Nanopost of the day…
…in which a High Court with 466 years of backlog of cases will now also monitor sale of “junk food” near schools and other educational institutes, potentially worsening (and adding several more years to) an already creaking system.

Sigh.
Related Post: Forget Right to Justice; Just Do What is Right and Do we Really Need a Jan LokPal?
Dumb Headline of the Day: Do women really realize how harmful junk food is? Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

13 vs. 0
That is the number of advertisements I counted in today’s Times of India (Delhi edition). No points for guessing who was the man in the 13 ads. And no points for guessing who had zero ads mentioning him. At least one of you had anticipated this (see Uma’s comment here).
As I wrote last year, this man was easily India’s most unassuming, modest and hard-working Prime Minister..

Lal Bahadur Shastri
Image courtesy: Uday Kuckian, Rediff

The man who put forward the example of “moral responsibility” as Union Minister for Railways
A man with an unparalleled …

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 …

..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 …

In the concluding lines of “India needs reforms not a super babu“, Kanchan Gupta writes:
Anna Hazare is right…
India does need a second freedom movement, but not to recreate the Inspector Raj of our socialist past.
We need a second freedom movement to secure economic freedom and freedom from a system that intrudes into every aspect of our lives.
That’s how democracies have dealt with the menace of corruption elsewhere in the world.
Tavleen Singh made a similar point a few weeks back:
Corruption has eaten into India’s soul and its future. It must be …

Dear All: Please join me and my fellow panelists for this online discussion tomorrow night at 9pm IST. You can view the discussion and join by clicking the window below…
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After Lokpal, what?
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Dear All: I am reproducing two posts by my friend and FTI colleague Sanjeev below..I would recommend them as essential reading for anyone who is serious about tackling corruption. Do read and share – in particular with members who are active in the India Against Corruption movement. These points (related to cleaning the system) ought to be on the agenda of this movement – if we are serious about removing corruption.
*** Are you serious about removing corruption? by Sanjeev Sabhlok ***
Basically corruption can be attacked in one of two ways:
a) …

…a brazen attempt was underway to further divide India – one bit at a time…Read about this and the “twilight zone where inclusive turns into exclusive“, courtesy, this post from RealityCheck’s blog that is worth further dissemination, discussion and debate..Reproduced verbatim below:
*** Independence day adhoc benefit reminder by Reality Check***
Half page ad seen in major papers on the occasion of Independence Day.
Blogged for the record.

Special benefits platform to prevent free agents.
Some points are not clear in the image (trying to get a better quality picture) :

75+ Lakh scholarships awarded till …

Dear All: I am opening this thread (hurried post) to provide a space for discussing and debating the developments since last 2 days (and in particular, since today morning)…
The clumsy way in which Team Anna’s plans were sought to be derailed appears to have boomeranged on the government. While senior ministers are busy passing the buck, others are asking where is the “chosen one”?  What made me furious was this bit of news – if true, this is shameful and disgusting.  It appears that a citizen’s fundamental right to be …

I began to get seriously worried about “India Against Corruption” and “Team Anna” when I spoke to Prahlad Pandey last week. Prahlad is a young enthusiastic FTI member and now a full-fledged political activist. Many of you would remember him as the hero of a lone man’s fight against the “system”. But when I spoke to Prahlad last week, I became seriously worried. He was enthusiastically planning for August 16th, he told me. When I asked does he not feel uncomfortable about this, knowing that after all corruption is just …