Vipul Tripathi

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, currently in India, is expected to address concerns in India over attacks on Indian students.

The issue blew up in May this year after a spate of attacks on Indian students amid allegations of racism.

The Australian leaders have been defending the safeguards and measures taken since then, but every time there is a fresh attack the media goes to town with the issue.

With over 80,000 students enrolling in Australian every year the attacks, whatever their nature, have hardly dampened the outflow of students.

Rudd won’t be the first to offer a reassurance and given the regularity with which incidents are reported it doesn’t look like he would be the last.

Indian students continue to be interested in Australian education.

Is this because they can sense that the issue is has been blown out of proportion?

Or are they voting with their feet on the state of Indian education system?

Are we still sold out over the lure of a ‘foreign degree’ and willing to run the risks for it?

It is former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s 25th death anniversary on October 31. 

What was her legacy?

She was associated with events like the Emergency, which briefly made Gerald Ford head of the largest democracy in the world, and decades of militancy in Punjab.

Her policy of nationalising banks was mentioned as a reason why the Indian banking sector weathered the global financial crisis.

She also won a famous military victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan and ordered the Pokhran I nuclear tests three years later.

Going by columns and television discussions around her anniversary, it is safe to say it was contentious.

Over her career and beyond she was compared to a dumb doll, the goddess ‘Durga’, a lioness and Napolean.

Some called her, like Margaret Thatcher, the only man in her cabinet.

Richard Nixon described her as an “old witch”.

She herself played at being Joan of Arc as a child.

The more enthusiastic of her partymen coined the phrase “India is Indira and Indira is India”.

Its cadence has had a longer shelf life, if not the idea itself.

Twenty five years after her assassination, the Congress party in the ascendant, one news channel recounted her as India’s Indira.

Would it be accepted the other way around now?

Indira’s India is not an incredible idea given she was the second longest serving prime minister we had.

She was Prime Minister or minister for eighteen of her sixty six years. Not counting her other political roles.

I was four when she died and my memory of her is from Doordarshan films showing her unfurling the tricolour.

Much clearer is the memory as a seven-year-old, of waiting for hours behind wood barrricades with my mother to watch Rajiv Gandhi pass by.

What I remember is my mother's patience and my disappointment when I couldn’t glimpse him as his convoy zipped by.

My mother did however, or so she said.

It was a Gandhi who was passing through that day and that seemed to be enough reason to wait however long, for a fleeting moment.

Was dynasty and its mystique, which she was accused of building, the most lasting contribution of Indira Gandhi?

Or is it too soon to assess her legacy?

Universal Studios has shelved plans to shoot "Indian Summer", a film based on the lives of Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten.

(UPDATE: On Friday, a studio spokesman was quoted as saying "Indian Summer" is continuing to be developed but will not go into production until the script, budget and cast are all in place)

Filmmaker Joe Wright, who was slated to direct the project, was quoted as saying there were creative differences between the studio and the Indian government.

Many people are not comfortable with national leaders being portrayed on celluloid in any way other than flattering.

Most leaders are interpreted by their followers in a particular manner. Any alternative recounting especially on celluloid runs into controversy.

Biopics of leaders are few and far between in Bollywood in spite of it being a vibrantly political and prolific film industry.

Some say the Indian masses tend to deify their leaders and hence are less receptive to anything critical.

And celluloid is a mass medium more than any book on history ever can be.

In Pakistan, the movie "Jinnah" starring Christopher Lee and sanctioned by the Pakistan government had also run into controversy.

But does public policy also contribute to this state of affairs?

The Indian Express says in a report that ministries don't transfer records to National Archives "which leaves modern, democratic India's history shrouded in secrecy".

Does this contribute to a lack of public discussion on various facets of our leaders' lives and policies and therefore an intolerance of alternative readings?

As for the movie "Indian Summer", the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was to appoint a liaison officer to ensure the movie did not deviate from the approved script.

Is imposing a government-sanctioned memory of events on people any different from Mayawati's efforts to erect statues to herself?

Who is the Minister for Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation?

When is the National Statistics Day celebrated?

An average person may find it difficult to answer these questions.

Just as it is difficult to understand why the people are hurting even if the government inflation figures are near zero if not negative as they were a few weeks ago.

To talk of inflation near zero after visiting the vegetable vendor seems surreal.

Experts explain this as due to food items having less weight or influence in the weekly inflation measure which assesses wholesale prices.

An individual spends much more on food than the weekly inflation index makes allowance for.

Some of this is also due to creaky statistical infrastructure.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself indicated this in a speech to the conference of states on the management of statistics.

He pointed out that the National Statistical Commission had identified agriculture, labour, industry and commerce as sectors where the collection of raw data itself had declined.

That is a pretty exhaustive list.

As for inflation, efforts are on to evolve an inflation index representative of the country as a whole.

Do we need a single, credible measure for price rise or given India's size -- sectoral ones?

Should we have a separate, credible measure of inflation for 'roti, kapda and makaan'?

As for the wholesale price index (WPI) the government has so far not come up with a decision on revamping it.

Is the issue getting clouded because of government tardiness?

Obama has won the Nobel Peace prize.

The citation commends him for calling for a nuclear-weapon free world, emphasising the role of international institutions and preferring dialogue.

Less than a year into his presidency he has yet to implement much of his programme.

"For the time being Obama's just making proposals. But sometimes the Nobel committee awards the prize to encourage responsible action," said Poland’s Lech Walesa, a Nobel Peace Laureate.

What does it mean for India to have the most powerful man in the world honoured for his policies?

The policies of the Obama administration are different from those of the George W. Bush era when multilateralism was seen as a liability.

Bush’s ambassador to the U.N. was John R. Bolton whose scepticism towards multilateralism was well known.

Yet Bush helped India get a crucial waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group and was described as the friendliest U.S. President India has had.

Obama on the other hand has called for strengthening nuclear non-proliferation, prompting India to seek clarifications.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, argues in a recent column that Indians find it more difficult to deal with those who they think of as American liberals than the conservatives.

Will we now see a more forceful and active Obama on issues like non-proliferation that India is wary of ?

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has been awarded the chemistry Nobel this year.

He joins a select club of scientists recognised by the Nobel foundation.

But Ramakrishnan joins an even more exclusive group -- Indians (by birth) who received such recognition.

The country still awaits a second entry in the most exclusive group -- an Indian who gets a Nobel staying and working in India.

So far only C.V. Raman, the founder-member of this club, qualifies.

In the days to come, Indians around the world, especially those in the country, will derive vicarious pleasure from another Indian (at least by birth) earning the top honour.

The Times of India listed India's Nobel connections on their website, a list which includes British surgeon Ronald Ross and poet Rudyard Kipling -- both born in India.

The list stretched to include all categories, as evident from above, contains only 12 names.

Whereas Ramakrishnan is the 13th Nobel prize winner from Cambridge-based MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology alone.

The WolframAlpha search engine returns an estimate of 14,172 patents filed in 2009 for U.S. for the query “U.S. patents filed”.

The comparative figure for China is 2097. For India it returns a figure of 256.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan took his PhD in physics and gets a Nobel for chemistry while investigating a biological process.

Why has no Indian working in India won a science Nobel since independence?

Is it the lack of multi-disciplinary approach in Indian institutions?

Is it our expenditure on R&D? Or the brain drain?

It’s been more than a decade since the Buddha smiled again.

A debate has exploded in the Indian media about the circumstances of India’s hydrogen bomb test, with a group of scientists questioning the yield of the test.

The government claimed a yield of 45 kilotons; while the sceptics say the yield was much less at 25 kilotons.

K. Santhanam who claims the thermonuclear bomb was a ‘fizzle’ called for more nuclear tests to develop hydrogen bombs.

The argument in a nutshell is that if India doesn’t have a bomb big enough with which it can threaten an adversary, then the adversary may be emboldened to carry out a nuclear strike.

However, many experts demur given the changed international environment.

The controversy came right before President Obama made a call for all UN states to ratify the NPT.

The nuclear bomb at Hiroshima had a smaller estimated yield of 14 kilotons and killed 80,000 people instantly.

The logic of having nuclear weapons when other friendly and not-so- friendly countries have it is derived from deterrence theory.

However, strategic analysts differ widely on the size of the deterrent.

To put it plainly a nuclear bomb is as effective as the number of people it can kill.

But a consensus on how many deaths are enough seems to be elusive.

Do we need the big bomb at this stage?

Or do we need more of smaller ones as argued by Manoj Joshi?

Is it possible to agree at the number of deaths that would be unacceptable to the other side and then work back to how many bombs or how big a bomb we need?

Nalini Sriharan is on hunger strike seeking an early release from jail. 

But she's no ordinary prisoner.

Nalini is currently serving a life sentence for her role in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Part of Nalini's plea is that she does not expect to live long due to her deteriorating health after spending nearly two decades in prison.
 
Nalini, her husband and two others were sentenced to death for conspiring to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

But her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment at the pleading of Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress and widow of Rajiv, so that Nalini's young daughter would not be orphaned.

Priyanka Gandhi met Nalini in jail last year and later said the meeting helped her come to terms with her father’s loss.

The Gandhi family appears to have made peace with Nalini.

Should the country also respond in kind?

Can her case be treated as punishment intended for reform rather than retribution?

On Sunday, media reports said Nalini had earned a post-graduate degree in computer applications, topping the course among jail inmates who appeared for the examination in Tamil Nadu.

The Tamil Nadu government has said it will decide on Nalini's case after consulting the union government.

Should Nalini be released?

Or is her hunger strike an example of "blackmail" -- which is how a TV news channel put it.

(PHOTO: Nalini [R] seen in a court in the southern Indian city of Chengalpattu in this June 15,1991 file photo)

September 11, 2001 -- I was at university attending a freshers’ welcome bash in New Delhi.

That was a time before cell phones had become affordable and news travelled slowly.

There were murmurs of an attack, something about the U.S. and a trade center but I didn't pay much attention.

"Is Osama coming?" someone sniggered, about a senior who shares his name with the infamous al Qaeda chief.

"Osama is sleeping in the hostel. Why are you bothering him?"

Back at the hostel, my roommate asked me if I had heard the news.

"Go look, it's on TV. They ploughed planes into a building."

I went to the common room, thinking randomly of Timothy McVeigh and David Koresh.

All the TV news channels were showing footage from the attacks -- over and over again.

I had just read the book 'The Inscrutable Americans' and as I saw the towers go down, I remembered these were the first buildings the novel's protagonist had seen in New York.

I was glued to the television screen, unable to tear myself away.

Scenes from assorted Hollywood movies played through my head as I tried and failed to make sense of it.

The spectacle of thousands dying beggared my imagination.

As I turned in for the night, I couldn't shake of the thought that if this could happen to the most powerful country in the world, then what about us in India?

The distraught foreign national and her wheelchair-bound mother on TV is a compelling argument against the Jet Airways pilots' strike which has dragged on for four days.

The stand-off between the pilots and the airline management over the sacking of four pilots has forced the airline to cancel hundreds of flights, affecting at least 14,000 passengers since Tuesday.

The public inconvenience caused by such strikes is so pressing that the cause of the strike almost always seems petty.

But striking employees are not always to blame over fragile labour relations.

There have been years when man-days lost due to lockouts have surpassed those caused by employee strikes.

In the current strike, the management as well as the pilots’ union have been pointing fingers.

On Wednesday, the High Court had issued a contempt notice to the pilots for going on ‘mass leave’.

A day later, the chief labour commissioner said that it was illegal to dismiss the pilots while conciliation proceedings were still on.

So who is responsible for this chain of events?