The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The glory and the blemishes of the Indian news media

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The glory and the blemishes of the Indian news media

Brilliant piece by Dr. Amartya Sen on state of Indian news media.

Proof of Pakistan's Terror acts

As the present Government of India has turned a blind eye to terror cells and terror acts against India.
Present day city opinion is we, the Indians must act like USA and Israel to combat terror, but the fact is USA too has been doing nothing but lip-service to help India.

Remember David Coleman Headley has struck a deal with US authorities, notwithstanding prior verbal commitments to India. Let me upload the video's FBI interrogation of Rana, which clearly showed FBI even tacitly acknowledging that they knew and believed ISI was supporting LeT and other Islamic terrorist organizations.

Now that Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State is here, could we ask that Tahawwur Hussain Rana& David Coleman Headley are handed over to India for interrogation on 26/11 and other terror plots against India.

                  Part one : Rana being told his rights, what about the rights of the terror victims

Part two: These were presented as evidence against Rana

Part 3: Noticeable that few minutes were missing since the last piece, Would Homeland security care to bring these minutes.

Part 4: Rana by now clearly acting now.

Part 5

Part 6: One for the gallery by Rana

The way Rana keeps talking about ISI and terror operatives, I wonder why he does not deserve the fate of Guantanamo prisoners. Yet there was no water-boarding for him, he is seen sipping mineral water during the interrogation. Although I do not support use of torture during interrogation, this surely looks a walk in the park for Rana, he smiles at the camera at times and even heard to be sharing a joke about headley with his interrogators.

Different sets of terror victims in different places evokes different sets of response for the US Government.
I don't blame them alone; our very own ministers are so busy with making money for themselves that they can't make a stand. They have plenty of dossiers to hand over, but don't have the guts to ask for justice for the slayed countrymen whom the swore to protect & serve.

Blogspot blocked by India

India has a draconian cyber law in the form of information technology act, 2000 (IT Act, 2000). It was deliberately amended by the information technology amendment act, 2008 (IT Act 2008) for the sole purpose of getting absolute and unaccountable e-surveillance, internet censorship and website blocking powers.

Although all these powers were granted to Indian government and its agencies yet till now the government of India in general and ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) in particular have defaulted in providing such civil liberty protection safeguards.

Repeated requests to the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh in this regard also proved futile. Till now the prime minister’s office (PMO) has not shown any willingness to reform this situation.


Please see this link

Why do they block us; basically Indian ruling class is afraid of freedom of speech; they have been selling the world an idea that everything is rosy in here. If we present anything else, they will charge us for sedition or something vicious like that.

They want world to believe that everyone is happily subjecting themselves to double digit food price inflation for 2 and half years in a row and everybody has one goal to see DOUBLE DIGIT GDP growth, anyway, anyhow.

Well I hate to break the news, but that's just fiction, pure unimaginable fiction.

Even after watching the fall of Mubarak's Egypt, I guess the political class is scared and lost of its senses.

Its not just my occasional posts, many journalists, students and people from all walks of life uses Google Blogspot service. The government of India just don't us to be heard.   

Please note: If the layout is lousy for this post, that's because even preview of the blog can't be done from India. However I will keep posting on this blog, so world would know.

Why This Monsoon Is Not Normal

Indian Met Office has gleefully declared that the 2010 rainfall is normal and published the map in its website to justify its claim. Current rainfall deficit is at -5%. The tolerance for average rainfall remains very high +/- 19%. I would like to draw your attention towards the heterogeneity of Terrain and Climatic conditions of India. Please remember the food security of 1/6th and economic existence of1/10th of global human population depends on truthful projection of Indian Monsoon by Indian Met Office. Monsoon Watch gives a daily briefing of Monsoonal conditions. Here's the map depicting rainfall from 1st June to 28th July 2010 released after weekly briefing.

The lack of red color in the map and the presence of blue color might make it soothing for the eyes. But they hide the fact and at least 5 meteorological divisions had just missed the red color by a whisker. IMD does not provide tabular data, so we had to create one for ourselves.

Met. Zone	Terrain	Normal Rainfall	Actual Rainfall	Change Noted
Coastal Karnataka	Coastal Plain	1990.4	1746	-12.28
Konkan and Goa	Coastal Plain	1643	1911.9	16.37
Kerala	Coastal Plain	1383.9	1199.2	-13.35
Orissa	Coastal Plain	519.5	442.3	-14.86
Saurashtra, kautch, Diu	Coastal Plain	262.7	470.5	79.10
Coastal A.P.	Coastal Plain	243.5	385.4	58.27
Tamil Nadu and Pondi.	Coastal Plain	107	165	54.20
	Coastal Plain Total	6150	6320.3	2.76
Gangetic W.B.	Grain bowl	531.9	366.7	-31.06
Bihar	Grain bowl	474.4	378.1	-20.30
East UP	Grain bowl	381.8	260.8	-31.69
West UP	Grain bowl	309.8	252.8	-18.39
Punjab	Grain bowl	207.1	235.9	13.90
Har., Chd and Delhi	Grain bowl	198.2	184.5	-6.91
	Grain bowl Total	2103.2	1678.8	-20.18
Assam and Meghalaya	H.Plains and plateau	1121.8	795.7	-29.07
	H.Plains and plateau Total	1121.8	795.7	-29.07
Sikkim Him. WB	Himalayan	1027	1185	15.38
Arunachal Pradesh	Himalayan	949.9	747.2	-21.34
N.M.M.T.	Himalayan	754.7	636.1	-15.71
Uttarakhand	Himalayan	540.9	568.2	5.05
HP	Himalayan	348.7	372.9	6.94
Jammu and Kashmir	Himalayan	226.8	298.6	31.66
	Himalayan Total	3848	3808	-1.04
A + N Islands	Islands	818.7	926.8	13.20
Lakshadweep	Islands	588.1	602.8	2.50
	Islands Total	1406.8	1529.6	8.73
E. Rajasthan	Low rainfall	268.5	213.9	-20.34
N. I. Karnataka	Low rainfall	210.7	271.8	29.00
Rayalaseema	Low rainfall		141.2	221.9	57.15
W. Rajasthan	Low rainfall	119.6	174.5	45.90
	Low rainfall Total	740.0	882.1	19.20
Chattisgarh	Plateau and Plains	546.7	453.1	-17.12
Jharkhand	Plateau and  Plains	488	264.5	-45.80
Vidarbha	Plateau and Plains	467.1	510.8	9.36
East MP	Plateau and  Plains	476.8	391.7	-17.85
Inner Gujarat and Daman	Plateau and Plains	435	394.1	-9.40
Madhya Maharashtra	Plateau and Plains	350.7	416.5	18.76
West MP	Plateau and  Plains	381.6	282.9	-25.86
S. I. Karnataka	Plateau and  Plains	347.6	313.4	-9.84
Telangana	Plateau and Plains	348.6	418.6	20.08
Marathwada	Plateau and Plains	315.4	408.6	29.55
	Plateau and Plains Total	4157.5	3854.2	-7.30
	Grand  Total	19527.3	18868.7

So we can see there are actually more areas in red. Lets check out where it has rained most,

• The traditionally low rainfall areas like west Gujarat, west Rajasthan great surplus of rain.  
• The West coast and the state of Maharashtra along with Andhra Pradesh and Surprisingly Tamil Nadu.  
• Western Himalayan States and Punjab. Here the no of rainy days has decreased but when it rained, it poured.
• Sikkim & North Bengal 

There has been incidents of flash floods too. Neither floods nor Drought is good for the vast rural population of India.Many would like to discard the monsoon anomalies, as they have seen pictures of floods in Punjab and Hariyana on TV. But remember last year there were far more devastating floods in Orissa and Saurashtra, still the National consensus was 2009 was a drought year.

The major crop of monsoon has been predominantly rice and sugarcane. Rice being the staple food for majority of Indians in the states facing rainfall shortage. The rainfall is still not good enough for sowing the rice paddy, although it is great for city folks who face water-logging in their neighborhood.  

Lets sign off with the latest satellite image which clearly shows weak monsoon clouds, with two blobs of cloud in the west coast and in the north.

Protest song against corporate greed brewing at the top

Dear Dave,

Perhaps you have heard about the Bhopal Gas Disaster in 1984, where around 3-5 thousand people died immediately after the gas leak. Till today more than 25000 have died. For 26 years, we were told judicial action,that is, a court case against the guilty is ongoing and due process is taking the time. After 26 years and 25000 dead, hundreds of thousands sick with chemical poisoning and dying, 7 of 8 accused got 2 years jail and currently are appealing in higher court and are out on bail. In normal course, this case will take another 10-15 years by which all of the accused would have died their natural death after living their normal life (As it happened in the case of the 8th accused)

Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, is currently living in New York, He had jumped bail and has been declared a fugitive by the Indian court. Surprising after or maybe before the bail, he was flown out of Bhopal by that state's Chief Minister. Request for his extradition was never taken up seriously by Indian Government and all politicians are backing the corrupt corporation. Union Carbide does not exist now, both internationally and in India, Globally it has been purchased by Dow Chemicals and In India, all of its assets were allowed to be sold in Eveready.

All the lawyer-turned-cronies are claiming the top management and the new companies/owners carry no liability, Primary or Vicarious. Like many others, I am protesting in all the ways possible. I feel there is no east-west or north-south divide in this. The People of United States are feeling the same about BP oil-spill. Tomorrow if a similar Oil-spill or Industrial disaster happens in Europe, people will suffer the same way. Our common friend (Although my acquaintance is through twitter only) Mr. Shekhar Kapoor also feels justice has not been done in Bhopal case. 

I have written a protest song (More of rhyme actually), which is given below. I'm no poet or songwriter or musician, but a protest song will help in awareness. My forte is numerical analysis and software programming and my last position in 2 decade long career was Vice President (Technical). So please feel free to comment on my writing, which might be "no good" at all.

But I'm sure, you can make something out of it.

[PROTEST SONG]

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

I got golden parachutes,

I can bail out, when I want to,

If you tax me more,

I can “get the hell out o town” too.

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

Be it Bhopal, be it Gulf,

My greed can ruin any habitat.

Maybe people die, people starve,

But look at the GDP’s upward curve.

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

[Mr Chairman, People are dying in Bhopal.]

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility

[Mr Chairman, People are crying in Bhopal]

I’m just a chairman, I'm the chairman.

[Mr Chairman, Mr Chairman livelihoods are lost]

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

I'm the new King, I'm powerful

I can choke your voice.

I'm the gonna break your toys.

I'm gonna get you killed,

If you ever any more noise.

Dont you know....

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

I’m just a chairman with no responsibility,

In the name of torts, I carry no liability.

The unnamed cyclone, Let call it 92B

Please find above the infra-red picture of system 92B its going to big cyclone. I don't know if Met office or administration would be surprised by this cyclone. Its an annual feature like cyclone Nargis or cyclone aila. this picture was taken at 1800 hrs GMT or 2330 IST

The picture below shows 92B at 12hrs GMT, The intensification of the system is obvious.

Cyclone forming over Bay of Bengal

It's the month of May once again. Last year it was #Aila, a tropical depression capable of becoming a big time cyclone is gaining strength. It is currently named 92B. Indian, Bangladeshi & Myanmar government should start doing their drills and start activating their watch now. Preparedness is better than lament.

Thats at 0000 hrs GMT

At 600 hrs GMT Cyclone still a strong possibility