Sparsh

1- Retuning Alha Udal : The lustrous versatility of film music, and change wrought by time. Gulzar knows our culture more than anybody in music industry. 2- Evaluating responses to India's macroeconomic crisis by Shubho Roy and Ajay Shah. 3- Not an April Fool : We are encouraged to over-share, for commercial reasons (just as we are encouraged to over-consume, but that's an issue for another time). 4- वक्‍त की छलनी में चेहरे गुम हो जाते हैं, गीत अमर रहता है ♦ जावेद अख्‍तर - पिछले दिनों जावेद अख्‍तर को राष्‍ट्रपति ने राज्‍यसभा की सदस्‍यता दी। 17 मई 2012 को जावेद साहब ने संसद में अपना पहला भाषण दिया। 5- Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech At Harvard Business School . Sandberg urged the new graduates to think of their careers as a “jungle gym,” jumping around instead of following a preordained progression. She urged her listeners to take similar leaps, perhaps accepting a job that’s a step down from what one is currently doing if it offers the chance to learn something ...

1- Great compilation of cultural article at BBC Hindi : Enjoy Reading about Hindustani Tahzeeb 2- ऑन स्‍क्रीन ऑफ स्‍क्रीन : बहुरुपिया का माडर्न अवतार आमिर खान 3- Death by Dialogue By Trisha Gupta : What does it mean for the future of Hindi cinema if most films are now in fact conceived, thrashed out and largely executed not in Hindi but in English? Will filmmakers only tell the stories of a minuscule section of the population? 4- National Film Awards : The absurdity of censorship - An open letter to Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting on July 14, 2005 by Rakesh Sharma , a prominent Indian documentary film-maker. 5- Paradoxes of memory by Helmut König : Lasting peace agreements after wars and civil wars were for a long time considered to be conditional upon damnatio memoriae – the deliberate and reciprocal forgetting of violence and injustice. However, the established amnesty clause is only realistic where certain rules were not broken during war. The First...

1- How China reports the Arab world :- In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year. 2- The rules of entrapment :- The noise against Tehelka after last week’s cover story was to be expected. Much more surprising was the confusion over the ethics of political baiting. 3- Haaretz prides itself on being the conscience of Israel. Does it have a future? :- by David Remnick 4- James Gosling joins Google, what can startups learn? :- Cultivating talent is not about hiring only those people who will work on assignments or wait on benches for projects that are in the sales pipeline. You also require people who are not in the thick of daily grind; those who can think up new paradigms and new ways to doing things without the pressure of how it will impact the company's next quarter's bottom-line. ...

As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, the head of Al Jazeera, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what's happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond -- at this powerful moment when people realized they could step out of their houses and ask for change. As Director General of Al Jazeera, the only international TV network based in the developing world, Wadah Khanfar works to bring rare liberties like information, transparency and dissenting voices to repressive states and political hot-zones. TED LINK The counter-attack of people on the state is on and we all hail change in Middle East and Africa. As only words that comes in my mind are - Inquilab Zindabad ( a Hindi phrase which translates to "Long Live Revolution").

1- Why We Have More Sympathy for Baby Jessica Than for Darfur by Dan Ariely. VIDEO Focusing on the struggles of an individual appeals to our emotions and makes us care. As the numbers of people suffering get bigger, our cognition, calculation, and thoughtfulness are activated—and we care less ; A NGO on this concept is Rangde; 2- The danger of Being good : - The miracle of individual choice may be what is keeping us safe as a society. Some people just choose to be good, no matter what. This is the story of what happens to them 3- Freedom of speech and expression and the law of sedition in India : Text of keynote address delivered by Colin Gonsalves at the inauguration of Persistence Resistance 2011, New Delhi 4- Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks bluntly about politics and diplomacy, making the case that women's issues deserve a place at the center of foreign policy. Far from being a "soft" issue, she says, women's issues are often the very...

People of the Middle East had been living under the tyranny of secular and corrupt governments, which were all supported by the United States and other Western countries. People have experimented with most other forms of governance. Where these experiments have failed to deliver and simultaneously education has been infused with religion, the attraction of the only untried one has increased. This context left them recourse to only one political alternative: religious fundamentalism. Arab economy is based on oil and knowledge is not valued term their. That is why there academic does not have cultural inquiry and only revolve around theological discussions. The most educated young Muslims have lost the capacity to question the false Islamic history and ideology dished to them in academics. An Islamic country with ethnic, sectarian and religious diversity becomes a issue to fear within the Mullah and Army. And the worse response for any catastrophe is : ‘If only ...... imposes true ...

1- Let a thousand heretics bloom : Liberal education is a sustained and controlled matter, where practicality is directly related to searching analyses and the fecundity of thought processes. Sadly, the flag-bearers of a new India have no clue about such a pedigree of liberalism. 2- A Case of Conscience : Shiv Viswanathan writes to Manmohan Singh on the conviction of Binayak Sen. 3- Our phony economy By Jonathan Rowe : From testimony delivered March 12 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce. Rowe is codirector of West Marin Commons, a community-organizing group, in California. 4- Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1974 by Friedrich August von Hayek . The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1974 was awarded jointly to Gunnar Myrdal and Friedrich August von Hayek "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetr...

1- Transparency and Poverty in India :  It is interview of Aruna Roy a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement and and Nikhil Dey. 2- Indian Culture : How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do? 3- A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn : Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag , the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich , two of his best-known works. 4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, ...

1-  One grey issue needs our attention :  The real tragedy of the media’s surrender to the state is that journalists have stopped reading books, especially history books. Speaking at the Fifth Al Jazeera annual forum Robert Fisk laments the state driven semantics that take over and alter grave debates:  Journalism and 'the words of power' ; 2- Media does not act out of grief or out of some sense of compulsion at the death of any celebrity. Media is merely pandering to the lowest common denominator for commercial considerations as the stories that combine sex, glamour and death find a ready market. So its like justification of drug peddler for giving drugs to victims as given by media on defencing its coverage of sensational gossips and celebrity lifestyles. 3- Let me remind you, there is a public service broadcast also in this mob of news channels for serving citizens of this  nation. That is called Prasar Bharati. B G Verghesse covers necessity of publ...

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. [Part of Speech by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.] 1- Delhi's Commonwealth Games slave labour shame : CHILDREN are slaving away at work on building sites in New Delhi as the Indian capital struggles to get ready ...

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)

Literacy specialists say that giving children a say in what they read can help motivate them. “ If your goal is simply to get them to read more, choice is the way to go. ” I am presenting here few interviews and speeches given by beautiful minds who are/were shaping our thinking. 1- Uttarpara Speech by Sri Aurobindo in 1909. Aurobindo made this speech after his release from prison, where he had been incarcerated on charges of conspiracy to murder an English magistrate. Another speech of Sri Aurobindo when he was requested by the All India Radio, Thiruchirapalli, to give a message for India's independence. This is the message which was broadcast from the All India Radio on the 14th of August 1947. 2- Edward R. Murrow gives a speech at RTNDA Convention, Chicago on October 15, 1958. He is famous for bringing down of ' McCarthysim ' in America. A movie ' Good night, and good luck ' inspired me reproduce his speech about power & responsibilities of journali...

Speech addressed by Professor Yash Pal,Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University at Indian academy of social sciences October 5, 2007 . ( Original Link ) There was a time when we dreamt that someday we would have a countrywide TV channel that would be primarily used for education and science communication. This was also the time when we were preparing for the “satellite instructional television experiment”. At that time a foreign interlocutor once asked me whether we would be able to have programs like those on American network television. My reply was that perhaps we could but that would be a tragedy because we had different values and different needs. Perhaps the tragedy i talked about is already upon us – and with a vengeance. indeed we have gone much beyond the state of American TV in brainwashing people into buying goods, services and a great deal of tinsel. In the process of doing that with much song and dance, movie clips and news of crime, murder and corruption we do not have tim...

1-Bill Waterson at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio in 1990. --- Some Thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled. 2-Steve Jobs at Stanford University in 2005.--- Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. 3-Balraj Sahini at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in 1972. --- Speech. 4-J. K. Rowling at Harvard University in 2008. ---- The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination 5-Chetan Bhagat at Symbiosis, Pune in 2008. --- Keep the Spark Alive. 6-Subroto Bagachi at IIMB in 2006. --- Go Kiss the World. 7-Ajit Balachandran at IIMC in 2007. --- The Bakshali inheritance .

Keep the Spark Alive Inaugural Speech for the new batch at the Symbiosis BBA program, Pune 23rd June, 2008 Following is the speech by Chetan Bhagat given at the orientation programme for the new batch of MBA students at Symbiosis, Pune. Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if ...