Today is the 104th birth anniversary of Sardar Bhagat Singh Shaheed – a man who truly became a legend in his own lifetime. His story must be familiar to almost all of you. Many of you will also remember his crime – shooting a police officer in response to the “lathi charge” on a gathering that resulted in the death of Punjab Kesri, Lala Lajpat Rai. But few may know that patriotism and participation in the freedom struggle ran in the family. His uncles as well as his father were members …

..or The Great Joke that is Indian Media – Part XVI !
Please have a look at the two images below…They refer to news-reports of certain politicians implicated in a crime. They are both from the same newspaper and are fairly recent (one from yesterday; another from a few months back). Notice anything strange?

Source: Missing woman: Rajasthan Minister is accused of her murder and rape

Source: CBI arrests Punjab BJP MLA for graft, names minister too
I would like to think that the curious omission of the name of the political party to which …

Dear All: I finally managed to upload the video of my talk and Q&A at IIM-Indore on 1st Sept ’11…Here is the entire playlist (also below):

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These are my favourites of the lot:

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Interestingly, in an Op-Ed for Pioneer written a few days later, Shashi Shekhar made a point very similar to the one I mentioned in the Open Government, Information and RTI clip (emphasis added):
Hard questions need to be asked on why the focus of the RTI Act was not on creating an open Government where information was freely available, thus …

Dear friends, some of you will remember the conversation I had a few days back with the proud parents of Captain Saurabh Kalia, Kargil’s first war hero – who has been all but forgotten by the “official” media and the government machinery. I sent an email to Dr Kalia after the call requesting details of his efforts to get justice and offering whatever little help I can..In response, I received this very moving email written by him. I sought his permission to reproduce it on the blog. He kindly agreed…The …

This post was prompted by a tweet from Ashik earlier this week.  He wrote:
Who has paid money for this? Congress party or Sonia/Manmohan? Isnt this free publicity by taxpayers money?

Before we go any further, here’s a pop-quiz: Can you guess the number of schemes, programmes and institutions in India named after the Nehru-Gandhi family? 100? Wrong. 200? Wrong? 300? Wrong. 400? Now you are getting close…As of 2009, the number stood at 450+. I have no doubt that it must have increased since then.
Of course, we are not just talking …

Aryabhata discussed the concept of sine in his work by the name of ardha-jya. Literally, it means ”half-chord“. For simplicity, people started calling it jya. When Arabic writers translated his works from Sanskrit into Arabic, they referred it as jiba.
However, in Arabic writings, vowels are omitted, and it was abbreviated as jb.

Later writers substituted it with jiab, meaning “cove” or “bay” (in Arabic, jiba is a meaningless word).
Later in the 12th century, when Gherardo of Cremona translated these writings from Arabic into Latin, he replaced the Arabic jiab with its Latin counterpart, sinus, which means “cove” …

Almost 40 years ago, in October 1962, young men of the Ahir Charlie Company from 13 Kumaon faced an extraordinary assault. It came in the early hours of dawn, as snow was falling at Rezang La, 17,000 feet above sea level. The story of their resistance became a legend..Of the 120 defenders, only three survived, seriously wounded. The rest – including their commander – were discovered after the winter, frozen, mostly holding their weapons but with no ammunition. This was a genuine ‘last man-last round’ defense…and it succeeded in stalling the …

Here’s a 15-min video of an extempore speech at the Odisha High Court Bar Association in Cuttack on the topic of Lokpal, laws and corruption.
I made the following points in this informal speech:

Almost all of corruption in India is linked to government. So open-ness, transparency helps…
..but merely “opening up” the economy is not enough
You also need to bring change at the top..by changing the people …or by changing behaviour of those at the top
To change behaviour, need to have “consequences” in place
How do we change leadership at the top?
For that, …

From “Remember Jatindra Nath Das?” by Sh Balbir K Punj (emphasis added):
On September 13, 1929, a youth from Bengal gave up his life in a prison of Lahore fasting for 63 days. He literally fasted unto death in Gandhian fashion though Mahatma Gandhi himself never touched that apogee despite undertaking 17 fasts unto death in his lifetime.
…does any Congressman remember Jatindra Nath Das (1904-1929), who adopted the Gandhian instrument of fast unto death and adhered to it steadfastly unto his last? Of millions in the country who swore by Gandhism, Jatin …

..or Notes from the Road and the 3 States, 4 cities, 20hr workdays Outreach…
Its been more than a week since I got into my normal routine…but the ideas keep coming in …The outreach earlier this month was one of the most intensive to date. It was also a great learning experience and a chance to see first-hand the impact of Anna-ji and IAC on the socio-political landscape in India. I witnessed that impact first-hand – at colleges in Odisha and at meetings in Delhi, in MP and in numerous conversations …