Passionate About India

Manu Sharma is back in the news again, and like always, for all the wrong reasons! For me, Manu Sharma is a special case, as his case is a classic metaphor of the state of judiciary in our country, which is painfully slow and visibly discriminatory! It is no secret that Manu Sharma was finally convicted with life imprisonment in 2006, for a murder that he committed in 1999! It took our courts close to a decade to convict him for a heinous crime like cold blooded murder, wherein evidences were yelling against him. Not to forget that he almost managed his acquittal in 2003; and it was only after Sabrina Lal’s (Jessica’s sister) determined fight for justice, media’s persistent and systematic follow up and a huge public outcry that Sharma was finally convicted in 2006! And it has been just three years that he was found partying at a lounge bar in Delhi couple of days back. As is reported, he managed to do so as he was out on a parole, initially for a month and then further for another mon...

Last week, a leading media house organised a conclave in which the who’s who of Indian Polity, Civil Society and global leaders came and spoke on what they think about India’s future potential. They also talked of how eventually India is going to tread on the path of becoming a major economic and military powerhouse, while remaining a democratic (ahem!!), secular and truly sensitive society (sigh!!). It was indeed inspirational as the global leaders showered adjectives like ‘Super Power’, ‘Knowledge Superpower’, ‘melting pot of politics, culture and ethos’ etc., for India. All that is fine, but I wonder as to which India were they referring to. And I fear that we are increasingly thinking about, and building & taking only a miniscule part of urban India towards the growth trajectory, whereas the majority of rural India is being comprehensively neglected and calculatively forgotten. It is hypocritical that amidst all the developments that we boast of, we forget that it is the same n...