Dilip Simeon's blog

HARIDWAR: Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi kicked up yet another controversy when she came up with her logic on the recent earthquake that devastated Nepal.  Commenting the most unreasonable statement that could come at this tragic time, controversial BJP functionaries, Saksha Maharaj and Sadhvi Prachi have linked the earthquake in Nepal to Rahul Gandhi’s Kedarnath visit. Speaking to media persons in Haridwar, Sakshi Maharaj said, “Rahul Gandhi eats beef and goes to the holy shrine without purifying himself, the earthquake was bound to happen.” It may be mentioned here that the lady was in the news recently for calling the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi a British Agent.  She was the same lady who said, “Those who do not chant ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, ‘Vande Mataram’, insult the national flag and those who indulge in cow slaughter have no right to live in India.”  http://thenortheasttoday.com/vhp-leader-links-nepal-earthquake-to-beef-eating/ Rahul+Kedar...

NB - Why it is so villainous for someone to question 'Islamic tenets'? Why should not anyone, Muslim or not, criticise any religious tenets whatsoever? Once upon a time the Church insisted that the sun went around the earth. Galileo was threatened with torture and confined to house arrest for suggesting that the truth was the other way around. It's all very well to say this or that is an Islamic tenet. Its another thing altogether to threaten someone with violence because he or she disagrees with xyz religious tenet. The mentality of the Inquisition must be set aside, or else Muslim society will end up crushing its most outstanding and humane members, simply because they feel it's time to move on - DS Muslim Civil Society activists have urged the Sri Lankan authorities to bring to book those who have been harassing and intimidating journalist and social worker Sharmila Seyyid for her opinion on rights of the sex workers.  Giving an interview to the BBC Tamil radio ...

Luxury is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed. Such, at any rate, is the provocative argument put forward by Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. Recently dubbed “the Varian rule”, it states that to predict the future, we just have to look at what rich people already have and assume that the middle classes will have it in five years and poor people will have it in 10. Radio, TV, dishwashers, mobile phones, flatscreen TVs: Varian sees this principle at work in the history of many technologies. So what is it that the rich have today that the poor will get in a decade? Varian bets on personal assistants. Instead of maids and chauffeurs we would have self-driving cars, housecleaning robots and clever, omniscient apps that can monitor, inform and nudge us in real time. As Varian puts it: “These digital assistants will be so useful that everyone will want one and the scare stories you read today about privacy concerns will just seem quaint and old-fashioned.”  Goo...

A quiet smile plays on his lips. Unusually mum, he clutches the duff close to his chest and makes way past the garbage dump that marks the beginning of the Gandhinagar slum in Pune’s Pimpri-Chinchwad. It’s 4 pm. The hot afternoon sun has barely begun to relent. Most residents are holed up inside their yellow brick-and-tin tenements. Children are busy at their games. Four women sit in a corner, chatting. The sight of kurta-clad strangers is enough to attract attention but Sambhaji Bhagat doesn’t wait. He begins to beat his duff, its clanging insistent and urgent. Soon, curtains — the makeshift doors to the houses — part. Faces peep out. Bhagat begins, a powerhouse of anger and resistance, his words his ammunition: Bhalan dada, dada re, bhalan dada Arre raan raan raan chala uthvu saare raan re (Oh brother, come on, come on, wake up!) The words have the desired effect. Amused faces are on the street, surrounding Bhagat and his two vocalists, Shirish Pawar and Baba...

Around 50 million years ago, the Indian plate inched its way across primeval oceans and collided with the Eurasian plate. It was a cataclysmic event that influences our lives even today. As the Indian plate continues to thrust northwards against a resisting Eurasian plate, unimaginable quantities of energy are compressed and released periodically around the fault line extending from Ladakh to Arunachal. The earth heaves in earthquakes big and small. A major such earthquake exploded on Nepal shortly before noon on April 25, 2015. We were at the arrival lounge of Tribhuvan airport, Kathmandu, waiting for baggage clearance, on our way to Syabru Beansi on the Bhote Kosi, the base for our trek to Kyangin Gompa in the upper reaches of the Langtang.  Suddenly, the room rocked violently and continued to do so in jerky, uncoordinated motions. A muted roar seemed to emerge from somewhere. All there fled to the safety of the tarmac. Looking north we could see a scar being formed on the u...

​ PROTEST MEETING Against  State’s Frontal Attack on Right to expression, association and dissent April 29, 2015: 3.00 pm. YWCA –Blue Triangle Auditorium, Near Banglasahib Gurudwara Criminalising dissent, illegitimising people’s organisations and repressing freedom of expression has reached its zenith in India. Successive governments have perceived voices of dissent and peaceful expressions of protests as hurdles to their grand plans of large industrial corridors, mega energy projects, infrastructure projects and privatisation of natural resources. The last few years have witnessed unprecedented crackdown on organisations and individuals who are seemed to be either protesting or amplifying the local voices of protests. What one is witnessing is a systematic design to discredit and illegitimise people’s organisations on the one hand, and amending laws and policies without engaging in a democratic process to support the corporations, on the other. Ordinance to ame...

"Congress has turned Lal Bahadur Shastri's slogan of 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan' into 'Mar Jawan, Mar Kisan'. Farmers in Gujarat did not think of ending their lives." Narendra Modi on March 30, 2014 when farmers were killing themselves under the corrupt, incompetent and anti-national UPA.​ ​"The problem is very old, deep-rooted and widespread. Don't let our farmers die. Whatever (previous) governments could do, they have been doing. We need to introspect and find a solution collectively": Narendra Modi on April 23, 2015, when farmers were killing themselves under the clean, competent and patriotic NDA. Farmer suicides are in the news in India, and this is unusual because viewers find agriculture stories unappealing and such things are rarely covered by English television channels. What changed is that a farmer hung himself before a grateful national media, which duly recorded the tragedy and has been replaying ​​ it since. The event occurred at a m...