What most of us long suspected, or knew, has just been confirmed by Interpol:
INTERPOL admits Dawood’s presence in Pakistan.
So whats stopping him from being extradited over? A minor technicality….Pakistan refuses to admit that Dawood Ibrahim is in the country
Never mind…once they do, we have everything lined up…including a number of flight options and easier availability of visa(s) !!
Sorry, I forgot…Shri Ibrahim is an Indian citizen…

or is he?
His passport has been revoked by the Government of India… but that may only be a minor problem… as Pakistan’s government has …

I stumbled on this news-item on Barbarindian’s blog. From a news-report in The Hindu:
“…Cyriac Joseph, Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka, on Friday said that the provocative dresses that women wear in buses put the men travelling in the buses in awkward situations and hence women must dress modestly.
Coming back to why attacks on women happen, he linked it to their clothes…”

I am stumped.
Please also read: On Jeans, Indian Men and “Indecent Behaviour” and Let us blow up “Khajuraho”
Image courtesy: Wikipedia

A tidbit on the health benefits of traditional Indian spices:
“Black pepper could provide a new treatment for the skin disease vitiligo..” Excerpt:
“…Vitiligo is a condition in which areas of skin lose their normal pigment and become white.
Researchers discovered that piperine – the compound that gives black pepper its spicy, pungent flavour – can stimulate pigmentation in the skin.
The study, by King’s College London, appears in the British Journal of Dermatology. These findings could potentially lead to the development of treatments…”
As many of you may know, the incidence of …

…but there is no मराठी in there.
This was the thrust of a discussion I had with a group of Maharashtrian professionals earlier this month when the “Maharashtra saga” was just beginning to unfold. See some of the slides here (CAUTION: 800k download: A Question of Identity).
Then Anil Sharma-ji of Freedom Team alerted me to this article by Pratap Bhanu Mehta (“His freedoms and ours”, Feb 18) which I felt best captured my thoughts on the going-ons in “Aamchi Mumbai” (excerpts below; emphasis mine).
“…Thackeray deserves all the blame he is getting. But …

Some of you may have already picked up this report: AP to give Christians subsidy to visit Israel
“…the Andhra Pradesh government of chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Monday decided to dole out subsidies, on the lines of the Haj scheme, for Christians who want to visit holy sites in Israel.
Governor N D Tiwari in his address to the joint budget session of the Assembly and Council said, “My government has decided to extend the Haj pilgrim scheme to Christian minorities also for their religious visits to Christian Holy …

A report in yesterday’s Telegraph (14th Feb) has some surprising statistics re. the growth of Muslim population in the border districts of Assam, Bihar and West Bengal.
The numbers speak for themselves.

Source: http://telegraphindia.com/1080213/images/13zzpopulationbig.jpg
Some excerpts from the report, “Demography survey on eastern border” by Bhavna Vij-Aurora
…”There have been reports that more madarsas and mosques are sprouting along the borders, which in itself is an indication of increased Muslim population in the area,” disclosed an intelligence official.
….The last such study was done by the Intelligence Bureau and the home ministry in 1992, and …

The dark clouds may be parting…
In the last few days, I came across two more movements for political reform, at least one of which I was unaware of.
The first was LokSatta, which I had briefly mentioned before and which appears to be getting more active now; the second is Professionals Party of India (Thanks, Sundeep).
LokSatta appears to have a good base of volunteers, one of whom stumbled on my blog and sent me an email with this information (Thanks, Dnyanesh; emphasis mine):
“…We are a group of professionals in the age …

Amidst all the recent brouhaha around Bharat Ratna nominations, someone conveniently forgot the “truth” about some of our nominees. I am thinking of Bahadur Shah Zafar who was proposed for the award as a champion of India’s freedom and someone who actively opposed the British.
The demand was made by Delhi Assembly Deputy Speaker Shoaib Iqbal…(who reportedly said that)…it was unfortunate that Emperor Bahadur Shah II, also known as Zafar, whose martyrdom and national stature rank among the highest in India’s freedom struggle, had not so far been conferred with the …

Read this eye-opening report on Ladakh by Tarun Vijay in the Times of India in full…(Anirban, thanks for alerting me to this)
Excerpts below:
“…Of late Ladakh has been witnessing a continuous trespassing by Chinese shepherds and soldiers in Chushul area where we fought a famous war of Trishul mountains led by Major Shaitan Singh (who received Param Vir Chakra after his and his brave men’s bodies were discovered one year after their martyrdom) and in the vast grass lands near Demchok.�
…Chinese are known to enter our region in a clandestine manner. …

From a very readable article in the latest edition of Technology Review* “You Don’t Understand Our Audience“, an excerpt that applies equally well to the media in India.
The background to this extract is a series on Al Qaeda that John Hockenberry (the writer of this piece) had proposed to NBC bosses in the aftermath of 9/11 which was deemed to be less interesting/relevant than a series on firefighters. Read on and think how sharply this applies to the Indian mainstream media.
Excerpt:
“…This was one in a series of lessons I …