Food, Politics and some fund-raising

Almost exactly seven weeks ago, on the back of very well attended Rememberance Meeting for the victims of terrorism in India, many who had gathered for the evening asked me what can we – as ordinary Indians, living several thousands of miles away from India – do to change the “system”?

I did not have any ready answers…but suggested we can start by getting like-minded people together to share thoughts and discuss various ideas.

The upshot of that was a dinner with an explicitly political agenda that I organised last Friday, on the eve of Netaji’s Birth Anniversary in London. To make the dinner more meaningful, I had requested everyone to donate a modest amount to Loksatta for the upcoming elections. I am glad to say that we had a very good turnout…and we managed to raise ~ Rs 23k during the course of the evening.

I intend to follow this up with more such meetings and dinners. If you are in London/UK and would like to join one of these, pl. leave a comment here and I will make sure you get an invite to the next one.

More on the content of the discussions and some ideas, in a later post.

In the meantime, wishing all of you Happy Republic Day and गणतन्त्र दिवस की हार्दिक शुभकामनायें !

Here is a link to the live video of the parade starting at 925am IST and here are some photographs from the past.