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Buying/Selling1 ?
Wednesday, February 18-24, 2015
Winzone Realty Inc.
Baldev
Singh
Associate
Broker/Notary
Cell : 917-224-7395
Vol. 12
Issue 37
Wednesday 19-24 February, 2015
www.thesouthasianinsider.com
Price $ 1
Published Weekly from New York
Obama Calls Idea That The West Is At War With Islam
‘President Obama
doesn’t love America’
Rudy Giuliani
'An Ugly Lie'
(News Agencies)
New York- Former
New York City
Mayor
Rudy
Giuliani
went
straight for the
jugular Wednesday night during a
private group dinner here featuring
Wisconsin Gov.
Scott Walker by openly questioning
whether President Barack Obama “loves
America.”
Giuliani, speaking in front of the
2016 Republican presidential contender
and about 60 right-leaning business executives and conservative media types,
directly challenged Obama’s patriotism,
discussing what he called weak foreign
(Contd on page 22)
(Insider Bureau) Washington DC- "The notion that the West is at
war with Islam is an ugly lie and all of us — regardless of our faith
— have a responsibility to reject it," President Obama said Thursday, at a summit on defusing violent extremism.
The statement echoes the president's remarks from
Wednesday, when Obama said it's crucial to change the narrative
about the intersection of religion, particularly Islam, and modern
society. He called it “a generational challenge”.
Instead of focusing on Islam, the president and others
have said at the summit, the U.S. and other countries should be
trying to snip away at terrorism's ideological, economic and political roots.Obama spoke on the issue for more than 20 minutes,
urging countries not to help lend legitimacy to extremist groups
such as ISIS."Nations need to break the cycles of conflict especially sectarian conflict that are magnets for violent extremism."
"We have to confront the warped ideologies espoused by terrorists like al-Qaida and ISIL,
especially their attempts to use Islam to justify their violence."
"When people, especially young people, feel entirely trapped in
impoverished communities
(Contd on page 23)
India Republic
Day Celebrated
Judge stalls Obama immigration orders
(News Agencies) The ruling puts on hold Mr.
Obama’s orders that could spare as many as five
million people who are in the U.S. illegally from
deportation. It came from U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who once accused the Obama administration of participating in criminal conspiracies to smuggle children into the U.S. by helping
reunite them with parents who live here illegally.
In response, the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security said it would halt preparations for a program to protect parents of U.S. citizens or legal
permanent residents until further notice.
(Contd on page 22)
Negativity against Congress won BJP,
AAP their elections: Raj Babbar
Story
ON P a g e
19
(News Agencies)
Congress leader
Raj Babbar on
Tuesday said
India is now
seeing a new
form of 'wave'
politics which is based on the extensive use
of the internet and web-based applications
to influence young voters. "This is a politics of waves and both in the 2014 parliamentary
(Contd on page 22)
Swine flu kills 600-plus
in India, refuses to die
Story
ON P a g e
23
WORLD
2
Canadian company behind Keystone to seek US approval for another pipeline
(Agencies) The Canadian company behind the long-delayed Keystone XL oil
pipeline will seek U.S. government approval for another pipeline — this one
going north.
Industry officials in North Dakota say
the proposed Upland Pipeline could
reduce reliance on the railroads to ship
crude following recent concerns about
safety.
TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $600
million Upland Pipeline would begin near
the northwestern North Dakota oil hub of
Williston and go north into Canada about
200 miles. At peak operation it would
transport up to 300,000 barrels of oil daily,
connecting with other pipelines including
the Energy East pipeline across Canada.
“We expect Upland and Energy East
to play a key role in providing sufficient
pipeline capacity to improve supply
security for eastern Canadian and U.S.
refiners, and reduce the need for foreign
imports,” TransCanada said in a
statement.
The company last year sought
commitments from shippers and said in
its quarterly earnings report last Friday
that the effort was successful.
TransCanada hopes to have the Upland
Pipeline operating in 2018, pending
approval from the U.S. State Department,
North Dakota’s Public Service
Commission and Canada’s National
Energy Board. The company plans to
submit an application to the State
Department in the second quarter of this
year.
TransCanada has been trying for
years to get U.S. approval for the 1,179mile Keystone XL, which would connect
Canada’s tar sands to refineries on the
U.S. Gulf Coast but has sparked
environmental objections. Congress last
week approved construction but President
Barack Obama has threatened to veto the
measure.
TransCanada spokesman Davis
Sheremata on Thursday said the
company can’t speculate on whether it
might run into similar problems with
Upland. Company President and CEO
Russ Girling last week told analysts and
reporters that he hopes the drawn-out
Keystone XL process is “an anomaly.”
“Obviously, the market isn’t waiting for
the regulators to catch up with their
decisions — they’re moving the oil now,”
he said. North Dakota Petroleum Council
President Ron Ness on Thursday called
the Upland proposal a needed project that
would move the state’s crude to “great
markets” in eastern Canada and the
northeastern U.S.
North Dakota, the nation’s No. 2 oil
state behind Texas, is producing about
1.2 million barrels of crude daily. Several
pipeline projects are proposed to move
the oil, 80 percent of which now is being
hauled by rail, according to North Dakota
Pipeline Authority Director Justin
Kringstad.
US announces massive attack
plans for 25,000 Iraqi soldier
to retake Mosul from ISIS
Rebel takeover of
eastern Ukraine
city raises
questions about
cease-fire,
Putin’s intentions
(Agencies) The Ukrainian military’s
withdrawal from a key eastern city –
leaving Russia-backed rebels to roam
the streets in celebration – has raised
questions about a newly struck ceasefire and Vladimir Putin’s ultimate intentions.
The city of Debaltseve effectively fell
to rebel fighters days after the ceasefire was signed last week with the heavy
involvement of European leaders. That
deal may have eased, for now, any
consideration by the Obama
administration of arming the Ukrainian
military.But U.S. lawmakers say the
latest developments only underscore
the need for greater involvement by the
U.S. and its allies.
“The fall of Debaltseve to Russianbacked Ukrainian separatists should be
all the evidence we need to proclaim
the failure of the recent cease-fire
agreement in Ukraine,” Sens. John
McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., said in a statement, calling the
deal a “delusional piece of paper.”
They warned the Ukrainians’ retreat
will only embolden Putin as he
seemingly tries to aid the rebels in
gaining more territory – effectively
adding to his largest prize to date, the
annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Mariupol.
“Persisting with the illusion of a ceasefire will only give Putin the cover he wants
to plan his next act of aggression inside
of Ukraine,” they said, accusing
President Obama and other leaders of
using “any available excuse not to provide
defensive arms.”
The Obama administration has made
clear that arming the Ukrainians is on the
table, although it has not yet taken that
step. Asked about the latest
developments on Thursday, State
Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki
said the U.S. “condemns continuing
attacks by Russia-backed separatists in
and around Debaltseve, Mariupol and
other locations in eastern Ukraine which
violate the cease-fire and flout the Minsk
agreements.”
She added: “We call on Russia and
the separatists it backs to stop their
attacks immediately, withdraw heavy
weapons, halt the flow of fighters and
equipment from Russia into Ukraine.”
The war in eastern Ukraine has killed
5,600 people and forced over a million to
flee their homes since fighting began last
April, a month after Russia annexed the
mostly Russian-speaking Crimean
Peninsula. Russia denies arming the
rebels or supplying fighters, but Western
nations and NATO point to satellite
McCain and Graham predicted the pictures of Russian military equipment in
next offensive will likely occur in nearby eastern Ukraine.
The Keystone XL would move 830,000
barrels of oil a day from Canada south,
as well as about 100,000 barrels of
domestic oil daily from North Dakota’s
Bakken region. With Upland, a total of
about 1 million barrels of oil could be
moved by pipelines from North Dakota to
markets across the U.S., Ness and
Kringstad said.
That would help displace rail
shipments of North Dakota oil. Trains
hauling crude from the state’s rich oil
fields have been involved in major
accidents in Virginia, West Virginia,
North Dakota, Oklahoma and Alabama,
as well as in Canada, where 47 people
were killed by an explosive derailment in
2013 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
“Producers want to put oil on pipelines
to get it to these key markets,” said
Ness, whose group represents more than
500 companies working in western North
Dakota. “We’ve just got to get them
permitted.”
In Paris, French President Francois
Hollande said he and German Chancellor
Angela Merkel spoke Thursday with the
leaders of Ukraine and Russia -- Petro
Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin -- about
cease-fire violations and their
consequences. The Kremlin confirmed
the four leaders had spoken by phone and
praised the cease-fire deal, saying it has
led to "a reduction in the number of civilian
casualties."
France and Germany, which oversaw
marathon peace talks between the
Ukrainian and Russian leaders last week
in Minsk, Belarus, both signaled
Thursday that they're determined to
salvage the cease-fire deal and keep the
two sides talking.
The German government said the four
leaders had agreed "to stick to the Minsk
agreements despite the serious breach
of the cease-fire in Debaltseve." It said
"immediate concrete steps" were
necessary to ensure that the cease-fire
is fully implemented and heavy weapons
are withdrawn. Both sides were supposed
to pull back heavy weapons in eastern
Ukraine beginning Tuesday, but
international monitors said Thursday they
had not seen either doing so.
"We have not observed the withdrawal
of heavy weapons, however we have
observed and reported on the movement
of heavy weapons," said Michael
Bociurkiw of the Organization for Security
(Agencies) The operation to
retake Iraq's second largest city from
Islamic State militants will likely begin
in April or May and will involve about
12 Iraqi brigades, or between 20,000
and 25,000 troops, a senior U.S.
military official said Thursday.
Laying out details of the expected
Mosul operation for the first time, the
official from U.S. Central Command
said five Iraqi Army brigades will soon
go through coalition training in Iraq to
prepare for the mission.
Those five would make up the core
fighting force that would launch the
attack, but they would be
supplemented by three smaller
brigades serving as reserve forces,
along with three Peshmerga brigades
who would contain the Islamic State
fighters from the north and west.
The Peshmerga are Kurdish forces
from northern Iraq.
The official said there also would
be a Mosul fighting force, largely
made up of former Mosul police and
tribal forces, who would have to be
ready to go back into the city once
the army units clear out the Islamic
State fighters.
WORLD
Which woman says beauty to YOU?
(Insider Bureau) Photographer
travels the globe to prove appearance is all in the eye of the beholder
In contrast to the constant
barrage of women's fashion
magazines declaring what is attractive, photographer Mihaela
Noroc set off on a journey around
the world -- and found that beauty
really is in the eye of the beholder.
The Romanian traveled to 37
different countries, where she of-
ten met women simply walking
the street and took stunning portraits of them, highlighting what
is considered desirable in different cultures.
From the freezing, chaffing Tibetan Plateau near the
Himalayas to the sultry tropics
of South America, Noroc, 29,
entitled her startling and revealing project, 'The Atlas of Beauty.'
At times spending only 30
seconds with each subject and
traveling only with her camera and
a backpack, Noroc tried to take
pictures of young women all in
their twenties.
She explained in a statement
to Daily Mail Online 'I'm a [29year-old] female photographer
from Romania that quit her boring job and started a new life. Two
years ago I took my backpack,
my camera and begun to travel
around the globe, with savings
made in years of working.
'In this journey I photographed
hundreds of natural women surrounded by their culture. My
project is called 'The Atlas Of
Beauty' and is about our planet's
diversity shown through portraits
of women.' Noroc said she visited a variety of locations, including favelas in Brazil and 'rough
neighborhoods of Colombia,' as
well as an Iranian mosque and
the Amazon rainforest.
She said in her statement
'Now I can say that beauty is everywhere, and it’s not a matter of
cosmetics, money, race or social
status, but more about being
yourself.
'Global directions make us
look and behave the same, but
we are all beautiful because we
are different. In the end, beauty
is in the eye of the beholder, and
the beholder is always somebody
else.' Noroc added 'When I photograph a woman I talk a lot, I try
to to make her feel special, proud
and unique. I can get along in 5
languages and this helps me a
lot, but in some countries, talking becomes body language.
'I prefer to photograph natural
faces, without a lot of make-up,
and to capture that moment of
sincerity and serenity that is so
specific for women.
3
OPINION
Huzoor, AAP ?
We pride ourselves in
Ahankaar (as also Hunkaar, till
recently). Do-you-know-who-I-am
is our calling card. We adore Big
Beasts with tinted glass. We
think lal-batti is our birthright. We
covet Z-plus security. It’s a high
when all traffic stops for us. We
walk with a swagger, usually with
a bottle in one hand and a gun in
the other. We greet each other
with gaalis. We rage on the
roads. We don’t care for rules.
We hate traffic lights, zebra
crossings and parking lots. Bullets fly over parking brawls. We
hate queues. We think it’s beneath us to stand quietly in a line.
Our communities are gated. Our
rwas are territorial as pit bulls. We
don’t like our house-helps in the
same elevator as us. We side with
diplomats who underpay maids,
because it’s the norm here. We
usurp whatever we can. We extend our houses. We make personal gardens of public parks. We
spread out our shops. We plunder, we purge. We take hafta, we
give hafta. Black money runs in
our veins. When we buy or sell
houses, we carry sacks to stuff
in the illegal moolah. When we
sign MoUs, suitcases full of cash
exchange hands. When we win
contracts, we shower the babus
with gold. We like our lucre filthy,
our deals underhand, our capitalism crony.
We have bloated
ghamand. We are snooty, we are
class-conscious, status-minded.
When we meet someone new,
our first question is ‘where do you
live?’. Golf Links, Civil Lines,
West End? We have never been
to, or even heard of, Seelampur,
Shakur Basti or Geeta Colony.
We may be mouthing paeans to
the aam aadmi now, but we abhor the small guy. We squash the
underdog. We trample, we
stomp. We let nine-year-old boys
clean our cars, adolescent girls
sell roses at crossings. We curse
rickshaw-pullers, we think slums
are gangrene, we run over our
homeless. We like our poor
meek, servile and scrawny. We
are suspicious of anybody with
dark skin or slanted eyes. We
torment and taunt the outsider.
We ridicule men who like men.
We take tourists for rides. We
want to cull stray dogs. Our city
is frightening for single women.
Our girls have to be home by
eight. We kill our girls if they
marry for love. We stalk our
women, we ogle, we touch, we
pinch, we molest, we eve-tease,
we throw acid, we abuse. And as
everyone knows by now, we rape
our women savagely.
We are not honest or
austere. We are guttural, we are
gluttonous. Our weddings, our
addresses, our cars, our
jewellery, our little titles are our
identities. We want them all gargantuan, shiny and shrill. We
gobble, we plunder, we maraud.
We are dynastic. Nepotism is in
our blood. We take favours, we
do favours. We are pushy, we use
pull. An Aggarwal (or Agrawal, or
Agarwala) Sweets Corner
owner—or if that caste is too
touchy right now, a Bengal Sweet
House—will want his son to take
over after him. A motorcyclemaker will want his son to run the
business after him. A Delhi
Gymkhana or a Delhi Golf Club
member will bequeath his membership to his son. A think-tanker
will want his son to join the thinktank. We don’t care too much
about our daughters. Our youth
is not very brainy or talented.
Most of them don’t want to crack
any entrance test, they mostly
want to crack the formula of an
original to make duplicates. We
make duplicates of everything,
from immersible motor pumps to
Imodium. We are the world’s
capital for fakes. We don’t do
start-ups, we are more smashups.
We are unruly, uncouth
and uncaring. We have Vishaal
Bhagwati Jagrans in the middle
of the road. A baraat is not a
baraat if it doesn’t block traffic for
hours. We throw heaps of plastic plates of leftover puri-halwa on
the sidewalk. We hate sidewalks.
We set up taxi stands, security
guard cabins, dhabas, paan
kiosks, barber shops on them.
4
We set up weekly haats on residential lanes. Our autorickshaws
don’t want to go anywhere. Our
taxis overcharge. We are louts,
we are touts. We scramble for
passes for everything, from classical concerts to Formula One
races. We steal electricity, evade
taxes, sell spurious goods. We
don’t take receipts for our transactions. We like our leaders in
palaces. We worship them. We
don’t ask why our MPs must stay
in sprawling bungalows. Our
leaders like us to suck up. They
like yesmen and we like to say
yes. We bow in front of the
mai-baaps. Our citizens don’t
rebel, they loathe protests.
Give us our maa ki daal, our
butter chicken, a double peg
and we are numb.
Egypt strikes back
Egypt seems to have set its foot deep into the Islamic State (IS)
quicksand. Since Monday, the Egyptian military has been carrying
out raids on IS camps and weapon storage areas in northeast Libya.
These attacks were in response to the brutal beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians kidnapped by militants claiming allegiance
to IS. The tragic fact, by now obvious, is that Egypt’s military strikes
are only a very partial solution to a continuously expanding IS threat.
To make matters worse, these air strikes on Libyan soil would be
seen as an assault on Libya’s sovereignty. About seven civilians,
including four children, have been killed in these air strikes, which
have damaged several residential areas in the city of Derna. Having
a relatively stable base in Syria and Iraq, IS is now gradually carving out its presence in Libya. Libya has been in a political vacuum
since the 2011 uprising which led to the overthrow of Muammar
Qadhafi. The revolution has since been undermined by political factions and rebels struggling for power. Egypt’s attack on Libyan soil
will only add to the existing lawlessness of that state, giving IS a
better opportunity to dig in and strengthen its presence there.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been leading
an internal battle against political-religious groups, especially the
Muslim Brotherhood, his largest opposition. But Mr. Sisi’s error lies
in declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist group and equating it with
more violent ones such as IS and al-Qaeda. His crackdown may
even lead some local groups to pledge allegiance to the IS in order
to resist Mr. Sisi. This is in fact a strategy that IS has been deploying to destabilise other states as well. Jordan, for instance, was
similarly provoked recently into a military strike following hostage
beheadings, magnified by IS’s use of carefully crafted visuals in the
media.
(Contd on page 23)
COMMUNITY-TRISTATE-NEWS
5
FBI's most wanted cyber criminal arrested in Pakistan
(Insider Bureau) Karachi : Pakistani officials on Saturday arrested two men
wanted for cyber crimes by Interpol and
the FBI for defrauding several companies
and individuals of over $50 million. Mir
Mazhar Jabbar, a senior official with
Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency,
told AFP his team had arrested Noor Aziz
and Farhan Arshad from the northern part
Karachi, the country's largest city and
commerical hub. "They were on the most
wanted list of the FBI and we have successfully arrested them," Jabbar told
Media. The FIA team also arrested three
others who are all part of the same extended family, Jabbar said.The FBI on its
website said that Arshad and Uddin were
wanted for their alleged involvement in an
international communication scheme and
hacking venture that defrauded individuals, telecom companies and government
entities in the United States and elsewhere in the world. They cost their targets more than $50 million.Arshad and
Uddin gained access to business telephones systems and used the systems to place long distance telephone
calls to premium rate numbers as part
of a scheme known as international
revenue share fraud, according to the
US agency. "Arshad and Uddin are
part of an international criminal ring
that the FBI believes extends into Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Spain, Singapore, Italy, Malaysia and other locations," the FBI said in
late 2013.The FBI -- which had the pair
on their "cyber most wanted" list -- had also offered a reward of up to $50,000 each for information that led to their arrest.
Ex-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg to aid ‘smart cities’ project
Indian-American
businessman shot dead in US
(Insider Bureau) New York : A 28-year-old IndianAmerican businessman, who was gunned down by
an unidentified assailant in his family-owned liquor
shop in the US, has succumbed to his injuries,
police said today. Amit Patel from Edison was shot
and killed in New Jersey inside Roseway Liquors
in Irvington yesterday.
Patel was alone in the liquor store, owned
by his father, when the assailant shot at him at
close range, police said. There was no damage to
the store or indication of a robbery and only one
shot was fired, they said.
When police arrived at the store, they found
Patel injured from a gunshot wound. He was later
pronounced dead, acting Essex county prosecutor Carolyn A Murray and acting Irvington police
director Musa Malik said in a statement .According to close family friends, Amit's father was in the
back office when the shooting took place.
"Somebody came in, shot him... fell down
here," family friend Rakesh Patel said. "We don't
know if it was a robbery, nobody knows. They were
alone here," Bimal Patel, another family friend, was
quoted as saying by nj.com.
"He was a nice guy. I don't know what happened. Everybody's nervous," he said. The victim
got married only a year ago. Authorities said they
were looking into whether the shooting may have
been the result of a robbery, but said it was too
early in the investigation to be sure.
The CCTV camera footage will be examined for any leads in the case, in which no arrests
have been made so far.
(Insider Bureau) New Delhi: Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and former
New York City mayor Michael
Bloomberg announced a partnership to take forward the NDA
government's "Smart Cities" initiative. The partnership between the
urban development ministry and
Bloomberg Philanthropies shall
look to promote economic growth,
improve governance and deliver effective public services in urban areas.
Sources said that a formal
memorandum of understanding between UD ministry and Bloomberg
Philanthropies would be signed in
a month to take forward the partnership. A release issued by the
Prime Minister's Office said
Bloomberg Philanthropies "will provide assistance to the ministry of
urban development to select cities
for Smart Cities Mission funding on
a continuous basis ... It will ensure
that real citizen engagement happens, as people get involved both
in design and execution of city development plans. This will actualize the idea of cooperative and
competitive federalism."
Following PM's direction,
the urban development ministry is
working on a scheme to encourage
competition among cities to make
it to the list of Smart Cities.
Bloomberg Philanthropies is expected to help the ministry in se-
lecting the cities.
Earlier in the day, the former New
York mayor met urban development
minister M Venkaiah Naidu where
he said that in the US, state and
city governments are more pro-active than the federal government so
far as development of cities is concerned. He said Americans are
apolitical in the matter of urban
development and expect quick results and delivery of services.
A release issued by urban development ministry said that
Bloomberg mentioned that global financial institutions are increasingly
coming under pressure not to assist
any development activity that does not
adequately address environment and
climate change concerns.
Kerala girl a step away from ticket to Mars
(Insider Bureau) Mumbai: Kerala girl
Shradha Prasad's dream of settling
down on Mars is inching towards
reality, with the 19-year-old from
Palakkad qualifying for the final
round of selection for the "once-ina-lifetime opportunity".
Her parents' only child, this
mechanical engineering student is
also the lone candidate based in
India to be selected by Netherlandbased Mars-One for the fourth
round of the astronaut selection
process, the organization announced on Monday.
Three other Indians have
been selected, of which two are
based in the US and one in Dubai.
Speaking to TOI, Shradha,
a student of Coimbatore's Amrita
University said, "I am keen on settling down on Mars as I have a passion for space sciences and technology. This apart, I also enjoy taking risks and doing something adventurous. The one-way trip to
Mars combines the two."
Asked if she was confident of making it into the 24member crew that will be selected to go to Mars, she replied: "After my success in the
third round, my confidence has
strengthened. I came to know on
February 13 that I had passed. I
was ecstatic. But we were not
allowed to disclose it.
It will be tough leaving
my family, friends and all my
near and dear ones. Yes, I agree
it will not be that easy. But, let
me not forget that it will be an
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Asked how her parents
view the possibility of their only
child permanently settling down
on Mars, she said: "They think I
am crazy. But, I am known for
doing eccentric stuff. So, they
are not surprised."
Out of 202,586 applicants,
100 qualified for the third round. Of
these, 24 will be chosen by MarsOne for the mission. Among the
organization's advisors are two Indians — K R Sridhara Murthi,
former head of Antrix Corporation,
Isro's commercial arm, and aerospace expert Gautam Hariharan.
Mars-One is a non-profit
organization based in the Netherlands. It aims to establish a
permanent human settlement on
Mars by offering a one-way trip
to those selected. The current
plan envisages crews of four departing every two years beginning 2024. The first unmanned
flight is slated for lift-off in 2018.
According to MarsOne, 50 men and 50 women
passed the second round.
The candidates came from
across the world — 39 from
the Americas, 31 from Europe, 16 from Asia, seven
from Africa and seven from
Oceania.
EDITORIAL
6
Waking up to a new 'usual' BJP's dangerous liaison in J&K
A conversation, factual or embellished, with a taxi driver has been the oldest ploy in the journalist's book. Sometimes it sparks new ideas, sometimes it
helps to substantiate your hypothesis, and occasionally it is a farcical ploy to put in
an anonymous mouth a too-clever one-liner you'd rather not utter yourself, but say
nevertheless. A conversation with a top fund manager in a hotel lift is a different
proposition, and a new spin on the old taxi-driver wisdom.
So, how far do you think AAP will reach? How will the BJP recover? Can the
Congress survive? He asked as we climbed from the first floor to the third of the
suburban Mumbai hotel where I had just dispensed an hour's gyan to a hallful of
moneyed people like, and including, him. Then he answered it more succinctly than
I had, and in the time taken from floor 3 to 10. "Modern politics has now become like
the IT industry," he said. "Just as smart tech start-ups keep disrupting established
giants, a political start-up has disrupted established, big parties. The big question
now, do they understand this? And how will they respond?"
Let's test this proposition in some detail. It is easy to see how AAP is a
start-up. First of all, it literally is one. Most of our established parties, national and
regional, are old, multi-generation brands such as the Congress, BJP, CPI(M), Akali
Dal, Shiv Sena, DMK. Or they are derivatives, offshoots and splinters such as the
AIADMK, the many baby Congresses, TRC, TMC, NCP. Or amorphous, opportunistic amalgams, rather khichdis, such as the old Janata Party and its own estranged
offspring, the Biju Janata Dal, JD(U) and many Lok Dals. Come to think of it, our
politics hasn't thrown up many start-ups. The last ones I can think of are the Asom
Gana Parishad in 1985 and NTR's Telugu Desam in 1982. Both, by the way, were an
instant, stunning success. Both have endured for three decades or more, though
the one in Assam now seems to be fading away, its leaders and votes moving to the
BJP.
AAP is even more of a start-up than these. The closer parallel is the AGP,
which also morphed from an honest young people's movement with wide, emotional
support, imaginative agitational tactics and a largely sympathetic media. Covering
the movement closely as a newspaper reporter in 1981-83, its years of high idealism, I was amazed and stirred by such commitment and integrity at a very young
age. Of course, the party took no time to evolve into "normal" political behaviour, but
that is another story. I was not surprised seeing Rajmohan Gandhi in studios talking
about AAP with adulation. Similar idealism had attracted him to Assam as a student
leader in the early 80s, which is when we first met as he visited me at my home in
Shillong. The TDP is a little different; at least it had a big film star launch it.
The Aam Aadmi Party has sharper features of a modern-day start-up. It has
the kernel of a new thought so essential for a disruptive idea: changing the way a
business is done. Compare, say, Flipkart or Snapdeal with Kishore Biyani's Future,
Tata's Croma or Reliance Retail. It is mostly led by under-50s, which is Indian
politics' equivalent of IT people in their 20s. And its real troopers are barely in their
twenties. You want to see how much younger, full of attitude they are, replay the
footage of the members of the BJP and AAP celebrating victory in 2014 and last
week, respectively. One, the familiar old way, stuffing mithai in each other's mouths,
loading the leaders with garlands and bursting crackers. The other erupting in flash
mobs, some even live in TV studios, singing and dancing steps perfected over many
a wedding baraat and sangeet. And see how young they look. AAP is not even the
classical case of a set of people growing out of student politics into the big league.
Its heft and lung power come from thousands of supporters still in college.
Like a classical start-up, it also carries no baggage, respects no legacy
and finds reputation contemptible. Yogendra Yadav answers the larger question of
AAP's ideology with a brilliant turn of political phraseology: the problem is, people
cannot fit us into one of the ideological boxes that evolved in the early 20th century.
We are willing to learn from everything and choose what works best. Of course, you
know the box in which he belongs, or Prashant Bhushan or his self-proclaimed
opposite pole, Kumar Vishwas. But none of them represents the ideology of AAP. It
is still a work in progress and probably the right product in post-ideological times
when India is muscled forward by an ambitious, me-first, selfie generation. In a very
vaguely defined manner (and I know the comparison would enrage genuine intellectuals), AAP is evolving like the Congress did in its early days, having the right, left,
even libertarians under its umbrella in pursuit of a common idea, not ideology. You
can even stretch that comparison to the dumping of Gandhi, though the children of
Anna Hazare have done it rather more brutally. The Aam Aadmi Party is now looking
more and more like a cult built around Arvind Kejriwal, borrowing whatever ideas will
make their product sell. They have taken the self-pitying, povertarian, freebie-laden
discourse from the Congress, soft Hindutva, including Bharat Mata and Vande
Mataram, from the BJP, and patriotic Sunny Deol hyper with Bhagat Singh and
Inquilab Zindabad from Anna. Most amusingly, a "deshbhakti" song often played at
AAP rallies was "Dil Diya Hai Jaan Bhi Denge, Ai Watan Tere Liye" from the Dilip
Kumar-starrer Karma.
As per the "sources" of various news channels, the Sarsanghchalak of the
RSS, Dr Mohan Bhagwat, has reportedly expressed his displeasure at the proposed concessions to be made by the BJP to join a likely coalition in Jammu
and Kashmir led by the PDP. This is unusual, to put it mildly.
The PDP is known to have driven a hard bargain with the BJP on the
terms of sharing power. Concessions on sensitive issues like AFSPA that impinge on the national security and also the morale of the armed forces, are
rumoured to be part of the deal. That the Centre should start talks with the
Hurriyat separatists too has been insisted upon, and reportedly conceded. But
what takes the cake is the insistence on recommencing stalled talks with Pakistan. Never mind if this amounts to interfering in the conduct of the nation's
foreign policy which is, unexceptionally, the Centre's domain. The Centre seem
to have found a way to avoid the embarrassment on this count too by initiating
the Pakistan dialogue even before the formal announcement of the coalition, so
as not to let it be seen as a part of a domestic political quid pro quo. There are
other sticking points too, such as the lakhs of Hindu PoK-refugees languishing
as "non-subjects" of Jammu and Kashmir for more than six decades.
And that is not all. With this deal, the BJP may have given itself a
convenient excuse to keep the repeal of Article 370 in abeyance. To be fair to
the BJP, their prevarication on this began months before the Assembly polls.
But the PDP, reportedly, wants to rub it in by seeking an assurance on it in
writing. The BJP's demand for the CM's post to be shared between the PDP and
the BJP by rotation, too, in all likelihood, stands rejected by the PDP. Yet, the
BJP looks eager for the alliance.
For the prime minister and the other BJP leaders, particularly the one
who is a senior minister in the government and is known to call all the shots on
matters pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir, to disregard the reported reservations of the Sarsanghchalak, may not be an easy decision to take. But, if they
do go ahead with their plans for Jammu and Kashmir, with the reported compromises, it is likely to cause some eminently avoidable repercussions. Tongues
will wag. The easiest to foresee is an uneasy speculation dominating the discourse within the Parivar, which could, potentially, undermine the ideological
clarity and cohesion among its cadres. For a cadre-based Parivar which is
nothing if not every bit ideological, such a scenario will have consequences.
The first NDA government too went through a few ideological fractures
with the Parivar. Besides a few unseemly public showdowns, it also led to some
of the senior-most leaders of the Sangh organisations snapping all communication links with those who led the BJP in the government. Such were the ruptures
caused by their compromises that they remain to be mended till date. Additionally, the very icon of BJP's spectacular rise through the '90s stands isolated and
rendered irrelevant after he, almost irretrievably, alienated the RSS.
(Contd on page 23)
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OP-ED
7
Unless Congress fights back, it could cease to be the Grand Old Party in Punjab
Things seem to be going from bad
to worse for the Congress in
Punjab. The factionalism between Captain Amarinder Singh
and Punjab’s state party chief PS
Bajwa shows no signs of abating. Organisers say that this has
weakened the party organisation
at the grassroots level.
The more worrying thing
for the Grand Old Party (GOP) is
that the Gandhis seem to have
lost control in the recent past.
Things have gone from bad to
worse and the AICC vice president Rahul Gandhi has been unable to stop the rot in Punjab. The
result is a slow exodus from the
Congress to other parties.
The impression that one
gets is that the Gandhis are either confused or not in control.
Whether the reason, the party
continues to lose election after
election. First the Lok Sabha
elections, then Assembly polls in
Haryana and now the recent rout
in New Delhi. The last is possibly the most worrying for the
GOP as it has revealed a new
option for the electorate – the
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). If the
Congress does not fight back, it
could soon cease to matter in the
grander scheme of things.
The party has also failed
to learn lessons from their rivals.
The biggest similarity between
the AAP and the BJP are their
organisational capabilities. They
have clear vision, motivated cadres and a clear message. What
they are both against is “dynastic politics, sycophancy and corruption”. People are associating
all these things with the Congress
and thus it received zero seats
in New Delhi.
The Congress must also
learn lessons about how to keep
a party together. Both PM Modi
and Amit Shah were able to arrest factionalism in various states
and thus create a united BJP. Despite losing some trusted lieutenants, the AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal
rose from the ashes within just a
year and prepared new warriors
and controlled them effectively.
Both the BJP and the AAP have
used novices and first timers to
channelise its game plan and it
has worked.
The Congress thus is in
the middle of a great crisis. After
losing Delhi, the party may also
lose Punjab, which will go for Assembly elections in 2017. This is
despite the fact that Shiromani
Akali Dal-BJP relations are
strained, but infighting, lack of
motivation and lack of a clear
message for the electorate are
hurting the GOP. So rather than
preparing for 2017, Punjab Congress leaders – Amarinder and
Bajwa have trained their guns at
each other.
Both the Amarinder and
the Bajwa factions, are organising
rallies not to attack the rival SADBJP, but in an attempt to impress
the high command. A frustrated
Rahul Gandhi has rebuked both
of them but has had little impact
so far.
Things are no different in
neighbouring Haryana. Despite a
shameful drubbing in Assembly
elections, the party refuses to
learn its lessons. Recently leaders of rival factions – namely state
unit chief Ashok Tanwar and Congress Legislature party leader
Kiran Choudhry – skipped the
lunch that was hosted by former
chief minister Bhupinder Singh
Hooda recently. It does not help
that the Gandhis are allegedly
divided in their support. Tanwar is
supposed to be Rahul Gandhi’s
choice while Kiran is believed to
be close to Sonia Gandhi. Hooda
hownever has “re-emerged” as the
leader with his show of strength
and signalled to his “detractors”
within the party that he cannot be
sidelined. For now, this oneupmanship among these top
leaders is likely to continue till
the party high command intervenes decisively. Things are no
better in Himachal Pradesh where
CM Virbhadra Singh is locking
horns with state transport minister GS Bali. The rivalry between
the duo, which has given the party
high command many headaches
in the past, is now much much
serious now.
The fact is that many
Congress leaders seem to be
taking their cue from the national capital. After the Congress’ poor show in Delhi,
former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit
attacked Delhi’s Congress CM
candidate Ajay Maken by saying she “pitied” him, and he
should have been much more
aggressive in the campaign.
The remarks were supposedly
in reaction to Maken’s remarks in January this year
when he said in a reference to
Dikshit. “Every person has an
era of glory which also comes
to an end.”
Unless the Gandhis
comes down hard on this infighting, the Congress’ is likely to
become a spent force soon.
MANJEET SEHGAL
Did AAP get votes because of free wifi ?
By Anukriti Singh
On 10th December AAP
won the Delhi Elections with a
surprisingly big margin. Out of 70,
AAP won 67 seats whereas BJP
had 3 seats and Congress and
others were at 0. Kejriwal has
managed to make his impression
on all the Delhites. When Kiran
Bedi had the support of Narendra
Modi, Arvind Kejriwal has the
support of Delhi. But what made
the youth of Delhi trust and campaign for Kejriwal so much?
Kejriwal’s manifesto had
some points that might have
been attractive to the youth of
Delhi. Some caught my eye too
like, the electricity bills would be
halved, Delhi will be made a solar city, Free 700 litres of water
to every household having metered connection, 500 new
schools, 20 new colleges, Free
Wi-Fi throughout Delhi, Drug-free
city, Fill 55,000 immediate vacancies in government departments, Special reservations have
been made for all senior citizens
and youth of the nation, To provide loans to young entrepreneurs
at low interest rates and To enforce an education loan guarantee scheme.
I don’t know and I can’t
question about the possibility of
these promises but they sure attracted me.
If I can use whatsapp no
matter where I am I’ll be happy,
so is this the only reason Delhi
has trusted the ex 49 days old
CM? Well, Kejriwal being a common man who is fighting for justice and is trying to make Delhi
a better, secular, technologically
advanced, environment friendly
place. This has attracted the public, because he can relate to
everyone’s problems and everyone can relate to him. All the
Aam Aadmi’s of Delhi voted for
the Aam Aadmi party!
Kiran Bedi's open letter to fellow Indians on the Delhi debacle
I opted for electoral politics not for position
or power but for serving the city which is my home
for last over 40 years. A city which I have served
in various capacities, through thick and thin.
I saw it through various challenges, international sports events, VIP security, political upheavals, communal riots, agitations, and more
...
On crime front I saw it through when Delhi
was hit by terror from outside. I spent years to
catch a wink with boots on and with wireless
blaring to get on the street any moment.
I did crime prevention saving women from
being raped in rural areas on dark nights by erstwhile criminal tribes with literally no cops on roles
... by involving village young men to patrol at
night. While I was personally out 5 nights a week.
Conducted traffic management for Asian
Games with hundreds of students doing traffic
duties, when my senior wanted to send me to
Japan on a course, just to edge me out. Traffic
was revenue for some.
Another time when a district was ridden with
bootlegging I managed to dry them out and rehabilitate them to honourable living ... or rag picking children sent to schools, now become community colleges and many of the same children
become teachers ... or opened drug abuse treatment centres from police stations never heard
of...
All this became a life long mission and will
remain ...
I did it all not for any glory, I did it because
the service and situations demanded it ...
I stepped into electoral politics because I
wanted to give my city all I still had, when i was
given the feeling that I could be of value. I wanted
to see it get a stable government in alignment
with government of India to get all that Delhi
needed.
I also wanted to not die one day with a guilt
that I was commenting only and never daring to
pass the ultimate test of electoral politics.
I have failed the test. And take full responsibility for my decision.
But inside me has not failed. Because given
the time I gave to myself I gave it all the energy
and experience I had. Obviously it was not
enough.
In such trying situations one does not meet
the challenge alone. There are several factors
which play a vital role. And each one did. I wish
to add nothing more. History will keep analyzing
till cows come home. And as I read them, each
one of them makes sense. And worth being reflected upon.
The wise will read each one, and take due
notice ...
On the election trail I wish to say, we need to
rework the way we campaign. Whole city or state
comes to a grinding halt. Should it?
Roads are in disarray, and work just stops.
Everything is too loud, uncouth at times, insulting to thin skinned, false, insinuating, biased,
revengeful, corrupt, wasteful, highly disruptive of
common man's needs, breaking all laws, and
sending all wrong messages. It's not a level playing field for the levelheaded serving people. It's
a field for might and muscle in all respects. We
need to address these. Hope to see it in my life
time. People need services to be delivered. They
want integrity, trustworthiness, and professional
commitment. But they also want an
implementable vision and plans. But they also
want freebies ... more you give, more you get.
They do not get it still, that there are no free
lunches in life. If you rob Peter to pay Paul, it
won't be long before all get robbed. Also all campaigning must be become lawful, transparent,
facts and evidence based, civil, organized, more
technology driven, reasonable, unbiased, neutral through different mediums, etc.
Space could be allocated through neutral
umpires appointed by the Election Commission
as per laid down rules based debates and also
grass root work done, and let candidates be
chosen on the basis of performance or
implementable ideas. Which means widespread
use of television reaching out to the last mile...
Public 'appeals' through use of congregations
must be not be allowed and considered a violation of laws. Hence must be banned.
NATIONAL-COMMUNITY NEWS
8
(Insider Bureau) The Income Tax department is likely to file a complaint against
HSBC Bank, Geneva for allegedly abetting" tax evasion by unauthorisedly operating accounts of Indian citizens in its
overseas branches. Sources said the
complaint against the global banking giant is expected to be filed under Section
278 of the I-T Act (abetment of false return) before March 31 as these accounts
pertain to the time period of 2006-07 and
would get "time barred" after that date.
The department, a senior I-T officer said, has taken upon itself to file
these cases after informing the Special
Investigation Team (SIT) on black money,
which is understood to have given its go
ahead. The taxman, sources said, has
worked on at least four cases figuring in
the purported 'HSBC lists' it got from
France a few years back and gathered
evidence against the bank to say that it
"wilfully abetted" tax evasion in India by
HSBC Bank under Inocme Tax radar for abetting tax evasions
not disclosing client information and layering it to avoid law enforcement agencies, thus leading to violation of I-T laws
and evasion of huge amounts in taxes.
"The evidence has been vetted at
the senior-most level in the department
and the CBDT. The prosecution complaint
against the bank would seek punishment
under tax laws," the sources said. When
approached by PTI, HSBC, however, declined to comment.
In the four cases, the I-T probe
has recorded statements of the bank
account holders who said they were
"aided and helped" by the bank in not
disclosing their cash movements and
balances. These clients have also submitted some email communications
exchanged in this regard. The probe
in the HSBC-Geneva cases, with
names of 628 entities, gathered momentum recently as a number of cases
under this category are getting timebarred by the end of this financial year,
meaning they cannot be acted against
after the said time period.
The SIT has also widened its
probe into these cases after revelations
in this regard were made recently by ICIJ
-- a global collective of journalists. Details
of more than 1,00,000 account holders
around the world, including over 1,000
from India, were claimed to have been disclosed through a joint investigation by
ICIJ.
The entire HSBC list features
names of 1,668 Indians while the number
of actionable cases stands at 1,195 after
taking into account duplication and other
factors. Collectively, these accounts had
a balance of USD 4.1 billion (Rs.25,420
crore) till 2007.
In the list published recently,
there are 2,699 accounts linked to 1,688
Indians. Of these, 1,403 accounts were
opened between 1969 and 2006 while the
maximum amount of money associated
with a client connected to India was USD
876.3 million. Earlier, India had received
from France a list of over 628 Indians with
accounts in HSBC's Geneva branch in
Switzerland.
That list was also part of the larger
'HSBC list', which a former bank employee had "secreted away" and handed
to the French government.
Miscreants paint hate message on temple’s wall in US
(Agencies) WASHINGTON: A Hindu
temple has been vandalized with hate
message in the US state of Washington, sending shock waves through the
community in the area and prompting authorities to launch an investigation.
The incident happened when
unidentified miscreants sprayed swastika
and painted “Get Out” on one of the walls
of the temple in the Seattle Metropolitan
area. It is one of the largest Hindu temples
in the entire North West. The Snohomish
county sheriff’s department is investigating this case as malicious harassment.
Yesterday top county officials visited the
temple.
“This kind of thing should not
happen in the US. Who are you telling to
get out? This is a nation of immigrants,”
Nitya Niranjan, chairman of board of
trustee of the Hindu Temple and Cultural
Centre, Bothell, Washington told Media.
Today the temple is celebrating
Mahashivratri. Niranjan said some kind
of painting was sprayed on the outside
wall of the temple a few years ago, but
they did not bring it to the notice of the
law enforcement authorities as nothing
was written.
“We have no idea, who did it,”
Niranjan said. While the temple has been
there for nearly two decades, the construction on the second phase of the
current building began recently. The
Hindu American Foundation (HAF) condemned the incident.
“The timing of this crime, occurring before a major Hindu festival, warrants special attention from law enforce-
ment,” said Jay Kansara, director of government relations, Hindu American Foundation. “We are encouraged by the ongoing thorough investigation of the Bothell
city police department. HAF will continue
to engage through the local community
with city, state, and federal officials until
the perpetrator is brought to justice,”
Kansara said.
Of late there has been increasing incidents of vandalism of Hindu
temples in the US including one in
Loudoun County, Virginia and Monroe,
Georgia last year. As of January 1, 2015,
the department of justice ordered all
crime reporting forms to include the category anti-Hindu under the possible motives of hate crimes.
“Houses of worship are places
where people should be able to be safe,
at peace, and inspired to serve others,”
said Padma Kuppa, HAF board member. “Instead, the vandalism of the Hindu
temple in Seattle and the arson of a
mosque in Houston this past weekend
incite fear and result in distrust among
communities,” he said.
(Agencies) THE swords are out for Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the BJP's disastrous
showing in Delhi. Critics describe the verdict
as a indictment of the PM's nine-month stint
in office. From his '`10 lakh-suit' to 'love jehad'
to Church vandalism, pundits have attributed
many acts of omission and commission to the
67-3 score line against the ruling party. While
experts are entitled to their opinion, let us take
a look at the only empirical data available that
sheds light on what the voters of the Capital
actually think of the Centre. According to the
CSDS post-poll data for the Delhi elections,
two-thirds of the respondents said they were
satisfied with Modi as prime minister. If the
mandate was a referendum on the Modi
government’s performance, then a massive 66
per cent of the respondents would not have
said they approved of PM Modi’s work. Only
30 per cent were dissatisfied with the PM’s
efforts. Even among the poorest voters, there
was high level of support for Modi. Centre’s
popularity CSDS polled 2,060 respondents
across 120 locations in 24 Assembly constituencies of Delhi. It's not just the PM who scored
on the popularity charts, even the central government got a thumbs up with 60 per cent respondents saying they were satisfied with the
performance of the central government. People
seem to be more patient than the pundits, who
have been quick to describe Modi's government
as a failure. So if it wasn't the PM's performance, what worked against the BJP? The data
shows, contrary to common perception, that
voters had a high opinion of Arvind
Kejriwal's 49-day stint in power. A whopping
72 per cent expressed satisfaction with the
aborted AAP government. Amongst poor voters, Kejriwal had an even stronger approval with
almost 80 per cent of respondents approving
his government. Even amongst middleclass and
rich voters, 68 per cent said they had a high
opinion of the 49-day AAP government. Only
24 per cent said they were dissatisfied. Kiran
Bedi’s entry into the BJP made things worse
for the party. 63 per cent of respondents disapproved of the decision.
NATIONAL-COMMUNITY NEWS
9
WORLD
10
Now Fox News host Bill O'Reilly is forced to deny accusations that
he 'pulled a Brian Williams' and exaggerated his war stories
(Media Reports)One week
after Brian Williams was
unceremoniously kicked off the
air by NBC for lying about his
time in Iraq, combative Fox New
host Bill O’Reilly is facing
allegations he lied about his own
wartime experiences.
According to left-leaning
magazine Mother Jones, 65year-old O’Reilly exaggerated his
coverage of the Falklands War
and the civil war in El Salvador in
the 1980s.
The article trawls through
decades-old interviews in which
O’Reilly said he had reported from
‘active war zones’, including the
Falklands conflict - even though
no American journalist was
witness to the fighting during the
10-week war between the UK and
Argentina.
The magazine also claims
that O’Reilly elaborated on the
destruction he saw in one El
Salvadoran town he visited during
that fighting there in the early
80s.
While NBC at first tried to
downplay Williams’ false report,
O’Reilly took the opposite stance
Thursday, viciously defending his
reporting in an interview with
Daily Mail Online, in which he
called the Mother Jones article
a ‘hit piece’ written by a reporter
with a grudge. ‘The report is a
politically motivated smear job by
a guy who has a long history of
doing this. All you have to do is
Google David Corn, Fox News,
Bill O’Reilly to see that he does
this on a regular basis,’ O’Reilly
said.
‘He does this because he’s a
far-left zealot, he doesn’t like the
operation, so he sees an
opportunity to try to tie me to
Brian Williams and he takes it.’
It’s a ‘totally dishonest piece,’
according to O’Reilly, who adds:
‘Everything I’ve ever said about
my reportorial career is accurate.
I have never mislead anyone or
said anything that is untrue.’
Corn says he gave O’Reilly
and his network nine hours to
comment on the story, and says
their refusal to talk speaks for
itself.
‘To me, the issue here is
whether a media figure and
journalist like Bill O’Reilly, who
claims to be a truth teller, can
get away without answering
questions about specific
statements he’s made, and hide
behind name calling,’ Corn told
On Media on Thursday. ‘I would
encourage anyone else who
covers this story to get Bill
O’Reilly to answer those
quesitons - if not to me, than to
anyone else.’ The Mother Jones
report centers mainly on
O'Reilly's time covering the
Falklands War in 1982, when the
then 32-year-old reporter was
working for CBS.
O'Reilly arrived in Buenos
Aires just before the country
surrendered to British troops
leaving the small chain 1,200
miles south of the Argentinian
capital under the control of the
United Kingdom.
O'Reilly's wording in several
interviews seems to be most at
issue. While O'Reilly visited war
zones, he includes the Falklands
in these general statements making it seem as if he actually
claims to have seen action
between British and Argentinian
troops.
'You know that I am not easily
shocked. I've reported on the
ground in active war zones from
El Salvador to the Falklands.' he
said in his 2001 book The No
Spin Zone.
However, during the Falklands
War, no American journalists
were approved to visit the chain
during conflict, something CBS'
lead reporter for the conflict, Bob
Schieffer, and producor Susan
Zirinsky, confirmed to Mother
Jones. They say the CBS team
worked out the Buenos Aires
bureau, and were put up in a
Sheraton HOTEL more than a
thousand miles away from the
fighting.
India-National News Analysis
11
Lead Us To The Tap
(Media Reports) Dear Modiji, began Arvind Kejriwal’s letter dated
June 11, 2014. After congratulating Narendra Modi on his Lok
Sabha victory, Kejriwal got
straight to the point. “Delhi is reeling under massive power cuts,”
wrote Kejriwal, reminding the
prime minister of the time he himself was the chief minister of
Delhi.
“The discoms had attempted to blackmail the government, but when they were told in
clear terms that deliberate power
cuts would lead to cancellation
of their licences, it led to immediate improvement in their work
and behaviour. You are therefore
requested to strictly enforce the
accountability of these discoms,
so that the people of Delhi are
provided with immediate relief,” he
wrote.
June is a mere three
months away. It is also the time
when Delhi sweats under the
summer heat, punctuated by the
long power cuts. Last year, the
month of June saw a record demand for power at 5,643 MW—
the highest in all the four metros
setting a record of sorts in consumption. With his tantalising
promise of free power and water,
the question everyone is asking
is this: how will the newly elected
government backed by an absolute mandate provide real power
to the people—power that is continuous, power that comes sans
high costs.
At Patel Nagar, amidst
the ecstatic crowds gathered to
acknowledge the two-year-old
party’s historic win, a former Congress
block
committee
pre-s-ident says, “Jo bhi hua
achcha hi hua (Whatever happened is for the good). Now we
have to watch and see how AAP
keeps its promises.” He reminds
us that the promise of “free” bijli
and paani received the loudest
cheers at every AAP rally of
Kejriwal.he prospect of free power
and water has its takers but is it
practical? Says a former official
at the Delhi Regulatory Electricity Commission, “Subsidy has
been sweetened for the last 12
years to those who consume
between 0-400 units of power. In
that sense, AAP’s promise is
nothing new. It becomes a part
of the manifesto of political parties. The question is power is
bought from public sector companies whose rates are fixed by
the government at the Centre and
these cannot be manipulated.”
But it is the manipulation
of expenses incurred that AAP
seeks to question when the party
presses for an audit of the companies. The PSUs involved in fuel
supply, the party says, have
made windfall gains. Both public
and private power sector power
producers show excessive coal/
fuel consumption, resu-lting in
unreasonably high tariffs for the
consumer, says AAP.
Both BSES, a subsidiary of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani
Group (ADAG), and Tata Power
Delhi Distribution, which supply
power to the entire capital,
emp-hasise that there is no standard basis for the charge of high
tariffs as it is influenced by the
high cost of power procured for
supply in the capital. On the issue of audit, both entities clarify
that the CAG audit of discoms
has been in progress since January 2014 and “we continue to provide the audit teams our fullest
support and cooperation”. BSES
states that it has even given the
government auditors access to
“our billing and consumer database. Relevant documents in
excess of over one lakh pages
have already been submitted”.
In its 49 days in power
in 2013-14, the AAP government
had reduced electricity rates by
half for households consuming up
to 400 units a month. The state
picked up a bill of Rs 200 crore
as a result of this subsidy, of
which Rs 139 crore was billed to
the power companies.
But the situation has
changed now. Delhi has added
nearly six lakh people since then,
as they keep pouring into the
capital in search of livelihoods.
The cost of power continues to
be high though the cost of fuel
and coal has gone down internationally. If the government keeps
its promise, the quantum of sub-
sidy will see a rise. Rajiv Kakria,
a member of the upscale Gre-ater
Kailash Residents Wel-fare
Asso-ci-ation, says the AAP government will not need to provide
subsidies to help ease people’s
burden of high bills if it fixes the
meters. “Fixing the fast-running
meters will itself bring 25 per cent
relief,” he says.
The AAP’s proposal does
envisage a subsidy to the stateowned power tra-nsmission company Transco-—to whom private
discoms owe Rs 3,500 crore as
dues. While AAP’s hopes rest on
discoms paying up, the matter is
under dispute before the courts.
AAP’s plan states that discoms
should purchase power from economical sources and get out of
unsustainable power purchase
agreements as a first step. The
longer-term plan includes Delhi’s
own power station to meet peak
power consumption of 6,200 MW.
And lastly, AAP proposes to introduce competitive distribution
leading to lower tariffs.Each of
these proposals comes with their
NRI offers Rs. 1.11 crore for Modi's Bandhgala suit
(Media Reports) The controversial
pinstriped suit has attracted massive
offers from businessmen at an auction in Surat, where items gifted to the
Prime Minister have gone under the
hammer to raise funds for the Clean
Ganga Mission.
A whopping Rs 1.11 crore bid was
made by a Gujrati NRI in an auction
on Wednesday for the controversial
pinstripe monogrammed bandhgala
suit which Prime Minister Narendra
Modi wore during United States President Barack Obama’s visit to India last
month.
Viral Chowksi, the NRI made the
offer at the three-day auction which
commenced on Wednesday.
Another businessman Suresh
Aggarwal made an offer of Rs. 1 crore
for the suit. “I have offered Rs. 1 crore.
This is work of charity and when the
Prime Minister is doing for a great
cause like the cleaning of the Ganga,
I decided to go ahead and buy the
suit,” he said.
Another Raju Aggarwal offered Rs.
51 lakh for the suit, saying it was for
a noble cause. The suit that created
waves and kicked up a political storm
will be auctioned along with 455 items
that Mr. Modi had received as gifts
during his nearly nine-month long tenure to generate funds for the Prime
Minister’s ambitious ‘Clean Ganga
RPT Ganga Mission’.“Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s suit, that he wore
during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama last month, along
with other 455 items that he received
as gifts during his tenure as Prime
Minister will be auctioned at a threeday event in Surat,” Surat Municipal
Commissioner Milind Toravane told
Media. The gift items belonging to
Prime Minister Modi is a national treasure and the money generated from
the auction will be utilised for the
‘Clean Ganga Mission’, he added.
The event was organised at SMC’s
Science Convention Centre at citylights road in Surat as the Prime
Minister’s Office(PMO) had decided
to hold the auction event in the city.
(Media Reports) In Calcutta, a
beaming Mamata Banerjee was
distributing chocolates as results
came in from Delhi. In the national capital, an equally exultant
AAP leader and Supreme Court
lawyer, H.S. Phoolka, was tweeting, “Dilli hamaari hai, ab Punjab
ki baari hai (Delhi is ours,
Punjab’s next).”
In Bihar, JD(U)’s Nitish
Kumar got back his voice as he
mocked
at
the
bjp’s
dis-comfi-ture. The saffron party
would bite the dust in Bihar too
(where assembly polls are due
later this year), he hoped. In
Cha-ndigarh, however, Punjab
chief min-ister Parkash Singh
Badal and his deputy, son
Sukhbir Singh Badal, were dismissive. The AAP landslide, they
felt, was confined to the national
capital and would have little or no
impact in Punjab.
Bihar (2015), West Bengal (’16) and Punjab (’17) are
sch-edu-led to elect new assemblies in the next three years
(along with Assam, Kerala, UP
and Tamil Nadu among others).
But with AAP drawing a big support from Poorvanchalis (peo-ple
from Bihar and eastern UP) in the
capital and with all its four MPs
in the Lok Sabha elected from
Punjab, it can reasonably hope
to do well in these states. Time
may be a constraint in Bihar with
an early election before the
scheduled time of OctoberNove-m-ber appearing likely. But
even a last-minute foray could
affect
the
recently
acco-mp-lished consolidation of
anti-BJP elements. But in the
other two states, the political
situation appears ripe for a new
party with a fresh outlook.
But then hasn’t AAP
learnt lessons from 2014?
Stretching itself too thin, it
conte-s-ted 470-odd seats for the
Lok Sabha. As many as 468 of
its candidates ended up forfeiting their security deposit.
Chast-ened, the party decided
not to con-test the Haryana
ass-embly polls later in the year
although Kejriwal himself, as well
as AAP stalwarts Manish Sisodia
and Yogendra Yadav, hail from the
state. Will the Delhi landslide
again lead to a plan change?
While AAP is the elephant in the room, there is no
unanimity on its potential. The
dominant view is that it can’t in
any way replicate its success
beyond Delhi, or at best that the
idea of AAP can work only in
metropolitan cities and smaller
urban conglomerations. Of
course, the-re’s also a minority
view that AAP is an idea whose
time has come; that it’s only a
matter of time before it spreads
like wildfire and engulfs the country.
Much will clearly depend
on how the AAP government
fares in Delhi. Its ability to live up
to its own ideals, deliver on its
pro-mises and keep both idealism and optimism alive will decide if the party can make inroads into the hin-terland. That
said, the three most fertile
grounds for it to leave its footprints are the ones mentioned
above: Bihar, Punjab and Bengal.
Will Bihar embrace
AAP?: While AAP is reminiscent of the JP movement in the
mid-’70s when Jayapr-akash
Narayan called upon students
to give up their studies for a
year and help usher in ‘Total
Revolution’, the state since
then has witnessed a surge of
identity politics along caste
lines. Also, Bihar may rank at
the bottom on socio-economic
indices but such is the love for
politics here that it’s pro-du-ced
a disproportionately large number of dailies and TV news
channels. With no mainstream
party being a paragon of virtue
in public life, a new outfit challenging the established order
may appeal to the people. The
related fear is about a split in
the secular vote, helping the
BJP.An advantage for AAP is
the support it already enjoys
in the capital among students,
teachers and youth from Bihar.
Both Delhi University and
Jawaharlal Nehru Unive-rsity
(JNU) have large numbers from
the state and it came as no
surprise to find the Facebook
page of AAP’s Bihar unit had
a photograph of its ‘Bihar volunteers’ at JNU. What is not
clear is how it will impact the
established parties if AAP
does decide to put up candidates. Would it be satisfied
with testing the waters by
fielding a handful of candidates
or will it go the whole hog, contest all 244 seats?With Jitan
12
Ram Manjhi playing the
‘Mah-adalit card’ and expected
widely to join hands with Ram
Vilas Paswan if he fails to
prove his majority, new social
and political equations are
forming rapidly in the state.
Neither the JD(U)-CongressRJD-Left combine nor the NDA
will be comfortable with AAP
muddying the situation
furt-her. On the other hand,
AAP supporters will be hoping
the party makes a splash in
the volatile state.Challenge for
SAD: A political joke doing the
rounds in Punjab for the past decade or so has the two top leaders of SAD and Congress in a boat
that sinks. The question was who,
if any, should be the survivor. The
answer was none, that it would
be Punjab which would be saved.
13
RSS says Kiran Bedi was a mistake,
roasts BJP brass for Delhi loss
(Media Reports) New Delhi: What
BJP has been shying away from
saying publicly, RSS has said in
its mouthpiece 'Panchjanya'. In
its latest issue, the fortnightly has
raised questions on the choice
of Kiran Bedi as the chief ministerial candidate for Delhi even as
it pointed out how ignoring party
workers may have cost BJP in
the polls.
In its two-part cover
story titled 'Akankshaon ki
Udaan' (flight of aspirations) and
'Vaade, Sawaal, Kejriwal' (promises, questions, Kejriwal), the
RSS mouthpiece says, "The
question is why did BJP lose?
Was the decision to make Kiran
Bedi CM candidate correct?
Would the results have been different had Harsh Vardhan or any
other BJP member from the state
been chosen as CM candidate?"
The piece written by
Manoj Varma also asks if BJP
failed to take to the masses the
achievements of the Narendra
Modi government and if the party
was too dependent on the Modi
wave. Hinting again at how Bedi's
candidature worked against the
party, the piece says, "Or did
BJP lose because of lack of unity
in the organization, planning and
most importantly respect for the
sentiments of the workers?"
Another piece written by
Hitesh Shankar raises questions
on the BJP leadership itself. It
says, "BJP office-bearers will
have to answer if they have any
capital other than Sangh's ideological strength and commitment
of party workers. If some people
in the organization and the government thought that the party is
some kind of machine than can
gallop at their whim, these results
have broken that illusion. It is with
the party workers' dedication and
commitment to the nationalist
ideology that BJP has been able
to retain its vote share."
It has also questioned
the approach taken by BJP office-bearers towards projection of
certain members. "Were BJP
functionaries overconfident of
their extreme acceptability
among public? Or did some push
for individual acceptability among
people a little too much," said the
piece.While BJP members in pri-
vate have admitted to many of the
"mistakes" hinted at in
'Panchjanya', the party has officially maintained that the responsibility of losing the elections is
collective and that it is still analyzing the loss.
However, several BJP
leaders express similar concerns. "The very fact that we lost
our safest seat in Krishna Nagar
(Kiran Bedi's constituency)
shows that not only BJP office-bearers but even workers have not supported the
party in the polls. Selection
of Bedi sent a message that
we had a leadership crisis.
Workers didn't like this," a BJP
leader told Media.
MP Congress attacks CM Shivraj Sunanda Case: Tharoor Lashes Out at
Singh Chouhan on recruitment scam Media, Alleges 'Concocted' Stories
(Agencies) Top Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders
Monday accused the Special Task Force (STF) probing
the Recruitment Scam of "tampering" with evidence to
be submitted to court by removing Chief Minister Shivraj
Singh Chouhan's name at several places in an excel
sheet as one who had recommended jobs for contractual teachers. Accompanied by Congress leaders Kamal
Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia and senior Supreme Court
advocate KTS Tulsi, former Chief Minister Digvijay Singh
told a press conference in Bhopal that he has filed a
statement under oath before the High Court appointed
Special Investigation Team (SIT) that words 'CM' occurred
at 48 places.This was changed to just 'minister' at 21
places, then 'Uma Bharati' at 18 places and 'Ms' at one
place. In 18 places, it has been altered to be left blank,
Congress leaders alleged.Rejecting their accusations,
Madhya Pradesh Health and Family Welfare minister
and government spokesperson Narottam Mishra said the
allegations were "baseless and without any
substance"."The allegations levelled by them are imaginary, baseless and without any substance. We have full
faith in the SIT, STF, High Court and the Supreme Court.
(Agencies) Former Union minister
Shashi Tharoor today vent his anger
at the media, alleging that "concocted" stories and "lies" about him
were being put out in connection with
the investigation into his wife
Sunanda Pushkar's mysterious
death. "Revolted by the lies in the
media about me, esp on Kerala
channels. Stories are concocted
&attributed to police sources without any basis," the Congress MP
from Thiruvananthapuram said in a
series of tweets."Our country needs
better &more honest journalism. Not
1 that will broadcast or publish any
lie so long as it will titillate &increase
TRPs," he said. "What a sad state
we have reduced our press freedom
to!," he said in another tweet which
showed a picture of a placard which
read "Caution: the media is NOT a
reflection of reality".
There were reports that the
New Delhi police had warned Tharoor
for not giving appropriate answers to
the several questions asked by the
special investigation team. "If there
is such an issue, they would have
informed me first rather than going
to media. All such reports are totally
baseless as I am fully cooperating
with the investigation," Tharoor had
said earlier insisting that he was fully
cooperating in the probe.
Tharoor had reportedly
reached Thiruvananthapuram on Friday for a five-day programme in his
home constituency after taking special permission from the SIT for travelling outside New Delhi. The police
had informed that he should not go
outside Delhi without permission.
Tharoor said in his tweets, "I had my
first taste of it during the mediamanufactured controversies around
my every word or tweet in 2009-10.
In the UPA era. "There is no better
cure for any illusions about our media than reading or viewing a story u
actually know something about!"
INDIA
14
Spare judiciary from corrupt practices: Supreme Court
NEW DELHI: The Supreme
Court on Thursday sent out a loud
warning to the high and mighty,
including politicians, not to try to
change the course of judicial
proceedings with corrupt practices
and said any such attempt would be
dealt with an iron hand.
"Please keep corrupt practices
away from judiciary. At least this
institution should be spared," a bench
of Justices T S Thakur and Rohinton
F Nariman said while hearing a petition
by mining baron Gali Janardhan
Reddy, who is accused of paying a
bribe of Rs 10 crore to a trial judge for
getting bail. Reddy approached the
court seeking that two cases filed
against him — one for illegal mining
and another for bribery — be heard
together as the facts and evidence of
the cases arose from the same
offence. Expressing concern over
attempts to bribe judges, the bench
said, "People are having so much
money that they are now bribing
j u d g e s . W h e n money comes in
abundance, then people don't know what
to do with the money. They try to subvert
the entire system and judicial process.
Anyone who plays with the court system
must be dealt with heavily. This virus has
to be eliminated." It added that people
who adopted corrupt practices like bribing
a judicial officer were actually attempting
'Corporate espionage' in oil ministry
Delhi police arrest former journalist Santanu Saikia
NEW DELHI: Delhi Police crime
branch has arrested former
journalist Santnu Saikia and another
energy consultant Prayas Jain on
early Friday. Media has first reported
about Jain being questioned on
Friday. Jain runs an oil and gas firm
based in New Delhi and Melbourne.
Saikia runs an energy portal named
indianpetro.com. Saikia and Jain
have been accused of buying the
leaked documents, analysing them
and selling them off to business
houses, police say.
The number of arrests has
shot up to 7 including 4 multitasking officers of the petrolium
ministry. The arrested men will be
produced in court around 2pm
Friday. More arrests are likely.
The RIL and Essar staff are
still being quizzed. The cops have
raided their offices along with that
of two others like Cairn energy and
recovered several documents and
hard drives. The Delhi Police has
now formed a SIT to investigate the
ongoing case of corporate
espionage. It comprises addl CP
Ashok Chand, DCP Bhisham Singh,
ACP KPS Malhotra, Inspectors
Kulbir Singh, PC Yadav, Arvind and
SI Ritesh among others. Joint CP
(crime) Ravindra Yadav said that
they had received information that
two persons alongwith their
associates wee involved in
procuring/obtaining/stealing the
official documents by trespassing
into the offices of Ministry of
Petroleum and Natural Gas
(MoPNG) at Shastri Bhawan, New
Delhi.After this, a trap was laid and
three persons were spotted coming
in an Indigo car to Shastri Bhawan.
"Two persons alighted and went
inside while the third remained
sitting in the car. After around two
hours, when the two persons
entered the car, all three persons
were apprehended," he added. "They
were identified as Lalta Prasad (36)
from Khichdipur, Delhi, Rakesh
Kumar (30) from Nairoji Nagar and
Raj Kumar Chaubey (39 ) from
Va i s h a l i , G h a z i a b a d . O ff i c i a l
documents were recovered along
with duplicate keys used by them
for accessing the offices of the MoPNG
officials, forged Id-card and fraudulently
obtained temporary passes were also
recovered. The indigo car was having
an unauthorized signage declaring
the car to be of Bharat Sarkar/
Government of India," Addl CP Ashok
Chand said.
to hijack the system. The bench asked
the counsel appearing for Reddy how
much money was allegedly paid to the
judge. The lawyer tried to skirt the
question but the bench insisted on
knowing the amount. "Don't feel
embarrassed to tell the amount," the
bench said. The counsel said the
allegation against his client was that he
paid Rs 10 crore.
Reddy submitted that the two
cases against him were related and
should be tried together. He said his
defence would be exposed if the
cases were not clubbed together.
"What defence can a person have for
bribing a judge," the bench asked.
The CBI has alleged that trial judge T
Pattabhirama Rao granted bail to
Reddy after the mining baron agreed
to pay Rs 10 crore. The judge was
later suspended by the Andhra
Pradesh High Court and the CBI filed
an FIR against him, his son and five
others including Reddy.
Dhoni behind Yuvraj's
exclusion from World
Cup: Father Yograj Singh
Yuvraj Singh's father Yograj Singh held
Indian captain MS Dhoni behind the non-selection of his son for the 2015 World Cup, which
started on February 14 and continue till March
29. Before the squad was picked for the World
Cup, Yuvraj was a likely candidate to find a
place in the squad. But the selectors ignored
him despite a good performance in the Ranji
Trophy for Punjab. According to his father, Yuvraj
was pushed away from the list on the insistence of skipper Dhoni who doesn't share a good
personal relationship with the dashing lefthanded batsman. "If MS Dhoni is having personal issues with my son, I won't do anything, God will do justice. Pray India wins
World Cup under your captaincy (MS Dhoni)
but nothing can be more sad that you behaved this way," Yograj said. However, on
Monday, Yuvraj got a best deal in the IPL 8
auction after he was bought by Delhi Daredevils at a whooping Rs.16 crore.
Narendra Modi's yoga therapist who could rid Arvind Kejriwal of his chronic cough
BENGALURU: He rises much before the
sun. His day begins at 1.30 am and an
hour later, he plunges into his regular twoand-a-half-hour yoga session. Meet Dr H
R Nagendra, who could soon be treating
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal if the
latter goes according to Prime Minister
Narendra Modi’s prescription. Watching
Kejriwal battling persistent cough at a
programme in Delhi on Tuesday, Modi had
suggested that he consult the yoga
therapist. “Allergic cough and diabetes
are ailing Kejriwal,” said Dr HR Nagendra,
who is known for having treated over 2
lakh asthma patients — from threemonth-olds to nonagenarians — with yoga
and ayurveda. Kejriwal, though, is yet to
approach Nagendra. The 72-year-old
yoga therapist’s association with Modi
began 10 years ago when the BJP leader
came to meet Nagendra’s uncle H V
Sheshadri, an RSS leader, in Karnataka.
The acquaintance has only grown since.
“Every year, I travel to Gujarat to teach
yoga to cabinet ministers, including chief
minister Anandiben Patel,” he told Media.
Nagendra, who is co-founder of Swamy
Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana
Samsthana (S-VYASA), believes that
specialised yoga and lifestyle
modifications are the key to health
solutions. “We have taught yoga to kids
with special needs. We’ve even had
monks from Ramakrishna Ashram and
nuns from Christian missionaries
approach us,” he said. “In a polluted city
like Bengaluru, asthma cases are on the
rise. We had conducted a study on how
yoga helped asthma patients, which was
published in the Journal of Asthma, US.
We formed three separate groups of
those who practised yoga regularly, those
who weren’t so regular and those who
had learnt it but were not doing asanas.
The study revealed that even the third
category of people had benefited,” recalled
Nagendra. Nagendra is a qualified
mechanical engineer who has a PhD from
IISc. He’s had a stint with NASA as a
space scientist and also served Harvard
University as consultant.Many premier
institutions, including Nimhans,
consult him. "He has been guiding the
yoga centre in Nimhans for more than
15 years. We have signed an MoU
with S-VYASA and will continue to do
collaborative research. He has an
objective approach towards yogic
science. He's been working on taking
yoga beyond faith, as youngsters look
for scientific validation," said Dr B N
Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry
and programme director of advanced
centre for yoga at Nimhans.
TRISTATE-COMMUNITYNEWS
15
India Association (IALI) offers Thanks Prayer (Shukrana)
(By a Staff Reporter)
Hicksville- Satnam Singh
Parhar, President along with
his team of India Association
of Long Island (IALI) recently
hosted and organized IALI
Home Shukrana Kirtan at the
Guru Nanak Darbar
Gurdwara, Hicksville.
Shukrana Kirtan celebration
was well attended and among
them were 10 IALI Past
Presidents , IALI Executive
council, IALI members and
invited guests.
The program started
with kirtan in praise and to
thank the Waheguru (God
almighty) for making the IALI
Home dream come true, that
was organization's dream for
the last 37years. The kirtan
was followed by Katha
Wachak
(Preacher)
congratulating Satnam Singh
Parhar, saying that this was a
good thing for the community.
He also said he was very
happy that this celebration
was held at the Gurudwara
instead of some restaurant or
Hotel and thanked all the
families for participating in this
celebration.
A Citation from the
To w n o f H e m ps t e a d w a s
presented b y To w n C l e r k
Nasrin Ahmad to Satnam
S i n g h P a r h a r.
Nasrin
Ahmed said it was a matter
of pride that IALI was able
to make IALI Home for the
community. As per the Sikh
Traditions, Community Food
(Guru Ka Langar) was
served to all attendees in
t h e c o mmunity in the
Gurudwara Kitchen.
Valentine Day Celebrated by India Association (IALI)
(By a Staff Reporter) Garden City, New York- India Association of
Long Island (IALI) recently celebrated "Valentine Day 2015" in Mint
Restaurant & Banquet Hall in Garden City, Long Island. Mostly
female members of IALI led by celebrated the day with Music, Dance
and Greetings to other members. Also in attendance IALI President
for the 2nd term Satnam Singh Parhar & Media Chair Ajay Batra.
(Seen in pictures: Members of IALI during the event).
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16
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17
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18
TRISTATE-COMMUNITYNEWS
19
India Republic Day Celebrated in Town of Hempstead
(By our Staff Reporter)
Hempstead - India Republic Day
was recently celebrated for the
12th time at Nathan L.H, Bennett
Pavilion in Town of Hempstead
New York by Indian American
Forum (IAF) . Honorable Town of
Hempstead Supervisor Kate
Murray hosted the Republic Day
Celebration. On Thursday
February 5, 2015, town Hall was
decorated with Tricolors from
Indian flag and patriotic songs
were being played all over.
Supervisor Murray was joined by
Council members Anthony
Santino, Dorothy L Goosby,
Bruce Blakeman, Councilwoman
Erin king Sweeney and Town
Clerk Nasrin Ahmed. Several
elected officers, judges and
dignitaries were present and
enjoyed this unique evening of
celebrations. Supervisor Murray
welcomed everyone and praised
the efforts of Indian American
Community in USA.
An award was presented
to Dr. Anila Midha, Founder and
President of South Asian
Women’s Alliance for her
dedicated service to the
community. Program started
with Pledge of Allegiance by
An appeal of $11 for Sri Sai Datta Ke Naam
(By our Staff Reporter) New
Jersey- Shri Sai Datta Temple is
a Hindu religious learning and
community service center
located at South Plainfield, New
Jersey. This temple is
a religious worship
center for Shri Sai
Datta Baba. Within
this one year of
consecration, the
temple has been a
great source for Hindu
religious teachings
and worship while still
continuing works of
community service.
The temple inspired
many volunteers and
organized food drives,
blood drives, toy
drives and back to
school programs. On
the religious side, Sai
Bhajans
and
Satsangs
are
conducted every
Thursday at the
temple along with Aarthis to Sai
Baba and other deities every day.
With selfless help from
many devotees and volunteers,
Shri Sai Datta Temple is
expanding to acquire 23 acres of
land in New Jersey within June
2015. The plan is to construct a
temple at this new site for
spiritual saint Shri Sai Baba
similar to that in Shirdi, India.
With a motivation to provide lot
of people the opportunity to be
part of this process of acquiring
land, Sai Temple is requesting a
donation of only $11 per person
from donors.The cost of each
square yard is $11 and every
donor will get an opportunity to
donate a square yard for this
temple. (Contd on page 23)
Roubin Singh Thind, a 6th grader
from Jonas E. Salk Middle
School. Indian and American
National anthem were sung by
Part Maria and Manjari, runner
up Miss Teen New York, 2014.
Opening prayers were done by
Pandit Ramesh Choudhry, priest
from Vedic Heritage, Inc.,
Hempstead.Folk dances and
other performances were
presented by Sadhna Pranji
School of Dance, students of
Sangeeta Pandit and Local
talents. Also present were
winners of Miss Teen New York
2014. Emcee for the evening was
Arvin Batra. End of the ceremony
prayers done by priest Samiran
Chakrovorty from NY Kali Mandir.
Indu
Jaiswal,
Chairperson of Indian American
Forum (IAF) thanked all present.
20
Maha Shivratri Celebrated
(By Our Staff Reporter) Floral ParkSri Sankat Mochan Hanuman Mandir in
Floral Park, Queens recently celebrated
the auspicious Maha Shivratri festival
which commenced on Tuesday, February 17 and concluded on Wednesday,
February 18. The festival of Char Pahar
Ki Pooja started with the first Pahar at
6:00pm with Pundit Sanjeev Mishra,
Pradeep Sharma and Krishna Shastri
performing Maha Rudra Abhishek and
Pooja Archana followed by the second
Pahar at 9:00pm, the third Pahar at 12
midnight and the fourth Pahar at 3:00am.
At every Pahar, the Main Shiv Lingam was
given a special bath with milk, yogurt,
honey, ghee, sugar, sandalwood paste
and rose water. Moreover, the Shiv
Lingam was adorned with the image of
different Gods at each Pahar: Lord
Ganesh at the first Pahar, Sri Hanuman
at the second Pahar, Lord Mahakaal the
third Pahar and the wedding of Lord Shiva
and Goddess Parvati at the fourth Pahar
was decorated with flowers and fruits.
Each Pahar ended with the chanting
of Har Har Mahadev and Om Namah
Shiva Mantra which reverberated
throughout the well-decorated temple.
Indu Gajwani relentlessly volunteered
her services by phoning devotees to
attend the festival and organizing the
Pooja ceremony thought the four
Pahars. A countless number of devotees volunteered their services to
make the festival a grand success.
The temple was thronged by a stream
of devotees to perform the traditional
Shivling Pooja with sincerity and devotion and seek blessings from Lord
Shiva. MahaShivRatri which occurs on
the 14th night of the new moon during
the dark half of the month of Phalguna is
celebrated enthusiastically by Hindus
every year in reverence of Lord Shiva. According to a legend, the MahaShivRatri
celebrates the marriage of Lord Shiva and
Goddess Parvati. Another legend states
that on the ShivRatri day, the Lord Shiva
danced the Tandav Nritya which signifies creation, preservation and destruction of the Cosmos. The holy
pooja ended around 6:00am on
Wednesday with Maha Mangal Arti and
Maha Bhog. A langar prasad, tea and
thandai were served to devotees throughout the festival.
Widespread Condemnation of Excessive Force used by Alabama Police
(Insider News Network) USA- Strong
messages against the incident were issued by different officials and community leaders to condemn the use of excessive police force against Sureshbhai
Patel, an Indian grandfather who was left
partially paralyzed after an encounter with
Alabama police.
Congresswoman Judy Chu (CA-27),
CAPAC Chair:
“I was appalled to learn about the brutal
attack on Sureshbhai Patel by a police
officer in Madison, Alabama. It is a positive development that the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) has stepped in to
investigate this case. In no way should
the color of someone’s skin or their limited English proficiency lead to the type
of confusion and unreasonable use of
force that left Mr. Patel partially paralyzed. As we await the FBI’s findings, I
will continue to work with my colleagues
in Congress to ensure that this type of
profiling and excessive force is no longer
permitted by law enforcement.”
Congressman Michael Honda (CA17), CAPAC Chair Emeritus:
“I am pleased that the officer involved in
the assault of an Indian grandfather visiting his family in Alabama has been
charged with assault. My thoughts go
out to the family and friends of
Sureshbhai Patel, who is still recovering
from injuries that have left him partially
paralyzed. In the aftermath of so many
events that have worn down the trust between communities of color and police
officers, the Madison Police Department
has taken the right step. I look forward
to the findings of an FBI civil rights investigation into this incident.”
Congressman Ted Lieu (CA-33):
“A full investigation into this matter is
what Mr. Patel, his family and the Madison,
Alabama
community
deserve. Once all the facts are known
about this unfortunate incident, it is vital
that they serve as a roadmap to improve
the way law enforcement interacts with
individuals who possess limited English
proficiency. I hope for Mr. Patel’s quick
return to full health.”
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky
(IL-09):
“I join the call to investigate the violence
against Sureshbhai Patel. We must ensure that people of all backgrounds, including visitors and immigrants, are
treated fairly under the law.”
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) is comprised of
Members of Congress of Asian and Pacific Islander descent and Members who
have a strong dedication to promoting
the well-being of the Asian American and
Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Currently chaired by Congresswoman Judy
Chu, CAPAC has been addressing the
needs of the AAPI community in all areas of American life since it was founded
in 1994.
Congresswoman Meng
“The episode in Madison, Alabama is
very disturbing,” said Meng. “We will be
watching closely to see what happens
with this case, and we hope and pray
that Sureshbhai Patel recovers from his
injury. We have a reason to be concerned over this and other recent incidents that may be directed towards the
Muslim
and
South
Asian
community. Arson investigators are looking into the cause of a fire that broke out
at an Islamic school and family center
in Houston and investigators are examining whether race and religion played a
role in the shooting of Muslim students
in North Carolina. In addition, Texas Muslim Capitol Day was disrupted and derailed last month by protesters. Whether
or not these incidents are Islamophobic,
one thing is crystal clear: Nobody in our
society must ever be subjected to hate
and violence. All Americans have a responsibility to raise their voice and condemn bigotry when and wherever it occurs. Our fight against intolerance must
continue until all hate crimes are a thing
of the past.”
Sureshbhai Patel was visiting his son in
Alabama and was stopped by police as
he walked in the neighborhood. A neighbor who was suspicious of Patel called
911. The officer has been arrested and
faces dismissal.
Navjot Thind, Executive Director of
New York based Center for Women’s Empowerment, expressed serious concern
over injury of Sureshbhai Patel , Grandfather visiting from India and also felt disturbed about possible rise in incidents
against South Asian community.
“This is a very unfortunate and avoidable
incident, with proper sensitivity training
towards properly accommodating as well
as treating people from different cultures
and religions, who are visiting or who have
made America their home”.
Congressman Ami Bera:
“This week's incident in Alabama that
left an Indian grandfather visiting his
American family partially paralyzed
is horrible and tragic,” said Bera. “My
heart goes out to Mr. Patel and his
family and I wish him a speedy recovery. I’m glad officials have acted
quickly to respond and that the FBI
has opened an investigation. Moving
forward, we must come together as
a nation to tackle the very real issues
our minority communities face, and
to rebuild trust and understanding
among law enforcement agencies and
the diverse communities that they
serve.”
Man admits to shooting cop in NHP
A man charged with the 2013 shooting of a police officer in New Hyde Park
pleaded guilty to two felonies Tuesday
and received a sentencing commitment
of 30 years in prison, the Nassau
County District Attorney’s office announced. Cong Xu, 22, of Brooklyn,
pleaded guilty to assault in the first degree and burglary in the first degree, both
B felonies, according to a district attorney spokesman. He received a sentencing commitment of 30 years in prison
from Acting Nassau Supreme Court
Justice Philip Greta and is due back in
court for sentencing April 2.
Xu, a Chinese national, had been facing charges of first-degree burglary, firstdegree attempted robbery, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon
and first-degree attempted murder of a
police officer. According to the Nassau
district attorney’s office, Xu was fleeing
from a burglary in New Hyde Park when
he shot Nassau County police officer
Mohit Arora in the hip. Arora, who was
at the time 32 years old and a six-year
veteran of the force, and another officer
were responding to a 911 call by the
homeowners of 241 Campbell St. to report a burglary in their home, police said
at the time. According to the district
attorney’s office, the officers confronted
Xu as he fled the premises. As Xu ran
away from the officers, he turned and
fired several shots from a handgun, hitting Arora in the lower abdomen.
A second suspect, Renhang Qiu, 23,
also of Brooklyn, who the district
attorney’s office said “aided and abetted Xu in the home burglary,” pleaded
guilty in May to burglary in the first degree and received a sentencing commitment of seven years in prison, according to the DA’s office. He is due in
court for sentencing on Feb. 23. “Police officers risk their lives every day as
they work to keep our communities safe
from armed and dangerous criminals,”
acting District Attorney Madeline Singas
said in a statement. “This burglar had a
handgun when he entered a Nassau
family’s home. Officer Mohit Arora responded and was shot protecting innocent civilians. As a result of Officer
Arora’s heroism and today’s guilty plea,
this defendant will no longer be a threat
to others for a long time to come.” Both
suspects were caught following a search
that included the use of a police helicopter. Police said Xu was apprehended
on Flower Lane and Nugent Street. Qui
was caught on Lakeville Road at Sylvia
Lane. “We had an extensive manhunt
at the time,” police spokesman Vincent
Garcia said at the time. The officers
responding to the 911 call thought Xu
was surrendering when he proceeded
to run away and fire behind him, hitting
Arora and fracturing his hip bone.
WORLD
21
ISIS' incredible show of force on Europe's doorstep
(Agencies) Terrorists in Libya who beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians parade
their fleet of brand new 'police cars' in
front of cheering children
The video appears to show a fleet of
Toyota Land Cruisers carrying the notorious black flag of Islamic State as they
drive in perfect unison through the streets
of Libya.
Men, women and children cheer and
salute the pick-up trucks as they drive
freely through what is believed to be the
city of Benghazi.
The carefully produced propaganda
video was uploaded by terrorist group
Ansar al-Sharia on February 5.
The group declared city an 'Islamic
emirate' in July 2014 before pledging allegiance to Islamic State just three
months later. In November of that year,
the UN blacklisted it as a terrorist
organisation.
The group was widely blamed for the
death of US Ambassador Christopher
Stephens in Benghazi in 2012. And only
this week, it was linked to the bloody
executions of 21 Egyptian Christians on
a beach in Libya.
Fears of an equally brutal execution
were raised following the news that 35
more Egyptians may have been kid-
napped by Jihadists in the country.
The latest abduction is thought to be
a direct response to Egyptian airstrikes
on extremist locations in the Libyan city
of Derna, following the mass murder of
their countrymen.The Islamic Youth
Shura Council - a branch of Ansar AlSharia - was responsible for the very first
footage of a beheading to surface from
the North-African country.
In November 2014, it released footage showing the murder of an Egyptian
soldier who publicly supported his
government's forces led by General
Khalifa Haftar.
Masked men in camouflage cut
Muftah el-Nazihi's neck with a knife before removing his head and placing it on
his back.
The group has been enforcing Sharia
Law by carrying out public beheadings
and beatings in Libya since their formation in at least August 2014.
Power exorcised by radical groups
like the Islamic Youth Shura Council
continued to grow until February this
year when the Islamic State of Levant
self-declared 'caliphate' in Sirte - where
21 Egyptians were believed to be beheaded recently.
Its fighters traveled to the district in
40 heavily armoured cars and ordered
residents to follow Islamic State's leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
He has since appointed Ali Al-
Qarqaa as Libya's Emir- or leader meaning control over the country's fractured terror groups falls to him according to Gulf-based analyst Dr Theodore
Karasik.
He told MailOnline: 'Libya is seen by
North Africans now as the place to go
spread the Caliphate. Unlike a few years
ago, when everyone was leaving Libya
to go to the Levant, you now have people
going back.
'Because the idea of 'state' is
there and now with the executions,
they will feel like there are enough
numbers on the ground to fight. They
know at the same time the West is
slow at acting.' Three years after the
removal of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as
the country's ruler, Libya's main cities
have surrendered control to a melting pot
of extremist groups. Most of them - including Ansar al-Sharia, Libya Dawn and
the Islamic Youth Shura Council - have
pledged their allegiance to Islamic State
who seek to use the country's location
to establish a foothold in North Africa.
CONTD.
22
Judge stalls Obama immigration orders
(Contd from page 1) The decision does
not judge the merits of the case, but it is
a blow to a key Obama initiative that infuriated Republicans.
In a statement, the White House defended the executive orders as within the
president’s legal authority, saying the
U.S. Supreme Court and Congress have
said federal officials can establish priorities in enforcing immigration laws.
“The district court’s decision wrongly
prevents these lawful, commonsense policies from taking effect,” the statement
said.
The U.S. Department of Justice will
appeal the ruling, the White House said.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said
the Justice Department was reviewing the
ruling and was confident the matter would
ultimately be taken up by a higher court,
possibly the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We have to look at this decision for
what it is- It is a decision by one federal
district court judge,” Mr. Holder said.
Mr. Obama took the sweeping measures November, saying he had to act because comprehensive, bilateral legislation
to reform the country’s immigration system was stalled in the Republican-controlled House.
Republicans leaders said Mr. Obama’s
unilateral move would only make it more
difficult to get bipartisan legislation
through Congress.
Congressional Republicans are now
vowing to block Mr. Obama’s actions on
immigration by cutting off Homeland Security Department spending for the program. House Speaker John Boehner said
Hanen’s ruling underscores that MR.
Obama acted beyond his authority and
said he hoped Senate Democrats will relent in their opposition to the Homeland
Security Spending bill.
The first of Mr. Obama’s orders to expand a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were
brought to the U.S. illegally as children
was set to start taking effect Wednesday. The other major part of Mr. Obama’s
order, which extends deportation protections to parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the
country for some years, was not expected
to begin until May 19.
“The genie would be impossible to
put back into the bottle,” he wrote, adding that he agreed with the plaintiffs’
argument that legalizing the presence
of millions of people is a “virtually irreversible” action.
Joaquin Guerra, political director of
the Texas Organizing Project, called
the ruling a “temporary setback.”
The coalition of states, led by Texas
and made up of mostly conservative
states in the South and Midwest, argues that Obama has violated the
“Take Care Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, which they say limits the
scope of presidential power. They also
say the order will force increased investment in law enforcement, health
care and education.
In their request for the injunction, the coalition said it was necessary because it would be “difficult or impossible to undo the
President’s lawlessness after the
Defendants start granting applications for deferred action.”
Keywords: Obama immigration orders, White House appeal, U.S
Negativity against Congress won BJP, AAP their elections: Raj Babbar
(Contd from page 1)elections and in the
Delhi elections, this wave was evident
when both the Congress and the BJP lost
with a huge margin," the former Congress
MP from Agra said.In a conversation with
the India Today in Agra, Babbar said that
both the Lok Sabha and the Delhi Assembly elections had a common feature. "Koi
gaali dekar PM ban gaya aur koi gali
khakar CM ban gaya (In the parliamentary elections, someone became the PM
by hurling abuses at others; in Delhi, another person became the CM by ignoring
the abuses hurled at him)."
Babbar said that Modi had hurled
the same abuse at the Congress during
the parliamentary elections last year. "He
abused the Gandhi family so much that
an atmosphere of negativity was created
against the Congress party, which ultimately resulted in Modi's victory," he said.
The Congress spokesperson then accused Modi of making empty promises
and not delivering so far. "Nine months
after Modi's victory, the people have realized that he won on empty promises and
he is just survivng on rebranding the old
schemes already launched by the UPA
government in its ten-year tenture. The
result of this deception was the sound
beating received bythe BJP in the Delhi
elections where they were barely able to
hold on to the edge of the precipice with
just three MLAs." Babbar said that if Modi
had been able to display some credibility, the people would not have left the BJP
in a lurch in the Delhi elections.
The actor-turned-politician said
that the Congress is the only party in the
country that talks about equality and social justice and does not involve itself in
regional or communal politics like the BJP.
"Because the Congress has only one aim
and that is maintaining the unity of this
country," he said.
"During the past elections, some
negative elements resulted in the Congress descending into a state of confu-
sion. The Congress was criticized all over
the country, even in Delhi, but nobody from
the party could provide an answer to the
queries posed by the people," he said.
"This situation will improve pretty
soon and the Congress will emerge as a
renewed party in 2017 in the Uttar
Pradesh Assembly elections," Babbar
said, adding that the state of law and
order in the state has worsened and
Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party is
not presenting any credible opposition
to the ruling Samajwadi Party. "The
Congress is the only alternative left
for the state and the 2017 elections
will prove it," Babbar said.
‘President Obama doesn’t love
America’Rudy Giuliani
(Contd from page 1) policy decisions and questionable public remarks
when confronting terrorists. “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,”
Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era
speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t
love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was
brought up through love of this country.”
With Walker sitting just a few seats away, Giuliani continued by
saying that “with all our flaws we’re the most exceptional country in the
world. I’m looking for a presidential candidate who can express that, do
that and carry it out.”
CONTD.
23
Swine flu kills 600-plus in India, refuses to die
NEW DELHI: The mercury rising,
yet the H1N1 influenza A virus
seems to defy its survival limitations, worrying the health ministry and doctors. This year, swine
flu deaths have more than
doubled compared to the previous year taking the toll to 624. A
total of 9,311 people got infected,
government data show. In February alone over 300 died across
the country. In 2014, 218 swine
flu deaths were reported from a
total of 937 cases, pan-India."As
it starts getting warmer, we expected cases to come down.
This year the trend is different,"
says Dr Suranjit Chatterjee, senior consultant, internal medicine, at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals. Union health minister JP
Nadda has held frequent review
meetings. The ministry's directed
pharma companies to expedite
supply of antiviral medicines to
state hospitals and licensed retail outlets. "We've asked companies to airlift stocks, if required. We'll monitor availability in the retail market," Union
health secretary BP Sharma
said. The government hopes
cases will come down with
awareness and precautionary
measures, he said. The ministry has directed states to
provide protective kits to
health workers.
Although the cause is
yet to be ascertained, doctors
suspect a change in the strain
behaviour — which generally
happens in three to four years
— resulting in the sudden spurt
in cases. ICMR, though, has
ruled out strain mutation, BP
Sharma, secretary to the health
ministry said. Doctors recom-
'An Ugly Lie'
(Contd from page 1) where there is no order
and no path for advancement, where there are
no educational opportunities, where there are
no ways to support families and no escape
from injustice and the humiliations of corruption — that feeds instability and disorder, and
makes those communities ripe for extremist
recruitment.""We must acknowledge that
groups like al-Qaida and ISIL are deliberately
targeting their propaganda to Muslim communities, particularly Muslim youth. Muslim
communities, including scholars and clerics,
therefore have a responsibility to push back
— not just on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that we are somehow
engaged in a clash of civilizations, that
America and the West are somehow at war
with Islam, or seek to suppress Muslims, or
that we are the cause of every ill in the Middle
East."
Even before the U.S.-hosted Summit on
Countering Violent Extremism began in Washington this week, the White House has been
criticized for its position against using terms
that directly link Islam or Muslims to terrorism.
Last month, Politico's Rich Lowry
complained of "a haze of euphemism and cow-
ardice" in a January article about the White
House's stance, written following the Charlie
Hebdo attack in Paris.
That prompted The New York Times'
Thomas Friedman to write, "I am all for restraint on the issue, and would never hold every Muslim accountable for the acts of a few.
But it is not good for us or the Muslim world
to pretend that this spreading jihadist violence
isn't coming out of their faith community."
Yesterday, the Times explored the
administration's stance:
"Obama aides say there is a strategic logic to his vocabulary: Labeling noxious
beliefs and mass murder as 'Islamic' would
play right into the hands of terrorists who claim
that the United States is at war with Islam
itself. The last thing the president should do,
they say, is imply that the United States
lumps the world's 1.5 billion Muslims with vicious terrorist groups."
Today, Obama said, "When people
spew hatred towards others because of their
faith or because they are immigrants, it feeds
into terrorist narratives. If entire communities
feel they can never become a full part of the
society in which they reside, it feeds a cycle
of fear and resentment — and a sense of injustice upon which extremists prey."
ities for the sake of perceived
electoral advantages that may or
may not accrue. But he will not
countenance sacrificing national
interest at the altar of a powerquest of a few. And the apex of
the RSS would find it difficult to
explain away such a "give" that
no "take" can justify. Distancing
itself from the "deal" is plain impossible. After all, it is Ram
Madhav who conducted the negotiations with Haseeb Drabu of
the PDP. Ram Madhav is an RSS
Pracharak and was inducted into
the BJP. The challenge in the
Jammu and Kashmir is fast
emerging as a litmus-test of the
medicine shortages were reported
from
states,
including
Maharashtra and Delhi.
Sharma maintains it's
important to ensure needless
prescription doesn't lead to the
virus turning resistant to the
drug. Doctors, nonetheless,
suggest patients displaying
severe symptoms start taking
the antiviral medicine. "Once
the disease develops, the
medicine's efficiency starts
going down," said Dr Arup
Basu of Ganga Ram Hospital.
Asthmatics are more
vulnerable to swine flu. Nearly
30% of those hospitalized for the
flu are asthma patients, a research says. "Swine flu and
asthma attack the airways.
An appeal of $11 for Sri Sai Datta Ke Naam
(Contd from page 19) The temple
has a plan to collect $11 from
1,000,000 donors and engrave the
names of all those donors on a
wall to be erected in the temple
site.
This new temple is
envisioned to have an elaborate
structure similar to Shirdi. The
temple will also have many other
Hindu deities so that people from
all parts of India can worship and
practice their religious activities.
The envisioned temple will find us
more space to organize more
mass ritual events as conducted
in 2014. These events will give us
the opportunity to demonstrate to
our kids and the younger
generation regarding our rich and
spiritually advanced culture.
These events will also encourage
many kids and families to shown
interest in our Hindu scriptures
like Vedas, Bhagawad-Gita and
Yoga classes.As part of Shri Sai
Blessings seva, Sai Paduka (Shri
Sai Baba feet) will be taken to
devotees’ houses to bring peace
and cure their ailments. Shri Sai
BJP's ability to draw a line, in Temple is very keen to involve
its pursuit of power at the expense of what it stands for, what
it mobilises its cadre for and
what it gets all the votes for,
(Contd from page 7) But
across India. And, before the BJP King Abdullah’s commitment to
signs on the dotted line, all that “fight back” against IS was not
the RSS needs to worry is echoed by Jordanian public opinwhether, after such a compro- ion. To be clear, IS ultimately aims
mise, will they be able to look for greater territorial sovereignty
the very Jammu voter in the eye, and a Caliphate, maintaining a topin whose name the BJP seeks down model of power. But it is still
to share power with the PDP on through
affiliations
and
the reported terms. Or else, this decentralised networks with local
government will be considered, groups, spread from Yemen to
well and truly, to be run by the un- Libya and parts of Africa, that IS
abashed practitioners of whatever is attempting to gain political legoes in the name of statecraft.
gitimacy. The recent “lone wolf”
BJP's dangerous liaison in J&K
(Contd from page 6)
There is another kind of spin
sought to be put on the issue.
That, through such inspired leaks,
the RSS is attempting to distance
itself from the fall-out of such a
deal that is all but done. That the
disapproving cadres would take
solace in the fact that the RSS
did not approve of such a deal
though it could not prevent it happening. This is a far-fetched one,
even by Digvijaya Singh's standards. Those who are inclined to
thus speculate ought to know that
an average Swayamsevak is far
too sharp for that. He may ignore
or forgive certain tactical ambigu-
mend isolation of patients. They
cautioned that only those with
moderate to acute symptoms
should go to hospitals for tests
and treatment. "Patients with
milder symptoms should stay
home, take antiviral medicines
and precautions," says Dr KK
Aggarwal,
leading
cardiologist.Patients with
breathlessness, high fever for
three to four days or those already suffering from complex
diseases and are immuno-compromised should go for hospitalization, according to Dr
Aggarwal. Experts said the
government should formulate a
treatment protocol so there's no
unnecessary testing and hospitalization. Last week, retail
large number of people in temple
activities. The unique aspect of
this temple is that, temple and
priest services like archana,
abhishekam and individual house
pujas will be conducted FREE of
charge. The motivation towards
this aspect is to embrace
religion and religious practices
as service to humanity.
Last but not least, the
temple embraces Baba’s
quotes, especially “Athidhi devo
bhava”, a person who steps into
home should be welcomed with
warm heart and he should never
leave home hungry. The temple
will organize Nithya-annadhanam
program, where free food will be
served to all devotees who visit
the temple anytime. This is a
supreme charity service and a
great aspect of Hindu culture. To
get more information regarding
the Sai Datta Peetham and to
participate in this project, Please
contact the temple at 732-8091200 or by email at
[email protected] or visiting on
web page at
Egypt strikes back
terror attacks in Sydney, Paris,
Copenhagen and so on are also
instances of groups having ideological affiliations to the IS brand.
It is this decentralised and spectral nature of the enemy that may
frustrate Egypt’s military strikes
as well. But the crucial difference
between IS and all the previous
Jihadist groups is that IS will hope
to exploit these decentralised
networks to eventually strengthen
its territorial, sovereign political
order.
ADVERTISMENT
24
LIFE STYLE
25
From Grand Theft Auto to Wall Street: How gamers are becoming traders
(Agencies) Twenty-something consumers raised on video games such as
Grand Theft Auto and Angry Birds are
being wooed by financial trading apps,
keen to build bridges with a post-crisis
generation that is uninterested in financial services or plain mistrustful. Bright
colors, cartoon graphics and the ability
to trade risk-free with virtual credits are
features of apps such as BUX and
Kapitall, which eschew financial lingo
and complex charts in favor of competitive head-to-head battles and motivational messages like "OMG!" after placing a trade.
While financial trading is a niche
slice of the $15 billion mobile gaming
industry, dominated by brands such as
King Digital Entertainment's Candy
Crush, some two-thirds of UK retail traders already use their smartphone or computer to buy or sell and app makers are
sensing an opportunity."Developers are
realizing that games are played by all
kinds of people with different desires and
motivations, and the same kind of person who is hooked on a computer video
game may seek a similar thrill from the
stock market," said Kam Star, founder
and managing director at games development studio PlayGen. Nick Bortot, a
former executive at online broker
Binckbank, set up BUX (getbux.com) last
year in Amsterdam and London. BUX's
launch followed that of similar firms
Kapitall and invstr (invstr.com).
Both BUX and Kapitall offer players the chance to play games such as
challenging each other on how stocks
might perform, but they also offer players
the opportunity to go from playing for points
to betting actual money. "I got hooked on
BUX instantly, playing for fun, and trying
to understand how shares and markets
work. Since mid-December, I have been
trading with real money," said Nathaniel
Brooks, a 28 year old manager and
Playstation aficionado.
VIRTUAL POINTS
All three companies hope their bright
graphics and games can lure a younger
audience to the sometimes arcane world
of finance, the least trusted industry in
the world according to a 2014 survey by
communications company Edelman. By
contrast, technology is the most trusted.
For now, invstr is only focusing on
games that allow people to predict where
markets may go for virtual points, and on
building up a community of users, but the
company may also let people bet real
money at a later stage.
Bortot said only 5 per cent of BUX users converted from virtual play to real
money, but there were still ways for BUX
to make money from mere players.
He said the company would charge
small add-on fees of around 89 euro cents
or roughly 80 pence to top up a "funBUX"
virtual account, or to follow top traders on
the Internet. For those converting from play
money to real, BUX would then charge
small commissions of around 35 pence
or 40 euro cents per transaction, far
cheaper than online brokerage costs at
bigger, more mainstream firms. Some
were skeptical over the prospects of such
firms, while others expressed concerns
over the possible trivialization of trading
on financial markets.
"We are aware that the two markets
are converging, but we are keeping our
financial trading and gambling parts quite
separate," said Shai Heffetz, managing
director at InterTrader, which is owned by
gambling company BWin.Party.
Nevertheless, technology analyst Susan Anthony at brokerage Mirabaud Securities said the business could be worth
exploring. "Whether or not these things
become killer apps is hard to predict, but
I can certainly see how they might become quite addictive for some."
SPECIAL FEATURE
A Somalia on the
Mediterranean
In the cases of Muammar Qadhafi and Saddam
Hussein, opportunities to allow them to surrender were
squandered. It was as if the new dispensations in Iraq
and Libya could be created from scratch. Rather than
disappear, the older currents would reappear in ways
unforeseen in western and Gulf Arab capitals
Libya’s “Islamic State”
paraded 21 Egyptian workers
along the Mediterranean. The IS
fighters, dressed in black, then
killed the Egyptians, dressed in
orange jumpsuits. One of the IS
men speaks, in English, of the
beheadings in Syria before he
says, “… we are on the south of
Rome, on the land of Islam,
Libya, sending another message.” It is a direct provocation
to both the Egyptians and to the
West. “The sea you’ve hidden
Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body
in, we swear to Allah we will mix
it with your blood.” The braggadocio is familiar, as are the acts.
Within 24 hours, Egypt
and the West responded as IS
hoped. Three Egyptian jet fighters bombed eight targets in the
eastern Libyan city of Derna, the
hub of the “Islamic State.” Italy
and France are eager to join in
the intervention. Sources in the
city say that some civilians (including four children) died in
the Egyptian bombing, which
also hit sites associated with
the entrenched Islamist movement. Derna has been in the
ledger of political Islam since
the 1990s. That it is now in the
claw of the IS should not be a
surprise. Fighters from Derna
have long gone to fight in the
battlefields of modern jihad —
Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Syria. Foreign fighters,
such as the speaker in the
video, have also been known
to take refuge there. A pipeline
drew fighters from Derna to
northern Syria via Turkey, and
then back home. This pipeline
was well known to western,
Gulf Arab and Turkish intelligence. They had allowed it to
flourish. It is precisely the social
consequences of that pipeline
that worries the Europeans.
Kuwait on the Mediterranean
In 2008, Saif al-Islam
Qadhafi told a friend that he
wanted to turn Libya into “Kuwait
on the Mediterranean.” Oil-rich
Libya had not been able to convert its wealth into a paradise for
its people. Over the course of
the rule of his father, Muammar
Qadhafi, Libya had turned the
social wealth into social goods
— high social indicators demonstrate this fact amply. By the
1980s, however, it had become
clear that the Qadhafi regime
had neither the imagination nor
the will to diversify Libya out
of its reliance upon oil exports
and to draw these newly educated people into the political
system. Qadhafi tasked Saif
al-Islam to “modernize” Libya.
They drew on expatriate Libyans to “reform” the system —
which meant, all too often,
steady plans for giving away
national assets to private
hands. Domestic unhappiness
— even from among those who
had no desire to remove the
Qadhafi system — was crushed.
The most powerful challenge to
the state came from the Islamists — the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, whose members
were thrown into prison, executed or exiled. Those in exile joined the international
jihadi networks.
In 2011, discontent
against the Qadhafi regime
drew people onto the streets.
The mélange of groups that
desired something else was
startling — there were the
highly-educated liberals who
had benefited from the oil revenue, the diasporic business
elites who had been collaborating with Saif al-Islam, the
old jihadis who saw an immense opportunity, ordinary
Libyans who had stayed in the
shadows but now saw a place
for themselves. Rebellions are
often produced out of such diversity, and Libya in 2011 did
not disappoint. Sections of the
military hastily defected to the
rebellion, the city of Benghazi
was lost to the Qadhafis and
then the armed phase opened
up. It would likely have taken
a long time for the rebels to
succeed, but in that interim
they would have had to create
some form of political agreement. As it turned out, geopolitical enmity against Qadhafi
from the Gulf Arabs and the
West resulted in a NATO bombardment that destroyed
Libya’s infrastructure. It produced the conditions for a freefor-all.
Libyan politics fragmented, with the archipelago
of cities being held by their
various militias, with foreign
backers finding their own
friends here and there, and
with conflict over Tripoli’s resources at the centre of the
emerging civil war. Early signs
of danger were callously ignored by the new leadership —
worker unrest in the oilfields
over wages and protests by
former fighters who wanted
more from their new country.
Neither the workers nor the
thuwar (revolutionaries) saw
the new government as theirs.
The cult of the thuwar was all
that was permitted — the
rebels could hold onto their
guns and be treated as saviours, but they were not integrated into either a new military or into the new institutions.
Complex alliances
Absent political agreement,
chaos became the mode in
Libya from 2012 onwards. The
execution of Qadhafi in broad
daylight had the same kind of
effect as the execution of
Saddam Hussein in Iraq — in
both cases, opportunities to
allow these men and their
supporters to surrender were
squandered. It was as if the
new dispensation in both Iraq
and Libya could be created
from scratch, with the older
regimes consigned to the
dust heap. But these older
currents did not disappear.
They would reappear in ways
unforeseen in western and
Gulf Arab capitals. In Iraq,
many
Ba’athists
and
cashiered army men created
an alliance with the Islamic
State. Much the same seems
to have happened in Libya. It
is the only explanation for the
Islamic State’s ability to take
and hold Sirte, the birthplace
of Qadhafi and the epicentre
of his influence.After NATO’s
intervention in 2011, radical
Islamists in Benghazi who
had fought on NATO’s side
formed Ansar al-Sharia. It
then turned on the West and
was party to the 2012 attack
on the U.S. Consulate in
Benghazi, during which the
U.S. Ambassador Chris
Stevens was killed. Recently,
a rogue Libyan general,
Khalifa Haftar, has conducted
Operation Karama (Dignity)
against Ansar al-Sharia with
mixed success. Many Ansar
al-Sharia fighters have decamped to Sirte and to Derna
to join IS.
The Islamic State in
Libya is not merely a Libyan
problem but a regional one.
The chaos in the country has
allowed radical Islamists from
across North Africa to take
refuge here. As well, older
connections with radical Islamists across the Sahara
desert, in Mali for instance,
are part of their world. Al
Qaeda of the Maghreb,
centred in Mali, had made alliances with disgruntled Tuareg
nationalists, kidnappers of tourists, and trans-Saharan smugglers (of people, drugs and weapons). It operated as much as a
criminal gang as a franchise
of al-Qaeda. IS has links to
these networks, including the
trafficking of goods and
pe ople.
These
are
moneymaking enterprises that
have supplanted older trades as
26
northern Africa suffers from acute
desiccation caused by climate
change. Absent of alternatives, a
growing Sahara grows criminality.
Regional solutions
A source in the Pentagon
suggests that Washington has no
appetite for a serious engagement
in Libya. He spoke of the need to
rearm and refinance the Egyptian
military. Washington, it appears,
would like Egypt to take charge
of this war against IS. But bombing runs by Egypt have reopened
political fissures in Libya. The
Muslim Brotherhood-dominated
government in Tripoli considers
the Egyptian bombings a violation
of Libyan sovereignty. Khalifa
Haftar has, so far, supported them
as he did the August 2014 air
strikes by Egypt and the United
Arab Emirates around Tripoli.
Egypt’s entry into the conflict is
precisely what the Islamic State
wants. Egypt’s harsh crackdown
on all Islamists will likely afford
the Islamic State recruits inside
Egypt. Pressure needs to be
brought on the Egyptian government to cease its harsh repression of its critics. Rather than
maintain peace, this only creates
the most dangerous extremism.
It is naive to believe
that aerial bombardment here
or there will sort out the problems with the Islamic State. We
have entered a new period in
the history of the region.
Longer-term strategies need to
be worked out. Last August,
the foreign ministers of North
Africa met in Cairo to discuss
the security challenge posed
by Libya. They zeroed in on
two immediate steps that need
to be taken. First, that a unified government be formed in
Tripoli. The only way to allow
for this to happen is for the “cold
war” between regional parties
to be ended. Tensions between
the Qatar-Turkey backed Tripoli
government and the SaudiUAE-Egypt-West backed
Tobruk government remain. The
UN cannot facilitate a dialogue
unless the regional enmity is
lessened and unless pressure
is brought to bear on all sides
to join a political process. Second, that the countries “organize a common effort” to deal
with the issue of porous borders and trafficking. Included in
this should be the trafficking of
jihadis from Libya to Syria, and
from the world into Libya. Nothing has been done on this
front. If a regional solution is
not incubated, Libya is in danger of becoming a Somalia on
the Mediterranean.
TRAVEL
HAVE you ever been to a city where the alphabet gets jumbled and acquires uneven stance,
and emotions get addled between the carnage
of a war, the poetry of a Utopia, the darkness of
a heart and the syrupy sinfulness of a pastry
that comes with a meringue mop? It can happen in Warsaw. In the Polish capital, Ra is about
the first female Nobel Laureate who lived in a
yellow house and mulled over the properties of
radium. F Minor might as well be a proud note
from a composer whose heart still floats in cognac inside a church.
Behind the immaculate mien of Warsaw hide the carnage of war, where Utopia sometimes is just a stanza from another Nobel
laureate’s poem. Warsaw does something to
you. Here not one column seems crooked, not
one hue incongruous, not one façade discordant, not one monument a clutter. It seems as
if the gods hunched over their drawing board for
hours before creating this city that sits by the
Vistula river. Then, history pokes a reminder —
Warsaw is not as old as it looks; it is not even
original. During World War II, the city was
bombed into debris, only two buildings survived.
When peace returned, the entire city was recreated in three years.
Amidst the painstaking chore of recreating a city one brick on another, one dowel
in a plank, one daub of emulsion, it did not forget its bravehearts. It built the Monument to the
Heroes of the Jewish Ghetto, the Tomb to the
Unknown Soldier and Monument to the Katyn
Victims. ITHINK of Warsaw and the world much
before the war and step onto the cobblestone
pathways of the 14th century Old Town where
moneyed merchants built the colourful narrowfronted tenement houses, where the Royal
Castle looks oh! so medieval, where the tall
Sigismund’s Column almost scrapes the sky
and the crypt of Gothic St John’s Cathedral where
lie the sarcophaguses of the princes of Mazovia
and other famous Poles.
I lean on the column and think of Joseph Conrad, he must have sat on these steps
and woven the plots of Lord Jim and Heart of
Darkness. Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the first female Nobel Prize winner, must have walked out
of her yellow house by the Barbican Wall and
mulled over the properties of radium, a discovery that fetched her Nobel Prize in 1903. Who
knows maybe it was here that poet Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska defined the pentameters of her famous Utopia. However, my heart
was pining for one Pole. The one with square
jaw, gimlet eyes and magic in his fingers. I
wanted him to play two polonaises in G
minor and B-flat major on the grand piano. It was music composer Fredrick
Chopin that I was yearning for.
I knew I could never meet
Chopin; I had walked into Warsaw 165
years after his death. But beyond the
music in my heart, there was the heart
of Chopin that rests in the Holy Cross
Church. When Chopin died
oftuberculosis in Paris at age 39, his
heart was brought back to
Warsaw,preserved in cognac and sealed
behind a concrete pillar inside the
Church. There is nothing ornate
orflamboyant about the pillar, the plastic flowers in the white vase look odd,
even the plaque that reads, Here rests
the heart of Fredrick Chopin, looks too
ordinary. I stood by the wall, waiting for
the heartbeat to reverberate;instead I
heard the strains of the Ballade No. 4.
Maybe Chopin’s heart still beats in that
vial of cognac.
At least I heard the murmur in
F minor. Next day, I left Chopin behind
27
and took the train to Krakow, one of the
oldest cities in Poland, a city that grew
from Stone Age into a busy trading
centre as early as 965 to Poland’s royal
capital (until 1596) to one of Europe’s
most beautiful cities with Krakow Old
Town being the first one on UNESCO’s
World Heritage Sites.
Perhaps no other place packs
so much history within its cobblestone
pathways – Old Krakow Town has nearly
6,000 historic sites and two million
works of art.
ENTERTAINMENT
28
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Premier held
(By A Staff Reporter) London:
The Royal World Premiere of THE
SECOND BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL was held on Tues-
day evening, February 17, at the
Odeon in Leicester Square, London with cast, crew, and royalty
attending. Prince Charles and
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall,
were on hand at the gala event
joining Oscar-nominated director
John Madden and members of the
cast including Dame Judi Dench,
Lillete Dubey, Dame Maggie
Smith, Tina Desai plus many celebrity guests. THE SECOND
BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD
HOTELreleases across North
American theaters on March 6.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold
Hotel is the expansionist dream
of Sonny (Dev Patel), and it's
making more claims on his time
than he has available, considering his imminent marriage to the
love of his life, Sunaina (Tina
Desai). Sonny has his eye on a
promising property now that his
first venture, The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and
Beautiful, has only a single remaining vacancy posing a
rooming predicament for fresh
arrivals Guy (Richard Gere)
and Lavinia (Tamsin Greig).
Evelyn and Douglas (Judi
Dench and Bill Nighy) have
now joined the Jaipur
workforce, and are wondering
where their regular dates for
Chilla pancakes will lead, while
Norman and Carol(Ronald
Pickup and Diana Hardcastle)
are negotiating the tricky waters of an exclusive relationship, as Madge (Celia Imrie)
juggles two eligible and very
wealthy suitors. Perhaps the only
one who may know the answers
is newly installed co-manager of
the hotel, Muriel (Maggie Smith),
the keeper of everyone's secrets.
As the demands of a traditional
Indian wedding threaten to engulf
them all, an unexpected way forward presents itself.
Mumbai theatre cancels plans to stop twenty-year run of
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge after ‘overwhelming response
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Spot n is the SPITTING IMAGE of Cindy
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After the overwhelming public
response, the management of
Maratha Mandir theatre has
decided to withdraw its decision to
stop screening the iconic ‘Dilwale
Dulhaniya Le Jayenge’.
The film will now be screened at
11.30am from Friday.
“Soon after the last show ended,
both the theatre and Yash Raj Films
began getting calls and requests
against pulling down the iconic
movie. By evening, we held a
meeting. The owners spoke to YRF
and we decided to resume the
screening,” theatre manager Pravin
Rane said.
E a r l i e r i n t h e d a y, t h e
management had decided to draw
the curtains on the film after
screening it continuously for a
record 1,009 weeks.
After
the
1,000-week
celebrations, theatre officials had
requested YRF to reschedule the
screening time to 9.15am as they
were
finding
it
hard
to
accommodate the screening of
other new releases every week.
The management was glad to
continue the screening of the movie
till it continued to draw large
audiences. But owing to logistical
issues, specifically the theatre staff
having to work inordinately long
hours to accommodate the early
morning screening, it was mutually
decided to end the film’s 1,009week run, an official statement from
YRF said.
While the film largely enjoyed a
popular run at the cinema, it is
believed that its footfall towards the
end had decreased. The minimum
price of the tickets was as low as
Rs 20 as the Maharashtra
government had exempted the
movie from entertainment taxes.
During a recent trip to the Sundance Film
Festival, Amy Willerton was delighted to
be asked if she was related to Cindy
Crawford. And although there is no link
between the 22-year-old British model
and the world-famous supermodel who
turns 49, the likeness is incredible in
Amy’s latest photoshoot.To celebrate
Cindy’s birthday, Amy has recreated
some of the model’s most famous looks
and the similarities are extraordinary.
With Amy’s long brown hair, perfectly
symmetrical features and slim figure, it’s
not surprising that she was mistaken for
the star. With her hair in big, bouncy
Nineties waves for most of the pictures,
all that is missing from Amy is Cindy’s
distinctive mole above her lip. Amy said:
‘It was the greatest compliment but the
most bizarre moment for me being asked
whether Cindy and I are related. ‘At one
point I was asked to provide photographs
of my own mother in order for people to
believe me. I kept repeating over and over
again that I was not a Crawford love child.
It made me chuckle, and as her biggest
fan I left with the biggest smile on my
face.’Willerton is following in the steps of
the supermodel as producers in America
have already set their eyes on her. Amy
has flown out to America to discuss new
opportunities and to film for a new pilot
TV show.Amy’s photoshoot harks back
to Cindy in her glory years, the
Nineties.20 years ago, Cindy was among
the ‘Big Six’: Linda Evangelista, Naomi
Campbell, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer,
and Christy Turlington - who famously
quipped that they didn’t ‘wake up for less
than $10K a day’ in a 1990 interview with
Vogue.The Midwestern beauty’s
memorable mole and 34-25.5-36
measurements led to sexy Pepsi adverts,
MTV’s House of Style, and her disastrous
acting debut in Fair Game with William
Baldwin.Amy’s photoshoot harks back to
Cindy in her glory years, the Nineties.
20 years ago, Cindy was among the ‘Big
Six’: Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell,
Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, and Christy
Turlington - who famously quipped that
they didn’t ‘wake up for less than $10K a
day’ in a 1990 interview with Vogue.
SHOWBIZ
FRENCH beauty Marion Cotillard
shows her fashion edge in the March
issue of Interview magazine. The 38year- old French beauty is featured on
the cover wearing a blue satiny number with black ribbon tied seductively
around her throat and displaying a timeless quality that’s singularly hers.
Turning the pages, Marion can also
be seen in an inside picture wearing a
bronze lame dress with a slit down the
skirt, sheer black stockings covering
her legs and her hair styled in a glamorous ’ do inspired by screen sirens of
the 1940s. A third image shows the star
wearing a shiny black, floral number,
along with those black stockings, staring off to the distance. Also generating
interest is her new film Blood Ties , in
which she plays a woman who will do
anything for her children. Marion drew from
her own experience as a mother to flesh
out the role, as she told the magazine.
Marion also had the benefit of working with
her real- life partner, Guillaume Canet,
who directed and co- wrote the crimedrama about two brothers on opposite
sides of the law who combat each other in
1970s Brooklyn, New York. Describing her
character Monica, an addict who turns
tricks for a living, Marion said: “ It was actually one of my favourite characters.
Things your girl doesn't want to hear
Here are some things that you
should always avoid telling your
girl if you want to have a peaceful relationship You look a bit fat
in that dress Now which girl
would like you telling her that
she is looking fat. A statement
like this will definitely have you
spending the night on the couch.
Your mom looks like she's your
younger sister Yes, girls love
their mom, but don't ever do the
mistake of comparing them, especially in the looks department.
You won't score any brownie
points by doing this. I have the
best time with my friends You
may enjoy hanging out with your
friends, but that doesn't mean
you say that to her on her face.
Sometimes it's best to be diplomatic. I can't go out because
I want to watch a match
Unless your girlfriend is a sports
buff don't give her this excuse
very often. You remind me of my
ex That's the worst thing you
could say to your girlfriend. She
will always be left wondering if
you got into the relationship only
because she is a mirror image
of your ex. My mom is the best
cook Women take great pride in
their culinary skills. So don't ever
claim that your mom cooks better than any woman in the world.
29
You may just have to put up with
burnt food for the rest of the
week. I don't like your friends
Like you love hanging out with
your friends, your girlfriend loves
her friends. Don't make your dislike for them so obvious. Friends
can influence your girl to a great
extent, so make sure you are in
their good books. Why do you
spend so much on beauty treatments?
ENTERTAINMENT
30
ACTOR Neetu Chandra may be getting rave reviews in the theatre world these
days for her performance as Umrao Jaan, but that hasn’t helped her take the
hit play to her home town in Bihar. “I want the people of Patna to see my
performance as Umrao Jaan which has earned me praise everywhere, but
there is absolutely no initiative from anybody in the state to help me stage
the play there,” said Neetu, who shot to fame with\ her role as Sweety in the
Akshay Kumara and John Abraham starrer Garam Masala 10 years ago.
“The current political situation in Bihar reminds me of Bigg Boss,” she added,
“All the leaders seem to be taking part in a reality show, plotting against each
other. Nobody has time for anything else.” Neetu, who completed her 25th
performance playing Umrao Jaan at a drama festival in Delhi on Friday, said
she had been trying her best to get the art and culture department of the
Bihar government or any other organisation committed to promotion of theatre in the state. “Apart from Mumbai and Delhi, my play has been staged in
several cities such as Pune, Jabalpur and Bhopal with the help of government- aided organisations, but the possibility of taking it to my native place
still seems a distant dream,” the Traffic Signal actress said.
Heist trick gone wrong
FIRST thing, Ranbir Kapoor does not
have a starring role Roy — not in
the traditional Bollywood sense —
so go in knowing as much. That said
he is Ranbir Kapoor. So he gets to
romance the girl on screen, gets
going with the naach-gaana, and
gets to be in the thick of action substantially. All of it by way of an extended cameo that lets him play the
title role. Well, Bollywood needs its
stars to sell its films, especially a
concept like Roy, a mystery movie
that leaves a couple of lingering
mysteries in your mind after the
show. First, what was writer-director Vikramjit Singh actually trying to
say? Second, whatever he was trying to say, did Ranbir Kapoor have
to be a part of all the confusion? As
the supposed suspense drama tries
unfolding through layers of convoluted sub plots, you realise the only
thing Singh got right was pooling in
childhood buddy Ranbir for an extended cameo. Besides maxing out
Ranbir’s superstardom at the film’s
publicity phase to give it a big-budget
feel (without actually spending big
moolah on the film), Singh has done
very little correctly. And if the art of
promotion is increasingly becoming
more important than script, direction,
production and even stars in
modernday Bollywood, the smart marketing drive woven around Ranbir
should be the best thing about Roy.
The film casts Arjun Rampal as Kabir
Grewal, casanova and filmmaker who
has minted big bucks directing hits
about the daring art thief Roy. In Malaysia to shoot his new film, he meets
London-based filmmaker Ayesha
(Jacqueline Fernandez). She becomes Kabir’s latest muse. Things
become complex as Kabir starts obsessing too much about his creative
fancies and the line distinguishing re-
ality from illusion in his mind starts
blurring. At some point Jacqueline’s
double role is revealed though there
is not much of a difference by way of
personality traits between her two avatars. Fractured character sketches
leave it to varying lengths of hair and
shades of lipsticks to differentiate one
girl from the other. In fact, the whole
cast — Ranbir included — suffers due
to badly-etched roles. Arjun Rampal
looks dapper but Kabir Grewal offers
him nothing that might have helped
him prove he can be anything but
wooden. While on Ranbir, he looks seriously bored in most parts. The film
starts on a slow note and fails to pick
up pace thereafter. It becomes a
tangled maze in its bid to create suspense, owing to inept storytelling.
That’s a universal malady with
Bollywood crossover lately. You spot
the spark of an idea but the treatment
is all goofed up.
SHOWBIZ
31
THE GONG sounds. No it’s not
a Chinese restaurant trying to
create an ambience, but a group
of diners taking part in a unique
experiment. The concept called
Dans Le Noir, which literally
means ‘In the night’ is
now being recreated in India.
What this means is that a a
bunch of strangers will relish various cuisines, brought to them by
whitegloved waiters — blind. The
concept, introduced by Food Talk
India, is now being carried out in
various restaurants in Delhi.
Suchir Suri and Anjali Batra,
founders of Food Talk India, explain that while the evening is a
great ‘bonding’ experience, they
want it to help break down barriers when it comes to food. As
Anjali says, “Human nature is
such that we eat with our eyes –
or rather with the lens on our
phones nowadays – before we
really taste our food. What we
loved about this concept was that
we had the power to stimulate the
senses. Through this you are now
thinking about every bite you
take, trying to trace down the
exact flavours, the textures and
identify every little element. It’s
like shaking up your mind and
making it
learn things all over again.”
It isn’t just stereotypes
about food that are being shaken
up. Anamika Singh, certified tea
taster and founder/director of Himalayan Tea in 2011, has introduced ‘tea boutiques’ to help discover, or rather rediscover the
power of chai. Apart from introducing new signature blends of
tea, Anamika, through her tea
boutique sessions, has decided
to educate both Indians and foreigners about this unique beverage and break some stereotypes
in the process. As she says:
“There is more to tea than just
chai! And that is primarily the reason why I conduct events and
workshops, to create awareness
and to make people understand
that there is diversity in this particular beverage. You can infuse
it in food, you can sip it with food,
you can have the finest tea, and
keep its sanctity alive.” The result is astounding. Apart from
buying signature blends guests
can now opt for tea appreciation
workshops, pairing of the right tea
with cheese, or if you prefer, tea
with chocolate. As Anamika
elaborates: “The reason why I do
such varied workshops is to
make people understand the ability of this beverage to not only
stand alone and infuse your
senses but also to bring in an
element of surprise of how tea
can balance or accentuate the
other food it is being paired with,
without undervaluing it in terms
of palate. At times, a spicy
roghan josh is balanced off beau-
tifully with a sip of Autumn tea.
Or an Oolong tea has its sweetness highlighted if sipped with a
smoked Gouda.” Actually striking a chord with Gen- Next, many
of whom are well-travelled
foodies. Bored of standard restaurants and standard menus —
such endeavours are a great
boon as it helps them to meet
like-minded people and talk about
food. This also allows the
hospitality industry to introduce
‘experimental’ dishes, which they
would not normally have dared to
introduce in their traditional
menus.But more than anything
else it is the sense of innovating
on old-time favourite. Eat Treat,
a Delhi-based food group on
Facebook introduced a burgerfaceoff, where “hidden gems” of
the food industry got to showcase
their burgers in a no-holds barred
competition. Also on the anvil this
month is a food flea market where
foodies with a talent for making
home pickles, jams, or even exotic treats such as snails, can
sell their wares. But it’s not just
cooks. It also invites those who
are farming organic vegetables,
or selling unique kitchenware to
take part. As a result, budding food
entrepreneurs have a chance to meet
their target customers. The emergence of these offbeat ideas ensures
that we are in for one huge gourmet
adventure in the Capital.
ADVERTISEMENT
Wednesday,
February 18-24, 2015
ADVERTISEMENT
32

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