Saturday, March 28, 2009

Hyderabad Courier Company refuses ‘Pink Chaddi’ Parcel

The infamous pink chaddi campaign by Delhi girls would have died down but the controversy of cultural differences over the campaign hasn't.

The attention now has turned to Mr Venkatramana Reddy- proprietor of a courier agency in Madhapur, Hyderabad for turning down the customer’s request to send the ‘pink chaddi’ parcel.

This was revealed by an ex-member of Pink Chaddi group, who opted out of the group on ‘ideological’ differences. She said the group in Hyderabad had fifty to sixty members mostly men and didn’t respect the local culture.

When we contacted Venkat he felt proud for refusing the parcel. He spoke plainly – “Sir, if Mutalik behaved like a monster, we need not respond in the same way. The response by ‘Chaddi’ is worst. Many outsiders are encouraging bar culture and like... which is alien to Andhra”. He also said that he had advised the ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaigners to send ‘Rakhi’ if they want.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

India's Tata Motors launch Nano

Tata Motors launched its ultra-cheap Nano car in Mumbai on Monday — a vehicle meant to herald a revolution by making it possible for the world's poor to purchase their first car.



The name 'Nano' was chosen as it denotes high technology and small size. Most eagerly waited car
People world over were keen to see what Tata Motors' People's Car looked like, and know more about it. The Tata Motors website saw nearly 7.9 million hits on January 10 (the day the Nano was unveiled), while the Tata Nano website saw 4 million hits in 30 hours, making these sites among the busiest in the world.

The Nano website (www.tatanano.com) was developed within a short timeframe of 1.5 months and with limited resources.

The entire portal has been built on open source technologies, involving minimum investment, following the essence of the Nano - low cost, but high technology.








The Nano, which is priced starting at about 100,000 rupees ($2,050), is a stripped-down car for stripped-down times: It is 10.2 feet (3.1 meters) long, has one windshield wiper, a 623cc rear engine, and a diminutive trunk, according to the company's Web site.









The Nano will be launched on 23rd March, 2009. The car will be available in both standard and deluxe versions. Both versions will offer a wide range of body colours, and other accessories so that the car can be customised to an individual's preferences.






Stylish, comfortable

- Designed with a family in mind, the Nano has a roomy passenger compartment with generous leg space and head room.

- Can comfortably seat four persons. Four doors with high seating position make ingress and egress easy.

- With a length of 3.1 metres, width of 1.5 metres and height of 1.6 metres, with adequate ground clearance, it can effortlessly manoeuvre on busy roads in cities as well as in rural areas.

- Its mono-volume design, with wheels at the corners and the powertrain at the rear, enables it to uniquely combine both space and manoeuvrability, which will set a new benchmark among small cars.








Fuel-efficient engine

- The Nano has a rear-wheel drive, all-aluminium, two-cylinder, 623 cc, 33 PS, multi point fuel injection petrol engine. This is the first time that a two-cylinder gasoline engine is being used in a car with single balancer shaft.

- The lean design strategy has helped minimise weight, which helps maximise performance per unit of energy consumed and delivers high fuel efficiency.

- Performance is controlled by a specially designed electronic engine management system.

Meets all safety requirements

- The Nano's safety performance exceeds current regulatory requirements. With an all sheet-metal body, it has a strong passenger compartment, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat belts, strong seats and anchorages, and the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body.

- Tubeless tyres further enhance safety.

Environment-friendly

- The Nano's tailpipe emission performance exceeds regulatory requirements. In terms of overall pollutants, it has a lower pollution level than two-wheelers being manufactured in India today.



- The high fuel efficiency also ensures that the car has low carbon dioxide emissions, thereby providing the twin benefits of an affordable transportation solution with a low carbon footprint.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Who Controls Pakistan?

Who controls Pakistan? The answer is no one. Literaly it is uncontrollable. Here is the difference of Pakistan how it was in 1990's and how it is now!

Pakistan in 1990's



Pakistan Now

Pakistan is already split into four-five regions where the Government has no say. To the latest estimate only 45% of Pakistan is under government's control (atleast something belongs to the Government)
Next wave of Jihad will be in the port city of Karachi, which might soon fall to extremists. India, Russia and Commonwealth has to unite and make sure that Karachi doesn't fall and Pakistan as a state survives, even if it is in Coma / Intensive Care

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

We, The Nation(s) Of India

 
RAJIV MALHOTRA

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Ne170109we_the.asp

 



India breathes through her multiplicity, not her fragmenting voices



THERE IS a buzz about India becoming a superpower. But, are superpowers confused about national identity or inviting others to solve their civilisation's "backwardness"? Does a superpower allow foreign nexuses to co-opt its citizens as agents? India graciously hosts foreign nexuses that treat it as a collection of disparate parts. Is super - powerdom delusionary?

 

The Mumbai massacre painfully exposes flaws in our national character, the central one being the absence of a definitive, purpose-filled identity. Who is that "we" whose interests are represented, internally and internationally? How should Indianness be defined? Where is the Indianness that transcends narrow identities and vested interests, one that is worth sacrificing for? Is it in the popular culture of Bollywood and cricket? Or is it deeper? The national identity project is at once urgent and compelling.

The need for national identity

In their pursuit of personal goals, Indians are intensely competitive. But we lack consensus on a shared national essence and hence there is no deep psychological bond between citizen and nation. National identity is to a nation's well-being what the immune system is to the body's health. The over-stressed body succumbs to external and internal threats, and eventually death, as its immunity weakens. Similarly, a nation stressed by a vacuum of identity, or multiple conflicting identities, or outright confusion, can break up. Just as the body's immune system needs constant rejuvenation, so too a nation needs a positive collective psyche for its political cohesion.

 

Major nations deliberately pursue nation building through such devices as shared myths, history, heroes, religion, ideology, language and symbolism. Despite internal dissent, Americans have deep pride of heritage, and have constructed awe-inspiring monuments to their founding fathers and heroic wars. Where are Delhi's monuments honouring the wars of 1857 or 1971, Shivaji, the Vijayanagar Empire, Ashoka, or the peaceful spread of Indian civilisation across Asia for a millennium? Where are the museums that showcase India's special place in the world?



Forces that fragment

Voices of fragmentation drive India's internal politics — from Raj Thackeray to M Karunanidhi to Mamata Banerjee to the Quota Raj to the agents of foreign proselytising.

 

While social injustice, in India and elsewhere, demands effective cures, proper treatments do not follow faulty diagnoses. Since colonial times, influential scholars have propagated that there is no such thing as Indian civilisation. India was "civilised" by successive waves of invaders. The quest for Indianness is futile since India was never a nation. The noted historian Romila Thapar concludes that India's pluralism has no essence. Like a doughnut, the center is void; only the peripheries have identity.

 

Such thinking infects Indian elite. Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju, citing western historians, asserts that the Munda tribes are the only true natives and that 95 percent of Indians are immigrants; that all so-called Aryan and Dravidian classical languages are foreign, ruling out anything as pan-Indian in our antiquity; and that worthwhile Indian civilisation begins with Akbar, "the greatest ruler the world has ever seen."

 

This accelerating crescendo, portraying India as an inherently artificial, oppressive nation, is directed by western academics advocating western intervention to bring human rights. It is supported by private foundations, churches and the US government and promotes fragmentation by bolstering regional identities, "backward" castes, and religious minorities. Sadly, our own people, such as many activists and the westernised upper class, have internalised India's "oppression of minorities." The human catastrophe that would envelope diverse groups — especially the weakest — in the aftermath of India's break up is blithely ignored.

Beyond tolerance and assimilation

Critics worry that national identity promotes fascism. But while many civilisations have used identity for conquest, my vision of Indianness is driven by mutual respect. We respect the other who is different provided the other reciprocates with respect towards us, in rhetoric and in action. The religious "tolerance" of Judaism, Islam and Christianity is a patronising accommodation; it puts up with others' differences without respecting their right to be different. In contradistinction, Indian civilisation embraces differences reciprocally.

 

Movements that eradicate differences span the ideological spectrum. Some religions claim mandates from God to convert the religiously different. Although the European Enlightenment project dispensed with God, it enabled erasing ethnic diversity through genocide of Native Americans and slavery of African-Americans. Asians were luckier, because they could become "less different" via colonisation.

 

Today, many Indians erase their distinctiveness by glamorising white identity as the gold standard. Skin lighteners are literal whiteners. Media and pop culture incorporate white aesthetics, body language and attire for social status, careers and marriage. The venerable "namaste" is becoming a marker of the older generations and the servants. Pop Hindu gurus peddle the "everything is the same" mumbojumbo, ignoring even the distinctions between the dharmic and the un-dharmic. Intellectuals adopt white categories of discourse as "universal".

 

Difference eradicating ideologies are hegemonic. Either you (i) assimilate, (ii) oppose and suffer, or (iii) get contained and marginalised.

 

But Indian philosophy is built on celebrating diversity — in trees, flowers, matter, human bodies, minds, languages and cultures, spiritualities and traditions — and does not see it as a problem to be dealt with.

 

All social groups manifest an affinity for in-group relations but in the ideal Indian ethos, in-group affinity is without external aggression. Before colonial social engineering, traditional Indian castes were fluid, informal containers of identities, interwoven with one another, and not frozen hierarchically. This applied to Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Each caste had its distinct norms and was respected by others. My India is a web of thousands of castes encapsulating diverse genes and memes. This ideal is the exact opposite of fascist ethnocentrism.



Diversity yes, fragmentation no

The socially mobile castes that had preserved India's diversity were frozen into castes to serve the British divide-and rule. Independent India adopted caste identities to allocate quotas instead of safeguarding individual rights. When the Congress party failed to integrate a vast mishmash of subidentities, regional vote-banking entrepreneurs captured India's political fragments. Now, national interests are casually disregarded for fear of offending these fragments.

 

Cover Story Globalisation has opened the floodgates for minority leaders to tie-up with western churches and NGOs, Saudis, Chinese and just about anyone wanting to carve out a slice of the Indian elephant. Such minorities include the Nagas, now serving as a foreign subsidiary of the Texas Southern Baptist Church; Tamils who first got Dravidianised and are now being Christianised through identity engineering; Maoists in over 30 percent of India's districts; and Saudifunded Pan-Islamists expanding across India. These fragmented identities weaken Indianness due to their loyalty to foreign alliances. The leaders depend on foreign headquarters for ideological and financial support.

 

Such groups are no longer minorities, but are agents of dominant world majorities. They are franchisees of the global nexuses they serve. They are adversaries of the Indian identity formation. Do they truly help India's under classes? These global nexuses have a disappointing track record of solving problems in countries where they have operated for generations, including Latin America, Philippines and Africa where most natives have become converted. The imported religion has failed to bring human rights and has often exacerbated problems. Yet, Indian middlemen have mastered the art of begging foreign patronage in exchange for selling the souls of fellow Indians.



Towards an Indian identity

Hindutva is a modern political response lacking the elasticity to be the pan-Indian identity. Other popular ideas are equally shallow, such as the Indianness defined by Bollywood and cricket. Ideals like "secular democracy" and "development" do not a distinct national identity make. It is fashionable to blend pop culture with European ideologies and pass it off as Indianness. Such blends cannot bind a complex India together against fissiparous casteism and regionalism coming in the orbits of Islamist jihad and evangelical Christianity.

 

Indianness must override fragmented identities, no matter how large the vote bank or how powerful the foreign sponsor. Gandhi articulated a grand narrative for India. Tagore and Aurobindo saw continuity in Indian civilisation. Nehru had a national vision, which Indira Gandhi modified and defended fiercely. The Ashokan, Chola, and Maratha empires had welldefined narratives, each with an idea of India.



Debating Indianness fearlessly and fairly

A robust Indianness must become the context in which serious issues get debated. Everyone should be able to participate — be it Advani or Sonia, the Imam of Jama Masjid or Hindu gurus, Thackeray or the underworld — in a free and fair debate on Indianness, and no one should be exempt from criticism.

 

But the Indian intellectual mafia, which built careers by importing and franchising foreign doctrines, suppresses debate outside its framework, and brands honest attempts at opposing them as fascism. I offer a few examples.

 

A few years before 9/11, the Princeton-based Infinity Foundation proposed to a prestigious Delhi-based centre to research the Taliban and their impact on India. The centre's intellectuals pronounced the hypothesis an unrealistic conspiracy theory and unworthy of study. Even after 9/11, the American Academy of Religion refused to study the Taliban as a religious phenomenon while persisting with Hindu caste, cows, dowry, mothers-in-law, social oppression, violence and sundry intellectual staples.

 

Some analysts hyphenate Islamist terror with Kashmir, imputing that terrorism is a legitimate dispute resolution technique. "The plight of Muslims" is a rationalisation; and Martha Nussbaum, a University of Chicago professor, blames "Hindu fascism" as the leading cause of terrorism and justifies the Mumbai massacre by hyphenating it with Hindu "pogroms," Hindu "ethnic cleansing against Muslims," and the Hindu project to "Kill Christians and destroy their institutions." Her insensitivity to the victims, just two days after 26/11, was given a free pass by the LA Times.

 

Double standards are evident when cartoons lampooning Islam are condemned, whereas serious attacks against Hindu deities, symbols and texts are defended in the name of intellectual freedom. ( COMMENT: For more on this aspect, I would recommend a reading of "INVADING THE SACRED" (RUPA & CO) - Rajiv Malhotra was the 'prime -mover' in getting the book published. A fine intellectual treatise.)



Be positive and "live happily ever after"

The Bollywood grand finale, where the couple lives happily ever after, is de rigueur. Friends insist that my analysis must end with something positive by way of solving the problems I uncover. Hard evidence of dangerous cleavages in India, spinning out of control, is too "negative." The need to work backwards from a happy ending and only admit evidence that fits such endings is an Indian psychological disorder. But we don't expect doctors to reject negative diagnoses, analysts to ignore market crashes, or teachers to praise our unruly children. What if there is no "good" alternative?

 

It is disturbing that strategic options against Pakistan must subserve the sensitivities of Indian Muslims. This gratuitously assumes that Indian Muslims are less Indian than Muslim. Some fear that strong Indian action will precipitate increased jihad, or even nuclear war. Such fears recapitulate the early campaigns to appease Hitler. Once a violent cancer spreads outside the tumour's skin, it demands a direct attack. Vitamins, singing, and lamp-lighting are pointless. In sports or warfare, medicine or marketing, you cannot win by only using defence. The offensive option that cannot be exercised is merely a showpiece. If national interests are dominated by minority sentiments, our enemies will exploit our weakness. A paralysed India emboldens predators.



Games nations play

After Indians return to psychological normalcy, apathy will be confused as resilience. When each episode is seen in isolation there is short-term thinking, a tolerance of terrorism, and an acceptance that mere survival is adequate. Strategic planning requires connecting the trends clearly.

 

Indians must understand the reality of multiple geopolitical board games. Moves on one gameboard trigger consequences on others, making the tradeoffs complex. The South Asia gameboard involves USA-India-Pakistan as well as China-Pakistan stakes. Besides external games with its neighbours, India plays internal games to appease fragments, which are influenced by foreign stakeholders. Religion is used as soft power in the game of Islam versus the West, and India's fragmentation hastens the harvesting of souls in the world's largest open market. The multinational business gameboard spotlights India as a market, a supplier, a competitor, and an investment destination.

 

In another gameboard, scholars of South Asia construct a discourse with Indian intellectuals as their sepoys and affiliated NGOs as paid agents. Following the academic and human rights experts who profited from the Iraq invasion, the players in this game hope that US president designate Barack Obama will budget billions to "engage South Asia."

 

The identity challenges are offset by forces that hold India together. Private enterprises that span the entire country bring cohesion that depends on high economic growth and its trickle down to the lowest strata to outpace population growth and social unrest. Economic prosperity is also required for military spending. More than any other institution, the armed forces unify the nation because they realise that soldiers must identify themselves with the nation they are prepared to die for.

 

Recent US policy supports India's sovereignty, but this should be seen in the context of using India as a counterweight against Pan-Islam and China. In the long run, the US would like India not to become another unified superpower like China or to disintegrate into a Pakistan-like menace. It will "manage" India between these two extremes. An elephant cannot put itself up for adoption as someone's pet. It must learn to fend for itself.



Lessons for India

Although the US is a land of immigrants, pride of place goes to the majority religion. Political candidates for high office are seriously disadvantaged if they are not seen as good Christians. The church-state separation is not a mandate to denounce Christianity or privilege minority religions. America was built on white identity that involved the ethnic cleansing of others. To its credit, India has avoided this.Obama sought a better, unified nation and transcended the minorityism of previous Black leaders. Unlike the Dravidianists, Mayawati, and those Muslim and Christian leaders who undermine India's identity, Obama is unabashedly patriotic and a devout follower of its majority religion. America celebrates its tapestry of hyphenated identities (Indian-American, Irish-American, etc.) but "American" supersedes every sub-identity. Being un-American is a death knell for American leaders.

 

In sharp contrast, Mayawati, Indian Muslim leaders, Indian Christian leaders, Dravidianists and other "minority" vote bankers have consolidated power at the expense of India's unified identity. Unlike the promoters of fragmented Indian identities, Obama is closer to Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar, champions of the downtrodden within a unified Indian civilisation.

 

India can learn from American mechanisms. Indian billionaires must become major stakeholders in constructing positive discourse on the nation. They must make strategic commitments like those made by the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Fords in building American identity, its sense of history, and in projecting American ideals. American meritocracy in politics, implemented through internal primaries, is vastly superior to the cronyism in Indian politics.

 

The area studies programmes in American universities have close links to the government, think tanks and churches, and they examine nations and civilisations from the American perspective. India should establish a network of area studies to study neighboring countries and other regions from India's viewpoint. India should study China's establishment of 100 Confucian Studies Chairs worldwide and the civilisational grand narrative of other nations.

 

Ideological "camps" with pre-packaged solutions are obsolete. The Indian genius must improvise, innovate, and create a national identity worthy of its name.

 

Rajiv Malhotra is the President, Infinity Foundation,(Princeton, N.J., U.S.A.) who also writes on issues concerning the place of Indian civilisation in the world

 



 





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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Abject failure of UPA Government’s foreign policy

India's autonomy in the conduct of foreign policy has been seriously undermined.

• Although India should continue to have close and multi-dimensional friendship with the United States, the UPA Government ignored the fundamental truth that the US foreign policy is guided primarily by its own national interests and that India must do what is in India's national interest. The abandonment of autonomy was most evident in two issues: handling the menace of Pak-sponsored terrorism and the Indo-US nuclear deal.

• The UPA Government has been derelict in its duty by neglecting India's vital internal security interests, as is evident in the manner in which it turned a blind eye to illegal immigration from Bangladesh and to the Maoist insurgency in Nepal.

• The UPA Government's neighbourhood policy has been a disaster. Under its rule, our neighbourhood turned more unfriendly towards India than at any time in the past sixty years, Nepal and Sri Lanka being the most striking examples.

• Under UPA's rule, India's relations with a traditional ally like Russia were downgraded, as a result of which they considerably lost their warmth and closeness. Indeed, the quality of India's relations with all the major allies has suffered due to a lack of focus and commitment.

• The momentum and vigour that the Vajpayee government had introduced in India's relations with Iran and countries in Central Asia and also in its Look East Policy have disappeared.

• The UPA Government failed to engage countries in Africa and Latin America, thereby impairing the strength of India's global diplomacy and also the opportunities in economic diplomacy.

• The current  crisis in the global economy presents major challenges and opportunities before India. The UPA Government has left India unprepared in this vital area. There is an urgent need for India to engage the international community for restructuring of the global financial institutions for stable, equitable and sustainable growth of the world economy.



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Pakistan Shooting - Injured Srilankan Players List

Here is the list of Srilankan players who were injured in not-so-different cowardly shooting of Paksitan based Islamic terrorists

Jayawardene shrapnel in ankle cup

Sangakkara shrapnel in the shoulder

Vaas minor shrapnel in the leg

Mendis shrapnel in back of neck

Tharanga bullet in chest

Samaraweera bullet pierced through leg

Suranka Lakmal minor injury

Assistant coach minor injury

Let us all pray for the speedy recovery of all



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Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Srilankan Lions return home as frightened cats

Arjuna Ranatunga's batch of Lions went to Pakistan without heeding to advice of other ICC members. They were shown the taste of pakistan by twelve foolish militants who fired at their bus. Within minutes the lions shed their pride and return as cats and kittens. Fear and panic was largely written on every srilankan cricketer's face. Almost everyone had missed death by a whisker.

It is widely accepted that Pakistan is not a safe place. But what came as a surprise was the attack in Lahore, which was supposedly safer than many places in Pakistan. This clearly shows that even with a strong military, the actual control of the state doesn't rest with the government. With 45% of the country is out-of the state's control (Baluchistan, SWAT valley, NWFP), it is high-time international community steps in and appoints a government before the entire collapses



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