Sparsh

It's a great myth that democratic nations support democracy in other parts of the world. China and India are on the same page in the case of maintaining relationship with Burma's dictatorship government. Both of these developing nation will eevntually walk on the same path of USA i.e. supporting puppet dictators for its own development. There is no doubt on the rise of US economy after 2nd world war. Let's have close look on foreign policy of American government in last 60 years. Pakistan prominent newspaper, Dawn covered a pin pointing editorial on relationship of America and Dictators : Would Pakistan in the 21st century be wracked by militancy and terrorism if the US hadn’t supported Gen Zia and pumped millions into the Afghan ‘jihad’? The point here is that America has long been hand in glove with military dictators and varied despots, not just in Pakistan but across the globe. In Central and South America it has even engineered coups to oust democratically elected ...

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, ...

I often blog about culture but partially global politics. I do care about injustice, but the global scale and systematic nature of it has left me stunned. There is so much attempt to curb our freedom, liberty and public information in the name of secrecy and security. This blog post is compiled in the span of 30 minutes as soon as I became aware of about Wikileak. Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden. It publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. It has set a new standard in free information flow across the world. Afghanistan War Logs, Baghdad airstrike video, Guantánamo Bay procedures, 2008 Peru oil scandal and Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report are few important leaks of the secret government documents. You can read more about them in encyclopedia . It is more productive to engage with, rather than censor. There is an intimate and indissoluble link between inte...

Mental idleness leads to aimlessness and eventually despondency. To be a contented and creatively-active person, one has to keep doing something that keeps your zest for life alive and inspires you. For me it is blogging, it makes me feel alive. Today, Nothing to write but a zeal to express is there in the heart. I am observing that there has been shift towards how much you own, how much you can get paid for some skill that you have, and bargain hard to get the most you can. We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that the average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost (the factory approach) is the one and only way. It's not the ideal situation. People deserve more and have more potential within. I feel that capability rather than domain knowledge is more important; Today, I find a beautiful paragraph on creativity by a famous poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz . In 1951 Faiz and a number of army officers were implicated in the so-called Rawalpindi Con...

Continued from the Part 1 , When there is no cultural, political or social movement in a country, alternative forces emerge. That's why I believe that the intellectual life of the Islamic republic has virtually ground to a halt. The fear of causing offence has helped undermine progressive trends in Islam and strengthened the hand of religious bigots. Secular Muslims have come to be regarded as betraying their culture, while radical Islam has become not just more acceptable but, to many, more authentic. There is less need to quote Quran and Hadith again and again for better understanding of Islamic doctrines. This trend has led to cherry-picking whichever paraphrase or translation supports whatever point one attempts to convey through holy book. Here, we have to understand the relationship between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. The idea of two separate worlds divided from one another is wrong and violent repression is the seed of terror and militant Islamism in the I...

Udaan is touching chords of nostalgia of growing up amongst adults and charming the young with hope in the eyes. The undecisive youth wants time and emotional support to pursue his/her dream career. Udaan is going to be more than teenage success in coming years, a benchmark for coming of the age film. Udaan is going to be our own The Catcher in the Rye , an expression for the teen angst. Udaan was selected in the competitive section in the prestigious Cannes film festival. And the mainstream media and Bollywood reaction: silence. Unforgivable! Such efforts need encouragement in an early stage so that Udaan could have good outreach to global audience. Mainstream media and Bollywood fail us in great way. Now, when Amitabh Bachan likes the movie, everybody is hailing it as masterpiece. Udaan is a cinema based on real life and that has touched us in our lives. And people must watch it as its the voice and angst of mature teenager. I find ~uh~™ 's review enchanting and rational...

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...

This is mine 400th post on the 'Sparsh'. It’s an eve of expression and celebration for me. I have a long journey of “unlearning" prejudices to gain insight of human nature. Also, the explosion of the blog phenomenon has exposed youths like me to a multitude of opinions. I had read, written and discussed about social, economic, and political opinions of importance and enjoyed sharing views on cinema. I read several bloggers but follow ritually for new updates on these blogs : Nimmy , Nimmy2 , Indianhomemaker , Rashmi Bansal , Atanu Dey , Devinder Sharma , TheSouthAsianIdea , Prof Abi , Sameer Bhat, anindianmuslim , Winds From The East , Calamur Harini , Vikram V Garg , Diptakirti , aPocRyPHaL , Anu , The Rational Fool , Nita , The Religious Policeman , kufr , Roshmi , Jaya , Santosh Desai ,  joie de vivre and Rajjo ; I read and like works of these Public Figures : Osho , Nadeem F. Paracha , Bill Maher , Christopher Hitchens , Dr. B. R. Ambedkar , P. Sainath , N...

I have became a big appreciator of Bill Maher for his commentary on various social, political and religious issues. Here is his brilliant take on apocalyptic vision of religion in the must watch documentary Religulous : It seems peaceful, but this is where a lot of people believe the world will end. The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken. George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind i...

“Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker.” (Paul Valery 1871-1945) A true questioning spirit is always introspective in nature, not accusatory. Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against errors and dogma. Voice of reason asks for the justification of each a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. This creates a conflict in the society as people wants to be in their comfort zones of tradition. It is falsehood alone which needs the support of religion. Truth can stand by itself. The Judeo-Christian tradition began with the Hebrews but the goal was to extend the "faith" to the entire world over time. Judeo-Christian tradition has taken civilization back many years when scientific records and journals were destroyed in the name of being blasphemous. C...