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Category Archives: politics

Needed: Vox Populi

Not that I know enough to support or deride Rahul Gandhi, but I’m pretty sure he’s on to something here. The story of modern India is one in which a skilled, well-intentioned, resourceful, patriotic person — be it a businessman, technologist, social worker, or political leader — is bamboozled by the bureaucratic machine of Bharat […]

FBPNN: Routine enquiry yields seminal body of scientific work

In the myth-shrouded history of medieval England, a single apple’s fall moved Isaac Newton to discover the well known theory of gravity. In an understandable, if not excusable, pursuit of this process, the Indian administration decided long ago to on its Controlled Ordering of Vacuous Enquiries to Really Understand Phenomena (COVERUP) policy. In India, whenever […]

Don’t lower your standards

It was disheartening to read of two girls being molested in Bombay on new year’s day. Far more shocking was to hear that the Police Commissioner of Mumbai was dismissive in his reaction and asked the media “not to blow this out of proportion”, because such things “can happen anywhere.” There are just so many […]

Benazir Bhutto assassinated

The Pakistani leader was shot dead just before a suicide bomber blew himself up at an election rally she was holding in Rawalpindi. I liked to think that she was working to restore sanity in Pakistan. Obviously, there were people who did not agree. But what is clear is that whatever she was doing, it […]

Doing the dishes in Indian politics

The upper echelons of the Indian judiciary have long been active in public affairs. Recently, however, they realized that they may have gone a bit too far. This has sparked a lively debate on whether the Supreme Court of India has interfered too much or too little with socio-political affairs in India. Indira Jaising has […]

Intelligent Design on Trial

Recently saw this PBS production detailing the landmark Dover trial in which evolution and intelligent design battled each other. A really well-made documentary, and a fascinating story both for the human and legal interest. Convincing a conservative judge appointed by George Bush to rule that Intelligent Design is not science and shouldn’t be taught in […]

Bush and Mush: International intrigue

Here’s one article on rediff: Here’s another: Looks like our two esteemed world leaders have decided to make love, not war. The happy couple are, of course, to be applauded except that I wish they would, maybe, find a room? And no thank you, Rediff, one can do without the images.

Eating carbon

The Economist explains that companies in America are being forced to go green because of the inevitability of carbon-trading systems: if they want to have a say in the carbon market, they need to be lobbying for emission controls. A quote that cracked me up: As Mr Rogers explains: “There’s a saying in Washington: if […]

Liberty

So this is how liberty dies. Overnight.

What the …?

Is this any less than terrorism? Using military force to kill unarmed, neutral, civilian diplomats from the UN? And that too after the UN peacekeepers called the Israeli forces ten times before the killing blow, each time only to be assured that the shelling would stop? It is fast becoming a world where might is […]