[Assam] assam Digest, Vol 41, Issue 8

[Pragyan,Tinsukia College]

It was indeed a Good Article by Tarun Tejpal! 
More and more people are talking in this way these days. It's a mater of  great hope . By the way,  People of five state has given enough hints to the War-Monger Indian Elites that Vagawan Ram is not liking what his Vakts are doing in this country.But, I know for the time being people  will be dumped as 'fool' by Simi Garowal, PritiZinta like Neo-patriots.Even Hanuman was dumped by Ravana. Lanka Kandoto Etiao Ahiboloi Ache !!!
Sushanta  
 
 Read and Write in  PRAGYAN, 
 A Quarterly Journal of Academic, Intellectual and Career Pursuit from Tinsukia College.
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We believe not on the Bondage of knowledge, But in Its Freedom.    
 

--- On Mon, 8/12/08, assam-request at assamnet.org <assam-request at assamnet.org> wrote:

From: assam-request at assamnet.org <assam-request at assamnet.org>
Subject: assam Digest, Vol 41, Issue 8
To: assam at assamnet.org
Date: Monday, 8 December, 2008, 12:00 PM

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Today's Topics:

   1. On federal India (Pragyan,Tinsukia College)
   2. Python Park at Pabitora (uttam borthakur)
   3. GE's Welch;	& Mumbai: Business as Usual - murders
      notwithstanding (umesh sharma)
   4. Re: Python Park at Pabitora (mc mahant)
   5. Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite - NYT
      (Ram Sarangapani)
   6. Re: Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite - NYT
      (mc mahant)
   7. Fwd: must read from tehelka.com (cmahanta at charter.net)
   8. Re: Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite - NYT
      (cmahanta at charter.net)
   9. Mumbai Terror---Now Try This (cmahanta at charter.net)
  10. Re: On federal India (Mridul Bhuyan)
With all due honour to Sri Mridul Bhuinya’s concern and suggestion I do agree
with Chanda. I think all the right think (not wing) people in India are thinking
in that way. All I can remember that in the mid eighties a movement was launched
under the banner “Convention on Threat to Diversity and Federal India’. All
most all the intellectuals, NGOs and political parties who represent aspirations
of depressed identities in India got mobilised under that banner. The first
convention was held at Kolkata. Then a series of convention was being organised
in the different part of the country, including one in Axom Sahitya Sava Bhavan,
Guwahati. Where among others Axom Jatiotabadi Juba Chatra Parishad was one
participant. The movement on threat to diversity didn’t want to suggest any
concrete structure of federal India. All it wanted to accommodate suggestions
from all corners of the country.
But, after that, the whole initiative got sidelined for various reasons. I’m
not going to analyse the causes behind that. All that I want to say that there
are opinion makers in India who want India to be a real federal country. I
think, in near future, this initiative will again get momentum. But, one thing
is sure that no structural reconstruction in India is possible without going
against imperialist interest.  We have seen with laughter in this week it self
that even Indian warmongers can’t go to war with Pakistan without fighting
America! So, their main parties keeping their voice undertone. Very, soon they
will be exposed to Indian people. Possibly, the results of assembly election
held in this month is going to tell something positive.Sushanta


 Read and Write in  Pragyan, 
 A Quarterly Journal of Academic, Intellectual and Career Pursuit from
tinsukia College.
 Click on : http://www.perfspot.com/actapragyan05  
We believe not on the Bondage of knowledge, But in Its Freedom.    
 


      Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Go to
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It could only be for myopia that I did not see Pabitora earlier. Is not it
amazing that only sixteen square kilometers of sub-tropical forest and marshy
land can present so many wonders? Ninety one rhinoceros cooped up in that small
area. In contrast to the Kaziranga rhinos, they look well- fed, and perky at
times. Explanations abound, they not only graze they browse as well. Only a few
hundred kilometers away, their kith and kin lack the sheen, because they only
graze. May be there are more nutrients in the grass.But I attribute it to the
white magic of Mayang, where yellow flowers of mustard greens stretch far away
into the late November evenings.
 
Does anyone among you know the difference between a Pheti Xaap and a Mossowa?
Earlier explanations to me revealed that the former strikes with its fangs, the
latter strikes with its tail with a tooth. The herpetologists could not find for
me a snake with a buck tooth in its tail. As they studied herpetology in
English, they were unaware about the zoological equivalent of the word Mossowa
in Assamese. Magical Mayang had an easy answer for me in store. Mossowa is male;
Pheti female: makes sense.
 
With the recent erudition, I stepped confidently into the Python Park , where
the paddle boat in the moat runs only in the reverse! The park has a concrete
enclosure. A driftwood of considerable size covered with creepers and grass
adorns it. I looked over the wall to see what was inside. The gardener meekly
informed that there was a huge python, but one day it simply vanished, may be
into the blue, who knows?. Magic of Mayang; python goes, driftwood remains. But
the gardener was not so sure; it may be still lurking under the overgrowth, he
says mysteriously; but none dares to cross-over the wall to find it, because a
pair of Mossowa and Pheti is often seen in their love-dance inside the walls. 
 
No python in the “ Python Park ”: what’s in a name, so they say also in
Mayang.
No exclusivity for us there.
 
Uttam Kumar Borthakur


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Hi,
 
It seems that Mumbai is chugging along as usual - world media notwithstanding.
While the hostage crisis was going on we were watching CNN-IBN online at 3am EST
(India 1pm)and saw that outside a govt office there was firing. A childhood
friend of mine had moved to Mumbai and he worked in one of its branches. I
called his home - hoping he would have a day off (it was the first morning after
the night attack). His maid servant informed that he was not home. Then called
his phone. He was in his office. Business as usual. He works for India's
treasury. Asked what was he doing while firing was going on outside his office.
He replied - back to work as usual - like everyone else. Then he told others
that a friend from the US is telling me that there is some firing outside our
office. Yes , the TV report was about firing outside his office. They were all
watching TV too - in the office.
 
15 minutes later the TV apologized that it was just rumor - no firing in trains
or outside the office etc. 
I was shocked to see everyone going to work - in trains - while gun firing was
going on - for next two days in the heart of the city.
 
Today, my brother called at 12 noon (10pm India) that he had just returned from
Mumbai ( I think the last time he went was with me - to attend my Marathi MBA
classmate's wedding in 2000 (I was the only one who attended from our batch
though there were 3 others in the city). Then we had also boarded the ferry from
Gateway of India outside the Taj Mahal Hotel - our first sea ride - to go to
Elephanta caves.  I had taken along 1 teenaged niece and two nephews (both
about 10). It was a memorable experience. Then we had some Chinese noodles at a
Hong Kong eatery served by real Chinese guys. 
Today he informed that the younger of the two nephews (now 18) had been
murdered. No not by terrorists. about 5 days after the hostage crisis (Dec2). My
aunt's family seems jinxed - this is the third unnatural death in the
family. One of my cousin's died in a car accident while partying with
college friends. Then a nephew got struck down by a car while running out of his
apartment complex. Now this. 
 
I think it was a prank gone wrong. He was tied up by his close friends (also
from same community - same last name Sharma) and blindfolded. Told it was for a
photo shoot for some movie portfolio. Someone struck him on the head - he died.
Then tried to get rid of the body but got scared when they saw the police
searching for terrorists. Dropped the boy's body alongwith the car and ran.
 
It seems Mumbai is getting back to its feet. Some citizens are emulating the
terrorists. Some are doing their regular job - uderworld who supplied weapons
to terrrorists must be busy with business as usual.
 
Perhaps civil society would rise above banners and posters and use Right To
Info Act to take the security monitoring - about policing the police - and
arming the army. Even in other cities.
 
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_50/b4112000702712.htm
 
 
Any comments?
 

Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)




www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/



http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/



AGREE  
 
Last Sunday we went looking at the same vast expanse of Xoriyoh Phool thriving
on the POLOX  along Chandrapur>BurhaBurhi   road --ready (almost).Chandan +
his camera would have captured.
 
I was hoping to see the Sakoi-Sakowas at the  vast  pool of water just North of
the Bridge site at KAJOLII. The water body dried up.There were just a few
Panihanh.
In bright morning sun.
Unforgettable.
 
Yet nobody writes/advertizes/facilitates such sightseeing breaks for cooped up
Guwahatiyas.
Luxury buses go to Airport-and come back empty(VIPs come in their own
cavalcades)  but nobody thinks of ASTC's money- to- make from willing
seasonal sightseers  to such spots.And there were no guides to take you trekking
to the Sands of a Xuti  of Luit-just 1Km away-with return bus seat booked. 
There was no Bus on this Crores-a -Km hardtopped highway!
We were lonely visitors into this idyllic spot just 30 minutes along the  good
highway from Narengi!!!
 
Assam Tourism-did you say?
 
mm
 
> Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 18:13:00 +0530> From:
uttamborthakur at yahoo.co.in> To: assam at assamnet.org> Subject: [Assam]
Python Park at Pabitora> > It could only be for myopia that I did not see
Pabitora earlier. Is not it amazing that only sixteen square kilometers of
sub-tropical forest and marshy land can present so many wonders? Ninety one
rhinoceros cooped up in that small area. In contrast to the Kaziranga rhinos,
they look well- fed, and perky at times. Explanations abound, they not only
graze they browse as well. Only a few hundred kilometers away, their kith and
kin lack the sheen, because they only graze. May be there are more nutrients in
the grass.But I attribute it to the white magic of Mayang, where yellow flowers
of mustard greens stretch far away into the late November evenings.>  >
Does anyone among you know the difference between a Pheti Xaap and a Mossowa?
Earlier explanations to me revealed that the former strikes with its fangs, the
latter strikes with its tail with a tooth. The herpetologists could not find for
me a snake with a buck tooth in its tail. As they studied herpetology in
English, they were unaware about the zoological equivalent of the word Mossowa
in Assamese. Magical Mayang had an easy answer for me in store. Mossowa is male;
Pheti female: makes sense.>  > With the recent erudition, I stepped
confidently into the Python Park , where the paddle boat in the moat runs only
in the reverse! The park has a concrete enclosure. A driftwood of considerable
size covered with creepers and grass adorns it. I looked over the wall to see
what was inside. The gardener meekly informed that there was a huge python, but
one day it simply vanished, may be into the blue, who knows?. Magic of Mayang;
python goes, driftwood remains. But the gardener was not so sure; it may be
still lurking under the overgrowth, he says mysteriously; but none dares to
cross-over the wall to find it, because a pair of Mossowa and Pheti is often
seen in their love-dance inside the walls. >  > No python in the “
Python Park ”: what’s in a name, so they say also in Mayang.> No
exclusivity for us there.>  > Uttam Kumar Borthakur> > > Add more
friends to your messenger and enjoy! Go to
http://messenger.yahoo.com/invite/>
_______________________________________________> assam mailing list>
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I am not sure what to say - 'Mera Bharat Mahan'?


------------------------------

This from the IE http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/

and this from the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

 December 7, 2008
 Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite By SOMINI
SENGUPTA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

MUMBAI,
India<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>—
Last Wednesday, an extraordinary public interest lawsuit was filed in
this
city's highest court. It charged that the government had lagged in its
constitutional duty to protect its citizens' right to life, and it pressed
the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.

The lawsuit was striking mainly for the people behind it: investment
bankers, corporate lawyers and representatives of some of India's largest
companies, which have their headquarters here in the country's financial
capital, also known as Bombay. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry,
the city's largest business association, joined as a petitioner. It was the
first time it had lent its name to litigation in the public interest.

The three-day siege of Mumbai, which ended a week ago, was a watershed for
India's prosperous classes. It prompted many of those who live in their own
private Indias, largely insulated from the country's dysfunction, to demand
a vital public service: safety.

Since the attacks, which killed 163 people, plus nine gunmen, there has been
an outpouring of anger from unlikely quarters. On Wednesday, tens of
thousands of urban, English-speaking, tank-top-wearing citizens stormed the
Gateway of
India<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97766004>,
a famed waterfront monument, venting anger at their elected
leaders<http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=3712277001>.
There were similar protests in the capital, New Delhi, and the southern
technology hubs, Bangalore and Hyderabad. All were organized spontaneously,
with word spread through text messages and Facebook
pages<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=52727051223&ref=mf>
.

On Saturday, young people affiliated with a new political party, called
Loksatta <http://www.loksatta.org/index.php>, or people's power,
gathered at
the Gateway, calling for a variety of reforms, including banning criminals
from running for political office. (Virtually every political party has
convicts and suspects among its elected officials.)

Social networking sites were ablaze with memorials and citizens' action
groups, including one that advocated refraining from voting altogether as an
act of civil disobedience. Never mind that in India, voter turnout among the
rich is far lower than among the poor.

Another group advocated not paying taxes, as though that would improve the
quality of public services. An e-mail campaign began Saturday called "I Am
Clean," urging citizens not to bribe police officers or drive through red
lights.

And there were countless condemnations of how democracy had failed in this,
the world's largest democracy. Those condemnations led Vir Sanghvi, a
columnist writing in the financial newspaper Mint, to remind his readers of
1975<http://www.livemint.com/2008/12/04231559/Let8217s-recall-the-lessons.html?d=1>,
when Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/indira_gandhi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>imposed
emergency rule. Mr. Sanghvi wrote, "I am beginning to hear the same
kind of middle-class murmurs and whines about the ineffectual nature of
democracy and the need for authoritarian government."

Perhaps the most striking development was the lawsuit because it represented
a rare example of corporate India's confronting the government outright
rather than making back-room deals.

"It says in a nutshell, 'Enough is enough,' " said Cyrus
Guzder, who owns a
logistics company. "More precisely, it tells us that citizens of all
levels
in the country believe their government has let them down and believe that
it now needs to be held accountable."

In India's city of gold, the distinction between public and private can be
bewildering. For members of the working class, who often cannot afford
housing, public sidewalks become living rooms. In the morning, commuters
from gated communities in the suburbs pass children brushing their teeth at
the edge of the street. Women are forced to relieve themselves on the
railway tracks, usually in the dark, for the sake of modesty. The poor
sometimes sleep on highway medians, and it is not unheard of for drunken
drivers to mow them down.

Mumbai has been roiled by government neglect for years. Its commuter trains
are so overcrowded that 4,000 riders die every year on average, some pushed
from trains in the fierce competition to get on and off. Monsoons in
2005 killed
more than 400 people in
Mumbai<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/international/asia/30monsoon.html>in
one day alone; so clogged were the city's ancient drains, so crowded
its
river plains with unauthorized construction that water had nowhere to go.

Rahul Bose, an actor, suggested setting aside such problems for the moment.
In a plea published last week in The Hindustan
Times<http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=bde19709-fc96-4811-a8e8-37f3efb33367>,
he laid out the desperation of this glistening, corroding place. "We
overlook for now your neglect of the city," he wrote. "Its floods,
its
traffic, its filth, its pollution. Just deliver to us a world-standard
antiterrorism plan."

None of the previous terrorist attacks, even in Mumbai, had so struck the
cream of Bombay society. Bombs have been planted on commuter trains in the
past <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/world/asia/13india.html>, but few
people who regularly dine at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, one of the
worst-hit sites, travel by train. "It has touched a raw nerve," said
Amit
Chandra, who runs a prominent investment firm. "People have lost friends.
Everyone would visit these places." In any event, public anger could not
have come at a worse time for incumbent politicians, who were at their most
contrite last week. National elections are due next spring, and security is
likely to be one of the top issues in the vote, particularly among the urban
middle class. It remains to be seen whether outrage will prompt them to turn
out to vote in higher numbers or whether politicians will be compelled to
pay greater attention to them than in the past.

"There's a revulsion against the political class I have never seen
before,"
said Gerson D'Cunha, a former advertising executive whose civic group,
A.G.N.I. <http://www.agnimumbai.org/about.asp>, presses for better
governing. "The middle class that is laid back, lethargic, indolent,
they've
been galvanized."

For how long? That is a question on everyone's lips. At a memorial service
on Thursday evening for a slain alumnus of the elite St. Xavier's
College<http://xaviers.edu/frame14.htm>here, a placard asked: "One
month from now, will you care?"

"It's helplessness, what do we do?" said Probir Roy, the owner of
a
technology company and an alumnus of St. Xavier's. "All the various
stakeholders — the police, politicians — you can't count on them
anyway. Now
what do you do?"

Tops, a private security agency, has plenty to do. It is consulting schools,
malls and "high net individuals" on how to protect themselves better.
Security was a growth industry in India even before the latest attacks.
Tops's global chairman, Rahul Nanda, said the company employed 73,000
security guards today, compared with about 15,000 three years ago.

Mumbai is not the only place suffering from official neglect. Public
services have deteriorated across India, all the more so in the countryside.
Government schools are notoriously mismanaged. Doctors do not show up to
work on public health projects. Corruption is endemic. In some of India's
booming cities, private developers drill for their own water and generate
electricity for their own buildings.

Political interference often gets in the way of the woefully understaffed
and poorly paid police force. Courts and commissions have called for law
enforcement to be liberated from political control. Politicians have balked.

The three-day standoff with terrorists was neither the deadliest that India
has seen, nor the most protracted; there have been other extended
convulsions of violence, including mass killings of Sikhs in Delhi in
1984<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DF1F3DF934A3575AC0A96F948260&scp=4&sq=sikhs
1984&st=cse> and of Muslims in Gujarat in
2002<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E2DF163BF934A15754C0A9649C8B63&scp=51&sq=Gujarat&st=nyt>
.

Yet, the recent attacks, which Indian police say were the work of a
Pakistan-based terrorist group called
Lashkar-e-Taiba<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/lashkaretaiba/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
were profoundly different. Two of the four main targets were luxury hotels
frequented by the city's wealthy elite: the Taj, facing the Gateway of
India, and the twin Oberoi and Trident hotels, a few miles west on Nariman
Point. They were the elite's watering holes and business dinner
destinations. And to lose them, said Alex Kuruvilla, who runs the Condé Nast
publications in India, is like losing a limb.

"It's like what I imagine an amputee would feel," he said.
"It's so much
part of our lives."

Last Wednesday, on the night of the candlelight vigil, Mr. Kuruvilla's
driver made a wrong turn. A traffic policeman virtually pounced on the
driver and then let him go with a bribe of 20 rupees, less than 50 cents.
Mr. Kuruvilla is not optimistic about swift change. "Our cynicism is
justified," he said.

Ashok Pawar, a police constable from the police station nearest the Taj,
entered the hotel the night the siege began. It was full of gunfire and
smoke. He could not breathe, and he did not know his way around. "It was
my
first time inside the Taj," he said. "How can a poor man go
there?"

In The Indian Express newspaper on Friday, a columnist named Vinay Sitapati
wrote a pointed open
letter<http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/>to
"South Bombay," shorthand for the city's most wealthy enclave.
The
column
first berated the rich for lecturing at Davos and failing in Hindi exams.
"You refer to your part of the city simply as 'town,' " he
wrote, and then
he begged: "Vote in person. But vote in spirit, too: use your clout to
demand better politicians, not pliant ones."

"In your hour of need today," he added, "it is India that needs
your help."

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print>

<And so far, here’s what I’ve been hearing: “Congress weak, Muslims
guilty, India sucks”. >
 
THE LATEST daily event :RoundTables at CNBC-TV18   after StockBazars close ---
maybe Bull -maybe Bear:
Subject  frantically discussed:
 
  WHAT MODALITY to ensure MUMBAI's Autonomy.
  WE have to be Autonomous. 
  WE need to create wealth and progress for India.
  WE cannot be linked to slow India.
 
 
MM
 
> Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2008 20:58:28 -0600> From: assamrs at gmail.com> To:
assam at assamnet.org> Subject: [Assam] Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated
Elite - NYT> > I am not sure what to say - 'Mera Bharat
Mahan'?> > > ------------------------------> > This from the
IE http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/> > and this
from the NYT> >
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print>
> December 7, 2008> Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite By
SOMINI>
SENGUPTA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html?inline=nyt-per>>
> MUMBAI,
India<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>—>
Last Wednesday, an extraordinary public interest lawsuit was filed in>
this> city's highest court. It charged that the government had lagged in
its> constitutional duty to protect its citizens' right to life, and it
pressed> the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.> > The
lawsuit was striking mainly for the people behind it: investment> bankers,
corporate lawyers and representatives of some of India's largest>
companies, which have their headquarters here in the country's financial>
capital, also known as Bombay. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry,>
the city's largest business association, joined as a petitioner. It was
the> first time it had lent its name to litigation in the public
interest.> > The three-day siege of Mumbai, which ended a week ago, was a
watershed for> India's prosperous classes. It prompted many of those who
live in their own> private Indias, largely insulated from the country's
dysfunction, to demand> a vital public service: safety.> > Since the
attacks, which killed 163 people, plus nine gunmen, there has been> an
outpouring of anger from unlikely quarters. On Wednesday, tens of> thousands
of urban, English-speaking, tank-top-wearing citizens stormed the> Gateway of
India<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97766004>,>
a famed waterfront monument, venting anger at their elected>
leaders<http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=3712277001>.>
There were similar protests in the capital, New Delhi, and the southern>
technology hubs, Bangalore and Hyderabad. All were organized spontaneously,>
with word spread through text messages and Facebook>
pages<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=52727051223&ref=mf>>
.> > On Saturday, young people affiliated with a new political party,
called> Loksatta <http://www.loksatta.org/index.php>, or people's
power, gathered at> the Gateway, calling for a variety of reforms, including
banning criminals> from running for political office. (Virtually every
political party has> convicts and suspects among its elected officials.)>
> Social networking sites were ablaze with memorials and citizens'
action> groups, including one that advocated refraining from voting
altogether as an> act of civil disobedience. Never mind that in India, voter
turnout among the> rich is far lower than among the poor.> > Another
group advocated not paying taxes, as though that would improve the> quality
of public services. An e-mail campaign began Saturday called "I Am>
Clean," urging citizens not to bribe police officers or drive through
red> lights.> > And there were countless condemnations of how democracy
had failed in this,> the world's largest democracy. Those condemnations
led Vir Sanghvi, a> columnist writing in the financial newspaper Mint, to
remind his readers of>
1975<http://www.livemint.com/2008/12/04231559/Let8217s-recall-the-lessons.html?d=1>,>
when Prime Minister Indira>
Gandhi<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/indira_gandhi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>imposed>
emergency rule. Mr. Sanghvi wrote, "I am beginning to hear the same>
kind of middle-class murmurs and whines about the ineffectual nature of>
democracy and the need for authoritarian government."> > Perhaps the
most striking development was the lawsuit because it represented> a rare
example of corporate India's confronting the government outright> rather
than making back-room deals.> > "It says in a nutshell, 'Enough
is enough,' " said Cyrus Guzder, who owns a> logistics company.
"More precisely, it tells us that citizens of all levels> in the country
believe their government has let them down and believe that> it now needs to
be held accountable."> > In India's city of gold, the distinction
between public and private can be> bewildering. For members of the working
class, who often cannot afford> housing, public sidewalks become living
rooms. In the morning, commuters> from gated communities in the suburbs pass
children brushing their teeth at> the edge of the street. Women are forced to
relieve themselves on the> railway tracks, usually in the dark, for the sake
of modesty. The poor> sometimes sleep on highway medians, and it is not
unheard of for drunken> drivers to mow them down.> > Mumbai has been
roiled by government neglect for years. Its commuter trains> are so
overcrowded that 4,000 riders die every year on average, some pushed> from
trains in the fierce competition to get on and off. Monsoons in> 2005
killed> more than 400 people in>
Mumbai<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/international/asia/30monsoon.html>in>
one day alone; so clogged were the city's ancient drains, so crowded>
its> river plains with unauthorized construction that water had nowhere to
go.> > Rahul Bose, an actor, suggested setting aside such problems for the
moment.> In a plea published last week in The Hindustan>
Times<http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=bde19709-fc96-4811-a8e8-37f3efb33367>,>
he laid out the desperation of this glistening, corroding place. "We>
overlook for now your neglect of the city," he wrote. "Its floods,
its> traffic, its filth, its pollution. Just deliver to us a
world-standard> antiterrorism plan."> > None of the previous
terrorist attacks, even in Mumbai, had so struck the> cream of Bombay
society. Bombs have been planted on commuter trains in the> past
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/world/asia/13india.html>, but few>
people who regularly dine at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, one of
the> worst-hit sites, travel by train. "It has touched a raw
nerve," said Amit> Chandra, who runs a prominent investment firm.
"People have lost friends.> Everyone would visit these places." In
any event, public anger could not> have come at a worse time for incumbent
politicians, who were at their most> contrite last week. National elections
are due next spring, and security is> likely to be one of the top issues in
the vote, particularly among the urban> middle class. It remains to be seen
whether outrage will prompt them to turn> out to vote in higher numbers or
whether politicians will be compelled to> pay greater attention to them than
in the past.> > "There's a revulsion against the political class
I have never seen before,"> said Gerson D'Cunha, a former
advertising executive whose civic group,> A.G.N.I.
<http://www.agnimumbai.org/about.asp>, presses for better> governing.
"The middle class that is laid back, lethargic, indolent, they've>
been galvanized."> > For how long? That is a question on
everyone's lips. At a memorial service> on Thursday evening for a slain
alumnus of the elite St. Xavier's>
College<http://xaviers.edu/frame14.htm>here, a placard asked:
"One> month from now, will you care?"> > "It's
helplessness, what do we do?" said Probir Roy, the owner of a>
technology company and an alumnus of St. Xavier's. "All the various>
stakeholders — the police, politicians — you can't count on them anyway.
Now> what do you do?"> > Tops, a private security agency, has
plenty to do. It is consulting schools,> malls and "high net
individuals" on how to protect themselves better.> Security was a growth
industry in India even before the latest attacks.> Tops's global
chairman, Rahul Nanda, said the company employed 73,000> security guards
today, compared with about 15,000 three years ago.> > Mumbai is not the
only place suffering from official neglect. Public> services have
deteriorated across India, all the more so in the countryside.> Government
schools are notoriously mismanaged. Doctors do not show up to> work on public
health projects. Corruption is endemic. In some of India's> booming
cities, private developers drill for their own water and generate>
electricity for their own buildings.> > Political interference often gets
in the way of the woefully understaffed> and poorly paid police force. Courts
and commissions have called for law> enforcement to be liberated from
political control. Politicians have balked.> > The three-day standoff with
terrorists was neither the deadliest that India> has seen, nor the most
protracted; there have been other extended> convulsions of violence,
including mass killings of Sikhs in Delhi in>
1984<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DF1F3DF934A3575AC0A96F948260&scp=4&sq=sikhs>
1984&st=cse> and of Muslims in Gujarat in>
2002<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E2DF163BF934A15754C0A9649C8B63&scp=51&sq=Gujarat&st=nyt>>
.> > Yet, the recent attacks, which Indian police say were the work of
a> Pakistan-based terrorist group called>
Lashkar-e-Taiba<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/lashkaretaiba/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,>
were profoundly different. Two of the four main targets were luxury hotels>
frequented by the city's wealthy elite: the Taj, facing the Gateway of>
India, and the twin Oberoi and Trident hotels, a few miles west on Nariman>
Point. They were the elite's watering holes and business dinner>
destinations. And to lose them, said Alex Kuruvilla, who runs the Condé
Nast> publications in India, is like losing a limb.> > "It's
like what I imagine an amputee would feel," he said. "It's so
much> part of our lives."> > Last Wednesday, on the night of the
candlelight vigil, Mr. Kuruvilla's> driver made a wrong turn. A traffic
policeman virtually pounced on the> driver and then let him go with a bribe
of 20 rupees, less than 50 cents.> Mr. Kuruvilla is not optimistic about
swift change. "Our cynicism is> justified," he said.> > Ashok
Pawar, a police constable from the police station nearest the Taj,> entered
the hotel the night the siege began. It was full of gunfire and> smoke. He
could not breathe, and he did not know his way around. "It was my> first
time inside the Taj," he said. "How can a poor man go there?">
> In The Indian Express newspaper on Friday, a columnist named Vinay
Sitapati> wrote a pointed open>
letter<http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/>to>
"South Bombay," shorthand for the city's most wealthy enclave.
The> column> first berated the rich for lecturing at Davos and failing in
Hindi exams.> "You refer to your part of the city simply as
'town,' " he wrote, and then> he begged: "Vote in person.
But vote in spirit, too: use your clout to> demand better politicians, not
pliant ones."> > "In your hour of need today," he added,
"it is India that needs your help."> >
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print>>
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> Death Of A Salesman And Other Elite Ironies 
> TARUN J TEJPAL 
> ROHINTON MALOO was shot doing two things he enjoyed immensely. Eating good
food and tossing new ideas. He was among the 13 diners at the Kandahar,
Trident-Oberoi, who were marched out onto the service staircase, ostensibly as
hostages. But the killers had nothing to bargain for. The answers to the big
questions — Babri Masjid, Gujarat, Muslim persecution — were beyond the
power of anyone to deliver neatly to the hotel lobby. The small ones — of
money and materialism — their crazed indoctrination had already taken them
well beyond. With the final banality of all fanaticism, flaunting the paradox of
modern technology and medieval fervour — AK-47 in one hand; mobile phone in
the other — the killers asked their minders, “Udan dein?” The minder,
probably a maintainer of cold statistics, said, “Uda do.” 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Photo: AP
> Rohinton caught seven bullets, and by the time his body was recovered, it
could only be identified by the ring on his finger. Rohinton was just 48, with
two teenage children, and a hundred plans. A few of these had to do with
TEHELKA, where he was a strategic advisor for the last two years. As Indians, we
seldom have a good word to say about the living, but in the dead we discover
virtues that strain the imagination. Perhaps it has to do with a strange mix of
driving envy and blinding piety. Let me just say Rohinton was charismatic,
ambitious, and a man of his time, and place. The time was always now, and in his
outstanding career in media marketing, he was ever at the cutting edge of the
new — in the creation of Star Networks, and a score of ventures on the web.
The place was always Mumbai, the city he grew up in and lived in, and he
exemplified its attitudes: the hedonism, the get-go, the easy pluralism. 
> For me there is a deep irony in his death. He was killed by what he set
very little store by. In his every meeting with us, he was bemused and baffled
by TEHELKA’s obsessive engagement with politics. He was quite sure no one of
his class — our class — was interested in the subject. Politics happened
elsewhere, a regrettable business carried out by unsavoury characters. Mostly,
it had nothing to do with our lives. Eventually, sitting through our political
ranting, he came to grudgingly accept we may have some kind of a case. But he
remained unconvinced of its commercial viability. Our kind of readers were
interested in other things, which were germane to their lives — food, films,
cricket, fashion, gizmos, television, health and the strategies of seduction.
Politics, at best, was something they endured. 
> In the end, politics killed Rohinton, and a few hundred other innocents.
In the final count, politics, every single day, is killing, impoverishing,
starving, denigrating, millions of Indians all across the country. If the
backdrop were not so heartbreaking, the spectacle of the nation’s elite —
the keepers of most of our wealth and privilege — frothing on television
screens and screaming through mobile phones would be amusing. They have been
outraged because the enduring tragedy of India has suddenly arrived in their
marbled precincts. The Taj, the Oberoi. We dine here. We sleep here. Is nothing
sacrosanct in this country any more? 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Photo: REUTERS
> What the Indian elite is discovering today on the debris of fancy eateries
is an acidic truth large numbers of ordinary Indians are forced to swallow every
day. Children who die of malnutrition, farmers who commit suicide, dalits who
are raped and massacred, tribals who are turfed out of centuryold habitats,
peasants whose lands are taken over for car factories, minorities who are
bludgeoned into paranoia — these, and many others, know that something is
grossly wrong. The system does not work, the system is cruel, the system is
unjust, the system exists to only serve those who run it. Crucially, what we,
the elite, need to understand is that most of us are complicit in the system. In
fact, chances are the more we have — of privilege and money — the more
invested we are in the shoring up of an unfair state. 
> IT IS time each one of us understood that at the heart of every society is
its politics. If the politics is third-rate, the condition of the society will
be no better. For too many decades now, the elite of India has washed its hands
off the country’s politics. Entire generations have grown up viewing it as a
distasteful activity. In an astonishing perversion, the finest imaginative act
of the last thousand years on the subcontinent, the creation and flowering of
the idea of modern India through mass politics, has for the last 40 years been
rendered infra dig, déclassé, uncool. Let us blame our parents, and let our
children blame us, for not bequeathing onwards the sheer beauty of a collective
vision, collective will, and collective action. In a word, politics: which, at
its best, created the wonder of a liberal and democratic idea, and at its worst
threatens to tear it down. 
> We stand faulted then in two ways. For turning our back on the collective
endeavour; and for our passive embrace of the status quo. This is in equal parts
due to selfish instinct and to shallow thinking. Since shining India is
basically only about us getting an even greater share of the pie, we have been
happy to buy its half-truths, and look away from the rest of the sordid story.
Like all elites, historically, that have presided over the decline of their
societies, we focus too much of our energy on acquiring and consuming, and too
little on thinking and decoding. Egged on by a helium media, we exhaust
ourselves through paroxysms over vacant celebrities and trivia, quite happy not
to see what might cause us discomfort. 
> For years, it has been evident that we are a society being systematically
hollowed out by inequality, corruption, bigotry and lack of justice. The planks
of public discourse have increasingly been divisive, widening the faultlines of
caste, language, religion, class, community and region. As the elite of the most
complex society in the world, we have failed to see that we are ratcheted into
an intricate framework, full of causal links, where one wrong word begets
another, one horrific event leads to another. Where one man’s misery will
eventually trigger another’s. 
> Let’s track one causal chain. The Congress creates Jarnail Singh
Bhindranwale to neutralise the Akalis; Bhindranwale creates terrorism; Indira
Gandhi moves against terrorism; terrorism assassinates Indira Gandhi; blameless
Sikhs are slaughtered in Delhi; in the course of a decade, numberless innocents,
militants, and securitymen die. Let’s track another. The BJP takes out an
inflammatory rath yatra; inflamed kar sewaks pull down the Babri Masjid; riots
ensue; vengeful Muslims trigger Mumbai blasts; 10 years later a bogey of kar
sewaks is burnt in Gujarat; in the next week 2,000 Muslims are slaughtered; six
years later retaliatory violence continues. Let’s track one more. In the early
1940s, in the midst of the freedom movement, patrician Muslims demand a separate
homeland; Mahatma Gandhi opposes it; the British support it; Partition ensues; a
million people are slaughtered; four wars follow; two countries drain each other
through rhetoric and poison; nuclear arsenals are built; hotels in Mumbai are
attacked. 
> IN EACH of these rough causal chains, there is one thing in common. Their
origin in the decisions of the elite. Interlaced with numberless lines of
potential divisiveness, the India framework is highly delicate and complicated.
It is critical for the elite to understand the framework, and its role in it.
The elite has its hands on the levers of capital, influence and privilege. It
can fix the framework. It has much to give, and it must give generously. The
mass, with nothing in its hands, nothing to give, can out of frustration and
anger, only pull it all down. And when the volcano blows, rich and poor burn
alike. 
> And so what should we be doing? Well, screaming at politicians is
certainly not political engagement. And airy socialites demanding the
carpet-bombing of Pakistan and the boycott of taxes are plain absurd, just
another neon sign advertising shallow thought. It’s the kind of dumb public
theatre the media ought to deftly side-step rather than showcase. The world is
already over-shrill with animus: we need to tone it down, not add to it.
Pakistan is itself badly damaged by the flawed politics at its heart. It needs
help, not bombing. Just remember, when hardboiled bureaucrats clench their
teeth, little children die. 
> Most of the shouting of the last few days is little more than personal
catharsis through public venting. The fact is the politician has been doing what
we have been doing, and as an über Indian he has been doing it much better.
Watching out for himself, cornering maximum resource, and turning away from the
challenge of the greater good. 
> The first thing we need to do is to square up to the truth. Acknow ledge
the fact that we have made a fair shambles of the project of nation-building.
Fifty million Indians doing well does not for a great India make, given that 500
million are grovelling to survive. Sixty years after independence, it can safely
be said that India’s political leadership — and the nation’s elite —
have badly let down the country’s dispossessed and wretched. If you care to
look, India today is heartbreak hotel, where infants die like flies, and equal
opportunity is a cruel mirage. 
> Let’s be clear we are not in a crisis because the Taj hotel was gutted.
We are in a crisis because six years after 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered in
Gujarat there is still no sign of justice. This is the second thing the elite
need to understand — after the obscenity of gross inequality. The plinth of
every society — since the beginning of Man — has been set on the notion of
justice. You cannot light candles for just those of your class and creed. You
have to strike a blow for every wronged citizen. 
> And let no one tell us we need more laws. We need men to implement those
that we have. Today all our institutions and processes are failing us. We have
compromised each of them on their values, their robustness, their vision and
their sense of fairplay. Now, at every crucial juncture we depend on random acts
of individual excellence and courage to save the day. Great systems, triumphant
societies, are veined with ladders of inspiration. Electrified by those above
them, men strive to do their very best. Look around. How many constables, head
constables, sub-inspectors would risk their lives for the dishonest, weak men
they serve, who in turn serve even more compromised masters? 
> I wish Rohinton had survived the lottery of death in Mumbai last week. In
an instant, he would have understood what we always went on about. India’s
crying need is not economic tinkering or social engineering. It is a political
overhaul, a political cleansing. As it once did to create a free nation,
India’s elite should start getting its hands dirty so they can get a clean
country.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 49, Dated Dec 13, 2008
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SHANKAR BORUA
> THE ASSAMESE STORYTELLER
> EMAIL : gahori at hotmail.com
>  
> WHEN THE CAMEL DECIDES TO SIT
> THE NIGHT KNOWS IT'S TIME FOR THE NEW STORY
>  
> _________________________________________________________________
> Send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills.
>
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Hi Ram:

I saw the article this morning.

What left you speechless :-)?  Disbelief? Doubt? The improbability of it all? 

BTW, I saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire today, at San Francisco. I thought it
was an extremely timely movie for anyone interested in India in general and
Mumbai in particular to watch. It is a must see movie.It will immediately remind
you of Snehalaya. If you were left speechless with the NYT article, I am not
sure what Slumdog Millionaire would do however. Maybe you should not risk
watching it :-). Incidentally, I have seen even worse--at Ahmedabad.

Finally I was struck by the decay of  the Victoria Terminus --C Shivaji Stn.
(?). Last time I saw the place was in 1964. 44 years later I cannot believe how
decrepit the place looks. And it is one of Mumbai's most important public
facilities-- for the ordinary millions that is.

c-da

---- Ram Sarangapani <assamrs at gmail.com> wrote: 
> I am not sure what to say - 'Mera Bharat Mahan'?
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> This from the IE http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/
> 
> and this from the NYT
> 
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
> 
>  December 7, 2008
>  Mumbai Attacks Politicize Long-Isolated Elite By SOMINI
>
SENGUPTA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/somini_sengupta/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
> 
> MUMBAI,
India<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/india/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>—
> Last Wednesday, an extraordinary public interest lawsuit was filed in
> this
> city's highest court. It charged that the government had lagged in its
> constitutional duty to protect its citizens' right to life, and it
pressed
> the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.
> 
> The lawsuit was striking mainly for the people behind it: investment
> bankers, corporate lawyers and representatives of some of India's
largest
> companies, which have their headquarters here in the country's
financial
> capital, also known as Bombay. The Bombay Chamber of Commerce and
Industry,
> the city's largest business association, joined as a petitioner. It
was the
> first time it had lent its name to litigation in the public interest.
> 
> The three-day siege of Mumbai, which ended a week ago, was a watershed for
> India's prosperous classes. It prompted many of those who live in
their own
> private Indias, largely insulated from the country's dysfunction, to
demand
> a vital public service: safety.
> 
> Since the attacks, which killed 163 people, plus nine gunmen, there has
been
> an outpouring of anger from unlikely quarters. On Wednesday, tens of
> thousands of urban, English-speaking, tank-top-wearing citizens stormed
the
> Gateway of
India<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97766004>,
> a famed waterfront monument, venting anger at their elected
>
leaders<http://www.time.com/time/video/?bcpid=1485842900&bctid=3712277001>.
> There were similar protests in the capital, New Delhi, and the southern
> technology hubs, Bangalore and Hyderabad. All were organized
spontaneously,
> with word spread through text messages and Facebook
> pages<http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=52727051223&ref=mf>
> .
> 
> On Saturday, young people affiliated with a new political party, called
> Loksatta <http://www.loksatta.org/index.php>, or people's power,
gathered at
> the Gateway, calling for a variety of reforms, including banning criminals
> from running for political office. (Virtually every political party has
> convicts and suspects among its elected officials.)
> 
> Social networking sites were ablaze with memorials and citizens'
action
> groups, including one that advocated refraining from voting altogether as
an
> act of civil disobedience. Never mind that in India, voter turnout among
the
> rich is far lower than among the poor.
> 
> Another group advocated not paying taxes, as though that would improve the
> quality of public services. An e-mail campaign began Saturday called
"I Am
> Clean," urging citizens not to bribe police officers or drive through
red
> lights.
> 
> And there were countless condemnations of how democracy had failed in
this,
> the world's largest democracy. Those condemnations led Vir Sanghvi, a
> columnist writing in the financial newspaper Mint, to remind his readers
of
>
1975<http://www.livemint.com/2008/12/04231559/Let8217s-recall-the-lessons.html?d=1>,
> when Prime Minister Indira
>
Gandhi<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/indira_gandhi/index.html?inline=nyt-per>imposed
> emergency rule. Mr. Sanghvi wrote, "I am beginning to hear the same
> kind of middle-class murmurs and whines about the ineffectual nature of
> democracy and the need for authoritarian government."
> 
> Perhaps the most striking development was the lawsuit because it
represented
> a rare example of corporate India's confronting the government
outright
> rather than making back-room deals.
> 
> "It says in a nutshell, 'Enough is enough,' " said Cyrus
Guzder, who owns a
> logistics company. "More precisely, it tells us that citizens of all
levels
> in the country believe their government has let them down and believe that
> it now needs to be held accountable."
> 
> In India's city of gold, the distinction between public and private
can be
> bewildering. For members of the working class, who often cannot afford
> housing, public sidewalks become living rooms. In the morning, commuters
> from gated communities in the suburbs pass children brushing their teeth
at
> the edge of the street. Women are forced to relieve themselves on the
> railway tracks, usually in the dark, for the sake of modesty. The poor
> sometimes sleep on highway medians, and it is not unheard of for drunken
> drivers to mow them down.
> 
> Mumbai has been roiled by government neglect for years. Its commuter
trains
> are so overcrowded that 4,000 riders die every year on average, some
pushed
> from trains in the fierce competition to get on and off. Monsoons in
> 2005 killed
> more than 400 people in
>
Mumbai<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/30/international/asia/30monsoon.html>in
> one day alone; so clogged were the city's ancient drains, so crowded
> its
> river plains with unauthorized construction that water had nowhere to go.
> 
> Rahul Bose, an actor, suggested setting aside such problems for the
moment.
> In a plea published last week in The Hindustan
>
Times<http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=bde19709-fc96-4811-a8e8-37f3efb33367>,
> he laid out the desperation of this glistening, corroding place. "We
> overlook for now your neglect of the city," he wrote. "Its
floods, its
> traffic, its filth, its pollution. Just deliver to us a world-standard
> antiterrorism plan."
> 
> None of the previous terrorist attacks, even in Mumbai, had so struck the
> cream of Bombay society. Bombs have been planted on commuter trains in the
> past <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/world/asia/13india.html>,
but few
> people who regularly dine at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, one
of the
> worst-hit sites, travel by train. "It has touched a raw nerve,"
said Amit
> Chandra, who runs a prominent investment firm. "People have lost
friends.
> Everyone would visit these places." In any event, public anger could
not
> have come at a worse time for incumbent politicians, who were at their
most
> contrite last week. National elections are due next spring, and security
is
> likely to be one of the top issues in the vote, particularly among the
urban
> middle class. It remains to be seen whether outrage will prompt them to
turn
> out to vote in higher numbers or whether politicians will be compelled to
> pay greater attention to them than in the past.
> 
> "There's a revulsion against the political class I have never
seen before,"
> said Gerson D'Cunha, a former advertising executive whose civic group,
> A.G.N.I. <http://www.agnimumbai.org/about.asp>, presses for better
> governing. "The middle class that is laid back, lethargic, indolent,
they've
> been galvanized."
> 
> For how long? That is a question on everyone's lips. At a memorial
service
> on Thursday evening for a slain alumnus of the elite St. Xavier's
> College<http://xaviers.edu/frame14.htm>here, a placard asked:
"One
> month from now, will you care?"
> 
> "It's helplessness, what do we do?" said Probir Roy, the
owner of a
> technology company and an alumnus of St. Xavier's. "All the
various
> stakeholders — the police, politicians — you can't count on them
anyway. Now
> what do you do?"
> 
> Tops, a private security agency, has plenty to do. It is consulting
schools,
> malls and "high net individuals" on how to protect themselves
better.
> Security was a growth industry in India even before the latest attacks.
> Tops's global chairman, Rahul Nanda, said the company employed 73,000
> security guards today, compared with about 15,000 three years ago.
> 
> Mumbai is not the only place suffering from official neglect. Public
> services have deteriorated across India, all the more so in the
countryside.
> Government schools are notoriously mismanaged. Doctors do not show up to
> work on public health projects. Corruption is endemic. In some of
India's
> booming cities, private developers drill for their own water and generate
> electricity for their own buildings.
> 
> Political interference often gets in the way of the woefully understaffed
> and poorly paid police force. Courts and commissions have called for law
> enforcement to be liberated from political control. Politicians have
balked.
> 
> The three-day standoff with terrorists was neither the deadliest that
India
> has seen, nor the most protracted; there have been other extended
> convulsions of violence, including mass killings of Sikhs in Delhi in
>
1984<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DF1F3DF934A3575AC0A96F948260&scp=4&sq=sikhs
> 1984&st=cse> and of Muslims in Gujarat in
>
2002<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E2DF163BF934A15754C0A9649C8B63&scp=51&sq=Gujarat&st=nyt>
> .
> 
> Yet, the recent attacks, which Indian police say were the work of a
> Pakistan-based terrorist group called
>
Lashkar-e-Taiba<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/lashkaretaiba/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
> were profoundly different. Two of the four main targets were luxury hotels
> frequented by the city's wealthy elite: the Taj, facing the Gateway of
> India, and the twin Oberoi and Trident hotels, a few miles west on Nariman
> Point. They were the elite's watering holes and business dinner
> destinations. And to lose them, said Alex Kuruvilla, who runs the Condé
Nast
> publications in India, is like losing a limb.
> 
> "It's like what I imagine an amputee would feel," he said.
"It's so much
> part of our lives."
> 
> Last Wednesday, on the night of the candlelight vigil, Mr. Kuruvilla's
> driver made a wrong turn. A traffic policeman virtually pounced on the
> driver and then let him go with a bribe of 20 rupees, less than 50 cents.
> Mr. Kuruvilla is not optimistic about swift change. "Our cynicism is
> justified," he said.
> 
> Ashok Pawar, a police constable from the police station nearest the Taj,
> entered the hotel the night the siege began. It was full of gunfire and
> smoke. He could not breathe, and he did not know his way around. "It
was my
> first time inside the Taj," he said. "How can a poor man go
there?"
> 
> In The Indian Express newspaper on Friday, a columnist named Vinay
Sitapati
> wrote a pointed open
> letter<http://www.indianexpress.com/news/to-south-mumbai/394275/>to
> "South Bombay," shorthand for the city's most wealthy
enclave. The
> column
> first berated the rich for lecturing at Davos and failing in Hindi exams.
> "You refer to your part of the city simply as 'town,' "
he wrote, and then
> he begged: "Vote in person. But vote in spirit, too: use your clout
to
> demand better politicians, not pliant ones."
> 
> "In your hour of need today," he added, "it is India that
needs your help."
> 
>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/world/asia/07india.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print>
> _______________________________________________
> assam mailing list
> assam at assamnet.org
> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org



Indian Police Arrest 2 Men In Mumbai Investigation
stumble digg reddit del.ico.us news trust mixx.com 
AIJAZ HUSSAIN | December 6, 2008 09:13 PM EST |  

SRINAGAR, India — One of the two Indian men arrested for illegally buying
mobile phone cards used by the gunmen in the Mumbai attacks was a
counterinsurgency police officer who may have been on an undercover mission,
security officials said Saturday, demanding his release.

The arrests, announced in the eastern city of Calcutta, were the first since
the bloody siege ended. But what was touted as a rare success for India's
beleaguered law enforcement agencies, quickly turned sour as police in two
Indian regions squared off against one another.

Senior police officers in Indian Kashmir, which has been at the heart of
tensions between India and Pakistan, demanded the release of the officer,
Mukhtar Ahmed, saying he was one of their own and had been involved in
infiltrating Kashmiri militant groups.

Indian authorities believe the banned Pakistani-based militant group
Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has links to Kashmir, trained the gunmen and plotted the
attacks that left 171 people dead after a three-day rampage through Mumbai that
began Nov. 26.

The implications of Ahmed's involvement _ that Indian agents may have been
in touch with the militants and perhaps supplied the SIM cards used in the
attacks _ added to the growing list of questions over India's ill-trained
security forces, which are widely blamed for not thwarting the attacks.

Earlier Saturday, Calcutta police announced the arrests of Ahmed and Tauseef
Rahman, who allegedly bought SIM cards by using fake documents, including
identification cards of dead people. The cards allow users switch their cellular
service to phones other than their own.

Rahman, of West Bengal state, later sold them to Ahmed, said Rajeev Kumar a
senior Calcutta police officer.

Both men were arrested Friday and charged with fraud and criminal conspiracy,
Kumar said, adding that police were still investigating how the 10 gunmen
obtained the SIM cards.

Story continues below 

But the announcement had police in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled
Kashmir, fuming.

We have told Calcutta police that Ahmed is "our man and it's now up to
them how to facilitate his release," said one senior officer speaking on
condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information. Other police
officials in Kashmir supported his account.

The officer said Ahmed was a Special Police Officer, part of a semiofficial
counterinsurgency network whose members are usually drawn from former militants.
The force is run on a special funding from the federal Ministry of Home Affairs.

"Sometimes we use our men engaged in counterinsurgency ops to provide SIM
cards to the (militant) outfits so that we track their plans down," said
the officer.

Police said Ahmed was recruited to the force after his brother was killed five
years ago, allegedly by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants for being a police informer.

About a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting in Kashmir since 1989,
seeking independence from mainly Hindu India or a union with Muslim-majority
Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan
region, which is divided between them and claimed by both in its entirety.

The Calcutta police denied the claims from Srinagar. "This is not
true," said Kumar.

The bungling and miscommunications among India's many security services
comes as police said they were re-examining another suspected Lashkar militant
who was arrested nine months before the attacks carrying hand-drawn sketches of
Mumbai hotels, the train terminal and other targeted sites.

Rakesh Maria, a senior Mumbai police officer, said the man, Faheem Ansari, was
being transported to Mumbai from northern India where he has been in custody for
further questioning, hoping he could shed more light on the attacks.

Maria said there was a definite connection between Ansari and the Mumbai
attacks. "Ansari was trained by Lashkar and sent to do
reconnaissance," he said.

And a day after India's top law enforcement official apologized for
security "lapses" that allowed the gunmen to rampage through Mumbai,
there were new embarrassments _ this time with holes in the prime minister's
security.

Police preparing for a visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh near Calcutta
hired high-school children for the equivalent of $2.50 each to sit in trees for
the day and look out for suspicious people.

Local police chief L.N. Meena defended using children in the prime
minister's security detail, saying there were too many trees in the area and
not enough policemen.

"The area is full of trees, so to check them to see if there were any
anti-social elements or anyone making mischief, we employed the youths," he
said.

Television footage showed dozens of the youngsters perched in trees, with
yellow paper badges that read "security pass" pinned on their chests.

Meanwhile police continued the interrogation of the lone surviving gunman from
the Mumbai attacks, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who revealed that the gunmen had
detailed pictures of the locations, Maria said.

"They were pretty elaborate photographs," he said, adding that they
had also used maps from Google to study the targets.

Kasab has told interrogators he had been sent by Lashkar and identified two of
the plot's masterminds as being involved, two Indian government officials
familiar with the inquiry said. Police had earlier identified the prisoner as
Ajmal Amir Kasab.

Lashkar changed its name to Jamaat-ud-Dawa after it was banned in 2002 amid
U.S. pressure, according to the U.S. State Department. The U.S. lists both
groups as terrorist organizations.

Kasab told police that a senior Lashkar leader, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the
group's operations chief, recruited him for the attack, and that the
assailants called another senior leader, Yusuf Muzammil, on a satellite phone
before the attacks.

In Pakistan, the Interior Ministry chief told reporters he had no immediate
information on Lakhvi or Muzammil.

According to the U.S., Lakhvi has directed Lashkar operations in Chechnya,
Bosnia and Southeast Asia, training members to carry out suicide bombings and
attack populated areas. In 2004, he allegedly sent operatives and funds to
attack U.S. forces in Iraq.

____

Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman, Muneeza Naqvi and Ramola Talwar Badam in
Mumbai, Sam Dolnick and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi, and Manik Banerjee in
Calcutta contributed to this report.


Thanks for your comments. By the way my title is 'Bhuyan'.
 
Rgds
Mridul

--- On Sun, 12/7/08, Pragyan,Tinsukia College <pragyan_tsc50 at yahoo.co.in>
wrote:

From: Pragyan,Tinsukia College <pragyan_tsc50 at yahoo.co.in>
Subject: On federal India
To: "Assamnet Friends" <assam at assamnet.org>
Cc: "Chan Mahanta" <cmahanta at charter.net>, mridul_mb at yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, December 7, 2008, 1:30 PM







With all due honour to Sri Mridul Bhuinya’s concern and suggestion I do agree
with Chanda. I think all the right think (not wing) people in India are thinking
in that way. All I can remember that in the mid eighties a movement was launched
under the banner “Convention on Threat to Diversity and Federal India’. All
most all the intellectuals, NGOs and political parties who represent aspirations
of depressed identities in India got mobilised under that banner. The first
convention was held at Kolkata. Then a series of convention was being organised
in the different part of the country, including one in Axom Sahitya Sava Bhavan,
Guwahati. Where among others Axom Jatiotabadi Juba Chatra Parishad was one
participant. The movement on threat to diversity didn’t want to suggest any
concrete structure of federal India . All it wanted to accommodate suggestions
from all corners of the country. 
But, after that, the whole initiative got sidelined for various reasons. I’m
not going to analyse the causes behind that. All that I want to say that there
are opinion makers in India who want India to be a real federal country. I
think, in near future, this initiative will again get momentum. But, one thing
is sure that no structural reconstruction in India is possible without going
against imperialist interest.  We have seen with laughter in this week it self
that even Indian warmongers can’t go to war with Pakistan without fighting
America ! So, their main parties keeping their voice undertone. Very, soon they
will be exposed to Indian people. Possibly, the results of assembly election
held in this month is going to tell something positive. Sushanta


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 A Quarterly Journal of Academic, Intellectual and Career Pursuit from
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