Jati Shatru (enemy of your own people)

The thinking prevalent in pre-modern countries such as India is that if you (especially as a woman) do not fall in line with the wishes of the members of your community (guided by a khap leader or sarpanch) then you will pay for your sins with your body and that of your near and dear ones.

If the allegations below are true, then this incident is a new low in the election season which has already seen intolerance at the deepest levels (from all sides).
……………
A Muslim woman in eastern India has alleged she was
gang-raped by more than a dozen men because of her work helping the
Hindu nationalist opposition in ongoing elections, police said Tuesday.
The
woman from Jharkhand state has filed a complaint with police that a mob
attacked her in her home on Monday and also assaulted her 13-year-old
daughter. Her husband was allegedly handcuffed during the attack.

The
victim, in her 30s, was part of a so-called “minority” wing of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) designed to attract Muslim voters to the
party,
which is expected to sweep the ongoing polls. Few Muslims
are expected to vote for the BJP, which is being led by hardliner
Narendra Modi who remains tarnished by religious riots in his home state
of Gujarat in 2002.

Women’s issues are
high on the agenda in the parliamentary elections following the fatal
gang-rape of a student on a New Delhi bus in December 2012, which
touched off a national debate about sexual violence.
But fewer
than a fifth of the candidates standing for the BJP or the ruling
Congress party are women, according to an analysis by AFP.
In the current parliament women hold only 11 per cent of seats in both houses.

The
victim in Monday’s assault also alleged the attackers fled with 30,000
rupees (500 dollars) in cash and jewellery worth over 200,000 rupees.
Police inspector T. N. Singh in the police station closest to the victim’s home confirmed the gang-rape complaint to AFP. He said villagers had used the loudspeaker of the mosque to alert others to the assault, after which the attackers fled.
…………..
Link: http://www.dawn.com/news/1103058/indian-woman-alleges-gang-rape-punishment-for-election-work
………..

regards

Refugees require relief (not crocodile tears)

Hindus are out-migrating from (mostly Hyderabad) Pakistan. The real heroes in this story are the activist/journalist Zulfikar Shah who was assisting minorities in Pakistan and had to leave as punishment and police officer Nahar Singh who is helping refugees find a foot-hold in a country which is not their home.

We need many more of such heroes, but we also need the political class (as well as the elites) to give serious attention to the refugee problem. Why are Tibetans welcome but not Hindus (or for that matter muslims) from Pakistan? Refugees do not have any one religion, but they are all mostly poor, honest people who are traumatized. We need to do much more to help them out.

…….
Two
weeks ago, 16-year-old Bharti Rai from Hyderabad in Sindh, Pakistan,
came to India on a one-way train ticket.
She doesn’t want to go back
ever alleging oppression, sexual harassment and persecution as a
religious minority across the border. Coming through Rajasthan, she is
currently in Bijwasan village in outer Delhi. She is among 37 other
Pakistani Hindu refugees who arrived in the village this month on a
tourist visa, hoping to get asylum in India.


While Bharti
arrived in the capital just two weeks ago, her brother, Gomadh Ram, a
former farm worker from New Hala town in Sindh, was one of the first few
who came to the capital back in 2011.
The 34-year-old crossed the
border on foot through Amritsar, and reached a settlement in the
capital’s Majnu ka Tila. He now sells fruits in Basai village for a
living. He recently got an extension of two years on his tourist visa.

Nahar Singh, a politically-connected local police officer, has been
helping such refugees for about three years now. Singh says he has taken
811 refugees under his wing since 2011. More than half of them made
their way to India in 2012 when the Kumbh Mela was held in Allahabad,
says Singh. He claims enjoying the support of right-wing organizations
such as VHP, RSS and the Shiv Sena. Hindus form about 2% of the
Pakistani population. The 2014 BJP manifesto has declared India ‘a
natural home for persecuted Hindus’, while the party’s prime ministerial
candidate, Narendra Modi, has reiterated support for Hindu refugees in
his speeches.

“Young women cannot step out of their homes in
the evening in Sindh for fear of sexual harassment. Hindu men can’t get
their hair cut from a Muslim barber’s shop. The two communities do not
even share water,” says Jamna, 40. Like many other women who have
accompanied her, Jamna goes only by her first name
.

On Monday
afternoon, the shelter, located in a non-functioning school in Bijwasan,
is buzzing with noise from excited children running in the corridors.
The men are away searching for work. The asylum seekers realize that
moving to India is not a panacea to their problems. “If we were
discriminated against for religion in Pakistan, here we are
discriminated against for being Pakistani. It is difficult to get
respectable work in private companies or factories,” says Gomadh Ram.

However, Chandrama, a middle-aged woman who arrived here with her three
sons, said, “At least one has access to justice here. That doesn’t
happen in Pakistan.”

Activist and former journalist Zulfiqar
Shah is also a Pakistani refugee in the capital, currently living on the
street near Jantar Mantar with his wife. Shah had worked on the denial
of human rights to the Hindu minority in Pakistan, and he alleges it was
one of the reasons why he was hounded out. “Roughly 500 Hindus leave
Pakistan every year. The elite go to Dubai, US or the UK. The poor
gravitate towards India,” says Shah.

The group that arrived in
Delhi comprises mostly of poor farm workers or well-off small business
owners. At least two of them, who have been here over a longer period,
have acquired Aadhaar cards, the details of which they are unable to
divulge.

Last month, a temple in Larkana, Sindh, was set on
fire after rumours of a Hindu desecrating the Quran fanned communal
tension in the area. In March 2012, the case of Rinkle Kumari from Sindh
made international headlines after it was alleged that she was abducted
and forced to convert to Islam. …….  

……..
Hindus from Pakistan often travel to India on one-month pilgrim
visas, purportedly to visit the innumerable Hindu holy places and
shrines around the country. But since 2011, the number of Pakistani
Hindus refusing to leave at the end of their stay has increased
dramatically in response to the easing of visa regulations by the Indian
government, which has announced that Hindus from Pakistan can get long
term visas if they follow certain rules.



Most hail from Pakistan’s Hyderabad province, home to the majority of
the country’s 2.5 million Hindus. Once in India, they can apply for
refugee or asylum seeker status. But if their applications are denied,
they can simply go on extending their visas.
Those who stay usually end up living in tents on land offered on a
temporary basis by religious groups or temples. But lack of
identification documents means no real jobs, limited income and no means
to benefit from state welfare schemes.



But religious freedom is meaningless unless Pakistani Hindus are
given legal status and allowed to hold legitimate jobs so that they can
provide adequately for their families, said Ram Das, a college graduate
who came to India in 2011. Like most other asylum seekers from Pakistan,
despite his education, Das now makes his living as a lowly street
vendor.


“Wherever we go to look for better jobs, they ask for identity cards
and when we show them our Pakistan passports, they refuse us straight
away,” he said.


“We are neither Pakistanis nor Indians,” Das said, adding that the
Indian government is not responding to their repeated applications for
asylum or refugee status. “We get our visas extended, but how long can
we go on like that? At least give us refugee status.”




Overall, Pakistani Hindus have not benefited as much as other
migrants from Tibet, Myanmar and Afghanistan, who have been assisted by
the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

 India shelters
some 100,000 Tibetans, more than 110,000 Chin refugees, and some 250 who
have fled Afghanistan.


Mal says that he has filed several requests for financial help at the UNHCR office, but all of these have been rejected.



A spokesperson for UNHCR said it’s up to the Indian government to
decide whether or not to assist refugees and asylum seekers from
Pakistan.


“In the absence of a national legal framework for refugees in India,
the UNHCR has an understanding with the government of India whereby the
government assists refugees and asylum seekers from close neighboring
countries” and UNHCR assists those from Myanmar and Afghanistan, Suchita
Mehta, UNHCR public information officer said in an e-mail to
ucanews.com.


So for now, Pakistani Hindus can only wait patiently and continue extending their visas.

“When God has saved us from the atrocities in Pakistan, he will
surely show us the way in India,” said 25-year-old asylum seeker
Bindiya. “Good days will come. It is just a matter of time.”

……
Link: http://www.ucanews.com/news/pakistans-hindus-enter-endless-limbo-in-india/70827
……..

regards

Chennai bombing suspect in custody

The suspect was held while hiding in the train (smart guys dont make mistakes like that). Naturally they will not disclose who he is and why they have booked him. But if he is truly a “person of interest” then we should expect rapid progress. There will be intense pressure to resolve this case quickly.

A woman passenger was killed and 11 others were injured, two of them
grievously, when two bombs went off on in
two coaches of the Guwahati-Bangalore Express at the Chennai Central
railway station.
….blasts took place at around 7:45 am in S-4 and S-5 sleeper coaches after
the train arrived at the platform number 9. It is believed that this was an IED bomb.
….The
woman passenger traveling from Bangalore to Vijayawada died. She was
identified as 22-year-old Swati, who was slated to go further to Guntur.

Vijaywada is only six hours away from Chennai. Poor Swati, with her whole life ahead of her, lost her life because the train was running late (the bomb would have surely killed some other person).


First things first, we express our condolences for the victims and their families. Now for some uncharitable (but inevitable) thoughts. We are not sure what this atrocity is exactly meant to achieve. There are no sure-shot perps though suspicion will surely fall on islamists. In the middle of a highly contested election, this will probably assist the BJP. Elections are finished in Chennai/Tamil Nadu (and most of the South). Voting in coastal Andhra is scheduled for May 07. There are also many highly contested Northern seats, Varanasi being #1 amongst them.

The religious sword is a powerful and dangerous beast, difficult to place back once unleashed. Everyone has to be extra careful and the demagogues on all sides must be placed behind bars. Enough is enough.
….
10:43 am: 13 people have lower limb problem,1 has vascular injuries,1 brought dead: V. Sundaravalli, District Collector, Chennai.
10:35 am: A
passenger, who was traveling by the S3 coach, narrating his
experience, said, “I was awake and resting on my berth. At about 7.15
am, we heard some sound from the next coach. I came out of the coach and
saw what had happened in S4 and S5 coaches”.

10:23 am: Railway Minister Kharge assures help, offers Rs 1 lakh for kin of dead.

10:15 am:
A Special Investigation Team would probe the twin bomb blasts that
rocked the Bangalore-Guwahati Express: Tamil Nadu DGP K Ramanujam.

10:07 am: An ISI agent was arrested from Chennai two days ago.
10:05 am: Suspect was hiding inside the train for two hours after the twin explosions: Sources.
09:59 am: Tamil Nadu police nab a suspect who was hiding inside the Guwahati express: Sources.
09:58 am: Home Ministry has issued general alert to all railway stations after Chennai blasts: Sources.
……
Link: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/twin-blasts-at-chennai-central-station-bangalore-guwahati-express-platform-9/1/358436.html
……
regards

Mice fear men (love women)

It is just like Saudi Arabia in reverse, men should not be exposed to mice unless accompanied by a woman.

Though it is just one study, we feel it makes sense. Cant really blame the mice, they are just looking for a mother’s love (dont we all). To solve this problem men should try to become good at mothering (it is not that hard, just requires commitment).

……..

The history of
science is one chock-full of mice and men. Historically, biological and
medical research has largely depended on rodents, which provide
scientists with everything from cells and organs to behavioral data.
That’s why a new study in which researchers found that mice actually
fear men, but not women, has the potential to be so disruptive. It might
mean that a number of researchers have published mouse studies in which
their results reflect this male-induced stress effect
— and they know
nothing about it.

“People have not paid attention
to this in the entire history of scientific research of animals,” says
Jeffrey Mogil, a pain researcher at McGill University and lead author of
the study. “I think that it may have confounded, to whatever degree,
some very large subset of existing research.” Moreover, the effect
probably isn’t limited to behavioral studies, because the organs and
cells that are used in medical research, such as in cancer studies,
often originate in rodents. 

“If you’re doing a liver cell study, the
cells came from a rat that was sacrificed either by a man or a woman,”
Mogil says. As a result, “its stress levels would be in very different
states.” This, he says, could have an effect on the functioning of the
liver cell in that later experiment.


In the study, published today in Nature Methods,
researchers used the “mouse grimace scale” to measure pain responses in
rodents exposed to men, women, or their respective smells.
Pain is a
proxy for stress because stress can, to a large extent, numb pain. So
when the mice were confronted with the smell of men, they experienced
less pain, whereas the presence of women — or their smell, Mogil says —
“did nothing at all.”


This might seem like a
positive effect, but think of it this way: when athletes get hurt
during a stressful game, they often don’t feel the injury right away,
and they keep pushing. From an evolutionary standpoint, this is supposed
to keep them alive by helping them focus on something other than pain.
Yet in reality, it mostly just ends up making the injury worse.


But pain wasn’t the only
indicator of stress in this study. Further experiments showed that the
rodents also had increased body temperatures and levels of
corticosterone, a stress hormone, in response to the smell of men.
And
the effect wasn’t just prompted by human males, either. Rats and mice
“are afraid of the smell of males of any species,” Mogil says, because
the mice in this study reacted to the smell of male dogs, guinea pigs,
and cats as well.

The researchers think that mice
react this way because of competition, and not predation. Male mice are
territorial, Mogil says, even when it comes to females entering their
domain. They also compete with males for mating opportunities,
“so it’s
probably a little bit evolutionarily adaptive to have this effect until
you can determine that a male that’s around doesn’t actually mean you
any harm,” he says. In all likelihood, mice just haven’t developed a way
to discriminate between the smell of a male mouse and the smell of
other male mammals, so men also elicit a fear response.


Interestingly, the
stress response isn’t only dependent on the sex of an intruder, but also
on the circumstances of his or her approach. “If you put a male-worn
T-shirt and a female-worn T-shirt in the same room, the female T-shirt
counteracts the effect of a male T-shirt.”
This, Mogil says, indicates
that solitary males represent the real threat. “A lone male is up to no
good — either hunting or defending his territory.” 
Fortunately, the
male-induced stress effect becomes less pronounced over time, eventually
disappearing altogether. This, and the fact that women counteract the
effect, means there are a number of ways that researchers could prevent
it from showing up in data.

………
Link: http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/28/5661118/lab-mice-fear-men-not-women-big-problem-for-science
…….
regards

Safe jobs (2029)

Late in the 21st century there will be NO safe jobs. Everything hard will be done by computers, everything tedious, dirty, and dangerous by robots (including warfare). People will probably die of boredom, just sitting around at home and watching reality TV all day.
…….
According to CareerCast’s “Best Jobs of 2014”
report, employers are paying big bucks to lure employees that
understand data, code and math (which really translates to “data
analytics”). 

In fact, jobs that depend on these geeky skills comprise
half of the top 10 jobs of 2014.

……
Data analysis is so important to the modern enterprise, in fact, that one executive recruiter declared,
“In 15 years, if you don’t have a solid quant background, you might
have a permanent pink slip,” simply because “so much of decision-making
in corporations is going so quickly toward having a quant-foundation.”

…….
Here are the top 10 jobs of 2014, along with the median income for the position:


  1. Mathematician / $101,360
  2. Tenured University Professor / $68,970
  3. Statistician /$75,560
  4. Actuary / $93,680
  5. Audiologist / $69,720
  6. Dental Hygienist / $70,210
  7. Software Engineer / $93,350
  8. Computer Systems Analyst / $79,680
  9. Occupational Therapist /$75,400
  10. Speech Pathologist / $69,870

Among the worst jobs of 2014 were the lumberjack (No. 200) and the
newspaper reporter (No. 199). While it’s unclear what the lumberjack
should do, famed statistician Nate Silver offers clear guidance for journalists: Learn to code.

………..
Link: http://readwrite.com/2014/04/28/best-jobs-2014-math-big-data-code-programming
…….
regards

Apollo babies (hackers) recover earth-rise

This beautiful pix showing earth-rise for the first time (and its companions) will certainly be a joy forever. One more proof that the world is being  ruled by hackers and we are just allowed to live in it (and gawp at their achievements).
 

The most recent and impressive ones are the Lost Lunar Orbiter (satellite) pictures from 1966. It is mind-boggling what the folks did in those early days with so little money and primitive technology. Space was the new frontier then, and that magic cant be recreated easily. If someone can do it, we bet it will be the hackers (aka techno-archaeologists). Take a bow, Keith Conning and Dennis Wingo.

Finally, we just got bit by the nostalga bug when we read about Usenet and Radio Shack. Good old days!!!
…..
Sitting incongruously among the hangars
and laboratories of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley is the
squat facade of an old McDonald’s. You won’t get a burger there,
though–its cash registers and soft-serve machines have given way to old
tape drives and modern computers run by a rogue team of hacker engineers
who’ve rechristened the place McMoon’s.
These self-described
techno-archaeologists have been on a mission to recover and digitize
forgotten photos taken in the ‘60s by a quintet of scuttled lunar
satellites.




The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project
has since 2007 brought some 2,000 pictures back from 1,500 analog data
tapes. They contain the first high-resolution photographs ever taken
from behind the lunar horizon, including the first photo of an earthrise
(first slide above).
Thanks to the technical savvy and DIY engineering
of the team at LOIRP, it’s being seen at a higher resolution than was
ever previously possible.

“We’re reaching back to a capability that existed but couldn’t be
touched back when it was created,” says Keith Cowing, co-lead and
founding member at LOIRP. “It’s like having a DVD in 1966, you can’t
play it. We had resolution of the earth of about a kilometer [per
pixel]. This is an image taken a quarter of a fucking million miles away
in 1966. The Beatles were warming up to play Shea Stadium at the moment
it was being taken.”

Between 1966 and ’67, five Lunar Orbiters snapped pictures onto 70mm
film from about 30 miles above the moon. The satellites were sent mainly
to scout potential landing sites for manned moon missions. Each
satellite would point its dual lens Kodak camera at a target, snap a
picture, then develop the photograph. High- and low-resolution photos
were then scanned into strips called framelets using something akin to
an old fax machine reader.

The images were beamed in modulated signals to one of three receiving
stations in Australia, Spain, or California, where the pictures–and collateral chatter from the NASA operators–were
recorded straight to tape. After finishing their missions, the
satellites were unceremoniously dashed against the moon rocks, clearing
the way for Apollo. 

“These guys were operating right at the edge,” Cowing says with a
reverence for these NASA engineers that’s shared by his team. “There’s a
certain spy program heritage to all this, but these guys went above
that, because those spy satellites would send their images back. These
didn’t. They couldn’t. They were in lunar orbit.”

The photos were stored with remarkably high fidelity on the tapes,
but at the time had to be copied from projection screens onto paper,
sometimes at sizes so large that warehouses and even old churches were
rented out to hang them up. The results were pretty grainy, but clear
enough to identify landing sites and potential hazards. After the low-fi
printing, the tapes were shoved into boxes and forgotten.

They changed hands several times over the years, almost getting
tossed out before landing in storage in Moorpark, California. Several
abortive attempts were made to recover data from the tapes, which were
well kept, but it wasn’t until 2005 that NASA engineer Keith Cowing and
space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo
were able to bring the materials and the
technical know how together.

When they learned through a Usenet
group that former NASA employee Nancy Evans might have both the tapes
and the super-rare Ampex FR-900 drives needed to read them, they jumped
into action. They drove to Los Angeles, where the refrigerator-sized
drives were being stored in a backyard shed surrounded by chickens.
At
the same time, they retrieved the tapes from a storage unit in nearby
Moorpark, and things gradually began to take shape. Funding the project
out of pocket at first, they were consumed with figuring out how to
release the images trapped in the tapes.

“We’re both Apollo babies, so the moon to us was something that’s
unfinished business,” says Cowing. 

“These tapes were sealed for history
by somebody who cared, and it was astonishing the condition they were
in. So we started buying used parts on eBay, Radioshack–I was sitting at
a black tie reception at one point buying something on my iPhone.
We
just buy and reassemble these things bit by bit.”

The drives had to be rebuilt and in some cases completely
re-engineered using instruction manuals or the advice of people who used
to service them. The data they recovered then had to be demodulated and
digitized, which added more layers of technical difficulties.

…..
Link: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/lost-lunar-photos-recovered-by-great-feats-of-hackerdom-developed-at-a-mcdonalds
…..
regards

The (im)moral Maharajah

Adultery in our opinion is not necessarily a moral crime (in the context of an open marriage). We doubt this was the case when the famous lady journalist hotted it up with the Maharajah of Raghogarh (Guna, Madhya Pradesh) but this will be settled between the private individuals and is not a public concern. Normally we would worry about the neutrality of news media when journalists gets into bed (literally in this case, figuratively for others) with politicians. However with the spread of paid news and other delights no one in India can pretend that news is in any way neutral. Also by the time one has filtered the bytes through the lens (multiple) of caste, class, religion, language, and region, one is at liberty to state that there is no objective truth.

That said, it is always delightful to catch politicians with their pants down, especially hyper-moralistic partisans like Digvijay Singh, who was taking pot-shots just yesterday at the Hindu Great Man (HGM). Now we have also been critical of the shabby manner in which Jashodaben has been treated but then we are not creepy, stinky, dirty old males jumping into bed with married females young enough to be our daughters.

We also hope that this is not going to be another tragic play like the Sunanda Pushkar story. We pray that the husband gets his pound of flesh out of the matter, nothing less than 10 crore in cash will do, a posh flat in Delhi, and yes, a Jaguar F-type (Car of the Year award from Playboy magazine). We do wish the (about to be) married couple happiness in their future life together.
………
Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh’s acceptance of his
“relationship” with a 43-year-old Rajya Sabha TV anchor and their plans
to marry created a political storm on Wednesday with the opposition BJP
and Aam Admi Party (AAP) targeting the 67-year-old former Madhya Pradesh
chief minister on “morality”.




Singh confirmed the relationship on Twitter a day after his pictures with Amrita Rai went viral on social media.


The senior Congress leader has made barbs over Narendra Modi’s
marital status recently.


Earlier in the afternoon, Singh had tweeted, “I have no hesitation in
accepting my relationship with Amrita Rai. She and her husband have
already filed a mutual consent divorce case.
Once that is decided we
would formalise it. But I do condemn encroachment in our private life.”

Rai too posted on Twitter: “I have separated from my husband and we have
filed a mutual consent divorce papers. After which I have decided to
marry with Digvijaya Singh.”  

She also tweeted, “My email/computer been hacked & contents tampered
with. It is a serious crime in India & encroachment of my privacy. I
strongly condemn it.”

BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said, “A new definition of morality has
been given by the actions of senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh
Saheb. Those who preach lessons of morality should first look within
themselves to see if they are practising what they are preaching to
others. As far as the legal aspect of the matter of adultery is
concerned, it is up to the husband of the lady to pursue the matter.”

……….
Link (1): http://indianexpress.com/article/india/politics/digvijaya-singh-reacts-over-viral-pic-accepts-relationship-with-journalist-amrita-rai/99/

Link (2): http://newsroom.jaguarlandrover.com/en-us/jaguar/news/2014/02/jaguar_playboy_award_ftype/
………

regards

Maoists driven back (by women voters)

Unlike in Kashmir (Srinagar recorded only 25% votes yesterday) there seems to be fresh hope for electoral democracy in Chattisgarh. Two key things will have to happen for democracy to flourish: maximum possible devolution of power to the lowest level possible, and implementation of social schemes without fear or favor.

Congratulations are due to the Raman Singh led BJP govt for doing well on the governance front. However the Maoist menace will remain for a long time to come (it cant be wished away). The worst thing (as in Nigeria) is for the govt to become complacent.
…..
Defying the Maoist threat of poll-boycott, Chhattisgarh
has indeed created a record of sorts in the just concluded Lok Sabha
polls in the state, registering not only the highest ever turnout of
69.48% but also witnessing an overwhelming participation of 68.04% women
voters.

As compared to a turnout of 55.29% in 2009 and about
52.09% in 2004, nearly 70% of the 1,76,23,818 electorate exercised their
franchise in these elections. Even the so-called “red areas”, where
Maoists had given called for a poll boycott, voters remained undeterred,
with Bastar and Kanker regions recording a turnout of 59.4% and 70.29%
respectively, another first in the state.


Statistically
speaking, the second phase of polling in Rajnandgaon, Mahasamund and
Kanker witnessed the highest turnout of 73.04%. This was followed by
69.60% in the third phase, which concluded on Thursday.

Poling
in the first phase in Bastar was the lowest in the state at 59.40%.
However, this turnout was much larger than the 43.33% in 2004 and 47.33%
in 2009.

The increase in the participation of women voters has
been the other hallmark of these polls. As compared to 52.33% in 2009
and 45.50% in 2004, 68.04% of the 8714762registered women voters
exercised their franchise.

Even in the Maoist infested areas of
Bastar and Kanker, women participation was high at 49.85% and 49.27%
respectively. In fact the near 50% participation of women in Bastar has
been the highest in the state.

Reasons for high turnout: While
increased voter awareness, thanks to the massive campaigns undertaken by
the EC, is being considered the main reason for the high voting trends,
the hype surrounding the high pitched polls has also contributed to the
turnout. The BJP, which is hoping to come to power at the centre with
Narendra Modi at the helm, had been virtually in the poll mode for the
last one year and didn’t lose steam even after winning the assembly
elections. Some even attribute the advent of AAP on the state’s
political scene for the increase turnout.

The BJP has a lot at
stake and thus a lot to lose in these elections. It had won 10 of the 11
seats in the last two Lok Sabha polls and observers feel that it might
not be that easy for it to repeat the same performance. With punters
betting on 9 seats for the BJP, the gain of even one seat for the
Congress would mean a 100% increase for them.

…..

Link:
…..

regards

“million-woman” against Boko Haram (an appeal)

The Nigerian school girls abducted by Boko Haram apparently have been sold as slaves to jihadists. This is not exactly a surprise. A million-women march may help put pressure on a complacent government. But chances of recovering the girls (especially if they have crossed international borders) is close to zero.

We @ BP would like to appeal to our readers to highlight this important event on social media and hope for success in a difficult cause.
…….

Protesters
will hold a “million-woman march” in the Nigerian capital (Abuja) on Wednesday
over the government’s failure to rescue scores of schoolgirls kidnapped
by Boko Haram Islamists two weeks ago.
Angry Nigerian parents
lashed out at the government on Tuesday as a local leader claimed the
hostages had been sold as wives abroad.



The outrage that
followed the mass abduction has been compounded by disputes over how
many girls were seized and criticism of the military’s search-and-rescue
effort.
Borno officials have said 129 girls were kidnapped
when gunmen stormed the school after sundown on April 14 and forced the
students — who are between 12 and 17 years old — onto a convoy of
trucks. Officials said 52 have since escaped.
Locals, including
the school’s principal, have rejected those numbers, insisting that 230
students were snatched and that 187 are still being held hostage.

 

Mark told AFP that his wife has hardly slept since the attack, lying awake at night “thinking about our daughter”.

 
An organization called Women for Peace and Justice has called for a
“million-woman protest march” in the capital Abuja on Wednesday to
demand that more resources be committed to securing the girls’ release.

 

While the group is unlikely to rally a crowd of that size, support for
the movement has been growing on Twitter under #BringBackOurGirls.


 
Pogo Bitrus, leader of a Chibok elders group, told AFP that locals had
been tracking the movements of the hostages with the help of “various
sources” across the northeast. “From the information we
received yesterday from Cameroonian border towns our abducted girls were
taken … into Chad and Cameroon,” he said. The girls were then sold as brides to Islamist fighters for 2,000 naira ($12) each, Bitrus added.

 

There was however no independent confirmation of his report and the
defence ministry did not immediately answer calls seeking comment.

 

Some of the girls who escaped have said the hostages were taken to
Borno’s Sambisa Forest area, where Boko Haram has well-fortified camps.
Locals have scoured the bushlands of the remote region, pooling money
to buy fuel for motorcycles and cars to conduct their own rescue effort,
saying they have no confidence in the military’s search.

 

“The
free movement of the kidnappers in huge convoys with their captives for
two weeks without being traced by the military which claims to be
working diligently to free the girls is unbelievable,” Bitrus told AFP.

 

Nigeria deployed thousands of additional troops to the northeast last
year as part of an offensive aimed at crushing Boko Haram, but security
experts say the military lacks the troops needed to fully cover the
region.

Dozens of Borno women clad in black staged a protest on Tuesday in front of Nigeria’s parliament.

 

Protest leader Naomi Mutah told three senators who received the group
that they did not know the whereabouts of the girls, saying some might
have crossed over to Chad. “Our grievance is this: For the past
two weeks and this is the third week, we have not heard anybody talking
to us,” said Mutah. “They are suffering in the bush. Let them (authorities) help us to free them,” another protester said.

 

In a motion Tuesday, the senate urged the government and security
agencies to seek the cooperation of other countries and the UN security
council in the rescue effort.

…….

Link:
……

regards

India before Japan (World Bank)

Economy #3 as ranked by the International Comparison Program (ICP), hosted by the
Development Data Group at the World Bank.

These gross numbers are a bit meaningless anyway, still India would do much better off if the conflict level was lower in the sub-continent, OTOH the situation is more stable than Middle East North Africa (MENA) nations which are superior in HDI rankings.
……..
In a
matter of six years, India emerged as the world’s third-largest economy
in 2011 from being the 10th largest in 2005, moving ahead of Japan,
while the US remained the largest economy closely followed by China,
latest figures have revealed.


“The economies of Japan and the
UK became smaller compared to the US, while Germany increased slightly,
France and Italy remained the same,” according to data released on
Wednesday by the International Comparison Program (ICP), hosted by the
Development Data Group at the World Bank Group.

“The relative
rankings of the three Asian economies — China, India, and Indonesia — to
the US doubled, while Brazil, Mexico and Russia increased by one-third
or more,” the report said. The world produced goods and services worth
over $90 trillion in 2011 and that almost half of the total output came
from low and middle-income countries, it said.

According to the
major findings of the ICP, six of the world’s 12 largest economies were
in the middle-income category (based on the World Bank’s definition).

When combined, the 12 largest economies accounted for two-thirds of the
world economy and 59 per cent of the population, it said.

The
purchasing power parities (PPPs)-based world GDP amounted to $90,647
billion, compared with $70,294 billion measured by exchange rates, it
said, adding that the share of middle-income economies in global GDP is
48 per cent when using PPPs and 32 per cent when using exchange rates.

The six largest middle-income economies — China, India, Russia, Brazil,
Indonesia and Mexico — account for 32.3 per cent of world GDP, whereas
the six largest high-income economies — US, Japan, Germany, France, UK
and Italy — account for 32.9 per cent, the report said.

Asia
and the Pacific, including China and India, account for 30 per cent of
world GDP, Eurostat-OECD 54 per cent, Latin America 5.5 per cent
(excluding Mexico, which participates in the OECD and Argentina, which
did not participate in the ICP 2011), Africa and Western Asia about 4.5
per cent each.

“China and India make up two-thirds of the Asia
and the Pacific economy, excluding Japan and South Korea, which are part
of the OECD comparison. Russia accounts for more than 70 per cent of
the CIS, and Brazil for 56 per cent of Latin America. South Africa,
Egypt, and Nigeria account for about half of the African economy,” said
the report.

“At 27 per cent, China now has the largest share of
the world’s expenditure for investment (gross fixed capital formation)
followed by the US at 13 per cent. India, Japan and Indonesia follow with 7 per cent, 4 per cent, and 3 per cent, respectively,” the report said.

China and India account for about 80 per cent of investment expenditure in the Asia and the Pacific region. Russia accounts for 77 per cent of CIS, Brazil for 61 per cent of Latin
America and Saudi Arabia 40 per cent of Western Asia, it said.

The report said low-income economies, as a share of world GDP, were
more than two times larger based on PPPs than respective exchange rate
shares in 2011.

Roughly 28 per cent of the world’s population lives in economies with
GDP per capita expenditure above the $13,460 world average and 72 per
cent are below that average.

The approximate median yearly per
capita expenditure for the world — at $10,057 — means that half of the
global population has per capita expenditure above that amount and half
below, it said.

The five economies with the highest GDP per capita are Qatar, Macao, Luxembourg, Kuwait and Brunei. The first two economies have more than $1,00,000 per capita, the ICP report said.

Eleven economies have more than $50,000 per capita, while they
collectively account for less than 0.6 per cent of the world’s
population. The US has the 12th-highest GDP per capita.

Eight
economies – Malawi, Mozambique, Central African Republic, Niger,
Burundi, Congo, Comoros and Liberia — have a GDP per capita of less than
$1,000.

The five economies with highest actual individual
consumption per capita are Bermuda, US, Cayman Islands, Hong Kong and
Luxembourg.

The world average actual individual consumption per capita is approximately $8,647, it said.

…….

Link:
……

regards

Brown Pundits