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Articles Archive for March 2011

Jammu & Kashmir related, Pakistan related, Personal »

[10 Mar 2011 | 2 Comments | 282 views]
A 5-min video snippet and few slides on J&K

A 5-min video snippet from a discussion on Jammu & Kashmir that I introduced and moderated at the London School of Economics last week.
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Please take a moment to subscribe to my YouTube channel too.  I have also attached below the slides I shared during the discussion. Comments welcome, as always. Thanks

Jammu & Kashmir LSE Mar ’11
View more presentations from B Shantanu

*** Related: Slides from past presentations can be found here.

Miscellaneous »

[9 Mar 2011 | 4 Comments | 442 views]
Your chance to understand “politics” & make some money on the side (legally!)

Dear All, courtesy good friend Manali Shah, here is “an exciting opportunity to get an in-depth understanding (of) Indian politics” (emphasis added)
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JOB ANNOUNCEMENT
Project Coordinator
Empowering India
www.EmpoweringIndia.org is an award winning initiative of Liberty Institute. The goal is to make democracy more meaningful, by providing access to information, encouraging active citizenship, promoting transparency, and improving understanding of the electoral/ political processes in India.
This web platform allows citizens to access information about candidates and constituency, contesting state assembly and parliamentary elections. The objective is to empower the citizens with information, and enable …

Corruption in India, Current Affairs, Politics and Governance in India »

[6 Mar 2011 | 26 Comments | 1,003 views]
What the hell is going on in this country? Kuch nayee baat batao, yaar!

Continued from Part I.  The fascinating story of a certain Mr Hasan Ali Khan would have remained just a story but for a PIL petition by Sh. Ram Jethmalani and a Supreme Court bench which clearly felt enough was enough. Yesterday, I shared with you the trail of news-reports leading up to February of this year.  The final trigger to this post were three news-reports that appeared last week and a remarkable observation by Supreme Court.  The first of these three reports from last week was by CNN-IBN that confirmed what …

Corruption in India, Politics and Governance in India »

[5 Mar 2011 | 5 Comments | 541 views]
A stud farm owner, arms deals & missing billions (dollars!)

This has been one of the longest pending posts in my draft folder – going back almost 10 months to May 2010.  The reason for not posting this before was only partly laziness. The more relevant reason were the skeletons that kept tumbling out of the cupboard every few months. Read on for the amazing story of a stud farm owner, arms deals and missing billions..(please note that emphasis has been added throughout by me;  I have added “$ millions” equivalent figures at several places since “Rs Crores” appears to …

Miscellaneous, Personal »

[5 Mar 2011 | No Comment | 100 views]
While you were sleeping…

…not quiet! But while you were here on the blog, below are a few things I posted over at the “Satyameva Jayate” page on facebook.
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A mini quiz on the occassion of Maha ShivRatri. Who said this:
“If Om Namah Shivay is the reason I didn’t become president, then certainly it’s a great blessing…”
For the answer, pl click the link…
A three-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India SH Kapadia..said the appointment of Central Vigilance Commisioner, PJ Thomas was illegal and that he must go. The apex court further said criminal …

Personal, Politics and Governance in India »

[3 Mar 2011 | 6 Comments | 255 views]
From Hacking & Global Warming to Reconstructing India…

…or how to get to the matter of what you really want to discuss…particularly when you are unable to connect your laptop to the projector AND the audience is a restless group of 150+ very smart 19-year olds…and you don’t have all the time in the world…and there is no bar on questions!
For your viewing pleasure, the beginning of the talk at Sunderdeep Engineering College at Ghaziabad, Feb ’11 (uploaded on facebook). This turned into a 1.5hr free-wheeling (and impromptu!) discussion/Q&A…
It was also a lesson for me on how to …