We will defend any citizen’s right to freedom of speech till our last breath
… But, we don’t want this kind of content to be on the social media.

From the transcript of an interview with Karan Thapar
Related Posts:  On Artistic Freedom, Censorship and Responsibility

From Koodankulam stalled again: Sinister geopolitics by Radha Rajan, below are some figures to put the whole debate in perspective*:
*** Excerpts ***
India needs 1, 00,060 MWe of power while we are generating only 1, 00, 034 MWe. Of this –

60% is Thermal power which uses coal, diesel and natural gas as fuel
25% is Hydro
7% is from non-conventional sources like solar, wind and bio-gas; and
2.9% is nuclear

World average for nuclear power is 20%. 75% of all France’s power requirements is met by nuclear energy.

20% US
18% UK
12% Germany; and
5% China

In addition …

Thanks to Sanjeev for alerting me to this remarkable paper.  It is actually more than 15 years old (!) and was published in the journal of the Delhi School of Economics. It is remarkable for it shows that Bharat was far ahead of its time in ancient days when it came to cutting-edge economic theory and Chanakya was perhaps the pioneer of classical economics, free trade and progressive taxation policies..Excerpts from the paper below (you can download the pdf created by Sanjeev here).
Kautilya’s Arthashastra: A Neglected Precursor to Classical Economics
…

It is hard to conceive of a government farther removed from the people in spirit or sympathy than is that of India.
There has been a marked change for the worse in this respect within the past twenty-five years..

These words were written more than a 100 years ago – but could well be describing the situation we find oursleves in today.
Source: The New Nationalist Movement in India by Jabez T Sutherland.
Related Post: A leaderless nation stumbling from one crisis to another

Earlier today I leanrt that Dev Anand the legend passed after a heart attack in London…But many of you (especially the younger ones) may not know Dev Sa’ab was a staunch nationalist and openly opposed the Emergency in 1977..
Recalling those days in his autobiography, Dev Anand wrote:
“…the soul of the people was smouldering, their spirit stifled by an iron hand.They were dying to break the shackles, and the lava inside them was gathering momentum, soon to explode into a spluttering volcano.
It just needed a single matchstick to light up. And …

A few days back, I learnt (via an NYT article) that Jodhpur – a beautiful city in Rajasthan, with a population of a 1.2million has only one traffic stop-light. In that article, Thomas Friedman talked about “leaders-who-will-not-lead“.  After reading the news-headlines for the past few days. I now realise what he meant. Sample this…
In the south of India, a long-standing dispute centred on the Mullaperiyar dam threatens to snowball into a major flare-up between Kerala and Tamil Nadu…A few hundreds kilometers away, work on Kudankulam power plant remains stalled due to …