Passionate About India

Resul Pookutty was an obscure name and would have remained like that, had he not won the Oscar. In his own country, he would have always remained a dispensable and not so important sound technician, had the Oscar jury not decided to give him the coveted award. When the Oscar jury had shown to the world what Resul Pookutty was and what talent he had, his country’s government suddenly realized that it was time to give him something. And thus, he was given the Padma Shri award – thanks to the Oscar of course! One is forced to think then how many such Resul Pookuttys might be there in this country, people who are never recognized. Since Independence, the Padma awards have been one of the most coveted set of awards of this country, and for not just the award in itself, but for the prestige and honour that it carries. It is meant for the best and is meant to encourage others to strive for excellence. Yet, in spite of all these, and in spite of the supreme importance attached to it, one is le...

The year when India is going to host both the Commonwealth Games as well as the World Cup Hockey championships couldn’t have started in a more unfortunate way. The first is of course the fracas revolving around the strike of the Indian hockey players and their refusal to play till the time their arrears were paid. While the governing body known as Hockey India was quick to literally term the players unpatriotic and accuse them of putting money before the essence of playing for India, what was appalling was not only the fact that the arrears (running into lakhs) of the said hockey players had not been paid for a long duration, but also that Hockey India actually offered a pittance of Rs 25,000 for each player in lieu of the arrears. And this too was offered to them only with the condition that either the striking players accepted it or left the conditioning camp within 48 hours. Needless to say, the authorities were perhaps thinking that it would be easy for them to lure junior players ...

In the first week of January 2010, most newspapers carried a stunning report. And the report was based on data from the Central Statistical Organisation, which revealed that Bihar has clocked the second highest growth rate in the country, only second to Gujarat, between the period 2004/05 and 2008/09. Although in the same period, most of the backward states have shown a reasonably decent growth rate, but none could match up to Bihar. And what is even more remarkable is the manner in which the state has turned around. It was only in 2003/04 that it had shown a (de)growth of a negative 5.15%. Five years hence, the state has an aggregated growth of 11.03%, beating all conventions. Initially, analysts were skeptical about the data, but once it was reported that the data had been released by CSO – a central government agency – all doubts were put to rest. What is more interesting is the fact that most of the growth has taken under Nitish Kumar’s regime – which also proves that howsoever poo...

I hadn’t read the book, but even before going for the film 3 Idiots, I had heard the movie was based on Five Point Someone. So after seeing the movie, I immediately congratulated Chetan Bhagat on the outstanding philosophy of his book! However, after the controversy, I thought of reading Five Point Someone... and immediately realised the crux of the trouble! The book and the film have about ten to fifteen percent similarity. The book is more of a diary on IIT days without taking a strong stance on anything and without inspiring anyone to think of changing the education system. It has got its locker room humour of friends and is a decent read. But after reading the book, you don’t start thinking of the education system and about how to change it. So, to say that the film 3 Idiots has a lot in common with the book, is totally incorrect... The Aamir character in the book is a plain rich guy who doesn’t like the education system but does nothing to change it either, completely unlike what ...

While the government would make us believe that all is well with the economy, and that the Indian economy is resilient enough to withstand the shocks of global recession, one visit to any vegetable market in Delhi or for that matter anywhere in the country actually gives a very different kind of a picture. Food prices, in the last one year or so, have skyrocketed to such an extent that many items have become beyond the reach of the common man. For the common man in India, the staple diet consists of things as basic as potato, pulses and rice. But given the way the prices have increased in the recent past, today they can no more be called the ingredients of the common man’s diet. The price of pulses is almost touching Rs 100 per kg, while that of potato is hovering around Rs 40 per kg. Even a year back, pulses were available in the market for less than half the price and almost a fifth in the case of potatoes. So does it mean that all of a sudden the farmers of the country have decided ...

The untimely demise of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy could not have happened at a worse time. The sequence of events that happened post his death proved the same. If initially it was a major political crisis that erupted with respect to the nomination of a candidate as the next chief minister of the state, later on, it was the demand of K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) for a separate state of Telangana that turned one of the most prosperous and properly administered states into a virtual battleground. The state, which for a very long period has been in the news for its strides in Information Technology and the successful battle against Maoists, is now in the news for all the wrong reasons. True to its style, the government at the Centre easily gave in to the demands of K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who was quick to realise the political vacuum that was created by the death of YSR and found the revival of Telangana movement for a separate state an ideal platform to re-launch his political career graph. But wh...

AND WORK TOWARDS THE CREATION OF A BETTER AND CLEANER WORLD! An interesting piece of news had come out a few days back, where it was stated that the government is planning to replace polluting ‘chullahs’ in rural households with green stoves (stoves fuelled by biomass). As stated there, this flagship program would cover around 140 million households. In other words, it would cover over 560 million people. This, in itself, is a wonderful initiative and would go a long way in not just saving the precious forests of India but would also arrest many ailments which emanate from the poisonous smoke of chullahs. Another interesting news that has come up in the recent past is that India’s forest cover has grown by 728 square kilometers during 2005-07 and thus now stands at 21%. Similarly, one has also witnessed that there has been a sincere effort on the part of the government and also the judicial system to crack down on illegal mines in forest areas and force the fuel guzzling and polluting ...