (Indian Express).
It is not for nothing that such eminent writers as Kingsley Amis, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard have joined International PEN and India’s association of publishers and booksellers in condemning the decision. The right to freedom of expression is at the foundation of any democratic society, and at present, all over the world, Indian democracy is becoming something of a laughing stock.
The question raised by the book’s banning is precisely whether India, by behaving in this fashion, can any more lay claim to the title of a civilised society.
Let us try to distinguish truth from falsehood in this matter. Like my zealous opponents, you will probably not have read The Satanic Verses. So let me explain a few simple things. I am accused of having “admitted” that the book is a direct attack on Islam. I have admitted no such thing, and deny it strongly.
… I have tried to offer my view of the phenomenon of revelation and the birth of a great world religion; my view is that of a secular man for whom Islamic culture has been of central importance all his life.
Can the finance ministry really be saying that it is no longer permissible, in modern, supposedly secular India, for literature to treat such themes? If so, things are more serious than I had believed. From where I sit, Mr Gandhi, it looks very much as if your government has become unable or unwilling to resist pressure from more or less any extremist religious grouping; that, in short, it’s the fundamentalists who now control the political agenda.
You know, as I know, that Mr Shahabuddin, Mr Khurshid Alam Khan and their allies don’t really care about my novel. The real issue is the Muslim vote.
I deeply resent my book being used as a political football; what should matter to you more than my resentment is that you come out of this looking not only Philistine and anti-democratic but opportunistic.
Mr Prime Minister, I can’t bring myself to address finance ministries about literature. In my view, this is now a matter between you and me. I ask you this question: What sort of India do you wish to govern? Is it to be an open or a repressive society?
Your action in the matter of The Satanic Verses will be an important indicator for many people around the world. If you confirm the ban, I’m afraid I, and many others, will have to assume the worst. If, on the other hand, you should admit your government’s error and move swiftly to correct it, I will be the first to applaud your honourable deed.
Friday, January 20, 2012
You Get what you Give...
This is a true story that had happened in 1892 at Stanford University.
Its moral will always be relevant.
A young, 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. A friend and he decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.
They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital. A deal was struck. And the boys began to work to make the concert a success.
The big day arrived. Paderewski performed at Stanford. But unfortunately, they had not managed to sell enough tickets. The total collection was only $1600.
Disappointed, they went to Paderewski and explained their plight. They gave him the entire $1600, plus a cheque for the balance $400. They promised to honour the cheque soonest possible.
"No." said Paderewski. "This is not acceptable." He tore up the cheque, returned the $1600 and told the two boys "Here's the $1600. Please deduct whatever expenses you have incurred. Keep the money you need for your fees. And just give me whatever is left" The boys were surprised, and thanked him profusely.
It was a small act of kindness. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being. Why should he help two people he did not even know? We all come across situations like these in our lives. And most of us only think "If I help them, what would happen to me?" The truly great people think, "If I don't help them, what will happen to them?" They don't do it expecting something in return.
They do it because they feel it's the right thing to do.
Paderewski later went on to become the Prime Minister of Poland. He was a great leader, but unfortunately when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were over 1.5 million people starving in his country, and no money to feed them.
Paderewski did not know where to turn for help. He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration for help.
The head there was a man called Herbert Hoover - who later went on to become the US President. Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of food grains to feed the starving Polish people. A calamity was averted.
Paderewski was relieved. He decided to go across to meet Hoover and personally thank him. When Paderewski began to thank Hoover for his noble gesture, Hoover quickly interjected and said, "You shouldn't be thanking me Mr. Prime Minister.
You may not remember this, but several years ago, you helped two young students go through college in the US. I was one of them."
The world is a wonderful place.
What goes around comes around!
Sometimes we notice it, sometimes we don't !!!
Its moral will always be relevant.
A young, 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. A friend and he decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education.
They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a guaranteed fee of $2000 for the piano recital. A deal was struck. And the boys began to work to make the concert a success.
The big day arrived. Paderewski performed at Stanford. But unfortunately, they had not managed to sell enough tickets. The total collection was only $1600.
Disappointed, they went to Paderewski and explained their plight. They gave him the entire $1600, plus a cheque for the balance $400. They promised to honour the cheque soonest possible.
"No." said Paderewski. "This is not acceptable." He tore up the cheque, returned the $1600 and told the two boys "Here's the $1600. Please deduct whatever expenses you have incurred. Keep the money you need for your fees. And just give me whatever is left" The boys were surprised, and thanked him profusely.
It was a small act of kindness. But it clearly marked out Paderewski as a great human being. Why should he help two people he did not even know? We all come across situations like these in our lives. And most of us only think "If I help them, what would happen to me?" The truly great people think, "If I don't help them, what will happen to them?" They don't do it expecting something in return.
They do it because they feel it's the right thing to do.
Paderewski later went on to become the Prime Minister of Poland. He was a great leader, but unfortunately when the World War began, Poland was ravaged. There were over 1.5 million people starving in his country, and no money to feed them.
Paderewski did not know where to turn for help. He reached out to the US Food and Relief Administration for help.
The head there was a man called Herbert Hoover - who later went on to become the US President. Hoover agreed to help and quickly shipped tons of food grains to feed the starving Polish people. A calamity was averted.
Paderewski was relieved. He decided to go across to meet Hoover and personally thank him. When Paderewski began to thank Hoover for his noble gesture, Hoover quickly interjected and said, "You shouldn't be thanking me Mr. Prime Minister.
You may not remember this, but several years ago, you helped two young students go through college in the US. I was one of them."
The world is a wonderful place.
What goes around comes around!
Sometimes we notice it, sometimes we don't !!!
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Taxi-refusal score: 26 out of 35
Taxi-refusal score: 26 out of 35
They dare you to complain More misses than hits in taxi hunt
by TAMAGHNA BANERJEE, SREECHETA DAS AND ZEESHAN JAWED,
The Telegraph (Metro), Calcutta, January 19 , 2012
If you have never faced taxi refusal, chances are you have never tried hailing one in Calcutta.
An ongoing campaign by Lalbazar to rein in the incorrigibly rude Calcutta cabbie by posting plainclothes cops posing as passengers in parts of the city has barely skimmed the surface of what is now a badge of notoriety for this city.
To know how rampant the taxi-refusal menace is, a three-member Metro team went around town between 7.30 and 9 on Tuesday evening looking for rides to and from some prominent destinations. Of the 35 taxis we approached, as many as 26 refused to drive us to our destinations — either without giving any reason or after demanding twice the fare. A few snapshots from our close encounters with the Calcutta cabbie.
Place: Esplanade
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: (Thinks for a moment) I will go if you pay the up and down fare.
Metro: But why should I pay you so much?
Driver: Because I won’t get any return passenger. Move aside if you can’t pay.
Taxi speeds away
Taxi No: WB04D 2354
Place: In front of Metro cinema on JL Nehru Road
Destination: Behala
Driver: I need Rs 50 more than the meter reading.
Metro: I will pay by the meter.
Driver: Okay, pay me Rs 30 extra.
Metro: No, I won’t pay more than the actual fare.
Driver: Then you stay right here.
Taxi leaves
Taxi No: WB04D 9592
Place: The JL Nehru Road-Lindsay Street crossing
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: I won’t go by the meter, pay me Rs 450.
Metro: But the fare is hardly Rs 170 from here.
Driver: The route is full of traffic snarls and I will have to return empty. Hence the extra fare.
Metro: I will complain to the police.
Driver (Starts laughing and points to number plate) That is the taxi number. Note it down and do whatever you want to.
Taxi No: WB04F 4460
Place: Same as above. We approach the second taxi in the queue.
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: If the taxi ahead of mine doesn’t go, I can’t.
He gets off the car and shares a laugh with the other driver
Metro: What is your name and the number of your taxi?
Driver: Take down the number….There is a sergeant at the Esplanade crossing. You can go and complain to him.
Taxi No: WB04C 0125
Place: Park Street-JL Nehru Road crossing
Destination: Kasba
Metro: Will you go?
Driver: Doesn’t say anything; shakes his head and looks the other way. On seeing Metro approach a sergeant standing nearby, he revs up and speeds away towards The Park
Taxi no: WB04E 1346
Place: In front of The Park, Park Street
Destination: Kasba
Driver: Where in Kasba? Near the Bypass?
Metro: No, Rathtala, near Bijon Setu.
Driver: Okay, get in, but I will take the Bypass.
Metro: Why should I travel so much? It is a shorter route via Gariahat.
Driver: Then I won’t go.
Taxi No: WB04C 6744
Place: In front of Music World, Park Street
Destination: Gariahat
Driver: I won’t go that way.
Metro: But you are supposed to take passengers wherever they need to go at any time of day.
Driver: Don’t irritate me, find another taxi.
Taxi No: WB04B 2315
Place: In front of Olypub, Park Street
Destination: Joka
Driver: I can go till Taratala, you take another taxi from there.
Metro: You are supposed to take me wherever I want to go.
Driver: Keep standing here. No taxi will take you till Joka.
Taxi No: WB04A 5607
Place: In front of St. Xavier’s College, Park Street
Destination: Behala
Driver: Behala Chowrasta?
Metro: No, near Behala Tram Depot.
Driver: That will be Rs 300.
Metro: Why? It is more than double the fare.
Driver: Sit if you can pay or walk.
Two girls approach the taxi for a ride till Jadavpur. The driver demands Rs 300, the girls agree.
Taxi No: WB04E 6462
Place: Deshapriya Park
Destination: Nagerbazar
Driver: I won’t go.
Metro: Why?
Driver: Because I am going home now.
Metro: But you aren’t going anywhere, you are looking for passengers!
Driver: My wish, I will go when I want to.
Taxi No: WB04E 8674
Place: Rashbehari crossing
Destination: Shyambazar
Driver: I will take you there if you pay Rs 350.
Metro: But why so much extra?
Driver: Are you new to the city? This is the rule at night.
Metro: Maybe you don’t know the rules?
Driver: Damn the rules! Pay extra or don’t waste my time.
Taxi No: WB04B 2466
Place: In front of SSKM Hospital
Destination: Kankurgachhi
Driver: We will take the Bypass, right?
Metro: Why? We will go through Sealdah.
Driver: You will go by the meter, you will not take the Bypass. Do you expect everything to happen your way?
Grumbles and drives away
Taxi No: WB04A 4660
Place: In front of Rabindra Sadan Metro station
Destination: Howrah
Driver: That will be Rs 100 extra.
Metro: But why? It is not even 9pm.
Driver: Okay, give me Rs 50 extra.
Metro: I will pay only the legitimate fare.
Driver smirks and moves away
Taxi No: WB04E 9447
Place: Chandni Chowk
Destination: Salt Lake
Driver: Where in Salt Lake? Near City Centre?
Metro: No, I will get off at PNB.
Driver: Then I won’t go, try someone else.
Taxi No: WB25A 1302
Place: Government Place North
Destination: Hospital on the Bypass
Driver: Waves his hand to say no and parks taxi at a distance
Taxi No: WB04E 0116
Place: Mission Row-Bentinck Street crossing
Destination: Bypass
Driver: Slows down, cranes his neck to hear where we want to go and speeds away, not bothering to reply
Taxi No: WB04E 9319
Place: Ganesh Chandra Avenue
Destination: Salt Lake Karunamoyee
Driver: I won’t go that side, I will go to Behala.
Accelerates and drives away
Taxi No: WB04D 0260
They dare you to complain More misses than hits in taxi hunt
by TAMAGHNA BANERJEE, SREECHETA DAS AND ZEESHAN JAWED,
The Telegraph (Metro), Calcutta, January 19 , 2012
If you have never faced taxi refusal, chances are you have never tried hailing one in Calcutta.
An ongoing campaign by Lalbazar to rein in the incorrigibly rude Calcutta cabbie by posting plainclothes cops posing as passengers in parts of the city has barely skimmed the surface of what is now a badge of notoriety for this city.
To know how rampant the taxi-refusal menace is, a three-member Metro team went around town between 7.30 and 9 on Tuesday evening looking for rides to and from some prominent destinations. Of the 35 taxis we approached, as many as 26 refused to drive us to our destinations — either without giving any reason or after demanding twice the fare. A few snapshots from our close encounters with the Calcutta cabbie.
Place: Esplanade
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: (Thinks for a moment) I will go if you pay the up and down fare.
Metro: But why should I pay you so much?
Driver: Because I won’t get any return passenger. Move aside if you can’t pay.
Taxi speeds away
Taxi No: WB04D 2354
Place: In front of Metro cinema on JL Nehru Road
Destination: Behala
Driver: I need Rs 50 more than the meter reading.
Metro: I will pay by the meter.
Driver: Okay, pay me Rs 30 extra.
Metro: No, I won’t pay more than the actual fare.
Driver: Then you stay right here.
Taxi leaves
Taxi No: WB04D 9592
Place: The JL Nehru Road-Lindsay Street crossing
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: I won’t go by the meter, pay me Rs 450.
Metro: But the fare is hardly Rs 170 from here.
Driver: The route is full of traffic snarls and I will have to return empty. Hence the extra fare.
Metro: I will complain to the police.
Driver (Starts laughing and points to number plate) That is the taxi number. Note it down and do whatever you want to.
Taxi No: WB04F 4460
Place: Same as above. We approach the second taxi in the queue.
Destination: Thakurpukur
Driver: If the taxi ahead of mine doesn’t go, I can’t.
He gets off the car and shares a laugh with the other driver
Metro: What is your name and the number of your taxi?
Driver: Take down the number….There is a sergeant at the Esplanade crossing. You can go and complain to him.
Taxi No: WB04C 0125
Place: Park Street-JL Nehru Road crossing
Destination: Kasba
Metro: Will you go?
Driver: Doesn’t say anything; shakes his head and looks the other way. On seeing Metro approach a sergeant standing nearby, he revs up and speeds away towards The Park
Taxi no: WB04E 1346
Place: In front of The Park, Park Street
Destination: Kasba
Driver: Where in Kasba? Near the Bypass?
Metro: No, Rathtala, near Bijon Setu.
Driver: Okay, get in, but I will take the Bypass.
Metro: Why should I travel so much? It is a shorter route via Gariahat.
Driver: Then I won’t go.
Taxi No: WB04C 6744
Place: In front of Music World, Park Street
Destination: Gariahat
Driver: I won’t go that way.
Metro: But you are supposed to take passengers wherever they need to go at any time of day.
Driver: Don’t irritate me, find another taxi.
Taxi No: WB04B 2315
Place: In front of Olypub, Park Street
Destination: Joka
Driver: I can go till Taratala, you take another taxi from there.
Metro: You are supposed to take me wherever I want to go.
Driver: Keep standing here. No taxi will take you till Joka.
Taxi No: WB04A 5607
Place: In front of St. Xavier’s College, Park Street
Destination: Behala
Driver: Behala Chowrasta?
Metro: No, near Behala Tram Depot.
Driver: That will be Rs 300.
Metro: Why? It is more than double the fare.
Driver: Sit if you can pay or walk.
Two girls approach the taxi for a ride till Jadavpur. The driver demands Rs 300, the girls agree.
Taxi No: WB04E 6462
Place: Deshapriya Park
Destination: Nagerbazar
Driver: I won’t go.
Metro: Why?
Driver: Because I am going home now.
Metro: But you aren’t going anywhere, you are looking for passengers!
Driver: My wish, I will go when I want to.
Taxi No: WB04E 8674
Place: Rashbehari crossing
Destination: Shyambazar
Driver: I will take you there if you pay Rs 350.
Metro: But why so much extra?
Driver: Are you new to the city? This is the rule at night.
Metro: Maybe you don’t know the rules?
Driver: Damn the rules! Pay extra or don’t waste my time.
Taxi No: WB04B 2466
Place: In front of SSKM Hospital
Destination: Kankurgachhi
Driver: We will take the Bypass, right?
Metro: Why? We will go through Sealdah.
Driver: You will go by the meter, you will not take the Bypass. Do you expect everything to happen your way?
Grumbles and drives away
Taxi No: WB04A 4660
Place: In front of Rabindra Sadan Metro station
Destination: Howrah
Driver: That will be Rs 100 extra.
Metro: But why? It is not even 9pm.
Driver: Okay, give me Rs 50 extra.
Metro: I will pay only the legitimate fare.
Driver smirks and moves away
Taxi No: WB04E 9447
Place: Chandni Chowk
Destination: Salt Lake
Driver: Where in Salt Lake? Near City Centre?
Metro: No, I will get off at PNB.
Driver: Then I won’t go, try someone else.
Taxi No: WB25A 1302
Place: Government Place North
Destination: Hospital on the Bypass
Driver: Waves his hand to say no and parks taxi at a distance
Taxi No: WB04E 0116
Place: Mission Row-Bentinck Street crossing
Destination: Bypass
Driver: Slows down, cranes his neck to hear where we want to go and speeds away, not bothering to reply
Taxi No: WB04E 9319
Place: Ganesh Chandra Avenue
Destination: Salt Lake Karunamoyee
Driver: I won’t go that side, I will go to Behala.
Accelerates and drives away
Taxi No: WB04D 0260
Gujarat moves SC over Lokayukta ruling by HC
New Delhi, Jan 19 (PTI): The Gujarat Government on Thursday approached the Supreme Court challenging a High Court order upholding the governor’s decision to appoint Justice R A Mehta as the Lokayukta of the state.
While upholding the appointment of retired judge Mehta as the Lokayukta, Justice VM Sahai of the high court had said that Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s “pranks” had sparked a “constitutional mini crisis”.
Justice Sahai, who was hearing the petition against Justice Mehta’s appointment after a two-member bench came out with a split opinion on October 11, said Modi's ”questionable” conduct of “stonewalling” the appointment threatened the rule of law.
There was no good reason to reject the name of Justice Mehta once the Chief Justice had overturned the objections of the Chief Minister, he said.
Modi had insisted that Justice J R Vora be appointed as Lokayukta but the Chief Justice had pointed out that the judge had been appointed as the Director of the Gujarat State Judicial Academy. If the Chief Minister's choice had been accepted, it would have set a “pernicious trend” and would have propitiated the public functionaries who were likely to fall within the scanner of Lokayukta and destroyed the integrity of the institution as envisaged, Justice Sahai said.
Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal had appointed Justice Mehta to the post of Lokayukta on August 25. The post had been lying vacant for the last eight years.
While upholding the appointment of retired judge Mehta as the Lokayukta, Justice VM Sahai of the high court had said that Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s “pranks” had sparked a “constitutional mini crisis”.
Justice Sahai, who was hearing the petition against Justice Mehta’s appointment after a two-member bench came out with a split opinion on October 11, said Modi's ”questionable” conduct of “stonewalling” the appointment threatened the rule of law.
There was no good reason to reject the name of Justice Mehta once the Chief Justice had overturned the objections of the Chief Minister, he said.
Modi had insisted that Justice J R Vora be appointed as Lokayukta but the Chief Justice had pointed out that the judge had been appointed as the Director of the Gujarat State Judicial Academy. If the Chief Minister's choice had been accepted, it would have set a “pernicious trend” and would have propitiated the public functionaries who were likely to fall within the scanner of Lokayukta and destroyed the integrity of the institution as envisaged, Justice Sahai said.
Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal had appointed Justice Mehta to the post of Lokayukta on August 25. The post had been lying vacant for the last eight years.
Home beckons Japan war martyrs
Japanese team arrives in Guwahati to exhume soldiers & take them back
The Telegraph, Calcutta, January 19 , 2012
Guwahati, Jan. 18: A Japanese team today stood in Gauhati War Cemetery trying to exhume the remains of 11 compatriot soldiers who were killed and buried in this foreign land during World War II over 60 years ago.
If and when they find the remains, they will return home, conduct their last rites and give the soldiers their final resting ground.
“According to our records, the remains of the soldiers were buried here in wooden boxes but we have not found any remains till now. If we find anything we have been instructed to take them back to Japan for rituals. Digging is not complete and will continue tomorrow,” a Japanese team member said at the cemetery, which was set up by Commonwealth War Graves Commission during World War II.
The team comprised Ken Miyashita, deputy director of office of foreign affairs, planning division of War Victim’s Relief Social Welfare and War Victim’s Relief Bureau, ministry of health, labour and welfare of Japan, Kiju Matsubayashi, first secretary of embassy of Japan in India and Masahiro Takeda of the planning division of War Victim’s Relief Bureau.
The team reached here yesterday and will stay here till January 23 to carry out research and forensic examinations of the remains, if required.
None of the team members spoke English and communicated only through an interpreter, who explained that the officials were unwilling to speak to the media.
That left a lot of questions unanswered.
No one, for instance, could explain why the Japanese government wants to exhume the remains of the soldiers over 60 years after they were buried.
The 11 graves dug out today going by the epitaphs included those of 10 soldiers and a lance corporal of the Japanese forces who had died during World War II from 1939 to 1945. Hachivetsuyoshi (buried in 1944), Urata Yotaka (1944), Ishiwara Hiroya, Shotasabaro (1944), Ikdimiraisao (1944), Kito Zwao (1944), Komatsutomoshige (1944), Morata Doshu (1944), Yamado Kesakti (1941), Okamoto (1945) and Miyata Kotsuo (lance corporal), buried in 1944, were on the officials’ list.
Most of these soldiers must have been involved in the World War II’s “China-Burma-India theatre”, since 1944 saw the battle of Kohima and the battle of Imphal, two of the major battles in the region.
The Japanese team reached here yesterday on the exhumation mission following a request from the Japanese government to New Delhi.
The state home department received a letter on December 14 last year from the ministry of external affairs and the Japanese embassy seeking help for carry out the exhumation and examination of the remains.
The graves were dug in the presence of the district magistrate, forensic experts and an official from the state archaeology department. When asked if they would carry the soil from the graves, the team said, “We have no such instructions.”
According to the regional manager of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Salew Pfotte, there are 486 graves in the Gauhati War Cemetery, of soldiers belonging to the UK, Japan, China, besides 18 unknown soldiers.
The cemetery was established during World War II for burial of soldiers brought from various military hospitals in the pre-Independence eastern region, including Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Later, other coffins were brought in by the Army Graves Service from Amaribari Military Cemetery, Sylhet Military Cemetery, Mohachara Cemetery, Nowgong Civil Cemetery and Gauhati Civil Cemetery, where permanent maintenance of bodies could not be assured.
Coffins were also brought to the cemetery from isolated sites in the Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) and from civil cemeteries in Badarpur, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Dhubri, Dibrugarh, Dinjan, Katapahar, Lebong, Lumding, Shillong and Silchar, in 1952, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The Telegraph, Calcutta, January 19 , 2012
Guwahati, Jan. 18: A Japanese team today stood in Gauhati War Cemetery trying to exhume the remains of 11 compatriot soldiers who were killed and buried in this foreign land during World War II over 60 years ago.
If and when they find the remains, they will return home, conduct their last rites and give the soldiers their final resting ground.
“According to our records, the remains of the soldiers were buried here in wooden boxes but we have not found any remains till now. If we find anything we have been instructed to take them back to Japan for rituals. Digging is not complete and will continue tomorrow,” a Japanese team member said at the cemetery, which was set up by Commonwealth War Graves Commission during World War II.
The team comprised Ken Miyashita, deputy director of office of foreign affairs, planning division of War Victim’s Relief Social Welfare and War Victim’s Relief Bureau, ministry of health, labour and welfare of Japan, Kiju Matsubayashi, first secretary of embassy of Japan in India and Masahiro Takeda of the planning division of War Victim’s Relief Bureau.
The team reached here yesterday and will stay here till January 23 to carry out research and forensic examinations of the remains, if required.
None of the team members spoke English and communicated only through an interpreter, who explained that the officials were unwilling to speak to the media.
That left a lot of questions unanswered.
No one, for instance, could explain why the Japanese government wants to exhume the remains of the soldiers over 60 years after they were buried.
The 11 graves dug out today going by the epitaphs included those of 10 soldiers and a lance corporal of the Japanese forces who had died during World War II from 1939 to 1945. Hachivetsuyoshi (buried in 1944), Urata Yotaka (1944), Ishiwara Hiroya, Shotasabaro (1944), Ikdimiraisao (1944), Kito Zwao (1944), Komatsutomoshige (1944), Morata Doshu (1944), Yamado Kesakti (1941), Okamoto (1945) and Miyata Kotsuo (lance corporal), buried in 1944, were on the officials’ list.
Most of these soldiers must have been involved in the World War II’s “China-Burma-India theatre”, since 1944 saw the battle of Kohima and the battle of Imphal, two of the major battles in the region.
The Japanese team reached here yesterday on the exhumation mission following a request from the Japanese government to New Delhi.
The state home department received a letter on December 14 last year from the ministry of external affairs and the Japanese embassy seeking help for carry out the exhumation and examination of the remains.
The graves were dug in the presence of the district magistrate, forensic experts and an official from the state archaeology department. When asked if they would carry the soil from the graves, the team said, “We have no such instructions.”
According to the regional manager of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Salew Pfotte, there are 486 graves in the Gauhati War Cemetery, of soldiers belonging to the UK, Japan, China, besides 18 unknown soldiers.
The cemetery was established during World War II for burial of soldiers brought from various military hospitals in the pre-Independence eastern region, including Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Later, other coffins were brought in by the Army Graves Service from Amaribari Military Cemetery, Sylhet Military Cemetery, Mohachara Cemetery, Nowgong Civil Cemetery and Gauhati Civil Cemetery, where permanent maintenance of bodies could not be assured.
Coffins were also brought to the cemetery from isolated sites in the Lushai Hills (now Mizoram) and from civil cemeteries in Badarpur, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Dhubri, Dibrugarh, Dinjan, Katapahar, Lebong, Lumding, Shillong and Silchar, in 1952, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Monday, January 16, 2012
SINNERS AS LAMENTERS - What was the PM doing at the Indian Science Congress?
Ashok Mitra, The Telegraph, Calcutta, January 16 , 2012
The Indian Science Congress had its annual session in Bhubaneswar as the old year was ending. The prime minister was there; India, he was heard lamenting, lagged way behind China in the pursuit of scientific and technological development. His comment has diverse implications.
Comparisons are supposed to be invidious. Politicians in, or aspiring to, power nonetheless find it difficult not to succumb to the weakness. They dearly love their people to rouse the latent animal spirit and try harder so as to win greater laurels for the nation in different spheres. This, in a way, is also the mantra of the market. President Obama wants American children to concentrate on their studies in order that they might succeed against competition from Chinese and Indian students. Our prime minister does not ask our scientists to do better than their American counterparts; that will be lèse majesté. But it is all right for him to refer to China: is it not a matter of shame we should fall behind China in the field of science? Something has to be done about it.
The more squeamish ones may not feel comfortable with either the propriety or the aesthetics of the prime minister’s dragging in a neighbouring country when his overt concern is over what is happening or not happening in our own midst. Values and systems differ between countries, circumstances vary; comparing dissimilar categories, it will therefore be suggested, is neither here nor there. But leave that issue aside. The more important thing surely is to unravel the factors underlying the relative lacklustreness of scientific achievements in India. We need not travel far, nor does the prime minister, in this quest. One of the possible reasons for our backwardness is staring glaringly at our face.
Pray, why was the prime minister at the Science Congress, what earthly business did he have there? An annual session of the Science Congress, one would have thought, is an intensely internal affair of the scientists, where they assemble to talk shop, that is, discuss themes and puzzles that challenge them. It provides them a forum for exchanging, in their own code and lingua franca, thoughts and ideas. Instead, the Indian Science Congress, like several similar other congregations of the academia and the cognoscenti, has increasingly assumed the character of a jamboree.
The Bhubaneswar session, for instance, was reportedly attended by, hold your breath, as many as 16,000 delegates. If true, nothing could be more grotesque. A fair number of this crowd, it is worth suspecting, had perhaps not even the remotest connection with science and technology, quite a few of them were drawn in the manner of tourists, or persuaded to be there as tourist attraction. Those attending included two Nobel laureates whose spheres of interests are quite some distance from science and technology. It was no Science Congress, but a public-relations event.
Besides, once a technical concourse assumes the features of a carnival, anything goes. It does not take long for a carnival to turn into a racket either. The atmosphere gets spoiled, scientific pursuit tends to lose its focus, genuine scientists begin to lose ground to hucksters, the inevitable consequence is a pall of shadow over the quality of scientific research, achievements shrivel.
Such intrusion of waffle has a bit of ancient history. Way back in the 1930s, the Indian National Congress was the most formidable platform from where nationalist leaders would spit fire. Most of it was pure froth. But, in the mêlée, Jawaharlal Nehru stood out for the kind of things he said and the manner he said them. He did not talk the diction of a run-of-the-mill politician. He sounded rational, extolled the scientific spirit and gave evidence of an earnestness to harness the wonders of science for the social and economic progress of a future India. The Indian scientific community was bowled over. Here was the man of destiny for them, he was bound to understand the problems confronting science and scientists in the country about to see the dawn of freedom. The nationalist lobby in the Science Congress moved fast. Nehru, no scientist by any definition, was elected president of the Indian Science Congress. He made a beautiful oration, at the annual session, which was on schedule, but whether his imposture served the cause of either science or India remains an open question.
Those who sponsored him knew what they were doing though. Nehru was the future, he was soon going to take over the governance of the country. His patronage would mean access to funds and an escape route from encountering bureaucratic hurdles. In many respects, these enthusiasts were dead right. Without Nehru as prime minister, it would have been most improbable for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the whole chain of national science laboratories, or the atomic energy department to get established that quickly. But patronage, particularly where the milieu is overwhelmingly feudal, a written constitution with democratic pretensions notwithstanding, has other fallouts. It leads to cronyism, a natural enemy of rationality and, in the long range, a corrupting influence vitiating the system.
It also means subtle, and not so subtle, imprest of the government’s priorities on the mindset of the scientific community. The concept of tied grants seeks to attain sovereign power. Funds flow for scientific investigations, but funds flow relatively more generously to areas where the government is intensely desirous of a scientific or technological breakthrough for purposes of the State, not so much for purposes of science.
The government is in a hurry. It wants scientists to deliver, pronto, an invention or a product or a datum which will have immediate application in military strategy or the making of foreign policy. The emphasis in the allocation of funds accordingly develops a built-in bias. For instance, the overwhelming accent in nuclear research in the country in the immediate past few decades has been more specifically on the development of delivery mechanisms. This has affected research all the way down the academic stream, including re-drafting of courses, syllabi.
In any event, in the frenzy of achieving scientific and technological breakthroughs in a fiercely combative global framework, the tendency grows to dub those who love to stick to basic research as idlers, dreamers or lotus-eaters. That is precisely it. Science advances because individuals — or at most a close group of individuals — while away time to think and dream and speculate. They play with puzzles in their mind. With some puzzles, they reach a dead end. They do not, however, like to give up. They weave another puzzle and keep toying with solutions.
There is a huge waste of resources involved, resources that are a burden on society, but perchance if a magic result comes up, the face of human civilization can get changed. This is how science has progressed past the citadels of history. There is enormous outlay in terms of thought, time, financial resources. All this has to be considered as investment in the cause of science and human progress; waste of this kind is the other name for investment.
All this apart, is it not ironic that so-called received knowledge desists from regarding as waste the continuous piling of nuclear weapons, embodying trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars? The mounting stockpile is judged as indispensable for national security and transcends desiccated cost accounting. The criterion is different for basic research, which is often treated as akin to idling. It tends to be forgotten that had not one or two odd scientists once upon a time indulged in idle speculation over the mysteries of basic particles, there would have been no ushering in of the nuclear era, and the luscious enterprise of nuclear weaponry would not have seen the light of day.
The Republic of India has been sucked into the nuclear delirium. The State’s priorities have become priorities of the scientific community. It is not an unfair question to raise whether this has not stunted the growth of science in the country. Politicians hanging about in academic gatherings, where the agenda ought to be severely scholastic, are no help to the advancement of science. The prime minister was sorrowful over the state of science and technology in the country. He was actually incriminating himself and his tribe. They themselves are the prime sinners.
The Indian Science Congress had its annual session in Bhubaneswar as the old year was ending. The prime minister was there; India, he was heard lamenting, lagged way behind China in the pursuit of scientific and technological development. His comment has diverse implications.
Comparisons are supposed to be invidious. Politicians in, or aspiring to, power nonetheless find it difficult not to succumb to the weakness. They dearly love their people to rouse the latent animal spirit and try harder so as to win greater laurels for the nation in different spheres. This, in a way, is also the mantra of the market. President Obama wants American children to concentrate on their studies in order that they might succeed against competition from Chinese and Indian students. Our prime minister does not ask our scientists to do better than their American counterparts; that will be lèse majesté. But it is all right for him to refer to China: is it not a matter of shame we should fall behind China in the field of science? Something has to be done about it.
The more squeamish ones may not feel comfortable with either the propriety or the aesthetics of the prime minister’s dragging in a neighbouring country when his overt concern is over what is happening or not happening in our own midst. Values and systems differ between countries, circumstances vary; comparing dissimilar categories, it will therefore be suggested, is neither here nor there. But leave that issue aside. The more important thing surely is to unravel the factors underlying the relative lacklustreness of scientific achievements in India. We need not travel far, nor does the prime minister, in this quest. One of the possible reasons for our backwardness is staring glaringly at our face.
Pray, why was the prime minister at the Science Congress, what earthly business did he have there? An annual session of the Science Congress, one would have thought, is an intensely internal affair of the scientists, where they assemble to talk shop, that is, discuss themes and puzzles that challenge them. It provides them a forum for exchanging, in their own code and lingua franca, thoughts and ideas. Instead, the Indian Science Congress, like several similar other congregations of the academia and the cognoscenti, has increasingly assumed the character of a jamboree.
The Bhubaneswar session, for instance, was reportedly attended by, hold your breath, as many as 16,000 delegates. If true, nothing could be more grotesque. A fair number of this crowd, it is worth suspecting, had perhaps not even the remotest connection with science and technology, quite a few of them were drawn in the manner of tourists, or persuaded to be there as tourist attraction. Those attending included two Nobel laureates whose spheres of interests are quite some distance from science and technology. It was no Science Congress, but a public-relations event.
Besides, once a technical concourse assumes the features of a carnival, anything goes. It does not take long for a carnival to turn into a racket either. The atmosphere gets spoiled, scientific pursuit tends to lose its focus, genuine scientists begin to lose ground to hucksters, the inevitable consequence is a pall of shadow over the quality of scientific research, achievements shrivel.
Such intrusion of waffle has a bit of ancient history. Way back in the 1930s, the Indian National Congress was the most formidable platform from where nationalist leaders would spit fire. Most of it was pure froth. But, in the mêlée, Jawaharlal Nehru stood out for the kind of things he said and the manner he said them. He did not talk the diction of a run-of-the-mill politician. He sounded rational, extolled the scientific spirit and gave evidence of an earnestness to harness the wonders of science for the social and economic progress of a future India. The Indian scientific community was bowled over. Here was the man of destiny for them, he was bound to understand the problems confronting science and scientists in the country about to see the dawn of freedom. The nationalist lobby in the Science Congress moved fast. Nehru, no scientist by any definition, was elected president of the Indian Science Congress. He made a beautiful oration, at the annual session, which was on schedule, but whether his imposture served the cause of either science or India remains an open question.
Those who sponsored him knew what they were doing though. Nehru was the future, he was soon going to take over the governance of the country. His patronage would mean access to funds and an escape route from encountering bureaucratic hurdles. In many respects, these enthusiasts were dead right. Without Nehru as prime minister, it would have been most improbable for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the whole chain of national science laboratories, or the atomic energy department to get established that quickly. But patronage, particularly where the milieu is overwhelmingly feudal, a written constitution with democratic pretensions notwithstanding, has other fallouts. It leads to cronyism, a natural enemy of rationality and, in the long range, a corrupting influence vitiating the system.
It also means subtle, and not so subtle, imprest of the government’s priorities on the mindset of the scientific community. The concept of tied grants seeks to attain sovereign power. Funds flow for scientific investigations, but funds flow relatively more generously to areas where the government is intensely desirous of a scientific or technological breakthrough for purposes of the State, not so much for purposes of science.
The government is in a hurry. It wants scientists to deliver, pronto, an invention or a product or a datum which will have immediate application in military strategy or the making of foreign policy. The emphasis in the allocation of funds accordingly develops a built-in bias. For instance, the overwhelming accent in nuclear research in the country in the immediate past few decades has been more specifically on the development of delivery mechanisms. This has affected research all the way down the academic stream, including re-drafting of courses, syllabi.
In any event, in the frenzy of achieving scientific and technological breakthroughs in a fiercely combative global framework, the tendency grows to dub those who love to stick to basic research as idlers, dreamers or lotus-eaters. That is precisely it. Science advances because individuals — or at most a close group of individuals — while away time to think and dream and speculate. They play with puzzles in their mind. With some puzzles, they reach a dead end. They do not, however, like to give up. They weave another puzzle and keep toying with solutions.
There is a huge waste of resources involved, resources that are a burden on society, but perchance if a magic result comes up, the face of human civilization can get changed. This is how science has progressed past the citadels of history. There is enormous outlay in terms of thought, time, financial resources. All this has to be considered as investment in the cause of science and human progress; waste of this kind is the other name for investment.
All this apart, is it not ironic that so-called received knowledge desists from regarding as waste the continuous piling of nuclear weapons, embodying trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars? The mounting stockpile is judged as indispensable for national security and transcends desiccated cost accounting. The criterion is different for basic research, which is often treated as akin to idling. It tends to be forgotten that had not one or two odd scientists once upon a time indulged in idle speculation over the mysteries of basic particles, there would have been no ushering in of the nuclear era, and the luscious enterprise of nuclear weaponry would not have seen the light of day.
The Republic of India has been sucked into the nuclear delirium. The State’s priorities have become priorities of the scientific community. It is not an unfair question to raise whether this has not stunted the growth of science in the country. Politicians hanging about in academic gatherings, where the agenda ought to be severely scholastic, are no help to the advancement of science. The prime minister was sorrowful over the state of science and technology in the country. He was actually incriminating himself and his tribe. They themselves are the prime sinners.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
A PRIME MINISTER IN PERIL - Ramachandra Guha
A PRIME MINISTER IN PERIL - From warm welcome to disappointing failure
Ramachandra Guha, TT, December 31 , 2011
Soon after the general elections of 2004, I heard a sociologist and an economist exchange stories about the new prime minister. Back in the early 1990s, the sociologist was asked to write a recommendation for one of Manmohan Singh’s daughters. Since he knew (and admired) her work, he agreed readily. When the young lady’s CV reached him, he found that she had gone to some considerable trouble to hide the fact that her father was finance minister. She was staying with her parents in their large Lutyens bungalow; yet had chosen to use as her mailing address a friend’s flat in East Delhi.
The economist said he had a better story. In the late 1970s, when Manmohan Singh was a secretary in the finance ministry, the two had lunch at the India International Centre. After the meal, the economist asked Singh: “Do you mind if after dropping you at South Block, your car drops me at my office on Ring Road?” “Do you mind if it didn’t?” answered Singh, a brush-off as gentle as has ever been delivered or received.
When he assumed office in 2004, Manmohan Singh was by some distance India’s best educated prime minister. He was the most widely travelled since Jawaharlal Nehru. He was the most honest since Lal Bahadur Shastri. He had a wide range of experience in government, having served as, among other things, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and finance minister.
There were great expectations of Singh as prime minister; few of which have been fulfilled. Those who thought that the co-author (with P.V. Narasimha Rao) of the first generation of economic reforms would further free entrepreneurs from State control have been disappointed. So have those who hoped the experienced administrator would modernize the civil service by encouraging the lateral entry of professionals, those who believed that the former secretary general of the South Commission would adopt a foreign policy independent of Western (more specifically, American) pressures; and most of all, those who imagined that a person of rectitude and personal honesty would promote probity in politics and administration.
This last failure explains, among other things, the appeal of Anna Hazare, a man whose intellectual vision is as confined as Singh’s is large. In the early part of 2011, as the evidence of cabinet collusion in the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams accumulated, the prime minister continued to shield his corrupt ministers. After Anna Hazare’s fasts, a popular, countrywide movement against corruption began to take shape. Singh still would not act. In the popular imagination, the prime minister was now seen as indecisive and self-serving, his fellow septuagenarian, Anna Hazare, as courageous and self-sacrificing. It is a mark of how disappointing Manmohan Singh’s second term has been that it has allowed an authoritarian village reformer — with little understanding of what Mohandas K. Gandhi said, did, or meant — to claim the mantle of the Mahatma.
About 18 months ago, Khushwant Singh wrote that Manmohan Singh was the best prime minister India has had. Khushwant is reliable on some matters: such as the history of the Sikhs, the attractions of Scotch whisky, and the poetry of Muhammed Iqbal. He is a man of enormous charm, with a large fund of good and bad jokes. But in so far as politicians go he has a disastrous track record. He once saw in the ruffian Sanjay Gandhi the redeemer of the nation.
Even at the time, Khushwant’s praise of Manmohan Singh seemed excessive. Now it seems ludicrous. But why has this honest, intelligent, experienced man, whose appointment as prime minister in 2004 was so widely welcomed, been such a disappointment in office? Here are four reasons, roughly in order of importance:
1. His timidity, bordering at times on obsequiousness, towards the president of the Congress. Singh is evidently so grateful to Sonia Gandhi for having made him prime minister that he yields to her on matters which are within his preserve rather than hers — such as the appointment of ministers, governors and ambassadors, and the framing of public policies and laws.
In truth, Sonia Gandhi needs Singh almost as much as he needs her. She did not become prime minister in 2004 because she knew she was plainly unqualified — never having worked in government, how could she conduct cabinet meetings, have official meetings with visiting presidents and prime ministers, participate in international conferences on climate change, and so on? Sonia Gandhi had bestowed on Singh an unexpected gift; however, by accepting it, he had done her a favour too. He should have made more of this reciprocity — by, for example, insisting that incompetent or malevolent ministers be replaced.
2. His timidity in not contesting a Lok Sabha seat. Singh was, by my count, the fifth person to be sworn in as prime minister while in the Rajya Sabha. The other four sought election to the Lower House at an early date. Surely in the 2009 elections, at least, he should have asked for a Lok Sabha seat, from a safe constituency if need be? This is a major source of the prime minister’s weakness, of his inability to assert his authority over the cabinet, or garner respect from the Congress, from its coalition partners, and, perhaps above all, from the Opposition.
3. His lack of judgment when it comes to choosing key advisers. The two principal secretaries in the prime minister’s office have been a notorious intriguer and a Gandhi family loyalist respectively. Unlike their predecessors, neither commands respect within the civil service at large. His two media advisers have been PhD’s turned editorial writers, with little experience of on-the-ground reporting, and scant understanding of the power of television to make and unmake images. A less intellectual media manager might have insisted that the prime minister go out often into the countryside, to meet and mingle with the aam admi.
4. His keenness to win good chits from Western leaders. Singh is reluctant to travel to most states of the Indian Union, but always happy to fly between continents for G-20 meetings and the like. As is well known, the one time he asserted himself was when canvassing for the Indo-US nuclear agreement. This treaty will do little to meet our energy needs in an efficient or sustainable manner. And Indo-US relations were on an even keel anyway. But, as when he told George W. Bush that “the people of India love you”, his campaign for the nuclear deal suggested that for him a good press in the West sometimes mattered more than focused action at home.
In his first term as prime minister, Singh did not notably enhance his reputation; nor, however, did he seriously diminish it. If he had retired from office in 2009, history would have judged him more kindly. If he thought himself able to carry on, then he should have sought election to the Lok Sabha. He did neither — to find his credibility steadily eroding. It was still possible, in the winter of 2010-11, for Singh to have retrieved some lost ground, by sacking Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja as soon as the scale of the scandals they oversaw became evident, and by insisting that the Congress break its ties with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, even if that meant the fall of the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi.
These successive failures signal a character trait that one does not usually associate with upright and intelligent individuals —namely, a rather desperate desire to cling to office, at whatever cost to one’s reputation, one’s party, and one’s nation
Ramachandra Guha, TT, December 31 , 2011
Soon after the general elections of 2004, I heard a sociologist and an economist exchange stories about the new prime minister. Back in the early 1990s, the sociologist was asked to write a recommendation for one of Manmohan Singh’s daughters. Since he knew (and admired) her work, he agreed readily. When the young lady’s CV reached him, he found that she had gone to some considerable trouble to hide the fact that her father was finance minister. She was staying with her parents in their large Lutyens bungalow; yet had chosen to use as her mailing address a friend’s flat in East Delhi.
The economist said he had a better story. In the late 1970s, when Manmohan Singh was a secretary in the finance ministry, the two had lunch at the India International Centre. After the meal, the economist asked Singh: “Do you mind if after dropping you at South Block, your car drops me at my office on Ring Road?” “Do you mind if it didn’t?” answered Singh, a brush-off as gentle as has ever been delivered or received.
When he assumed office in 2004, Manmohan Singh was by some distance India’s best educated prime minister. He was the most widely travelled since Jawaharlal Nehru. He was the most honest since Lal Bahadur Shastri. He had a wide range of experience in government, having served as, among other things, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and finance minister.
There were great expectations of Singh as prime minister; few of which have been fulfilled. Those who thought that the co-author (with P.V. Narasimha Rao) of the first generation of economic reforms would further free entrepreneurs from State control have been disappointed. So have those who hoped the experienced administrator would modernize the civil service by encouraging the lateral entry of professionals, those who believed that the former secretary general of the South Commission would adopt a foreign policy independent of Western (more specifically, American) pressures; and most of all, those who imagined that a person of rectitude and personal honesty would promote probity in politics and administration.
This last failure explains, among other things, the appeal of Anna Hazare, a man whose intellectual vision is as confined as Singh’s is large. In the early part of 2011, as the evidence of cabinet collusion in the Commonwealth Games and 2G scams accumulated, the prime minister continued to shield his corrupt ministers. After Anna Hazare’s fasts, a popular, countrywide movement against corruption began to take shape. Singh still would not act. In the popular imagination, the prime minister was now seen as indecisive and self-serving, his fellow septuagenarian, Anna Hazare, as courageous and self-sacrificing. It is a mark of how disappointing Manmohan Singh’s second term has been that it has allowed an authoritarian village reformer — with little understanding of what Mohandas K. Gandhi said, did, or meant — to claim the mantle of the Mahatma.
About 18 months ago, Khushwant Singh wrote that Manmohan Singh was the best prime minister India has had. Khushwant is reliable on some matters: such as the history of the Sikhs, the attractions of Scotch whisky, and the poetry of Muhammed Iqbal. He is a man of enormous charm, with a large fund of good and bad jokes. But in so far as politicians go he has a disastrous track record. He once saw in the ruffian Sanjay Gandhi the redeemer of the nation.
Even at the time, Khushwant’s praise of Manmohan Singh seemed excessive. Now it seems ludicrous. But why has this honest, intelligent, experienced man, whose appointment as prime minister in 2004 was so widely welcomed, been such a disappointment in office? Here are four reasons, roughly in order of importance:
1. His timidity, bordering at times on obsequiousness, towards the president of the Congress. Singh is evidently so grateful to Sonia Gandhi for having made him prime minister that he yields to her on matters which are within his preserve rather than hers — such as the appointment of ministers, governors and ambassadors, and the framing of public policies and laws.
In truth, Sonia Gandhi needs Singh almost as much as he needs her. She did not become prime minister in 2004 because she knew she was plainly unqualified — never having worked in government, how could she conduct cabinet meetings, have official meetings with visiting presidents and prime ministers, participate in international conferences on climate change, and so on? Sonia Gandhi had bestowed on Singh an unexpected gift; however, by accepting it, he had done her a favour too. He should have made more of this reciprocity — by, for example, insisting that incompetent or malevolent ministers be replaced.
2. His timidity in not contesting a Lok Sabha seat. Singh was, by my count, the fifth person to be sworn in as prime minister while in the Rajya Sabha. The other four sought election to the Lower House at an early date. Surely in the 2009 elections, at least, he should have asked for a Lok Sabha seat, from a safe constituency if need be? This is a major source of the prime minister’s weakness, of his inability to assert his authority over the cabinet, or garner respect from the Congress, from its coalition partners, and, perhaps above all, from the Opposition.
3. His lack of judgment when it comes to choosing key advisers. The two principal secretaries in the prime minister’s office have been a notorious intriguer and a Gandhi family loyalist respectively. Unlike their predecessors, neither commands respect within the civil service at large. His two media advisers have been PhD’s turned editorial writers, with little experience of on-the-ground reporting, and scant understanding of the power of television to make and unmake images. A less intellectual media manager might have insisted that the prime minister go out often into the countryside, to meet and mingle with the aam admi.
4. His keenness to win good chits from Western leaders. Singh is reluctant to travel to most states of the Indian Union, but always happy to fly between continents for G-20 meetings and the like. As is well known, the one time he asserted himself was when canvassing for the Indo-US nuclear agreement. This treaty will do little to meet our energy needs in an efficient or sustainable manner. And Indo-US relations were on an even keel anyway. But, as when he told George W. Bush that “the people of India love you”, his campaign for the nuclear deal suggested that for him a good press in the West sometimes mattered more than focused action at home.
In his first term as prime minister, Singh did not notably enhance his reputation; nor, however, did he seriously diminish it. If he had retired from office in 2009, history would have judged him more kindly. If he thought himself able to carry on, then he should have sought election to the Lok Sabha. He did neither — to find his credibility steadily eroding. It was still possible, in the winter of 2010-11, for Singh to have retrieved some lost ground, by sacking Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja as soon as the scale of the scandals they oversaw became evident, and by insisting that the Congress break its ties with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, even if that meant the fall of the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi.
These successive failures signal a character trait that one does not usually associate with upright and intelligent individuals —namely, a rather desperate desire to cling to office, at whatever cost to one’s reputation, one’s party, and one’s nation
Saturday, January 14, 2012
China's own Twitter 'Sina Weibo'
Press Trust of India, January 12, 2012
Beijing: Notching up the likes of Bill Gates, Tom Cruise, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde and Indian Embassy, China's own Twitter 'Sina Weibo' is gaining popularity world over, having attracted 250 million subscribers.
Sina Weibo has said that it now has about 450,000 users in the United States out of its total of 250 million as of late November.
There is no official record of the nationality of the US users. They could be US citizens, Chinese students or people from other countries, state run China Daily reported.
Its users included philanthropist Bill Gates of Microsoft, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde and actor Tom Cruise, who started using it to step up interaction with Chinese public, the report said.
Lagarde made her Weibo debut in early November, posting her first message which reads: "Hello Sina Weibo, looking forward to sharing updates here."
By the end of the day, Lagarde's account had drawn about 40,000 followers and had more than 1,000 comments. She currently commands 150,000 followers.
Gates is a popular Sina Weibo user, currently with 2.19 million followers.
Recognising Weibo's importance, almost all foreign missions here including the Indian Embassy have started their Weibo tweets to highlight their activities and policies of
their countries.
The site also helped politicians like San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a Chinese-American, to reach Chinese audiences during the recent mayoral elections.
During the election day in November, Lee posted messages calling for support. Later that day the first elected Chinese-American mayor posted to his followers on the site: "Thank you San Francisco!"
Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax, a US-based search engine optimisation firm, said Sina Weibo is following the same development pattern as Twitter, which took about two years to be fully accepted before it became the dominant social media platform it is today.
Weibo's overseas users mostly utilise the service to reach Chinese audiences. And for celebrities, their reason is quite simple: to promote themselves or their programme in China.
China's total Internet users hit 450 million early this year - larger than the whole US population - and that number is expected to grow.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/chinas-own-twitter-weibo-goes-global-gates-cruise-sign-up-166288&cp
Beijing: Notching up the likes of Bill Gates, Tom Cruise, IMF Chief Christine Lagarde and Indian Embassy, China's own Twitter 'Sina Weibo' is gaining popularity world over, having attracted 250 million subscribers.
Sina Weibo has said that it now has about 450,000 users in the United States out of its total of 250 million as of late November.
There is no official record of the nationality of the US users. They could be US citizens, Chinese students or people from other countries, state run China Daily reported.
Its users included philanthropist Bill Gates of Microsoft, International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde and actor Tom Cruise, who started using it to step up interaction with Chinese public, the report said.
Lagarde made her Weibo debut in early November, posting her first message which reads: "Hello Sina Weibo, looking forward to sharing updates here."
By the end of the day, Lagarde's account had drawn about 40,000 followers and had more than 1,000 comments. She currently commands 150,000 followers.
Gates is a popular Sina Weibo user, currently with 2.19 million followers.
Recognising Weibo's importance, almost all foreign missions here including the Indian Embassy have started their Weibo tweets to highlight their activities and policies of
their countries.
The site also helped politicians like San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a Chinese-American, to reach Chinese audiences during the recent mayoral elections.
During the election day in November, Lee posted messages calling for support. Later that day the first elected Chinese-American mayor posted to his followers on the site: "Thank you San Francisco!"
Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax, a US-based search engine optimisation firm, said Sina Weibo is following the same development pattern as Twitter, which took about two years to be fully accepted before it became the dominant social media platform it is today.
Weibo's overseas users mostly utilise the service to reach Chinese audiences. And for celebrities, their reason is quite simple: to promote themselves or their programme in China.
China's total Internet users hit 450 million early this year - larger than the whole US population - and that number is expected to grow.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/chinas-own-twitter-weibo-goes-global-gates-cruise-sign-up-166288&cp
China's total Internet users 450 million - larger than US population
China's total Internet users hit 450 million early this year - larger than the whole US population - and that number is expected to grow.
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/chinas-own-twitter-weibo-goes-global-gates-cruise-sign-up-166288&cp
Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/chinas-own-twitter-weibo-goes-global-gates-cruise-sign-up-166288&cp
Friday, January 13, 2012
Indian bureaucracy worst in Asia, says HK survey report
The Statesman, January 13, 2012
PTI (11 Jan 2012)
SINGAPORE, 11 JAN: Indian bureaucracy is the worst in Asia with a 9.21 rating out of 10, according to a report by a prestigious consulting firm based in Hong Kong.
India fared worse than Vietnam (rated at 8.54), Indonesia (8.37), Philippines (7.57) and China (7.11), said the report by Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd released today.
Singapore remained the best with a rating of 2.25, followed by Hong Kong (3.53), Thailand (5.25) Taiwan (5.57), Japan (5.77), South Korea (5.87) and Malaysia (5.89).
The report said India's inefficient bureaucracy was largely responsible for most of the biggest complaints that business executives have about the country.
The complaints included inadequate infrastructure and corruption, where officials were willing to accept under-the-table payments and companies were tempted to pay to overcome bureaucratic inertia and gain government favours, the report claimed.
The report also highlighted onerous and fickle tax, environmental and other regulations that could make business in India “so frustrating and expensive”.
It said dealing with the court system in India was an unattractive option for companies, and would be best to avoid it.
The bureaucrats were rarely held accountable for wrong decisions and it would be extremely difficult to challenge them when there were disagreements, it said. “This gives them (bureaucrats) terrific powers and could be one of the main reasons why average Indians as well as existing and would-be foreign investors perceive Indian bureaucrats as negatively as they do,” said the report.
But there were plus points when India was compared to countries within the economic development group.
In the 2011-12 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, India ranked behind China but ahead of Russia and Brazil for the burden of government regulations as well as for the burden of Customs procedures. India was also second to Brazil but well ahead of China and Russia for the quality of regulation and supervision of the securities exchange, said the report.
India was also better than Brazil, Russia and China as the fastest place to set up a new business and to deal with construction permits, and was the second fastest place to deal with export and import procedures, the report said.
PTI (11 Jan 2012)
SINGAPORE, 11 JAN: Indian bureaucracy is the worst in Asia with a 9.21 rating out of 10, according to a report by a prestigious consulting firm based in Hong Kong.
India fared worse than Vietnam (rated at 8.54), Indonesia (8.37), Philippines (7.57) and China (7.11), said the report by Political & Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd released today.
Singapore remained the best with a rating of 2.25, followed by Hong Kong (3.53), Thailand (5.25) Taiwan (5.57), Japan (5.77), South Korea (5.87) and Malaysia (5.89).
The report said India's inefficient bureaucracy was largely responsible for most of the biggest complaints that business executives have about the country.
The complaints included inadequate infrastructure and corruption, where officials were willing to accept under-the-table payments and companies were tempted to pay to overcome bureaucratic inertia and gain government favours, the report claimed.
The report also highlighted onerous and fickle tax, environmental and other regulations that could make business in India “so frustrating and expensive”.
It said dealing with the court system in India was an unattractive option for companies, and would be best to avoid it.
The bureaucrats were rarely held accountable for wrong decisions and it would be extremely difficult to challenge them when there were disagreements, it said. “This gives them (bureaucrats) terrific powers and could be one of the main reasons why average Indians as well as existing and would-be foreign investors perceive Indian bureaucrats as negatively as they do,” said the report.
But there were plus points when India was compared to countries within the economic development group.
In the 2011-12 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum, India ranked behind China but ahead of Russia and Brazil for the burden of government regulations as well as for the burden of Customs procedures. India was also second to Brazil but well ahead of China and Russia for the quality of regulation and supervision of the securities exchange, said the report.
India was also better than Brazil, Russia and China as the fastest place to set up a new business and to deal with construction permits, and was the second fastest place to deal with export and import procedures, the report said.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Doomsday Clock Moved to 5 Minutes to Midnight: Focus on Global Warming & Energy
Zachary Shahan, Clean Technica, January 10, 2012
The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic clock focused on how close we are to tremendous global catastrophe… or doomsday, was moved from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight today.
Reasons for Moving the Clock Forward
A handful of reasons were provided for moving the Doomsday Clock’s hands for just the 20th time since it was unveiled in 1947, including increasing worry regarding the original topic of the clock’s concern — nuclear proliferation. One of the growing concerns over the years, however, has been global warming, and our inaction on this topic, combined with some politicians complete rejection of science on this matter, was a key factor in moving the clock forward today.
“The scientists also noted how Republicans seeking the GOP nomination were trying to outdo each other in denying climate science,” The Guardian reports.
“It is five minutes to midnight,” the scientists said. “Two years ago it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed.”
“A cross-cutting issue through the entire discussion is the worrisome trend to reject or diminish the significance of what science says is the characteristic of a problem,” said Robert Socolow of Princeton’s Environmental Institute. “There is a general judgement among us that we need the political leadership to affirm the primacy of science.”
Additionally, the nuclear disasters in Japan last year contributed greatly to the clock’s most recent tick.
“They warned that the Fukushima meltdown once more exposed the dangers of nuclear power – not just because of technology but because of management failures.”
Suffice it to say, we here at CleanTechnica agree with the scientists, and it is largely why we do what we do.
In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel energy and the concerns of nuclear energy, the unsustainable nature of reliance on oil, coal, and other limited resources was also cited. If only we could harness power from the sun, wind, and water….
History of the Doomsday Clock
For those interested in a little more history, the clock was first put into use in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. They have maintained the clock ever since. The clock has ticked forward or backward 20 times in those 65 years. The furthest it’s ever been from midnight was 17 minutes (after the break-up of the Soviet Union 20 years ago) and the closest it’s ever been is 2 minutes from midnight (in 1953, after the US’ and Soviet Union’s testing of their first thermonuclear devices). In 2010, the clock was moved backwards to 6 minutes to midnight out of optimism over global leader’s positions on key issues, but lack of action has led to greater concern.
More history on the Doomsday Clock, including all changes, can be found on Wikipedia, of course.
Source: Clean Technica
The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic clock focused on how close we are to tremendous global catastrophe… or doomsday, was moved from 6 minutes to midnight to 5 minutes to midnight today.
Reasons for Moving the Clock Forward
A handful of reasons were provided for moving the Doomsday Clock’s hands for just the 20th time since it was unveiled in 1947, including increasing worry regarding the original topic of the clock’s concern — nuclear proliferation. One of the growing concerns over the years, however, has been global warming, and our inaction on this topic, combined with some politicians complete rejection of science on this matter, was a key factor in moving the clock forward today.
“The scientists also noted how Republicans seeking the GOP nomination were trying to outdo each other in denying climate science,” The Guardian reports.
“It is five minutes to midnight,” the scientists said. “Two years ago it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed.”
“A cross-cutting issue through the entire discussion is the worrisome trend to reject or diminish the significance of what science says is the characteristic of a problem,” said Robert Socolow of Princeton’s Environmental Institute. “There is a general judgement among us that we need the political leadership to affirm the primacy of science.”
Additionally, the nuclear disasters in Japan last year contributed greatly to the clock’s most recent tick.
“They warned that the Fukushima meltdown once more exposed the dangers of nuclear power – not just because of technology but because of management failures.”
Suffice it to say, we here at CleanTechnica agree with the scientists, and it is largely why we do what we do.
In addition to the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel energy and the concerns of nuclear energy, the unsustainable nature of reliance on oil, coal, and other limited resources was also cited. If only we could harness power from the sun, wind, and water….
History of the Doomsday Clock
For those interested in a little more history, the clock was first put into use in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. They have maintained the clock ever since. The clock has ticked forward or backward 20 times in those 65 years. The furthest it’s ever been from midnight was 17 minutes (after the break-up of the Soviet Union 20 years ago) and the closest it’s ever been is 2 minutes from midnight (in 1953, after the US’ and Soviet Union’s testing of their first thermonuclear devices). In 2010, the clock was moved backwards to 6 minutes to midnight out of optimism over global leader’s positions on key issues, but lack of action has led to greater concern.
More history on the Doomsday Clock, including all changes, can be found on Wikipedia, of course.
Source: Clean Technica
Tears rolled down my eyes when I saw Indian soil: Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad
Srikant Tripathy & Saurabh Sharma, TNN & Agencies | Jan 10, 2012
JAIPUR: They may have been away for generations and grown up thousands of miles away, but it appears that the emotions attached to the country of forefathers gets passed down through the genes and is kept alive through the culture. This was more than evident during Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar's visit to India this week. From a family which had migrated from Bihar, she rose to become the first woman head of the Caribbean nation. In an interview to TOI on Monday, she talks of her roots and deepening the bonds with India. After attending the Pravasi Diwas in Jaipur, she flies to Bihar to visit her ancestral village. She touched the feet of President Pratibha Patil when they met.
Read the TOI interview here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/pravasi-bhartiya-news/Tears-rolled-down-my-eyes-when-I-saw-Indian-soil-Trinidad-and-Tobago-PM-Kamla-Persad/articleshow/11431099.cms
JAIPUR: They may have been away for generations and grown up thousands of miles away, but it appears that the emotions attached to the country of forefathers gets passed down through the genes and is kept alive through the culture. This was more than evident during Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar's visit to India this week. From a family which had migrated from Bihar, she rose to become the first woman head of the Caribbean nation. In an interview to TOI on Monday, she talks of her roots and deepening the bonds with India. After attending the Pravasi Diwas in Jaipur, she flies to Bihar to visit her ancestral village. She touched the feet of President Pratibha Patil when they met.
Read the TOI interview here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/pravasi-bhartiya-news/Tears-rolled-down-my-eyes-when-I-saw-Indian-soil-Trinidad-and-Tobago-PM-Kamla-Persad/articleshow/11431099.cms
70% of milk in Delhi, country is adulterated
TOI, Jan 10, 2012 (Kounteya Sinha, TNN)
NEW DELHI: Beware, your daily glass of good health could actually be doing you harm. As much as 70% of milk samples picked up from the capital by a government agency failed to conform to standards.
Of the 71 samples randomly taken from Delhi for testing by the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), 50 were found to be contaminated with glucose and skim milk powder (SMP), which is usually added to milk in the lean season to enhance volumes.
Elsewhere in the 33 states and UTs study, milk was found adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old dilution with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
Only in Goa and Puducherry did 100% of the samples tested conform to required standards. At the other end were West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Mizoram, where not a single sample tested met the norms.
Other prominent states fared just a shade better. Around 89% of the samples tested from Gujarat, 83% from Jammu & Kashmir, 81% from Punjab, 76% from Rajasthan, 70% from Delhi and Haryana and 65% from Maharashtra failed the test. Around half of the samples from Madhya Pradesh (48%) also met a similar fate.
States with comparatively better results included Kerala where 28% of samples did not conform to the FSSAI standards, Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%) and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%).
The samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states totaling a sample size of 1,791. Just 31.5% of the samples tested (565) conformed to the FSSAI standards while the rest 1,226 (68.4%) failed the test.
A study conducted by Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) across 33 states has found that milk was adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old practice of diluting it with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
These were sent to government laboratories like Department of Food and Drug Testing of Puducherry, Central Food Laboratory in Pune, Food Reasearch and Standardization Laboratory in Ghaziabad, State Public Health Laboratory in Guwahati and Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata, for testing against presence of adulterants like fat, neutralizers, hydrogen peroxide, sugar, starch, glucose, urea, detergent, formalin and vegetable fat.
Detergent was found in 103 samples (8.4%). "This was because milk tanks were not properly washed. Detergents in milk can cause health problems," FSSAI official told TOI. The non-conforming samples in rural areas numbered 381 (31%) out of which 64 (16.7%) were packet milk and 317 (83.2%) were loose samples.
In urban areas, the number of non-confirming samples were 845 (68.9%) out of which 282 (33.3%) were packed and 563 (66.6%) were loose.
The most common adulteration was that of fat and solid not food (SNF), found in 574 (46.8%) of the non-conforming samples. This, scientists say, is because of dilution of milk with water. The second highest parameter of non-conformity was skim milk powder in 548 samples (44.69%) which includes presence of glucose in 477 samples. Glucose could have been added to milk probably to enhance SNF.
The report asked state enforcement authorities to check whether the new FSSAI rules are being complied with. An earlier first-of-its-kind study of milk boiling habits that involved 2,400 women across eight major cities had found that Chandigarh leads the pack in boiling milk, doing it more than three times a day. While 84% women in Kolkata boiled milk for more than five minutes, about 46% of women in Pune preferred to boil milk in high temperatures. The study, by the Indian Medical Academy, said, "About 49% boil milk more than thrice before consumption. Around 56% boil it for more than 5 minutes, and 73% don't stir while boiling," said Dr Pawan Gupta, IMA.
NEW DELHI: Beware, your daily glass of good health could actually be doing you harm. As much as 70% of milk samples picked up from the capital by a government agency failed to conform to standards.
Of the 71 samples randomly taken from Delhi for testing by the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), 50 were found to be contaminated with glucose and skim milk powder (SMP), which is usually added to milk in the lean season to enhance volumes.
Elsewhere in the 33 states and UTs study, milk was found adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old dilution with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
Only in Goa and Puducherry did 100% of the samples tested conform to required standards. At the other end were West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Mizoram, where not a single sample tested met the norms.
Other prominent states fared just a shade better. Around 89% of the samples tested from Gujarat, 83% from Jammu & Kashmir, 81% from Punjab, 76% from Rajasthan, 70% from Delhi and Haryana and 65% from Maharashtra failed the test. Around half of the samples from Madhya Pradesh (48%) also met a similar fate.
States with comparatively better results included Kerala where 28% of samples did not conform to the FSSAI standards, Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%) and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%).
The samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states totaling a sample size of 1,791. Just 31.5% of the samples tested (565) conformed to the FSSAI standards while the rest 1,226 (68.4%) failed the test.
A study conducted by Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) across 33 states has found that milk was adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old practice of diluting it with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
These were sent to government laboratories like Department of Food and Drug Testing of Puducherry, Central Food Laboratory in Pune, Food Reasearch and Standardization Laboratory in Ghaziabad, State Public Health Laboratory in Guwahati and Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata, for testing against presence of adulterants like fat, neutralizers, hydrogen peroxide, sugar, starch, glucose, urea, detergent, formalin and vegetable fat.
Detergent was found in 103 samples (8.4%). "This was because milk tanks were not properly washed. Detergents in milk can cause health problems," FSSAI official told TOI. The non-conforming samples in rural areas numbered 381 (31%) out of which 64 (16.7%) were packet milk and 317 (83.2%) were loose samples.
In urban areas, the number of non-confirming samples were 845 (68.9%) out of which 282 (33.3%) were packed and 563 (66.6%) were loose.
The most common adulteration was that of fat and solid not food (SNF), found in 574 (46.8%) of the non-conforming samples. This, scientists say, is because of dilution of milk with water. The second highest parameter of non-conformity was skim milk powder in 548 samples (44.69%) which includes presence of glucose in 477 samples. Glucose could have been added to milk probably to enhance SNF.
The report asked state enforcement authorities to check whether the new FSSAI rules are being complied with. An earlier first-of-its-kind study of milk boiling habits that involved 2,400 women across eight major cities had found that Chandigarh leads the pack in boiling milk, doing it more than three times a day. While 84% women in Kolkata boiled milk for more than five minutes, about 46% of women in Pune preferred to boil milk in high temperatures. The study, by the Indian Medical Academy, said, "About 49% boil milk more than thrice before consumption. Around 56% boil it for more than 5 minutes, and 73% don't stir while boiling," said Dr Pawan Gupta, IMA.
The 87-crore dalit CM
TOI (IANS) Jan 10, 2012
NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has topped the list of chief ministers in the five election-bound states with maximum assets: worth Rs 87 crore, according to the National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms.
"RTI responses from five states showed Mayawati has the highest assets at Rs.87 crore," said the study. " Chief minister of Manipur Okram Ibobi Singh has the lowest assets worth -- just Rs.6 lakh."
Punjab's Parkash Singh Badal is the only chief minister who has got a criminal case, related to cheating and forgery, against him, said the study. He has assets worth Rs 9 crore.
In comparison, Uttarakhand Chief Minister BC Khanduri has assets worth Rs 1.69 crore and Goa counterpart Digambar Kamat has assets worth Rs 3.2 crore.
All five chief ministers are graduates. Khanduri is a post graduate.
NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has topped the list of chief ministers in the five election-bound states with maximum assets: worth Rs 87 crore, according to the National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms.
"RTI responses from five states showed Mayawati has the highest assets at Rs.87 crore," said the study. " Chief minister of Manipur Okram Ibobi Singh has the lowest assets worth -- just Rs.6 lakh."
Punjab's Parkash Singh Badal is the only chief minister who has got a criminal case, related to cheating and forgery, against him, said the study. He has assets worth Rs 9 crore.
In comparison, Uttarakhand Chief Minister BC Khanduri has assets worth Rs 1.69 crore and Goa counterpart Digambar Kamat has assets worth Rs 3.2 crore.
All five chief ministers are graduates. Khanduri is a post graduate.
Monday, January 09, 2012
Up above the world so high
From The Telegraph 8 Jan 2012
On June 5, 1921, on a windswept plain in Tibet, Lt-Col. Howard Bury, the leader of the Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, had a very unhappy task to perform. He was to preside over the last rites of Dr Alexander Mitchell Kellas, 53, who was the first casualty of the expedition and died before the team could reach the foot of Mount Everest. So, with Bury reading from Corinthians, surrounded by his team of Everest climbers and the Sherpas, Kellas was buried near the Tibetan fortress of Khamba Dzong in the shadow of the three mountains which he alone had climbed — Kangchenjau, Pauhunri and Chomiomo. As the team made its way to the Rongbuk base camp, one of the finest mountaineers of his generation passed into oblivion.
Kellas was no ordinary mountaineer. He was a Scottish doctor of chemistry, an expert in high-altitude physiology and, above all, a Himalayan explorer. He was the first to promulgate the theory that it would be possible to ascent Everest without artificial oxygen in his pioneering paper A consideration of the possibility of ascending Mount Everest. Fifty-eight years later, in 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler proved Kellas right when they made that epic first ascent, the climbers gasping for breath and crawling on all fours along the final summit ridge.
Kellas was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1868 and studied at University College, London. He travelled to Heidelberg, Germany, for his PhD and returned to take up a lectureship at Middlesex Hospital, where he was highly regarded as a chemistry teacher. But his first love remained mountaineering and exploration.
Kellas was reclusive to a fault and wrote very little about his exploits. He undertook eight Himalayan expeditions between 1907 and 1921. Six of them were in Sikkim, where he made the first ascents of Pauhunri (7,128 metres), Chomiomo (6,829 metres), Sentinel Peak (6,470 metres), Langpo (6,950 metres) and Kangchenjau (6,920 metres), assisted solely by Sherpas. On his first Himalayan expedition in 1907, Kellas had hired Swiss guides, but he soon realised he preferred the Sherpas from Darjeeling. “Really, they are the most splendid fellows,” he wrote. “They are strong, good-natured if fairly treated and since they are Buddhists, there is no difficulty about special food for them — a point surely in their favour at high altitudes.” It was primarily due to Kellas’s pioneering efforts that links were formed between British mountaineers and the Sherpas, which became the backbone of all Everest expeditions since 1921.
In 1920, Kellas undertook an expedition to Kamet in Garhwal where, along with Henry Morshead, he tested oxygen equipment at high altitudes in preparation for the first Everest expedition the next year. Kellas would possibly have climbed Kamet had it not been for a porters' rebellion. Morshead later climbed up to 7,650 metres on Everest in 1922 accompanied by Mallory, Norton and Somervell.
In 1921, as a run-up to the Everest expedition, Kellas and a team of Sherpas made an unsuccessful attempt on Kabru (7,338 metres) in the Sikkim Himalayas. Nine days later, a weary Kellas started out on the Everest expedition to Tibet, which would be his last.
Tom Longstaff climbed Trishul (7,120 metres) in 1907 and supposedly held the high altitude record until 1930. But it was later proved by Kellas's biographer Ian Mitchell that the record belonged to Kellas, as Pauhunri, which he climbed in 1911, was eight metres higher than Trishul.
In 1930 the Kangchenjunga expedition led by Gunther Dyrenfurth had named a shapely 6,680-metre peak north of Jonsong as Kellas Peak. This peak, interestingly, is unclimbed till date and in 2009 a team of British mountaineers including Graham Hoyland and George Rodway, were able to reach the Kellas Col at 6,380 metres, where avalanches and crevasses prevented them from making a summit bid.
Kellas has always been overshadowed by the likes of Mallory, Smythe and Shipton, but Everest historian Walt Unsworth in his epic Everest - A Mountaineering History, wrote: "In terms of Himalayan experience he [Kellas] was the greatest of all."
Kellas’s years in anonymity may now end. The story of his life has been documented in Prelude to Everest: Alexander Kellas, Himalayan Mountaineer, by Ian R. Mitchell and George Rodway, published in 2011. It should finally give the explorer his deserving place in the annals of mountaineering.
Sujoy Das (The writer is a Calcutta-based photographer and trekker)
On June 5, 1921, on a windswept plain in Tibet, Lt-Col. Howard Bury, the leader of the Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, had a very unhappy task to perform. He was to preside over the last rites of Dr Alexander Mitchell Kellas, 53, who was the first casualty of the expedition and died before the team could reach the foot of Mount Everest. So, with Bury reading from Corinthians, surrounded by his team of Everest climbers and the Sherpas, Kellas was buried near the Tibetan fortress of Khamba Dzong in the shadow of the three mountains which he alone had climbed — Kangchenjau, Pauhunri and Chomiomo. As the team made its way to the Rongbuk base camp, one of the finest mountaineers of his generation passed into oblivion.
Kellas was no ordinary mountaineer. He was a Scottish doctor of chemistry, an expert in high-altitude physiology and, above all, a Himalayan explorer. He was the first to promulgate the theory that it would be possible to ascent Everest without artificial oxygen in his pioneering paper A consideration of the possibility of ascending Mount Everest. Fifty-eight years later, in 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler proved Kellas right when they made that epic first ascent, the climbers gasping for breath and crawling on all fours along the final summit ridge.
Kellas was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1868 and studied at University College, London. He travelled to Heidelberg, Germany, for his PhD and returned to take up a lectureship at Middlesex Hospital, where he was highly regarded as a chemistry teacher. But his first love remained mountaineering and exploration.
Kellas was reclusive to a fault and wrote very little about his exploits. He undertook eight Himalayan expeditions between 1907 and 1921. Six of them were in Sikkim, where he made the first ascents of Pauhunri (7,128 metres), Chomiomo (6,829 metres), Sentinel Peak (6,470 metres), Langpo (6,950 metres) and Kangchenjau (6,920 metres), assisted solely by Sherpas. On his first Himalayan expedition in 1907, Kellas had hired Swiss guides, but he soon realised he preferred the Sherpas from Darjeeling. “Really, they are the most splendid fellows,” he wrote. “They are strong, good-natured if fairly treated and since they are Buddhists, there is no difficulty about special food for them — a point surely in their favour at high altitudes.” It was primarily due to Kellas’s pioneering efforts that links were formed between British mountaineers and the Sherpas, which became the backbone of all Everest expeditions since 1921.
In 1920, Kellas undertook an expedition to Kamet in Garhwal where, along with Henry Morshead, he tested oxygen equipment at high altitudes in preparation for the first Everest expedition the next year. Kellas would possibly have climbed Kamet had it not been for a porters' rebellion. Morshead later climbed up to 7,650 metres on Everest in 1922 accompanied by Mallory, Norton and Somervell.
In 1921, as a run-up to the Everest expedition, Kellas and a team of Sherpas made an unsuccessful attempt on Kabru (7,338 metres) in the Sikkim Himalayas. Nine days later, a weary Kellas started out on the Everest expedition to Tibet, which would be his last.
Tom Longstaff climbed Trishul (7,120 metres) in 1907 and supposedly held the high altitude record until 1930. But it was later proved by Kellas's biographer Ian Mitchell that the record belonged to Kellas, as Pauhunri, which he climbed in 1911, was eight metres higher than Trishul.
In 1930 the Kangchenjunga expedition led by Gunther Dyrenfurth had named a shapely 6,680-metre peak north of Jonsong as Kellas Peak. This peak, interestingly, is unclimbed till date and in 2009 a team of British mountaineers including Graham Hoyland and George Rodway, were able to reach the Kellas Col at 6,380 metres, where avalanches and crevasses prevented them from making a summit bid.
Kellas has always been overshadowed by the likes of Mallory, Smythe and Shipton, but Everest historian Walt Unsworth in his epic Everest - A Mountaineering History, wrote: "In terms of Himalayan experience he [Kellas] was the greatest of all."
Kellas’s years in anonymity may now end. The story of his life has been documented in Prelude to Everest: Alexander Kellas, Himalayan Mountaineer, by Ian R. Mitchell and George Rodway, published in 2011. It should finally give the explorer his deserving place in the annals of mountaineering.
Sujoy Das (The writer is a Calcutta-based photographer and trekker)
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
LOOMING LARGE - Gentlemen without oxygen
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest By Wade Davis, The Bodley Head, Rs 699
From the outset, the British adopted a proprietory attitude towards Mount Everest, particularly after the Great Trigonometrical Survey revealed it to be the world’s highest peak. This persisted after World War, or the Great War, as Wade Davis — the author of this dense, packed, but fascinating book — insists on calling it. Britain’s successful record of exploration in the 19th century had been challenged by Robert Peary reaching the North Pole (1909) and Roald Amundsen (1911) its opposite. Amundsen’s vastly better organized expedition beat the national hero, Robert Scott, whose incompetent leadership resulted in his death and those of his companions — but who then became a hero in glorious failure. (1912 is the centenary of Scott’s death).
Davis does not make this point, but the iconic figure of George Mallory, whose walk into mountaineering myth with his untrained companion, Sandy Irvine, seems just another glorious failure celebrated for the manly virtues of the English upper-middle class, sought to be inculcated in its single-sex public schools. But Davis is not out to simply recapture an era when exploration was supposedly more “pure” or “untainted” by commercial concerns. He has focused on the first three expeditions — 1921, 1922 and 1924. In his view, the quest for Everest may have begun as a “grand imperial gesture” to redeem the failure to reach the Poles, but it became a national exercise to assert national pride after the carnage of the Western Front.
Of the 26 climbers on the first three expeditions, 20 had seen service in the war. Six had been severely wounded — John de Vars Hazard’s wound had never healed completely, which severely limited his usefulness on the mountain. Others had lost siblings and close friends. Three as army surgeons had had to deal with the horrific consequences of sustained artillery fire and poison gas. Among them, Arthur Wakefield lost his religious faith, while Howard Somervell spent the rest of his life in a mission hospital in South India. To the mountaineers, Davis writes, Everest was “a sentinel in the sky, a place and destination of hope and redemption, a symbol of continuity in a world gone mad”. Davis chooses to begin with the memorial service on Great Gable, for climbers lost in the Great War — ironically on the same day that Mallory and Irvine disappeared — and that sets the tone for the rest of the book.
There may have been a search for some sort of transcendence, but Davis does not neglect the less elevated aspects of the expeditions, relating them to the social milieu, the attitudes and the human frailties of the day. What comes across is just how badly prepared and poorly equipped these expeditions were, for the technical and physical challenges that climbing Everest presented. (The discovery of Mallory’s body in 1999, clad in tweed, wool and hobnailed boots, with a hemp rope around his waist, only underscored this point.) There was a question of whether it was “gentlemanly” to use oxygen, with Arthur Hinks — dominant figure of the Everest Committee, with no climbing experience — arguing against its use. (Mallory eventually came round to its use, and most climbers use it today.) Still worse were the xenophobia and snobbery that deprived George Ingle Finch — arguably the best ice climber of his day — of a place on the final expedition because he was an Australian, outside the public school climbing fraternity, and because of his complicated private life. Climbers like Frank Smythe, one of the great figures of the inter-war period, were left out (he would climb Kamet and re- discover the Valley of Flowers). Men like Harold Raeburn, physically and mentally unfit, were included.
What add both length, but also human interest, to the story are the detailed biographies of the members of each expedition, particularly those who had lived with the constant threat of death during their war service. These potted biographies are included, the first time one of the major players enters the scene. The war becomes the unspoken backdrop. These men had seen so much of death that “life mattered less than the moments of being alive”. True to their upbringing these men never spoke of the war, but it was always present.
Inevitably, Mallory looms large, both because of what Davis calls his “unprecedented level of athleticism” and “a mental focus utterly modern in its intensity”. According to Geoffrey Keynes (brother of John Maynard Keynes), Mallory had a premonition of death, but could not resist the lure of the mountain. Yet he could be untidy, forgetful and technologically incompetent — his decision to take Irvine on his last climb rather than the more experienced Edward Norton or even Noel Odell, may have been because of the young man’s technical expertise with the oxygen cylinders.
Other figures, who have had a somewhat shadowy existence in the literature of the period come to life in this telling. Wade Davis is partial to Oliver Wheeler, a fellow Canadian, who later became surveyor general of India. It was Wheeler, the competent and gritty surveyor who found the northern approach to Everest, while Mallory simply flailed about on the first expedition. Davis is rightly critical of Mallory’s rather superior attitude towards this “colonial”, as he is about the outlook displayed by many of the sahibs towards the sherpas. Here, too, there were differences. For Mallory, Tibet was “a hateful place”; Somervell grieved at the death of the sherpas in 1922, and saw the beauty of the landscape (he was a talented artist).
The book’s subtitle gives a sense of its scope. Davis has succeeded in bringing together a vast amount of disparate material, although some may feel overwhelmed by its wealth of detail. (Among the many things that this, somewhat overlong, book explores is the culture of the public school and the homo-erotic atmosphere of early-20th-century Cambridge, the Bloomsbury group, Jallianwala Bagh, and the Younghusband expedition.) The book ends with an annotated bibliography, which is well worth reading. He is sceptical of claims that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit. But, in his words, “they did on that fateful day, climb higher than any human being before them….That they were able to do so, given all that they had endured, is surely achievement enough.”
DAYITA DATTA (A review from The Telegraph, 6 Jan 2012)
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest By Wade Davis, The Bodley Head, Rs 699
From the outset, the British adopted a proprietory attitude towards Mount Everest, particularly after the Great Trigonometrical Survey revealed it to be the world’s highest peak. This persisted after World War, or the Great War, as Wade Davis — the author of this dense, packed, but fascinating book — insists on calling it. Britain’s successful record of exploration in the 19th century had been challenged by Robert Peary reaching the North Pole (1909) and Roald Amundsen (1911) its opposite. Amundsen’s vastly better organized expedition beat the national hero, Robert Scott, whose incompetent leadership resulted in his death and those of his companions — but who then became a hero in glorious failure. (1912 is the centenary of Scott’s death).
Davis does not make this point, but the iconic figure of George Mallory, whose walk into mountaineering myth with his untrained companion, Sandy Irvine, seems just another glorious failure celebrated for the manly virtues of the English upper-middle class, sought to be inculcated in its single-sex public schools. But Davis is not out to simply recapture an era when exploration was supposedly more “pure” or “untainted” by commercial concerns. He has focused on the first three expeditions — 1921, 1922 and 1924. In his view, the quest for Everest may have begun as a “grand imperial gesture” to redeem the failure to reach the Poles, but it became a national exercise to assert national pride after the carnage of the Western Front.
Of the 26 climbers on the first three expeditions, 20 had seen service in the war. Six had been severely wounded — John de Vars Hazard’s wound had never healed completely, which severely limited his usefulness on the mountain. Others had lost siblings and close friends. Three as army surgeons had had to deal with the horrific consequences of sustained artillery fire and poison gas. Among them, Arthur Wakefield lost his religious faith, while Howard Somervell spent the rest of his life in a mission hospital in South India. To the mountaineers, Davis writes, Everest was “a sentinel in the sky, a place and destination of hope and redemption, a symbol of continuity in a world gone mad”. Davis chooses to begin with the memorial service on Great Gable, for climbers lost in the Great War — ironically on the same day that Mallory and Irvine disappeared — and that sets the tone for the rest of the book.
There may have been a search for some sort of transcendence, but Davis does not neglect the less elevated aspects of the expeditions, relating them to the social milieu, the attitudes and the human frailties of the day. What comes across is just how badly prepared and poorly equipped these expeditions were, for the technical and physical challenges that climbing Everest presented. (The discovery of Mallory’s body in 1999, clad in tweed, wool and hobnailed boots, with a hemp rope around his waist, only underscored this point.) There was a question of whether it was “gentlemanly” to use oxygen, with Arthur Hinks — dominant figure of the Everest Committee, with no climbing experience — arguing against its use. (Mallory eventually came round to its use, and most climbers use it today.) Still worse were the xenophobia and snobbery that deprived George Ingle Finch — arguably the best ice climber of his day — of a place on the final expedition because he was an Australian, outside the public school climbing fraternity, and because of his complicated private life. Climbers like Frank Smythe, one of the great figures of the inter-war period, were left out (he would climb Kamet and re- discover the Valley of Flowers). Men like Harold Raeburn, physically and mentally unfit, were included.
What add both length, but also human interest, to the story are the detailed biographies of the members of each expedition, particularly those who had lived with the constant threat of death during their war service. These potted biographies are included, the first time one of the major players enters the scene. The war becomes the unspoken backdrop. These men had seen so much of death that “life mattered less than the moments of being alive”. True to their upbringing these men never spoke of the war, but it was always present.
Inevitably, Mallory looms large, both because of what Davis calls his “unprecedented level of athleticism” and “a mental focus utterly modern in its intensity”. According to Geoffrey Keynes (brother of John Maynard Keynes), Mallory had a premonition of death, but could not resist the lure of the mountain. Yet he could be untidy, forgetful and technologically incompetent — his decision to take Irvine on his last climb rather than the more experienced Edward Norton or even Noel Odell, may have been because of the young man’s technical expertise with the oxygen cylinders.
Other figures, who have had a somewhat shadowy existence in the literature of the period come to life in this telling. Wade Davis is partial to Oliver Wheeler, a fellow Canadian, who later became surveyor general of India. It was Wheeler, the competent and gritty surveyor who found the northern approach to Everest, while Mallory simply flailed about on the first expedition. Davis is rightly critical of Mallory’s rather superior attitude towards this “colonial”, as he is about the outlook displayed by many of the sahibs towards the sherpas. Here, too, there were differences. For Mallory, Tibet was “a hateful place”; Somervell grieved at the death of the sherpas in 1922, and saw the beauty of the landscape (he was a talented artist).
The book’s subtitle gives a sense of its scope. Davis has succeeded in bringing together a vast amount of disparate material, although some may feel overwhelmed by its wealth of detail. (Among the many things that this, somewhat overlong, book explores is the culture of the public school and the homo-erotic atmosphere of early-20th-century Cambridge, the Bloomsbury group, Jallianwala Bagh, and the Younghusband expedition.) The book ends with an annotated bibliography, which is well worth reading. He is sceptical of claims that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit. But, in his words, “they did on that fateful day, climb higher than any human being before them….That they were able to do so, given all that they had endured, is surely achievement enough.”
DAYITA DATTA (A review from The Telegraph, 6 Jan 2012)
Accused dragged to court violating human rights norms
The Statesman
7 January 2012
DURGAPUR, 7 JAN: Blatantly violating human rights norms, police dragged a youth with a rope fastened around his waist in front of hundreds of people in Durgapur Town this morning and that too to produce him before the magistrate who was attending a programme in an auditorium located about 200 metre away from the court compound.
Mr Amit Dey, who was accused of attempting to commit an offence under Section 109 of Crpc, was arrested last night and while taking him before Mr Biswajit Samaddar, the executive magistrate, who was attending a Voters’ Day programme in an auditorium, about 200 metres away from the Durgapur Sub-divisional Court compound, police officials forcefully put the rope in his waist.
Two police constables were guarding the accused from the court lock-up to the auditorium. Mr Dey was arrested by the New Township police from the Biddhannagar locality last evening. The magistrate said that police did a mistake in bringing him to the place where he was attending a government programme.
The state law minister, Mr Malay Ghatak, condemned the act saying the matter needs to be investigated properly.
Mr Ajay Nand, commissioner, Asansol-Durgapur Police, said this is a major violation and he has asked the concerned officer to file a report on this incident. sns
7 January 2012
DURGAPUR, 7 JAN: Blatantly violating human rights norms, police dragged a youth with a rope fastened around his waist in front of hundreds of people in Durgapur Town this morning and that too to produce him before the magistrate who was attending a programme in an auditorium located about 200 metre away from the court compound.
Mr Amit Dey, who was accused of attempting to commit an offence under Section 109 of Crpc, was arrested last night and while taking him before Mr Biswajit Samaddar, the executive magistrate, who was attending a Voters’ Day programme in an auditorium, about 200 metres away from the Durgapur Sub-divisional Court compound, police officials forcefully put the rope in his waist.
Two police constables were guarding the accused from the court lock-up to the auditorium. Mr Dey was arrested by the New Township police from the Biddhannagar locality last evening. The magistrate said that police did a mistake in bringing him to the place where he was attending a government programme.
The state law minister, Mr Malay Ghatak, condemned the act saying the matter needs to be investigated properly.
Mr Ajay Nand, commissioner, Asansol-Durgapur Police, said this is a major violation and he has asked the concerned officer to file a report on this incident. sns
Anatomy of a cover-up - I
Statesman Special Article
7 January 2012
Anatomy of a cover-up~I
CBI’s Handling Of The Jain Hawala Case
By Rajinder Puri
THERE has been much talk about the way in which CBI probes are subverted because the agency is not independent. One popular solution is to make the CBI accountable to a newly created Lokpal. Do most people who glibly offer solutions have a realistic idea of the problem? They should first acquaint themselves with how corruption is really covered up. They would know then that the challenge is much bigger than they realise. They would know then that the crisis is not just about corruption but about culture. They would know then that the problem is not just about the CBI but about the system. They would get some idea of this after recalling what happened in the Mother of all cover-ups ~ the Jain Hawala Case. This briefly is what happened in that case.
In 1991, a terrorist funding case was being investigated by the CBI. On 3 May 1991 a special investigating unit conducted searches in several places. One belonged to SK Jain from where Rs 58 lakh and a huge amount of foreign exchange were recovered. Along with these, proper books of accounts, as described by the Supreme Court, later popularly described as diaries, were also seized. The accounts revealed Rs 64 crore from abroad and their disbursement in India. It transpired that top politicians and bureaucrats were recipients of these foreign funds.
Among the top politicians and others were: Rajiv Gandhi, LK Advani, Devi Lal, Pranab Mukherjee, Yashwant Sinha, RK Dhawan, Arif Mohammed Khan, Kalpnath Rai, Balram Jakhar, Shiv Shankar, Moti Lal Vora, Har Mohan Dhawan, Rajesh Pilot, Natwar Singh, MJ Akbar, Jaffar Shariff, Lalit Suri, Rajesh Pilot, VC Shukla, Madhav Rao Scindia, Chiman Bhai Patel, ND Tewari, Arun Nehru, Kamal Nath, Arjun Singh, Ashok Sen, Kalyan Singh Kalvi, Ajit Panja, AK Antulay, Dinesh Singh, Madan Lal Khurana, Buta Singh, Sharad Yadav, Tajdar Babbar, Purshottam Kaushik, Krishan Kumar and many others.
There were three categories of recipients. A few received big amounts which were in fact their own monies stashed abroad brought into India by availing of the Hawala route. Secondly there were a few who received big amounts that were kickbacks paid by the Jains. But the vast majority were recipients of sometimes small amounts who accepted donations for the impending elections. In fairness, they were most likely unaware of the foreign source of the money. By accepting cash for elections they were merely acting by the prevailing political practice ~ legally wrong but morally accepted. Indeed Mr Devi Lal and Mr Sharad Yadav in the beginning were not at all secretive about having received the donations. However, after knowing the foreign source of the donations would not the recipients have felt vulnerable to blackmail? These VIP names remained outside public knowledge because the CBI did not leak them. The agency was vigorously pursuing the terrorist funding angle.
Mr OP Sharma, DIG, was in charge of the investigation. There was quick progress and seven people were arrested, among them Mool Chand Shah known as the Hawala King of Bombay. London and Interpol were contacted and foreign sources such as Mohini Jain in London and Tariq Bhai in Dubai were identified. But 20 accounts in the diary remain unidentified even till today. They could belong to anyone, including terrorists. Then something happened to derail the whole process. On the last working day of Prime Minister Chandrashekhar, 16 June 1991, one LK Kaul complained that OP Sharma had demanded a bribe from SK Jain for not arresting him. On behalf of SK Jain, Kaul claimed to have delivered Rs 10 lakh to Sharma. LK Kaul was neither an accused nor a witness.
It transpired that SK Jain later said he never knew Kaul, nor OP Sharma and he was never asked for a bribe nor did he pay one. Without contacting SK Jain the CBI quickly registered a case against DIG OP Sharma. It was the news of a top CBI officer being accused by the CBI which first attracted national media attention. Only after that gradually the details about the so-called Jain Diaries also surfaced in the media. After that operation cover-up proceeded rapidly.
With Sharma out of the probe five out of the seven arrested were released on bail. Only two Kashmiris were kept in jail. Subsequently not a single accused person was arrested and for all practical purpose they were all given amnesty. They included Mool Chand Shah who many years later was arrested by the Mumbai police for his role in funding the city’s bomb blasts in 1991! The entire investigation was buried and the public was kept in the dark. But a leak from the CBI found its way into the media. The Hindi daily, Jansatta, gave the whole story of the Jain Diaries written by Mr Ram Bahadur Rai. This was followed by exposure in Blitz weekly by Mr. Sanjay Kapur. This was followed by public interest litigation by Mr Vineet Narain and others in the Supreme Court (SC) demanding a proper probe. The petition was drafted under the direct supervision of noted lawyer Mr Ram Jethmalani. But before the court hearing he left on an urgent foreign visit. Later against established convention he appeared for one of the accused, Mr LK Advani. Did personal friendship prove too strong for observing professional norms? In Mr Jethmalani’s absence his named substitute Mr Shanti Bhushan wanted to withdraw the case from the Supreme Court and introduce it in the High Court. The petitioners disallowed this and eventually Mr Anil Dewan represented them. The SC admitted the petition and criticized the CBI for inaction stating: “This revealed a grave situation posing a serious threat even to the unity and integrity of the nation. The serious threat posed to the Indian polity could not be under-scored.”
The Jain Diaries were deposited with the Registrar of the SC. The CBI probe was subject to “continuous mandamus”, meaning that the agency had to periodically report to SC all progress in the probe. SC for all practical purpose was monitoring the investigation. Similar “continuous mandamus” is being followed by SC in the current 2G Spectrum probe. I opposed this move in the light of the experience gained in the Jain Hawala Case. Fortunately I was proved wrong. The SC in the present case is giving a better account of itself than it did in the Hawala case. What went wrong with the SC in the Jain Hawala Case?
(To be concluded)
The writer is a veteran journalist and cartoonist
7 January 2012
Anatomy of a cover-up~I
CBI’s Handling Of The Jain Hawala Case
By Rajinder Puri
THERE has been much talk about the way in which CBI probes are subverted because the agency is not independent. One popular solution is to make the CBI accountable to a newly created Lokpal. Do most people who glibly offer solutions have a realistic idea of the problem? They should first acquaint themselves with how corruption is really covered up. They would know then that the challenge is much bigger than they realise. They would know then that the crisis is not just about corruption but about culture. They would know then that the problem is not just about the CBI but about the system. They would get some idea of this after recalling what happened in the Mother of all cover-ups ~ the Jain Hawala Case. This briefly is what happened in that case.
In 1991, a terrorist funding case was being investigated by the CBI. On 3 May 1991 a special investigating unit conducted searches in several places. One belonged to SK Jain from where Rs 58 lakh and a huge amount of foreign exchange were recovered. Along with these, proper books of accounts, as described by the Supreme Court, later popularly described as diaries, were also seized. The accounts revealed Rs 64 crore from abroad and their disbursement in India. It transpired that top politicians and bureaucrats were recipients of these foreign funds.
Among the top politicians and others were: Rajiv Gandhi, LK Advani, Devi Lal, Pranab Mukherjee, Yashwant Sinha, RK Dhawan, Arif Mohammed Khan, Kalpnath Rai, Balram Jakhar, Shiv Shankar, Moti Lal Vora, Har Mohan Dhawan, Rajesh Pilot, Natwar Singh, MJ Akbar, Jaffar Shariff, Lalit Suri, Rajesh Pilot, VC Shukla, Madhav Rao Scindia, Chiman Bhai Patel, ND Tewari, Arun Nehru, Kamal Nath, Arjun Singh, Ashok Sen, Kalyan Singh Kalvi, Ajit Panja, AK Antulay, Dinesh Singh, Madan Lal Khurana, Buta Singh, Sharad Yadav, Tajdar Babbar, Purshottam Kaushik, Krishan Kumar and many others.
There were three categories of recipients. A few received big amounts which were in fact their own monies stashed abroad brought into India by availing of the Hawala route. Secondly there were a few who received big amounts that were kickbacks paid by the Jains. But the vast majority were recipients of sometimes small amounts who accepted donations for the impending elections. In fairness, they were most likely unaware of the foreign source of the money. By accepting cash for elections they were merely acting by the prevailing political practice ~ legally wrong but morally accepted. Indeed Mr Devi Lal and Mr Sharad Yadav in the beginning were not at all secretive about having received the donations. However, after knowing the foreign source of the donations would not the recipients have felt vulnerable to blackmail? These VIP names remained outside public knowledge because the CBI did not leak them. The agency was vigorously pursuing the terrorist funding angle.
Mr OP Sharma, DIG, was in charge of the investigation. There was quick progress and seven people were arrested, among them Mool Chand Shah known as the Hawala King of Bombay. London and Interpol were contacted and foreign sources such as Mohini Jain in London and Tariq Bhai in Dubai were identified. But 20 accounts in the diary remain unidentified even till today. They could belong to anyone, including terrorists. Then something happened to derail the whole process. On the last working day of Prime Minister Chandrashekhar, 16 June 1991, one LK Kaul complained that OP Sharma had demanded a bribe from SK Jain for not arresting him. On behalf of SK Jain, Kaul claimed to have delivered Rs 10 lakh to Sharma. LK Kaul was neither an accused nor a witness.
It transpired that SK Jain later said he never knew Kaul, nor OP Sharma and he was never asked for a bribe nor did he pay one. Without contacting SK Jain the CBI quickly registered a case against DIG OP Sharma. It was the news of a top CBI officer being accused by the CBI which first attracted national media attention. Only after that gradually the details about the so-called Jain Diaries also surfaced in the media. After that operation cover-up proceeded rapidly.
With Sharma out of the probe five out of the seven arrested were released on bail. Only two Kashmiris were kept in jail. Subsequently not a single accused person was arrested and for all practical purpose they were all given amnesty. They included Mool Chand Shah who many years later was arrested by the Mumbai police for his role in funding the city’s bomb blasts in 1991! The entire investigation was buried and the public was kept in the dark. But a leak from the CBI found its way into the media. The Hindi daily, Jansatta, gave the whole story of the Jain Diaries written by Mr Ram Bahadur Rai. This was followed by exposure in Blitz weekly by Mr. Sanjay Kapur. This was followed by public interest litigation by Mr Vineet Narain and others in the Supreme Court (SC) demanding a proper probe. The petition was drafted under the direct supervision of noted lawyer Mr Ram Jethmalani. But before the court hearing he left on an urgent foreign visit. Later against established convention he appeared for one of the accused, Mr LK Advani. Did personal friendship prove too strong for observing professional norms? In Mr Jethmalani’s absence his named substitute Mr Shanti Bhushan wanted to withdraw the case from the Supreme Court and introduce it in the High Court. The petitioners disallowed this and eventually Mr Anil Dewan represented them. The SC admitted the petition and criticized the CBI for inaction stating: “This revealed a grave situation posing a serious threat even to the unity and integrity of the nation. The serious threat posed to the Indian polity could not be under-scored.”
The Jain Diaries were deposited with the Registrar of the SC. The CBI probe was subject to “continuous mandamus”, meaning that the agency had to periodically report to SC all progress in the probe. SC for all practical purpose was monitoring the investigation. Similar “continuous mandamus” is being followed by SC in the current 2G Spectrum probe. I opposed this move in the light of the experience gained in the Jain Hawala Case. Fortunately I was proved wrong. The SC in the present case is giving a better account of itself than it did in the Hawala case. What went wrong with the SC in the Jain Hawala Case?
(To be concluded)
The writer is a veteran journalist and cartoonist
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
SC notice on judges exam fraud
The Telegraph, Calcutta, Tuesday , January 3 , 2012
New Delhi, Jan. 2 (PTI): The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Chhattisgarh High Court registry on a PIL alleging manipulation and irregularities in the conduct of a civil judges examination in 2008 to favour candidates related to certain judges, bureaucrats and politicians.
A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and H.L. Gokhale issued the directive after counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), submitted that no action had been taken on the allegations even though the matter was brought to the notice of the then Chief Justice of India in 2008.
“The entire selection process of the exam is vitiated by favouritism and malafide, as candidates are close relatives of the senior judges and bureaucrats. The intelligent and suitable candidates have been sidelined to favour certain candidates related to senior judges and bureaucrats.” the petition said.
Bhushan alleged that a number of relatives and associates of sitting judges, bureaucrats and politicians have been selected by employing fraudulent means such as manipulations of answer sheets and serious irregularities in their evaluation.
The scrutiny of the answer sheets of two successful candidates, siblings of Radhey Shyam Sharma, the legal secretary of the Chhattisgarh government, indicates that the marks have been awarded only in numerals, not in words, thus disobeying the Chhattisgarh High Court’s order, the petition alleged.
The answer sheet of another candidate was also allegedly manipulated by altering marks to favour her, the petition said.
New Delhi, Jan. 2 (PTI): The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Chhattisgarh High Court registry on a PIL alleging manipulation and irregularities in the conduct of a civil judges examination in 2008 to favour candidates related to certain judges, bureaucrats and politicians.
A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and H.L. Gokhale issued the directive after counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), submitted that no action had been taken on the allegations even though the matter was brought to the notice of the then Chief Justice of India in 2008.
“The entire selection process of the exam is vitiated by favouritism and malafide, as candidates are close relatives of the senior judges and bureaucrats. The intelligent and suitable candidates have been sidelined to favour certain candidates related to senior judges and bureaucrats.” the petition said.
Bhushan alleged that a number of relatives and associates of sitting judges, bureaucrats and politicians have been selected by employing fraudulent means such as manipulations of answer sheets and serious irregularities in their evaluation.
The scrutiny of the answer sheets of two successful candidates, siblings of Radhey Shyam Sharma, the legal secretary of the Chhattisgarh government, indicates that the marks have been awarded only in numerals, not in words, thus disobeying the Chhattisgarh High Court’s order, the petition alleged.
The answer sheet of another candidate was also allegedly manipulated by altering marks to favour her, the petition said.
Scientists grow sperm in laboratory dish
The Telegraph, Calcutta, Tuesday , January 3 , 2012
Jan. 2: Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could soon see human sperm grown in the laboratory.
The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.
Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish.
In a world first a team headed by Prof. Stefan Schlatt, at Muenster University in Germany, were able to grow sperm by using germ cells. These are the cells in testicles that are responsible for sperm production.
Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles.
Prof. Mahmoud Huleihel, who also grew the sperm at Israel’s Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, said: “I believe it will eventually be possible to routinely grow human male sperm to order by extracting tissue containing germ cells from a man’s testicle and stimulating sperm production in the laboratory.”
The findings of the sperm trial have been revealed in a major scientific journal published by Nature.
Now the scientists who made the discovery have begun experiments that will hopefully lead to the “Holy Grail” — human sperm grown outside a man’s body.
Stephen Gordon, a leading NHS male infertility consultant, praised the breakthrough.
He said: “This is an amazing development that could revolutionise fertility treatment and allow every man to be a natural father.
“Infertile men naturally want to be the father of their child but at present have to accept that can’t happen. With the mouse discovery, that could now be a possibility.”
Prof. Richard Sharpe, one of the UK’s top fertility scientists based at Edinburgh University, who hopes to work on the project, said: “This is a significant step forward towards making human sperm.”
The problem of male infertility has grown over the last 50 years and has been matched by huge decrease in sperm counts in men. Some of this has been attributed to environmental factors such as pollution and female hormones appearing in plastic packaging.
Gordon, a urologist, who practises at Epsom Hopsital, Surrey, said: “Even with our latest microsurgical techniques there are still thousands of men — who are otherwise healthy — who can’t naturally father babies and rely on sperm donation.”
Jan. 2: Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could soon see human sperm grown in the laboratory.
The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.
Researchers in Germany and Israel were able to grow mouse sperm from a few cells in a laboratory dish.
In a world first a team headed by Prof. Stefan Schlatt, at Muenster University in Germany, were able to grow sperm by using germ cells. These are the cells in testicles that are responsible for sperm production.
Scientists grew the sperm by surrounding the germ cells in a special compound called agar jelly to create an environment similar to that found in testicles.
Prof. Mahmoud Huleihel, who also grew the sperm at Israel’s Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, said: “I believe it will eventually be possible to routinely grow human male sperm to order by extracting tissue containing germ cells from a man’s testicle and stimulating sperm production in the laboratory.”
The findings of the sperm trial have been revealed in a major scientific journal published by Nature.
Now the scientists who made the discovery have begun experiments that will hopefully lead to the “Holy Grail” — human sperm grown outside a man’s body.
Stephen Gordon, a leading NHS male infertility consultant, praised the breakthrough.
He said: “This is an amazing development that could revolutionise fertility treatment and allow every man to be a natural father.
“Infertile men naturally want to be the father of their child but at present have to accept that can’t happen. With the mouse discovery, that could now be a possibility.”
Prof. Richard Sharpe, one of the UK’s top fertility scientists based at Edinburgh University, who hopes to work on the project, said: “This is a significant step forward towards making human sperm.”
The problem of male infertility has grown over the last 50 years and has been matched by huge decrease in sperm counts in men. Some of this has been attributed to environmental factors such as pollution and female hormones appearing in plastic packaging.
Gordon, a urologist, who practises at Epsom Hopsital, Surrey, said: “Even with our latest microsurgical techniques there are still thousands of men — who are otherwise healthy — who can’t naturally father babies and rely on sperm donation.”
How India missed being Einstein home
The Telegraph, Calcutta, Tuesday , January 3 , 2012
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 2: Seven years after fleeing Nazi Germany for Princeton in 1933, Albert Einstein took US citizenship. India can only rue what might have been.
Around 1937, the then fledgling Travancore University in Kerala had apparently invited the great physicist to become its first vice-chancellor for a monthly salary of Rs 6,000, a huge sum those days. Einstein had declined, saying he wanted to be at Princeton University, whose “liberal atmosphere” he had earlier praised.
It’s a regret that Travancore University, now renamed University of Kerala, would be nursing as it gears to celebrate its 75 years.
The platinum jubilee has breathed fresh life into the claim, which had gained currency after the late historian, A. Sreedhara Menon, authored the history of the university. Menon wrote that inviting Einstein was the idea of the Diwan (prime minister) of the princely state of Travancore, the scholarly C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.
Another writer and historian M.G. Sashibhushan says: “An invitation to a genius like Einstein to a tiny state like Travancore is truly amazing, but CP was an astute administrator who would try to make impossible things possible.
But Sashibhushan added: “I have heard people mention CP’s public announcement about the proposal at the state council.... Unfortunately, the copy of the letter to Einstein is yet to be traced.”
Some historians, though, believe that CP had floated Einstein’s name only to pre-empt local academics from pulling strings and lobbying for the post. The university was born on November 1, 1937, with the Travancore prince as chancellor and CP as vice-chancellor.
CP, a politically controversial figure often attacked by nationalists and communists, later tried to bring many brilliant academics to the university but without much success. Among those who declined the pro-vice-chancellor’s post were Nobel-winning physicist C.V. Raman, philosopher S. Radhakrishnan (who later became India’s President) and physicist Meghnath Saha, Menon wrote.
“It was also said that CP once made a similar request to eminent biologist Julian Huxley, who too declined,” Sashibhushan said.
Einstein, who had no weakness for high office, declined Israel’s presidency in 1952. In Princeton, he developed a deep friendship with the great Austrian logician-mathematician Kurt Godel, a fellow immigrant with whom he took long walks discussing science and philosophy.
Perhaps it does not matter where Einstein lived, as a drawing by the US cartoonist Herblock after the scientist’s death in 1955 suggests. It shows planet Earth and simply says: “Albert Einstein lived here.”
Thiruvananthapuram, Jan. 2: Seven years after fleeing Nazi Germany for Princeton in 1933, Albert Einstein took US citizenship. India can only rue what might have been.
Around 1937, the then fledgling Travancore University in Kerala had apparently invited the great physicist to become its first vice-chancellor for a monthly salary of Rs 6,000, a huge sum those days. Einstein had declined, saying he wanted to be at Princeton University, whose “liberal atmosphere” he had earlier praised.
It’s a regret that Travancore University, now renamed University of Kerala, would be nursing as it gears to celebrate its 75 years.
The platinum jubilee has breathed fresh life into the claim, which had gained currency after the late historian, A. Sreedhara Menon, authored the history of the university. Menon wrote that inviting Einstein was the idea of the Diwan (prime minister) of the princely state of Travancore, the scholarly C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar.
Another writer and historian M.G. Sashibhushan says: “An invitation to a genius like Einstein to a tiny state like Travancore is truly amazing, but CP was an astute administrator who would try to make impossible things possible.
But Sashibhushan added: “I have heard people mention CP’s public announcement about the proposal at the state council.... Unfortunately, the copy of the letter to Einstein is yet to be traced.”
Some historians, though, believe that CP had floated Einstein’s name only to pre-empt local academics from pulling strings and lobbying for the post. The university was born on November 1, 1937, with the Travancore prince as chancellor and CP as vice-chancellor.
CP, a politically controversial figure often attacked by nationalists and communists, later tried to bring many brilliant academics to the university but without much success. Among those who declined the pro-vice-chancellor’s post were Nobel-winning physicist C.V. Raman, philosopher S. Radhakrishnan (who later became India’s President) and physicist Meghnath Saha, Menon wrote.
“It was also said that CP once made a similar request to eminent biologist Julian Huxley, who too declined,” Sashibhushan said.
Einstein, who had no weakness for high office, declined Israel’s presidency in 1952. In Princeton, he developed a deep friendship with the great Austrian logician-mathematician Kurt Godel, a fellow immigrant with whom he took long walks discussing science and philosophy.
Perhaps it does not matter where Einstein lived, as a drawing by the US cartoonist Herblock after the scientist’s death in 1955 suggests. It shows planet Earth and simply says: “Albert Einstein lived here.”
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