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| Mayawati's Historic Win
The great beauty of Indian elections is that nobody loses. Even when you are routed, you can boldly claim victory. Listen to the Congress spokesman after the UP rout:"The courage of Rahul Gandhi is laudable.We increased our percentage and the number of seats".
The politics of bombast is an escape latch when the field is crowded with so many parties. Behind the brazenness, however,there is no hiding the facts. The basic fact in UP was that the people badly wanted Mulayam Sing out.
The politicians give it a respectable term: The incumbency factor. It is actually a shameless admission that once a party is voted in to power, it turns autocratic and irresponsible, as if by right.
The people's dilemma is that all parties are equally avaricious and short-sighted, leaving no meaningful choice. So,in two-front states like Tamilnadu and Kerala they resort to the sea-saw game. In multi-party jungles like UP they play merry-go-round.
Mayavati this time seemed to be moving forward to something new unlike others who were looking backwards.
Keeping her dalit fortress secure,she extended a welcome mat to Brahmins and Muslims. The long ostracized Brahmins were flattered by the wooing The Muslims were in a mood to welcome any new guardian anyway. What a combination, though -Brahmins and Dalits!
The bigger question is; Will she use the bigger opportunity to build something substantive, or will she again be just another politician enamored of unnecessary evils like the Taj corridor complex?
Like the AIADMK in Tamilnadu the BSP is a one-leader party. This is a variation of the kind of weakness that cripples the Congress. No political party can rise to historical levels when one person is the fount of all wisdom.
If Mayavati puts her unchallengeability to constructive purpose five years are enough to make a mark. If she doesn't, the UP electorate will again play merry-go-round.
source: TJS George in Indian Express
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Let the Games Begin: Protests Under Way Ahead
of 2008 Beijing Olympics 
In the thin air of Mount Everest base camp last week, a group of
five American activists thumbed their frozen noses at the Chinese Government by
holding their own "opening ceremony" on behalf of Tibet.
They unfurled a banner that parodied China's Olympic slogan: "One
World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," it read. As a cameraman sent live images via
the Internet, the activists even lit their own torch and sang the Tibetan
national anthem -- minutes before Chinese border guards took them into
custody.
The stunt was the latest effort to use next year's Olympic Games
as a platform for advocacy on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights.
Winning the right to host Beijing 2008 was a coup for China. Not
only will it shift the international spotlight and millions of tourist dollars
towards the country for a few precious weeks, it was also a nod from the
International Olympic Committee that the communist nation is fit to stand
alongside past hosts from the "developed world," such as Athens, Sydney and
Atlanta.
Since winning the bid, Beijing has been busy grooming itself for
show. The government is spending $38 billion on infrastructure and promises to
be "showing to the world a new, vigorous image of an open, modernized, civilized
and well-developed metropolis."
 
Students for a Free Tibet members (from left) Shannon
Service, Tenzin Dorjee and Laurel Mac Sutherland in Katmandu a few days after
the Everest protest
But even though the games are still 16 months away, the backlash
has already begun, with activists determined to insert their messages into the
international media coverage of Beijing
source:World Politics Watch
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| Planet India
Planet India
India is the new America, affirms Mira Kamdar an Indian-American scholar in her latest book: Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World. As its corollary she says:as goes India, so goes the world. Truly, it’s a book that is very bullish on India
Mira Kamdar grew up living between the United States, Europe and India. Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York and an associate fellow at the Asia Society, declares: "We already live on Planet India…This book is about what kind of planet that can be."The new and powerful India is technologically savvy, culturally hip, politically powerful and poised to challenge the dominance of the western world".
In Planet India, Kamdar tells the dramatic story of a nation in the midst of redefining itself and the world. Provocative, timely, and essential, Planet India is the groundbreaking book that will convince Americans just how high the stakes are-what there is to lose, and what there is to gain from India’s meteoric rise.
According to Kamdar,India has within its grasp all the elements it needs to imagine a different trajectory. Because it is still a developing country, it can choose to develop differently. India does not have to blindly follow the American agribusiness model and become another fast-food nation. It does not have to allow a military-industrial complex to dictate national priorities. It can - it must - forge its own path, lest a world hell-bent on consumption for its own sake and the dangerous vanities of military one-upmanship lead us all into oblivion
More importantly, Kamdar suggests that the notion in the West that developing economically means becoming, in all ways, like the existing developed Western countries - is a deeply prejudiced and flawed one. She believes that it comes as much from an inability to imagine an alternative model as from the hubris of assuming that "our" system is the best for everyone.
This is why India is so important. It is a non-Western, Asian country, an ancient civilization that is undergoing rapid growth and profound change. If India can do this, as a democracy and as an open society, yet do it as India, taking what makes sense from the West but doing so in order to invent a new paradigm that works for India, it will show that democracy and economic development can go hand in hand, that democracy and freedom of expression and of religion are not luxuries for developed, Western countries, and that there is a non-Western alternative to the Chinese model.
Kamdar has also authored another work: Motiba’s Tattoos.
source: INDOlink:Francis C. Assisi | | |
| India catches more steel balls and spy cameras for Tigers
India catches more steel balls and spy cameras for Tigers
 Sri Lankan army despatches bodies of soldiers home from the war front
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| AFTER THE SIX TONNES OF BALL BEARINGS POLICE CATCH SOME MORE STEEL BALLS, SPY CAMERAS FOR TAMIL TIGERS
A week after catching six tons of steel balls to make claymore
mines India’s Mumbai police caught Indian Rupees 150,000 worth of spy
cameras about to be smuggled out to the same terrorist group,
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The procurement of arms and other military equipment by the LTTE
after the detection of six tons of ball bearings as raw materials for
claymore mines by Indian law enforcement officials continued to make
headlines in India when the Police also discovered another 5000 ball
bearings and digital cameras used for spy work worth Indian Rupees 150
thousand rupees was once again caught in Mumbai area, according to
police reports.
The Mumbai police sources revealed that four people including three
hailing from Tamil Nadu were arrested from North Western Mumbai area
suspected to be people dealing with the Tamil terrorist group LTTE.
Police said the equipment included 65 Japanese made digital cameras
believed to be used widely by the Tamil Tigers for spy work.
"The four were arrested from Vile Parle on Monday. They were in the
process of sending a consignment of 65 digital cameras, 500 ball
bearings, 21 camera lenses, 30 motherboard chips, 300 FM radio sets and
other accessories collectively valued at Rs 15 lakh to Tamil Nadu,"
Additional Commissioner of Police (west region) Bipin Bihari told news
reporters
The four were arrested while they were getting ready to ship them to
Chennai from Vile Parle station, the police said. The goods were in a
Maruti van from where the police took them.
Police Inspector Sudhakar Pujari said that Nainar, Sultan and Khan
arrived in Mumbai on January 25 and were staying in Dongri. “There is
reason to believe that the goods were meant for some illegal purpose,
as the four travelled from Dongri to meet Khan — who owns a courier
agency at Vile Parle. We believe they had sent goods to Chennai in the
past too.” Coins from other countries, including Sri Lanka were also
recovered.
“We learnt that one them came back from Hong Kong with these goods on
January 28. They had planned to smuggle these goods to Chennai,” said
Additional Commissioner of Police Bipin Bihari (western zone).
Strangely none of the people arrested for having dealings with the LTTE were Tamil people and all were Muslims.
The police said none of the suspects arrested could produce any
receipts to indicate the suspected military related merchandise were
purchased legitimately.
The police identified the suspects as Mohammed Kashim Nainar, Hamid
Wahab Sultan and Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed (all from Tamil Nadu) and Rafiq
Ahmed Atiullah Sheikh, a local who works for a courier company.
Police said it was too early to associate the seizure with the arrest
of an alleged agent of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) at Oshivara on January27.
The very first to be arrested were eight alleged men suspected to be
LTTE agents last week. That led to the arrest of Miraj Saheb Ismail, a
tea vendor hailing from Tamil Nadu but living in Mumbai. He is the one
who purchased the six tones of ball bearings from Mumbai. Thereafter
the police detectives from Q branch of the Tamil Nadu Police arrested
the seller of the steel balls Asghar Ali, who did business in South
Central Mumbai’s Null bazaar. (EOM)
By Walter Jayawardhana World news
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|  The passing of India Nuke Deal
The passing of the India Nuclear Deal by US Senate is one fluttering proof of what could be achieved in Capitol Hill by sheer lobbying. When Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the floor on Thursday to propose the India nuclear legislation, there was almost a reassured calm among the Indian American community as well as top diplomats on both sides who had hard-lobbied for the deal, that the nuclear deal would face no more hurdles. 
For, Lugar is not only a foreign policy expert, but also the co-author of the Nunn-Lugar Programme that secured and destroyed materials that could be used for proliferating weapons of mass destruction at the end of the Cold War. In the US Congress, his word on non-proliferation counts. Therefore, for both the Bush administration as well as Indian diplomats, it was crucial to win over Lugar and his House of Representatives counterpart Henry Hyde if there was any hope of getting the nuclear deal passed by Congress. Pro-India lobbying groups and spin doctors from at least six major multinationals including Boeing, Bechtel, GE and Raytheon had parked themselves at Capitol Hill for nearly a year. According to lobbying sources "the Indian American community, along with the Indian government and the MNCs interested in new-found nuclear market in India, spent a few million dollars in campaign funds, gala dinner events, high-tech presentations to congressmen and senators, multimedia dockets and specially-organised trips to India to make them feel comfortable about the deal.” Full credits are also due to the untiring duo of Shyam Saran the ex Foriegn Secretary who was apponted as India's Special Envoy just to devote his full time to carry the deal through, and Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else. In the words of South Asia scholar, foreign policy expert and author of "India: Emerging Power" Stephen Cohen: “Shyam Saran and Nicholas Burns have done more to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else. More so Shyam Saran who, with his regular visits to Washington to speak with congressional leaders, almost single-handedly was responsible for the deal to reach such a stage.” They have been together so much that Burns now calls Saran his “personal friend” and “the most knowledgeable person in the world on the US-India nuclear agreement”. With President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice involved with other events such as the war in Iraq, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and a tense truce between Israel and Hezbollah, it was left to Burns to negotiate the deal and take it forward ever since the July 18, 2005 joint declaration According to DNA World, The irony could not have been lost on Senator George Allen. The Virginia senator, best known for his “Macaca” allusion to S R Sidharth, an engineering student of Indian origin at the University of Virginia, who presided over the US Senate when the votes for the final passage of the deal were being counted. While campaigning for Virginia seat, Allen had called Sidharth, a volunteer for Democratic rival Jim Webb, a “macaca”, a racist slur. The resulting uproar cost Allen his seat. To be fair, Allen has been a proponent of the deal. He said, “I rise in strong support of the deal. We must realise that India’s nuclear weapons are for self-defence, and that India has no record of nuclear proliferation.” US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will visit India in December to start the final rounds of negotiations on the deal. Burns will meet with key government officials in India after the US Congress agrees on a unified bill that will later become law. | | |
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