Start the weekend with this write-up on Hon. Rly Minister Sh. Lalu Prasad Yadav in The American (Hat Tip: Ajay)
…move on to a thought-provoking article on Pubs and Women Empowerment by Anil Chawla
and finally, read General Vijay Oberoi’s thoughts on Death, Valour and Awards (email excerpts below)
Excerpts from all these article are below, as always.

A few weeks ago Amitabh alerted me to two very interesting initiatives launched by Shivraj Singh’s government in Bhopal recently.
The first is a website called “MP Samadhan” – a site specifically developed to deal with public grievances (“Samaadhaan” can be loosely translated as satisfactory resolution of a query/complaint/grievance etc).
The second is called “Ideas for CM” which explicitly asks for people’s ”…help in fulfilling the aspirations of development and credible Governance” in MP.   
Unfortunately when I asked some friends and others about the websites, they had never heard of them
If any of you have …

This is a quick post or more accurately, a collection of snippets in reaction to recent news about a bloggerin Kerala being refused protection against summons issued by the High Court in Maharashtra over comments posted on an Orkut group managed by him.
To be honest, I was a bit surprised when I read that a Supreme Court “…Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam refused to protect a 19-year-old Kerala boy, who had started a community on Orkut against Shiv Sena, from protection against summons received from a …

Some of you may have come across an article on Islam-watch recently that contained several derogatory references – supposedly from vedic texts – towards women and their position in ancient Hindu society. I was first alerted to it a few weeks ago by Jagmohan.
While I was still trying to compile references and source material to refute the claims made in the article, Parama Karuna-ji introduced me to Raju Maliger who forwarded me his rebuttal to Abul Kasem.
I would put this essay by Sh Maliger in the category of *Must read*. …

Some of you may remember the scandal that rocked Tony Blair’s government in 2001 when one of his aides appeared to suggest that 9/11 offered a good opportunity to distract attention from “bad” news.
I was reminded of that when I chanced upon Ahmed Ali Shaik’s post on Satyam Scam – Politics, Media and Lies (Hat Tip: Vijay). In the post, Ahmed wrote:
It’s been more than a month since Satyam scam came to light…with elections round the corner, I feel that Satyam will get very little space in both television and print media in …

Just back from a hectic and intense 10-day visit to India.
I did four cities on this visit…and on an average, slept about 5 hours each day…by 7pm on most days, my throat would begin to hurt (from talking too much)…and I actually managed to run down a fully charged phone battery in about 15 hours during one of the days!
Highlight of the visit was an hour I spent with Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s parents. It was a moving and unforgettable experience…I will write more on this in the next few days.
Had …