DesiPundit

My colony has a fancy western-sounding name and, while constructing the illusion that we were buying into something exotic, the builder has installed statues vaguely modeled on Venus de Milo — nearly nude white female forms, arms missing. Then one day, our statue was found dressed in a nightgown. But perhaps some poor person needed that nightgown, so the statue was bare again. Soon enough, somebody had dressed it up again, in a man’s shirt. I often wonder at the people who did that. I doubt they were worried about the dignity of our fake plaster-of-paris Venus. It hasn’t been molested (as far as I know).

I’m sure some plaster-of-paris statues have been molested but then if that prevents from actual humans from being molested, we ought to install more nude statutes.

Politicians and clerics offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills.

More often than not, we’re focused on the temporary issues affecting minorities instead of focusing on empowering them to succeed. 

Content law is a field of law unto itself, and the Indian corpus juris contains over twenty statutes governing content. In addition to statutory law, case law and tort law also govern content – for example, the right to privacy (and the corresponding prohibition on the publication of content invasive of privacy) finds its roots not only in constitutional law but also in tort law.

Most Indian content laws are not directed specifically at online content. However, they are, for the most part, applicable to online content (even though recent debates may lead one to believe that the legal regulation of content in India is non-existent). These laws, however, do not focus on ‘pre-screening’; as with most laws, they prescribe sanctions upon the publication etc. of illegal content.

Dating back to 1860. Who says we don’t protect our history? [via @gkjohn]

Anuradha Vaidyanathan is India first Ironman athlete. The multi-tasking 30-year-old PhD holder and entrepreneur tells us about the challenges she’s had to face and how she made it.

Very few of us may have even heard of the sporting event she represents. Fewer are probably aware of the extreme physical endurance it demands. Ironman one-day triathlon that involves a 3.8km swim, 180km bicycle ride and a 42.2km run. The relatively ‘easier’ triathlon event is the Ultraman — a three-day stage race that involves a 10km swim, 420km bicycle ride and an 84.4km run.

Anuradha Vaidyanathan is India’s first Ironman athlete and one of the only 450 people in the world to have finished an Ultraman.

The study focuses on West Bengal, a state in eastern India, where one-third of the pradhan positions have been randomly reserved for women since 1998. This policy is part of a larger effort in India to put women in local government: In 1993, the country widely adopted gender quotas for village councils. As a result, India’s proportion of local elected leaders who were female rose from less than 5 percent in 1992 to more than 40 percent in 2000.

It’s all about role models. However, I bet it would help more if familial ties did not always play a role in advancement of women in Indian politics.

Having spent three months snooping around a restaurant, Sohini Chattopadhyay reveals why even great recipes sometimes don’t make it to the menu, the food service industry’s unforgiving hierarchy, and other secrets.

It’s hard out there for a chef.

I’d like to see the Lok Sabha implement a Prime Minister’s Question system akin to the one in the House of Commons. The post of PM is not a ceremonial one but an executive one. The current prime minister has shown a revulsion for saying anything that is not delivered from a pulpit or behind closed doors. This has only compounded the feeling that nobody is in charge. I find this utterly ridiculous.

Back after a long hiatus, Sidin puts forth this Whatay Wishlist for governance in India; or as most resident Indians will dismiss it as jibber-jabber by a NRI by saying, come here and talk, nah!

The reputation of a country affects the way citizens are perceived abroad, too. A citizen of a booming, honest and friendly country is treated very differently from a citizen of a graft-ridden, poor nation. NRIs, therefore, care more about the brand value of India than those who are sheltered within their domestic borders. It is the individual NRI out there who is at the front line of what are personal, but very significant, political efforts on behalf of their country. The dignity with which they present themselves, the quality of their contributions, the ability to hold their own in unfamiliar circumstances, all add to the respect of the home country.

The Lokpal has been left in the lurch. Who is to blame? Just about everybody who claimed to be in the Bill’s favour

Everyone got their fifteen minutes of fame and in the end, we’re left with the bill. Or rather no bill.

There is huge money to be made out of this subculture one could call Talent TV. Money that is trading on that most profound resource: the human desire for recognition. The young see reality shows as a way of escaping their small horizons: the shows pick them for precisely that reason. This narrative arc — the desire for escape and the potential for escape — makes for great viewing. It is little wonder then that reality shows have become the biggest phenomenon in Indian television after the saas-bahu serials. They are cheaper to programme than full-scale soaps and hang their success on massive audience participation, which can run into crores of SMSes for the bigger shows. (Channels, in fact, often make more money from these shows from telephone company tie-ups than from advertising.) The market is so fecund, desperate producers running out of ideas have begun to throw up amalgamate contests, where winners from past shows compete against each other.

Not all ‘slumdogs’ become millionaires but then some do. That’s what keeps the hope alive.

Appropriately, the last week of 2011 saw the last hurrah of pro-violence Gandhian and ineligible Bachelor of the Year, Anna Hazare. Not only were people in the real world deserting him, even Twitter’s revolutionaries were leaving his sinking ship. First he came for our alcohol, then he came for the women who couldn’t breed. People were suddenly surprised that an old man whose name literally translates to “Big Brother” had some strong opinions on how other people should live and behave.

Over_rated gives you an overview on what outrage-worthy topics dominated the Twitterverse (yup, that’s a word that’s bandied about) in 2011.

“In a centuries-old hunting lodge hidden on the fringes of India’s capital, in a room where pigeons fly among hand-carved pillars and Persian carpets rot in the gloom, a princess dreams of a long-gone kingdom.”

Economics isn’t about protecting rights. It is about efficient processes that reduce costs, and it encourages competition. While development jargon consists of terms such as social inclusion and sustainable development, these policies assert rights without an enforcement mechanism, and may ensure that the poor remain poor, dependent on someone’s compassion. The poor become objects of pity and recipients of charity, and not equal citizens who should have equal access to opportunities.

Unfortunately, this debate isn’t done enough in India and Salil is right to bring up the topic. A majority of people are still unaware of their rights and the manner in which they are entitled to them. Most still think of rights as something that the government grants to them.

Fifteen years on, Hazare’s demand for an investigation into Thackeray’s assets, and Thackeray’s use of the word “mad” for Hazare, have, in Thackeray’s mind, morphed into Hazare saying Thackeray “is the only ray of hope and only he can dare crush corruption.” Why? Because nobody, least of all Thackeray, is above using the sudden rise to prominence of Anna Hazare and his cause to score a few political points. Public memory? Of what? But context: it’s everything.

Everything or rather everyone in context puts things in perspective.