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Storm in the
desert
The meticulously
planned Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan has thrown the state machinery
out of gear. Chitleen K. Sethi gives a
first-hand account of this hardy community’s fight for reservation
The
Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan has revived the debate on
reservation and vote-bank politics. The sustained intensity of the
agitation led by retired Col Kirori Singh Bainsla and the emergence of
a new form of protest are challenge to the powers that be.
The man and
the movement
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| ALL FOR A CAUSE: Women, seen blocking railway tracks, have been an important part of the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan this year.
— Photo by Rajesh |
Lure
of Everest
From the very first attempts
to climb Mount Everest in the 1920s to the actual success in 1953, the
world’s highest peak has always tempted mountaineers. Lt
Gen Baljit Singh (retd) questions whether the carrying of the
Olympic torch to the summit has demystified the spirit of adventure in
conquering it
When
in 1920 the Royal Geographical Society, London, (RGS) decided
to sponsor the attempt on Mount Everest, the ethics of the sport had
already been distilled over the previous 50 years of mountaineering in
Europe. The essence of it lay in the subtlety that a team or a
sportsman did not "conquer" but rather "summitted"
a peak.
‘TV
soaps are tasteless’
Pakistani playwright Haseena
Moin does not have any good thing to say about the popular Indian and
Pakistani serials
Indian
television soaps may be enjoying high TRPs in the country and
abroad but one of Pakistan's best known playwrights has lashed out at
the serials describing them as a ‘sort of a fashion parade’ and
wondered how viewers across the border can ‘tolerate’ them.
Master
of melody
The songs of most of Raj
Kapoor’s films topped the charts, writes Surendra
Miglani
Actor,
producer, director and editor par excellence. This is how history
would remember Raj Kapoor. However, what would never come on record is
his talent as music maker. Several
top film personalities who were associated with the RK set-up and even
those who watched him at work often recall his unique sense of music
and his contribution to making the musical score of his movies truly
memorable.
Chitrangada
is back
Subhash K. Jha
After
having shot for Onir’s Sorry Bhai in Mauritius,
Chitrangada Singh is back in Mumbai to work with none other than Aamir
Khan in his hush-hush project Delhi Belly. All
her fears about the comeback have vanished in less than three months.
Radio
creates new awareness
Penne Nee Arivaai
is a community radio programme broadcast thrice a day by MOP Vaishnav
College for Women, Chennai. Through their programme the students focus
on people from slums and their problems, writes Hema
Vijay
When
Meenakshi (28) tuned into the radio, it was only to lighten her
daily drudgery of washing dishes and clothes. However, just by
accident, the young housewife heard the strains of 107.8 MHz. "It
was the dialect that caught my attention. The voice on air sounded
different. The woman on the radio was speaking ‘slum’ Tamil,
unlike the anglicised Tamil common on the FM channel," she
recounts.
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