Posts from — August 2003

Here we are! Back again with the all-singing, all-dancing show called the Bharateeya Blog Mela. And can you believe it… this is the 26th edition of the Mela!! Which means that it has been around for over 6 months now!! :-)

Let’s get straight to the point. The biggest event this week was one of the saddest days in Mumbai’s recent history. And it’s not surprising that the shockwaves of the Mumbai Bomb Blasts were felt through the Blog world too. As a result, posts related to the blasts and the subsequent opinions merit a separate post altogether. Yazad will be hosting a round-up of the posts about the Mumbai bomb blasts, this weekend.

So, on with the Mela…

• Yazad notices a political banner that uses language one would not expect to see in serious political slogans. I wonder if anyone actually clicked a snap of that banner!
• Shanti posts about an Associated Press news article that curiously traces the root cause of the Mumbai blasts to the Hindu-Muslim riots in the 1940s, events that led to the partition of India. Clearly, the author of that AP article needs to read a chapter from an elementary school history book to understand that partition caused riots and not the other way round!
• Niraj cautions against the recent trend in some midwestern American cities, of accepting illegal immigration without the apparent consent of the US federal government.
• Jivha unearths a small newsitem that announces a BESCOM decision which is actually an encroachment on our personal freedom.
• JK posts a detailed book review of “Fast Food Nation”… a book that he found “very gripping and interesting to listen“.
• It’s JK once more, as he is fascinated by a new archaelogical discovery that unravels some more facts about Ancient India.
• Smorgasbord lists some of Mr. Christopher Hitchins’ accusations against Mother Teresa in his post titled Saints and Sinners… accusations that try to “blazon her carefully crafted image of piety“.
• Another post by Jivha finds a mention in the Mela. Here, he cautions against revising history as he wonders why, in the first place, did the Allahabad High Court ask the ASI to carry out excavations at the disputed site in Ayodhya.
• Sandeep has a detailed post about the de-merits of urbanization and its effects on the Rural Indian Economy.
• Radhika Nair posts about an encounter with drunks that gets her thinking about how some Britons feel insecure due to the immigrants.
• Srijith posts about the Urdhva Tiryagbhyam which is an extremely easy formula in Vedic Mathematics that simplifies all cases of multiplication. It really is amazing!!
• Parag has a post about earth’s close encounter with Mars. He even has a photo on the post.

And that… is a round up of some of the interesting posts that have appeared on the Indian Blogscape in the past few days. I hope you enjoyed going through these wonderful posts.

Thanks a lot to Shanti, Ashwini, Yazad, Parag and JK for sending in nominations for the Mela!! :-)

I know I’m late in posting this, but I shall post it nonetheless. Arun Shourie’s three-part series of articles in The Indian Express that is an absolute MUST-READ. Read it!!… if you haven’t done so already!!

Part 1 : Before the whining drowns it out, listen to the new India

And guess what the average age is in the industry? Just 26 and a half! These 26/27-year-olds have changed the world’s perception of India. It’s not just a country of snake-charmers, it’s a country against which protectionist walls have to be erected. Of course, we can also charm snakes.

Part 2 : When sky is the limit

The point is the successes we have encountered above are not fortuitous. India has a score of strengths that others do not.

Cost is one of them. Nor is it a marginal advantage. Indeed, the difference between the cost at which we can provide services and many commodities of comparable quality and what those cost in the developed world is so vast that, should those firms and economies shut themselves out from our supplies, they are the ones who will be severely disadvantaged, they are the ones who will be making themselves un-competitive.

Part 3 : This is India’s moment but it’s onle a moment, can we grasp it?

So we have many things working for us. In many ways, this is India’s moment, even vis a vis China. For the first time, observers have begun to voice questions in public about China—its statistics; the fact, for instance, as a German investor said recently at a conference I was deputed to attend, that, ‘‘If you want your factory to come up quickly, go to China; if you want to make money, go to India.’’ On the other side, everyone’s noticing Indians make a mark in every sphere: writers, scientists, doctors, IT, cricket, beauty pageants, chess…

So it is the moment for India. It is a moment. But, it is only a moment. What should we do to ensure we grasp it?

Call for nominations for Bharateeya Blog Mela#26

The 26^th edition of the Bharateeya Blog Mela will be hosted here at The Opti Mystic tomorrow, i.e. 29th August 2003.

The directions for nominating entries:

• Since there was no Mela last week, I will accept entries dated August 16 through August 28.
• Send an email to sameer @ opti-mystic dot net
• Drop it as a comment to this post
• Nominations should reach me by tomorrow (Aug 29) evening, i.e. 5 PM IST

The Rules :

• Posts must be either written by Indians or focus on India or Indians.
• Please send the permalinks to the posts rather than the blog URLs. If the permalink does not work, please send the title of the post alongwith the date of that post.
• You can nominate either your own post or someone else’s.
• All posts except personal jounal entries are allowed to be nominated in a Mela. All the nominated posts shall be included in the Mela without any censoring/editing. A post may be excluded only if it is a personal journal entry.

For more info about the Bharateeya Blog Mela, please visit this detailed post by one of its founding members, Ashwini. You could also head over here to look at the rich archives of past Blog Melas.

So… let the nominations flow!! :-)

Forensic experts from The State Forensic Laboratory have concluded that RDX was used in the blasts that shook Mumbai on the 25^th of August, 2003. Now, this certainly means that these blasts were much similar to the 1993 blasts than the ones that have rocked Mumbai in recent months. The Ghatkopar, Mulund, Vile Parle blasts used crude explosives

This is really interesting. Former top cops give their views on two B’s… Blasts and Bhujbal. And it seems that all of them except Rebeiro speak like the politicians that they serve.

On being asked, “How do you rate the performance of the police with respect to the blasts?“… some of them have given some answers that are worth scoffing at…

Sahney: I will not blame police. This is a phenomenon that will not stop as long as there are angry people bearing grudges.

Ohh! … then why have the police at all?! … Maybe we should have counsellors instead… or meditation courses for these angry people. Maybe that would reduce the terrorist activities.

Soman: I don�t find anything objectionable. In a city like Mumbai with a population of 1.10 crore, it�s difficult for a police force of 40,000 to know everything.

Well… I do concede that there’s an iota of truth in what he says… but then Hello Mr. Soman… police need to know most of these things. That’s why its called “intelligence“!! Otherwise why would we need police??!

Rebeiro hits the nail right on the head when he says, “They should have more contacts at the grassroots level, because intelligence comes from there.“. Now that’s common sense stuff. But sadly, its lacking these days. Gone are the days when Mumbai police were the finest in the world. The network of informants that the police maintained then, was huge and almost legendary. But with the passage of time, the job of police was diluted by the politicians. VIP duty meant that the police were guarding the lives of wretched politicians instead of crime detection and prevention. With proximity to the politicians, came frequent contacts with the high flying dons of the underworld. Thus, the grassroots-level informer network was neglected to a large extent. And the word on the street was no longer heard by the police.

Coming back to the point…

On being asked about Chhagan Bhujbal’s (Maharashtra Dy. Chief Minister) performance, most of the former top cops refused to comment. Rebeiro however openly said that “This is the worst administration as far as police is concerned.“. He also gave Bhujbal a ‘zero’ on a scale of one to ten!!

That says a lot, doesn’t it?!