Pay as you go, Bandhs

bq. The Bombay high court on Thursday directed the Maharashtra government to file an affidavit by February 4 in response to a bunch of petitions asking the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party to pay Rs 50 crore for losses suffered by citizens due to the bandh organised by them in the city in July last year. [“Rediff”:http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/08bandh.htm]
Kerala High Court has banned bandhs in the state. So people just renamed it to “hartal”:http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&edition=in&q=kerala+hartal&btnG=Search+News and still bring the state to a halt. I hope the court passes the judgement that political parties who prevent people from earning their living, pay for the damages they cause.

Mini iPod

For the past few months there have been many rumors about the new mini iPod. The present iPod models are very expensive, and so the rumors were that the new ones would cost $99. That turned out to be wishful thinking. In MacWorld, Steve Jobs “announced”:http://wirelessnewsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_title=Apple__New_iPod_Mini__MS_Office_Update&story_id=22951&category=hndhld that the new 4GB models would cost $249. If you pay $50 more, you can get a 10GB iPod.
There are many MP3 players which offer the same set of features offered by iPod, but none of them can match the elegance of an iPod. Also Apple is not a company known for low priced devices. They may not be market leaders in terms of hardware, but they have a cult following, which swears by their products.
I would have bought an iPod, for the coolness factor, but it is way too expensive.

For the people

Sonia Gandhi, the Congress(I) President recently made a statement that “it is the right of the people of India to say who shall be prime minister”. TVR Shenoy gives a lesson in history and explains how Nehru became the “first Prime Minister of India”:http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/30flip.htm
bq. Let me take you back to the year 1946. Everyone knew that Independence was around the corner (though the precise date remained undecided). The choice of Congress president became crucial since it was certain that the Viceroy would invite him or her to head the interim government. Twelve of the 15 Pradesh Congress Committees proposed the name of Sardar Patel; not one of them sent up the name of Jawaharlal Nehru — not even his native United Provinces (as Uttar Pradesh was then titled). It was at this point that Mahatma Gandhi made his last decisive intervention in the affairs of the nation.
bq. He asked Acharya Kripalani — who, if I remember correctly was the choice of the United Provinces Pradesh Congress Committee — to circulate a note to the Congress Working Committee asking that body to nominate Nehru. From this distance in time, the Mahatma??s reasons seem less than convincing. ‘He, a Harrow boy, a Cambridge graduate and a barrister, is wanted to carry on the negotiations with Englishmen.’ Again, the Mahatma believed that Nehru could ‘make India play a role in international affairs.’ More realistically, ‘Jawahar will not take second place.’ Whatever the rationale — and the last suggests that our much-worshipped first prime minister was a spoiled brat in the Mahatma’s estimation — the fact remains that Bapu??s suggestion carried the day, and Sardar Patel, the choice of the people, failed to become prime minister through a palace coup.

Afghanistan has a constitution

Few days back we were talking about the “difficulty”:https://varnam.org/archives/000303.html Afghans were having in coming up with a constitution. But now the Afghans “have ratified”:http://israpundit.com/archives/004110.html a new constitution
bq. In an enormous step forward, Afghanistan will now have a democratic presidential system, with a directly elected president, a two-chamber national assembly, an independent judiciary and new elections in just six months. In carefully balanced wording designed to combine democracy and Islam, the country will be renamed the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and will be ruled by civil law, although no law will be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of Islam. [“IHT”:http://www.iht.com/articles/123582.htm]
But if such a wide range of people could compomise on various topics, and agree on a constitution, I think it is a giant leap forward.

Pakistan, the Proliferator – II

bq. The cover bears an official-looking seal that says “Government of Pakistan” and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan’s three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud. In other nations, such sales would be strictly controlled. But Pakistan has always played by its own rules. [“NYT”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/04NUKE.html]
Do you need “any”:https://varnam.org/archives/000290.html more proof ? If so, “please ask”:http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13351805 Saif al-Islam, son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi
[via “LGF”:http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9500_All_Roads_Lead_to_Pakistan]

France and Head Scarfs

The French have decided to ban the wearing of any religious symbols by people in public places and the main focus is on the head scarfs worn by Muslim women. Democracies like United States and India do not enforce any ban on public display of religious symbols worn by people. But France thinks this ban is required to assimilate Muslims into the mainstream. So when such an issue comes up, “the question is”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=324469
bq. Thus the issue has become, in large part, who controls women? Are they subject to French laws ? and the deeply held principle of church-state separation ? or to their fathers, husbands, brothers and mullahs? Are they free? And a second issue is even broader: Do religious citizens of a democratic country owe first service to their religion or their nation?
The second question is more important. And here is the answer given by the Grand Sheikh of the al-Azhar mosque in Egypt, “Mohammed Sayed Tantawi”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3358363.stm
bq. He said Muslim women had to obey the rules of the host country in which they live, under what he described as dire necessity.
I think this is a very important statement, which sets the order of loyalties very clear. But as “Niraj”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/002057.html notes, such a measure would be considered as a violation of both freedom of speech and freedom of religious statutes in United States.

Writing a Constitution

Afghanistan is in the process of writing its constitution, and it is not easy. There are 502 delegates, consisting of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Pashtuns and many other ethnic groups involved in deciding many issues including which language the national anthem will be sung. Another issue that the opposition of Hamid Karzai does not like is a “strong presidency”:http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1231afghan31.html.
bq. Meeting the Tajiks’ demands would be a considerable compromise for Karzai, who has held out for a strong presidential system. His opponents want parliamentary control of the printing of money, the creation of a constitutional court, three vice presidents rather than one, a ban on top officials holding dual citizenship or having a foreign spouse, more power devolved to provincial councils, and for Uzbek and Turkmen language rights in their ethnic regions.
The Loya Jirga was halted after many delegates boycotted the sessions. It is to resume soon and Afghanistan may have a constitution. Now I am sure, we will see the same issues, when Iraq starts writing a constitution.

For a Better Job Market

Few months back I wrote saying that Dow will cross 10,000 and Nasdaq, 2000 and soon “the economy will change”:https://varnam.org/archives/000268.html. Both the indices crossed these round figures in December. In 2003, the economy was improving, but it was a jobless recovery. But one of the forecasts is that soon jobs will “be created”:http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1231/p01s01-usec.html
bq. Still, the stronger growth will add about 1 million new jobs to the US economy, estimates Mark Zandi of Economy.com, an economic website. This will help to recoup some of the 2.4 million jobs that have been lost since February 2001, when unemployment started moving up. If things go well, “we’ll get half those jobs back,” says Mr. Zandi, who adds that there are still 8 million unemployed workers.
Already stock prices of many companies are going upto levels not seen in two years and I hope this will encourage the management to make more investments in product development.

Deepening Ties

As two democracies facing a common enemy called Islamic Terrorism, it is only natural that Israel and India become allies. American Thinker had an article on on the “deepening”:http://americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=39 Indo-Israeli alliance. The American Thinker article focuses on the relations in the field of Space technology, but there are many other areas in which co-operation is there.
* “Business”:http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EK25Df01.html
* “Defence”:http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13340952
* “India’s Moon Mission”:http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=49130
* “Phalcon”:http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/376174.html
* “Spy Planes”:http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=452CED9B-0C38-4AF5-855EDD6ACD568F11
[links via “Bharat Rakshak”:http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005896;p=2]