from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Beneath the radar, a Russia-Pakistan entente takes shape
Russian PM Putin shakes hands with Pakistan's PM Gillani during their meeting in St.Petersburg
One of the early calls that Vladimir Putin took following his expected victory in the Russian presidential election last weekend was from Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. He congratulated Putin on his success and invited him to visit Islamabad in September which the Russian leader accepted, according to newspaper reports citing an official statement.
It would be the first visit by a Russian head of state to Pakistan which stood on the other side of the Cold War, peaking in its emergence as the staging ground for the U.S. campaign to defeat the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. It's now again the frontline state in America's war against Islamist militants in Afghanistan, but it is a far more conflicted partner than those days of war against the godless communists. So fraught and uncertain is the nature of the relationship with the United States that Pakistan has sought to deepen ties with long-time ally China, but also Russia, the other great power in a dangerously unstable neighbourhood.
Last year Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari made the first official visit to Russia by a Pakistani head of state in 37 years after Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's trip to Moscow. The visit capped a series of exchanges including on the sidelines of a four-way summit that Russia has promoted involving Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, besides Moscow, to discuss regional security. Zardari and outgoing President Dmitri Medvedev have met six times in the past three years, according to a count by an Indian security affairs expert, and last month Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was in Moscow negotiating an agreement to guide futue ties including Russian investment in the Pakistani economy.
There is always a risk of reading too much into bilateral exchanges that you would expect between two major countries, both nuclear powers with shared interests in the region. Visits alone don't transform ties, and especially ones with a troubled history behind them. And then there is India to be factored in, both for Russia and Pakistan. Moscow has long stood in India's corner from the days of the Cold War to its role as a top weapons supplier to the Indian military, still ahead of the Israelis fast clawing their way into one of the world's most lucrative arms markets.A nuclear-powered submarine has just sailed from Russia to be inducted into the Indian navy - a force-multiplier in the military with the sub's ability to stay beneath waters long and deep and far from home.
And while Islamabad and Moscow are planning a first visit this year, India and Moscow have long held summits each year alternating in the two capitals. Indeed the Hindu quoted Putin as saying last month that Russia was engaging India "full thrust" when a questioner said Russia must engage powers such as India, China and Iran to advance its interests.
@Matrix
A Nation which has no morals or ethics is a dead functional State, a land of zombies. India today is not the India of Gandhi, the great Mahatma who inspired the world for non violence resistance against the occupiers; today it has occupied a vast land which can only be maintained by violation of human rights, military occupation and millions of slave labour( bonded labour as the India labour minister calls it) compelling its citizens to seek employment or assylum in all corners of the world.
Once the so called Talibans get rid rid of the yanks, they are no longer to return to their bunkers, but as I forecasted before, they are going to march through to Baluchistan and seek direct access to the warm waters. No military, neithe Pakistan nor Inian military is going to stop them from retaking the Kashmir, which they once intrude but then the Pakistan military blew it up. The USA is currently preparng the Bagram palace for the arrival of First Amir of Afghan Talibans! Let India prove hat it is mor functional than Pakistan? Pakistan military has already appoited the military Governors for eac Province, naming them as Corps Commanders of Peshawar, Karachi etc., building up cantonments around major cities, reliving the colonial days.
Rex Minor
Is the outraged Indian over-sensitive or culturally prudent?
Protests are as common in India as the ‘Singh’ surname in the national hockey team.
On the face of it, it’s one indicator of a free society where every citizen can get his voice heard. But agitations like the recent one against a film crew for recreating parts of Chandigarh to look like a Pakistani city seem to create an impression of misplaced priorities (and some would say too much free time for the protesters).
Hindu radicals decried the Pakistan link; and not to be left out, a Muslim umbrella body said the movie about the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden showed their religion in a bad light.
Apart from Pakistan and religion, one also has to be careful in making public comments on topics which touch on caste, class, ethnicity, geography and gender.
The straight-talking and self-professed forward-looking chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Mamta Sharma, discovered the gender minefield when she said at a seminar that girls should not be offended if someone calls them ‘sexy’.
Rights activists and politicians slammed her, saying the sexually suggestive word “promotes violence”.
But there are many liberals who defend the right to free speech and artistic freedom. Local artists in Chandigarh defended Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow’s film crew on their right to make a realistic movie set (even if it meant temporarily creating a mini-Pakistan), while the protests against author Salman Rushdie’s scheduled presence at the Jaipur Literary Festival in January was slammed by the media and many literary figures.
What is the point your are trying to make? Indians protest left, right and center. At the drop of a hat. When a Hindu protests, there will be some muslim who will protest the fact that the Hindu is protesting. So on and so forth.
If that is not freedom of speech, what is?
Are you saying that India does not have freedom of speech because somebody will protest if an Indian speaks his or her mind? The second person protesting against the first person has freedom of speech too!
So what exactly are you trying to say here?
from Photographers Blog:
Privileged witness to the start of life
By Vivek Prakash
It's an experience I will never forget. I have no children of my own, but when the day does come, maybe I'll be just a little bit more prepared for it.
I had come a long, long way from my usual cosmopolitan stomping ground of Mumbai, to a place just about as far interior as you can go in India. I was about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Rajasthan border in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in a village of about 700 people. This is very, very small by Indian standards. There were dusty roads that a car could barely fit down, mud houses, a scorching heat during the day which turned to a deep chill at night.
I had many ideas in my head and many questions too - what kind of emotions was I going to experience and witness? Should I be excited, or should I feel like an intruder, given the subject matter I was here to shoot? I had come a long way to shoot this, but now, standing in this little rural community health center with my camera, I felt conflicted.
Well, did you get authorization from Anguri about using her picture? That should help your conscience’s conflict.
Lucas
http://www.pictobank.com/
Assembly Elections 2012: Results Coverage LIVE
Live coverage of election results from Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh.
On Delhi’s deadly roads, life-saving helmet not required for women
India’s roads are among the world’s most dangerous, claiming thousands of lives each year. Cows and elephants rub shoulders with sleek foreign-made sports cars on highways across the country.
But two-wheelers remain India’s favourite mode of transport. Millions of scooters and motorbikes are sold every year, accounting for 75 percent of all vehicles sold in the country. Entire families are seen seated on these affordable and fuel-efficient vehicles, zipping in and out of packed traffic in cities and towns.
Enforcing road safety measures remains a huge problem, leading to one road accident every minute and a road accident death every four minutes in India.
But surprisingly, in New Delhi, women who drive two-wheelers or ride pillion don’t, by law, have to wear a helmet.
Women in the Indian capital are often seen sitting side-saddle on the back with their hair freely fluttering in the wind, while their male drivers wear helmets, a life-saving accessory in case of a crash.
India’s Motor Vehicles Act, enacted in 1988, states “every person driving or riding” a two-wheeler must wear protective headgear. The only group of people exempt from the law are turban-wearing Sikhs.
But in Delhi, following protests by Sikh women, the city incorporated another exemption, making it “optional for woman whether riding on pillion or driving on a motor cycle to wear a protective headgear.”
Bollywood stars kick up a fuss with real-life rumpus
Pow! Biff! Bang! Dishoom! Real life action by Bollywood celebrities has caught the nation’s eyeballs. Shah Rukh Khan was accused of roughing up Shirish Kunder some days ago and made ripples as he brought the media’s gaze from corruption scams and the election circus to the one thing that never fails to draw attention — a spicy brawl.
Now, Saif Ali Khan diverts attention from Vijay Mallya’s king-size woes for beating up a certain businessman in Mumbai’s Taj hotel. Saif was booked for assault, arrested and later bailed — insisting that he was only defending himself.
Salman Khan has lost his temper on many occasions, and so have many others from Bollywood. Shah Rukh and Salman engaged in a verbal duel some years ago, and it would have ended ugly had Shah Rukh’s wife Gauri and Salman’s then girlfriend Katrina Kaif not intervened.
The latest incident comes a month before Saif Ali Khan’s spy thriller “Agent Vinod” is set to release. Therefore, we are pushed to wonder — publicity or aggression? Or could these public spats be attributed to a heady mix of fame, power and alcohol?
It is acceptable in a movie for the hero to rough up the bad guys. The audience savours the good guy’s vengeance. But these men are not superheroes in their real-life avatars, and are bound by the law. Justice will take its course, but in the mean time, the nation’s politicians should be grateful their real-life foibles are pushed down the front page.
Human waste corroding Indian railway network
Human faeces is scattered across India’s 64,400 kilometres of rail lines.
One of the world’s largest surface transport networks, carrying 30 million people and 2.8 tonnes of goods daily, is being downed by those using it.
A government panel report this month said that human waste from open-discharge toilets used by passengers is damaging tracks and associated infrastructure.
The report recommended that toilets with nil or harmless discharge be installed within the next five years in all 43,000 carriages used by the railways.
“Apart from the issue of hygiene, this has several serious safety implications arising out of corrosion of rails and related hardware,” the report said.
Waste is dumped directly on to the tracks through small holes from western-style and squat toilets inside trains.
Only a handful of luxury tourist trains like the “Palace on Wheels”, running between New Delhi and Rajasthan, have bathrooms with well-built toilets.
Politicians like Mamta do not want common people and Industries to see growing. These guys know if they let them educate, give better facilities, give them opportunity to grow, then who will care for illiterate / poorly educated politicians.
We must dump these politicians like our railway is dumping human faeces.
Parents to get top marks for voting in UP
Students at a Lucknow college will earn extra credit if they can get their mom and dad to vote in the Uttar Pradesh state elections this month.
Getting those 10 extra marks is no easy task. A girl student at Christ Church college said she would have to work hard to push her “lazy” mother to go out on polling day but it would be worth it.
School officials insist this is no bribe, only an incentive to ensure students learn the value of their vote. At a parent-teacher conference immediately after the election, the ink-stained fingers of voting parents will show which students have succeeded in the task.
Elections in India typically see just half of the eligible voters on government lists turn up on polling day. But Uttar Pradesh has sprung a surprise this year, with around 60 percent voter turnout in the initial phases of the election, which is staggered over four weeks.
Analysts are saying young voters in the politically crucial state, which is bigger than Brazil by population, are hankering for change and coming to vote in larger numbers.
Though a higher voter turnout in Uttar Pradesh is good news for Indian democracy, it’s still not a nationwide phenomenon. Civic polls in Mumbai last week saw a voter turnout of just 46 percent, which officials said was in line with previous years, and recent local elections in other cities such as New Delhi and Chennai have shown a similar trend.
‘Come and vote’ appeals from Bollywood celebrities and media campaigns haven’t helped. To counter voter apathy, some suggest that voting should be made compulsory, as it is in Australia. Is that a practical option for India? Share your views.
Yes the attempt tried by this government is good for the democracy
India, Pakistan find common cause in shoddy national carriers
The two are nuclear-armed, arch rivals often threatening the stability of South Asia and with little common ground, but the sorry state of their national carriers puts India and Pakistan on the same pedestal.
India may be an emerging superpower and Pakistan seemingly always on the brink of a disaster, but the national carriers of the arch-rivals face similar woes.
Both carriers — Air India (AI) and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) –- are struggling to stay afloat, battered by financial woes and mismanagement.
Amid a major cash crunch and reeling under heavy losses, Air India and Pakistan International Airlines are struggling to continue operations — a shame for the state-run carriers which often are the defining images of their countries.
“Financially unviable” is the term attached to both carriers by lenders and both airlines have so far just managed to survive on taxpayer money.
The Indian government, battered by allegations of graft, and with the opposition snapping at its heels, can’t even afford to shut the airline down primarily on fears of a political backlash.
While Air India struggles with striking pilots, the state of publicly-listed PIA is worse.
Comment by Pathozade is sheer nonsense. I cannot find anywhere the negative comments against Pakistan except to blame “mismanagment” for both airlines travails and a quote extracted from the news services. I have flown PIA Tues am Karachi/Islamabad, return Friday pm. This is the route all bureaucrats take, Islamabad nearly deserted on week-ends. We all conduct business from just one fortress like hotel up on the slope with beautiful (Shalimar-like) gardens owned by the Arabs. The only truly secure place save for the Presidential Palace. Once, in the company of former finance minister Shaukat, we were ejected from first class because an MP “co-opted” the seats. The owner of Dawn was on the flight. A fight ensued, degenerating into fisticuffs and shoving, and the flight was delayed an hour. Indeed the return Friday night flights are so full that, rules be damned, some passengers stand in the back and in the aisles.. This is reality.. Parveen
It is not good for us ,to pay more ticket charge,he could has increased 1 rupee for whole ticket price,instead of per kilometer,it is going to be a overload on all Indian .
They can take our money as deposited by them(Ministers).
from Swiss Bank to fill Cr 40000gap.
If he(Trivedi) is a good Indian ,then he should think about us not in terms of collecting money by increasing the ticket price.