11th May, 2012 : Politicians create an uproar in parliament over a cartoon featuring Dr. Ambedkar. This cartoon depicts Dr. Ambedkar in a manner which is supposedly demeaning to the father of the Indian constitution. HRD minister is forced to apologize. A group of youths belonging to RPI, ransack the office of an ex-member on board of NCERT, which is responsible for publishing the cartoon. All parties unanimously claim that, this cartoon is a big blow on the image of Dr. Ambedkar.

13th May, 2012 : We celebrate 60th anniversary of Parliament and Parliamentary form of democracy. The same politicians go ga-ga over how we are one of the very few surviving democracies in the world, in spite of being a multicultural society and how we should uphold the freedom of expression to preserve democratic principles.

Irony at its very best!

Political satires have been mainstream since times immemorial. We have had great artists like R.K Laxman, Shankar, who have made us look at the unattractive world of politics with humor-tinted glasses. We even have had politicians who take a dig at other politicians and governments through their caricatural masterpieces. Then what was so offending about this particular cartoon (in which Dr Ambedkar is merely shown sitting on a turtle named "Constitution" with a whip in his hand) that made our revered politicians go berserk? Was it

• Their love for the Constitution
• Their undying affection and respect for Dr Ambedkar (which the cartoon had nothing to do with)
• Playing the card of caste politics

You obliviously don't need to be a rocket scientist to answer that.

Using the names of iconic figures like Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, etc, for petty personal gains is an art that our current politicians have attained a mastery in. Its a matter of utter regret and shame that, they have not realized the vision of modern India that these great leaders had dreamt about. Our founding fathers had envisioned a country, that, is free from all socio-economic barriers; is free from social evils like fascism, fundamentalism, authoritarianism that plague the society; takes into consideration views and opinions of all its people, irrespective of their caste, creed or religion and is self-sustaining economy where no countryman sleeps hungry. This was the very same reason why it took such a long time for an intellectual personality like Dr. Ambedkar to frame our constitution. He wanted to incorporate all of the above and much more. He wanted a state where a person, dalit, under-privileged or otherwise, can live amicably and prosper; a community where woman, children and old are all treated equally with honor and respect; a society where a person is not “identified” by his last name and a country where every Indian puts his nation and its people before self. This is exactly what the cartoon along with its sub-titles was implicitly intending to portray. But, leave it to our genius politicians to misinterpret it, twist it and weave a story to ignite mass sentiments.

To cut a long story short, in a modern day India, all it takes is a facetious cartoon for all our politicians to unite and raise their voice in protest. On the other hand, acts involving money laundering, million dollar scams, corruption, land grabbing, terrorism etc, are all perspicaciously brushed beneath the carpet.

Sometimes, I wonder, if Dr. Ambedkar (or any of our great freedom fighters) would have been alive today! Would he be more angry on the cartoon or deeply worried about the saddened state of current leadership of this nation? A nation, which he loved so immensely and wanted it to be one of the greatest and fledgling democracies of all time.

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Originally posted on : Desicritics.org

The article posted below is an actual bloodcurdling account of the Bhopal Gas tragedy by Mr.G.V Krishnan, who was then a correspondent for TOI based in Bhopal. Now retired, he runs www.mymysore.com , a civic initiative on the web.

December 2-3 night has significance for my family. We are Bhopal survivors. I read in the papers that people in Bhopal observed the 22nd anniversary of the gas tragedy with a silent procession by the gas victims. Even after two decades since the tragedy the gas victims are still on a protest mode for relief and rehabilitation. Over 40 tonnes of the lethal methyl isocyanate – a toxic substance whose formula remains an industrial secret that is zealously guarded by the company – leaked from the Chhola Road Union Carbide pesticide plant, Bhopal, claiming 3,000 lives and leaving thousands of others with, what is suspected, genetic and reproductive

For several days in the wake of the disaster all nine cremation grounds in town were kept busy round the clock. There were reports of collective cremation of bodies to clear the backlog in the first few days of the gas leak. As many as 191 bodies were cremated as "unclaimed." Many of them were rail passengers who collapsed in the waiting hall and platforms of Bhopal railway station. Over 85,000 residents fled Bhopal in the wake of the gas leak.

It happened late on a Sunday night, when the town had gone to sleep. I was woken up by commotion on the street. When my wife opened the balcony door for a look-see we sensed irritation in our eyes. I thought the police might have burst teargas shells somewhere in the vicinity to disperse a mob. People were out on the street, heading towards the lake close to our flat in Professors' Colony. Within a few minutes I got a call from N. Rajan, a neighbor and editor of the local daily, Hitavada. He said there was a gas leak in the Union Carbide pesticides plant and residents in the old city were fleeing their houses to escape the gas that caused irritation in the eyes, vomiting and breathlessness.

Before long we felt the effect of the gas in our house, though we were more than five kilometers away from the Carbide plant. And, like scores of others in our neighborhood, we locked our place and took to the street in a bid to outpace the drift of the poisonous gas. The four of us - my wife, 12-year-old son and I, along with our dog Bitsy - joined hundreds of others on the road. Many were rushing ahead in panic, hoping to get as far away and as quickly as they could from the Union Carbide plant. We could not keep pace, which turned out to be a blessing. For those who were in a rush, and breathing heavily, inhaled more of the toxic gas, developing breathlessness. We saw some of them vomit and collapse on the wayside.

As we fled our houses, Rajan, who also represented Patriot newspaper, and I realised that we had a major story to handle. I was then the Bhopal correspondent of The Times of India. But the story had to wait. Besides, it was past edition time. My immediate concern was finding a place that was unaffected by the leaking gas. We spent the night at a relation's place in Arera Colony.

The morning after the tragedy was bright and sunny. I started working the phone for information. Among the more resourceful newsmen in Bhopal those days was Taroon Bhaduri of The Statesman and Abhishek Bachchan's grandpa. Bhaduri told me about a call he received from someone high up in Union Carbide. Initial reports put the gas leak toll at five and the company executive said the situation had been brought under control. It was evident that the Union Carbide spin doctors were already at work.

Later in the morning Rajan and I found that all hell had broken loose at Hamidia Hospital. The OPD verandah, outer lawns and even the driveway were littered with people who had collapsed in fatigue and complained of breathlessness. Doctors said they were running short of drugs. To cope with a spate of patients that continued coming through the night the hospital authorities sent out their staff to buy up from drugstores in town all available stock of sodium thiosulphate - antidote to cyanide poisoning.

The tragedy of it was that the gas victims did not respond to the drug. The toll mounted by the hour. Postmortem indicated that the deaths were due to respiratory failure following pulmonary oedema (fluid in the lungs). It was found that the lungs of gas victims contained 250 cc of fluid and weighed 900 grams against the normal lungs weight of 400 to 500 grams.

The gas that leaked out of the pesticides plant was methyl isocyanate (MIC). And doctors in Bhopal administered drugs for cyanide poisoning. The 'cyanate' in MIC was quite another devil. No one had a clue to the formulation of MIC, which was the trade secret of the US multinational. The Union Carbide stonewalled all queries on possible antidote to MIC while the gas affected were dying by the hundreds. All that the Union Carbide could be persuaded to divulge was a statement saying that methyl isocyanate had nothing to do with cyanide and that the two substances had entirely different effects on tissues and human health.




The views represented in this article are unedited and unaltered standpoints of the author as discussed by him on desicritics.org. The article is posted on this site with the author's imprimatur.

For those who are not able to snicker at the gags conjured up by those half-witted, imbecile morons from the Great Indian Laughter Challenge show…here is something that is sure to crack them up. It’s an advertisement (issued in the November 1 issue of TOI) highlighting the “DEVELOPMENTS” made by the Democratic Front government in its two year of being in power in Maharashtra.


Some of the most “dazzling” claims made by this ad are:

1. “I feel safe and secure right here”

I feel safe alright. With terrorist attacks becoming a once-in-a-fortnight affair and our ‘conscientious’ and ‘high-spirited’ police personnel getting tangled in zillion scams, charges of rape, extortion and corruption, I surely feel secure. After all, it is undeniably safer than Kabul or Baghdad!


2. “The best jobs in the world in IT, Finance etc are right here”

And what about some of the major IT corporations like Intel and Google that we lost out to Bangalore, thanks to the absurdly high real estate prices in Mumbai and predominantly due to the Maharashtra Urban Land Ceiling Act. (The Maharashtra government continues to swear by the Act despite its counter-productivity and the Centre’s advice against it.)


3. “I have seen airports abroad and we have similar ones….right here”

The lady in this ad need to be catechized exactly which Airports has she seen abroad. If she means airports of Sudan or Nigeria, then I think it’s a legitimate claim. But by that, if she means world class airports like Heathrow or JFK, then I guess we need to take her to a little tour of our International Airport, which I presume is the only Airport having the world’s largest slum in its own backyard! (Or is it Front yard!)



And the last one which will undoubtedly have you rolling in laughter,

4. “The roads are becoming better and the air cleaner”

What can I say about this stupefying comment? The one who has externalized this line has evidently either not been to Mumbai or is a burnout alcoholic! There are estimated 1500 potholes on roads in Mumbai including suburbs, some of them gargantuan enough to make the craters on Moon look diminutive! The pollution levels don’t draw a rosy picture either. The phrase ‘Cleaner Air’ is Latin for us Mumbaikars where breathing is equivalent to smoking almost 8 cigarettes daily!

This is the situation prevailing in the Financial Capital of India, the city which contributes 40% of income tax collections, 60% of customs duty collections, 20% of central excise tax collections, 40% of foreign trade and Rupees 40 billion (approx US$ 9 billion) in corporate taxes. The situation gets worse as we move into deeper parts of Maharashtra, where the exigency of load shedding (8-10 hours a day) and naxalite problems are rampant.

So instead of thinking about making us laugh by publishing such humorous ads (that too at the cost of the exchequer), I request our government to bequeath the money spent on such ads to those hapless and impoverished farmers who are committing suicides by the day. As far as our laughing is concerned, we will somehow manage to snicker at the gags conjured up by those half-witted, imbecile morons from the Great Indian Laughter Challenge show!

Picture this...on one page of Saturday's (27th Oct) edition of Mumbai Mirror you have,

And on the page, exactly next to the above mentioned one you have,


This is how India responds to the capacious amount of terror strikes which are carried out by Pakistan-sponsored jihadi outfits.

Since time immemorial, we have always been the begetters of the peace process with Pakistan. We have provided artistes from their country with a platform to foster, publicize and boost themselves. We have provided free medical services to kids from their country. Our actors/actresses have performed in concerts which have helped augment funds for various social activities in their country. Even though we ourself suffered a significant amount of damage in the earthquake that hit Kashmir, we still managed to make an exemplary contribution to relief activities in PoK.

And how do they reimburse us in return? Bomb our Trains....Attack our places of Worship…Effectuate suicide bombing operations on our Jawans and even civilians….Introduce counterfeit currency to wreck our economy.......Harbor Terrorists and Gangsters which are responsible for carrying some of the most dissolute, heinous and vicious attacks on our Country.

During the “Ban-cricket matches-with-Pakistan call given by the Shiv-Sena” incident, when people were asked whether banning matches with Pakistan is the appropriate thing to do, most of them answered by saying that Cricket and Politics are two completely different fields and should not be mixed! What does this imply? Have we taken Gandhigiri too seriously? Or, isn’t there at least an iota of self-esteem and patriotism left within us? Or, are we AFRAID of the Pakistanis? Wake up people…..TERRORISM isn’t politics….its gruesome mass MURDER of innocent people by cold-blooded, ruthless, brain-dead fanatics….its WAR!

It's useless relying upon our politicians for our defense needs as they are the biggest terrorists of them all (the people who commit scams in deals related to buying improved weaponry for meliorating our Country’s security or the people who take bribe from militants are no less than terrorist themselves).

So it’s entirely up to us to look out for ourselves. We must forget mutual animosity and think of us as ONE unified entity. Linguistic and Caste based differences be damned, Indian ness should be the only religion for us to follow. Or the day isn’t far when we all will be offering Namaz (with all due respect to INDIAN Muslims) five times a day or worse still, we will all be DEAD.


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It can't get any worse than this.It is not like we have had shortage of gangsters in Politics before, but now with Abu Salem joining ranks, our political system has truly become a haven for them!
Though the verdict on his involvement in the 93 Serial Bomb Blasts which rocked Mumbai and took toll of nearly 300 innocent lives (http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/nov/13salem.htm) is yet to be passed, the parties in UP are busy in making preparations for contesting him from the Azamgarh assembly constituency in the forth coming elections (http://news.webindia123.com/news/Articles/India/20060904/441473.html).

Don't these politicians have atleast some amount of Patriotism left in them? How can they stoop to such low levels? At this rate, tommorow if Dawood is extradicted to India, they will even make him enter politics!

We all know that he is responsible for the blasts. Then, why give him a royal service in the first place? Why not just kill him him under the pretext of an encounter or give him a lethal injection? I know that doing so will be against the extradiction treaty with Portugal, but its not like Portugal will attack us if we do. He was not a Portugalese resident. But, instead of doing that, if we make him contest elections, what example will we be setting for other gangsters responsible for the same attack?

My humble request to the politicians is, If you can't make India any better, please don't make it any Worse!

Its pathetic to the see the Indian government debating wether to ban Cola manufacturing units for the high pesticide residues present in them as proved by the CSE. Its like the Indian government has run out of all other issues and this is the only thing left to do.

If pesticide content is the only reason for considering this ban, then the government must first ban TEA. Tea contains 1,87,300 times the water contained in the colas. Hypothetically, even if the Cola companies increase thier pesticide content 30 times the present amount, I can still drink 62oo bottles of Cola and have less pesticide content in my body than I would have by drinking a single Cup of TEA. Even apple contains 1,54,120 times the pesticide content, Milk contains 7140 times the pesticide content. So all this brouhaha created on the pesticide content in the Colas is nothing but Hogwash!! They can be called one of the safest drinks available, certainly not NUTRITOUS, but safest and pure for sure!

The recent ban Colas implemented by Kerela government is nothing but another of its innumerable tactics of garnering cheap votes. How can you ban Colas while sale of Cigarettes and Liquor is permitted? Ain't Right of Selecting what to Drink allowed in Democracy? Who is the government to decide what should we drink? People have to understand this and not fall for it...or else they are sure to be taken for a ride....!!

The newspapers nowadays are filled with news mentioning the Oil-For-Food scandal and how Natvar Singh alone is being made a scapegoat as being the sole beneficiary of this scam. But what exactly is this Oil-For-Food scam?

The United Nations first conceived the Oil-For-Food programme as a means for providing humanitarian aid to the war stricken people of Iraq. But it was subverted by Saddam Hussein regime and modified to prop up the Iraqi Dicatator. He siphoned off allegedly 10 Billion $ in Oil Smuggling and systematic theivery by demanding illegal payoffs from Companies buying Iraqi Oil and all this kept happening right under the noses of UN bureaucrats. The gross mis-management and incompetencies on the part of UN officials and their possible complicity with the Iraqi Regime resulted in one of the biggest Scandals in the annals of UN history.

In April 2004, the General Secretary of UN, Kofi Annan announced the formation of an Independent High Level Inquiry Commission headed by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to investigate the scam. This committee came to be known as the Volcker Committee.

So now the question that comes to your mind is, where does Congress and Natvar Singh fit in this whole picture?
The Volcker Committee named Natwar Singh and Congress party as the beneficiaries of this scam. Natwar Singh got the Iraqis to sell them oil at well below the International price. This oil was then resold to a Swiss firm Masefield AG and the beneficiaries of this cheap oil made a handsome profit in this whole deal. But in those days the Congress was not in power and Natwar was out of office, so this whole deal was allegedly implemented by his Son Jagat Singh at his father's behest. But the R.S Pathak Inquiry Authority (Indian Version of the Volcker Committee) exonerated the Congress party of all the charges and indicted Natwar Singh alone.

So what do we gain from all this?? NOTHING. Few months of investigation, few more enquiry commissions and few Court Orders later, Natwar Singh will again be a free man. Free to do whatever he wishes to, free to contest and win elections and free, to again become the External Affairs Minster of this country. This is how it has going on for all this years and it ain't gonna cease anytime sooner!! After all, Yeh hai India, ....meri jaan!!!

TamilNAdu CM, M.Karunandihi's statement of pulling out support from the NDA goverment if the 27% quotas for OBC are not implemented at one go are nothing but a vivid example of DMK's selfish motives.
At time when the V.Moily commitee had approved of implementing the quotas in staggered manner, here comes DMK with a threat directly aimed at maligning PM Manmohan Singh. Karunanidhi specifically stated in his comments that he got elected because of his promise of implementing the quota. I say, why can't these politicians promise people something more important?
Tamilnadu is a land of varied beauty. It has got some of the best temples in India.
Some of the oldest like the Brihasdiswara temple which is about 1200 years old and which is also on the UNESCO's World Heritage List is located in TN. TN has a coastline which spans nearly 1000 kms. Some of the very finest and exotic beaches are located in TN. Why not do something to market this untapped potential of this State? Why not do something to improve tourism? It is ultimately going to result in creating number of jobs for the unemployed irrespective of whichever caste or creed one belongs to! Why do these politicians think that implementing reservation in National Level Institutes is the ONLY way in which people from Backward Category can progress?
Where was Karunanidhi's DMK when Tsunami struck TN? Weren't RESERVED Category people affected then? If he projects himself as the so called messiah of the backward masses, why didn't he implement projects for the affected?
No doubt that People from TN are some of the most educated and talented among the lot, but when people like Karunanidhi get elected by promising QUOTAS or by distributing FREE COLOUR TV's that too at the cost of the exchequer, don't u think thats its time for you to WAKE UP?