Jinhe Naaz Hai

Bilquis (Jinhein Naaz Hai) is an awesome song from Rabbi Shergill's album, Avengi Ja Nahin. Part of the lyrics are based on a song with the same name from Guru Dutt's Pyaasa (1957)

Shergill's song speaks about the atrocities committed against people who raised their voice against corrupt practices in the system. It asks the obvious question, "jinhe naaz hai hind par woh kahan the, jinhe naaz hai hind par woh kahan hai." 3 of the 4 people mentioned in this song were murdered.

Translation of 'jinhe naaz...'
"Where were all those people who were proud of India (when this happened), where are the people who are proud of India?"

People mentioned in the song

[0:54] Bilkis Yaqoob Rasool aka Bilkis Bano
During the Gujarat riots of 2002, Bilkis Bano was raped and left for dead alongside 14 members of her family. In January 2008, 13 of the 20 accused in the case were convicted. Supreme Court lawyer Vrinda Grover pointed out, “For the first time in post-independence India, a communal riot-related rape case has seen conviction.

Read more on Tehelka

[1:32] Satyendra Dubey
Dubey was Project director at the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). He was murdered while fighting corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway construction project.

Read more on Wikipedia

[2:20] Shanmugham Manjunath
Manjunath was murdered  for sealing a petrol station in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh. The station was sealed for selling adulterated fuel.

Read more on Wikipedia

[3:32] Navleen Kumar
Navleen Kumar was a human rights activist who was murdered in 2002 in her apartment in Mumbai. She had been working for more than a decade to protect and restore the lands of Adivasis (indigenous people) in the Thane district through legal interventions at different courts.

Read more on Wikipedia


So, jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hai?

"Everyone just stood there and watched."

November 19, 2011. In a city bus in Pune. The young girl standing beside me in the bus starts yelling at a guy next to her. It was time the girl's patience had gone over board due to inappropriate advances the guy was making towards her, intruding her personal space. My friend & I had noticed the pranks of this guy from the time we had boarded the bus, which he had been doing since he was in the bus stop. Meanwhile, the guy tried to defend himself by blaming the girl for what was happening. She created commotion out of it and called out for the conductor to chuck this guy out of the bus. But like everyone else in the bus, the conductor just stood there and watched the tamasha. The bus and the commuters continued their journey as if nothing had happened.

What the girl told me, during the conversation later, is what this article is about. “I cannot tolerate such things” she said “Unfortunately, no one in the bus came to my help. Everyone just stood there and watched.”

“Everyone just stood there and watched.”

This is exactly the same thing what Priyanka Fernandes said a week back, “When my friends Keenan and Reuben were being stabbed repeatedly, mercilessly, I could see at least 50 eyewitnesses, who stood like stone, unmoving and unmoved, as we screamed for help. Not one came forward to join the fray, to help us fight against a reprehensible crime.” [Keenan & Reuben case: NDTV, Wikipedia ]

Not that I expected a mob justice for this girl, but I was hoping that, at least, the bus conductor would give a warning to the guy. The last time I witnessed something similar was in Chennai, when a guy was thrown out of the bus for making lewd remarks to a girl.

But unfortunately, people need a more empathetic factor to raise a voice against something bad happening to a person standing next to them. They don't care because it is not someone they know. And while we stand there watching indifferently, the number of Keenans & Reubens will only continue to increase in our country.

Thankfully, this time, I wasn't one of those who stood there and just watched.

[The above image is not an image from the scene]

Policeman attacks mentally challenged man with brute force. Jai Ho!

The ABC of Ayodhya

Source: The Internet

A celebration of slavery

A recent campaign by Arindam Chaudhuri (of IIPM) about his latest article on the Common Wealth Games interested me and took me to his blog. The article is about Indians creating hype around the CWG and that we should stop participating in such lavish games.

In a country like India where we cannot provide the basic necessities of life to lakhs of people across the country - is there a need of spending Rs. 70, 000 Cr on a 11-day event? I am sure many would have been happy, at least, if the money was genuinely spent on the games, but we know what has happened to it, which is a different story in itself. Even the central government did not show much interest though it involved so much money.

In terms of expenditure, Rs. 70, 000 Cr is a whopping amount compared to the 1951 and 1982 Asian Games for which the expenditure was only Rs. 5cr and Rs. 55cr respectively. Yes, there has been inflation over the decades but this is mind boggling. The amount spent on the games is a lot more than the yearly food budget of the country.

Arindam says in his article (complete article here) that these games are a celebration of our slavery under and British Empire and of all the nations that were under the colonial rule. Frankly speaking, they are. Is there a need for any of the erstwhile colonies to celebrate their centuries of oppression?

Amazingly this year, the celebration of slavery started a day after Bapu’s birth anniversary.

 

Also read

Arindam’s article on CWG

Was IIPM offering an MBA degree that nobody would recognize? – By Vir Sanghvi

Food for thought: I hail from India…

 

 

I hail from India - the country which ranks at 66 among 88 in the Global Hunger Index. A nation whose child malnourishment record is worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa. A country now ranking 134 in the United Nations Human Development Index below Bhutan and Laos.

Here, issues of grave national concern get only a couple of stories spanning a modest few inches across three or four columns in newspapers but full pages are devoted to deaths of fashion models.

Here, 836 million Indians (77 per cent of the population) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. (Report by National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector)

Here, the authorities say that ‘there-is-no-money’ to feed the hungry while the country spends Rs. 10,000 crore on a new airport, more than Rs. 40,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games, Rs. 60,000 crore happily lost in the spectrum scam, Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs under just three heads for the super-rich and the corporate sector in the current government budget. Here, funds for the hungry are hard to come by.

Economists estimate that if rice/wheat were made available to all Indians at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would add Rs.84,399 crore to the food subsidy in coming budgets. That's about one-sixth of the tax write-offs for the wealthy in this year's budget. (Other estimates place the added expenditure each year at no more than Rs. 45,000 crore).

It is the same country that has 49 dollar billionaires in the Forbes list.

I hail from India, the land of the Mahatma.

(Excerpted from (a must read article) Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL by P. Sainath of The Hindu)

The Indian Jawan

These are few stories told by the jawans in the Indian paramilitary forces.

Story 1

“I spent one third of my 20 years in the CRPF just travelling. Of these 20 years, I could spend only three years with my children. I took medical leave to get married. I could only reach my village five days after I received news of my father passing away. I am the eldest in my family but I couldn’t even perform the last rites. I couldn’t attend three of my four sisters’ marriages. I had to arrange a separate house for my wife and kids after my father’s death because my brother threw them out from the joint family house. But if you take any of these problems to your officers, they just shoo you away.”

Story 2

A jawan who has spent 16 years in the CRPF — six in Jammu and Kashmir, three in Assam, three in Tripura, and three in Manipur. Too scared to talk at the CRPF headquarters, he calls late at night to share his story. During a posting in Srinagar, he was charged with indiscipline and lost 15 days of pay for daring to complain about inedible food and cockroaches in his dal. When he fell sick in Tripura, he couldn’t get a car to get to hospital. “I had to hire a jeep,” says he. “Only if 15-20 constables fall sick and need a car together, there’s a chance of us getting it. Otherwise the cars are busy ferrying the officers’ children. This country got independence in 1947, but we still live like slaves. Our officers order us to do unauthorized things; we have no right to express ourselves. They tell us to barge into people’s homes and pick up bricks and cement and construct our quarters. They pocket lakhs of welfare money; they take commissions from ration shops.

We pay Rs 1,326 per month for food. The bills are for A-grade rations but we get C-grade food. The commander is like the king of a battalion. He runs it the way he wants. As a driver, I am sent all the time for unauthorized pick ups. All the risk of being caught is on me. You live under so much pressure, you either shoot yourself or shoot someone else. I am just waiting to complete 20 years so I can get a part of my pension and then I’ll quit."

Story 3

One retired jawan remembers a tortuous journey in 2004 that stretched 8,000 kilometers over two months as the Home Ministry ordered his company like a pawn to move from Agartala to Gujarat via Bangladesh, Delhi, Kashmir and back to Agartala. Crowded trains, no reservations, no accommodations, no sense of why they were being deployed anywhere, and, most of all — no sense of respect. “I have fought insurgents for 20 years,” says the jawan bitterly, “but this one journey showed me my standing in my country’s eyes. How can you fool around with so many human beings on the pretext of an emergency situation?” Other jawans speak of being summoned to places for six months and being asked to stay for six years.

Read the full article here: Soldiers of Misfortune

Also read ‘My patriotism is dead’ & ‘We felt like pawns’ on the same page.

Life, as a normal Indian…

The road woes

 

+ I take my cycle to school. I approach a crossroad; a bus swerves from the right to the left extreme left of the road, close enough to flick me. Someone from inside the bus stretches his hand to take off my cap. I am glad my cap stays tight. No one says a word. They are all just like me, Indians. This is a common sight for us.

+ Another fateful Monday, I am in white school uniform, heading to school. Someone from the bus spits out his tobacco, randomly. And luck has it that the red spit of his lands on my shirt. No one says a word. No sympathy for me, this is a common occurrence, I was there at the wrong place. I will soon live with it.

+ I realize it is a bad idea to venture out on rainy days. One is sure to get mud all over the dress, thanks to the holes in the road and our dear artistic bus drivers.

+ I understand it is not safe on the road. There is nothing called a lane system here.

+ Sometimes I get so freaked, I know no one would blame me if they also saw a huge truck coming straight at me, on my ‘correct’ side of the road.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

+ I would think thrice before I take my girlfriend to the beach. For I am sure there would be some lolling tongue that would comment on her. I am just reconciled to the fact that there is no concept of solitude here!

……………………………………………………………………………………………

+ Every time I say goodbye to a friend who takes his/her bike, I offer a prayer that they reach safe. Never have I been sure that it would happen. I am not scared; I have just come to terms with lack of rules at the roads.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Indian real-idiot-box

+ I switch on the TV, there are ads that I don’t like, especially the one where a guy gets a deodorant out and the servant women feels him all over. If there ever was a desperate woman, this would be one.

+ I change the channels and I see our super action hero taking his 150 cc bike, with no helmet, jumping red signals and speed limits at will. The heroin behind him removes her veil and lets if fly, not caring about it falling on the path of those behind her. What love indeed!!

+ I change channels again and there is an hour show on what is going on in the world of films. Who kissed who, and who slept with who are the hot topics here. Sportsmen are not spared either, every word they utter is scrutinized and each one of their gestures is interpreted a million bad ways.

+ I don’t watch Indian channels anymore.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

It is an open secret

+ I would gladly give a couple of hundreds for not wearing a helmet, five hundred for not wearing my seat belt, a thousand for crossing the red light and a thousand more to close a case, if I banged my car and killed someone. It is so easy here, in India.

+ I go to the police station, to report the loss of my bike, and I am treated like a criminal myself. I make a follow up trip a week later and I am reasoned out that people lose their cars and houses and a bike ain’t such a great loss.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

We are used to all this now

+ I take up the newspapers, and the first item that catches my eyes is the picture of death, a burning van, a child – crying as his legs were severed from the explosion. I read of parliamentary bitching everywhere. I read of shameless ministers who jump from party to party, all of them with often conflicting ideologies. I read of deceitful men, who call themselves as saints on the outside and are sex addicts inside their so called hermitages.

+ I don’t read the papers anymore.

………………………………………………………………………………………………

+ I take my friends to a hotel. I order lunch and wait half an hour for it to arrive. I don’t complain about the extra salt or the lack of salt or how hot or cold the food is. What can I expect, if I complained a fly fell in my soup I would have to drink it with the knowledge that the waiter picked it out with his bare hands!

……………………………………………………………………………………………

+ I can apply for any certification that I want. Be it birth, death, educational degree, marriage, passport, voting id, ration card. All could all be done by spending extra money. There is no waiting period for those who choose to be smart and bribe. I am smart, I bribe.

+ I live in Gandhian land, where the man in white and white is the most respected. He is also the most powerful.

+ I need a job, no problem; I just gather up a few lack of rupees and land it into his hands, I get settled for life – a job in the government.

+ I need to enrol myself in some college; I gather up some money and give it to him.

+ I need to escape the law; I flash a photograph of myself with him, or show his visiting card. He would save me, as long as I would pay him his cut dutifully!

……………………………………………………………………………………………

+ I am an Indian I endure it all. I don’t comment when someone spits on the road. I act as if I don’t notice when I see them throw litter on every empty land available. I would keep silent even if someone killed my brother and threw him into one of those pits. I would bribe anyone for I have no other choice if I need my work to be done. I am not surprised when the leader of my clan cheats his followers. I don’t stop anyone when they are busy abusing my women folk.

+ I would not dare stop them, for I fear that if I did, It would be  me who gets thrown in the pit and one of my Indian brothers who would watch me silently from above.  

……………………………………………………………………………………………

I am an Indian, and I am not proud of it.

(The author does not like to disclose his identity. Content slightly edited.)

Who on earth is Shashank Manohar?

(A bot tweeted me about this article. An interesting read about Shashank Manohar. Have not verified the facts myself, though.)

The short answer is Shashank Manohar is a NEW President of the BCCI. But there is enough dirt on this clown and he is a perfect example why Indian cricket is in such perfect shambles.

To know Shashank Manohar better, one has to go back to 26th November 1995. It was an ODI played between India and New Zealand when the VCA stadium wall collapsed, killing 13 people and injuring over 70. And who were responsible? Shashank Manohar himself, along with his father V.R. Manohar, the bosses of the VCA stadium - allegedly these guys had contracted a close relative of theirs for the construction of the wall. It isn't a surprise that a man responsible for cricket's biggest on-field tragedy is the NEW president of the board. (Read here)

It's no secret that the betting cartel run from Karachi by Dawood Ibrahim's gang has the BCCI backing. So what's the nexus between the Dawood gang and BCCI? Well. the official link is Shashank Manohar. Manohar's family is quite close to the Dawood gang and defends their gang members in most high-profile cases. So the question arises if a man is so close to the betting cartel, should he be the BCCI New president?

Is he an honest man? Shashank Manohar claims to be one. His sycophant journalists include a certain Ajay Nayudu and Vinay Nayudu who claim that Shashank Manohar does not take a penny from the BCCI, even pays for his travel expenses. Facts state otherwise. Shashank Manohar took money from the VCA offers to sponsor a school-boy team's 3 month tour to England. Why? Just because his son was playing in the team. For the record, his son Adwait Manohar is a pathetic cricketer, with a first class average of 15.

So, he spent millions from the BCCI earnings to give his own good-for-nothing son. An honest douche bag indeed. (Read here)

He is also the guy making the most fuss about contracts, pay-for-performance and endorsement caps. Why? Simply because to cover up all his betting cartel links, he needs an honest image.

As a cricketer himself, he played just one first-class match - thanks to his father's influence, averaging 9. (Read here)

Read the original article here.

IPL – it’s real

I came across this blog post, IPL, Basic Economics & Us, a few days back, while surfing the internet about how IPL is affecting the common man. The ‘phenomenon’ of IPL has gripped the whole nation for the past 3 years with an entire generation from film stars to politicians to you and I involved in it. Everyone wants to be a part of it, the rich men want to buy it, the cricketers want to play it, bloggers like me want to write about it and the common man doesn’t want to miss it either. And yeah, the Bollywood too is not behind in the race.

I am not a great fan of IPL or of cricket for that instance (not that I hate cricket) Actually, IPL is not about cricket at all. It is just another reality show with the world’s finest cricketers as lead actors. The only difference compared to other TV shows is that this reality show is LIVE and is also telecasted on YouTube. No doubt it would be one of the highest grossing shows in television history. Thanks to the amount of money involved.

Now, coming to the article which I read, is by a guy called Buddhiraj. He is not a regular blogger but I liked the only two articles (my kind) he has written so far. In this article he starts off with a story and then goes on to relate economics in IPL to inflation in the country. He also tells about the how the advertising during IPL will (might) influence the prices of day-to-day commodities. It is a short write-up and good read for IPL fans to know that IPL has some serious side effects, other than wasting a few million man-hours.

Read the complete article here. You can also read Buddhi’s other articles on his blog, Buddhi Baptizm.

Forgive me for being blasphemous about IPL and cricket. They are just not my cup of tea.

WTF News Part – 1

This is the first of my WTF News series. There will be more of these, probably once every week, or as I gather enough stuff for a post. These are screenshots of news from prominent news websites in the country.

And the reason why I consider these WTF News is:

i) I (or you) wouldn’t care to have first look at them. Forget about the second look anyway.

ii) Their being there or not being, anyone reading it or not reading does not make any difference to you, me or the common man walking on the road.

iii) Coz I love it when the news channels make a fun of themselves and those whom they are writing about, by posting this kind of news on their sites.

iv) They think we are jobless to read them. Yes, I am, jobless enough to read them and put them on my blog.

So, here we go. The first in the series.

More to come.

Just 1411 tigers left…

Just 1411 left. You can make a difference. Show your support... join the roar on http://www.saveourtigers.com/

And the Padma Shri goes to…

The recent list of the Padma Shri awards raised eyebrows in the political and entertainment circles and most importantly in the story-hungry media. While I wondered why (Nawab) Saif received it - whether it was for marrying a woman elder to him by 12 years, or to divorce the woman after 13 years of marriage, or was it for the alleged poaching of two bucks or was it for romancing an actress younger to him by 10 years – the statement in the media by Saif did confirm me that he surely did not deserve it. (Read the complete article here)

According to Saif, "If you look at the awardees over the last couple of years, all of them have not exactly invented a nuclear bomb."

And the closest Saif (probably) got to it was only to the word ‘bomb’shell, as seen below.

I also started thinking who the possible contenders for the next year’s award would be. Here’s the list.

1. On top is Rakhi Sawant for strengthening cross-border relationships and for social service like donating her clothing and looking after children.
2. Next is Shilpa Shetty for her nature of athithi devo bhava (sanskrit: guest is equal to God) and allowing her guests to do whatever they wanted with her, in front of the media. And for her attempt to revive the ancient Indian art of Yoga.
3. To the wife-friendly, Rahul Mahajan for showing compassion towards his fellow beings in the ‘house’ and to bring back the extinct Indian custom of swayamvar, actually reverse-swayamvar.
4. Ekta Kapoor for creating the image of the liberating Indian naari.
5. Chetan Bhagat. Period.
6. KCR for his modern (a)satyagraha
7. Kareena Kapoor (though size zero) won’t get it as ‘behind every successful man, there is a woman’ or is it?

Man…lot of people trying to restore the Indian culture, don’t you think they deserve it more than any restaurateur.

“1st February 2010 - An interesting day at The Hindu” by Mir Mohammed Ali

“You're brother and sister. No we're not. You're BROTHER and SISTER. No, we're not. YES YOU ARE AND THAT'S THE BOTTOMLINE CAUSE STONE COLD SAID SO!”

A panchayat in Chandigarh decided that a 3-year marriage which now had a 10-month-old baby needs to annulled because the absent-minded couple (Satish and Kavita) in question were actually ‘brother and sister’ (though not from the same 'gotra' - lineage or clan. More on that in a while). That their parents had consented to the wedding carried no weight against conclusions of the Panchayat.

 

Not long ago, the friendly panchayats had issued punishments when couples from the same ‘gotra’ got married. But the problem with these ‘same gotra’ couples was that they were a hard catch as they would quickly elope and the poor panchayat's lack of enforcement capability made it rather difficult to bring the freshly-eloped pair to injustice. To the panchayat's credit, they still managed to get their job done by using the tried and tested techniques of blackmail and ostracism, among other things.

 

Not to be tied down by the specifics of intra-gotra marriage, the panchayat now decided to punish people even from different ‘gotras’. In the above case, village-specific dimensions came into play when an official profoundly said, “In our village, a couple from these two ‘gotras’ cannot marry as they are considered brother and sister”.

 

The ‘firm’ (air)head of the panchayat, Hawa Singh was, well, firm. he gave the couple a 28-day deadline to comply, pending which firm action would be taken. I do not know if the number 28 was given keeping in mind the approaching month of February. If it was, then I'm sure poor Satish would've wished for March to have begun.

 

In all fairness, I must add that the Panchayat did not take a knee-jerk decision. It took "a six hour discussion" to decide.

 

Read the original article here

Roger that, Chief. Chief. Chief... Chief?

Meanwhile, in the legion of doom... Actually in Meghalaya, the Meghalayans (I know they are Indians first, but here I’m talking in the ‘second person’) had the rare privilege of having 4 ‘Chief Ministers’. They already had three and now, four. In the latest instance, the Deputy Chief Minister Mr. Lyngdoh became the proud 4th CM. There is some serious enjoyment happening at the top, thought I. And to second me thrice was the Chief Minister himself (CM No 1, 2 or 3? I found out later).

 

His un-minced words bear quotation in extensio: “This is not the first instance of Meghalaya having more than one person enjoying the rank of Chief Minister. We had done [it] in the past. I myself was enjoying the rank of Chief Minister when Mr. Rymbai became Chief Minister. Similarly Mr. Rymbai and Mr. Donkupar Roy are enjoying the rank of Chief Minister. There is absolutely nothing wrong in our upgrading the rank of Mr. Lyngdoh to Chief Minister.”

 

Read the original article here

The Divider becomes the Compass...I mean... the Divided

India's favourite uniting-dividers, who unite as they divide (or vice-versa depending which side you're on) found themselves divided. When RSS ideologue Ram Madhav tried to test the waters by calling on the “[Parivar's] volunteers in Maharashtra” and indirectly told our Marathi-supremacist brothers (and sisters. Happy?) to “try and prevent the spread of anti-north Indian and anti-Hindi feelings”, he probably didn’t realize that the word ‘prevent’ was superfluous. Because if they tried, the ‘spread of anti-many things’ would surely be prevented. Mr. Manohar Joshi, former Lok Sabha Speaker (who never spoke as he was without a Mic) took more than a hint and “...Mumbai belongs to the Marathi people...” he roared.

 

When Mr. Madhav and Mr. Joshi met at the sidelines of the - where else? - midlines, here is how the conversation continued (according to a ‘highly placed source’ of course) -
Ram Madhav (RSS) - 'Why did you get offended? I was only addressing the "volunteers of the Parivar"' to stop the spread of you-know-what. If you consider yourself a volunteer of the Parivar, you ought not to have been offended as you are part of the Parivar and ought to know to take orders. If you don’t consider yourself a volunteer, then the message wasn’t addressed to you in the first place. Now tell me, "Is it the former or the latter?”
Manohar Joshi (The ‘SS’) - [now feebly] 'Mumbai belongs to the Marathi people...’
Ram Madhav (RSS) - ‘Did you comprehend my question?’
Manohar Joshi (The ‘SS’) - ‘Well. What can I say... I got serious Language issues!’

 

Read the original article here

 

Reach the author at seekingoblivion(at)gmail.com.

Let’s hope for the best..

Aman ki Asha – an initiative by Times of India and Jung Group. I am sure many people would have been shocked (like I was) after seeing the headlines on January 1st. And most of them would have ignored it saying that something like that wouldn’t be possible. For them, I would like to repeat what they said - It is easier to say Hi than to say Sorry. It's shorter too. Besides, there is no rule that says a book has to be closed before a new one is opened. Not even if it's a history book. (See the newspaper advertisement below)

They also made a good television promo(may be one of the many) for the project…I like it…

Below is the advertisement which appeared in Times of India, on January 1st, 2010.

Read more here.

The vicious circle

A conversation I had with my colleague Aniket Nathvani, while returning from office. It was about the software industry and the vicious circle around it.

“These people in software companies write code to make applications which can reduce human labour in other MNCs and thereby cutting down the number of people working in that company. The people who could not join those MNCs, come and join the software industry to write more and more code for the MNCs. And the cycle continues…”

Pretty funny…heh…hmm…??? But that’s the truth buddy. :)

Justice in India. WTF!

Was searching for this video for a long time. An example of quick justice when someone steals a gold chain in India. Amazing. Jai ho ! WTF!

Tryst with destiny

Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech

World’s poor = $13 trillion

C. K. Prahalad identifies the world’s poor (the “bottom of the pyramid”) as a mostly untapped market for companies, worth up to $13 trillion a year in revenues. In his words, “the real source of market promise is not the wealthy few in the developing world, or even the emerging middle-income consumers. It is the billions of aspiring poor who are joining the market economy for the first time.” In his TED talk, Dr. Prahalad warned against “learning disabilities” on the part of companies, leading to mistakes, such as mistaking current profits for leadership, and unwillingness to face up to capability gaps. He seems to be saying that the answer lies in democratizing technology, communication, and learning, such that everybody from the top to the bottom will know what’s going on.

A display of compassion at TEDIndia

TEDIndia is an international conclave of achievers, thinkers and speakers and this year (2009) it was held in Mysore, India. I found this in the blog of www.shambhalasun.com. You can read the complete article here.

Sunitha Krishnan brought the house down in Mysore today. And by that, I mean that she broke hearts and moved people to action. The audience listened painfully to some of the stories of the more than 3,200 girls she has rescued, girls who had endured unimaginable torture and yet, somehow, nevertheless found the will to heal and thrive. She spoke of the need for everyone to overcome silence about the phenomenon of human trafficking, the modern form of slavery, and for us not only to offer our love and compassion to its victims, but to be willing to accept them in our communities. She admitted that rescuing girls is never a very safe business, sharing that she can no longer hear out of her right ear, and that she has been beaten up during interventions more than a dozen times. Her strong voice and powerful body language ensured that no one could claim to have misunderstood her points.

During her post-presentation interview with TEDIndia’s co-host, Lakshmi Pratury, Ms. Krishnan had just finished describing a wish for Prajwala to have permanent property to establish its headquarters in India (due to social stigmatization, Prajwala is charged extraordinarily high rent for office and work space). At that moment, a woman (whose name I will try to report here when I find it) called out from the audience, “Excuse me. I’d like to give ten thousand [US] dollars. Could I please have eight other hands of people who will also give ten thousand dollars?” Several hands sprung to the air within seconds. Ms. Pratury, later in the day, would also report that Google had pledged to offer employment to some of Ms. Krishnan’s rescuees, and that at least $100,000 in donations to Prajwala had been pledged.

Get an insight into Sunitha’s work. View the video.

Click here to know more about TEDIndia.