Sparsh

1- Barefoot - The other side of life Harsh Mander -: Can anyone really live on Rs. 26 a day, the income of the officially poor in rural India? Two youngsters try it out. 2- Powerhouse on your plate! - Easily accessible and affordable, millets are making a comeback to Indian kitchens, says Shonali Muthalaly. 3- The everyday embrace of inequality :The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society. 4- Salman Rushdie & India's new theocracy :-India's secular state is in a state of slow-motion collapse. The contours of a new theocratic dystopia are already evident. 5- BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India by P. SAINATH 6- 42 per cent of Indian children are underweight - Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) report by the Naandi Foundation – were described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “national shame” at a release function here on Tuesday. 7- The complex co...

Harvard professor Larry Lessig is one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition. 1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story , we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice . 2- La Grande Revolution, Encore? A comparison between France of 1787 with present USA as both had financed an overseas war with borrowed money. 3- The War Dogma : This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt. 4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill ...

1- Dark side of giving: The rise of philanthro-capitalism --- Large philanthropic resources are being utilised to further the interests of business. 2- Noam Chomsky interviewed by Ajaz Ashraf and Anuradha Raman in Outlook magazine, November 1, 2010. The man NYT called “arguably the most important intellectual alive” finds the media in Pakistan more vibrant than it is in India. 3- Elections come and go. But the immigrant issue goes on forever [PDF]: A quarter century post the Assam Accord, political parties in the state still seek votes on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigration, reports Tehelka Reporter Kunal Majumdar. 4- Stan Ovshinsky’s Solar Revolution : His inventions from 50 years ago enabled cell phones, laptops, and flat-screen TVs. Now, at age 88, he’s aiming to make solar power cheaper than coal. 5- Why Do Some Countries Win More Olympic Medals? Lessons for Social Mobility and Poverty Reduction :- Not everyone in our country has equal access to competitive s...

1- Who pays the price for paid news? : In mid-June, the Election Commission of India directed Chief Electoral Officers of all states and Union Territories to enforce the law against "paid news" during elections. The institutionalised racket has been running into hundreds of crores of rupees. Ammu Joseph brings you up to speed. 2- Lokayukta stand on illegal Bellary mining has put Government of Karnataka in trouble. Santosh Hegde, the Lokayukta (ombudsman) for Karnataka gives first hand account to Tehelka Magazine . 3- Why you must read this censored chapter : Raman Kirpal reports, When the truth about the flouting of tribal rights in the Red Corridor struck home, the government dropped a whole chunk of damning material from a report it had itself commissioned. 4- Living with the Enemy : Applying the ideas of Holocaust survivor Jean Améry to present day Rwanda, our author argues that reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture. 5- How Goldman gambled ...

The first step in solving any issue is accepting the presence of the problem. A man convinced against will is of the same opinion still. So let us broadened our opinions about issues here - 1- Before the home ministry raises new paramilitary battalions, it needs to ask why the old ones are quitting in droves. raman kirpal reports on a brewing crisis : Soldiers of Misfortune . 2- Taking offense an be a competitive sport. Islam is forefront runner in this game : Not Even in South Park? 3- Opposition to reservations for women in Parliament have centred on at least four points. Step by step Vaijayanti Gupta rebuts the arguments and re-iterates the case for reservations. Women’s reservation Bill – the 2010 story . 4- Need tribal voices for their rights to counter corporate propagandist nationalism. The Fall Out Of Dantewada By Vidya Bhushan Rawat. 5- David Mumford reviews Kim Plofker's Mathematics in India ; 6- In this interesting paper [PDF], Lant Pritchett argues tha...

I don't know what to write today. The blank spaces between mine words have more meanings than this whole blog. Now, few words for world around me. When we win a match against Pak in Hockey World cup, certainly times appear good if we look at confident India. Then, three continuous defeats expose our inability to change and do vocal politics. After acute crisis majority of people returns to sense, and then again going numb with time. The “ His troubles, his miseries & his problems will fall on my head if I support him ” is part of our whole system in the country. In a talk the famous historian Antony Beevor gave at the Galle Literary Festival recently,he made an interesting point. While bemoaning the lack of historical accuracy in much of the media, he said we had entered a “ post-literate phase ”. By this he meant that images had superseded the printed word as the vehicle for disseminating history. Consequently, TV and movies now determine which historical narrative is believ...

When I read the stories of Deep joshi, Venkat Krishnan, Sandeep Pandey & Kiran bedi, it helped me realise that these were ordinary guys who fell in love with something, worked hard at it and came through excellently. I hope that someday I will do something on my own merit, and earn the right to meet them. Till then, learning is the way to go. Death of Nationalism: CPM is known to have extreme intolerance to any struggle that is not led by them. They will label those struggles as foreign funded or a Maoist uprising, how much public support behind the struggle becomes irrelevant to them. Congress is the mother of all regional parties in nepotism. There are only kripa-patras (sychophants) and chamchas (yes-men) left in the so-called socialist and regional outfit. 'Elections are fought to win and not to lose' , a nepotism supporter proclaim. 'But what of socialism? The lumpen brigade of socialist parties cannot be trusted to usher in socialism. Patriotism is the love to y...

On the profound truth which is a hybrid of reality and mythology, There's no one truth & On telling stories ; What Have We Done to Democracy? - by Arundhati Roy Does the Internet spread democracy? - by Evgeny Morozov India’s Maoist dilemma: the case of Lalgarh by Aaradhana Jhunjhunwala A Former Street Kid Sizes Up 'Slumdog Millionaire' Rashmi Bansal's Talk at IIT-Kgp covered by a blogger. Thought of the Day: “You see with your eyes, you hear with the sense of your hearing, you feel with your sense of touch, and all these senses are nothing but functions of your mind which is nothing but a thought which in turn is just an idea… so if you close your eyes and go to sleep the world ceases to exist and when you wake up it comes back in different shapes and forms to every living being on the earth. ” – Arthur Schopenhauer (The World As Will and Idea)

Frederick Douglass had written over a century ago. “ Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them … . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Naxal problem is making up a civil war like situation in India. And we are talking the losses in the terms of loss of life in encounters. The big picture is going beyond our imagination and tales of exploitation of dalits , labours and adivasis is echoing the real India. Shoma Chaudhary examines the tricky and dangerous terrain of Operation Green Hunt , the offensive against Naxals, might blow up in our faces: " Dalits and adivasis comprise a staggering one fourth of India’s population, yet are disproportionately destitute and low on the Human Development Index scale. Worse, they suffer the most humiliation and indignity: the proverbial insult on injury. Our country represents a show where 77 percent of Indi...

Two News affected me in this 24 hour.Just want to capture the big news in summary and small news in descriptive way. Feel free to read and choose importance of them. Deccan snatch title in tense finish. My views: The fortunes have reversed. Desi team and videsi captain strategy works for winning this year also. Previous year 2nd last team is runner up and 1st season's last team gets championship of IPL season 2. Akon with Katrina instead of Gilly and jumbo after the match disappoint me. But the most discussed name among all of us was of fake IPL player blog . He has showed the power of blog and anonymity to the media giants in gossip/news coverage. For fun, surely KKR will be hoping to win tournament next year after this turnaround of DC. For more usual stuff, follow the grand story coverage on cricinfo. OR Supreme Court grants bail to Binayak Sen: It took just 30 seconds. And five words: “Bail is granted on personal bond.” But these numbers pale when confronted with another, 24...