Barely a month after Reliance Communications broke the Rs 15,000 price-barrier for a branded 3G tablet in India, Spice Mobile has mounted a strong challenge to the company with its new Spice Mi-720 tablet. Though Bharti group firm Beetel had become the second prominent brand two weeks ago to to enter this category with its […]
While it has always been known that talks between Chinese and US officials are not always cordial, the stormy nature of some of these meetings is revealed in cable written by US embassy in Beijing in October 2007. The cable described the unusually aggressive and blunt feedback from the then Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi […]
The Shiva Sena, one of NDA’s biggest allies and a major player in Maharashtra, has declared its full support to the three demands raised by Anna Hazare. Anant Geete, Shiv Sena MP from Raigarh in Maharashtra, expressed his party’s “total support” to the three points — bringing all bureaucrats under Lokpal, installing a citizen’s charter […]
In this age of super-charged discussions and rallies against corruption, it is perhaps instructive to look back five years when scams were not the stuff of daily news. Hearing the innovative ways in which people rationalized corruption, the then US Consul for Chennai David Hopper wondered if Indians really objected to it at a deep […]
The most impassioned speech in the Lokpal debate in the Lok Sabha today was made by the young parliamentarian from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Jayant Chaudhary. Chaudhary, the grandson of former Prime Minister Charan Singh and the son of Ajit Singh, was the only parliamentarian to go against the general trend of criticising Anna […]
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to prevent the emergence of Nepal as a republic in 2008 as it wanted to retain it as the World’s last ‘Hindu Kingdom’, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) felt. Krishna Mahara, a member of the Maoist Central Committee of Nepal expressed the fear in a letter written to […]
Suspicion about “Love Jihad” — an alleged Islamist plot to increase the share of Muslims in the population by incentivizing Muslim men to marry outside the community — is probably the result of the overall paranoia and religious tension in South India, US Consul General Andrew Simkin told his government in February last year. However, […]
Is the famed ‘Kerala Model’ of development — characterized by high government spending on health and education — unsustainable in the long run? Even the state’s then ruling Communists were not sure it was, according to a detailed report of a visit by US officials to the South Indian state in late 2007. The visit […]
Just days after Twitter indicated its interest in the search market, the messaging platform is now spreading its wings towards the social networking scene. Under a pilot project covering a small (lucky) portion of its user-base, it has introduced two new ‘tabs’ that increasingly turns the Twitter experience more ‘Facebookish’. The tabs, that replace the […]
Two German mountaineers missing in Afghanistan since last week found to be killed in the Salang Pass near the capital Kabul. Though the Interior Ministry Spokesperson, Sidiq Sediqi, has not yet confirmed the report, the Governor of the Parwan province,Abdul Basir Salangi, talking to the RTN confirmed the death. He said that the bodies have […]
Muslims in China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) are increasingly becoming more aware of their Isamic heritage, thanks to more liberal policies followed by the Chinese government in the last three decades, according to an on-the-ground report from David Brown, the Consul General of Chengdu in Sichuan, a province adjoining the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). However, […]
The coming to power of Mayawati, India’s most powerful Dalit leader, in Uttar Pradesh has instilled fear in the minds of criminals and improved law and order, the US embassy to India felt after a review at the end of 100 days of her rule in UP in 2007. While she may not be “up […]
The Bhartiya Janata Party, which had expressed its great displeasure after the Congress Party ‘back-stabbed’ it with a surprising statement by Rahul Gandhi, has been persuaded not to insist on a vote on Lokpal bill tomorrow. According to Parliamentary Affairs minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, the BJP and the government have agreed to have a simple […]
Even as minutes remain for the beginning of the debate in the Indian Parliament on Anna Hazare’s three demands for Lokpal, uncertainty remains over whether or not there will be a vote on the three specific demands. A vote-less discussion is likely to simply postpone the current conflict and agitation by a few weeks or […]
Minutes before the Parliament starts a debate on veteran Gandhian Anna Hazare’s demands on Jan Lokpal, the 74-year-old sent a clear signal that he is willing to fight on if the legislature tries to wriggle out of the situation. Speaking on the 12th day of his marathon fast, he tried to lay to rest the […]
Medha Patkar, one of India’s biggest mass leaders and part of the Anna Hazare group, has confirmed that Team Anna is giving feedback to the Government on the statement to be made by leader of the Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee in a few minutes. Patkar said a team of Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan, Kiran Bedi […]
Over the last five days, conversations in the national capital are increasingly about a 72-year-old son of a factory worker from Maharashtra, Kisan Baburao Hazare or Anna Hazare. While the majority of the Indian middle-class and the rural residents seem to be in favor of his agitation (going by the polls), many, especially the urban […]
The Parliament will not give a binding directive to the standing committee to go by the consensus that may emerge at the end of discussions today, according to the statement made by Pranab Mukherjee to start off the discussion in Lok Sabha today. Kicking the discussions off, Pranab Mukherjee, the senior most Congress leader, said […]
I do have a strong set of issues with the supposed ‘intelligentsia’ response to the Anna Hazara / IAC movement / Jan Lokpal bill – I use the terms loosely and interchangeably. The key stands, summarising Nitin Pai, Amba Salakar, Arundhati Roy et al seem to be: 1. “We (the civil society experts / bloggers […]
Leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj has lent strong support to passing a “strong and effective” Lokpal bill as soon as possible. She also lent support to Anna Hazare group on all three questions which were subjected to debate in the Parliament today. 1) On the issue of including the Judiciary, […]
