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Dastardly act
Third-degree policing |
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Infanticide
Expecting a populist Budget
A true braveheart
Three cheers: (L-R) Raj Kumar Yadav, Sushant Singh Rajput & Amit Sadh
bad man: Arshad Warsi
A good dose of thrills Bruce Willis
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Dastardly act
The twin blasts in Hyderabad are yet another reminder of the lost battle in the fight against terror. Many people were killed and over a hundred injured by the improvised explosive devices that were triggered in Dilsukhnagar, a densely populated area that is also a nodal station for buses. There is no doubt that the blasts are acts of terror. The cowardly killings expose the desperation of the terrorists who attacked the most vulnerable sections of society, the innocent mass of people going about their regular business. There are many individual tragedies that have come to light. Five of those killed were students, each with aspirations and dreams that will now remain unfulfilled. Most of the injured too were young people, who were caught by circumstances in the area of the blast. The Central and state governments have moved swiftly after the incident in helping the injured, providing the basic security arrangements, and in investigating the crime. Preliminary investigations suggest the hand of the terror group Indian Mujahideen, and in the coming days the National Investigation Agency as well as the state’s own agencies are expected to get to the bottom of the matter and identify those who were involved in such acts. There have also been reports of warning issued by Central agencies regarding such an act, and their not being heeded by the state police. If this is so, it is a sad reflection on the lack of coordination between the Central and state agencies responsible for providing people with security. Various terrorist acts continue to expose the chinks in the security apparatus that has been tasked with combating terrorism. After every major incident, new measures are announced. However, it seems that not much is done to implement them after the spotlight moves away, and thus there is recurrence of such incidents. People in Mumbai, Pune, Varanasi, New Delhi and Hyderabad have seen the face of terror, some more than once. Swift action, through investigations and speedy justice, alone will prove that the government is committed to combating terror and preventing the repetition of such dastardly acts.
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Third-degree policing
The
Punjab and Haryana High Court has made it plain that the police shall under no circumstance resort to ‘third degree’ techniques while investigating any crime. While hearing a petition seeking an inquiry into an alleged instance of torture, the court reminded the police of a ban it had imposed on such methods in 1998. Under the law, there is no provision for causing bodily harm to a suspect even if there were no ban order. Torture, however, is an unrecognised practice resorted to without much thought in nearly all police stations. The wrong gets morally compounded when it turns out after torture that the suspect was innocent, which happens quite often. Conducting all business of the state, including policing, strictly by the law is not a luxury but a founding principle of a functional democracy based in a sound constitution. That, however, does not happen by intention alone. A police investigation, for instance, can reach a dead end if a suspect refuses to lead it to the evidence. To overcome that will be required an extensive investigation wing — as mandated under the law, separate from the law and order personnel — trained and equipped with the latest that the police and forensic sciences have to offer. In a country where police stations often lack even stationery to write complaints and the manpower is half of the required, we have a long way to go. Under the circumstances, we need a holistic appreciation of the pressures under which the police and other investigating agencies have to deliver. In certain cases there are lives at stake — as in a kidnapping or terror plot — in which quickly getting information from a nabbed suspect may be of utmost importance. The law does not provide separately for various exigencies, which is why it becomes the collective responsibility of society to ensure no injustice is done or excess committed, and yet safety and security are not compromised. To fund a well-provided-for police force would be a good point to begin.
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Infanticide
Killing
a child born of one’s own blood line for its gender is not an odd incident. Not at least in this part of the country. Female foeticide, now visible in our skewed gender ratio, has failed to stir our society out of its fixation with patriarchy. The fears have been expressed for long by researchers who have pointed towards the improved sex ratio at birth, thanks to some degree of fear that has been instilled for practising female foeticide, but they have also shown the dwindling number of baby girls by the time they reach the age of five. They find a mismatch that indicates something is going wrong on the way. Baby girls are neglected, not given proper medical care, timely vaccination and nourishment, hoping that they die a natural death, sparing the family the burden of guilt of killing a girl. It is all the more unfortunate when a woman kills a female child. Centuries of denial of their rights has nurtured an intense feeling of self-hatred among women across social hierarchy. They are not able to break free of the blinkers handed down to them over generations that make them believe of their inferior status. The grandmother who killed her own granddaughter in Sirsa is reflective of this very deeply engrained malaise in women’s psyche. She strangled her granddaughter because the child’s gender was not male; she looked at the birth of a girl as a kind of disaster and defeat. The law will take its own course to punish the woman. Though the silver line surrounding this dark social reality comes from the young mother who reported the case to the police. But the intensity of self- hatred prevalent among women demands that gender-specific policies, better suited to women, should offer them a new pedestal and opportunities so that no woman would degrade her own gender by eliminating her own kind the way this grandmother did in
Sirsa.
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Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own. —Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
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Expecting a populist Budget The forthcoming Union Budget will have few surprises and it would be perforce a populist budget, and India’s economic performance will be praised and lauded. All doomsday scenarios will be cast aside and India’s good performance in the global arena will be emphasised. Even though all the economic signals seem to point towards a gloomy outlook for India in the next one year (2013), Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is likely to sound optimistic. He will be hoping that all will be fine soon and India will be on a higher growth trajectory. The current account deficit, which is at 5.4 per cent of the GDP, the highest in absolute terms since 1949, will be played down and India’s trade partners who are undergoing recession or slow recovery will be blamed for slow export growth. The high current account deficit could lead to a sharp depreciation of the rupee against the dollar, which will make imports costlier. It will also further deplete the foreign exchange reserves of $296.5 billion. On the other hand, the fiscal deficit, which is also high at 5.9 per cent of the GDP, cannot be reduced to 5.3 per cent in the forthcoming budget because there is no way by which the government can hope to bring down its expenditure or increase its revenue earnings any further. The current account deficit too can only come down with higher export growth – something which is not possible and the latest export growth figure of below 1 per cent in January 2013 underscores it. India’s own penchant for gold imports, however, will receive a strict rap on the wrist by way of higher import duties. Unfortunately, industrial growth has also dipped in the last quarter and it shrank by 0.6 per cent in December, and agricultural growth is also low and projected at only 1.8 per cent for 2012-13. So, where is the optimism coming from? Perhaps the economic policy makers are looking around the world and when they see that other countries are growing at a far slower rate, they feel good about their own performance. Indeed, the lingering perception of India is of a burgeoning emerging nation. Otherwise, why is it that every developed country is trying to woo India with its products and services? Many are especially coming to India like the recent visit of French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron to sell big ticket items. India is still growing relatively faster, and the middle class has a significant buying power. There is also a big amount of black money in circulation which gives a large section of the people access to all that they want. And Indians are known for their craving for shopping and liking for imported goods. The Finance Minister will point out that inflation has come down significantly to 6.62 per cent (even though the consumer price index is still at 10.8 per cent) and will promise a further decrease in the WPI. Even if government spending on education, health and housing receives a cut in the budget (which is unlikely), this group with the buying power will not be affected. They will keep sending their children abroad to study and go to private hospitals for healthcare and will keep maintaining their high lifestyle as before. No member from this group is going to be affected by any austerity measures imposed by the government. According to one estimate, the black money in circulation is equal to half of India’s GDP. No wonder, despite a high rate of inflation, the consumer demand for goods and services in India does not get affected adversely that easily, and there is always enough demand to keep the economy on a roll. The sheer number of consumers is also huge as compared to developed countries with ageing populations, and Indian markets are always abuzz with people. People with lower incomes, however, are likely to cut down their inessential consumption than the robust stable-income middle class which often has more than one source of income. The corporate sector is also not experiencing drastic salary cuts or facing major retrenchment and in general this sector is not very worried because once again it is likely to get various sops in the forthcoming Budget so that investments continue to flow in. Now the government has made it much easier for companies to go abroad for setting up business. The flow of FDI into the country will continue because there is always a better return to be expected than in neighbouring countries. Also since Mauritius is the biggest foreign investor with 40 per cent of investment coming from there, one can assume that a large chunk of Indian money will continue its ‘round-tripping’ via Mauritius to come back to India. The Finance Minister may give more incentives for FDI and equity finance to revive small investors’ sentiments. There is unlikely to be any big tax hike to affect the rich in the coming budget or inheritance tax because it will be politically inexpedient to do so, especially when the next general elections are only a year and a few months away. To appease the farm lobby, there will, however, be agricultural sops. It may also give exporters some tax relief and incentives. In what makes India keep growing and beating recession, the high level of corruption plays an important part as illicit financial flows keep financing high lifestyles and pushing up the demand for luxury goods, real estate and the leisure industry. Everyone in India is aware of the high level of corruption in every walk of life but most are helpless to do anything about it. The government will need a lot of explaining to do about the rising corruption in the Budget session and will have to cast its tax net wider to catch the tax dodgers. What it will do to make the tax base bigger could be an interesting feature of Budget 2013. And whether it will be able to bring back money from Swiss banks is also awaited. Unfortunately, it is the common man or woman who will have to be happy with small sops if there are any. He or she will have to wait for higher growth in the future. As Mr C. Rangarajan , head of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council rightly pointed out recently, higher GDP growth is important for bringing more benefits to the poor and for creating employment. It is the GDP forecast of 5 per cent by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) which is bothering the government. The Finance Minister said that it was an underestimate. Strange as it may seem, the government is decrying its own estimates! It would lay emphasis on a 6.5 per cent growth in the
Budget.
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A true braveheart The hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru the other day made me go down memory lane. On a foggy day on December 14, 2001, (a day after the Parliament attack), I was on my way to Rathdhana (Sonepat), martyr ASI Nanak Chand’s native village, on an assignment. Even as a unique “kar seva” was in progress on a stretch of panchayat land for the hero’s last rites, I bumped into a stern-looking man, Rameshwar Dayal, Nanak Chand’s classmate. After exchanging customary greetings, I hesitantly broached the idea of meeting the martyr’s widow, Ganga Devi. While other media persons waited outside the modest house, I was the only journalist (apparently due to the respect my newspaper The Tribune enjoyed) who was led into a dingy room, where the martyr’s widow and her two teen-aged daughters --- Puja and Arti -were huddled together waiting for the body. As I came face to face with the bereaved family, I was in a dilemma and the thought of “exclusive” interview with the hero’s widow evaporated into thin air. The chain of my thoughts was suddenly broken by gutsy Ganga Devi herself, who murmured: “He died a martyr’s death which comes to a chosen few.” A true braveheart even in bereavement, I thought before my eyes welled up. Left speechless, I folded my hands as Dayal ushered me out of the house, telling me that Nanak Chand wanted to join either the Army or the police to “live and die for the country”. Outside the house, the martyr’s son, Dharamvir (now a Delhi police constable), was being prodded by byte-hungry electronic media representatives for a byte. “Main apne papa ki maut marna chahta hu” (I want to die bravely like my father), he said heroically before tears started rolling down his cheeks. The braveheart’s bold statements in the face of the tragedy continued to reverberate in my ears on my return journey as Rafi-Lata evergreen numbers played in the background in my taxi. Suddenly, Lata’s soul-stirring number soaked in patriotism, “Aay meray watan ke logo…” which famously brought tears into the eyes of first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was enough to bring tears into my and my driver’s eyes. About five years later, I met Ganga Devi in Chandigarh. This time, the braveheart was waging another battle against “corrupt bureaucracy” for dilly-dallying on the allotment of a promised petrol station to the family. And last time, I saw her on a TV channel expressing her desire to take back her husband’s medals, including a posthumous Kirti Chakra, and surrender these as a mark of protest for the delay in the execution of Afzal Guru. As TV channel played her images, I saluted the indefatigable spirit of the true braveheart again. Will the Central Government restore the medals to the martyr’s family?
Amen!
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CINEMA:
NEW Releases
A story worth knowing A simple story beautifully told …. if one line could suffice, the heart warming tale of three friends could easily be summed up succinctly. Only Abhiskek Kapoor's directorial venture with a battery of lesser known actors, including Sushant Singh Rajput who makes his Bollywood debut, deserves to be lauded for more reasons than one. So, there they are three friends as disparate as chalk and cheese. While Govind (Raj Kumar Yadav) has an acute business sense and an understanding of maths as well as money, Ishaan Bhatt (Sushant Singh Rajput), apparently a rebellious wastrel cricketer happens to be the man with a heart of gold. The third end of the friendship is held by Omi (Amit Sadh) who is drawn into the world of divisive politics. Together they have ordinary middle class dreams of making it big and start by opening a sports shop and a coaching academy. Only the pursuit of these is marred by the shadow of Gujarat riots. Since cricket is not the only religion in India, their friendship is soon under test. It is because of young Ali in whom Ishaan senses a cricket prodigy, a fulfilment of his own dreams of becoming a cricketer that they are drawn into mayhem and warring sides. While the director has not shied away from showing the toxicity of religious divide, nowhere has he allowed it to overshadow all else. The basic thread of the film is not so much about secularism but the ultimate truth of humanity. Supported by natural performances not just by the three lead actors but of the entire cast, Kapoor has delivered a narrative that tugs at your heart strings. Subtly but surely it makes you repose faith in human goodness. All the while telling an tale with humour and warmth, it begins like a breath of fresh air and climaxes as gently. If the first half keeps you riveted by capturing the joy of small things in life, post interval it takes a bigger leap and creates the big picture amidst the socio-political backdrop. And not for a moment turning jingoistic or preachy.Surprise element keeps the interest going. Love angle (Amrita Puri) too is as believable as the rest of the storyline and characters. Here's an example of how movies ought to be made (shot too as Anay Goswamy the cinematographer does full justice) yet rarely are. If you are tired of the masala tadka go for it and immerse in the world you and me are familiar with yet have rarely paused to ponder over its beautiful nuances and layers.
Action generates little reaction It's story of a circuit that fused mid-way, causing a lot of damage to the rest of the set-up. Now, the set was not that brilliantly put up otherwise it would have acted as a good shock absorber. Director Anand Kumar is perhaps a Salman Khan Dabangg fan or he has been watching Gangs Of Wasseypur off late. So, if you find inspector Pritam Singh (Sanjay Dutt) pulling a Dabangg kind of style, do not blame 'baba' for it! Zila Ghaziabad is a story of a good man turning bad because of some nasty circumstances. Of course, you have heard this before. If we tell you which good guy turned bad, you wouldn't hear the rest of the tale! Anyway, it is Vivek Oberoi. See we told you, you can't ask for the refund of your ticket! A storyline which the bacha bacha of India knows is what makes the actors fight, cry a bit, fight and kill. And Arshad Warsi as Fauji is the bad man who does so much fighting. Arshad as the bad man rings a bell only for the director and actor! We know Arshad is a dancer who is good with comedy; the director, however, forgot to tell him, yahan naachney ka nahin hai circuit. Zila Ghaziabad is an overdose of action, something like The Matrix, where the actor and villains fly into the stratosphere! The only 'worth mentioning' job has been done by Paresh Rawal and Ravi Kissen. As for the big name Sanjay Dutt, he is under Salman's spell. Do you think we missed out on the actresses? Where were they? The music of Zila Ghaziabad is all about blood bath and bullets. You don't hope to hear music here. What you do hear is a bomb that fails to take off!
A good dose of thrills A Good Day to Die Hard is the fifth installment of the series which began in 1989 and is still going strong with hero Bruce Willis as detective John McChane showing little ageing. This time McChane has his son Jack (Jai Countney), a CIA operative joining him in the slam-bang action. The establishing shots include one of McChane Sr at target practice. "Nice grouping grandpa" is the comment from a bystander to show that our hero is still in fine nick. That he has not seen his son for five years is meant to indicate how busy or heartless (or both) he is. They meet under trying circumstances, pitted against each other but it doesn't take time for both to be on the same side. As though two McChanes aren't bad enough we have another child, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) join the group and one of her early lines is telling her dad 'try, just try, not to make more trouble than there is'. So much for John's reputation! Skip Wood's screenplay is studded with sharp wit, the best lines are between father and son who address each other by their first names. Action there is (or else it wouldn't be Die Hard), car chases which make Steve McQueen in Bullitt seem like Stone-age stuff. But they are not in excess. Breaking through glass frontages of houses is also passé as is the one instance of John plucking out a bullet from his son's leg like a plum. But if one overlooks these 'minor glitches' as one is supposed to, the fare is quite enjoyable. What's more, it is just 97-minutes long and so much easier on the attention span. Jonathan Sela's fluid camera is another asset and so is the taut editing. There's not very much by way of acting but Bruce Willis manages to look fresh after going through the same routine for the fifth and Jai Courtney shows talent. So does Sebastian Kock but the rest are purely academic. All in all A Good Day to Die Hard is well worth watching. Only leave your grey matter at home.
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movies on tv
Anaconda is an adventure-horror film, directed by Luis Llosa, starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer and Jonathan Hyde. It centers around a film crew for National Geographic who are kidnapped by a hunter who is going after the world's largest giant anaconda, which is discovered in the Amazon Rainforest. Though the film received mostly negative reviews from critics, it was a box office hit. It was then followed by three sequels. ZEE CINEMA STAR GOLD SET MAX STAR MOVIES MOVIE NOW B4U MOVIES FILMY HBO ZEE CINEMA STAR GOLD SET MAX STAR
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Ervell E. Menezes
And subtlety alone is not one of his strengths. Based on Chetan Bhagat's book The Three Mistakes of My Life, the film set in Gujarat takes into account the state's cataclysmic moments like the earthquake as also the communal Gujarat riots. Yet it remains till an end an ode not just to friendship but genuine human emotions. In a country where cricket is akin to a God, yet sports is of little consequence, the storyline weaves in the need for sports culture and much more.
Zila Ghaziabad, directed by Anand Kumar blows off your mind with one single question — What was that! A film that brings on to the screen big names of Bollywood — Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Vivek Oberoi, Ravi Kissen, Chandrachur Singh, Paresh Rawal, Divya Dutta, Ashutosh Rana — Zila Ghaziabad still is a tasteless mix of action and drama. 
Not surprisingly it's the old enemy, Moscow and WMD, enriched uranium and Chernobyl figure in the plot even though the rapprochement is decades old. This time it is Yuri Kamarov (Sebastian Kock) who has to be freed from trouble because of his secret file and Viktor Chagarin (Sergei Kolesnikov) is the Russian big boss at whose behest he has been jailed.
Saturday
Sunday FEBRUARY 24