India Political Blog

From time to time, we all hear stories about how supposedly closed cold drink bottles have had all sorts of things inside the bottle, ranging from cockroaches to pieces of metal, and so on. In a new twist that combines these stories with the push by our Health Minister to reduce the prevalence of smoking and tobacco consumption, a consumer found a bottle of Coca Cola containing a pouch of tobacco. He was shocked, and started a chain of correspondence with the company in order to discuss this, but apparently getting nowhere, he finally filed a case in the consumer redressal forum. And the consumer court ruled in his favor, awarding him a compensation of Rs. 15,000 (bringing the case dating from 2004 to a conclusion):

CHANDIGARH: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Fatehgarh Sahib, has fined Coca Cola Rs 15,000 after a tobacco pouch was found in a bottle of the company. “The sale of contaminated Coca Cola, which is dangerous to human consumption is a matter of deficiency of service,” the forum said in its order.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of the past 2 years, there has been an immense amount of literature and news over the dangers of bird flu, especially the H5N1 variety that is extremely destructive, and has caused human losses elsewhere. There is a lot of worry over the fact that a pandemic has not happened for a long time now, and with the current movement of humans all over the world, any spread of a human version will be a much higher killer than previous pandemics. What can cause such a thing to happen ? Well, the bird flu is mostly restricted to avian creatures, and spreads to humans very rarely. In addition, even if humans are affected due to contact with infected birds, the disease does not jump from person to person. It is feared that if the virus comes into close contact with the human influenza virus, and exchanges genetic material with the virus, it is possible that this may cause the bird flu virus may be capable of becoming capable of getting transferred from humans to other humans. This is one of the most feared scenarios for health care personnel, especially because while humans do not take human flu seriously, the bird flu variety is a much bigger killer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gurgaon, just south of Delhi, is reported as the Millenium City, as a sample of growth. It has gleaming buildings, swanky malls, and plenty of BPO’s, IT offices and many other such high-growth industries. It is seen as a self-sufficient township, with a large number of people now living there. However, there are many warts in this story. It suffers from infrastructure problems with poor water and electricity, lack of easy public transport, and sectors not involved in these sunrise sectors feel alienated from all this growth (one just needs to go and see ‘Old Gurgaon’).
And amidst all this, a heinous trade involving the removal of kidneys from poor people and selling to rich patients needing a kidney was going on (for a long time, maybe more than 8-10 years). Refer this news:

Read the rest of this entry »

India’s political parties have typically used the mass star power of famous actors / actresses to get seats, and nothing else. It is only in the Southern states where famous actors / actresses plot to translate their star power into electoral power, but for the rest, getting stars has been nothing but a game to get more votes.
In a major setback for the Congress in Bombay, their MP in the Mumbai North constituency and the film star Govinda has decided to quit politics. When Govinda was brought into the electoral race in the last elections of 2004, there was a large amount of criticism of the Congress for this move, given that Govinda was going through a lean patch in his movies, and he had not shown any inclinations towards political activities before this. No matter, the need was to defeat former minister Ram Naik of the BJP, and that was dutifully done. But now, everything gets reversed.

Read the rest of this entry »

The favorite way for any politician to get out of a jam is to claim that they have been misquoted; that is all that it takes. Even if the media brings out the verbatim text of the previous speech or discussion, all that the politician has to do is to claim that he or she has been misquoted, and everything is forgotten. So it proved for Delhi’s Lt. Governor Tejendra Khanna, who had to reverse himself on the matter of ID cards for Delhi’s citizens.

Facing flak on the issue of photo-identity cards in the capital, Lt Governor Tejendra Khanna on Monday did a U-turn on the matter, saying carrying of ID proof by the denizens would not be mandatory.
“I had never said that ID proof would be made mandatory. The message has been misunderstood. I never said without ID cards, people will be treated as culprits. Ours is an open society and no citizen can be put to unwanted discomfort,” he told reporters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes good intentions can lead to ill-effects as well. The condition of women in India overall needs a great deal of improvement. Dowry deaths, harrassement, female infant killing, eve-teasing and molestation, all of these happen to a large extent in our country, much more than we as a society should tolerate. To change society, there are a number of educational and empowerment measures that should be taken, but giving legal protection to women is also necessary. And hence the need for some strict anti-dowry laws and to protect women against domestic violence.
This is where problems start arising. Owing to the fact that in many of these situation, the oppressed women find it hard to find proof, the laws have been slanted in their favor and the burden of proof has been made much lower. And therein lies the scope for misuse. Given the slant of these laws, it is very easy for a lady to misuse such laws. So, among the many genuine cases of dowry harrasement, there will be cases where innocent people have also been caught.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since the concept of providing a cooked meal to school children as part of school came into existence, India’s education system has seen a major improvement. The thought of getting a good nutritious meal has made children more eager to attend school, and at the same time, has made parents see more value in sending their children to school. Continuing this scheme, while making sure that the quality and quantity of food served remains good is an essential ingredient of making sure that India rural children attain more education, and India’s targets of making sure that these children grow up into better adults is met. It would not too much to say, that in addition to having good educational facilities and good teachers, providing them good cooked food is essential.
And now enter the money-makers. The very size and reach of this cooked food program makes for an extremely large sum of money that is being spent. This money has attracted many corporates, who have launched a campaign to get biscuits to be served instead of food. The claim is that biscuits will be easier to manage than the logistics of cooking food, and the biscuits can be specially made to be as nutritious as the education program requires. The pressure by this lobby is so large that Members of Parliament have got involved, with many MP’s having been swayed to sign a letter promoting this changeover into biscuits.

Read the rest of this entry »