India Insight

For India, it took a Bollywood actor’s weekend TV show to openly debate female foeticide, a rampant practice in parts of the country that has struggled with a lopsided sex ratio for decades.

The impact of the show Satyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Prevails) was evident when its host, actor Aamir Khan, convinced the chief minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot, to help bring justice to women who have had to forcibly abort their foetuses.

Media reports say the Maharashtra state administration has also sought Khan’s help to prevent female foeticide.

Khan, one of the most popular Bollywood actors, has associated himself with various social causes in the past. But critics question his activism and say it is more to do with promoting an upcoming film.

Khan is perhaps the most outspoken Bollywood actor when it comes to social issues. But, when state governments like Rajasthan and Maharashtra wake up to issues as old as the pre-independence era merely through a TV show, it speaks volumes about the disconnect the administration has with its own people.

In the face of climate change, is it time to re-examine the way we do development in Asia?

For years, many developing countries have believed it can be only one or the other - economic growth or reducing carbon emissions.

But a new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says it’s possible for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to do both.

One of the many benefits of vegetarianism, so animal rights activists say, is that it cures impotence. To that end, the global rights group PETA is offering a way to give flagging Kingfisher Airlines a lift.

The airline, once the flashiest in the Indian aviation industry with well-groomed hostesses and gourmet food, is struggling to stay upright after running up a debt of about $1.3 billion. It has been wooing investors, pleading with banks and sounding out anyone who could help.

Now, help is being offered from an unlikely quarter.

PETA has made a “tempting offer to help keep Kingfisher Airlines out of its financial crisis and flying sky-high”, the group said in a statement. Condition: The airline — whose advertisements once featured tastefully served lobsters and baked chicken — covers its planes with anti-non-vegetarianism slogans.

On Monday, India’s remote northeastern state of Assam saw probably its biggest tragedy in recent memory, when an overloaded ferry carrying about 300 people sank in the Brahmaputra river, killing at least 103 people.

However, the bigger tragedy perhaps was the minimal coverage it got in the national media. Apart from The Hindu, which had the accident as its top story, none of the leading dailies in the country gave it much coverage beyond a mention on the front page.

Considering that the news first surfaced at around 6 p.m. on Monday, newspapers had ample time to give it more space if they so wished before they went to print, again putting the spotlight on the much-discussed question of whether the northeast is ignored by the national media.

It's clear for some time now that India and Pakistan are on the cusp of the kind of open  trade relationship they had until the 1965 war when all business links were snapped, border trading posts shut and overland Indian access to Afghanistan blocked. It was never to be the same again, despite fitful progress over the years.

On Saturday, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has invested a great deal of personal credibility in a rapprochement with Pakistan, inaugurates a  $4 billion refinery in the northern state of Punjab , not far from the border with Pakistan. While   the bulk of the refinery, which is a joint venture between billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and an Indian state oil company will feed the hungry energy markets of India's booming northern triangle, it stands to reason that some of the fuel sales will flow westwards, to Pakistan. The distance from Bhatinda where the 9 million tonne refinery is located to Pakistan's heartland city of Lahore is about 100 miles.  If you don't sell it to the market next door where else would you begin from ?  Pakistan's refining capacity is half the domestic demand and last year it opened up diesel imports from India, although petrol and other petroleum products are still on a rapidly dwindling negative list.

If they begin piping fuel from the plant in Bhatinda to the Pakistani part of Punjab, and down the coast in Gujarat, if Reliance Industries' huge refining complex in Jamnagar ships products to Karachi, you can imagine the game-changing effects of such interlocking economic stakes. Next up will be the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which has been hobbled not just by security fears in Afghanistan, but the deep distrust between India and Pakistan, the two big markets at the far end of the pipe.   If Pakistan can buy refined fuel products from India, then perhaps New Delhi will have less fears about being held to ransom by Pakistani shutting off its natural gas supplies traversing through Pakistan soil.

The abductions of two Italians and two government officials by Maoist guerrillas in just over a month must have left Indian authorities with a sense of déjà vu as they search for ways to end the cycle of negotiations and eventual accession to demands made by the rebels.

For the Maoists, who say they are fighting for people left out of India’s economic boom, the tactic of taking hostages instead of engaging soldiers brings huge dividends — obtaining freedom for jailed comrades and suspension of military ‘combing’ operations in areas controlled by them.

The method is not new, with government records showing hundreds of kidnappings since 2008 by Maoists, who have fought for decades in a wide swathe of central and eastern India including many resource-rich regions. Authorities stumble along on a case-by-case basis because there is no set procedure on how to handle such situations.

So it’s just a matter of time, according to media reports, before Sachin Tendulkar swaps his India jersey for starched white and walks into the Rajya Sabha.

While the clamour was growing to honour him with the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award, few expected him to be nominated to the upper house.

That too when he is not yet done with cricket.

Tendulkar’s meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi at her residence on Thursday was probably the early inkling of a new innings and by afternoon, political parties were falling over each other to congratulate him.

Is marriage a guarantee that a woman won't be prostituted?

It's a question that played heavily on my mind recently when I went to the remote village of Wadia in India's western region of Gujarat to cover a mass wedding and engagement ceremony of 21 girls, which was aimed at breaking a centuries-old tradition of prostitution.

I arrived in the small, neglected hamlet on the eve of the big ceremony. Preparations were well underway.

Soon-to-be-brides sat inside the mud-walled compounds of their homes surrounded by singing female relatives, with "haldi" or turmeric paste smeared on the faces and arms - a South Asian pre-wedding ritual believed to make the skin "glow".

The clock is ticking for the ruling Congress party. Ever since the national auditor’s report blew the lid off the 2G spectrum scandal, the second term of the UPA government has been clouded by incessant talk of premature general elections or who will lead India in 2014.

As rumours do the rounds of a possible reshuffle of the Congress party after the Budget session, one gets the sense that India’s grand old party is starting to prepare for national elections, even if they are two years away. And rightly so, especially after its disastrous performance in Uttar Pradesh, the state that sends the largest number of lawmakers to parliament. While no political party is likely to secure majority if national elections were to be held today, regional parties could hold sway.

The Congress’ present situation is a throwback to the 1960s when the party was trying to revitalise its functioning in the face of declining popularity and vote share. Indira Gandhi ruled India for eleven consecutive years, followed by another term later that was cut short by her assassination. After her son Rajiv came to power and his destiny followed his mother’s, the Congress returned to power for only one term until the UPA government came to power in 2004.

From a hefty trade deficit to shocking child malnutrition, there is no dearth of social or economic problems to be dealt with in India. Yet in the midst of all these issues, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission has, in his wisdom, decided to wage a beverage war in India.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia wants to declare tea as the national drink of India by next year to commemorate the birth anniversary of India’s first indigenous tea planter who was also part of the 1857 mutiny against British rule.

Ahluwalia’s declaration has already sown the seeds of another mutiny in India. Milk producers have thrown down the gauntlet, and are demanding that the “honour” should go to, well, milk.