Hidden among the news of last few days was an innocuous and brief report which I am certain most of you missed.
It talked about an “Excellence Award” for 2012 that was bestowed upon Dr Augustine F Pinto (Chairman) and Grace Pinto (MD) of the Ryan Group of Institutions by the Governor of Rajasthan, Margaret Alva (thanks to Sh Krishen Kak for alerting me).
What was interesting was not the award but the body that was honouring Dr Pinto and Grace Pinto. This organisation was the Christian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Now, …

Thanks to RealityCheck for prompting this post. Read on for an amazing story of discretionary powers, patronage, quotas and favours that revolves around the Hajj subsidy. The extracts are from a court order disposing off the special leave petition filed by Union of India (please note that emphasis has been added).  They make for a long reading but are well worth pondering upon..
*** CAUTION: Long Post ***
..By this interim order, we (Supreme Court) propose  to  deal  with  some  of  the issues arising from the 2012 Haj Policy on a  priority …

Courtesy my friend RealityCheck (emphasis added); please try and ignore the absurdity of the headline in (as RealityCheck so memorably puts it) “a chest thumping secular country“. From 2 more minority lists put up, cut-offs dip further by Bhavya Dore, Hindustan Times, Mumbai, June 22, 2012, this brief excerpt:
At NM College in Vile Parle, the commerce cut-off for Gujarati minority students fell from 90.91% last year to 89.64% this year.
..At Hinduja College, students who fall in the Sindhi quota will be given walk-in admissions until Friday morning.  Earlier this week, cut-offs at …

..or how in the mad race of vote-bank politics and pandering to narrow interests, common sense and logic take a back seat.
What I am sharing below hardly needs any commentary but some may find this video that touched on this subject relevant and interesting. Excerpts from Minority and SC/ST Quota for Auto-Rickshaw Drivers:
Eying the 2013 Assembly elections, the Delhi Government is mulling to have a quota for minority groups and Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the new auto rickshaw policy.
..“The Ministry has given directive to the …

Dear All: I stumbled on this article a few weeks back and felt that it deserved wider circulation – especially in the context of the recent discussions and decision by SC on RTE.  I was vaguely aware of the discriminatory nature of Article 30 (which by the way, was the reason behind the Ramkrishna Mission to declare itself a non-Hindu “sect”) but its extent and repercussions shocked me. Below, excerpts from a richly referenced and data-rich critique of this article by Dr Moorthy Muthuswamy…Read on.
*** Excerpts from Religious Apartheid in Modern …

..or something like that. From Banerjee announces sops for Muslims, honorarium for Imams (3rd Apr):
Raising the pitch for next year’s Panchayat elections..Mamata Banerjee..announced pro-minority sops including a monthly honorarium for Imams.
“The government wants to give a monthly honorarium of Rs. 2,500 to Imams of the state which will be paid through the state Wakf Board.
..Banerjee also said “homeless, landless Imams” will now be given the benefits under her pet project “Nijo Bhumi Nijo Griha (Own Land, Own House)“.”There are more than 30,000 Imams in Bengal and a large percentage …

..and why some days I get really angry. Have you ever read something sometime that almost forces you to put pen to paper? Something so outrageous that you drop everything and get yourself on the keyboard to express your anguish and rage? Something so unbelievable that you check and double-check to make sure you have your facts right? It happened to me today – in fact just a few minutes earlier (thanks to Radha-ji for alerting me to this). I don’t know how many of you read this bit of *news* …

A few weeks back, at one of my frequent sessions at Chanakya Institute of Public Leadership, I got the chance to share my thoughts on the proposed Communal Violence Bill with participants in the programme. We had a lively discussion against the backdrop of some slides I had prepared. Unfortunately we could not record the session…Below are the slides…Comments, thoughts welcome.
 
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Communal Violence Bill – Presentation at CIPL, Dec '11
View more presentations from B Shantanu

 
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Related Post: Losing sleep over communal violence and hate propaganda

“I once more appeal to you to forget the past…You have got what you wanted.
You have got a separate state and, remember, you are the people who were responsible for it, and not those who remain in Pakistan
What is it that you want now?

…Now again you tell me and ask me to say for the purpose of securing the affection of the younger brother I must agree to the same thing again, to divide the country again in the divided part.
For God’s sake understand that we have also got some …

Dear All: Following up from the series of “live chats” and calls last year, I would like to start 2012 with a live text chat on:

“The continuing illegal infiltration from Bangladesh and its implication for the demographics of Assam and Paschim Banga”
Time: 8pm IST
Date: 6th Jan ’12 (Friday)
Please do leave a note below (via comments) if you have a specific question or wish me to address a specific point.

 
Illegal Infiltration & Impact on Demographics
The text-based chat will be a relatively free-flowing discussion focused on illegal infiltration from Bangladesh and …