Scandals at the Jaipur Literature Festival:

barometers for social change? What the Dalai Lama, Glenlivet whisky, and the growing significance of caste politics  tell us about Indian politics and society.

by Faisal Devji

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A major sponsor of the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Tata Corporation's motto for this year's event was the cringe-making "Carnival of Values." When I first saw them emblazoned on banners in Jaipur, I thought these words represented the price that had to be paid for the festival's remarkably open and diverse gathering. But I soon came to realize how accurate the motto in fact was, with the JLF's hugely mediatised popularity turning it, unfortunately, into the site of a political carnival. And as in a carnival, the controversies for which the festival is coming to be known are distributed randomly, as if by a kind of raffle. Last year, of course, it was Salman Rushdie who won the draw. And this year, despite the presence of formidable competitors like the Dalai Lama (whom I saw outside the authors' lounge flanked by giant cut-out bottles of Glenlivet whisky, another JLF sponsor), it was a far more original writer, the Indian "political psychologist" Ashis Nandy, whose comments on "low" caste corruption are still the subject of acrimonious debate in his country.

True to form, Rushdie tried to claim the raffle prize, a poisoned chalice engraved with the words "free expression", when he was banned from attending the Kolkata Book Fair shortly afterwards. But like a remaindered copy of his autobiography, Sir Salman was quickly relegated to the bargain basement of Indian interest, despite his friends making hysterical statements in the press about Kolkata losing its status as the "cultural capital of Asia". Such exaggerated and even untruthful statements also serve as examples of India's carnival of values, in which controversies are produced on demand, as part of the very publicity machine that makes events like the JLF possible. The media-generated controversy over some not very credible threats to Rushdie's safety last year had been one in which religious belief was set against free expression in the most hackneyed way possible, one I had described then as having little to do with the realities of Indian society. This year's scandal, however, has taken a different turn, with religion no longer the subject of controversy. What does this mean?

Joker in the pack

A famously maverick thinker, Nandy's offence was to claim that "low" castes were at the forefront of corruption in India, or, in a later explication of his statement, at least the most visible, because untrained in its practices. And that this indicated their entry into the country's mainstream, thus ensuring the republic's survival by holding off the authoritarian desire for a completely clean or purified society, of the kind that many of India's middle class campaigners against corruption feel. Words like "clean" are heavily loaded, signifying "upper" caste attempts to distinguish themselves from those lower in the hierarchy, which may be why Nandy went on to refer to communist-ruled Bengal as a "clean" state, because it had excluded Dalits and other oppressed groups from its government. Nandy's words immediately gave rise to a countrywide controversy, with cases lodged against him for breaching anti-caste legislation, and a vociferous defence mounted by his liberal and leftist supporters, which resulted, as was only right, in the staying of legal action against him.

Nandy has been ill served by his supporters, many of whom have repeated the same, purely legalistic verities about freedom of expression they utter on all such occasions, thus refusing to take the changing realities of Indian society seriously. These include new forms of violence against Dalits, of the kind covered by the prevention of atrocities act that Nandy was charged under. For having escaped the traditional bonds of servitude to "upper" castes, it appears as if some of these groups can now be eliminated altogether by exclusion as much as murder, rather than merely being punished or humiliated to keep them in their place. But a number of Nandy's defenders seem to think that a formally universal attitude is "fair", and so make a fetish of balancing or evenly distributing their opprobrium at "intolerance" between different caste and religious groups, despite the enormous differences of power, wealth, number and status among them. This is a good liberal attitude, but one that should stand condemned in the eyes of those on the left, given Marx's severe criticism of such an abstract and "bourgeois" form of equality.

Just as they had done in the Rushdie controversy last year, many of Nandy's friends speak in the name of an imaginary Indian state when they claim to embody this neutral and universal position, distributing blame "fairly" on all those who are unable to transcend their partisan viewpoints. Their vision of the state is imaginary because, as a result of lengthy struggles for representation by groups like Dalits, the Indian constitution has explicitly set aside the formal equality of liberalism by instituting the largest system of reservations or affirmative action in the world. By ignoring this reality the partisans of universality are in fact eliminating the particular reality of Indian society. In fact the truly liberal way of considering Indian society was characteristic of colonial rule, with the British claiming precisely to be the neutral arbiters of an irredeemably particularistic India. And in adopting this view, or at least trying to identify with such a state, the defenders of free expression join ranks with Indian protest movements more generally, including their enemies on the right, all of which mix anti-state feeling with the desire for a more efficient and effective, not to say authoritarian state.

Anyone who is at all familiar with Nandy's work will realize the irony of this situation, since he has been inveighing against the desire for a strong state and a society defined entirely by legal contract for decades now. Indeed those among his supporters who blame the state, and political parties more generally, for abandoning a neutral and universal stance in tolerating or encouraging threats to free expression, do more than betray Nandy's own thought. By in effect accusing the politicians who did not come to Nandy's support of "pandering" to or "pampering" constituencies seen as "vote banks", they take on the narrative, if not the exact terminology of the far right. With its fear of all kinds of caste or religious particularity, after all, it is the right that has always been at the forefront in advocating a purely formal or uniform equality for all Indians, something that gives liberalism a distinctive history in India. Maybe it is the "cynical" politicians, then, who recognize Indian particularities better than the defenders of free expression, whose utopian and universalizing urges Nandy had condemned in Jaipur.

House of cards

The controversy over Ashis Nandy's remarks is the second one to erupt over the issue of caste and free expression, the first occurring last year and having to do with a historical cartoon of the Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar in a school textbook. In it Ambedkar, who was responsible for the assembly in charge of drafting the Indian constitution, was depicted perched on a snail representing the slow-moving constituent assembly, with Nehru, the Brahmin prime minister, brandishing a whip behind his back in front of a large crowd. Whatever the cartoonist's intention, and despite the absence of Dalit outrage when it was originally published, this image conjured up the classic scene of caste violence and degradation, with a Dalit whipped by a Brahmin for shirking his work before an appreciative crowd. It would be like including a cartoon about the lynching of an African-American in a US textbook without commenting on its depiction of racial violence.  

At the time it was jokingly said in some quarters that Ambedkar had become "untouchable" in a new way, like his great rival M.K. Gandhi no longer accessible to criticism. It was also said that Dalits were joining India's political mainstream by taking offence in the way Hindu, and especially Muslim groups generally do. Indeed by comparing Ambedkar to their prophet, Dalit activists referred to the global Muslim outcry over caricatures of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper a few years earlier. And it is no accident that last year's equally "Muslim" controversy over Rushdie at the JLF was followed up this year with a "Dalit" one over Nandy. Now it is true that Dalits and Muslims are increasingly being compared to one another, for instance in a government report named after its leader, Justice Rajinder Sachar, which demonstrated that the two groups suffered from similar rates of poverty and exclusion. But the structural similarity between most Muslims and Dalits has not so far led to any common struggle, despite fears of such an alliance that go back a century among those who would preserve the "upper" caste domination of Indian society—Hindu or Muslim.   

The relationship between Dalits and Muslims does not all go in one direction, as the latter are increasingly attempting to follow the former's example by demanding quotas in employment and education for themselves, by invoking their caste rather than religious identities. Important about the alternation of caste and religious community in the debate over free expression, however, is the fact that it dissolves the carefully constructed partitions that Indian liberals place between these forms of particularity, which can only be transcended and made intelligible by the formal universality of the law. For if Muslim "fanaticism" and Dalit "sensitivity", to say nothing of Hindu "sentiment" are open to one another, then they are not, after all, locked into their individual forms of particularity, to be understood only by those who speak in the name of an imaginary state. And it is because of this possibility that liberals lurch, nonsensically, from insisting upon the particularities of caste and religion on the one hand, to proclaiming their negation on the other, by attributing offended sentiments to the most "rational" kind of political cynicism.

Perhaps it is time to take the language of offence seriously instead of seeing it only through the universality of an imagined state. In India this language derives from colonial times, and is largely about "hurt feelings" and similar, unexpectedly delicate sentiments. While the liberal defenders of free expression routinely condemn this language as hypocritical when it is not fanatical, what interests me is how its rhetoric of sensitivity sets religious and caste conflict within a context of intimacy and betrayal. Gandhi had noted early in the last century, for example, that caste Hindu objections to cow slaughter, described as something that hurt their feelings, were directed exclusively against Muslims. Neither the British nor even Indian Christian, to say nothing of Dalit consumers of beef were blamed for it. Rather than dismissing such hurt feelings as cynical, Gandhi recognized that they defined religious violence as the betrayal of a pre-existing, or at least possible intimacy between these religious groups, one given a name by the commonplace call for Hindu-Muslim brotherhood. In other words it was the presumption or perhaps even the perverse desire for intimacy that informed religious hatred.

Recognizing how different this situation was from, say, the European language of hatred, depending as this did on the denial of intimacy, Gandhi's project of communal harmony aimed at purifying the perverse desire for brotherhood he saw in the rhetoric of Hindu as well as Muslim betrayal. For such a desire, he thought, was only possible in a society whose relations had not yet been subordinated to the law of contract—itself an impossible desire. Gandhi's political enemy, M.A. Jinnah, who would go on to found Pakistan, also recognized the presumption of intimacy in the vocabulary of betrayal that informed religious hatred in India. But his way of dealing with it was to break the bond of brotherhood that Gandhi would foster, partitioning hearts as well as hearths, and finally the country itself, to make for a purely contractual set of relations between Hindus and Muslims, and thus the possibility of their friendship in future. Nandy, it is clear, has always followed Gandhi's view on the matter, flirting, as some see it, with the language of hatred and violence for presumably "therapeutic" reasons. But his liberal supporters take the side of another of Gandhi's enemies, the right-wing ideologue V.D. Savarkar, one of whose former acolytes assassinated the Mahatma precisely because he rejected egalitarian formalism and "pandered" to minorities. Indeed the Indian right has always been the greatest champion of a "pure" liberalism in this deeply unequal society.

As in so many other things, Ambedkar was on Jinnah's side on this matter, despite being severely critical of his politics. For unlike the liberals, he did not call for a merely formal equality and insisted, much like Pakistan's founder, on the legal acknowledgement of social difference. What, then, does the gradual and still incomplete adoption by Dalit activists of the primarily Hindu as well as Muslim language of intimacy and betrayal indicate? Placed as it is alongside the contractual imperative of the law, in both its caste and religious usage, this language may portend an uneasy shifting between the two major categories of Indian identity, neither of which can be reduced to the other. It also indicates the changing character and growing importance of caste politics, which allows its representatives to inhabit new social and indeed existential spaces from which they have hitherto been excluded. Rather than simply joining an existing and, in the liberal view, dysfunctional narrative of victimization and offence, the entry of caste into a well-established religious debate about free expression might have the potential to transform it and Indian politics in general.

[Editor's note: This essay is featured in the Winter/Spring 2013 issue of Current Intelligence.]

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About the Author: Faisal Devji is Reader in Indian History and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St. Antony's College, Oxford University.

currentuntelligence

Is Mamata a victim of perception?

Chief ministers are assessed by popularity, performance and perception. That third attribute is decidedly subjective and slippery. Often, it amounts to how newspapers, news channels and the broader media ecosystem look upon an individual. If perception were all there was to public life, Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal, would long have been history.

Since September 2012, when the Trinamool Congress withdrew support from the UPA government, Mamata has faced an acutely hostile media. She has been mocked for both serious errors of judgement as well as trivia. For someone who sees her herself as incorruptible and essentially well-meaning, Mamata is within her rights to wonder why she is being so targeted.

Other women chief ministers have got away with such angularities and worse. They have been applauded for a "no-nonsense" imperiousness (J Jayalalithaa) or for representing the social deepening of democracy (Mayawati). In contrast, Mamata is sniggered at.

Take an example. On the evening of February 20, West Bengal came out of a bandh that was only half successful. The government did not support the bandh; Writers' Buildings, the secretariat in Kolkata, functioned normally.

Anybody who has lived in the state through 40 years of State-sponsored bandhs would acknowledge this is a change, incremental change perhaps but change nonetheless. Yet, when Trinamool Congress spokespersons gamely tried to make that point on television, anchors shouted them down. It did seem unfair on Mamata, and it was.

It is true West Bengal has an image problem, but then so do vast parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. If you forget its 19th century history, those are the states West Bengal has to benchmark itself against. This may seem harsh, but it is not fundamentally untrue. Mamata has to contend with that reality; unfortunately she also has to contend with non-resident nostalgia.

The Kolkata diaspora — vast, prodigious and talented as it is — has a disproportionate influence on media discourse. It has arrogated to itself the right to interpret contemporary Bengal for the state's residents. It has wedded itself to an idea and an ideal of Bengal that never existed or is so remote it may as well be a fairy-tale. Measured against such parameters, Mamata can just never succeed. Nobody can.

So embedded is the nostalgia that some critics have even begun to weave a mythology about CPI(M) rule and its alleged cultural creativity and commitment to industry. This is bizarre. Over 34 years, the CPI(M) reduced West Bengal to a provincial backwater. Mamata has only emerged within that construct, she has not created it.

What of her performance as chief minister? Admittedly she has not matched the enormous and almost scary expectations of "Poriborton" (Change), the slogan that swept her to office in 2011. Even so, the police is freer of political influence than it was under the Left Front. Maoist violence has declined. A genuine attempt has been made to address Darjeeling's urgings for autonomy.

However, the essential tendency of the ruling party in West Bengal remains hegemonic. The syndicates and informal networks, extending from auto-rickshaw drivers to tradesmen, that provided the CPI(M) its underpinning have simply switched allegiance. In that sense, Mamata has embraced an extortionate political tradition and not challenged it. Perhaps the choice was made for her. To challenge entrenched interest groups would be to risk losing them again to the CPI(M).

So is Mamata still popular? This past week West Bengal saw three assembly by-elections, all in seats the Congress won in 2011. When the votes are counted on February 28, it is expected Trinamool will win English Bazaar in Malda district. Nalhati (Birbhum), won by President Pranab Mukherjee's son two years ago, and Rezinagar (Murshidabad), where Adhir Chowdhury, minister of state for railways, is the Congress strongman, remain imponderable.

This trio of by-elections will tell Mamata if she has absolute sway over the non-Left space or if she needs to worry about the Congress. Following this there are the panchayat elections in April-May. These will tell Mamata if she has absolute sway over rural Bengal or if she needs to worry about the CPI(M).

In 2008, the Left Front won 13 of 17 zila parishads (district councils) and Trinamool only two. The Left won 183 panchayat samitis and the Trinamool only 79, up from 12 in 2003. That 2008 contest was Bengal's final old-era election. In 2009, the wheels turned and the Marxists lost the Lok Sabha polls. This summer Mamata hopes to finally cripple the CPI(M)'s once-formidable rural machine. If she does it, she will have the last laugh over the "nattering nabobs" of the newsroom, to borrow William Safire's famous put-down.

Governance is more than just astute politics. It must include a rich economic agenda. West Bengal remains an economic laggard. After 18 months, Mamata can still get away with blaming the Left Front; after five years, people will be less patient. The CPI(M) used the Tata Motors project in Singur to convince people of a new awakening. This was premature, but the thought of big-ticket investment and industrialisation was appealing. Mamata needs a similar game-changer.

Her government is looking to sell its stake in Haldia Petrochemicals. Rather than do the expected thing and negotiate with a public-sector buyer, she should aim to privatise the company. Mamata could gamble on an auction for the shares, with major oil-sector corporations invited to participate. It may be the tonic she — and West Bengal — need.

Ashok Malik is a Delhi-based political commentator. The views expressed by the author are personal.

HT

Google most trusted online brand in India

Mumbai: Google is the most trusted online brand in the country, with Facebook coming in at number two, says a study by Brand Trust Advisory. Yahoo has emerged as the second-most trusted search engine after Google, says the report.

The survey was conducted in 16 cities, taking into consideration 19,000 unique brands across 211 categories, Trust Research Advisory Chief Executive Officer N Chandramouli said. Social networking sites are gaining popularity, with Orkut and Twitter ranking fourth and sixth respectively overall.

"Google's Orkut, steadied at fourth rank despite a significant fall in daily visitors from here. Facebook has ranked first in the sub-category of social networking," he said. The fifth slot has gone to shopping portal eBay, which tops in the list of e-commerce brands followed by AOL, Amazon, Ibibo and OLX.in.

EBay took the fifth slot, which topped the list of e-commerce brands, followed by AOL, Amazon, Ibibo and OLX.in.

YouTube, which ranks ninth, leads the sub-category of online sharing portals, while Naukri managee the 24th position overall.

ibnlive

Not aiming at Rs 100 crore mark for 'Kai Po Che

Mumbai: Director Abhishek Kapoor, who is basking in the success of 'Kai Po Che', says he is not aiming to make Rs 100 crore at the box office. Starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Amit Sadh and Raj Kumar Yadav in lead roles, the movie, which hit the screens last Friday, witnessed a good response on its opening weekend and has reportedly earned Rs 18 crore till now.

Evidently, Kapoor is happy but does not consider that the new definition of success is the entry into the elite club.

"I think it (Rs 100 crore) is silly. Beyond that I would not like to say anything. For my films I never aimed for them to do X amount of business. All I want is the audience to like and enjoy the film," Kapoor told PTI.

Abhishek Kapoor is basking in the success of 'Kai Po Che' but he is not aiming to make Rs 100 crore

"As far as 'Kai Po Che' is concerned I don't aim for any number or figures. I am happy I have touched the hearts of audience. Their reaction to the film holds more value to me than anything else," he said.

"People have liked the film and I am really happy about it. We all have worked hard for it and our efforts have paid off well. Even the actors are getting good response for their performance in the film. We are elated. We hope to work again with the same cast," the director said.

Kapoor adapted Chetan Bhagat's book '3 Mistakes of My Life' for the big screen and titled it as 'Kai Po Che'.

"When I read it (book) for the first time I found it very attractive as the film is about India in a simple way. I wanted to make a film based on India and want everyone to see this film. When I got into it I realised it is not going to be an easy task," he said.

"This book is about politics, friendship, love, religion and earthquake all in equal measure. But when you make a film there has to be a theme or trajectory... We chose to revolve it around friendship. Then you remove and add things from the novel and you end up making a different entity," he added.

After he directed 'Rock On' it took almost four years for Kapoor to come up with this film.

"It took a while... I did not intend to take such a long time. All I wanted to do is make a good film... So it took time. It is not a race as to who makes a film first. Hoping my next film does not take that long time," Kapoor said.

His next project would be with UTV Motion Pictures again and with Ekta Kapoor. The filmmaker, however refused to divulge details about it.

ibnlive

1971 War and Richard Nixon

As he asked his administration to support Pakistan against India in the 1971 war, the then US President Richard Nixon had faced a virtual revolt from his diplomats with the entire State Department team based in Dhaka writing the so-called Blood telegram, which was supported by Secretary of State William Rogers, a new book has claimed.

While his diplomats were calling for a different approach – a policy that stops massacre of innocent people and supports democracy – Nixon's direction to his administration to support Pakistan in this 1971-conflict was mainly driven by his animosity with then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and his secret desire to open up with China, for which he was seeking help from the Pakistani leadership, argues Bruce Riedel in his latest book 'Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back'.

Riedel, a former CIA official, is now a scholar at the Brookings Institute - a prestigious US think-tank, based in Washington.

"Acting under the President's guidance, Henry Kissinger ordered the American government to "tilt" toward Pakistan and Yahya. Many in the bureaucracy resisted. At one National Security Council meeting, Kissinger, exasperated by the pushback from the regional specialists, exclaimed, 'The President always says to tilt toward Pakistan, but every proposal I get is in the opposite direction. Sometimes I think I am in a nut house'," he wrote in the book.

The American diplomats on the scene were appalled at their country's policy, Riedel writes adding that in 1971, virtually the entire country team in Dhaka signed a dissent cable.

"Our government has failed to denounce the suppression of democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities. Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its citizens [dual nationals of the US and (East) Pakistan] while at the same time bending over backwards to placate the West Pakistan dominated government and to lessen likely and deservedly negative international public relations impact against (it)," the cable said.

"Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral bankruptcy, ironically at a time when the USSR sent President Yahya a message defending democracy, condemning arrests of leaders of a democratically elected majority party (incidentally pro-West).

But we have chosen not to intervene even morally on the grounds that the Awami conflict, in which the overworked term genocide is applicable, is purely an internal matter," the cable said.

The then US consul general in Dhaka, Archer Blood, sent the cable- the so-called Blood telegram- to Washington, and several officers in the department signed a letter to Secretary of State William Rogers supporting it, he said.

"The consul general had classified the cable "confidential," but Nixon had it reclassified "secret/NODIS," the highest classification possible for a State Department cable, to restrict its dissemination.

"Nixon's tilt was only in part a reflection of his animus toward India and his fondness for Pakistan. Behind the scenes the president and his national security adviser were reversing over two decades of American policy toward China, and they needed Yahya and Pakistan to do it," Riedel said.

"It was a very closely held secret; not even Rogers, the secretary of state, knew what they were doing. Nixon had visited South Asia three times as a private citizen between his years as vice president and his election to the presidency, and on each visit he was snubbed in India and hailed in Pakistan. In August 1969, Nixon again visited India and Pakistan, this time as president," he wrote.

"His meeting with Mrs Gandhi in New Delhi was strained and uncomfortable. Because he was now president, she could not snub him again (she had famously asked an aide in Hindi during an earlier visit, "How much longer must I talk to this man?"), but their contempt for each other was self-evident.

In Islamabad, Pakistan's new capital, the reception was much warmer. Nixon was greeted as a close friend by Yahya, for whom the president had a surprise request. He asked Yahya to use Pakistan's close ties to China, forged after the invasion of India in 1962, to pass a very important message to Chairman Mao: Nixon was interested in a dialogue at the highest level with the communist government, ending decades of isolation," the former CIA official said.

Ahead of the war, when Indira Gandhi sought international support, there was little response from Nixon.

"Nixon saw her as a Soviet partner, if not client, and was deaf to her concerns. It was an ugly meeting by all accounts. Nixon called the Indian prime minister a "bitch" and much worse behind her back; she thought that he was a cold war fanatic who cared nothing about innocent lives. As India under the able leadership of Indira Gandhi was busy liberating people of East Pakistan from the oppressive regime of Islamabad, Nixon was busy seeking global support for Pakistan and asking its allies to supply arms and ammunition to the Pak Army.

And in between, Nixon received a secret intelligence report from CIA that Indira Gandhi was planning to move ahead of East Pakistan and had plans to destroy Pakistan and liberate Kashmir.

"The CIA delivered a secret intelligence report to Nixon suggesting that Mrs Gandhi had designs beyond East Pakistan and was determined to destroy Pakistan entirely in the war. The report was judged alarming and probably incorrect by the CIA's own analysts," Riedel writes.

"Nonetheless, Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence, told the White House that "Gandhi intends to attempt to eliminate Pakistan's armour and air force" and "straighten out" Kashmir.

Nixon called it "one of the few really timely pieces of intelligence the CIA had ever given me." "Helms later told me in a private conversation shortly before he died that the report was inaccurate but too important to be ignored," Riedel wrote.

"He felt that he had not handled it well by highlighting it to Nixon. Nixon dispatched a carrier battle group led by the USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal from the Strait of Malacca to try to save Pakistan's fortunes by an intimidating show of support.

He may have hoped that the Chinese would be emboldened by the move to attack India. It did not work. Indira, who probably had no designs on West Pakistan, was not easily intimidated. It was also too late for the Pakistanis. They asked the American consul in Dacca on December 14, 1971, to tell the Indians that they were ready to surrender. The darkest day in Pakistan's history followed," Riedel wrote.

Indian Express

Bank robbers inspired by Hollywood movie 'Ocean's 11'

Kanpur: Four people, including two students, who carried out a sophisticated robbery - inspired by Hollywood film 'Ocean's 11' - at a bank in Kanpur in November, have been arrested and most of the stolen Rs 23 lakh recovered, police said.

Announcing the solving of the case, Kanpur Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Yashaswi Yadav said that out of the Rs 23 lakh looted from the Bank of Baroda branch in Nirala Nagar in Kanpur, Rs 19 lakh had been recovered from the three persons - Anshul, Shailendra and Jitendra, who were arrested earlier in the day. Their accomplice Atif was picked up by a team of Kanpur police from New Delhi.

Yadav said that what had even stunned the police was the robbers' modus operandi - use of technology and social networking sites in the crime. "The robbers had put tape on their fingers so as not to leave any finger prints, they were wearing helmets and goggles to prevent identification and talked to each other on ear phones," he said, and said that soon after the bank robbery, they broke and threw away their SIM cards and separated.

Four people, including two students, stole Rs 23 lakh from a branch of Bank of Baroda in Kanpur.

During interrogation, the trio told police that they had taken inspiration from Hollywood flick 'Ocean's 11', a film on robberies in Las Vegas casinos. One of the bank robbers is a computer science engineer and other an information technology (IT) engineering student. One of them had also used some of the looted money to pay his college fees.

Zila Ghaziabad: 15 unbelievably corny lines from the film

1. "Gaaon ka sabse pada likha aur SEXFUL (though he wanted to say successful) aadmi hai", says Paresh Rawal when he introduces Vivek Oberoi (Satbir) to a policeman. (He is the most literate and successful person of the district.)

2. "Naa goliyon se kaam hua hai, na gaaliyon se, app angrezi mein hi jhaad dijeyega, sharm se hi mar jaaenge," Paresh Rawal advises Vivek Oberoi during a discussion concerning a disputed land. (Neither foul langauge, nor bullets helped us in getting the work done, you rebuke them in English, they will feel abashed.)

3. "Khade insaan ko maarna aisa hai, jaise mele mein gubbaare fodna," speaks Sanjay Dutt (Thakur Pritam Singh). (To kill a man standing still is like hitting balloons on a target board with a gun.)

4. "Agar pyaar se nahi aaya na toh saale ke pichwade mein itni goliyaan maarunga ke uske bache peetal ke paida honge," says Arshad Warsi (Fauji) to Chandrachur Singh (Satbir's brother) while gravelling him. (If he does not come quietly, I will shoot in his a** unremittingly that he will father children of brass)

5. "Kabhi chhal se, toh kabhi bal se kitno ki lanka dahayi hai, par is shahar ki hawa mein kuch alag hi garmi hai, isliye yahan akal ladane ki baari aayi hai,"Sanjay Dutt while cogitates and mulling over the plan to deal with gangsters. (Have spifflicated many - sometime deceitfully and sometime with power - but now is the time to put the criminals down, slyly.)

6. "Kutta kitna bhi khatarnaak ho jaae, par sher ki nai le pata," utters Sanjay Dutt. (No matter how dangerous a dog becomes, but he can never slaughter a lion.)

7. "Baap dada shikaari, 'Pritam' un pe bhi bhaari, abhi kahan aayi inki baari," say police constables while making laudatory remarks for Sanjay Dutt. (Even ancestors can't outdo Pritam, and thus Pritam will triumph over gangsters.)

8. "Hum kaun se Salman Khan hai jo commitment karke peeche nai hat sakte,"speaks a character, who plays the role of Sangam in the movie. (I am not Salman Khan, and hence, I can renege.)

9. "Yaad toh hum Madhuri Dixit ko bhi karte hai, wo kaun sa milti hai," expresses Sanjay Dutt, who is believed to have dated Madhuri Dixit in the past. (We dream of Madhuri Dixit, but she is not ours.)

10. "Sir apne chikne heroes toh chalte nahi, islie sab Sanjay Dutt bane fir rahe hain," says a police constable. (A police constable takes a dig at present-day heros and says all of them (goons in the scene) are aping Sanjay Dutt.)

11. Crook: "Sir pitaji income tax mein hai"; Sanjay Dutt: "par hum toh rishwat lete hi nahi."

12. Vivek Oberoi's Accomplice: "Ye sab netagiri muje nai aati"; Vivek Oberoi:"haath jodna aata hai? (and then grins)."

13. "Yahi toh Zila ghaziabad hai sahab, yahan koi halka nai moot ta hai." (Zila Ghaziabad is where no one pees lightly.)

14. "Aaj agar maut khud mere aur 'Fauji' ke beeche mein khadi ho jaae toh main maut ko bhi maar dunga." (I will kill even death if it comes between me and 'Fauji'.)

15. "Jo na kar paaye bandok ki goli, wo kar jaaye bus ek mithi boli." teaches Vivek Oberoi to pupils. (There are things which can't be done forcefully, but you can get them done with sweet talk)

ibnlive

Apologising for Amritsar is pointless

Better redress is to never forget

If Cameron feels real contrition he should make teaching of the British empire a compulsory part of the GCSE history syllabus

On 13 April 1919 a large group of Punjabis protesting against British rule gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. They were incensed at the arrest of two of their leaders, and for 24 hours the city had been consumed by riots. At five in the afternoon, General Reginald Dyer marched into Jallianwala Bagh with 140 troops, most of them Gurkhas, but with a few Sikhs and Baluchis as well. Having blocked the exits, they fired into the peaceful and unresisting crowds until they had exhausted all their ammunition. Official estimates put the casualties at 379 killed and 1,200 injured. Popular estimates put the casualties as much as 10 times higher.

The massacre was a major turning point for the Indian freedom struggle and, along with Gandhi's Salt March 11 years later in 1930, was one of the two forces that gave India's march towards independence its unstoppable momentum. For a generation of Anglophile Indians brought up on British propaganda that British rule was just and uncorrupt, and that it had replaced centuries of arbitrary tyranny at the hands of brutal Muslim invaders, Jallianwala Bagh was a moment of revelation. Rabindranath Tagore immediately gave back his knighthood. The Nehrus were radicalised overnight. Gandhi lost his faith – intact until that point – in British justice, and wrote that he had "underrated the forces of evil" in the British empire.

But Jallianwala Bagh was by no means the worst atrocity committed by the British in India. Following the British conquest of Bengal in 1757, the province was left devastated by war and high taxation, then stricken by famine. According to Edmund Burke, the women of Bengal suffered mass rape at the hands of East India Company tax collectors. Certainly the wealth of Bengal rapidly drained into British bank accounts, while its prosperous weavers and artisans were coerced "like so many slaves" by their new British masters, and the markets flooded with British products.

More horrific still were the actions of the British army sent into Afghanistan in 1842 to take revenge for the massacre of troops during the retreat from Kabul earlier in the year. All the villages in its path were looted and torched and the women were raped. When the army got to Kabul the city was deliberately consigned to the flames.

These horrors were merely a dress rehearsal for what followed a decade later across northern India. During the suppression of the Indian uprising of 1857, tens if not hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in British reprisals: in one neighbourhood of Delhi alone – Kucha Chelan – some 1,400 unarmed citizens were cut down. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a million souls, was left an empty ruin, as was Cawnpore (now Kanpur) and Lucknow. These massacres, major war crimes by any standards, make Jallianwala Bagh look a picnic.

Should David Cameron have apologised for all this? While it makes sense for politicians to apologise for their own mistakes, it is surely pointless for them to apologise for the mistakes of others committed long before they were born. For politicians to make apologies for events long in the past can anyway be counterproductive, often looking more like political expediency than genuine contrition. This is particularly the case if you are coming to a country with a delegation from British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce to boost trade, as Cameron was doing to India. When I tweeted the advance rumours of Cameron's apology for Amritsar, my Indian Twitter followers were united in derision.

What Cameron can do, however, if he feels real contrition for Britain's past, is to make the teaching of the British empire a compulsory part of the GCSE history syllabus. The empire was, for better or worse, the most important thing the British ever did: it completely changed the shape of the modern world. Yet most British people are by and large completely unaware of the details of their imperial history. My own children learned Tudors and the Nazis over and again in history class, but never came across a whiff of Indian history. This means that they, like most people who go through the British education system, are wholly ill-equipped to judge either the good or the bad in what we did to the rest of the world.

For while there are things the British did that can be celebrated and of which we can be proud – the incorruptibility of the Indian civil service, the railways, the rule of law, or the laying of the foundations for parliamentary democracies through legislative assemblies and so on – these have to be weighed against a long succession of terrible war crimes. For we must never forget that whatever its achievements, the British empire, like every empire before or since, was both gained and maintained by military might, and built over a mountain of skulls of those it conquered and defeated.

william dalrymple, guardian

How a Rs 30 lakh burglary at Opera house inspired making of Special 26

On the afternoon of March 19, 1987, Arvind Inamdar received an urgent phone call at his office at the Police Headquarters in Mumbai. Inamdar would retire in 2000 as director-general of police for Maharashtra, but he was in the crime division then and this call was about something odd happening in Opera House where Mumbai's most exclusive jewellery stores were located.



Inamdar was told that a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raid had taken place at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zhaveri (TBZ), the most prestigious jeweller of them all.

They came in, pulled down the shutters, ordered customers and staff to wait and took the registers," recalls Inamdar. All that was standard for the CBI, the feared criminal investigation agency, but what happened next was not. "We were told they had taken a lot of jewellery and decamped," says Inamdar.

What the police found was even stranger. The 'CBI team' that staged the raid was still there, except for their leader, who they knew as 'Mohan Singh'.

He had met the team members after placing a classified ad in the March 18 issue of The Times of India, asking for "Dynamic Graduates for Intelligence Officers Post and Security Officers Post".

Applicants were told to come to the Taj Intercontinental, the city's premium hotel, between 10 am and 5 pm. Twenty-six were finally selected, some of them, the Times report would note, already government servants presumably looking for more prestigious jobs.

The team had been told to report to the Taj the next day at 11 am, where Singh had given them their CBI 'identity cards'.

An hour later, they boarded a luxury coach that Singh had hired through the Taj and taken on what they were told was a trial raid.

The target was TBZ and matters went as planned, with Pratap Zhaveri, the owner, and his staff too scared of the CBI to raise any protest or ask for proof. They said later that Singh and his team acted "in perfect raid-like attitude" (whatever that means, as the Times wrote in an incredulous edit after the episode). Singh had then gone around the showcases picking up jewellery as 'samples'. They were placed in polybags and stapled with slips showing a government seal.




Then Singh told the staff to wait as he had to visit another shop, and walked out. He got in the bus and went back to the hotel. The police later found he took a taxi from there, and then, at one point, got into an auto. But there the trail went cold. "We never found a trace of him after that," says Inamdar.

It was not for want of trying. The police put out a nationwide alert, sent a team to Kerala, since Singh had checked into the Taj saying he was from Trivandrum. A man named George Augustine Fernandes was arrested there, but he turned out to be a petty thief. Inamdar says police informers were pumped for possible gang connections, but these did not seem to exist.

They followed up the obvious thought that he was a CBI officer gone rogue, but Inamdar says they did extensive checks of CBI records and discounted that possibility. "We even sent a team to Dubai, because we heard he might be there, but got nothing," he says. Singh appeared to have acted alone and left no traces. "You could say it was the perfect crime," says Inamdar.

Neeraj Pandey read about this story many years later. "I think it was in 2000-01, and it caught my attention because it seemed like such a great story," he says. He kept it in his head and years later, as a filmmaker with the success of his first film A Wednesday under his belt, he set out to make a movie inspired by this story.

The result, Special 26, with Akshay Kumar in the con artist's role, has been one of the first Bollywood hits of the year. It is not a direct reconstruction of the TBZ heist, since it pulls its own confidence trick on the viewers, taking the story in an unexpected direction. But the germ of the idea came from that day in 1987.

Could such a con be pulled off today? It might seem unlikely given the ubiquity of cellphones, CCTV cameras and other security measures. Yet, as we know from stories of email frauds and computer crimes, con artists simply move blithely to appropriate new technology.

The con artist is always with us, and the game the police play in tracking him down, always looking for that tell-tale slip, the one con too far, the trace you can't help leaving behind. And this perhaps is why when Inamdar is asked how he would react if, so many years later, he got another call, from the mysterious Singh, just to touch base with his opponent, he says: "I would ask him how he managed to vanish so perfectly."
ET

SC sets up 6-member team to examine Radia tapes

The Supreme Court has set up a six-member team -- five from the CBI and one from the Income Tax department to examine tapes containing conversation of Niira Radia and others.

The Supreme Court on February 8, said the tapped telephone conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos and others needs to be scrutinised by the CBI to find out the element of criminality.

A bench of justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhaya said that it had gone through transcripts of some of the conversations which were not personal and innocuous in nature.

Excerpts from the tapes earlier leaked in the media had sparked a political storm with the conversations bringing out the nature of corporate lobbying and also its purported impact on politics. The income tax department placed transcripts of 5,800 tapped telephone conversations in 50 sealed envelopes.

The conversations were recorded as part of surveillance of Radia's phone on a complaint to Finance Minister on November 16, 2007 alleging that within a span of nine years she had built up a business empire worth Rs 300 crore.

The government had recorded 180 days of Radia's conversations--first from August 20, 2008 onwards for 60 days and then from October 19 for another 60 days. Later, on May 11, 2009, her phone was again put on surveillance for another 60 days following a fresh order given on May 8.
rediff

Nervy moment for PM as Prez protocol puzzles him:

While images on TV showed the majesty of the opening session of Parliament, here's the inside story: The PM did not know where he was to stand to welcome the President into the Central Hall. "Where do I stand and behind whom in the procession?" Dr Manmohan Singh asked Secretary General Lok Sabha T K Viswanathan.

Dr Manmohan Singh, Dr Hamid Ansari and Meira Kumar were standing outside the main gate of Parliament to receive the President. Viswanathan fished out his protocol chart and said the PM had to stand behind the Speaker and was supposed to follow the Speaker and the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to Central Hall.

rediff

In Praise of Bangla, My Mother Tongue

I take pride in the fact that despite being born and raised in New York City, I speak Bangla fluently. I credit this mostly to my Bangladeshi parents for being brutal in their approach to teaching my younger sister and me a language that that was so violently fought for.

Feb. 21 is recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as International Mother Language Day in honor of linguistic diversity, prompted by Bangladesh’s 1952 National Language Movement. Prior to independence in 1971, present-day Bangladesh was East Pakistan. When the Pakistani government moved to eradicate Bangla from official use, despite its centuries-old history, and replace it with Urdu, Dhaka University students staged a peaceful protest on Feb. 21, 1952. The Pakistani police opened fire, injuring and killing protesters.

As young parents and new American immigrants, my parents were no less passionate about preserving their beloved language in their new home. My sister and I weren’t allowed to speak to our parents in English for the first 15 or 16 years of our life. To do so was considered disrespectful, even though they spoke English fluently. If we wanted something or if we had something to say, we could only say it in Bangla. My mother was a homemaker until I started school, and in those early years, she shared her love for Bangla songs, poetry and stories with us, showing us the romantic side of this poetic language.
Courtesy of Jennifer ChowdhuryJennifer Chowdhury, left, with her sister, Jabina Chowdhury, at Niagara Falls in 1993.

I was so accustomed to speaking in my parents’ tongue that in kindergarten I was put in a class with children for whom English was a second language because I was too shy to speak in English. (I was transferred into a regular class when my teacher figured out I was just timid.)

So even though I think, read and write primarily in English, I can’t really claim it as my first language. Growing up in New York City during the late 1980s and 1990s, when most people didn’t even know where Bangladesh was and referred to it as “that little country next to India,” Bangla was the strong thread that kept my family together. It was something my parents shared and entrusted to their American-born children.

When I was 15, my father sent me to Dhaka to spend the summer with my grandmother. When I arrived, my relatives in Dhaka were amazed at the ease and clarity of my Bangla. I was surprised that they would even fathom the notion that I couldn’t speak the language — how else was I supposed to communicate with my parents and elders? The idea that speaking in English with my parents, or any other Bengali adult, was a form of disrespect had been drilled into my brain.

When I started high school, I hoped and prayed that I would make a few Bengali friends with whom I could communicate with in my mystical language. But that didn’t happen until I started college. I wished so badly that my Guyanese, Dominican and Indian friends were Bangladeshi because some things were just easier to express in Bangla. For a history project in 10th grade, I decided to research the origins of Bangla. I learned about the Bong (Vong) tribe and Bangla’s close association to Sanskrit. I also learned about Bhasha Andolan (National Language Movement) and National Mother Language Day.

In 2010, I went to Shaheed Minar, Dhaka’s national monument commemorating the National Language Movement within Dhaka University, for the first time. I’d heard stories (my grandmother’s uncle was a part of the police force that was ordered to shoot the Dhaka University students, but he refused), read books and seen movies about the movement. But I hadn’t expected such a strong emotional response as I crossed the university grounds. Walking past the Bangla Academy, I found myself wishing that I was a part of Bangladesh’s history as a Dhaka University student.

Undulating crowds pushed me this way and that, and the sun burned into my skin, but that couldn’t keep me from marveling at the fruits of the shahids’(martyrs) labor all around me — masses of people who openly spoke a language that was almost banned, pushing and tripping over each other in a country that is now free from anyone’s rule except its own. I shared an entire heritage with these people. We had survived the slaughtering of language and freedom.

When I finally got up close to the monument and saw the bright red sun reflected in the back of the statue of the mother beckoning to her fallen sons, I found myself closing my eyes among the crowds for a brief second, and I expressed my gratitude for the people who laid down their lives so that my parents could openly speak and study in their centuries-old language, move across oceans and pass it down to me.

nyt

How Robert Vadra made a killing in the Rajasthan sun

You could call him India's canniest real estate investor. Or you could suggest that he was helped by those who knew he was the son-in-law of India's most powerful politician. But whichever way to you want to see Robert Vadra, there is little doubt that he made, and is still making, his biggest killing in the deserts of Rajasthan, a state run by a Congress government under Ashok Gehlot.

Parts of this story have already been told in the media, including Firstpost. What we now bring you is the real scale of Vadra's land holdings, and the humongous profit potential embedded in owning over 10,000 acres of land acquired for a song from unwary farmers. While his mother-in-law is trying to ensure that farmers get more than market prices, Vadra's caper is about skimming the cream himself with inside knowledge.

Sixty percent of the state (208,110 sq km) is low-cost desert land. It is dead land with no water or habitation in sight. The cost is often as low as Rs 20,000 an acre at some places. You can't make a killing unless you know someone would want to buy land at significantly a higher price than this.

In this desert state, Vadra picked up piece by piece of wasteland that was strategically located near power sub-stations in Bikaner and elsewhere. And from the few examples at hand, he is raking it in. A plot of 30 hectares costing Rs 4.45 lakh bought two years ago now fetches nearly Rs 2 crore!


]No applause please: Vadra has proven to be an astute investor in realty. PTINot only that, but in some places he is practically a monopoly seller of the land. In Kolayat, for example, Vadra calls the shots. His companies own nearly 90 percent of the wasteland there.

Through his agents and companies, he directly bought hundreds of acres of land from small and big farmers in areas with solar power potential. According to sources, Vadra owns over 10,000 acres of land in the state today.

Only the state government - and the central government - knew that land around power sub-stations would be valuable once they announced plans incentivise solar power generation. So, logically, the state should have bought land first.

It did, but it did something peculiar. The Congress government in Rajasthan acquired 50,000 hectares of land for solar plants, but bypassed the wasteland near power sub-stations during the acquisition process. Solar plants situated close to sub-stations are most economical since this means you have to invest less in grid lines to evacuate the power.

Did Gehlot's government know that Vadra was going to buy, or did Vadra know in advance that the state government was going to announce it solar policy well in advance? Firstpostsent a mail to Vadra to get his version of things, but at the time of writing he had failed to respond.

Vadra started creating a land bank near power sub-stations from June 2009. Barely eight months later, in February 2010, the Central Government announced the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (NSM) Policy under which huge subsidies (nearly 40 percent) were offered for setting up grid-tied solar power plants.


]Land in Bikaner where a solar plant is to be set up. Raman Kripal/ FirstpostAlmost immediately, Vadra's land located near power sub-stations soared in value. The land bought by the state government had practically no takers because most of it was not close enough for easy grid connections. The government is now mulling developing solar parks on this land by setting up elaborate evacuation systems. It will spend a pretty penny in doing so, while Vadra is sitting on crores of profits - and potential profits.

Not one of the 23 companies which obtained licences to set up grid-connected solar power plants under NSM opted for government land! This, despite the fact that the state government offered to lease out or allot the land at 10 percent of the market rate.

Now, stuck with land that no one wants, Rajasthan Energy Minister Jitender Singh says his government will build huge solar parks on the 50,000 hectares by setting up the necessary infrastructure.

For hundreds of private developers who have registered for solar plants in Rajasthan, land near a power sub-station is the top choice. This means they don't have to bear the cost of putting up gridlines and related infrastructure to connect to transmission sub-stations. Not only that, by setting up solar projects next to sub-stations, the investor suffers minimum loss in transmission and distribution of power.

The state government's land policy helped Vadra make crores because its own land policy involves only leasing the land, not selling it.

“This makes things more uncertain for a developer, because the government keeps changing and so does the solar policy,'' a private developer requesting anonymity said.

For instance, on 24 February 2009, the Rajasthan government had issued a circular making it mandatory for solar power producers to supply a certain amount of free power to the state as they were getting vast amounts of land at throwaway rates. Moreover, the government shut “open” access for solar power plants built on the allotted government land. While private solar power developers who procured land on their own were free to sell power outside the state under the “open” access system, those opting to lease government land would have got stuck in case the state did not buy their power.

This circular did not make sense, and was overturned in the new solar policy of the state government in 2011. Under this policy, a private developer can take government land, but the land acquired by the government is 20-30 km away from the grid sub-stations.

The target in the first phase of NSM is 1,000 MW of grid-connected solar power projects by 2013. Jitender Singh says: “The decks have already been cleared for 820 mw of solar power. And over 800 private solar developers have registered with us.''

Vadra's land is thus in huge demand for grid-tied solar projects. He is selling these `agricultural' plots exclusively for solar plants. Since the state is promoting solar power, the rate for converting agricultural land to industrial use is lower than the normal rate prevailing in the state.

Pratap Raju, Joint Managing Director of PR Fonroche Pvt Ltd, who bought land from Vadra's company Blue Breeze Trading Pvt Ltd and Sky Light Realty Pvt Ltd, says: “Bikaner did not have quite as high isolation as other parts of Rajasthan. It was still quite good. More importantly, this land we chose was 2 km from the sub-station, which meant evacuation costs would be less. Moreover, the sub-station was a 220 kv and brand new, which meant that we could expect quite high uptime/availability. So juggling these several variables - insolation, distance to sub-station, available capacity at the said sub-station - we found this land to be a top choice for us.''

PR Fonroche, a French joint venture, is developing two solar projects totalling 20 mw of power at Kolayat, about 15 km away from Bikaner. The company had signed a power purchase agreement in 2011 and it bought land in May 2012, just in time to launch the project on the targeted deadline.


]The site of an upcoming solar plant in Bikaner. Raman Kripal/ FirstpostSo what kind of killing did Vadra make? Raju says that the price he paid was perhaps something like five times the price of land just three-four years ago.

“It is important to choose the right land at a good price, rather than lowest price, to make the project viable,'' Raju told Firstpost.

In fact, Kolayat is attracting several other private developers. Greentech Power Pvt Ltd, Alex Spectrum Radiations (P) Ltd, RH Prasad & Company Pvt Ltd and Hasya Enterprises (P) Ltd.

It is not known if they too bought land from Vadra, but in Kolayat, Vadra's companies own nearly 90 percent of the wasteland. They may have no choice.

Vadra began his real estate investments in Rajasthan in 2009, when the Central government had not yet announced its new solar policy. There was only a hint of it in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement (while launching India's Action Plan on Climate Change on 30 June 2008), that in the new energy strategy, “the sun occupies center-stage, as it should, being literally the original source of all energy.”

“We will pool our scientific, technical and managerial talents, with sufficient financial resources, to develop solar energy as a source of abundant energy to power our economy and to transform the lives of our people. Our success in this endeavour will change the face of India. It would also enable India to help change the destinies of people around the world'', said the PM.

Well, one person whose financial destiny it changed was his party boss's son-in-law.

Right from the beginning, it was clear that the Rajasthan government was sure to get the lead role in the new solar energy policy because it had perhaps the best solar radiation in India (6-7 kwh/sq m/day) and a vast pool of wasteland. Jodhpur district alone, a solar potential district, is bigger than Kerala.

To execute the policy, the Congress government in Rajasthan started creating a land bank in districts with solar potential. Surprisingly, land that was close to the grid was ignored during the acquisition.

And this is where Robert Vadra jumped in. In 2009, much before the grid-tied solar power generation policy was announced, he started buying wasteland near the sub-stations. Unsuspecting farmers, who live with the hope that their land, which is barren and of no use, will get acquired one day, suddenly found a messiah in Robert Vadra's agent Mahesh Nagar, brother of Faridabad-based Congress leader Lalit Nagar.

Just 30 km outside Bikaner is a 220 kv grid sub-station located in Kolayat tehsil on National Highway 15. Between June 2009 and June 2010, 63 land deals were struck in Kolayat. And in all these deals, Mahesh Nagar is at the forefront, as an agent of Robert Vadra's companies, Blue Breeze, Sky Light, North India IT Parks, Real Earth, etc.


]A solar power plant in Bikaner, Rajasthan. The land was acquired from a firm owned by Vadra. Raman Kripal/ FirstpostIn some deals, he represented other individuals, including Robert Vadra's Private Secretary Manoj Arora, and his own brother Lalit Nagar, apart from some unknown companies. But Vadra's pointperson Mahesh Nagar is the agent in all the deals.

Firstpost sent a detailed questionnaire to Robert Vadra and Manoj Arora, asking them specifically about these individuals and unknown companies. Vadra has not replied yet to our queries.

Over 2,200 hectares of land was bought in Kolayat on a war footing in one year. One hectare is equivalent to 3.95 acres. So nearly 8,800 acres of land, equivalent to one sector of Gurgaon, was sold off in Kolayat. This is the tip of the iceberg, because this information is based on investigations conducted near just one power sub-station only. There are nearly 30 power sub-stations in Rajasthan.

Here's an indicator of the kind of profits Vadra could have made. A plot of 30 hectares costing Rs 4.45 lakh two years ago now fetches nearly Rs 2 crore!

Vadra's Sky Light Realty Private Ltd bought this plot in Kolayat on 31 March 2010. Just two years later, on 4 May 2012 (according to a sale deed available with Firstpost), Sky Light sold off 29.36 hectares of land in Kolayat for nearly Rs 2 crore (Rs 1,99,58,121) to French joint Venture Fonroche Saaras Energy Pvt Ltd.

The land was as barren as it was with the farmer. Vadra's company did not add any value to it. Blue Breeze and Sky Light together sold over 55 hectares of land to Fonroche.

Likewise, Vadra's Sky Light Realty Pvt Ltd sold 3.25 hectares to one Rishipal, resident of Haryana, for Rs 22 lakh (Rs 7 lakh a hectare) on 11 May 2012. Interestingly, Rishipal sold this land to Fonroche seven days later on 18 May 2012.

BJP MP from Bikaner and former IAS officer Arjun Meghwal wondered why Robert Vadra had to invest in dead land in Bikaner. “One can understand Vadra investing in the Gurgaon realty sector, but why Bikaner of all the places,'' asked Meghwal.

Well, he has his answer now. Bikaner is fast emerging to as the next solar hub in the country! And Robert Vadra made his hay in the sun.
firstpost

100 pc attendance at govt offices in WB on bandh day

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who is against the bandh and had
warned government employees from remaining absent, said attendance at
the state secretariat, Writers' Buildings, was 100 per cent. Finance
Minister Amit Mitra said that his department also registered 100 per
cent attendance. Many government employees stayed overnight in their
offices.

Bandh supporters took out processions in some areas. Commissioner of
Kolkata Police Surajit Karpurakayastha was on the roads in the morning
to review security. "Everything is normal. There is enough police," he
said.

Trains services in the Howrah and Sealdah divisions of Eastern Railway
remained more or less normal, though there was some disruption in
Sealdah South due to squatting by strike supporters in the morning,
railway sources. Metro Rail services in the metropolis was normal as
also flights at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport.
Rediff

How the Delhi gang-rape has changed Indian women forever

Embarrassed in case her friends overheard, the young woman I was saying goodbye to spoke in almost a whisper. “I probably wouldn’t catch the bus back to your hotel if I were you and it’s better if you don’t go back alone in an auto-rikshaw. I wouldn’t anyway.”


I had been interviewing students at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for a special Woman’s Hour programme for BBC Radio 4. It’s a mixed college and the women students here have a reputation for being firebrands. Many of the female students I spoke to were preparing to take to the streets for last week’s Valentine’s Day One Billion Rising March. The Brainchild of Eve Ensler, the playwright behind the Vagina Monologues, It was one of the biggest international protests by women for women, calling for an end to physical and sexual violence around the world.


Just six months ago such advice, coming from an otherwise sassy would be marcher, would have struck me as both ironic and ridiculous. On this occasion I received it with thanks. I’m no stranger to Delhi, it was only three in the afternoon and the journey would barely have taken 10 minutes. Yet even though I hate to admit it, I was relieved my producer was travelling in the same direction and would drop me off in his taxi on the way to the bureau.


New Delhi, the crowded, colourful and cheerfully bonkers city that I have both worked and played in, feels like a foreign territory to me now. It has been redefined by a single act of unspeakable violence which may yet change the very fabric of India.


On December 16 last year, a 23 year-old woman and her male companion were on their way home from the movies. In a residential area in upmarket South Delhi, not far from the JNU campus, they caught what they thought was a private bus. Many such vehicles operate in the city where middle class’s demands are outstripping government infrastructure.



As they got on they noticed six male passengers on board. Almost immediately they began to taunt the woman, making lewd comments about her ‘boyfriend.’ The situation escalated quickly, and while the driver kept the vehicle moving, they battered the woman’s companion with a tyre iron.

As she fought to protect him, the men dragged her to the back of the bus and gang-raped her. As the bus kept moving, the rapists changed places with the driver so he could have his turn. Behind the tinted windows, they used the iron bar to sexually violate her, causing such horrific internal injuries that she later died.






The fact that the victim was a student and that she had been taken from an affluent suburb of Delhi made the press take note in an unprecedented manner. Frightened editors had daughters who moved in the same parts of the city, and so the story saturated India’s many rolling news networks, and dominated the front pages of the papers.

Suspects were arrested within 24 hours, yet that did nothing to sate the rage growing throughout India. Just six months before, news channels were running looped footage of a school girl being stripped and sexually assaulted on the streets of Guwahati in Assam. Fifty men were involved and the whole incident was caught on camera.

Even though the faces of the mob were clearly visible, police made only a handful of arrests. It seemed to prove what women’s groups had been saying for years. When it comes to violence against women in India - the police do little, the courts do less and society often vilifies the victim for somehow ‘asking for it’.

However, after several million Indians witnessed the ordeal of the helpless and utterly blameless Guwahti schoolgirl on their TV’s, the Delhi bus rape tipped them over the edge. A mass protest for women’s rights seemed to grow over night. Those who voiced the ‘old attitudes,’ were met with condemnation.rape victim in New Delhi, India

“Disgusting man and disgusting words,” was how Shabana Azmi legendary Indian actress turned social activist described Asaram Bapu, an influential spiritual leader who waded into the post-rape debate.

“He told the world that the victim should have taken God’s name. She could have held the hand of one of the men and called him brother. By failing to do that she was partly to blame for what happened. We will not stand for such rubbish any longer”.

Azmi is one of many high profile Indian women who have come out to demand the Indian government takes action. “Things need to change from top to bottom and the lawmakers need to lead the way.”
The government's actions have been unusually swift

In response the government commissioned a retired Chief Justice, Jagdish Sharan Verma, to recommend legal changes which might better protect Indian women. The 631 page report was released on January 24. Verma’s committee had taken some 80,000 submissions before making sweeping recommendations which were startling in their scope.

They looked not only at rape but also acid attacks, child sexual abuse, the practice of stripping and humiliating women in public, the abuse of women by the army in conflict zones and perhaps most startlingly of all, rape within marriage. Although most in India were aware that such things went on, never before had they been presented with such damning clarity.

I personally couldn’t believe how far Verma had gone, and how quickly. His committee had wrapped up proceedings in just 29 days, in a country where the legal cogs turn at a maddeningly slow pace. A friend once wailed to me, “Indians take the urgency out of manyana,” and anyone who has fallen foul of the endless bureaucracy there can sympathise.
Change is thankfully happening in India

However the speed of Verma’s report and the largely warm response to it convince me that things are changing quickly in India. Almost overnight, the appallingly arcane turn of phrase used to describe public groping as “eve-teasing” has been replaced with what it really is: sexual assault. The message is spreading beyond the urban elite of the capital. While visiting my family in Kanpur I was stunned at how politically literate my female relatives had become. Never before have I heard them speaking of their “rights”.

My young nieces have been posting angry blogs questioning the way in which they have been brought up, not just by their parents but by teachers too. “I’m not a precious statue that needs to be wrapped up and protected, I want to breathe the air as freely and safely as my brother,” posted one.

In a land that worships goddesses in temples, it seems finally as if flesh and blood women are on the verge of getting better treatment than their mothers. Why? Because they are asking for it.

My good health is bad for Congress, says Badal

Wooing voters for his party candidate in the Moga assemby byelection, Shiromani Akali Dal patriach and Punjab  Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday regaled the crowds with his wit and sarcasm mainly directed at his political opponents.

"Every election is a health tonic for me and my good health is bad for Congress' health," he told an election meeting in Moga.

Referring to repeated comments on his health by Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh during campaigning for the bypoll, Badal said, "Sorry captain sahib, I have no good news to give you about my health. I am too hale and hearty for your good. My good health is bad for your health!"

"What a pity that an organisation like the Congress should believe that their political future depends entirely on my health. Captain sahib, if you are praying only for my bad health, I and my doctors have no good news to give you on this," he told the meeting.

"I am not only healthy but keep getting healthier and healthier and younger and younger. Election especially works on me like a magic tonic," he said.

"The Congress and its leaders are still to regain full consciousness after the sunstroke they suffered in the state assembly poll and the party needs immediate and major surgical intervention to save it from sinking even deeper into coma," the SAD supremo said.

"The Congress is in last gasps of a dying man and Moga will see its last rites as a party in Punjab," he said.

Captivating the people with his inimitable style, Badal, turning to his personal physician, said "if possible, spare some time to look after captain sahib's health also. He needs you more than I do."

"After the Moga result, captain sahib and his Congress party are going to need a lot of anti-depressants.

"Keep these anti-depressant tablets ready and please deliver these to captain sahib personally at his residence, lest he tries to drown his blues by taking some other liquid forms of medicine," the chief minister said.

"I am a people's man and I am most comfortable only with them. I am not a palace pet," he said in a veiled dig at Amarinder.

rediff