Give me Blood I will give you GDP / Everyone loves a Bomb Blast in India

(With due apologies to Subhash Chandra Bose and P Sainath)

There was a time when everyone loved a good draught. But last three years Indra God has showered enough on Indian soil, and all the people those who were happy because of draught were sad. (Also draught has been now more for jholawala types and not for World Bank types). The saddest person was our economist, honest, intelligent, Oxford and Cambridge educated, ex-world banker, who loses sleep if a terror accused is arrested, Prime minister Doctor Manmohan Singh. Every bomb blast in India gives him a peaceful sleep. After all bomb blasts helps in the overall economic growth of India. His slogan is Give me Blood I will give you GDP.
(Since Government says bomb blast of 14/7 was not an intelligence failure and future prime minister indirectly says one off bomb blast is necessary; it makes me wonder is Government of India organising this bomb blasts? Because, I have still not understood how 26/11 terrorist could roam freely shooting people from CST to Taj Hotel, crossing Head office of RBI, Navy Base and Police Commissioner’s office, which are guarded 24 hours with armed men).
For the uninitiated let me clarify every bomb blast adds to India’s GDP and gives an immediate boost to the industrial growth. Let’s look at bomb blasts contribution to Indian economy, step by step:
· It reduces population.
· Family, relatives of dead, get rich by insurance and compensation money. If they are poor they move up the poverty ladder.
· The family, relatives, friends become instant celebrity.
· Bomb Blasts have moved to 2.0 from 1.0; i.e. some are getting luckier twice because of Bomb blast 2.0; i.e. loosing family members second time, which means assured source of income.
· News Channels, portals, newspapers, magazines; viewership, readership goes up instantly.
· Mobile companies sell more handsets and make more money on uses of SMS, Twitter etc.
· Places of Bomb Blast become tourist spot; don’t believe me; just checkout Leopold Cafe.
· More bomb blasts attract FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in terms of insurance, mobile, medical and media companies.
· FDI also happens in the area of social entrepreneurship i.e. more unaccounted funds come for the human right organisations for terrorist and safety of minority community.
· People’s attention gets diverted from scams, price rise and gives politicians to focus on new ways of corruption.
There was a Savitri who got Satyavan back from Lord Yama. There was Basanti Devi, wife of Deshabandhu Chitaranjan Das who called the youth of India for revenge for Lala Lajpat Rai’s death and inspired Bhagat Singh to do so. Today; most of the wives, as well as husband (if they are educated) try to encash the death. It could be by writing books, joining political parties, addressing seminars. The only known (to me) exception has been Paramveer Late Sub Inspector Tukaram Ombale’s family.
In today’s age and time, no point talking of Abhimanyu, when, the future prime minister aspirants, Ex-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s children generally have a chat with his killers. After all it helps in winning elections.
Don’t be surprised if Taliban, Indian Mujaheedin, Lasker e Toyaba, ISI, etc. get listed in Bombay Stock Exchange. They will be oversubscribed several times; after all, number of shares one holds of these organisations will be directly proportional to his secular standing in the society. The who’s who of corporate world, those who were fortunate to lose their family members in attack on Taj and Oberoi; will ask to reserve a quota for them in share allocation.
It is not Kalyug stupid, it is just GDP i.e. Greed over Dead body and Patriotism. That’s why; everyone loves a Bomb Blast in India, keeps voting secular government back into power and no one talks of revenge.

Kamladevi Saklecha Memorial School

Visited Kamladevi Saklech Memorial School near Bhanpura near Bhavani mandi.
Excellent school , brilliant students.
Great work being done by Indian Businessman.

Pracheen cool The Times of India Crest

Do you prefer two-millennia old remedies from Charaka Samhitaover modern medicines for your allergies? Do you choose to wear fabrics treated with turmeric for rejuvenation? Insist that rasam be cooked in a lead vessel? Refurbish your house with terracotta tiles, red oxide flooring and wooden beams? Opt to wear flower jewellery a la Shakuntala at your wedding? Are you keen that your children learn about their tradition in a gurukul? Then you are part of the ancient tribe, men and women who believe that all that is old is vastly more preferable to current practices and lifestyle choices. A look at the return of the past in our lives.India is on the move, there's no doubt about that. Cast a glance at our urban centres - with their shiny malls and multiplexes, fancy restaurants, hip discos, owering ...........................................................................
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All future, no past TOI Crest Aug 7, 2010, 01.08pm IST

India's archaeological heritage means different things to different people. Those of us who have made a career out of the study of history see such relics as a means of animating the dead past. As Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska so unforgettably put it in her poem, Archaeology, "Show me whatever and I'll tell you who you were... I'll read your views from the sockets of your eyes."
In large parts of India, on the other hand, people visualise and valourise material traces of past life-ways not as the dead past but as an integral element of their living present. In this process, they also actively transform the meanings that academics and archaeologists read into them.
And then there is the state, which sees itself as the legal guardian of this heritage — the central act, state provisions and local legislation which govern the preservation of monuments and archaeological sites make this reasonably clear...........................

happy karva chauth Damodar Mall

RANJIT and Payal Saxena live in Noida near Delhi in a newly constructed apartment block.Ranjit is a software consultant with a multinational while Payal,an engineer herself,is a stay at home mom.Apart from everything else,Payal loves Karva Chauth for one thing,the fresh feeni,the threadlike concoction that is soaked in milk and eaten early in the morning.The sweet is available only for this festival and isnt to be seen for the rest of the year.Though it is Payal who,as the fasting wife,is supposed to eat feeni,the entire family loves it and joins her in the morning to enjoy this specialty.Feeni is an import from Rajasthan,certainly not native to Punjab and UP,the two largest states for karva chauth celebrations.No Holi in the Marwari neighbourhood of Andheri is complete without the traditional thandai,a cooling drink made with exotic ingredients like almonds,black pepper,poppy seeds and crystallized rose petals (gulkand).The Deshpandes in Amravati in Maharashtra always have one dish on the platter on the day of universal fasting,sankashti sabudana khichdi.Sabudana,or tapioca sago,was originally an import from distant Tamil Nadu.So how did it end up in far away Amravati For Satyanarayan puja,a key component is the prasad,the holy offering,which is almost always sheera,made from white rava or semolina.The tradition of Satyanarayan puja goes back to the days when the household staples were wheat flour and unrefined jaggery,certainly not semolina and white sugar.These,one would assume,were manufactured products from a distant location and offered to the gods as an exotic food,made especially for this festival.In fact,theres a distinct pattern in the way festivals are celebrated across India.Festivals are and always have been a cultural license to feast and indulge,for the individual and the family.Every celebration is accompanied by food that was once upon a time imported from a distant place.In the days of cooking at home from scratch with local raw ingredients,upwas items like sabudana,rajgira atta,bhagar,sweet potatoes and festival foods made with ..............

British girl in love with lord Ganesh Ullekh NP, ET Bureau May 26, 2011, 01.48am IST

Alice Albinia is kind-hearted, but anger seems to simmer inside her as a sort of passive resistance to the ills she sees around her. Her heart goes out to Pakistan's poor boys with no access to formal education which makes them easy targets for Salafi jihadists.
"If you are sent to a madrassa, you are already poor," she speaks with a writer's flourish. "Maulana Sami ul-Haq never sent his children to a madrassa," she argues. Sami ul-Haq, the "father of the Taliban", is the chancellor of Pakistan's famous madrassa, Darul-uloom -Haqqania, which was attended by several top Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar.
Albinia had travelled extensively in Pakistan and Afghanistan, sometimes in a burkha, "writing about a river". The river is Indus, and the book is Empires of the Indus.
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Green fuel, empty stomachs By Bjorn Lomborg Economic Times

Spectators at February's Daytona 500 in Florida, US, were handed green flags to wave in celebration of the news that the race's stock cars now use gasoline with 15% corn-based ethanol. It was the start of a season-long television marketing campaign to sell the merits of biofuel to Americans. On the surface, the self-proclaimed 'greening of Nascar' ( National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing )) is merely a transparent - and, one suspects, ill-fated - exercise in an environmental form of whitewashing for the sport: call it 'greenwashing'. But the partnership between a beloved American pastime and the biofuel lobby also marks the latest attempt to sway public opinion in favour of a truly irresponsible policy. The US spends about $6 billion a year on federal support for ethanol production through tax credits, tariffs and other programmes. Thanks to this financial assistance, a sixth of the world's corn supply is burned in American cars. That is enough corn to feed 350 million people for an entire year. Government support of rapid growth in biofuel production has contributed to disarray in food production. Indeed, as a result of official policy in the US and Europe, including aggressive production targets, biofuel consumed more than 6.5% of global grain output and 8% of the world's vegetable oil in 2010, up from 2% of grain supplies and virtually no vegetable oil in 2004. This year, after a particularly bad growing season, we see the results. Global food prices are the highest they have been since the United Nations started tracking them in 1990, pushed up largely by increases in the cost of corn. Despite the strides made recently against malnutrition, millions more people will be undernourished than would have been the case in the absence of official support for biofuel