Videocon MD Venugopal Dhoot brazenly declares that businesses can’t be run by women. He said this on being asked about the future of his daughter Surabhi, who has passed her MBA with distinction from University of Wales.

“Our community does not allow that. So, she is back at home,” he explains, adding “Anyway, businesses can’t be run by women, especially in India. She can do professional managerial work from home if she wants but she will not come to the office,” he says emphatically.”Show me one woman who is running a business successfully,” he challenges.

Such sexist attitude! And that too from a person who is about the enter Rajya Sabha, supported by Congress, a party headed by a woman, who, among other things, aims to run the country one day!!

And ohh… by the way… in a completely unrelated piece of news, for the first time ever, women on Forbes� list of the 400 Richest People in America topped men in average net worth, with $2.8 billion vs $2.4 billion for men.

Featured on that list at number 224 is Meg Whitman who’s the President and CEO (and has been since 1998) of eBay which is a $32 billion business today.

Any views on this, Mr. Dhoot?

Swapan Dasgupta, in his column in Rediff believes that India and Pakistan belong to different civilisations.

We love to believe that the kindness shown to a Pakistani child with a heart ailment will melt even the most hardened souls across the border. We love to believe that the overpowering strength of the hospitality we experience during casual visits to Lahore means that politics is the only hurdle to rapprochement. And we love to believe, as Rajiv Gandhi once put it, that the Taj Mahal is as much theirs as Mohenjodaro is ours.

The time for such romantic piffle is over. Actually, there was never any basis for it.

Exactly!!

Likewise it is too naive to think that cricket or any other socio-cultural exchange will thaw the frozen attitudes on both sides. Pakistan’s proclaimed strategic objective is to bleed India through a thousand cuts. With this larger strategic intent in mind, Pakistan may shift tactics and postures, but it will never walk the path of peace with India. Any Pakistani government who tries to take this path will be hounded at home and branded traitors. I wonder why successive governments in India have ignored this simple fact.

For too long India has allowed its responses to be guided by the sanctimoniousness of a professional peace lobby. It is time we ignored these appeasers of jihad. Let the prime minister’s pronouncement that India cannot negotiate with terrorists be the final word on Pakistan.

Amen!