Bharatham : Uthishtatha-Jagratha : (wef-05/11/2012. )

The Hindu 29.06.2013 Opinion » Lead    June 29, 2013        Indentured labour may be a forgotten part of our colonial economic history but Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are still sending ‘Girmitya’ to toil in distant lands ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The descendants of indentured labourers, who migrated from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to erstwhile colonies, recently met at The Hague in the Netherlands to commemorate 140 years of migration — perpetuated through a system popularly known as ‘Girmit.’ They gathered from all corners of the world to pay homage to their ancestors and celebrate the end of slavery in the Dutch colonies. Persons of Indian origin in Suriname, a sizeable portion of the country’s population, are also marking the occasion this month.  Contractual system  Suriname, previously a Dutch colony, abolished slavery in 1863. To meet the demand f...

Thousands of gullible students are spending time preparing for and paying entrance fees to appear for these bogus tests where the candidates who have already “booked” their seats months or even years in advance get the top ranks. File photo: K. Murali Kumar The massive fraud being played on medical students who prepare for the entrance exam of private colleges, thinking them to be genuine, should be stopped : It is admission time and the great medical education bazaar is in full swing. Parents are running around like headless chickens ready to mobilise bundles of cash trying to get their children into the best medical colleges. In a society that has come to accept that paying illegal capitation fees is an effective way to get good education it is little surprise that parents have no compunction in violating the law and in acceding to the demands of the colleges by paying up whatever is asked.  Officially, the collection of capitation fee is banned. Ho...

1. Almost all channels are boring, all copied items, silly, stupid, wastage of valuable time. 2. Entertainment value -great Zero. 3. News channels - broadcasting stick to few sensational  items through out the day, continued to many days. 4. Indian films foolish, silly copied from different films and events are stitched from scenes of many films lifted crookedly. 5. Indian sports limited to cricket played by eleven fools, against another eleven fools, watched by thousands of fools, in India only. 6.Other programmes , all types funny realty shows with Judges drop outs in the present, by the entertainment industries+glamour added by the presence of no theme idea, celebrity with joker face. 2. Stupid comedy of low taste, 3. Last and decaying vulgar serials, 4. Discussion programmes with ignorant audience, facing  some no-work specialists(fixed members in all channels), and the Anchor (Joker) conducting the show with his intermittent foolish cheap jokes. 7. Ads cove...

The Hindu 23.06.2013 Courting marriage GEETA RAMASESHAN  The Madras High Court's order treating sexual relationships under some conditions as marriage opens the door to fresh litigation. The judgement of the Madras High Court in Aysha vs Ozir Hassan does not really lay down any new law in a case where the husband denied the marriage even though he had declared himself as the father of the two children and stated that the petitioner was his wife in the ration card giving rise to presumption of marriage. The concept of presumption of marriage is invoked to address instances when a spouse denies the marriage. In Mohd Amin and Others vs Vakil Ahmad and Others (AIR 1952 S.C 358) the Supreme Court held that the presumption of a lawful marriage would arise when there was a prolonged and continued cohabitation as husband and wife and where there was no insurmountable obstacle to marriage, such as prohibited relationship between parties, the spouses being not divorced and the ...

The Hindu 21.06.2013   A Himalayan tragedy Excessive rainfall provides only a partial explanation for why the ‘abode of the Gods’ — the Himalayan hill States of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh — has been battered beyond measure in recent days. For man’s excesses and follies have also been a factor in the destruction that nature has wrought. Whole villages, stretches of roads and communication links have been effaced. Thousands, including those from other parts of the country who were undertaking pilgrimages to religiously significant temples in the region, remain stranded. It is evident that the problem of poor soil stability on the steep slopes in this fragile region has been compounded by man-made factors like indiscriminate deforestation and mindless construction. Hundreds of buildings along the banks of the Alaknanda and the Bhagirathi have been swept away in Rudraprayag district alone. Downstream, the Ganga, Yamuna and other rivers have reached levels not seen in year...

The Hindu 19.06.2013. Opinion » Columns » Harsh Mander  Barefoot: Battle for the idea of India HARSH MANDER  On a winter morning in 1992, a frenzied mob of young men assaulted and triumphantly razed the three domes of a medieval mosque. I wept then, as did large numbers of my countrymen and women. Eighteen years later, the three judges of the Special Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court, hearing a 60-year-old title suit over this bitterly contested property, could have corrected these immense wrongs, and restored to Indian public life principles of justice, secular democracy and rationality. But they have failed us comprehensively. Today once again I feel dismayed and betrayed. And again I am not alone. The campaign demanding that a grand Ram Temple should be built on the site in Ayodhya where the Babri Masjid stood is often understood to be a clash between Hindus and Muslims. There is indeed no such clash, and there never has been. It has always been a dispute...

The Hindu 19.06.2013. Barefoot - Unwanted daughters Harsh Mander  India is one of the few countries in the world in which there are fewer women and girls than men and boys: their share in the country's population has declined continuously over the past century. The census of 2001 revealed that for every 1000 males, there were only 946 females. If women and girls are ceded the same life chances as men and boys, including health care and nutrition, there would be roughly equal numbers of females and males. Instead, there were 35 million fewer women and girls than men and boys in 2001. In a stark sense, what these figures establish beyond doubt is that social, cultural — and increasingly technological — processes of discrimination, neglect and hostility have extinguished life chances of these many million ‘missing' girls and women.  Exposed These figures hold up a mirror to society, to what we are and what we have become. They reveal the enormity of vio...