If Jairam Ramesh is scared of Narendra Modi, he should join BJP: Congress MP

June 14, 2013, 4:02 am

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If Jairam Ramesh is scared of Narendra Modi, he should join BJP: Congress MP

INDIA TODAY ONLINE | New Delhi, June 13, 2013 | 20:46

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh

After union minister Jairam Ramesh described Narendra Modi as 'Bhasmasur', a mythological character known for trying to destroy his creator, and said the Gujarat chief minister has "consumed" his mentor L.K. Advani, Satyavrat Chaturvedi, a Congress MP, said: "If Jairam feels Modi is a threat and a challenge, he should resign from the Congress and join the BJP in Gujarat.".

Ramesh, a Congress strategist, also compared his party leader Rahul Gandhi and Modi - the two possible Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 elections, saying while Gandhi was trying to create a structure and a system in the country, Modi "is saying he is the system and the structure".

"Modi is Bhasmasur. He will consume the people who have created him. He has consumed his mentor, Mr Advani. He has consumed Togadia, one of his co-conspirator in 2002 and he is nothing but a Bhasmasur," the minister told reporters.

Bhasmasur was a demon who was granted the power by Lord Shiva to destroy anyone whose head he touched with his hand. When Shiva granted him the power, Bhasmasur attempted to touch the head of the Lord with his hand because he saw his wife Parvati and wanted to possess her.

Ramesh was reacting to a volley of questions about the developments in the BJP after Advani's resignation from all party posts following the elevation of Modi as the party's chief campaigner for the next Lok Sabha polls.

"The fundamental difference between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. Gandhi is trying to create a structure and a system which are not dependent on individuals. Modi is saying I don't care about the system, I am the structure. I am the system. Nothing exists other than me. Gandhi has never said that," he said when asked about the difference between the two leaders.

The minister, however, refused to say that the 2014 elections will be Rahul Gandhi Vs Narendra Modi contest but said it will be the fight between Congress and RSS. Launching a scathing attack on RSS and its chief Mohan Bhagwat, Ramesh said the Sangh should now register itself a political party.

"It must give up this pretence of being socio-cultural organisation. The manner in which it has manoeuvred Modi in and Advani out and the manner in which Mohan Bhagwat is travelling all over the country, trying to lobby with various people, it is no longer a socio-cultural organisation," he said.

--With PTI inputs

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/jairam-ramesh-says-bhasmasur-modi-has-consumed-his-mentor-advani/1/279990.html

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Maternal and child undernutrition -- Lancet, WHO

June 14, 2013, 4:15 am

≫ Next: Food Security Bill: Where’s the money for this colossal waste? -- Venkatesh Ramachandran

≪ Previous: If Jairam Ramesh is scared of Narendra Modi, he should join BJP: Congress MP

Maternal and Child Nutrition

Published June 6, 2013 See:

http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/lancetseries_maternal_and_childundernutrition/en/

Executive summary

Maternal and child undernutrition was the subject of a Series of papers in The Lancet in 2008. Five years after the initial series, we re-evaluate the problems of maternal and child undernutrition and also examine the growing problems of overweight and obesity for women and children, and their consequences in low-income and middle-income countries. Many of these countries are said to have the double burden of malnutrition: continued stunting of growth and deficiencies of essential nutrients along with the emerging issue of obesity. We also assess national progress in nutrition programmes and international efforts toward previous recommendations. Read the entire Executive Summary here.

Comments

Nutrition: a quintessential sustainable development goal

Richard Horton, Selina Lo

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Maternal and child nutrition: building momentum for impact

Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

Full Text | PDF| Presentation slides

Delivery platforms for sustained nutrition in Ethiopia

Ferew Lemma, Joan Matji

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Only collective action will end undernutrition

Anna Taylor, Alan D Dangour, K Srinath Reddy

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Nutrition-sensitive food systems: from rhetoric to action

Per Pinstrup-Andersen

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Global child and maternal nutrition—the SUN rises

David Nabarro

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Early nutrition and adult outcomes: pieces of the puzzle

Z A Bhutta

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Series Papers

Maternal and child undernutrition and overweight in low-income and middle-income countries

Robert E Black, Cesar G Victora, Susan P Walker, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Parul Christian, Mercedes de Onis, Majid Ezzati, Sally Grantham-McGregor, Joanne Katz, Reynaldo Martorell, Ricardo Uauy, and the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

Full Text | PDF| Presentation slides

Evidence-based interventions for improvement of maternal and child nutrition: what can be done and at what cost?

Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Jai K Das, Arjumand Rizvi, Michelle F Gaffey, Neff Walker, Susan Horton, Patrick Webb, Anna Lartey, Robert E Black, The Lancet Nutrition Interventions Review Group, and the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

Full Text | PDF| Presentation slides

Nutrition-sensitive interventions and programmes: how can they help to accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition?

Marie T Ruel, Harold Alderman, and the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

Full Text | PDF| Presentation slides

The politics of reducing malnutrition: building commitment and accelerating progress

Stuart Gillespie, Lawrence Haddad, Venkatesh Mannar, Purnima Menon, Nicholas Nisbett, and the Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group

Full Text | PDF| Presentation slides

Articles

Mortality risk in preterm and small-for-gestational-age infants in low-income and middle-income countries: a pooled country analysis

Joanne Katz, Anne CC Lee, Naoko Kozuki, Joy E Lawn, Simon Cousens, Hannah Blencowe, Majid Ezzati, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, Tanya Marchant, Barbara A Willey, Linda Adair, Fernando Barros, Abdullah H Baqui, Parul Christian, Wafaie Fawzi, Rogelio Gonzalez, Jean Humphrey, Lieven Huybregts, Patrick Kolsteren, Aroonsri Mongkolchati, Luke C Mullany, Richard Ndyomugyenyi, Jyh Kae Nien, David Osrin, Dominique Roberfroid, Ayesha Sania, Christentze Schmiegelow, Mariangela F Silveira, James Tielsch, Anjana Vaidya, Sithembiso C Velaphi, Cesar G Victora, Deborah Watson-Jones, Robert E Black, and the CHERG Small-for-Gestational-Age-Preterm Birth Working Group

Summary | Full Text | PDF

Associations of linear growth and relative weight gain during early life with adult health and human capital in countries of low and middle income: findings from five birth cohort studies

Linda S Adair, Caroline HD Fall, Clive Osmond, Aryeh D Stein, Reynaldo Martorell, Manuel Ramirez-Zea, Harshpal Singh Sachdev, Darren L Dahly, Isabelita Bas, Shane A Norris, Lisa Micklesfield, Pedro Hallal, Cesar G Victora

Summary | Full Text | PDF

Dear MPs, please heed Lancet and debate the Food Security Bill

by G Pramod Kumar Jun 14, 2013

Even as the UPA government is trying to enact the National Food Security Bill one last time through the Parliament, two significant global initiatives on nutrition happened last week.

One of them is a a new series by the prestigious medical journal Lancet on maternal and child nutrition; and the second, a G8 summit on hunger which is aptly titled “nutrition for growth”.

The messages from both unequivocally endorse Indians’ undeniable need for food security and nutrition – if the non-UPA politicians, the food-security-malnutrition naysayers are willing to listen. Even from the pure utilitarian perspective of growth, it is absolutely unavoidable.

The focus of both is the same: that without nutrition and food security, the world is screwed up – sick and under-nourished mothers, stunted and dead children and a future workforce that is too weak to work and earn.

One estimate is that malnutrition will cost 11% of the GDP in Asia and Africa. And what does the Food Bill ask for? Just above 1 per cent of the GDP.

While the Lancet series helps us to cut the clutter, the G8 Summit is a warning against importing donor countries’ prescriptions because they will make the situation worse.

Ca the Food Bill save lives? Reuters

As Lancet notes in its preface to the series, which comprises extensive analyses of data over the last five years, reviews and modelling studies, “if maternal and child nutrition is optimised, the benefits will accrue and extend over several generations.”

The Maternal and Child Nutrition Study Group of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which did the Lancet series, emphasises ten interventions targeted at women of reproductive age, during pregnancy, and to infants and children. They calculate the effects of these interventions in 34 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, which account for 90 per cent of the global burden of undernutrition.

Their key message is “the importance of the first 1000 days from conception to two years. What goes right and what goes wrong for fetal and child nutrition during this period has lasting and irreversible consequences for later life.” The series also talks about the importance of nutrition throughout the life-cycle.

Significantly, India’s Food Security Bill also takes this “human life cycle approach by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people to live a life with dignity and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. ”

Here are ten key points from the Lancet series that we have teased out for our parliamentarians and food security denialists

1. Prevalence of stunting of children younger than 5 years has decreased during the past two decades, but is higher in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere. Under-nutrition is a cause of 3·1 million child deaths annually or 45% of all child deaths in 2011

2. Poor growth of the foetus, due to the poor nutrition and health of the mother, is a major reason for stunting of children and deaths of infants. Restricted foetal growth causes more than 800,000 neonatal deaths and 20 per cent of stunting in children younger than 5 years.

3. The high present and future disease burden caused by malnutrition in women of reproductive age, pregnancy, and children in the first 2 years of life should lead to interventions focused on these groups.

4. The adolescent girl is especially vulnerable to the effects of under-nutrition – since they are future mothers, they are critical to both maternal and child health. Therefore, they offer a special opportunity as well.

5. Community and schools are great delivery platforms for the implementation of interventions

6. The cost of intervention —an additional $9·6 billion annually for the 34 countries identified—is much less prohibitive than they might at first seem.

7. Current total of deaths in children younger than 5 years can be reduced by 15 per cent if populations can access ten evidence-based nutrition interventions at 90 per cent coverage.

8. Accelerated gains are possible and about a fifth of the existing burden of stunting can be averted using these approaches, if access is improved in this way. Continued investments in nutrition-specific interventions to avert maternal and child under-nutrition and micro-nutrient deficiencies for the poor can make a great difference.

9. If this improved access is linked to nutrition-sensitive approaches—i.e. women’s empowerment, agriculture, food systems, education, employment, social protection, and safety nets—they can greatly accelerate progress in countries with the highest burden of maternal and child under-nutrition and mortality.

10. These interventions, if scaled up to 90 per cent coverage, could reduce stunting by 20·3 per cent (33·5 million fewer stunted children) and can reduce prevalence of severe wasting by 61·4 per cent.

The Lancet series also lists ten specific interventions (iron and folic acid, iodine, calcium, energy and protein supplementation and food security in which 25 per cent of energy needs coming from proteins, etc).

Interestingly some of these elements are included in the Indian bill while some are grossly missing.

The G8′s suggestions on the subject may not work. Reuters

Some elements are also part of the efforts at the state levels. For instance, targeting adolescent girls as future mothers to improve maternal and child health has been in vogue in Tamil Nadu since the 1990s. Similarly community and schools as platforms for delivery have also been part of the efforts in the states.

The Indian legislation also lists the other sectoral interventions for advancing food security (Schedule III of the Bill). The insights from Lancet papers show how progressive some of the Indian states have been (e.g Tamil Nadu despite its struggle with a stagnant maternal and infant mortality rates) and how the Food Bill might be a step backward for them.

Now, the second initiative, namely the G8 summit where “eradication of hunger” was the main focus. In contrast to the constructive and specific policy guidance by Lancet, the rich nations’ prescription is what countries such as India should avoid.

The G8’s private-sector reliant food security fixes look dangerous.

Critics say the policies endorsed at the summit will make the problem of hunger worse because of the thinking that “the market knows best”. As this Guardian report noted, the summit failed to address the wider context that starvation is a symptom of a larger problem involving land, health, power and ecological damage.

The G8′s new alliance for food security and nutrition, an initiative that mobilises private capital for investment in African agriculture doesn’t get this point and is rightfully opposed by civil society.

Ironically, this anti-hunger initiative will foster more hunger.

It “will lock poor farmers into buying increasingly expensive seeds, allow corporate monopolies in seed selling, and escalate the loss of genetic diversity in seeds, opening the door to genetically modified crops by stopping farmers’ access to traditional local varieties and forcing them to buy private seeds,” according to Friends of the Earth, quoted by The Guardian.

It is also called a “new wave of colonialism” that targets food systems for corporate profit. This is a point that market and cash-for-food messiahs wouldn’t appreciate.

Anyway, it’s time to go back to the parliament and look at India’s Food Security Bill that is far from perfect. The evidence in favour of food security is too overwhelming to ignore and an optimum document on the issue based on informed debates can be a great beginning.

An imperfect bill through an ordinance will be an opportunity lost. It’s hight time the BJP forgot Modi for a few days and went back to the Parliament.

http://www.firstpost.com/india/dear-mps-please-heed-lancet-and-debate-the-food-security-bill-871539.html

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Food Security Bill: Where’s the money for this colossal waste? -- Venkatesh Ramachandran

June 14, 2013, 5:04 am

≫ Next: Gandhiji's celibacy experiments: Sardar Patel's anger -- Uday Mahurkar

≪ Previous: Maternal and child undernutrition -- Lancet, WHO

Food Security Bill: Where’s the money for this colossal waste?

By Venkatesh Ramachandran on June 14, 2013

“This would perhaps be the biggest ever experiment in the world to distribute subsidised grain to achieve food and nutritional security.” “This” refers to the Food Security Bill, [FSB] the brainchild of the National Advisory Council and widely expected to be the route to political nirvana for UPA.

But pray who calls this grand design of distributing food grains to approximately two-thirds of our population at subsidized prices an “experiment?” The Opposition? No. The Media? Never. The Judiciary? Not at all.

Ordinance on Food Security Bill postponed

In fact, this is the view of the Ministry of Agriculture contained in The Discussion Paper on National Food Security Bill and prepared by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation.

That is not all. The document laments that “The Bill, in its present form, throws up major operational and financial challenges and would have enormous ramifications on the cereal economy/markets and therefore Indian agriculture as a whole.”

To appreciate the “enormous ramifications” mentioned above, its consequences and implications on national grain markets a reference to the food grains production as well as procurement and distribution by the Government through the extant Public Distribution System [PDS] needs to be appreciated.

Government as a hoarder

India produces approximately 250 MT of food grains annually. Of this one-half i.e. 120 – 140 MT is estimated to be consumed by farmers and theoretically does not enter the national grain markets. Of the balance 110-130 MT that enters the national grain markets, Government procures approximately half of this for public distribution. The balance – a small portion say 60 MT – enters our grain markets.

It is in this connection this document correctly points out that “The government already procures one-third of the cereals production (which amounts to almost half of marketed surplus of wheat and rice).” That makes the Government a dominant player.

This has profound implications on food grains prices. As we have an open-ended purchase policy, we continue to endlessly purchase over and above our buffer stock requirements. For instance, as against the buffer stock norm of 31.9 million tons of Rice & wheat (as on July 1 of each year), total central stocks were at 80.5 million tons as at July 1, 2012.

Debate: Does India need the ‘Food Security Bill’?

Obviously the Government, thanks to its inefficiency, is unable to distribute what it procures. In the process, little do we realise that this is public hoarding by the Government. This in turn robs the common man of grain stocks while artificially inflating its prices. This hoarding by the state is at the root of the extant chronic food inflation and shortage in India.

Food Security Bill simply seeks to amplify this.

Another dimension of the problem is that only a handful of States have marketable surplus. That implies concentrated procurement. And this needs to be distributed nationwide. It may be noted that 70 per cent of rice procurement is done from Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh while 80 per cent of wheat procurement is done from Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

This is a logistic person’s nightmare. For instance, moving wheat from Punjab situated in one corner of the country through an archaic transportation system and storage network mechanism into Kerala virtually doubles its cost as it arrives in the point of consumption in Kerala.

Interestingly, the economic cost of FCI for acquiring, storing and distributing food grains is about 40 per cent of the procurement price. Obviously, Food Corporation of India must be a unique organisation that suffers from diseconomies of scale! But who cares? The more it procures, stores or distributes, the more it leaks.

In such a scenario, importing wheat, at times from international markets, theoretically becomes a wiser proposition. But when a country like India enters the international grain markets, (in view of her volumes) instantly international prices spike, making imports practically a non-option. That makes us extremely dependent on the national grain markets to feed our gargantuan population.

Yet, what is galling is the fact that the National Sample Survey [NSS] studies reveals massive leakage of food grains in the Targeted PDS mechanism that aims to deliver food grains for BPL families. This is simply because PDS has virtually collapsed in several states in India due to weak governance and lack of accountability.

In fact, this document by the Ministry of Agriculture demonstrates the dismal performance of this scheme for 2004-05 and 2009-10, the two years for which NSS data on consumption from PDS are available.

In 2004-05, compared to an off-take of 29 million tonnes of rice and wheat by States, only 13 tonnes were actually lifted by households for consumption – suggesting a massive leakage of 54 per cent. In 2009-10, 25 million tonnes was received by the people under PDS while the off-take by states was 42 million tonnes — indicating a leakage in excess of 40 per cent.

Further, the FCI storage facilities are still primitive. For instance, the FCI is facing an acute storage crisis with covered capacity estimated at around 45 million tonnes and Covered and Plinth storage of 17 million tonnes against the stocks crossing 80 million tonnes. This once again adds to the wastage of grains while storing and handling.

Suicidal mission

There is a yet another piece of data that possibly is hidden from most Indians. Most economists within the establishment have a skewed view of the massive levels of malnutrition and food deprivation. Thus they assume we have a distributional problem. In the process most policies laid out by the Government aim to set right this issue when the challenge lies elsewhere.

The Economic Survey document for 2011-12 reveals that the average daily per capita food grain consumption of an Indian in 1965 was 418 grams and that of pulses, 62 grams. Remember, in 1965 we had a war with Pakistan on top of a deadly drought.

Approximately after five decades of our ‘successful’ tryst with green revolution, the survey shockingly points out that the average daily per capita food grain consumption of an average Indian in 2010 was a meagre 407 grams and of pulses, a disappointing 32 grams.

It is in this connection it has to be noted the National Institute of Nutrition is reported to have prescribed a minimum of 2,400 calories per day per person. Significant sections of our population do not have access to this minimal requirement. By the way, the average calorie intake available to an inmate at the dreaded Guantanamo Bay daily is well in excess of 4,000 calories.

Obviously, we are not producing enough food grains or pulses now when compared to 1965 on a per capita level. Yet, for the past four decades or so we have been under the mistaken belief that distribution, not production, to be the key to the issue on hand. That explains why we created a monstrous public distribution system in the first place.

Simply put, the Food Security Act is implementable only when we produce food grains in excess of 350 MT. And in such a scenario with massive stocks of food we do not require state intervention. And should we produce less than 350 MT and seek an intervention of the state, it will be a futile exercise.

Crucially, the PM and his economists within the Government assume that this outlandish legislation will settle our production, distribution and storage deficiencies in our farm sector.

But assuming that it can be done what is the cost? Crucially where is the money? The document prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture states that the total financial expenditure entailed will be around Rs 682,163 crores over a three year period.

This works out to in excess of Rs 225,000 crore every year. Given this massive sums of money required to administer this flight of fancy – the Finance Minister of India has allotted a paltry sum of Rs 85,000 crore in the Budget of 2013-14. And should the FM provide money for this food subsidy, his promise to assiduously restructure the finance of the country goes for a toss.

And even if the money is available [remember money can be printed, but not paddy or wheat] how can it be a solution? To improve food security to our people we need to produce more of food.

For decades socialist ideas was all about distributing poverty, not wealth. Food security bill, consequently, is a repetition of our mistakes of the Nehruvian era. Consequently, it is a by-product of dangerous analysis, bad diagnosis and awful prognosis.

The net impact of this silly idea of FSB is that can ruin the farm sector in India, deny food security and dynamite the food grain economics of the nation. No wonder, the document concludes that the FSB’s impact on the economy may be adverse.

And is that what the UPA aiming at – destroying the farm sector too completely before demitting office?

PS: My aged father tells me that ordinary cloth was rationed in the mid-forties. But once the production of cloth increased, rationing stopped. Likewise the solution to food shortage is to increase food production. Reducing this to a distributional issue is absolutely foolish.

(The author is a Chennai-based Chartered Accountant. He can be contacted at mrv@mrv.net.in)

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/06/14/food-security-bill-wheres-the-money-for-this-colossal-waste-89908.html

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Gandhiji's celibacy experiments: Sardar Patel's anger -- Uday Mahurkar

June 14, 2013, 5:33 am

≫ Next: Congratulations to Asif Ibrahim for taking a firm stand to defend Kumar of IB -- From an Indiatoday post (now missing)

≪ Previous: Food Security Bill: Where’s the money for this colossal waste? -- Venkatesh Ramachandran

Sardar Patel's anger against Gandhiji over his celibacy experiments

UDAY MAHURKAR | Ahmedabad, June 6, 2013 | 19:35

Sardar Patel

Sardar Patel's anger against Gandhiji over his celibacy experiments with young girls knew no bounds. He wrote to Gandhiji on January 25, 1947 when he was at Muriam-Hirapur.

Excerpt: "Read your letter to Kishorelal Mashruwala, Mathuradas and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. You have thrown us in wildfire of agony. I can't understand why you thought of reviving this experiment. After our last talk with you, we thought this chapter had ended. Parashuram was a faithful servant and your contempt for him is wrong (he was Gandhiji's attendant who left in disgust unable to stomach the experiments). You just don't care for our feelings. We feel utterly helpless. Devdas's feelings stand acutely injured. All of us are pained beyond measure. Till further discussion, you should suspend it. I just can't fathom such terrible blunder on your part."

Patel wrote another more letter on February 16, 1947 which was more lethal than the previous one when Gandhiji at Raipura. This followed after Gandhiji wrote to the administrator of his Navjivan publications, Jiwanji Desai, in Ahmedabad, asking him to carry details of his celibacy experiments in Navjivan publications including 'Harijan'.

Patel wrote: "I called Jiwanji (to Delhi) after your directive to him. In between I received Kishorelal Mashruwala's letter. Rajaji (Rajagopalachari) and Devdas also met me and talked about the issue. We all feel there is no end to your obstinacy. You have pushed us into a calamity. You are unable to measure the extent of our pain. Even if for the sake of taking pity on us you must leave it. Publicising these experiments isn't going to benefit the world. Your saying that others shouldn't follow you (on celibacy experiments) isn't going to make any difference. People always follow the elders. I can't understand why you are bent upon pushing the common people on the path of heterodoxy instead of religion. If only we could cut open our heart and show how deep are our wounds. In this helpless situation the trustees of Navjivan have come to the conclusion that they can't publish anything about this experiment, come what may."

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/sardar-patel-gandhiji-celibacy-experiments-harijan/1/278792.html

See: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mahatma-gandhi-experiment-sexuality-manuben-discovered-diaries/1/278990.html

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Congratulations to Asif Ibrahim for taking a firm stand to defend Kumar of IB -- From an Indiatoday post (now missing)

June 14, 2013, 5:53 am

≫ Next: Ancient Near East evidence for mleccha (meluhha) language from ancient texts

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IB's first Muslim chief does what the Congress didn't want, counter the CBI on Ishrat Jahan case by Uday Mahurkar in India Today. Also see related links below.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/asif-ibrahim-ib-chief-political-move-haunt-congress-ishrat-jahan-encounter/1/280045.html 14/6/2013

Political moves can often misfire if not taken after doing proper home work. IPS officer Asif Ibrahim was made the first ever Muslim director of the Central Intelligence Bureau by the Congress-led UPA Government last November ostensibly with an eye on Muslim vote in its race for minority votes with the likes of Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party. It was supposed to be a message to the India's Muslim leaders who command their community votes: "Look, we have made a Muslim the first Central IB head, something which no Government of Independent India including those of Pandit Nehru and Mrs Gandhi had ever done". Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde even said so after Ibrahim's appointment.

But this Muslim card has come back to haunt the Congress. Ibrahim has shown his true nationalist colours to the great discomfiture of the Congress, which wants to fix Narendra Modi in the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case by hook or crook, by opposing the CBI's attempts to rope in a (CIB) officer Rajendra Kumar, who had given the Ishrat Jahan tip off to Gujarat police in 2004.

Vehemently opposing the CBI move to chargesheet Kumar Ibrahim has communicated to the office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as well as Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde that CIB has enough evidence to prove that Jahan was a part of a Lashkar-e-Toiba ISI module out to kill Narendra Modi and LK Advani and that even David Coleman Headley, an accused in the Mumbai bomb blast case, had pointed this out to the FBI in US during his interrogation.

More, Ibrahim has pointed out that the arrest of Rajendra Kumar could have very serious consequences for the set-up of the nation's premier intelligence gathering agency and as a result the country's national security as it could deter dynamic CIB officers from genuine intelligence gathering in the fear that they could be hauled up in future. Reportedly Ibrahim had a running fight on the issue with his counter part in the CBI, Salim Ali, who is said to be of the view that Kumar can be chargesheeted.

Says security and political analyst Vidyut Thakar, who is an authority on Pakistan-related national security issues: "Ibrahim has acted like his great namesake in history, Ibrahim Khan Gardi, who commanded the artillery of the Marathas in the 1761 Third Battle of Panipat against Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Abdali. The invader promised him mountains of gold for leaving the Marathas and joining his Muslim flag. But Gardi refused to prove untrue to his salt and fought with great bravery in that battle. Ultimately, he was captured and killed with horrid cruelty by Abdali. Asif Ibrahim's move will go a long way in removing the stereo-typing of Muslims in this country as ones who always side with the cause of their brethren even at the cost of national security ".

Ibrahim has always had a good record of service and his role in counter-insurgency intelligence gathering has been outstanding. During his younger days, he was a great favourite of late Madhavrao Scindia having been his principal secretary when Scindia was the Railway Minister in the last 1980s

Ancient Near East evidence for mleccha (meluhha) language from ancient texts

June 14, 2013, 6:14 am

≫ Next: Permanent Sunni-Shia war

≪ Previous: Congratulations to Asif Ibrahim for taking a firm stand to defend Kumar of IB -- From an Indiatoday post (now missing)

A personal cylinder seal of Shu-ilishu, a translator of the Meluhhan language (Expedition 48 (1): 42-43) with cuneiform writing exists. The rollout of Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal. Courtesy of the Département des Antiquités Orientales, Musée du Louvre, Paris. "The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/ Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script." (Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu's cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43).http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/48-1/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf/1

The pot carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhhan is of traditional, cultural significance in the context of water-ablution ceremonies. It is not clear if this connoted a pot containing the metalsmith's alchemical rasa or alchemial elixir of life or Amrita (Sanskrit: अमृत). In western alchemy, it was also called 'tincture' or 'powder' of alchemists.

Assyrian Ashurnsirpal Relief

Assyrian Ashurnsirpal Relief from Nimrud, 865 B.C., can now be found at the British Museum. This section of wall relief was behind the king's throne and depicts a ritual involving a tree. Another panel with the same scene was opposite the center doorway of the throne room. The king is shown twice, on either side of a symbolic tree. On the left and on the right is an apkallu.

Assyrian Eagle Protective Spirit

Also known as Apkallu griffin. Originally from 865 B.C., it can now be found at the New York Metropolitan Museum.

Image of apkallu, winged 'sage'i n Mesopotamia carrying a pot?

kola 'woman' Rebus: kol 'working in iron, pancaloha alloy of five metals'. कमंडलु [kamaṇḍalu] m n (S) The waterpot used by the ascetic and the religious student. (Marathi) kamaṇḍalu कमण्डलु mn. (in the वेद f(ऊस्). according to Pa1n2. 4-1 , 71) a gourd or vessel made of wood or earth used for water (by ascetics and religious students) , a water-jar MBh. BhP. Ya1jn5. &c (Monier-Williams lexicon, p. 252). kamaṇḍalu1 m.n. ʻ gourd or other vessel used for water ʼ MBh.Pa. kamaṇḍalu -- n. ʻ waterpot used by non -- Buddhist ascetics ʼ; Pk. kamaṁḍalu -- m. ʻ drinking gourd used by ascetics ʼ; Bi. kãwaṇḍal ʻ mendicant's wooden cup ʼ; M. kãvaḍaḷ f. ʻ coconut used as a water vessel ʼ; Si. kaman̆ḍalā ʻ ascetic's waterpot ʼ.(CDIAL 2761). కమండలువు [ kamaṇḍaluvu ] kamanḍaluvu. [Skt.] n. A bowl or cruise carried by a Hindu ascetic. సన్యాసులుంచుకొనే గిన్నె వంటి మంటిపాత్రము. కమండలిkamanḍali. A hermit: "he who carries a cruise." Rebus: కమటము [ kamaṭamu ] kamaṭamu. [Tel.] n. A portable furnace for melting the precious metals. అగసాలెవాని కుంపటి. Allograph 1: కమఠము [ kamaṭhamu ] kamaṭhamu. [Skt.] n. A tortoise. Allograph 2: कमटा or ठा [ kamaṭā or ṭhā ] m (कमठ S) A bow (esp. of bamboo or horn) (Marathi). Allograph 3: kamaḍha ‘penance’ (Pkt.) Rebus: kampaṭṭam ‘coiner, mint’ (Tamil). The Allograph 4 is a recurring hieroglyph and may well have been connoted by the 'pot' carried by the woman accompanying the Meluhhan to signify a 'mint' associated with the 'antelope' carried by the Meluhhan -- read rebus for 'iron'. tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'; damgar 'merchant' (Akkadian). Alternative readings: miṇḍāl markhor (Tor.wali) meḍho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) Rebus: मेढ ‘merchant’s helper’ meḍ ‘iron’ (Munda). mlekh 'goat' (Br.) Rebus: milakku 'copper' (Pali); mleccha 'copper' (Skt.) Meluhha ! Mleccha ! tagara 'antelope' Rebus: tagara 'tin'.

It is likely that the hieroglyphic narrative describes the Meluhhan as a tin (tagara) merchant (damgar) with competene in working with metal alloys (kol) -- signified by the pot carried by the accompanying woman (kola).

Meluhha is cognate mleccha.

Ancient Near East evidence for mleccha (meluhha) language from ancient texts

This is based on updates to http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-writing-systems.html

Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing
Beyond the Mahābhārata incident in which Vidura is said to have alerted Yudhiṣṭira in Mleccha bhāṣā, evidence is provided on mleccha (cognate meluhha) language from ancient texts.

Manu (10.45) underscores the linguistic area: ārya vācas mleccha vācas te sarve dasyuvah smṛtāh [trans. “both ārya speakers and mleccha speakers (that is, both speakers of literary dialect and colloquial or vernacular dialect) are all remembered as dasyu”]. Dasyu is a general reference to people. Dasyu is cognate with dasa, which in Khotanese language means ‘man’. It is also cognate with daha, a word which occurs in Persepolis inscription of Xerxes...http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1204/1204.3800.pdf

A reference to mleccha as language, bhāṣā, in Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra:

XVIII. 80 ] RULES ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES 827 The Common Language

28. The Common Language prescribed for use [on the stage] has various forms 1 . It contains [many] words of Barbarian {mleccha) origin and is spoken in Bharata-varsa [only] Note: 28 (C.26b-27a; B.XVII.29b-30a). 'Read vividha-jatibhasa ; vividha (ca, da in B.) for dvividha.

'The common speech or the speech of the commoners is distinguished here from that of the priests and the nobility by describing it as containing words of Barbarian (mleccha) origin. These words seem to have been none other than vocables of the Dravidian and Austric languages. They entered Indo-Aryan pretty early in its history. See S. K. Chatterji, Origin and Development of the Bengali Language, Calcutta, 1926 pp. 42,178.'

Source: Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni in english THE NATYASASTRA A Treatise on Hindu Dramaturgy and Histrionics Ascribed to B H A R A T A - M r X I Vol. I. ( Chapters I-XXVII ) Completely translated jor the jirst tune from the original Sanskrit tuttri «u Introduction and Various Notes, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta http://archive.org/stream/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVolume1/NatyaShastraOfBharataMuniVolume1_djvu.txt

1 4 | I.11 - 12 {6/8}          mlecchaḥhavaieṣaḥyatapaśabdaḥ . 1 4 | I.11 - 12 {7/8}

mlecchāḥmābhūmaitiadhyeyamvyākaraṇam .~V.118.5 - 119.12 {20/36}

mlecchitam vispaṣṭena itievaanyatra .tasmātbrāhmaṇenana

mlecchitavaina apabhāṣitavai . Patanjali explains in the context of ungrammatical

mleccha with apaśabdaḥ . (Patanjali: Mahābhāṣya).

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/road-to-meluhha-dt-potts-1982.html

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeo.html

These are samples of results of my enquiry into mleccha vācas as distinguished from ārya vācas (Manu). I have detailed more in my book on Indus writing in ancient near East.http://www.amazon.com/Indus-Writing-ancient-Near-East/dp/0982897189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371088202&sr=8-1&keywords=indus+writing Vatsyayana attests mlecchitavikalpa as a cipher, one of the 64 arts to be learnt together with deśabhāṣā jnānam and akṣaramuṣṭika kathanam. Patanjali elaborates on mleccha as a dialect. There is a lot of textual data on people as distinct from language -- both mleccha and ārya as dasyu (cf. OIr. daha) and as dwīpavāsinah. I do not know when the word 'ayas' came into vogue. It is as old as Rgveda. The semantics of this word may hold the key in revisiting our language chronologies. I find the following DEDR (Dravidian etyma) entries intriguing:

aduru native metal (Ka.); ayil iron (Ta.) ayir, ayiram any ore (Ma.); ajirda karba very hard iron (Tu.)(DEDR 192). I do not know how aduru evolved or is phonetically cognate vis-a-vis ayo 'iron' (Gujarati). There is a very specific explanation for the Kannada word: aduru = gaṇiyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada. Siddhānti Subrahmaṇya śāstri’s new interpretation of the Amarakośa, Bangalore,Vicaradarpana Press, 1872, p. 330) One intriguing semantic may be cited, again, in the context of the bronze-age.

There are two compounds: milakkhu rajanam 'copper-coloured' (Pali),

mleccha mukha 'copper' (Samskrtam).

Why mleccha mukha? I think the lexeme mukha isa substrate lexeme
mūh 'face, ingot' (Munda. Santali etc.); it is possible that mleccha mukha may
refer to 'copper ingot'. mũhã = the quantity of iron produced at one time in a
native smelting furnace (Santali) Mleccha, language. Mleccha, copper.

How do semantic associations occur in human interactions as languages evolve?

The other meaning of mūh 'face' (CDIAL 10158) explains why a face glyph gets

ligatured in Indus writing to clear composite hieroglyphs to create mlecchitavikalpa

(cipher mentioned by Vātsyāyana)

See, for example, Seal m0302 (Mohenjo-daro) which shows a 'human face'
ligatured to an 'elephant trunk' etc. See other examples on Seals m1179 and
m1186A (Mohenjo-daro). The seal m0302 also has the uniquitous fish glyphs
denoting ayo 'fish' (Munda stream). ibha 'elephant' (Samskrtam) ibbho
'merchant' (Hemacandra Desināmamāla -Gujarati) ib 'iron' (Santali). There is a
Railway station, a village called Ib near Bokaro (with a steel plant in the iron
ore belt) on the Howrah-Mumbai rail-route :)--

I do not have the competence to suggest dates for the lexemes which were absorbed
into various languages of the language union. Some call them borrowings, some
call them substratum. Who knows?

Reconstructing mleccha (meluhha) beyond identification of glosses is a very tall order and I
have no competence whatsoever to take up the task. I have, however,
produced a comparative lexicon for the India sprachbund with over 8000 semantic
clusters. If it is validated, it could be a beginning to suggest phonetic and
morphemic evolution and formation of languages such as Marathi or Bengali or
Oriya. Syntax can only be inferred based on evidences provided in early
Samskrtam-Prakrtam dramas of the type mentioned in Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra.
Bloch has done pioneering work on Marathi.

Similar work has to be done for all languages of the language union which ancient India
nurtured on the banks of River Sarasvati. She is vāgdevi and mleccha was a
vācas. One thing is clear: if the lexemes related to metalware and
metalwork are found as substratum lexemes, the date should be subsequent to the
4th millennium BCE of the bronze-age when tin-bronzes and zinc-bronzes
supplemented arsenical bronzes; this was a veritable revolution of the times.
Given the rich treasure,Bharata nidhi of ancient Hindu texts such as those of
Patanjali or Bhartrhari, we have the work cut out for us to re-evaluate and
sharpen our understanding of Bharatiya vāk, the ancient spoken idiom.

m1179

m1186A
m0302

Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-writing-systems.html Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-jangad-accounting-for.htmlAncient Near East jangaḍ accounting for mercatile transactions-- evidence of Indus writing presented.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-bronze-age-legacy_6.htmlAncient Near East bronze-age legacy: Processions depicted on Narmer palette, Indus writing denote artisan guilds

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-art-indus-writing.html Ancient near East lapidary guilds graduate into bronze-age metalware

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/indus-writing-in-ancient-near-east-on.html An ancient Near East proto-cuneiform tablet with Indus writing

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/indus-writing-on-dilmun-type-seals.html Indus writing in ancient Near East (Failaka seal readings)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-on-gold-disc-kuwait.html Indus writing on gold disc, Kuwait Museum al-Sabah collection: An Indus metalware catalog

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/did-indus-writing-deal-with-numeration.html Did Indus writing deal with numeration? No. The writing dealt with metalware accounting as technical specs. in bills-of-lading.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/tokens-and-bullae-evolve-into-indus.htmlTokens and bullae evolve into Indus writing, underlying language-sounds read rebus

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/see-httpbharatkalyan97.htmlIndus writing in ancient Near East (Dilmun seal readings)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/bahrain-digs-unveil-one-of-oldest.htmlBahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations -- BBC

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/indus-writing-as-metalware-catalogs-and_21.htmlIndus writing in ancient Near East as metalware catalogs and not as agrarian accounting

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/on-perceiving-aryan-migrations-by.htmlOn perceiving aryan migrations by Witzel misquoting vedic ritual texts. Explaining mleccha vācas in Indian sprachbund.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/ancient-ivory-metal-traces-on.htmlIndus writing and ancient Ivory. Metal traces on Phoenician artifacts show long-gone paint and gold

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/functions-served-by-terracotta-cakes-of.htmlFunctions served by terracotta cakes of Indus civilization: Like ANE tokens for counting metal and alloy ingots

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-age-writing-in-ancient-near-east.htmlBronze-age writing in ancient Near East: Two Samarra bowls and Warka vase

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/bronze-age-glyphs-and-writing-in.htmlBronze-age glyphs and writing in ancient Near East: Two cylinder seals from Sumer

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/04/indus-writing-in-ancient-near-east.htmlIndus Writing in ancient Near East: Corpora and a dictionary and Akkadian Rising Sun: two new books (April 2013)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/08/proto-indian-in-harosheth-hagoyim.html Proto-Indian in harosheth hagoyim (S.Kalyanaraman 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/between-mesopotamia-and-meluhha-ancient.html Between Mesopotamia and Meluhha: an ancient world of writing

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/05/spinner-bas-relief-of-susa-8th-c-bce.html Spinner bas-relief of Susa, 8th c. BCE -- message of wheelwright guild

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/indian-hieroglyphs-indus-script-corpora.html Indian hieroglyphs -- Indus script corpora, archaeo-metallurgy and Meluhha (Mleccha)(S. Kalyanaraman, 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/04/heifer-lathe-hieroglyphs-on-indus-seals.html Young bull + lathe hieroglyphs on Indus seals

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/protovedic-continuity-theory.html Protovedic Continuity Theory (Kalyanaraman, 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/decrypting-sangar-fortified-settlement.html Decrypting sangar, fortified settlement on Indus script corpora (Kalyanaraman, March 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/03/trefoil-as-indian-hieroglyph.html Trefoil as an Indian hieroglyph: association with veneration of ancestors, sacredness (Kalyanaraman, March 10, 2012)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/indian-hieroglyphs-meluhha-and-archaeo.html Indian hieroglyphs, meluhha and archaeo-metallurgy

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/02/dr-s-kalyanaramans-recent-contribution.html Dr. S. Kalyanaraman's recent contribution to archaeo-metallurgy - Jayasree Saranathan

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/indus-script-hieroglyphs-composite.html Indus script hieroglyphs: composite animal, smithy

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/indus-valley-mystery-and-use-of-tablets.html Indus valley mystery. Archaeology and language: Archaeological context of Indus script cipher.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/12/acarya-hemacandra-1088-1173-ce.html Decoding 'ram' glyph of Indus script, meḍh: rebus: 'helper of merchant'

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/syena-orthography.html śyena, orthography, Sasanian iconography. Continued use of Indus Script hieroglyphs.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/assyrian-goat-fish-on-seal-interaction.html Assyrian goat-fish on a seal; compared with crocodile-fish hieroglyphs on Indus Script

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/susa-ritual-basin-decorated-with.html Goat and fish as hieroglyphs of Indus script: Susa-Meluhha interactions. Meluhhan interpreter 'may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script.'

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/indus-script-examples-of-free-hand.html Indus script: examples of free-hand writing. A professional calling card on gold pendant.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-longest-inscription-of-indus.html Decoding two long inscriptions of Indus Script (Kalyanarman, 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/mohenjo-daro-stupa-great-bath-modeled.html Mohenjo-daro stupa & Great Bath - Modeled after Ziggurat and Sit Shamshi (Kalyanaraman, 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-indus-scipt-susa-cylinder-seal.html Decoding Indus Script Susa cylinder seal: Susa-Indus interaction areas

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/11/decoding-fish-and-ligatured-fish-glyphs.html Decoding fish and ligatured-fish glyphs of Indus script (S. Kalyanaraman, November 2011)

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/itihasa-and-eagle-narratives.html Itihāsa and eagle narratives

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2011/10/road-to-meluhha-dt-potts-1982.html Mleccha, linguistic area; Meluhha -- Locus and interaction areas

See: http://sarasvatihieroglyphs.blogspot.in/2006/04/bronze-age-trade-and-mleccha-writing.html

↧

Permanent Sunni-Shia war

June 14, 2013, 8:17 pm

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/14/syrian-rebels-showdown-aleppo-hezbollah/print Syrian rebels, known as Martyr al-Abbas, rest in a safe house in Aleppo before the coming battle. Photograph: Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

Syrian rebels prepare for showdown in Aleppo

Rebels say regime troops and Hezbollah forces massing on outskirts, while Qatar and Saudi Arabia wait for US green light

Martin Chulov and Mona Mahmood
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 June 2013 17.19 BST
From where he sits behind a ruined stone wall in Aleppo's old city, Abu Firas, a rebel gunner has had a clear view of his enemy for most of the past 11 months.

In the middle distance, ahead of the fist-sized hole through which he pokes his rifle, there usually isn't much to see. The Syrian army troops on this part of Aleppo's jagged front line dug in long ago. Abu Firas says he can sometimes see his foes scampering between positions, but he has never seen them advance.

"This week things changed," he says. "There was more of them than before and they were up to something. They looked urgent."

Across Aleppo, rebel groups who have held roughly 60% of Syria's biggest city since last July sense that something is about to break. Positions on the other side that had long been only defensive are now much busier. Rebels who could go for weeks with out seeing a regime soldier now say they are sighting them regularly.

Even scenes of battles past that have long been barren rubble-strewn wastelands mow seem to have come to life, rebel fighters in the city's southwest say. In Salahedin – the first district the opposition fighters entered when they stormed the city last July – men stationed nearby say they can hear the distant rumble of tanks and the crunching of boots on masonry and glass.

The echoes of past battles clearly resonate loudly in the minds' eyes of Aleppo's rebels. So do the more recent reverberations of a stinging recent defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in Qusair almost 125 miles away. But even so, from ravaged urban areas to the city's outskirts, there are unmistakable signs that the full ferocity of war will soon return to the ancient stone city.

The coming showdown even has a name among the rebels. "We named the battle for Aleppo the 'Qusair echo'," said a sniper in the rural north of Aleppo, who calls himself Abu Abbas. "The regime is massing tanks and soldiers. This has been going on for 15 days now."

Buoyed by the Hezbollah-led victory in Qusair, a town of 30,000 on the border withLebanon, Syrian officials have over the past week pledged to retake Aleppo, a city that was once the engine room of its economy and for the last year has been a testament to its fatigued military's lack of success in most parts of the country.

The success that has revitalised the Syrian army has also motivated the opposition – and the US, which late on Thursday pledged to start arming some rebel groups, a move that overturns more than two years of reluctance to get directly involved in Syria's civil war.

The depth of Washington's commitment will be measured closely in the coming days, both on the planes of northern Syria, which are a short drive from warehouses holding weapons in Turkey and in the outgunned and desperate rebel posts in and around Aleppo.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the main suppliers of weapons to opposition groups, will be watching just as intently for a sign that the new US role is the green light they have been waiting for.

Until now both countries have been willing to supply the north with guns and ammunition that could sustain the battle, but not the larger firepower needed to win the war. "We simply cannot take the lead on this," said a senior Qatari official said in Doha late last month. "The Americans cannot walk away from the leadership role they have had in this part of the world for so long now. Without them, we can't get this done."

In Beirut, where one of the key protagonists, Hezbollah, is readying for the long journey to Aleppo, there is a clear sense that whatever takes place there will shape the fortunes of both cities. "They have rested for the past week, regrouped and prepared for the journey," said a Lebanese businessman with close connections to the powerful Shia militia on Thursday. "They will leave within 48 hours and there will be many, many thousands of them.

"This is a crossroads for Lebanon. And for Sunni, Shia relations in the region."

A senior official aligned to Lebanon's opposition, which is broadly supportive of the largely Sunni anti-regime forces in Syria, said Aleppo would be a much tougher proposition for both Hezbollah and the loyalist military.

"Qusair was a town of two kilometres by one kilometre and they sent say 1,500 troops and it took them three weeks," the official said. "Aleppo is much, much bigger and a far more powerful force awaits them. It will take many months, if not years, and they likely won't win."

Hezbollah's large-scale role in Qusair and its likely lead role in Aleppo sparked an urgent round of talks in Washington before the White House announcement on Thursday, which couched the decision to offer military support as a response to an assessment that Syrian forces had killed up to 150 people with chemical weapons.

In the Aleppo countryside, however, how people are being killed is now far less important than who is killing them.

"Hezbollah are coming to fight us in a sectarian war," said Abu Jafar, a foot soldier in a unit that fights under the Free Syria Army umbrella. "This drops the mask once and for all on the sectarian nature of the regime."

In Cairo on Thursday, 70 senior Sunni scholars were present as a call was made by seven influential sheikhs to send "money and arms to Syria" and "pursue all forms of jihad". The rhetoric was unmistakably sectarian. And the fallout will likely pour more fuel on crisis in which the regional stakes are now growing daily.

On a plateau north of Aleppo, Abu Abbas said there is now constant activity in two Shia villages, Nubul and Zahra. Rebels suspect that Shias from outside Syria have arrived to protect locals. They say some are wearing garments that identify them as fighters.

"I saw soldiers with yellow head ribbons and others with black, they might be Hezbollah or an Iraqi militia," said Abbas. "I saw them 10 days ago. They were here at the same time the battle was going on in Qusair."

Salma Bashier, a teacher from the same area said: "People are talking about the regime reinforcements heading to the two Shia villages. People have seen Hezbollah and Syrian soldiers reach the area. You can tell [Hezbollah members] from their Lebanese accents, let alone their uniforms and cars."

Whenever the showdown takes place, those who fight it out seem convinced that the war will be won, or lost, in Aleppo. The promise of new weapons, while seen as levelling the playing field by those who need them, is also seen by others as a portent for widespread destruction and uncertainty.

Meanwhile, Abu Abbas said confidence is up in the rebel ranks. "We do not have many weapons but we have men and high morale. To this point we haven't got anything new, but we are expecting the weapons to arrive soon."

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/sunni-clerics-assad-syria/2013/06/13/id/509879

Sunni Clerics Call for Jihad Against Syria's Assad, Allies

13 Jun 2013

A congress of leading Sunni Muslim clerics issued a call to holy war on Thursday against the Damascus government and its Shi'ite allies, hardening sectarian confrontation across the Middle East over the Syrian conflict.

Alarmed by reverses for the mainly Sunni rebels since the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah threw its full weight behind President Bashar al-Assad last month, Sunni religious authorities have stepped up rhetoric that could fuel a wider regional conflict and communal bloodshed in Syria and elsewhere.

Concluding a conference in Cairo at which more than 70 Sunni scholarly organizations were represented, a leading Egyptian preacher made a televised statement accusing the rebels' enemies of waging "war on Islam." He urged the faithful to send money and arms to Syria and pursue "all forms of jihad."

Among those present was Youssef al-Qaradawi, a renowned, Qatari-based Egyptian preacher close to Cairo's ruling Muslim Brotherhood, but the statement did not explicitly repeat a call by him two weeks ago for Sunnis to go and fight in Syria.

The number and prominence of those represented, however, made this a significant reinforcement of sectarian rhetoric.

"Jihad is necessary for the victory of our brothers in Syria — jihad with mind, money, weapons; all forms of jihad," said preacher Mohamed Hassan, reading from the statement.

It called for "support, whatever will save the Syrian people from the grip of murder and crime by the sectarian regime."

"What is happening to our brothers on Syrian soil, in terms of violence stemming from the Iranian regime, Hezbollah and its sectarian allies, counts as a declaration of war on Islam and the Muslim community in general," Hassan said.

Shi'ite, non-Arab Iran has long sponsored the Assad administration, which is dominated by the president's fellow Alawites, a religious community that is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Sunni powers, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt, as well as Western states, have taken up the rebel cause.

The congress urged governments not to cooperate with not only Iran but also with Russia and China, which have blocked U.N. resolutions aimed at sanctioning Assad.

It urged the rebels, mostly drawn from Syria's majority Sunnis, to overcome their internal differences. And it criticized those governments which have labelled some Islamist rebels as "terrorists," a factor which the United States and others have used to justify their reluctance to arm the rebels.

The Sunni Islamist administration in Egypt, which rose to power in the same movement of Arab revolt that started the war in Syria two years ago, has condemned Assad and Hezbollah but has stopped short of urging Egyptians to join the rebel side.

A senior aide to President Mohamed Mursi said on Thursday, however, that Cairo was not preventing Egyptians, by far the most populous Arab nation, from going to Syria if they wished.

"The freedom of travel . . . is open for all Egyptians," Khaled al-Qazzaz, Mursi's foreign affairs adviser, told a news briefing. "But we did not call for Egyptians to go and fight in Syria."

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Muslim vs Muslim in Middle East

Sreeram Chaulia

Jun 12, 2013

The recent declaration of a fatwa (a binding religious decree) by the Sunni Egyptian cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, against the Shia militant movement, Hezbollah, and Iran as enemies of Islam who are “more infidel than Jews and Christians” is a dangerous turn portending endless war among Muslims on sectarian lines.

Qaradawi’s poisonous rhetoric, which is influencing tens of millions of Sunnis globally via the Qatari television channel, Al Jazeera, is exacerbating the fratricide in Syria, where violence between Sunnis and Shiites is bringing back memories of historic battles and grudges between the two main sects of Islam.

As Hezbollah and Iran hunker down in Syria to defend the regime of president Bashar al-Assad (a secular government dominated by Alawite Shias), leading Sunni hate-mongers like Qaradawi and Sheikh Ahmad Assir of Lebanon are rallying sectarian passions to converge in Syria and overcome “pain from the Iranian domination”. The outcome of this religious bigotry by Sunni Salafists is visible in the extreme barbarities in the war in Syria, where the Sunni rebels ranged against president Assad have been brainwashed into believing that Shias are hizb ash-Shaytan (party of the devil).

Despite the religious overtones of this bitter sectarian divide, politics and the pursuit of power have been central to the Sunni-Shia rivalry since its very inception after the death of Prophet Muhammad. The two sects have not often seen eye to eye on the issue of political succession and legitimacy of rulers. Different forms of oppression and discrimination have been deployed against Sunnis and Shias by sultans and emperors of yore and by modern-day governments dominated by one sect or the other.

The current geopolitical context for the Sunni-Shia war sundering Syria and its neighbourhood lies in the long-term contest for supremacy between the orthodox Sunni monarchies of the Gulf Co-operation Council (its members deliberately call it “Arabian Gulf” as opposed to the Persian Gulf) and Iran. It is a contemporary iteration of medieval era wars between the Sunni Ottoman empire and the Shia Safavid empire for control over Arab territories. With present-day Turkey joining hands with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan to fuel the Sunni insurgency against Assad, there is a lingering symbolism of the bloody past that pitted Muslim against Muslim.

The sectarian myths circulating in the Middle East today are millennial in nature. In the world view of the hardline Sunnis — most of who belong to the Saudi-funded Wahhabi and Salafi schools of thought — it is the obligation of their sectarian brethren to unite and fight what they term as the “spreading of the Safawi project”, i.e. the erstwhile Shia empire centred in Persia. By labelling the war in Syria as an existential one, the Sunni regimes and their fiery mullahs are trying to leave no room for reconciliation and co-existence within Islam. Even so-called moderate Sunni elites like King Abdullah of Jordan are guilty of stoking phobia about the perils of a “Shia crescent” that could upset the traditional balance of power in the Middle East.

On the Shia side, too, centuries-old are being reinvented to defend Assad’s regime. In Shia-majority Iraq, the bugbear of ‘Sufyani’— an apocryphal tyrant who is predicted to arise in Syria and decimate the descendants of Prophet Muhammad (the most revered family branch for Shias) — is being likened to the Sunni jihadist machine that has been armed and funded by the Saudis and Qataris to topple Assad.

The cruelty and daredevilry of Sunni jihadist rebel outfits like the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria have convinced ordinary Iraqi Shias that they must rush to rescue the Assad regime or face prophesied extermination. The sight of armed Shias from outside Syria flooding in to protect haloed Shia memorials like the mosque of Sayyidah Zainab (the Prophet’s granddaughter) in Damascus reveals how elevated the sectarian anxieties are in the Levant region.

Owing to emotional religious baggage, the Salafi versus Safawi war is overshadowing other fault lines which mark conflict in the Middle East. The fact that the Assad dynasty has been ruling Syria with an iron fist for far too long, and the genuine desire among Sunnis and Shias alike to seek political self-determination and democracy throughout the region, have been swept aside by the sectarian frenzy.

Even the classic Arab versus Israeli antipathy has been sidelined due to the Sunni-Shia bloodletting, which is not only laying waste to Syria but also resurging alarmingly in neighbouring Iraq. More than one thousand people have been killed in sectarian clashes in Iraq last month, the deadliest since the gory Sunni-Shia civil war there during 2006-07. The sectarian fire lit by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has not only not subsided there, but also taken a more advanced and destructive avatar in Syria.

The masking effect of the sectarian war is a reason why little is being done to end it either in Syria, Iraq or Lebanon. As the Sunni-Shia dimension shifts the focus away from the Arab Spring and the popular push for democracy, and deviates from the Palestinian statehood topic, it helps status quo-minded elites in the Gulf nations to keep their people’s aspirations for political freedom under control.

A permanent Sunni-Shia war dynamic also works to the advantage of Western powers, intent on using any means to pressurise Iran. For Iran itself, its life-or-death struggle on behalf of the Shia regime in Syria is probably a good diversion from its own internal economic and political tumult.

The only constituencies of hope amidst the escalating Sunni-Shia war are the Sufis, who are mostly Sunni by origin but whose practices have much in common with Shias.

The Persian Sufi poet, Jalaluddin Rumi, preached “no division” in the spiritual realm. He was above petty politics and sectarian venom. Although Sufis are heavily persecuted by theocratic regimes in the Middle East, average Sunnis and Shias must strive for Rumi’s mystical condition or at least draw inspiration from it to foster peace.

Ordinary Sunnis and Shias gel well, but rebuilding trust and avoiding traps set by rabble-rousers like Qaradawi is arduous in the middle of a polarising war. Middle Eastern masses have to yet again make history by rejecting elite-imposed bifurcations. The alternative is self-destruction of Islamic civilisation.

Sreeram Chaulia is a Professor and Dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs

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http://www.meforum.org/646/the-qaradawi-fatwas

The Qaradawi Fatwas

Middle East Quarterly

Summer 2004, [pp. 78-80]

Editors' preface: In July 2004, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi visited the United Kingdom, to address several conferences, including a conference against restrictions on the hijab, or Muslim women's head-covering. (Such restrictions have already been introduced in France.) Qaradawi is a 78-year-old Egyptian cleric and preacher, with a history of activism in the Muslim Brethren. He was forced from Egypt for his views, and he lives in Qatar, where he has become a media star by virtue of his immensely popular television show on Al-Jazeera television. Qaradawi has sometimes been portrayed as a moderate, who favors a tolerant Islam and who would reconcile Islam with modernity. For example, he condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks. On these grounds, Britain issued him a visa, and the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone (Labor), strongly endorsed him.

However, Qaradawi's visit intensified interest in his legal rulings, or fatwas.[1] In particular, two rulings have contradicted the image of moderation purveyed by his supporters.

The first is Qaradawi's endorsement of Palestinian suicide bombings. These attacks have been sanctioned by numerous clerics,[2] but it was on Qaradawi's authority that the Palestinian Hamas began to deploy women to carry them out.[3]

The second is his strident condemnation of homosexuality, in which he has indicated his support for drastic "punishment."[4]

As a result of these rulings, Qaradawi's visit to London stirred strong feelings among those appalled by suicide bombings in Israel and by violent homophobia.

Since 1999, the United States has refused to issue Qaradawi a visa, although, in earlier years, he was an occasional visitor. But in Qatar, he has appeared as a speaker in two U.S.-Islamic dialogues. Livingstone has also invited Qaradawi to return to London for the European Social Forum, scheduled to meet in mid-October 2004. In the wake of Qaradawi's London visit, it seems likely that his American supporters will renew efforts to have him admitted to the United States.

The following are the texts of the two most controversial of his fatwas, as they appear in IslamOnline.net, a website supervised by a committee headed by Qaradawi. The site presently includes nearly 150 of his fatwas, on a wide range of subjects.

Women Martyrs

Question: I would like to ask about the ruling of Palestinian women carrying out martyr operations. Fulfilling this mission may demand that they travel alone, without a mahram,[5] and they may need to take off their hijab, the matter which may expose part of their 'awrah.[6] Would you please comment on this? I'd prefer Dr. Qaradawi to answer this urgent question, if you please.

Dr. Qaradawi answers: The martyr operation is the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah. A martyr operation is carried out by a person who sacrifices himself, deeming his life [of] less value than striving in the cause of Allah, in the cause of restoring the land and preserving the dignity. To such a valorous attitude applies the following Qur'anic verse: "And of mankind is he who would sell himself, seeking the pleasure of Allah; and Allah hath compassion on (His) bondmen." (Qur'an, 2: 207)

But a clear distinction has to be made here between martyrdom and suicide. Suicide is an act or instance of killing oneself intentionally out of despair, and finding no outlet except putting an end to one's life. On the other hand, martyrdom is a heroic act of choosing to suffer death in the cause of Allah, and that's why it's considered by most Muslim scholars as one of the greatest forms of jihad.

When jihad becomes an individual duty, as when the enemy seizes the Muslim territory, a woman becomes entitled to take part in it alongside men. Jurists maintained that when the enemy assaults a given Muslim territory, it becomes incumbent upon all its residents to fight against them to the extent that a woman should go out even without the consent of her husband, a son can go too without the permission of his parent, a slave without the approval of his master, and the employee without the leave of his employer. This is a case where obedience should not be given to anyone in something that involves disobedience to Allah, according to a famous juristic rule.

In the same vein, the public welfare should be given priority to the personal one, in the sense that if there is a contradiction between the private right and the public one, the latter must be given first priority, for it concerns the interest of the whole ummah [Muslim community]. Given all this, I believe a woman can participate in this form of jihad according to her own means and condition. Also, the organizers of these martyr operations can benefit from some, believing women as they may do, in some cases, what is impossible for men to do.

As for the point that carrying out this operation may involve woman's travel from [one] place to another without a mahram, we say that a woman can travel to perform Hajj [pilgrimage to Mecca] in the company of other trustworthy women and without the presence of any mahram as long as the road is safe and secured. Travel, nowadays, is no longer done through deserts or wilderness; instead, women can travel safely in trains or by air.

Concerning the point on hijab, a woman can put on a hat or anything else to cover her hair. Even when necessary, she may take off her hijab in order to carry out the operation, for she is going to die in the cause of Allah and not to show off her beauty or uncover her hair. I don't see any problem in her taking off hijab in this case.

To conclude, I think the committed Muslim women in Palestine have the right to participate and have their own role in jihad and to attain martyrdom.

Homosexuality

Question: Please, could you tell me the ruling on homosexuality: sodomy and lesbianism. And if it is haram [prohibited], what is the punishment for it in Islam?

Dr. Qaradawi answers: We must be aware that in regulating the sexual drive Islam has prohibited not only illicit sexual relations and all what leads to them, but also the sexual deviation known as homosexuality. This perverted act is a reversal of the natural order, a corruption of man's sexuality, and a crime against the rights of females. (The same applies equally to the case of lesbianism.)

The spread of this depraved practice in a society disrupts its natural life pattern and makes those who practice it slaves to their lusts, depriving them of decent taste, decent morals, and a decent manner of living. The story of the people of Prophet Lut (Lot), peace be upon him, as narrated in the Qur'an should be sufficient for us. Prophet Lut's people were addicted to this shameless depravity, abandoning natural, pure, lawful relations with women in the pursuit of this unnatural, foul and illicit practice. That is why their Prophet Lut, peace be on him, told them, "What! Of all creatures, do you approach males and leave the spouses whom your Lord has created for you? Indeed, you are people transgressing (all limits)!" (Qur'an, 26: 165-166)

The strangest expression of these peoples' perversity of nature, lack of guidance, depravity of morals, and aberration of taste was their attitude toward the guests of Prophet Lut, peace be upon him. [Here follows a digression on the story of Lot as related in the Qur'an.—Eds.]

Muslim jurists have held differing opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for fornication, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.

[1] A fatwa is a Muslim jurist's authoritative answer to an Islamic legal question posed by a believer. –Eds.

[2] See Haim Malka, "Must Innocents Die? The Islamic Debate over Suicide Attacks," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2003, pp. 19-28.

[3] This ruling is dated Mar. 22, 2004, at http://www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english/FatwaDisplay.asp?hFatwaID=68511.

[4] This ruling is dated Mar. 24, 2001, at http://www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english/FatwaDisplay.asp?hFatwaID=30519.

[5] A mahram is a close male relative in whose presence a woman need not veil and who should accompany a woman whenever she leaves the house or may be in the presence of a non-related male.—Eds.

[6] The 'awrah is that part of the body that must be covered for the sake of decency. In regard to females, most jurists define this as the entire body, except for the face, hands, and (perhaps) feet.—Eds.

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Google Launches Internet-beaming Balloons

June 14, 2013, 9:38 pm

≫ Next: Advani's contribution and irrelevance: rapid dissolution of the NDA. Good for BJP to exit Nitish Govt. in Bihar.

≪ Previous: Permanent Sunni-Shia war

Published on Jun 14, 2013

Google tests giant balloons to connect 50 New Zealand homes to the internet. It says the technology could bring websurfing to remote corners of the world.

http://youtu.be/xqa7ANl4w6k

Published: June 15, 2013 09:34 IST | Updated: June 15, 2013 09:35 IST

Google launches Internet-beaming balloons

Wrinkled and skinny at first, the translucent, jellyfish-shaped balloons that Google released this week from a frozen field in the heart of New Zealand’s South Island hardened into shiny pumpkins as they rose into the blue winter skies above Lake Tekapo, passing the first big test of a lofty goal to get the entire planet online.

It was the culmination of 18 months’ work on what Google calls Project Loon, in recognition of how whacky the idea may sound. Developed in the secretive X lab, that came up with a driverless car and web-surfing eyeglasses, the flimsy helium-filled inflatable’s beam the Internet down to earth as they sail past on the wind.

Still in their experimental stage, the balloons were the first of thousands that Google’s leaders eventually hope to launch 20 km into the stratosphere in order to bridge the gaping digital divide between the world’s 4.8 billion unwired people and their 2.2 billion plugged-in counterparts.

If successful, the technology might allow countries to leapfrog the expense of laying fibre cable, dramatically increasing Internet usage in places such as Africa and Southeast Asia.

“It’s a huge moonshot. A really big goal to go after,” said project leader Mike Cassidy. “The power of the Internet is probably one of the most transformative technologies of our time.”

The first person to get Google Balloon Internet access this week was Charles Nimmo, a farmer and entrepreneur in the small town of Leeston. He found the experience a little bemusing after he was one of 50 locals who signed up to be a tester for a project that was so secret no-one would explain to them what was happening. Technicians came to the volunteers’ homes and attached to the outside walls bright red receivers the size of basketballs and resembling giant Google map pins.

Nimmo got the Internet for about 15 minutes before the balloon transmitting it sailed on past. His first stop on the Web was to check out the weather because he wanted to find out if it was an optimal time for “crutching” his sheep, a term he explained to the technicians refers to removing the wool around sheep’s rear ends.

Nimmo is among the many rural folk, even in developed countries, that can’t get broadband access. After ditching his dial—up four years ago in favour of satellite Internet service, he’s found himself stuck with bills that sometimes exceed $1,000 in a single month.

“It’s been weird,” Nimmo said of the Google Balloon Internet experience. “But it’s been exciting to be part of something new.”

While the concept is new, people have used balloons for communication, transportation and entertainment for centuries. In recent years, the military and aeronautical researchers have used tethered balloons to beam Internet signals back to bases on earth.

Google’s balloons fly free and out of eyesight, scavenging power from card table-sized solar panels that dangle below and gather enough charge in four hours to power them for a day as the balloons sail around the globe on the prevailing winds. Far below, ground stations with Internet capabilities about 100 km apart bounce signals up to the balloons.

The signals would hop forward, from one balloon to the next, along a backbone of up to five balloons.

Each balloon would provide Internet service for an area twice the size of New York City, about 1,250 square km, and terrain is not a challenge. They could stream Internet into Afghanistan’s steep and winding Khyber Pass or Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, a country where the World Bank estimates four out of every 100 people are online.

There are plenty of catches, including a requirement that anyone using Google Balloon Internet would need a receiver plugged into their computer in order to receive the signal. Google is not talking costs at this point, although they’re striving to make both the balloons and receivers as inexpensive as possible, dramatically less than laying cables.

The signals travel in the unlicensed spectrum, which means Google doesn’t have to go through the onerous regulatory processes required for Internet providers using wireless communications networks or satellites. In New Zealand, the company worked with the Civil Aviation Authority on the trial. Google chose the country in part because of its remoteness. Cassidy said in the next phase of the trial they hope to get up to 300 balloons forming a ring on the 40th parallel south from New Zealand through Australia, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.

Christchurch was a symbolic launch site because some residents were cut off from online information for weeks following a 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people. Google believes balloon access could help places suffering natural disasters get quickly back online. Tania Gilchrist, a resident who signed up for the Google trial, feels lucky she lost her power for only about 10 hours on the day of the quake.

“After the initial upheaval, the Internet really came into play,” she said. “It was how people coordinated relief efforts and let people know how to get in touch with agencies. It was really, really effective and it wasn’t necessarily driven by the authorities.”

At Google’s mission control in Christchurch this week, a team of jet lagged engineers working at eight large laptops used wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to maneuver the balloons over snowy peaks, identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction and then adjusting balloons’ altitudes so they floated in that layer.

“It’s a very fundamentally democratic thing that what links everyone together is the sky and the winds,” said Richard DeVaul, an MIT—trained scientist who founded Project Loon and helped develop Google Glass, hidden camera—equipped eyeglasses with a tiny computer display that responds to voice commands.

DeVaul initially thought their biggest challenge would be establishing the radio links from earth to sky, but in the end, one of the most complex parts was hand building strong, light, durable balloons that could handle temperature and pressure swings in the stratosphere.

Google engineers studied balloon science from NASA, the Defense Department and the Jet Propulsion Lab to design their own airships made of plastic films similar to grocery bags. Hundreds have been built so far.

The balloons would be guided to collection points and replaced periodically. In cases when they failed, a parachute would deploy.

While there had been rumors, until now Google had refused to confirm the project. But there have been hints- In April, Google’s executive chairman tweeted “For every person online, there are two who are not. By the end of the decade, everyone on Earth will be connected,” prompting a flurry of speculative reports.

And international aid groups have been pushing for more connectivity for more than a decade.

In pilot projects, African farmers solved disease outbreaks after searching the Web, while in Bangladesh “online schools” bring teachers from Dhaka to children in remote classrooms through large screens and video conferencing.

Many experts said the project has the potential to fast—forward developing nations into the digital age, possibly impacting far more people than the Google X lab’s first two projects- The glasses and a fleet of self—driving cars that have already logged hundreds of thousands of accident—free miles.

“Whole segments of the population would reap enormous benefits, from social inclusion to educational and economic opportunities,” said DePauw University media studies Professor Kevin Howley.

Temple University communications professor Patrick Murphy warned of mixed consequences, pointing to China and Brazil where Internet service increased democratic principles, prompting social movements and uprisings, but also a surge in consumerism that has resulted in environmental and health problems.

“The nutritional and medical information, farming techniques, democratic principles those are the wonderful parts of it,” he said. “But you also have everyone wanting to drive a car, eat a steak, drink a Coke.”

As the world’s largest advertising network, Google itself stands to expand its own empire by bringing Internet to the masses- More users means more potential Google searchers, which in turn give the company more chances to display their lucrative ads.

Richard Bennett, a fellow with the non-profit Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, was sceptical, noting that cell phones are being used far more in developing countries.

“I’m really glad that Google is doing this kind of speculative research,” he said. “But it remains to be seen how practical any of these things are.”

Ken Murdoch, a chief information officer for the non-profit Save the Children, said the service would be “a tremendous key enabler” during natural disasters and humanitarian crises, when infrastructure can be nonexistent or paralyzed.

“The potential of a system that can restore connectivity within hours of a crisis hitting is tremendously exciting,” agreed Imogen Wall at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, although she warned that the service must be robust. “If the service fails in a crisis, then lives are lost.”

In Christchurch this week, the balloons were invisible in the sky except for an occasional glint, but people could see them if they happened to be in the remote countryside where they were launched or through binoculars, if they knew where to look.

Before heading to New Zealand, Google spent a few months secretly launching between two and five flights a week in California’s central valley, prompting what Google’s scientists said were a handful of unusual reports on local media.

“We were chasing balloons around from trucks on the ground,” said DeVaul, “and people were calling in reports about UFOs.”

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/internet/google-launches-internetbeaming-balloons/article4816811.ece?css=print

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Advani's contribution and irrelevance: rapid dissolution of the NDA. Good for BJP to exit Nitish Govt. in Bihar.

June 15, 2013, 2:44 am

≫ Next: MMS, a babu as 'neta' of SoniaG UPA -- R. Jagannathan

≪ Previous: Google Launches Internet-beaming Balloons

BJP threatens to withdraw support to Nitish Kumar govt

Law Kumar Mishra, TNN | Jun 15, 2013, 12.51 PM IST

PATNA: The BJP on Saturday threatened to withdraw its support to the Nitish Kumargovernment in Bihar. The Bihar NDA convenor and the road construction minister in the Nitish Kumar government, Nand Kishore Yadav is going to hand over a letter to the Bihar governor informing him about the withdrawal of the BJP's support to the ruling coalition, sources said on Saturday.

The letter will make a claim that the government has been reduced to a minority and therefore demand dismissal of chief minister Nitish Kumar. Yadav who is a BJP member will also seek resignation of chief minister Nitish Kumar formally, according to sources.

The BJP has 91 members in the assembly and JD(U) 118 in the 243-member House. The BJP, in 2010, had extended its support to the JD(U) and to Nitish Kumar, who was elected the leader of the NDA.

The BJP-JD(U) having come to a pass, Yadav will now inform the governor that Nitish Kumar was no more the leader of the NDA legislature party and, hence, could not fulfil his legal obligations, said a senior BJP leader here on Saturday. Yadav and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who were called by Nitish Kumar for a meeting at the CM House on Saturday morning, refused to meet the CM. Yadav said there was no point in meeting Nitish as the scope for negotiations had completely exhausted. "We are not authorised to talk to the CM by our central leaders who had been talking to him frequently," Yadav said and claimed that the deputy CM had declined the chief minister's invitation.

The BJP ministers in the Nitish Kumar cabinet will boycott the Janata Darbar scheduled for Monday. Nitish had sent formal invitation letters to the ministers seeking their presence in the Darbar. Sushil Kumar Modi has already stopped travelling in his red beacon-fitted government vehicle.

Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP's general secretary in charge of Bihar affairs, told TNN on Saturday morning: "Now, there is no merit in having further negotiations with the Bihar CM who had brought his intentions in public domain by asking the BJP not to field Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate. How can he dictate terms to our party?" Pradhan asked.

He said the top leaders of the party including L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh talked to Nitish Kumar in the last three days and tried to convince him about remaining in the NDA, but he has become adamant on the Modi issue, which was never a part of the NDA agenda. "People voted for NDA for good governance and to get rid of the "jungle raj" in the state and now Nitish is hell bent upon walking out of the NDA on a frivolous ground."

Pradhan said the BJP ministers in the Nitish cabinet would not submit their papers, but would wait for the CM to announce unilateral withdrawal from the NDA and dismiss them. "The BJP is keen to maintain the NDA, but Nitish Kumar is finding excuses to pull out of the alliance."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BJP-threatens-to-withdraw-support-to-Nitish-Kumar-govt/articleshow/20602022.cms

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MMS, a babu as 'neta' of SoniaG UPA -- R. Jagannathan

June 15, 2013, 3:07 am

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≪ Previous: Advani's contribution and irrelevance: rapid dissolution of the NDA. Good for BJP to exit Nitish Govt. in Bihar.

Why Manmohan Singh failed: neta who remained a babu

by R Jagannathan 18 mins ago June 15, 2013

Why is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh widely seen as a failure, at least in UPA-2?

Several answers have been suggested, including the division of powers between him and party PresidentSonia Gandhi, which ensures that all key decisions need her okay. Another explanation is coalition compulsions.

However, there is now one more reason being adduced for Manmohan Singh’s failure: he has surrounded himself with thinkers instead of doers.

PTI

Writing in Business Standardtoday, TN Ninan has this to say. “The Prime Minister has plenty of advisors, but is desperately short of doers. He has the benefit of wisdom from the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, the National Knowledge Commission, the National Skill Development Council, the National Advisory Council, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, the National Innovation Council, and the National Security Advisory Board, besides plenty of individual advisors, with and without prefixes. That’s a lot of people giving advice, writing reports and occupying sundry “bhavans” and multi-acre homes in Lutyens’ Delhi. But look for the doers in the system, and they are scarce. The Delhi Metro’s E Sreedharan stands out as a rare exception, perhaps alongside Nandan Nilekani. As for the rest, the less said the better.”

Now with Sreedharan retired, and Nilekani’s mandate at the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) being curtailed (the UIDAI is still to get parliamentary sanction, and is anyway mandated to cover only half the country), Manmohan Singh effectively has one doer less and a half-doer on his payroll.

If Atal Behari Vajpayee managed to achieve something, it’s because he had some doers in his team. Among them: Arun Shourie, who managed to get disinvestment moving and the new telecom policy. And he had BC Khanduri, who as Surface Transport Minister managed to get the national highways programme off to a spectacular start. Even Sreedharan was a Vajpayee appointee to the Delhi Metro.

However, there is another way of seeing this. One needs to ask: why does Manmohan Singh have more advisors and non-action people on his team than doers?

The answer may be: he himself is not a doer. He is just a file-pusher. He is a bureaucrat who has risen far above his level of competence. This is why Sonia Gandhi had chosen him as PM in 2004, because he would listen to her like a bureaucrat. Give advice, and then let her take a decision.

This is why Singh was successful under Narasimha Rao – despite being called finance minister, he was essentially a glorified finance secretary who proposed and Rao disposed.

A bureaucrat will not be comfortable with anyone who is not another bureaucrat – or else the lines of authority can blur. There is no one to tell him, “Yes, Prime Minister”. This is why Manmohan Singh never had a great equation with Pranab Mukherjee as Finance Minister. Mukherjee was always a minister, never a bureaucrat. And Singh had served under him. Their relationship was not that of boss and subordinate, but bureaucratic PM and Super Minister. The power relationship was skewed against Singh.

For the same reason, Singh was earlier uncomfortable with P Chidambaram, too. As a proud Chettiar from Tamil Nadu, Chidambaram was always someone who could give orders and get things done. He suffers no fools. Despite outward deference, Chidambaram does not see himself as beholden to the PM for his job, nor does he think he needs the PM’s support for anything. His current authority for reforms comes directly from Sonia Gandhi, and not the PM.

On the other hand, if you look at the people in various committees and “bhavans”, nearly all are people who would accept Manmohan Singh’s bureaucratic authority. Montek Singh Ahluwalia was one before Singh brought him to the Planning Commission. C Rangarajan was one, and headed the Reserve Bank in his time. Nandan Nilekani came to the UIDAI from the private sector, where deference to bureaucracy is a learnt virtue. Sam Pitroda at the Knowledge Commission was close to the Gandhi family in Rajiv Gandhi’s time, and S Ramadorai as the PM’s advisor on skill-building is from Tata Consultancy Services.

The last word on Singh should be given to Bibek Debroy, who summed up Manmohan Singh’s essential strength as the ability to survive all bosses, and not pushing for what he really believed in. Pointing out that UPA-1 was Left-wing in orientation, Debroy, writing inThe Economic Times some time ago, says Singh could still have pushed for reforms in public expenditure and social spending – which would not have been opposed even by Sonia Gandhi. But he did nothing.

Says Debroy: “Why did MMS choose not to push such reforms? Why, as PM, did he not insist on key individuals in key social sector portfolios during UPA-1? That demand would have also passed muster with 10, Janpath. The point is, multiple power centres or coalition compulsions do not explain MMS not pushing for key changes. MMS opted for the path of least resistance. Good bureaucrats often do that.”

Debroy’s conclusion: “MMS will most likely be judged by history as one of India’s most ineffective Prime Ministers. But there’s another judgment on MMS that’s equally valid and important. Manmohan Singh is the best Cabinet secretary India never had.”

As this writer has noted before, Singh’s failure validates the Peter Principle, which says every man gets promoted to his level of incompetence. Manmohan Singh the super-bureaucrat failed as PM because he had been promoted once too often and reached his level of incompetence.

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/why-manmohan-singh-failed-neta-who-remained-a-babu-873509.html

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Discovering Khirsara’s Harappan glory: Seals with Indus writing read rebus.

June 15, 2013, 7:15 am

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Churning of the Ocean of Milk.
From Prasat Phnom Da. 12th Century, Angkor Wat Style. अब्धिः abdhiḥ 'the ocean, receptacle of water' (Skt.)क्षार kṣāra -उदः, -उदकः -उदधिः, -समुद्रः, -सिन्धुः the salt ocean (Skt.)kṣīra also means 'water, milk' (Skt.) క్షీరము [ kṣīramu ] kshīramu. [Skt.] n. Milk, పాలు. The milky sap of plants. జిల్లేడు మొదలైన వాటిపాలు. Water ఉదకము. క్షీరాన్నము rice and milk boiled together. పరమాన్నము. క్షీరోదకన్యాయము intimate union as milk and watesr mixed with each other. నీళ్లును పాలును కలిసినట్లు ఒక్కటిగా కలిసియుండు ధర్మము. వారు క్షీరోదకన్యాయముగా నున్నారు they are intimately associated or related. క్షీరాబ్ధి or క్షీరసాగరము kshīr-ābdhi. n. The sea of milk పాలసముద్రము. క్షీరాబ్ధితనయthe goddess who sprung from this sea, i.e., Lakshmi. లక్ష్మి (Telugu)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtM-4Z4mHKUHISTORIC SITE - Prasat Chub Pul - Phnom Da - Phnom Bayang - Neang Sokro - oob - Kingdom of Cambodia The site has yielded the Samudramanthanam frescoe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnrsKGR4LFY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHVMarpAAH0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ALIRK9qsOk The first temple in this clip has the name: Ashram Maha Rosei. It is a basalt stone Shiva temple from the 7th century, the time of the Funan Kingdom. The second is Phnom Da, a 11th century Khmer construct of bricks and sandstone with some nice carvings.

Khirsara is a shortened form of kṣīrasāgara in śvetadwīpa (BhP. Viii,5,11). This is also referred to as samudramanthanam narrative pointing to Asura and Deva churning the ocean and harnessing the wealth of the ocean.kṣīrasābdhi (Kathās.xxii,186) refers to precious objects produced at the churning of the ocean.

A bar seal with writing in Harappan script. Only one other bar seal figures in the total of 11 seals found so far in Khirsara.

Rebus readings of Indus writing (from r.): मेंढरी [ mēṇḍharī ] f A piece in architecture. मेंधला [mēndhalā] m In architecture. A common term for the two upper arms of a double चौकठ (door-frame) connecting the two. Called also मेंढरी & घोडा. It answers to छिली the name of the two lower arms or connections. (Marathi) meḍhi ‘pillar’.

kolmo, ‘rice plant' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge' (Telugu)

sangaḍa ‘bangles’ (Pali). Rebus: sangaḍa‘lathe, furnace’. saghaḍī = furnace (G.) Rebus: jaṅgaḍ ‘entrustment articles’ sangaḍa‘association, guild’. dula 'pair' Rebus: dul ‘casting’.

Ku.koṭhoʻlarge square houseʼ Rebus: Md. kořāruʻstorehouseʼ

aḍar ‘harrow’ Rebus: aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada) dula 'pair' Rebus: dul ‘casting’.

ayo ‘fish’ (Mu.) Rebus: aya = iron (G.); ayah, ayas = metal (Skt.)

aḍar ‘harrow’ Rebus: aduru = gan.iyinda tegadu karagade iruva aduru = ore taken from the mine and not subjected to melting in a furnace (Kannada)

ḍato = claws of crab (Santali); dhātu = mineral (Skt.), dhatu id. (Santali)

kanka 'rim-of-jar' Rebus: furnace account (scribe); khanaka 'miner' (Skt.). kolom 'three' Rebus: kolami 'smithy, forge' (Telugu) The ligature of three strokes with rim-of-jar hieroglyph thus reads: smithy/forge account (scribe).

These readings are consistent with the readings of other artisans' work evidenced in other Seals/tabletw with Indus writing discovered in Khirsara (inscriptions and readings appended).

Copper fish-hook found in a trench. Beads of semi-precious stones. Conch-shells at the pottery yard. Disc-shaped gold beads found in a pot.

List of figures:

A section of the industrial complex excavated at the Harappan site at Khirsara in Gujarat's Kutch district. In the middle of the picture is the complex's fortification wall, which turns right and heads towards the citadel complex, in the background. The structures adjoining the fortification wall were added later.

A cluster of pottery, including a tall slender jar, and a big conch shell found in one of the trenches.

Kalyani Vaghela, research assistant in archaeology from M.S. University, Vadodara, at work in the trench.

Jitendra Nath (right), ASI and N.B. Soni, Senior Draftsman, examining drawings of the trenches at the industrial complex. The guard rooms are at left.

A staircase inside the industrial complex where the common people also resided.

The citadel complex. It was strategically located adjacent to the warehouse and the factory site in such a manner that the elite class might exercise full control over the manufacturing and trading activities.

Disc-shaped gold beads found in a pot.

A terracotta bull head.

A copper fish hook found in a trench.

N.B. Soni in the sprawling pottery yard where thousands of potsherds are classified under various categories.

A potsherd with painted work.

A terracotta hopscotch.

A potsherd showing reserved slip ware.

An anthropomorphic figurine.

Part of a perforated jar.

A striped potsherd.

Beads of semi-precious stones.

A bar seal with writing in Harappan script. Only one other bar seal figures in the total of 11 seals found so far in Khirsara.

A bathroom, with its sloping floor and a covered outlet (top left corner) and a drainage (left foreground) that leads into the street. The floor and walls have limestone slabs.

The warehouse. It had 14 parallel walls built in the north-south direction, each about 11 metres long. The walls supported a superstructure on which the goods were placed. The picture shows a couple of such walls.

Conch shells at the pottery yard. Between 2600 BCE and 2200 BCE the Harappans made bangles with the shells at the industrial site.

Grain, mixed with stone and sand, found in the warehouse. The grains have been sent to Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in Lucknow for dating and identification.

The circular kiln where pots and jars were made. The newly made pots were arranged under the dome on top of the kiln and baked at temperatures of around 500 degree C.

The reasonably big opening under the dome, as Bipin Negi, Assistant Archaelogist, ASI, demonstrates, through which burning firewood was pushed inside.

Aeration holes on the kiln.

A portion of the outer fortification wall, nearly 4,600 years old. The 310-metre-long and 230-metre-wide structure ran around the entire 12-acre settlement.

The dry bed of the Khari river with its banks overgrown with shrubs. To protect the settlement when the river was in spate a wall was built parallel to the outer fortification wall in the north and the east.

A serrated marine fossil on the riverbed. The sea or the Rann of Kutch would have extended up to where the river lies now at the peak of the settlement. Harappa was a maritime civilisation. Marine organisms fossilised when the sea receded because of tectonic movements.

Ramraj Meena, trench supervisor, delicately brushing a big pot found in one of the trenches.

While digging in an archaelogical trench, the first stage involves using a small pickaxe slowly and carefully.

The second stage in digging a trench involvees the use of a shovel to remove the earth.

The third stage involves brushing the artefacts. In the picture, a perforated jar that was probably used to keep fruits is being brushed.

Other Khirsara evidences of Indus writing posted at https://sites.google.com/?pli=1/site/bharatkalyan97 on finds of Indus Writing at Chanhudaro and 19 other sites:

Khirsara1a

Khirsra seal ID 3732 Mason, ingot kiln, tin smithy, blacksmith smithy, iron smelter furnace, nodule/ore stone furnace, brass-bellmetal kiln, native-metal-iron smelter

ḍabu ‘an iron spoon’ (Santali) Rebus: ḍab, ḍhimba, ḍhompo ‘lump (ingot?)’, bat.a = wide-mouthed pot; Rebus: bat.a = kiln (Te.)

ranku ‘antelope’; rebus: ranku ‘tin’ (Santali)

panǰā́r‘ladder, stairs’ (Bshk.)(CDIAL 7760) Rebus: pasra ‘smithy’ (Santali)

badhi ‘to ligature, to bandage, to splice, to join by successive rolls of a ligature’ (Santali) batā bamboo slips (Kur.); bate = thin slips of bamboo (Malt.)(DEDR 3917). Rebus: baḍhi = worker in wood and metal (Santali) baṛae = blacksmith (Ash.)

kolmo ‘three’ (Mu.); rebus: kolimi ‘smithy’ (Te.)

khaṇḍ ‘division’; rebus: kaṇḍ ‘furnace’ (Santali) khaḍā ‘circumscribe’ (M.); Rebs: khaḍā ‘nodule (ore), stone’ (M.)

bharna = the name given to the woof by weavers; otor bharna = warp and weft (Santali.lex.) bharna = the woof, cross-thread in weaving (Santali); bharni_ (H.) (Santali.Boding.lex.) Rebus: bhoron = a mixture of brass and bell metal (Santali.lex.) bharan = to spread or bring out from a kiln (P.lex.) bha_ran. = to bring out from a kiln (G.) ba_ran.iyo = one whose profession it is to sift ashes or dust in a goldsmith’s workshop (G.lex.) bharant (lit. bearing) is used in the plural in Pan~cavim.s’a Bra_hman.a (18.10.8). Sa_yan.a interprets this as ‘the warrior caste’ (bharata_m – bharan.am kurvata_m ks.atriya_n.a_m). *Weber notes this as a reference to the Bharata-s. (Indische Studien, 10.28.n.2)

kuṭi = a slice, a bit, a small piece (Santali.lex.Bodding) Rebus: kuṭhi ‘iron smelter furnace’ (Santali)

ad.aren ‘lid’; rebus: aduru ‘native metal’ (Ka.)

kad.i_ a chain; a hook; a link (G.); kad.iyo [Hem. Des. kad.a i o = Skt. sthapati a mason] a bricklayer; a mason; kad.iyan.a, kad.iyen.a a woman of the bricklayer caste; a wife of a bricklayer (G.)

Khirsara2a Khirsara seal ID 3733 Fire-altar (gold) smithy, artisan smith’s workshop, mineworker, scribe

gaṇḍa set of four (Santali) kaṇḍa ‘fire-altar’ (Santali) Vikalpa: pon ‘four’ (Santali); pon ‘metal’ (Ta.)

kolmo ‘three’ (Mu.); rebus: kolimi ‘smithy’ (Te.)

koḍa ‘sluice’; Rebus: koḍ ‘artisan’s workshop (Kuwi) Vikalpa: सांड [ sāṇḍa ] f (षद S) An outlet for superfluous water (as through a dam or mound); a sluice, a floodvent. सांडशी [ sāṇḍaśī ] f (Dim. of सांडस, or from H) A small kind of tongs or pincers.

kan.d.a kanka ‘rim of jar’ (Santali) kan.d.a ‘furnace, fire-altar’ (Santali); khanaka ‘miner’ karNaka ‘scribe’ (Skt.)

http://www.frontline.in/arts-and-culture/heritage/discovering-khirsaras-harappan-glory/article4794614.ece?homepage=true

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges as Harappan site

Posted by TANNAncient, ArchaeoHeritage, Archaeology, Asia, Breakingnews, India, South Asia12:00 PM

After three years of extensive excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Khirsara has emerged as the prominent Harappan site in western Kutch, showing how advanced the trade from this part of Gujarat used to be around 4,600 years ago.

The Khirsara site [Credit: Web]

“Earlier, Dholavira and Junikuren had emerged as prominent Harappan sites in Kutch,” ASI's Superintendent Archaeologist, Vadodara, Dr Jitendra Nath said. Khirsara was first reported by the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat government in 1969-70. The site was revisited by a team of Excavation Branch of ASI Vadodara in July 2009 for a survey during which they observed a variety of Harappa artefacts and carried out further digging.

Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway. The site is locally known as ‘Gadhwali Wadi' and is located on the south-eastern outskirts of the present village overlooking river Khari.

“The prime reason for Harappans to settle at Khirsara was perhaps the availability and accessibility to raw materials and minerals in the vicinity,” Nath said.

“Khirsara produced a variety of objects for export such as various types of beads of semiprecious stones, steatite and gold, shell bangles, inlays etc,” he said. Discovery of a large number of drill bits and shells debitage indicates that these items were meant for export, the officer said.

During excavation, we have discovered a unique warehouse, a factory site, a citadel, seals, antiquities from the Indus Valley settlement at Khirsara, which is fortified and measures roughly about 310 x 230 metres, Nath said.

The super structure of warehouse seems to have been made of perishable items such as wood or wattle and daub. The space in between the parallel walls might have served as a duct for circulation of fresh air to protect the stored material, he said. The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from earlier and later cultures existed in the same area of the Harappan Civilisation.

The citadel, a fortress overlooking a city or perhaps protecting a town, shows fortification and re-fortification which scholars reason that elite clan might have lived there. The rooms found there show finer structure, he said.

The factory site discovered during excavation had several products showing that it was utilised for manufacturing activity. “Amongst prominent antiquities we have found 26 pieces of disk type gold beads from the factory site there,” Nath said.

A variety of seals which include square, rectangular and bar types made of steatite, soap stone and sand stone have been discovered at Khirsara. The bar type seals bear Harappan character only whereas the two rectangular seals represent figurines of unicorn and bison on the obverse, Nath said.

The analysis of botanical remains done by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow, reveals that the carbon dates for samples collected from the site fall in the range of 2600-2200 BC approximately, which is roughly 4,600 years old, Nath said.PTI

Source: The Hindu [April 17, 2012] http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.de/2012/04/khirsara-in-gujarat-emerges-as-harappan.html#.Ubx9Tucwevc

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges prominent mature Harappan site

Monday, Apr 16, 2012, 13:58 IST | Agency: PTI

Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway

After three years of extensive excavation by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Khirsara has emerged as the prominent mature Harappan site in western Kutch, showing how advance the trade from this part of Gujarat used to be around 4,600 years ago.

"Khirsara has emerged as one of the most prominent mature Harappan settlements in Western Kutch. Earlier, Dholavira and Junikuren had emerged as prominent Harappan sites in Kutch," ASI's Superintendent Archaeologist, Vadodara, Dr Jitendra Nath said.

"The evidences found over last 3 years of excavation there show how advance trade used to be from this part of Gujarat around 4,600 years ago," he said.

Khirsara lies about 85 km Northwest of Bhuj on the Bhuj-Narayan Sarover State Highway. The site is locally known as 'Gadhwali Wadi' and is located on the south-eastern outskirts of the present village overlooking river Khari.

"The prime reason for Harappans to settle at Khirsara was perhaps the availability and easy accessibility to raw materials and minerals in the vicinity," Nath said.

"Khirsara produced a variety of objects for export such as various types of beads of semiprecious stones, steatite and gold, shell bangles, inlays etc," he said.

Discovery of a large number of drill bits and shells indicates that these items were meant for export, the officer said.

During excavation, we have discovered a unique warehouse, a factory site, a citadel, seals, antiquities from the Indus Valley settlement at Khirsara, which is fortified and measures roughly about 310 x 230 metres, Nath said.

The super structure of warehouse seems to have been made of perishable items like wood or wattle and daub. The space in between the parallel walls might have served as a duct for circulation of fresh air to protect the stored material, he said.

The Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan culture to distinguish it from earlier and later cultures existed in the same area of the Harappan Civilisation.

Khirsara's close proximity with river Khari might certainly have supported the maritime trading activities of its inhabitants, Nath said.

The citadel, a fortress overlooking a city or perhaps protecting a town, shows fortification and re-fortification which scholars reason that elite clan might have lived there. The rooms found there show finer structure, he said.

The factory site discovered during excavation had several products showing that it was utilised for manufacturing activity.

The presence of big furnaces, tandoor, storage jars, small water tanks and discovery of a hoard of gold beads, semi-precious and steatite beads, copper implements, seals, weights, shell objects and debitage indicate that this area (factory site) was once utilised for manufacturing activity, he said.

"Amongst prominent antiquities we have found 25-26 pieces of disk type gold beads from the factory site there. The gold beads are of disk type, globular and tubular," Nath said.

A variety of seals which include square, rectangular and bar types made of steatite, soap stone and sand stone have been discovered at Khirsara.

The bar type seals bear Harappan character only whereas the two rectangular seals represent figurines of unicorn and bison on the obverse, Nath said.

The analysis of botanical remains done by the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow reveals that the carbon dates for samples collected from the site fall in the range of 2600-2200 BC approximately, which is roughly 4,600 years old, Nath said.

Khirsara was first reported by the Department of Archaeology, Gujarat government in 1969-70. The site was revisited by a team of Excavation Branch of ASI Vadodara in July 2009 for a survey during which they observed a variety of Harappa artefacts and carried out further digging.
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1676569/report-khirsara-in-gujarat-emerges-prominent-mature-harappan-site

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498 Indians named in tax haven scoop: British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Singapore -- ICIJ

June 15, 2013, 8:03 am

≫ Next: Mahendraparvata discovered using airborne laser. 1200 year-old lost city in Cambodia.

≪ Previous: Discovering Khirsara’s Harappan glory: Seals with Indus writing read rebus.

Press Trust of India | New Delhi April 6, 2013 Last Updated at 17:00 IST

Govt has initiated probe against expose made by global org: FM

A worldwide media expose is claimed to have unearthed details of 2.5 lakh individuals and entities from more than 170 countries, including India

Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said an inquiry has been initiated against the individuals whose names appeared in a global report on the monies stashed in tax heaven.

"Yes. We have taken note of the names and inquiries have been put in motion in respect of the names that have been exposed", he said when asked whether the government has taken any action with regard to expose in connection with bank accounts in tax havens.

A worldwide media expose is claimed to have unearthed details of 2.5 lakh individuals and entities from more than 170 countries, including India, that evaded taxes by setting up companies in tax havens.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a body of newspersons from across the world, has reportedly found a trove of 2.5 million digital files, detailing "secrets of more than 1,20,000 offshore companies and trusts and nearly 1,30,000 individuals and agents".

On the sting operations carried out by Cobrapost alleging money laundering by some officials of ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank, Chidambaram said the Reserve Bank is seriously looking into the issue and stern action will be taken by the government if any violation of tax law was found.

"RBI is seriously looking into the matter", he said, adding, "my officers have taken a look at ... Sting. They have drawn some conclusions, we are looking into it. If violation is found (with regard to tax laws), stern action will be taken". http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-has-initiated-probe-against-expose-made-by-global-org-fm-113040600153_1.html

Jaimini Bhagwati April 18, 2013 Last Updated at 21:50 IST

Will tax havens fall apart?

India can gain from joining the West in taking firm action against tax havens

The heading of this article is adapted from Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's widely acclaimed novel Things Fall Apart. Achebe passed away a few weeks ago, on March 21, and hence his writings come to mind. He had borrowed this title from W B Yeats' apocalyptic poem "The Second Coming", written in 1919. Yeats was perhaps influenced by the meaningless carnage of the First World War, the fratricidal Russian revolution and foreboding about the future. The following lines from this oft-quoted poem rang true at the time of the financial sector meltdown in 2007-08:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

Are these words of any relevance with the spotlight again on tax havens and shadow banking? This article takes stock of recent government statements about their determination to fight tax evasion and tax avoidance, and the Financial Stability Board's (FSB's) efforts to formulate norms aimed at reducing the incidence of shadow banking (as mandated by the G20).

In the first week of April 2013, it was reported that a Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) had obtained access to emails and other documents relating to accounts located in offshore financial centres (OFCs). It seems that 2.5 million files from 120,000 offshore and trust companies covering almost 30 years of such activity and involving more than 170 countries were examined. It was mentioned that 612 Indians were among those named. In the same week, Jerome Cahuzac, the French budget minister, admitted to having a secret Swiss bank account for 20 years and had to resign.

The prompt reaction at senior government levels calling for action was refreshing. On April 4, 2013, the German finance minister welcomed the ICIJ revelations, saying that it would "increase the pressure" on tax evaders. On April 10, France announced that it was setting up a special prosecutor to investigate and pursue cases involving tax evasion and fraud and that France would work to eliminate tax havens around the world. On April 12, the finance ministers of the six major European countries - Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Poland - agreed to push for greater transparency. The French finance minister was reported to have said: "Nobody can deny that bank secrecy is outdated ... we need an efficient system to tackle [tax] evasion strategies."

Earlier, the 16 February edition of The Economist carried a special report on offshore finance. According to this report, the Boston Consulting Group estimates the total volume of funds in tax havens to be around $8 trillion. McKinsey believes that the amounts invested in tax-free jurisdictions could add up to $21 trillion. This special report suggests there are about 50-60 tax havens around the world that are located in the Caribbean (Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands), parts of the United States (Delaware state), Europe (Cyprus, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland) and the Indian and Pacific Oceans (Mauritius, Seychelles, Singapore). The names of internationally recognised banks or companies that warehouse huge volumes of funds in tax havens were not listed in this report.

Tax havens, with their minuscule to zero tax rates and strict confidentiality, enable individual fortunes to be hidden from external financial sector regulators and tax authorities. Accounts are also held in the names of private firms, and it is practically impossible to establish individual ownership by disentangling the complex web of cross-holdings that stretch across several tax havens.

OFCs invariably argue that tax arbitrage is legitimate; and that tax avoidance is legal in their jurisdictions while tax evasion is not. In practice, it is impractical to expect that external tax authorities would be able to provide the information required for OFCs to distinguish whether it is a case of tax avoidance or evasion. Assuming that the protestations of tax havens are valid and that they only facilitate tax avoidance, these OFCs should have no difficulty in sharing information about their clients with external regulatory authorities. Consequently, if G20 countries are serious about reducing tax evasion and the accumulation of ill-gotten gains in tax havens, OFCs could be threatened with economic sanctions if they are not adequately transparent and responsive. In fact, if there is political will, the threat could include potential restrictions in regular air and shipping links.

Tax havens can be centres for shadow banking activities, which cause systemic risks to build up outside regulatory purview. The November 2012 FSB consultative document titled "Strengthening Oversight and Regulation of Shadow Banking" identifies the risks in shadow banking as: (i) use of repos to create short-term, money-like liabilities and facilitation of credit outside the banking system; (ii) securities lending cash collateral reinvestment estimated to stand at over $1 trillion (could lead to systemic risks since it involves maturity and liquidity transformation). The following risks affect both shadow banking and regular banking: (i) tendency of secured lending to be pro-cyclical; (ii) fire sale of collateral securities; (iii) re-hypothecation of unencumbered assets; (iv) interconnectedness stemming from chains of transactions involving reuse of collateral (risk of financial contagion and opacity); (v) inadequate collateral practices (the risk is that regular mark-to-market practices are not followed). A fuller discussion and examination of the technical issues related to shadow banking is outside the purview of this article. Suffice it to say that banking activities in tax havens need to be made more transparent to external regulators.

In India it has been reported that the Cobrapost allegations and ICIJ revelations are to be investigated. It may make future wrongdoing less likely if the results of the investigations were to be placed in the public domain.

The principal difficulty with obtaining fuller disclosure from OFCs is that tax havens are under the administrative supervision of developed countries or are located in independent states. They are in stiff competition with each other to attract funds by keeping taxes at minimal levels. Further, legal structures have been set up in tax havens to disallow any disclosure unless the requesting side provides full details of alleged wrongdoing.

On balance, despite several recent high-level official statements, it would be wishful thinking to expect that tax havens will soon become fully transparent or fall apart. However, the current environment of mounting antipathy in developed countries towards tax evasion and tax avoidance could enable us to restrict clandestine capital outflows from India by working in concert with other G20 members.

j.bhagwati@gmail.com

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/will-tax-havens-fall-apart-113041801193_1.html

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The Portcullis TrustNet Group has identified an individual whom it strongly suspects as having been involved in the data theft that has led to information being published in a series of articles coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. A report has been filed with the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force, and they are investigating the matter.

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ICIJ on Indians' bank accounts in British Virgin and Cook Islands

ICIJ OFFSHORE LEAKS DATABASE

The database contains ownership information about companies created in 10 offshore jurisdictions including the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Singapore. It covers nearly 30 years until 2010.

Officers & Master Clients: First Global India Holdings Limited

Offshore Entities:

Siam Canadian (India) Limited
The East India Trading Company, Limited
CNETRIC SINGAPORE PTE. LTD
India Buildings Management Ltd.
India Buildings Contracts Ltd.
Quanta Energy Solutions (India), Ltd.
Listed Addresses (498)
Please read the statement below before searching.
There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly. If you find an error in the database please get in touch with us.
http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/search?q=India&ppl=on&ent=on&adr=on

498 INDIANS NAMED IN TAX HAVEN SCOOP

Sunday, 16 June 2013 | J Gopikrishnan | New Delhi

Nearly 500 Indians and Indian companies have bank accounts in tax havens like British Virgin, Cayman and Cook Islands and Singapore. They are among the 10,000 account holders worldwide whose comprehensive list was released by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Saturday. Interestingly, the official residential addresses of two senior Government officers also figure in the list.

In the massive worldwide exposé, titled 'Secrecy for Sale', the ICIJ released the names of 498 Indians and several Indian companies having bank accounts in the tax havens.

As per the list, one Ritu Verma's bank account carries the address of the official residence of a senior IAS officer of the UT cadre in Delhi. The address is: D-II-225 Vinay Marg, Chanakyapuri in New Delhi.

Inquiries by The Pioneer have revealed that the UT cadre IAS officer held important posts in the Delhi Government. He was transferred to Goa sometime ago, but now he is back in Delhi and resides at the same address.

According to ICIJ, Ritu Verma is a Director of Windsor Incorporation Inc since August 13, 2007. The company's address is shown as: Portcullis Trust Net Chambers, PO Box 3444, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands.

The other Government accommodation figuring in the list is: 15 E, CPWD Quarters, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi. This address is shown as that of one Sanjay Wali. The CPWD quarters in Vasant Vihar are allotted to senior Government officials.

According to ICIJ's exposé, Sanjay Wali is a Director of Crest Strategies Limited since September 6, 2006. This company is registered in Dubai and has accounts in tax havens.

A majority of the 498 Indian addresses are from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Baroda, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. All the posh colonies in these metros figure in the list.

Addresses from Delhi's posh areas include Greater Kailash, Defence Colony and Golf Links Road. Besides, Chennai's Pycrofts Garden Road and Race Course Road also figure in the list of bank account holders in tax havens.

Several Indian businessmen and their family members' names and their associations with trusts and companies are mentioned in the lengthy list produced by ICIJ on their website.

People from areas like Raipur, Bellary, Kurukshetra, Khammam, Ludhiana, Ajmer, Bhopal, Muzaffarpur, Baripada (Odisha), Kochi and Pondicherry also figure in the list.

"The ICIJ publishes today a database that, for the first time in history, will help begin to strip away this secrecy across 10 offshore jurisdictions. The Offshore Leaks Database allows users to search through more than 1,00,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore locales such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore. The Offshore Leaks web app, developed by La Nación newspaper in Costa Rica for ICIJ, displays graphic visualisations of offshore entities and the networks around them, including, when possible, the company's true owners," ICIJ, in the introduction of their exposé, said.

"When Bernard Madoff built his $65 billion house of cards; when food distributors passed off horsemeat as beef lasagna in Europe; and when Apple, Google and other American companies set up structures to channel their profits through Ireland - they all used tax havens.

"They bought secrecy, minimal or zero taxes and legal insulation, the distinctive products that tax havens market and that allow companies to operate in a fiscal and regulatory vacuum. Using the offshore economy is akin to acquiring your own island where the rules that most citizens follow don't apply," said ICIJ in the forward note to their biggest exposé, justifying the publication of bank accounts in tax havens across the world. The Journalists' organisation promises more release of bank accounts in the coming days.

Ravi Shankar Prasad 2 hours ago

Finance Minister P Chidambaram lives in Pycrofts Garden in Chennai. Pioneer should do more research on the names of Indians. There should be more politicians. Most of the powerful Indians have accounts in USB's Singapore. There is a company called Sharecorp in British Virgin Islands in the list, where 100s of Indians connected. Pioneer should investigate into former telecom minister A.Raja's accounts in Singapore, Dubai, Malaysia, Indonesia and London.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/todays-newspaper/498-indians-named-in-tax-haven-scoop.html

498 Indians hold offshore A/Cs in tax havens
TNN | Jun 16, 2013, 05.59 AM IST

NEW DELHI: A database of one lakh offshore entities in tax havens owned by, among others, 498 Indians with addresses in upscale enclaves in major cities, generated a huge buzz on Saturday with agencies expected to try and decipher the disclosures.

The last tranche of disclosures came out in April, among them were names of industrialists Vijay Mallya and Ravikant Ruia and Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam, although nothing incriminating has been found about any of their offshore entities.

The database on secret companies, trusts and funds created in tax havens such as British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands and Cook Islands — published by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) — has been made accessible online.

Given the heated political debate on black money in India, the disclosures are expected to lead to renewed calls for information received from countries such as France, Germany and Japan be made public. So far, the government has said that the nature of international agreements prevents it from doing so.

Among the owners with Indian addresses, 194 are from Mumbai (or Bombay), the highest among all the cities. New Delhi is second in that list with 113 owners of offshore entities. The remaining cities, in the descending order of the number of owners, are Kolkata (39), Bangalore (36), Chennai (31), Hyderabad (13), Gurgaon (9) and Ahmedabad (7).

Responding to the new information from ICIJ about hidden off-shore wealth, Financial Transparency Coalition, a network of international NGOs, said that it confirmed "beyond reasonable doubt that the world's financial system legitimizes industrial-scale tax avoidance, aids criminals and drug cartels and facilitates corruption up to the highest levels of our society".

ICIJ, however, clarified that the people and companies mentioned in the database were not necessarily involved in tax avoidance or evasion. "There are legitimate reasons to use offshore companies and trusts," it said, "ICIJ does not intend to suggest or imply that the people and companies included in the database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly."

The database is part of a cache of 2.5 million leaked offshore files ICIJ analyzed with 112 journalists in 58 countries. This is not a "data dump", ICIJ said, as "it is a careful release of basic corporate information".

The purpose of the "offshore leaks database" is only to make company ownership information transparent. ICIJ has therefore published the postal addresses of the owners without disclosing other personal data such as records of bank accounts and financial transactions, emails and other correspondence, passports and telephone numbers.

Within days of ICIJ's April release of dozens of stories, French president Francois Hollande called for the "eradication" of tax havens. Europe's largest economic powers - the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany - announced that they will start exchanging bank information.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/498-Indians-hold-offshore-A/Cs-in-tax-havens/articleshow/20611959.cms

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Mahendraparvata discovered using airborne laser. 1200 year-old lost city in Cambodia.

June 15, 2013, 4:29 pm

≫ Next: Ramlila -- Lalu. SoniaG's MLAs move to join Nitish-Muslim bandwagon

≪ Previous: 498 Indians named in tax haven scoop: British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Singapore -- ICIJ

http://youtu.be/qdLAGKj6abI

Mahendraparvata, 1,200-Year-Old Lost Medieval City In Cambodia, Unearthed By Archaeologists (VIDEO)

Agence France Presse | By
Posted: 06/15/2013 7:01 am EDTA lost medieval city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1,200 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists using revolutionary airborne laser technology, a report said.
In what it called a world exclusive, the Sydney Morning Herald said the city, Mahendraparvata, included temples hidden by jungle for centuries, many of which have not been looted.
A journalist and photographer from the newspaper accompanied the "Indiana Jones-style" expedition, led by a French-born archaeologist, through landmine-strewn jungle in the Siem Reap region where Angkor Wat, the largest Hindi temple complex in the world, is located.
The expedition used an instrument called Lidar -- light detection and ranging data -- which was strapped to a helicopter that criss-crossed a mountain north of Angkor Wat for seven days, providing data that matched years of ground research by archaeologists.
It effectively peeled away the jungle canopy using billions of laser pulses, allowing archaeologists to see structures that were in perfect squares, completing a map of the city which years of painstaking ground research had been unable to achieve, the report said.
It helped reveal the city that reportedly founded the Angkor Empire in 802 AD, uncovering more than two dozen previously unrecorded temples and evidence of ancient canals, dykes and roads using satellite navigation coordinates gathered from the instrument's data.
Jean-Baptiste Chevance, director of the Archaeology and Development Foundation in London who led the expedition, told the newspaper it was known from ancient scriptures that a great warrior, Jayavarman II, had a mountain capital, "but we didn't know how all the dots fitted, exactly how it all came together".
"We now know from the new data the city was for sure connected by roads, canals and dykes," he said.
The discovery is set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research centre in Cambodia, which played a key part in developing the Lidar technology, said there might be important implications for today's society.
"We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation," Evans, a co-expedition leader, said.
"One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilisation ... perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable."
The Herald said the trek to the ruins involved traversing rutted goat tracks and knee-deep bogs after travelling high into the mountains on motorbikes.
Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy until the findings were peer-reviewed.
Evans said it was not known how large Mahendraparvata was because the search had so far only covered a limited area, with more funds needed to broaden it out.
"Maybe what we see was not the central part of the city, so there is a lot of work to be done to discover the extent of this civilisation," he said.

"We need to preserve the area because it's the origin of our culture," secretary of state at Cambodia's Ministry of Culture, Chuch Phoeun, told AFP.

Angkor Wat was at one time the largest pre-industrial city in the world, and is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire's political and military power.

'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/15/mahendraparvata-lost-city-cambodia_n_3445545.html

AFP | Jun 16, 2013, 03.20 AM IST

1,200 years on, lost Cambodian city found

SYDNEY: A lost medieval city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1,200 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists using revolutionary airborne laser technology, a report said Saturday.

In what it called a world exclusive, the Sydney Morning Herald said the city, Mahendraparvata, included temples hidden by jungle for centuries, many of which have not been looted.

A journalist and photographer from the newspaper accompanied the "Indiana Jones-style" expedition, led by a French-born archaeologist, through a landmine-strewn jungle in the Siem Reap region where Angkor Wat, the largest Hindu temple complex in the world, is located.

The expedition used an instrument called Lidar which was strapped to a helicopter that criss-crossed a mountain north of Angkor Wat, providing data that matched years of ground research by archaeologists.

It effectively peeled away the jungle canopy using billions of laser pulses, allowing archaeologists to see structures that were in perfect squares, completing a map of the city which years of painstaking ground research had been unable to achieve, the report said.

It helped reveal the city that reportedly founded the Angkor Empire in 802 AD, uncovering more than two dozen previously unrecorded temples and evidence of ancient canals, dykes and roads using satellite navigation coordinates gathered from the instrument's data.

Jean-Baptiste Chevance, director of the Archaeology and Development Foundation in London who led the expedition, told the paper it was known from ancient scriptures that a great warrior, Jayavarman II, had a mountain capital, "but we didn't know how all the dots fitted, exactly how it all came together".

"We now know from the new data the city was for sure connected by roads, canals and dykes," he said.

The discovery is set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/1200-years-on-lost-Cambodian-city-found/articleshow/20610894.cms

Lost city of Mahendraparvata discovered in Cambodian jungles

Subodh Varma, TNN | Jun 15, 2013, 03.22 PM IST

Angkor Wat is celebrated the world over as a temple of steroid-induced proportions, buried for centuries in the forests of northern Cambodia before being rediscovered. (TOI photo by Vinay Sitapati)

NEW DELHI: A lost city that thrived on a mist-shrouded Cambodian mountain 1,200 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists using airborne laser technology, Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday in a world exclusive.

Over two dozen temple sites have been discovered on the site, which is thought to have been built around 802 AD when the Angor Empire was founded.

It is believed to be the lost city of Mahendraparvata, located on a misty mountain called Phnom Kulen deep in the hinterland of Cambodia. It was thought to be built 350 years before the famed Angor Wat. A journalist and photographer from the newspaper accompanied the expedition, led by a French-born archaeologist, through the landmine-strewn jungle in the Siem Reap region where Angkor Wat is located.

Jean-Baptiste Chevance, director of the Archaeology and Development Foundation in London who led the expedition, told the newspaper it was known from ancient scriptures that a great warrior, Jayavarman II, had a mountain capital, "but we didn't know how all the dots fitted, exactly how it all came together".

The expedition used an instrument called Lidar-light detection and ranging data-which was strapped to a helicopter that crisscrossed a mountain north of Angkor Wat for seven days, providing data that matched years of ground research by archaeologists, AFP reported.

The discovery is set to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.

Damian Evans, director of the University of Sydney's archaeological research centre in Cambodia, which played a key part in developing the Lidar technology, said there might be important implications for today's society.

"We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation," Evans, a co-expedition leader, said.

"One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilisation ... perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable."

Herald said the trek to the ruins involved traversing rutted goat tracks and knee-deep bogs after travelling high into the mountains on motorbikes.

Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy until the findings were peer-reviewed.

Evans said it was not known how large Mahendraparvata was because the search had so far only covered a limited area, with more funds needed to broaden it out.

"Maybe what we see was not the central part of the city, so there is a lot of work to be done to discover the extent of this civilisation," he said.

""We need to preserve the area because it's the origin of our culture,"" secretary of state at Cambodia's Ministry of Culture, Chuch Phoeun, told AFP.

Angkor Wat was at one time the largest pre-industrial city in the world, and is considered one of the ancient wonders of the world.

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire's political and military power.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/1200-years-on-lost-Cambodian-city-found/articleshow/20610894.cms

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Ramlila -- Lalu. SoniaG's MLAs move to join Nitish-Muslim bandwagon

June 15, 2013, 6:32 pm

≫ Next: Karan Singh breaks his silence -- Hari Om

≪ Previous: Mahendraparvata discovered using airborne laser. 1200 year-old lost city in Cambodia.

BJP-JD(U) split to spell rude jolt to RJD

Madan Kumar, TNN | Jun 16, 2013, 06.14 AM IST
PATNA: The impending split between Janata Dal (U) and BJP may be an internal affair of the twoNDA allies, but it will have serious fallout for Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).

As the BJP (with 91 MLAs), after the split, going to be main Opposition in the assembly, the RJD is bound to lose two key posts — the leader of opposition and the chairperson of public accounts committee — presently being held by its MLAs Abdul Bari Siddiqui and Lalit Kumar Yadav, respectively. As per convention, the two posts will now go to BJP MLAs.

Since the finance minister Sushil Kumar Modi is not a member of the assembly (he is member of state council), road construction minister Nandkishore Yadav is being considered for the post of leader of opposition in the assembly.

But the main loss to the RJD will be a possible dent in its traditional Muslim votes. As JD(U) is breaking its 17-year-long tie-up with BJP on the issue of elevation of Narendra Modi as the saffron outfit's national election panel chief, some RJD leaders in the state feel the Muslim votes may now be consolidated to the JD (U) folder. This is mainly because the courageous stand taken by Kumar on opposing NaMo's elevation tooth and nail.

"In 1991, when Prasad had ordered arrest of L K Advani after stopping his Rath Yatra in Samastipur district, the RJD chief had emerged as the most darling secular leader for Muslim voters in the country. Now, after opposing elevation of NaMo, Kumar has emerged the most popular saviour of interests and sentiments of Muslim voters. In the changed scenario, Muslim voters may consolidate themselves under the umbrella of JD (U), at least in Bihar during the general elections," said socio-political analyst Uday Shanker Choudhary.

And, even the RJD chief is aware about the danger of consolidation of Muslim votes in JD (U) folder. To check this likely consolidation of Muslim votes, Prasad, while talking to reporters here on Wednesday, described the Bihar CM as an "opportunist"" and said his protest over NaMo was just a charade for cornering Muslim votes.

"Kumar's opposition to NaMo and communal forces was just a charade with an aim to corner Muslim votes," Prasad said while reacting over imminent 'divorce' between the two NDA allies.

During the press meet, Prasad continued to highlight Kumar's previous actions related to interests of Muslim voters, including Gujarat riots and playing the `host' to RSS chief Mohan Bhagawat at the chief minister's official residence at 1 Anne Marg.

"Why Kumar didn't resign from the NDA after Gujarat riots in 2002 like Ramvilas Paswan did? Why did not he order a probe into Sabarmati train burning incident as a Railway minister in NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee?" Prasad asked.

The RJD president also said that people of Bihar were watching the "Ram lila" between JD(U) and BJP and would teach a lesson to them in coming elections.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BJP-JDU-split-to-spell-rude-jolt-to-RJD/articleshow/20612059.cms

Congress MLA likely to join JD(U)

Law Kumar Mishra, TNN | Jun 16, 2013, 05.37 AM IST
PATNA: The Congress legislature party (CLP) in Bihar is faced with a likely split with one of its four MLAs confirming he had received an invitation from the JD (U) leadership to join the party in return of a cabinet berth.

State JD (U) president Vashishth Narain Singh, however, said he did not contact any Congress legislator. Such an exercise might be taking place at "internal level". But he did not explain the level.

Mohammad Tausif Alam, Congress MLA from Bahadurganj who returned from New Delhi, told TOI, "I have urged the party leadership to helpNitish Kumar to strengthen secularism. It will help minorities in the state. I have conveyed my feelings to the central leadership."

Alam said the Nitish Kumar government needed support of the Congress in the interest of the minorities. He admitted having received an "invitation" from the JD (U). He, however, did not explain the nature of offer and the persons who made the offer.

Two other Congress MLAs, Mohammad Javed from Kishanganj and Mohammad Afaq from Kasba in Purnia district, said they would not betray Sonia Gandhi for a cabinet berth in Bihar. Sadanand Singh, a former speaker of Bihar assembly, is the fourth Congress MLA and is CLP leader.

Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee president Ashok Chaudhury is keeping a tab on the activities of the Congress MLAs. Sources close to him confirmed there were reports of one MLA deserting the party to join the JD (U).

Premchandra Mishra, media incharge of BPCC, said the party had taken note of the statement of Bahadurganj MLA about seeking Congress support to JD (U) government in Bihar. He recalled the chief minister had specially gone to Bahadurganj to attend the marriage of the MLA concerned few weeks back.

According to constitutional experts, Anti-Defection Act provisions can be applied against defecting MLAs. But there is no time bar on the Speaker to take decisions on disqualifications. They recalled two similar incidents in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assemblies. About 25 MLAs in MP had joined the Congress (T) during the regime of Digvijay Singh. They were ardent followers of Arjun Singh. Petitions to disqualify them were filed, but the Speaker's judgment could not come till the House was dissolved.

In Chhattisgarh, 12 BJP MLAs had left the BJP and joined the Congress. Proceedings of their disqualification could not be completed by the then Speaker Rajendra Prasad Shukla till the term of the Chhattisgarh assembly expired in December 2003.

Abdul Bari Sidiqqui, leader of opposition in Bihar assembly and senior RJD leader, on Saturday claimed none of the 22 party MLAs would join the JD (U). Sidiqqui said the JD (U) leaders were trying to touch the RJD territory but the party MLAs turned down the offer of ministership. RJD president Lalu Prasad has reached Patna and is personally handling the situation, he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Congress-MLA-likely-to-join-JDU/articleshow/20611827.cms

BJP snubs Nitish's plan for a 'cordial demerger'

Abhay Singh, Law Kumar Mishra & Faizan Ahmad, TNN | Jun 16, 2013, 05.15 AM IST

PATNA: The NDA collapsed in Bihar on Saturday with the BJP refusing to heed Bihar CM Nitish Kumar's demand for a public commitment that it would not project Narendra Modi as its PM candidate. The Bihar CM had set down this conditionality in an exclusive interview with TOI that appeared on Saturday.

The BJP central leadership turned down Kumar's pre-condition for staying with the NDA, and instructed its senior-most leader in the state — deputy chief minister Sushil Modi — as well NDA convener Nandkishore Yadav rebuff an invite from the Bihar CM for a discussion on the modalities of what JD(U) sources called "a cordial demerger".

Speculation raged in Patna over whether Kumar will need to resign after he parts ways with the BJP, but home ministry sources in Delhi said this won't be required. Even if BJP ministers in his government do not quit, the CM can submit a fresh list of ministers and also enumerate his support.

The relations between JD(U) and BJP continue to dip and communication between the two allies has virtually snapped, laying the ground for a formal announcement of the split, most likely by Monday.

"There is no merit now in having further negotiations with the Bihar CM now that he has publicly declared that he has asked the BJP leaders to announce that Narendra Modi will not be BJP's PM candidate. We can't allow others to intervene in our party's internal matters," said Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP general secretary in-charge of Bihar. "How can he dictate terms to our party?" he asked.

Kumar had told TOI on Friday TOI that he would continue with the NDA only if the BJP publicly met his "basic concern" which was a kind of political shorthand for his demand for an undertaking that the Modi wouldn't be foisted on the NDA as its PM candidate.

JD(U) is expected to announce its decision to pull out latest by Monday after its party chief Sharad Yadav has gone through the motion of holding consultations with the state unit.

BJP's Sushil Modi had on Friday evening accepted Kumar's invitation for talks. However, the publication of Bihar CM's pre-condition for staying in the NDA has triggered a re-think. Its decision to stay away from the talks reflected the party's resentment over Kumar's public ultimatum.

Sushil Modi couched the rejection for talks in a polite formulation, saying that it was beyond the state unit to address Kumar's "basic concern". Talking to TOI, he said, "The central leadership alone is competent to discuss the issues raised by Nitishji".

But JD(U)'s message is loud and clear. "What is left of the relationship when we are unable to have even a cup of tea together," said a source close to Kumar.

In fact, the focus has already shifted on the post-NDA scenario in Bihar, with each side engaged in finding ways how each can avoid being the trigger for the 17-year-old partnership which spelt the end of Lalu Prasad's hegemony and was started what many see as the process of the state's turnaround. They were also anxious to avoid bitterness as they part. "The alliance worked successfully for Bihar and there should not be acrimony when we go our separate ways," said JD(U) MP N K Singh.

There was speculation about whether the BJP ministers would resign after JD(U) announces the pullout by Monday or whether Kumar will resign as CM to be sworn in anew ; this time in his role as the leader of the JD(U) legislature party rather than that of the NDA.

Opinion is split on whether he would be obliged to resign, considering that the Governor invited him to form the government on the strength of a letter of support from the NDA group that included 91 MLAs belonging to the BJP.

Nandkishore Yadav, road construction minister in the Bihar government, has argued that the CM would be required to quit since he took oath as a leader of the NDA.

But Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary as well as parliamentary affairs minister Binjendra Prasad Yadav insisted that the CM would not be required to put in his papers after the NDA split unravels in the Assembly. They said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not resign when Congress's pre-poll partners, DMK and Trinamool Congress, withdrew from the UPA .

In any case, there is unanimity that Kumar will have little problem in proving its majority in a floor test. The party has the support of 118 MLAs in the 243-member-strong House, and can easily reach the magic figure with the support of Independents and the lone member belonging to CPI.

Besides, the RJD with 22 MLAs, and Congress, which has four MLAs — 3 of them Muslims — will have trouble voting along with BJP against someone who has abandoned a successful partnership on the issue of Narendra Modi's prime ministerial bid.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/BJP-snubs-Nitishs-plan-for-a-cordial-demerger/articleshow/20611694.cms

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Karan Singh breaks his silence -- Hari Om

June 15, 2013, 11:31 pm

≫ Next: Advani bursting into tears, a deluded farce -- Tavleen Singh

≪ Previous: Ramlila -- Lalu. SoniaG's MLAs move to join Nitish-Muslim bandwagon

Karan Singh breaks his silence

by Hari Om

on 16 Jun 2013

4 Comments

Congress veteran and former Sadar-e-Riyasat of Jammu & Kashmir, Dr Karan Singh, generally speaks on social, cultural and spiritual issues. Only rarely does he speak on political issues, especially those concerning the militant and separatist-infested State. He intervenes only if he feels that situation has gone out of control or is likely to assume alarming proportions. In the last five years, he intervened only thrice as far as the State of Jammu & Kashmir was concerned.

In August 2008, he disapproved of the opposition of communalists in Kashmir to the decision of the State Government to transfer a small piece of land at Baltal to the Sri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) for creating additional facilities for Amarnath pilgrims and the reaction to that senseless opposition in Jammu as a struggle between ‘nationalists and separatists’. “I have never seen this sort of uprising in Jammu which cuts across all barriers of caste, creed and religion. The situation in Jammu is worsening and the conflict is between the nationalist and anti-national forces. It is the moral duty of the nation to protect the nationalist people,” he said.

In 2010 – the year that stone throwers emerged in Kashmir and umpteen police-crowd clashes resulted in more than 110 deaths – Dr Singh urged the authorities to take all required steps to restore peace and normality in the Valley. He shared the grief of the bereaved families and at the same time expressed himself against violent methods. He urged the people to seek solutions to their problems through discussion and dialogue. He also accused the authorities of mishandling the situation.

Dr Singh again intervened on June 6, 2013 and did some plain-speaking in the summer capital of the State, Srinagar. He expressed himself against the protagonists of greater autonomy and self-rule and critics of the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA). He also took on those who seek to make New Delhi believe that Kashmir means the State of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh and suggest that meeting the aspirations of Kashmiri Muslim leadership is the same as fulfilling the urges, needs and compulsions of the entire population of the State.

“Jammu & Kashmir was never a State but it was during the Dogra rule that five regions (Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, Pakistan-occupied-Jammu & Kashmir (POJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan) were joined together and the shape of a State was given to Jammu and Kashmir… Kashmir has its own history, culture and tradition while the Dogras left no stone unturned in enriching it during their 101 years of reign… (Father and founder of National Conference) Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah was intensely anti-Dogra, but he gave Kashmiri people a space and relieved them of their miseries. Autonomy or self-rule (semi-independence) will be applicable only if these formulae satisfy the interests of people from all the three regions,” Karan Singh said.

What Dr Singh said in Srinagar could be construed as a major intervention in the sense that he made it manifestly clear that the solution to the so-called Kashmir problem cannot be Valley-centric and that it would be suicidal to strike a truce with the Kashmiri leadership over the heads of the people of Jammu and Ladakh. People of these two distinct regions constitute more than half of the State’s population and occupy over 88 per cent of the State’s land area.

Significantly, Singh intervened on the day news reports emanating from the Prime Minister’s Office suggested that Dr Manmohan Singh would pay a two-day visit to Srinagar, starting June 25, and make some important announcements. “The PMO has begun working on the ‘mission’ and seek a thorough feedback on issues facing Kashmir, including its economic reconstruction, and dialogue with stakeholders to find a viable solution to the vexed issue. Top officials of the PMO, including his advisor TKA Nair, one of the trusted confidants of the Prime Minister, has been asked to work out the modalities of getting a fresh feedback on Kashmir… The PMO has adopted a two-pronged strategy on Kashmir: economic reconstruction on fast track and revival of constructive dialogue process with all stakeholders, including separatists,” one news report said.

Another report said that the PMO would work with “experts” and Politicians”, including National Conference working president and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, People’s Democratic Party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Union Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, Chairman National Minority Commission Wajahat Habibullah, former interlocutor MM Ansari, former RAW chief A S Dulat, former diplomat S Lamba, journalist Prem Shankar Jha and Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress chief Saif-ud-Din Soz, to find ways and means of resolving the Kashmir issue.

It would not be out of place to mention here that while Omar Abdullah stands for greater autonomy and Mufti Sayeed for self-rule, Saif-ud-Din Soz vouches for a “new dispensation for Kashmir”. As for Messrs Habibullah, Jha, Dulat and Ansari, they are well-known votaries of limited accession of the State with India. All of them actually believe that one of the fundamental causes responsible for the alienation in Kashmir is the failure of New Delhi to respect its solemn commitment that it will not bring Kashmir under the ambit of Central laws and institutions.

Habibullah, who maintains very good relations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, even wants New Delhi to divide this part of Jammu & Kashmir into five zones on communal lines: Plain areas of Jammu, hilly and mountainous areas of Jammu, Shiite-dominated Kargil, Buddhist-majority Leh and Kashmir. He doesn’t want New Delhi to touch Kashmir because it is almost hundred per cent one-community dominated region.

Besides, everyone knows that Messrs Abdullah, Sayeed, Soz, Habibullah, Jha, Dulat and Ansari stand for the State’s demilitarisation and revocation of AFSPA. But more than that, all these experts and politicians long for a solution that accommodates the Pakistani view on this part of the State. They consider POJK and Gilgit-Baltistan an integral part of Pakistan for all practical purposes.

Karan Singh’s intervention has to be viewed in this context. It was in fact a warning to New Delhi that any failure on its part to adopt a holistic approach towards the issues facing different people inhabiting different regions of the State would create more problems than resolving the existing ones. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his advisors would do well to appreciate the sane counsel from Karan Singh who knows more about the State than anyone else. The Prime Minister must remember that both Jammu and Ladakh are sitting on a volcano of discontent.

User CommentsPost a Comment

Just like MOSES said :
"Let my people go"
The same way Kashmiris are telling Indians to leave and vacate Kashmir at their earliest.

observer
11 Hours ago

Report Abuse

There is only one option to solve J&K problem bifurcate the state to three small states jammu,kashmir and ladakh leh and put all these three states under central govt.cental forces in charge of law and order.governor is the chief administrator.muslim majority kashmir hindu majority jammu and buddhist majority ladakh leh be integrated and merged fully with india 370 be abolished.army stand by in barracks to fight with external enemy.

Muslim bhagawat
4 Hours ago

Report Abuse

@observer
And the same way Balochis, Pushtuns, Waziris, Sindhis, Balawaris are telling the Pakis to leave and vacate their territories at the earliest?

Bharati
2 Hours ago

Report Abuse

No funda of state reorganisation pronciple ever applied to J&K. All the 3 regions have nothing in common. Language, culture, food habits, all vary. 3 state and One union territory of Panun Kashmir should be created to fulfill the aspirations of the neglected regions and minorities
the state

Amit Raina
31 Minutes ago

http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=2837

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Advani bursting into tears, a deluded farce -- Tavleen Singh

June 15, 2013, 11:45 pm

≫ Next: Happy divorce for Nitish govt. Advani, weep.

≪ Previous: Karan Singh breaks his silence -- Hari Om

Narendra Modi’s march continues as Advani gets in his own way

By Tavleen Singh on June 16, 2013

For a while now, strange stories about Lal Krishna Advani have circulated on Delhi’s political grapevine. Stories of how visitors to his house in Prithviraj Road are obliged to watch the latest documentaries made by his daughter before they can discuss anything political. Stories of how he has taken to bursting into tears for no reason. Stories of how he seems deeply embittered about life. Stories of how he surrounds himself with courtiers who praise him all day long and how this has led to him becoming more than slightly deluded about his future political career. I have listened to these stories with sadness because on a personal level I have always had the deepest respect for Advani. I was very touched that after my book Durbar came out at the end of last year he called me and told me how much he had enjoyed reading it. Even when I have been in total disagreement with his politics, as I was during his Rath Yatra days, I have never lost respect for him. Can I say this any more with honesty?

LK Advani era is passe in BJP

No, I cannot, and I feel bad admitting it because even as I do so, images of him as he once was drift before my eyes. I remember him as he was when he first became a Minister in the Janata Party Government in 1977. I remember him from travels on his various yatras and I remember once being on a small aeroplane with him when the pilot lost his bearings and it seemed for a while that we would never find the landing strip on which we were to land for an election rally. In the years that I have known him I have been impressed by his qualities of humility, integrity and decency. Qualities that are rare in Indian politicians so when he did what he did after the BJP’s decision at its Goa conclave to appoint Narendra Modi as head of its election campaign committee, I felt almost personally betrayed. I found it hard to believe that he could have gone out of his way to destroy the political party that he had led for so long.

And, for what? After one day of hysterical panel discussions on our news channels, and a few hours of schadenfreude in Congress circles, Advani took back his resignation letter and the story died. When political commentators sat down to examine the fallout of Advani’s resignation, what they mostly concluded was that he had done more harm to himself than to his former protégé, Narendra Modi. Since there is no retirement age in Indian politics, he will undoubtedly continue to be an elder statesman in the BJP and continue to be seen in the political arenas of Delhi but he will no longer be taken seriously. Meanwhile, the damage that he sought to do to Modi has been done to the BJP and instead of getting into campaign mode senior leaders will have to spend most of their time on damage control.

This will not be easy. Modi is hated by most journalists working in the national media so they have taken great pleasure in pronouncing that if he can have such a polarising effect within his own party, he will certainly destroy the NDA (National Democratic Alliance). No sooner did Advani take back his resignation letter than the English news channels began to speculate about when Nitish Kumar would withdraw the Janata Dal (United) from the alliance. There is the additional problem that most political pundits from academia are even more leftist than us hacks so they hate Modi even more than we do. They say this is because of what happened in Gujarat in 2002 but you only need to scratch a little to discover that beneath that veneer lies the real reason. They hate Modi most of all because he has been articulating an economic vision for India that is the direct opposite of the one that the Congress Party has followed for most of its years in power.

With Modi in place, petulent Advani has become a farce

They hate the way in which he talks about aiming for a prosperous India instead of just one in which poverty removal is the goal. And, to demolish his ideas they spout so-called statistics that seek to prove that Gujarat has not done as well as Modi says it has. Any casual visitor to Gujarat cannot fail to notice the new roads and the new prosperity in the villages but academics rarely bother to travel out of Delhi so they base their opinions on information that they claim is from the Planning Commission. Modi’s political opponents choose to attack him differently by asserting as often as possible that he has been chief minister of a state that has always been prosperous so no credit should go to him.

Modi is the first major political leader since Jawaharlal Nehru who has articulated a clear economic vision. It is a vision that is almost the exact opposite of the one that Nehru believed in and it is this that attracts young people in our cities because it is a vision of prosperity in which he emphasizes governance rather than government. Indian businessmen are drawn to Gujarat exactly because he has succeeded in implementing his ideas in that state so that it has become a place that is investor friendly at a time when investors are fleeing our shores in search of friendlier climes.

Advani is playing King Bindusara

To articulate his vision in the coming election campaign Modi will need the full support of the BJP’s workers and its organisational machinery. What Advani has managed to do, albeit temporarily, is to disable this machinery by creating the impression that there is a deep rift within it over the leadership of Modi. The truth is that the rank and file of the party is solidly behind Modi and it was because of this that the BJP’s senior leaders were forced to elevate him. If Advani had stood his ground and attempted to break the BJP the only people who would have gone with him would have been a handful of aged leaders who can barely win their own seats but now that he has taken his resignation letter back we will never know for sure. In any case, the damage he has really done is to himself. No longer will it be easy for ordinary BJP workers to see him as the patriarch that he has been revered as despite leading the party into defeat in two successive general elections in 2004 and 2009.

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/06/16/narendra-modis-march-continues-as-advani-gets-in-his-own-way-90416.html

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Happy divorce for Nitish govt. Advani, weep.

June 15, 2013, 11:52 pm

≫ Next: Minimum government, maximum governance: Take the message, let a non-Modi implement it -- William Pesek

≪ Previous: Advani bursting into tears, a deluded farce -- Tavleen Singh

Happy divorce for Nitish govt. “Hum vipaksh mein iss sarkar ke chhakke chhuda denge, waqt aane deejiye,” Pandey railed, we will tear this government to shreds, let the time come.

Hour of ‘honourable option’

SANKARSHAN THAKUR

BJP leader Arun Jaitley lights the inaugural lamp at an India Day event at Oxford University on Friday as foreign minister Salman Khurshid looks on. At a dinner in Cambridge that Janata Dal (U) leader N.K. Singh hosted two nights earlier, Jaitley had wished his Bihar ally a “happy divorce”. (PTI)

Patna, June 15: Three nights ago, N.K. Singh, Janata Dal (United) MP and brainstrust, was hosting a dinner for select eminences in Cambridge and couldn’t resist popping a home question to Amartya Sen: “What, Sir, do you think are the options before Nitish Kumar?”

The Nobel laureate, who also mentors Bihar’s Nalanda University, reflected a moment, then issued a laconic reply: “Well, Nitish Kumar has several options, but only one honourable one.”

The laureate-mentor’s message was relayed to Nitish by Singh this morning, not that Nitish was confused about what he must now do. The chief minister is set to effect the “honourable option” tomorrow following the formality of running the break through party president Sharad Yadav over dinner tonight.

Singh flew back already possessed of the knowledge he was headed to attend the funeral rites of arguably the most durable contemporary political alliance. For it was at the same dinner in Cambridge that Arun Jaitley, architect and patron of the Bihar coalition, bade him a cryptic farewell, only half in soiree jest. “Happy divorce,” he wished Singh. Hearing it come from Jaitley, who had managed many crises in the alliance, Singh was convinced little could save it.

A radically changed temper has begun to sweep the BJP-JD(U) relationship almost overnight. It is no longer propelled by any desire to salvage this crumbled alliance, it is driven by angered posturing of adversaries girding their loins for battle.

Nitish has sent out a strong message down the party ranks: prepare for a no-holds-barred battle to neutralise Narendra Modi’s intervention in Bihar, we shall not tolerate his brand of politics.

The BJP has begun to warn of morphing into belligerent Opposition once “we are free from the chains of government”. The most dire dare came from culture minister Sukhada Pandey, who till the other day, sat submissively on Nitish’s cabinet table. “Hum vipaksh mein iss sarkar ke chhakke chhuda denge, waqt aane deejiye,” Pandey railed, we will tear this government to shreds, let the time come.

But the most substantive, though low-decibel, blow came this morning when deputy chief minister Sushil Modi and road construction minister Nand Kishore Yadav declined a call from the chief minister. Nitish had invited the two seniormost BJP ministers in his government last night, probably intending to discuss the modalities of breaking up. Both said they would turn up at 1 Aney Marg, the chief minister’s residence, for breakfast. Nitish had even ordered his kitchen to cook pakoras, Sushil Modi’s favoured snack.

Shortly after nine in the morning, though, Vijay Chaudhary, irrigation minister and Nitish confidant, got a call from Modi expressing inability to come. The Nitish camp’s sense is that the ministers had “received instructions from the top” not to enter any negotiations with the JD(U) leadership. BJP sources indicated they “saw no point” in any meetings any more. “We have to prepare our own strategy and gameplan now,” said a senior BJP leader.

Nitish is keenly aware of the antipathy drifting off the BJP ranks, and has hardened his posture in response. His sense, sources say, is that Narendra Modi is “completely dominating” the Bihar BJP discourse and the future, therefore, foretells a bitter battle between Bihar’s power bedfellows.

“Nitishji believes there is nothing such as a BJP at the moment, it has become Modi Janata Party and he will have no part in it,” a close aide said. “We have been told to prepare for hard times and a harder struggle, the instructions are to not allow Modi’s politics in Bihar, come what may.”

One Modi has caused fatal hurt to this alliance, another Modi is preparing to retire hurt. Deputy chief minister Sushil Modi will probably be the worst collateral sufferer of the collapse of this coalition. For years now, he has laboured to ease frequent creases in the alliance, even at the expense of being labelled a “Nitish agent” within his own party.

But as personality and ideological contradictions between Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar sharpened, Bihar’s Modi was compelled to choose; he chose the party he had spent all his life in, even having to prove his allegiance by declaring to doubting Thomases in the party that “only my dead body” will go out of the BJP.

Sushil Modi isn’t a happy man today, but as spearhead of the party in the state, he is having to lead the battle for Narendra Modi and against the man he has played deputy to for the last nine years.

And that man — Nitish Kumar — is equally intent now on what he thinks would be a fitting response: Stop Narendra Modi, at least in Bihar. How Nitish will manage to do that is moot, and also open to possibility of bloody battle. But as the laureate-mentor decreed, the chief minister has but one “honourable option”.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130616/jsp/frontpage/story_17013370.jsp#.Ub1fxecwevc

↧

Minimum government, maximum governance: Take the message, let a non-Modi implement it -- William Pesek

June 16, 2013, 1:37 am

≫ Next: Advani has done a huge favour to the UPA -- Madhav Nalapat. He is reportedly weeping.

≪ Previous: Happy divorce for Nitish govt. Advani, weep.

William Pesek June 15, 2013 Last Updated at 21:39 IST

Separate Modi and message

India needs Narendra Modi's ideas more than it needs Mr Modi himself. Indians shouldn't let the clouds that linger over Modi blind them to the dire need for change

Should the United States be taking economic lessons from India? Former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich thinks so. Perhaps not from India as a whole, but at least from the booming western state of Gujarat, which has enjoyed 10 per cent-plus growth under its controversial chief minister, Narendra Modi.

"If we had Gujarat's growth rates over the last 10 years," Gingrich told Modi in a recent Skype video conversation, "we would have been a lot healthier country than we are right now."

While the "Gujarat model" has about as much chance of gaining traction in Washington as Mr Gingrich does, its prospects look brighter at home. Mr Modi has just become the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party's pick to lead its 2014 election campaign. With the popularity of Sonia Gandhi's ruling Congress party evaporating fast, the BJP leader may soon be in a position to apply his "model" nationally.

Would he succeed? Could Gujarat's mix of pro-business pragmatism, limited government, hefty foreign direct investment and anti-graft efforts be expanded to the whole country? The task would be Herculean, and pitfalls abound. But India would reap big benefits for trying.

The mere mention of Mr Modi's name raises blood pressure. Muslims seethe over his failure to stop riots that targeted their community in 2002, leaving more than 1,000 people dead and Mr Modi barred from the US. Many see his governing style as autocratic, divisive and ill-suited to running a complex and cacophonous country.

Thatcher moment

Yet let's separate the villain from the ideas. Mr Modi harnessed his state's innovative spirit and didn't get in the way - both lessons the current government could stand to learn. Mr Modi's life story - he's the son of a train-platform tea seller - resonates with a populace fed up with dynastic politics. (Ms Gandhi's diffident son, Rahul Gandhi, is expected to be the Congress standard-bearer in next year's elections.) But what has really turned the Gujarat chief into a hero of the swelling middle class is his Margaret Thatcher-esque principle, "minimum government, maximum governance."

The current Congress prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has been a surprising failure. As finance minister in the early 1990s, he opened India's economy to the outside world. Investors hoped Dr Singh would use a sizable re-election mandate in 2009 to get back to his roots and remove barriers to trade, investment and job creation. Instead, a series of huge scandals involving everything from mobile-phone licences to coal assets have hobbled Singh's administration. New Delhi is gridlocked amid the slowest growth in a decade, just 4.8 per cent.

Gujarat's resilience stands in stark contrast. Over the last decade, Gujarat grew 10 per cent, compared with 7.8 per cent for the national economy. Under Mr Modi, Gujarat did four things that the nation, as a whole, can and should emulate. First, the administration has continued to slash away at India's "licence raj," the labyrinthine system of issuing permits that hampers business and breeds corruption. Second, officials revitalised industries from agriculture to manufacturing by improving irrigation, supporting small-share farmers and attracting new factories of companies including General Motors and Hitachi. Third, the state more than quintupled power-generation capacity by investing in more-efficient grids and building Asia's largest solar field. Fourth, Mr Modi successfully lobbied for business and infrastructure investment.

"Translating Mr Modi's success in Gujarat to the national level will be difficult as the bureaucratic impediments and opposition from powerful vested interests will be several times greater than at the state level," says economist Eswar Prasad of the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Nevertheless, a leader with a clear vision, strong political will, and broad political support is capable of effecting change."

Strong hand

That last point is key. Even if India stands to benefit from Gujarat-style reforms, that doesn't necessarily mean Modi is the best man to implement them. In fact, given how distracting his personal controversies are likely to be, he could be the worst.

Part of his popularity goes back to a long-running desire among middle-class Indians for a strong hand at the tiller - a Chinese-style autocrat who can break the grip of dithering politicians. No, Indians don't want to live under an oppressive regime that jails dissenters and muzzles the media.

But a system like India's that can't deliver and represses the economy isn't much fun, either.

The problem is that India's thriving democracy features several potent and independent-minded regional leaders with national ambitions - a multiplicity of Modis. Its constitution contains strong elements of federalism. It's very hard even for a popular and charismatic leader to ram proposals down the throats of reluctant states, and Mr Modi is no one's idea of a consensus builder. If US President Barack Obama thinks it's hard to enact change, a domineering and unrepentant Mr Modi could well find it impossible.

India needs Narendra Modi's ideas more than it needs Mr Modi himself. Perhaps the leader and the message are inseparable - that's what Thatcher's supporters would have argued in her heyday. I'm not so sure. In any case, Indians shouldn't let the clouds that linger over Modi blind them to the dire need for change.

The writer is a Tokyo-based columnist for Bloomberg View

wpesek@bloomberg.net

http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/separate-modi-and-message-113061500772_1.html

↧

Advani has done a huge favour to the UPA -- Madhav Nalapat. He is reportedly weeping.

June 16, 2013, 1:45 am

≫ Next: 612 Indians in tax havens. Will SoniaG UPA scrap P-Notes the favourite route for stashing away illicit wealth?

≪ Previous: Minimum government, maximum governance: Take the message, let a non-Modi implement it -- William Pesek

ROOTS OF POWER

MADHAV NALAPAT

www.sunday-guardian.com/profile/madhav-nalapat

SUNDAY | JUNE 16, 2013Advani has done a huge favour to the UPA

The BJP’s oldest leader must be hoping that Modi will get sidelined before he hits the campaign trail and shows who really counts.

Hindu Sena members celebrate outside senior BJP leader L.K. Advani’s residence in New Delhi on 9 June after Narendra Modi’s elevation as BJP campaign chief. PTI

anish Tewari must be delighted. L.K. Advani has confirmed in writing what he has been claiming for years, that the BJP has now become a party of opportunistic individuals chasing not the public interest but their own (presumably selfish) agendas. Indeed, that the merest flicker of idealism is no longer to be found within the party. The Advani Letter is well on the way towards becoming a prominent plank of the Congress and UPA campaign against the BJP and its allies. Thereby, Advani has done an immense favour to the UPA, and hopefully they will reciprocate the gesture, perhaps by awarding him a Bharat Ratna. Certainly Advani must be sincere when he portrays the BJP as a party of time-servers that, by implication, no decent individual could possibly be a member of.

Which is why it is surprising that Advani forgot to resign from the BJP itself or from the chairpersonship of the BJP parliamentary party. A man as honourable as Advani would surely not want to lead those whom he has so excoriated in the letter. But when exactly did Advani discover the rot within his party? It must have been very recently, for a man as honourable as himself would never have remained in the party — sorry, some party committees — once he saw it as a gang of opportunists. Which is why admirers of Advani are a trifle bewildered at his forgetting to resign from the BJP itself and, even more surprisingly, by his withdrawing his resignation from some party committees the next day itself, without at all repudiating his letter.

Ram Jethmalani was expelled from the BJP for casting a smidgen of doubt on the integrity of selected leaders of what passes itself off as the country's main Opposition party. However, instead of doing the same to Advani, six members of the Parliamentary Board trooped to his residence and begged him not to leave. Clearly, although they are each in their sixth or seventh decade of life, the Delhi Six feel as helpless as little children should Papa walk away. Now that it is clear that at least six within the highest body in the BJP lack the confidence to function without constant guidance from their ageing hero, what kind of a message does that send to voters soon to judge whether they can be entrusted with authority over the governance of the country? By his letter, Advani has severely hurt the BJP. By their desperate plea for him to reconsider, the BJP's Delhi Six have harmed the party's image even more.

As for Narendra Modi, who is being opposed within not only the Congress but in his own party not because he may fail — as they claim — but that he may shock the pundits by actually securing 175 or more seats for the BJP. He is certainly a polarizing figure, and because of his caste background (important in a country where this social scourge refuses to disappear) may cut deeply into the vote banks of the SP, the RJD and the JDU, should Nitish snap links with the BJP. Samizdat (the invisible information system) may catch fire with anticipation of the possibility of India's first Backward Class Prime Minister. Add to that the fact that his first job was as a teenager making tea for his father to sell on railway platforms in clay pots, as well as the fact that his relatives still live in extremely moderate circumstances, unlike for example the families of Lalu Yadav or Mulayam Singh Yadav. Stir within the mix support from that Yadav stalwart, Baba Ramdev, and the swelling tide of majoritarian pride that a Narendra Modi nomination for the nation's top job (till Manmohan Singh took over in 2004 and adopted the Chinese system of the party being superior to the government) would be likely to cause, and there are rational grounds for believing that the analyses of psephologists that the BJP cannot reach even close to double figures may prove to be wrong. Narendra Modi in 2013 is a force in Indian politics of such uniqueness that the only parallel which comes to mind is Indira Gandhi during 1969-71, which is why the BJP's leaders are wary of his ascendance, while everybody else in the party is euphoric. Should the public rallies that the newly anointed Campaign Committee chairperson is planning materialise, and should they be a success, he may be unstoppable even should Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik and others join with Ahmed Patel and L.K. Advani in seeking to block him. The BJP's oldest leader must be hoping that Modi will get sidelined well before the Gujarat CM hits the campaign trail and shows who really counts: the dozen at the top or the millions lower down.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/advani-has-done-a-huge-favour-to-the-upa

↧

612 Indians in tax havens. Will SoniaG UPA scrap P-Notes the favourite route for stashing away illicit wealth?

June 16, 2013, 2:12 am

≫ Next: Offshore Leaks app puts secret users of tax havens in the public eye: 612 Indians listed (with many Chidambarams)

≪ Previous: Advani has done a huge favour to the UPA -- Madhav Nalapat. He is reportedly weeping.

Govt gets data on investments by Indians in tax havens

Ritu Sarin Posted online: Sun Jun 16 2013, 03:57 hrs

New Delhi : The Indian government has obtained data of investments made by hundreds of Indians in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Cayman Islands, some of which was part of a global media expose on offshore investments and secret financial transactions two months ago.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has begun examining the information.

How international journalists' team analysed offshore files

The data about entities, registered by Indians through international financial service providers such as Portcullis Trustnet (PTN) of Singapore and the Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL) in the British Virgin Islands, was provided by the Australian taxation office using the Tax Information Exchange Agreement.

Top government sources told The Sunday Express that tax authorities in Australia, Britain and the US had received identical data about such offshore investments, and they had decided they would share intelligence and documents which hint at suspected tax avoidance with other countries according to their jurisdiction. Subsequently, Indian authorities made a formal request for the data, sources said.

In the biggest global expose of its kind, an international group of investigative journalists had reported in April that they had found details of over 1.2 lakh offshore entities and trusts belonging to individuals and companies in more than 170 countries and territories, including India.

The data was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which had collaborated with 38 media organisations around the world, including the The Indian Express, to analyse the documents.

The information showed that 612 Indians were among the thousands who had opened offshore entities through the CTL and PTN trusts. The 612 Indians included two members of Parliament — Lok Sabha Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam and RS member Vijay Mallya — and several industrialists such as Ravikant Ruia, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Abhey Kumar Oswal, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Teja Raju, Saurabh Mittal and Vinod Doshi.

Following the report, Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said inquiries had been “put in motion” about the names exposed by The Indian Express.

CBDT officials said that following the expose, each of the Indians named had been questioned about the companies registered in the tax havens. “While some of the persons named said they enjoyed NRI status and thus could not be questioned on tax liabilities, others denied any knowledge about entities attached to their name. Only one or two persons acknowledged that they had indeed registered companies in tax havens. We are still in correspondence with them,” a top official said.

With tax authorities now in possession of the entire data about the companies and trusts registered by Indians, the task of assessing tax avoidance in hundreds of cases is expected to become more daunting. However, unlike the sketchy details of bank accounts opened by 700-odd Indians in the HSBC bank in Geneva, information about the tax haven accounts includes data such as incorporation documents, names and addresses of beneficial owners and nominees and in many cases, correspondence and emails with the Indians.

The CBDT’s scrutiny of the offshore account data comes at a time when the ICIJ is itself releasing on Saturday an interactive database of more than 100,000 secret companies and trusts created in offshore locations.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/govt-gets-data-on-investments-by-indians-in-tax-havens/1129712/

ICIJ probe: List of Indians in tax havens

Express news service : New Delhi, Sun Jun 16 2013, 13:15 hrs

New Delhi : There are 612 Indians on the list exposed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for offshore investments and secret financial transactions. The ICIJ has now developed a global database of such companies and individuals.

These databases were parts of two larger separated databases that had been fed for nearly30 years by two companies: Singapore-based Portcullis TrustNet (PTN), and Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL), based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI).

Both firms specialise in setting up offshore financial structures. They have helped tens of thousands of people create offshore companies and trusts, as well as hard-to-trace bank accounts.

The data were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which chose The Investigative Unit at La Nacion to process it and to develop the interactive application of the most ambitious cross-border investigative project in history.

Here is a list of Indians mentioned in the database:

1. NAME: ABHAY CHOKSI & SIDHARTH CHOKSI

OFFSHORE ENTITY: BLUE MIST INTERNATIONAL

2. NITIN PANCHMAL

ENTITY: ENCORA GROUP, INC.

3. ROHITASHWA PODDAR

ENTITY: GAINFUL HARVEST INC.

4. RASHMI KIRTILAL MEHTA AND BHAVIN RASHMI MEHTA

ENTITY: BAPAJI INC.

5. DESAI LAXMIKANT YESHWANT

ENTITY: I-MOS PACIFIC LIMITED

6. SWATI GAUTAM ALLAHBADIA

ENTITY: ADMIRAL VIEW MANAGEMENT INC.

7. GAUTAM NAND ALLAHBADIA

ENTITY: ADMIRAL VIEW MANAGEMENT INC.

8. DALAL MALAVICKA RAMESH

ENTITY: GRAND HARVEST MANAGEMENT LIMITED

9. DALAL RAMESH SITALDAS

ENTITY: GRAND HARVEST MANAGEMENT LIMITED

10. ANOOP VRAJLAL MEHTA

ENTITY: BLUE JAYS PRIVATE LIMITED

11. KETANKUMAR SHANTIKUMAR MEHTA

UNIQUE CHOICE INVESTMENTS OVERSEAS LTD

12. HENA KHANNA

ENTITY: RESONUS ADVISORS (HK) LIMITED

13. MANISH KUMAR MATADEEN LATH

ENTITY: ZINFANDEL ENTERPRISES LIMITED

14. ARUN KUMAR DALMIA

ENTITIES: IN-SIGHT OVERSEAS OFFSHORE LIMITED AND WATERVIEW INTERNATIONAL GROUP CORPORATION

15. HARSH KUMAR DALMIA

ENTITIES: IN-SIGHT OVERSEAS OFFSHORE LIMITED AND WATERVIEW INTERNATIONAL GROUP CORPORATION

16. SHAIRUL SHAILESH MEHTA

ENTITY: DISTAR ASSETS LIMITED

17. MADHU SUDAN JALAN

ENTITY: GOLDEN WEALTH MANAGEMENT LIMITED

18. MANILAL BHANABHAI

ENTITIES: GLOBAL FINANCE CONSULTANTS LIMITED

PACIFIC FALCON LIMITED

FORTUNE EXPRESS FINANCE LIMITED

19. DHANGAVRI M. BHANABHAI

ENTITY: GLOBAL FINANCE CONSULTANTS LIMITED

20. KAUTILYA BANDESH KUMAR SHARMA

ENTITY: GIRA INVESTMENTS LIMITED

21. KANWAR VEERAJAN NATH

ENTITY: LONG WALK WORLDWIDE LTD

22. KAVEESH NATH

ENTITY: LONG WALK WORLDWIDE LTD

23. DIPAK KUMAR PODDAR

ENTITY: GAINFUL HARVEST INC.

24. KESHAV RAMNIK TANNA

ENTITY: DOUBLE TOP VENTURE LTD

25. SHASHI RAMNIK TANNA

ENTITY: DOUBLE TOP VENTURE LTD

26. RAVINDER BHAGWANDAS DEVIDASANI

ENTITY: DAFFODIL INVESTMENTS GROUP LIMITED

27. KIRAN KOCHAR

ENTITY: EVERBLOOM INVESTMENTS HOLDINGS LTD

28. AGYA SINGH KOCHAR

ENTITY : EVERBLOOM INVESTMENTS HOLDINGS LTD

29. MINI SINGH

ENTITY : EVERBLOOM INVESTMENTS HOLDINGS LTD

30. SANJAY GOEL AND ANJALEE SANJAY GOEL

ENTITY : KEYSTONE UNIVERSAL LTD

31. NARENDRA DHARMASINH DESAI

ENTITY : APAR INVESTMENTS, INC.

32. CHAITANYA NARENDRA DESAI

ENTITY : APAR INVESTMENTS, INC.

33. KUSHAL NARENDRA DESAI

ENTITY: APAR GLOBAL HOLDING TECHNOLOGIES CORP.

34. CHETAN NAVIN SHAH & SONALI CHETAN SHAH

ENTITY: DISTINCTIVE IDEA INCORPORATED

35. JAYSHREE ANUJKUMAR RATHI

ENTITY: PURPLE HUES INCORPORATED

36. HEMANT HANSRAJ KENIA

ENTITY: SHARP VISION INVESTMENTS OVERSEAS LIMITED

37. CHAULA VIMAL PODDAR

ENTITY: WYNVEL GLOBAL CORPORATION

38. RAVINDRA NATH GUPTA

ENTITY: ESSAR STEEL VIETNAM HOLDINGS PRIVATE LIMITED

39. VIMAL PODDAR

ENTITY: WYNVEL GLOBAL CORPORATION

40. MEENAKSHI JATIA

ENTITY: PALAZZO INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT LTD

41. SAKET AGARWAL

ENTITY: CONTIBULK HOLDINGS LIMITED

42. ARCHANA AGARWAL

ENTITY: CONTIBULK HOLDINGS LIMITED

43. RAJKUMAR MODI

ENTITY: ACROTERIA CORPORATION

44. NITIN NATH

ENTITY: WILDWOOD WORLDWIDE LTD

45. ARUN KUMAR SRIVASTAVA

ENTITY: ESSAR POWER OVERSEAS LIMITED

46. RAJIV BHARAT SHAH

ENTITY: GOLDEN LAUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD

47. MECCA NISAR AHMED

ENTITY: GRAND EMPIRE GROUP LTD

48. ROHINI MANGHARAM TALREJA AND TANYA MANGHARAM TALREJA

ENTITY: PERSIAN ROSE INVESTMENTS LTD

49. RAKESH KULDIP SINGH WADHAWAN AND SARANG WADHAWAN

ENTITY: MYSTICAL INTERNATIONAL WORLDWIDE LTD

50. GAUTAM ASHOK CHOKSI

ENTITY: ASIAN REAL ESTATE CAPITAL LTD

51. SADEESH RAGHAVAN MANIKOTHRAGHAVAN

ENTITY: HIGH PLAINS INTERNATIONAL LTD

52. MUDHIT GUPTA

ENTITY: EMGEE PROPERTIES LIMITED

53. MADHAV ARVIND GOGTE

ENTITY: ORIENTAL SUCCESS UNIVERSAL CORPORATION

54. VIJAY KUMAR RAICHAND

ENTITY: LONGSHORE INVESTMENTS GROUP LTD

55. MAHENDRAKUMAR POONAMCHAND KOTHARI

ENTITY: SKYWEST INTERNATIONAL LIMITED

56. RAMESH KUMAR SACHDEV

ENTITY: GROWEALTH UNIVERSAL CORPORATION

57. RAJU KARAMCHANDANI AND SARA RAJU KARAMCHANDANI

ENTITY: DYNAMIC SOLO INVESTMENTS LTD

58. PARUL DEVEN SARKAR

ENTITY: FAME GATE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED

59. DEVEN RATANCHAND SARKAR

ENTITY: FAME GATE INTERNATIONAL LIMITED

60. BHARAT PTAMBER PUNJABI

ENTITY: WINGLORY TRADING LIMITED

61. AMI RASHESH BHANSALI

ENTITY: GOLD JEWEL CORPORATION

62. RESHMA MOTIRAM DADLANI

ENTITY: SUNNY BLESSING HOLDING INC.

63. ANJANA HARESH VASWANI

ENTITY: SUNNY BLESSING HOLDING INC.

64. MOTI THANWERDAS DADLANI

ENTITY: SUNNY BLESSING HOLDING INC.

65. VISHAL DADLANI

ENTITY: SUNNY BLESSING HOLDING INC.

66. ANAND KUMAR KANODIA

ENTITY: BUSINESS MAGNET INTERNATIONAL LTD

67. SANJIV MAHESHWARI

ENTITY: EPHESUS CORPORATION

68. RAVIKANT RUIA

ENTITY: ORION WORLDWIDE UNIVERSAL CORPORATION

69. KALPESH SHANTIKUMAR MEHTA

ENTITY: UNIQUE CHOICE INVESTMENTS OVERSEAS LTD

70. RAVINDRA FOTEDAR

ENTITY: ROYALL PURPLE INTERNATIONAL LTD

71. SANDEEP DHIRAJLAL DHAKAN

ENTITY: ROTHBURY WORLDWIDE INC.

72. SANJAY BIJAYKUMAR SARAF

ENTITY: ROSEWOOD INTERNATIONAL GROUP LIMITED

73. PERNENDU BOSE

ENTITY: CONQUER MEDIA OVERSEAS LTD.

74. RASESH MANHARKUMAR BHANSALI

ENTITY: GOLD JEWEL CORPORATION

75. RESHMA RAJIV MEHTA

ENTITY: GOLDEN LAUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD

76. RAHUL UDAY TULJAPURKAR

ENTITY: RIVAGE ENERGY CORPORATION

77. HEENA CHAUHAN

ENTITY: RIVAGE ENERGY CORPORATION

78. SUNDIP RAMJI MEHTA

ENTITY: EDEN PEAK OVERSEAS LTD

79. PALLAVI ANIRUDHA JOSHI

ENTITY: UNION PINE INVESTMENT LIMITED

80. ANIRUDHA BALKRISHNA JOSHI

ENTITY: UNION PINE INVESTMENT LIMITED

81. KOKILA RATANCHAND SARKAR

ENTITY: MAIN CROWN MANAGEMENT LIMITED

82. AJAY MADAN

ENTITY: CROWN MATE CONSULTANTS LIMITED

83. SANJEEV KANWAR

ENTITY: UNOCAL CORPORATION

84. SUMIT KUMAR JAVERI

ENTITY: GLAMOUR RING OVERSEAS LTD

85. RAKESH KUMAR BHARTIA

ENTITY: VIOLACEA ENTERPRISES LTD

86. VISHAL SINGH

ENTITY: MANGAL MURTI LIMITED

87. KUMAR SEVANTILAL JAVERI

ENTITY: GLAMOUR RING OVERSEAS LTD

88. JASH PASTA

ENTITY: JASH PASTA, BRICK JOINT PTE. LTD.

89. ARVIND BALKRISHNA GOGTE

ENTITY: GLEAMING SNOW WORLDWIDE LTD

90. PANKAJ KIRTILAL MEHTA

ENTITY: DIMENSION WORLDWIDE LTD

91. DIYA GARG

ENTITY: PERFECT OPULENCE LIMITED

92. AMARENDRA MORESHWAR LAUD

ENTITY: SWAN BELL INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

93. KALPANA MORESHWAR LAUD

ENTITY: SWAN BELL INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

94. PRASHANT MORESHWAR LAUD

ENTITY: SWAN BELL INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

95. RICHA SAXENA KARPE

ENTITY: CAPITAL ALPS UNIVERSAL LTD

96. SACHIN SURENDRA KARPE

ENTITY: CAPITAL ALPS UNIVERSAL LTD

97. BHOJU ALIAS SADHU PHULWANI

ENTITY: GOLD EASTERN LTD

98. HARISH KUMAR MITTAL

ENTITY: METAPHOR ENTERPRISE LTD

99. RANGANATH THOTA

ENTITY: CONTESTS2WIN CHINA HOLDINGS LIMITED

100. NEERAJ KHANNA

ENTITY: FIRST GLOBAL CAPITAL INC.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/1129752/

Global media investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens

Ritu Sarin Posted online: Thu Apr 04 2013, 04:18 hrs

New Delhi, Washington : In the biggest global expose of its kind on offshore investments and secret financial transactions, an international group of investigative journalists has found details of more than 1.2 lakh offshore entities and trusts belonging to individuals and companies in more than 170 countries and territories, including India.

These individuals and companies include politicians, the mega rich and tax offenders, among others, who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Samoa and other offshore hideaways.

The 612 Indians in this list include two members of Parliament — Lok Sabha Congress MP Vivekanand Gaddam and RS member Vijay Mallya — and several industrialists such as Ravikant Ruia, Samir Modi, Chetan Burman, Abhey Kumar Oswal, Rahul Mammen Mappillai, Teja Raju, Saurabh Mittal and Vinod Doshi.

The list also includes businessmen who have had a brush with authorities such as the Income-Tax department and the CBI. Several of the offshore investments were made in possible violation of RBI and FEMA rules.

Details of these transactions were contained in 2.5 million secret files and accounted for more than 260 gigabytes of data. They were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and their total size is more than 160 times larger than the leak of the US State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010.

Based in Washington DC, ICIJ (www.icij.org) is an independent network of reporters who work together on cross-border investigations.

ICIJ collaborated with 38 media organisations around the world, including the The Indian Express, for this ambitious global project and to analyse the documents. The other media partners include The Washington Post in the US, The Guardian and BBC in Britain, Le Monde in France and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The secret files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe. They represent the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organisation.

Besides several well-known Indians, the lists include American doctors and dentists, middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, East European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives and international arms dealers.

These people used international financial services providers such as the Portcullis Trustnet (PTN) of Singapore and the Commonwealth Trust Limited (CTL) in the British Virgin Islands to register offshore companies in tax havens. PTN and CTL, it has been found, have helped tens of thousands of people set up off-shore companies, personal financial trusts and hard-to-trace bank accounts.

Anti-corruption campaigners argue that offshore secrecy undermines law and order and forces average citizens to pay higher taxes to make up for revenues that vanish offshore. The stolen asset recovery initiative, a programme of the Wold Bank and the United Nations, has estimated that cross-border flows of global proceeds of financial crimes total between $1 trillion and $ 1.6 trillion a year.

On the other hand, offshore defenders counter that most offshore patrons are engaged in legitimate business transactions. Offshore centres, they say, allow companies and individuals to diversify their investments, force commercial alliances across national borders and do business in entrepreneur-friendly zones that eschew the heavy rules and redtape of the onshore world.

The 15-month long investigation has found that alongside perfectly legal transactions, the secrecy and lax oversight offered by the offshore world allows fraud, tax dodging and political corruption to thrive. The expose has also thrown light on the functioning of “nominee directors’’ in offshore companies, several of whom have also been engaged by Indian patrons of offshore companies.

For instance, a cluster of 28 “sham directors’’ have been identified as having served as the on-paper representatives of more than 21,000 companies between them, with some individual directors representing as many as 4,000 companies each.

The expose comes shortly after a list of 18 Indians who had bank accounts in the LGT Liechtenstein Bank and around 700 Indians who had accounts in HSBC in Geneva became public. In both cases, account holders were prosecuted and paid penalties to Income-Tax authorities for deposits they had made abroad without paying taxes in India.

Incidentally, India had signed a double taxation treaty called the Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the BVI in 2011 to check tax evasion and money laundering from the tax haven. Finance ministry officials said that similar agreements are in the process of being drafted with the Cook Islands and Samoa.

While the Liberalized Remittance Scheme 2012 permits Indians to deposit up to $200,000 abroad annually, the RBI has made it clear that this does not include deposits in tax havens. “As yet, the $200,000 facility for remittances abroad is not applicable for individuals to open accounts or companies in tax havens,” a RBI spokesperson told The Indian Express.

Auditors said the legality of holding offshore accounts and registering offshore companies is complex. The RBI restriction on individuals incorporating companies abroad, they said, can be easily circumvented if an offshore company is first incorporated and the shareholding then transfered to the beneficial owner.

In the cases under scrunity, documents show that both patterns have been followed. The date of incorporation and the date of the patrons being appointed shareholders/directors is either identical — which is a violation of RBI guidelines — or is a month or so later. If it is the latter, these individuals can say they just acquired shares of an offshore company.

However, with individuals debarred from using LRS for setting up companies, even the remittance dispatched by them for setting up an offshore entity can be a violation. Under rules of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), the use of the offshore route to bring in FDI is also prohibitted and is a violation of Section 8 of the act.

There is also a restraint on individuals setting up offshore companies without the prior approval of the RBI.

MEGA BYTES

* 15-month investigation based on 260 GB data in 2.5 million secret files including 2 million emails covering nearly 30 years

* Data had details of over 1.2 lakh offshore firms/trusts and 12,000 agents

* Owners, benefactors of offshore accounts spread across more than 170 countries, territories

* 86 ICIJ journalists from 38 media organisations in 46 countries collaborated in investigation

* Data found 28 ‘sham directors’ who together represented 21,000 firms

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/global-media-investigation-finds-612-indian-firms-in-tax-havens/1097501/

Indian Express-ICIJ probe: Vijay Mallya, Ravikant Ruia in tax havens

Ritu Sarin Posted online: Thu Apr 04 2013, 04:10 hrs

The 612 Indians on the list of those who have invested in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands include two MPs, a former royal and top industrialists. RITU SARIN puts together details of 20 among them
SONU LALCHAND MIRCHANDANI

Mirchandani is the founder of popular consumer electronics firm Onida. Mirchandani and his wife, Soni, opened a BVI company called Strong Wing Overseas Ltd in 2006 with an authorised capital of $50,000. Both are directors and shareholders of the company.

Mirchandani, however, said he did not recall opening such a BVI entity. “The personal details in the papers are mine. Maybe someone else has opened the company in my name,” he said when shown the documents.

Investigation finds 612 Indian firms in tax havens

TEJA RAJU

Teja is the eldest son of Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced former chairman of Satyam Computers Ltd. Teja is said to be the brain behind Maytas Infrastructure, whose planned merger with the software giant went on to unravel the alleged corporate fraud that sent Ramalinga Raju to jail for 32 months.

The Rajus set up two BVI companies, Global Network Overseas and Stapley Universal Limited. Teja Raju is listed as the beneficial owner of both but records show their current status as “defunct”. Each company was registered with an authorised capital of $50,000.
Teja Raju denied any link with the companies. “Looks like a case of mistaken identity,” he said.

RAVIKANT RUIA

An NRI, Ruia is vice-chairman of the Essar group, which has interests in steel, oil, gas and power. His company has been embroiled in the alleged irregularities in the telecom spectrum allocation of 2001-02; last month, a special court named Ruia an accused.

He has registered three firms in the BVI and his daughter Smiti is a shareholder in two of them. Also, one of Ruia’s flagship companies, Essar Power, has five BVI accounts with their authorised capitals ranging from $100 to $100,000.

Essar officials said that of the eight companies, five were liquidated in 2011 and 2012 and three are “existing and operational”. They said necessary filings and compliance have been done in India in accordance with laws and Smiti has declared her holding in Paprika Properties Ltd and Paprika Holdings Management Ltd in her wealth tax returns. “These companies were started as SPVs to make investments and are in the knowledge of the authorities concerned,” Essar said.

RAMAKRISHNA KARUTURI

Bangalore-based Karuturi is the chairman of Karuturi Global Ltd, the largest producer of cut-roses in the world. He has diversified into farming and has leased 300,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia to produce cereals and edible oil.

In 2007, Karuturi registered companies in tax havens and with huge authorised capitals. He is shareholder or beneficial owner of six companies that have a collective authorised capital of $2.2 million. His wife, Anitha, is also a shareholder in one company, Maxworth Investment Ltd.
Reached in Ethiopia, Karuturi said he did not recall the companies and did not respond to subsequent calls.

VIJAY MALLYA

The other MP on the list, Mallya registered a BVI company called Venture New Holding in 2006 with an authorised share capital of $50,000. Mallya, who has been in the news for the trouble over his Kingfisher Airlines and with the tax authorities, is the beneficial owner of the firm.
“Dr Mallya is a non-resident Indian with business activities in different parts of the world. It is common practice to use BVI registered companies in connection with such activities which are not confined to India alone. All disclosures in regard to Dr Mallya’s wealth have been duly made to Parliament,” a UB group spokesperson said.

VIVEKANAND GADDAM

Gaddam is a Congress MP from the Peddapalle reserved constituency in Andhra Pradesh. The seat was earlier represented by his father, former union minister G Venkatswamy. Gaddam, who has a MBBS degree, is an industrialist and owns asbestos firm Visaka Industries. He is also chairman of CII’s Andhra Pradesh chapter.

Gaddam and his wife, Saroja, became directors and shareholders of British Virgin Islands (BVI) company Belrose Universal Ltd in 2009. The address mentioned in documents is the official Hyderabad address that is also mentioned in his Parliamentary records.
Reached for his comment, Gaddam said he was not aware of the existence of any such offshore company. “I do not remember being involved with such a company and have no connection with it,” he said.

ABHEY KUMAR OSWAL

Son of Ludhiana-based business tycoon Vidya Sagar Oswal, Abhey is chairman of Oswal Agro Mills and Oswal Chemicals and Fertilizers and managing director of Oswal Spinning and Weaving Mills. In 1999, tax authorities raided his establishments for suspected evasion.
He is one of the biggest Indian players on the BVI list. Starting in 2006, he registered 11 companies in Samoa and the BVI and controlled them through the Rising Wealth Trust, registered in the Cook Islands. While the trust owns shares in several of the companies, Abhey owns shares in others. Abhey is the protector of the trust and his son Shael is the settler. The combined authorised capital of the 11 companies is $5.3 million.

“I have not registered any offshore firms. You must be in the knowledge of business entities of my son Shael Oswal, who is a Singapore resident and an NRI. My companies or myself have no relation whatsoever with his business or business entities,” Abhey said.

SAMIR MODI

Son of top industrialist K K Modi, who owns the diversified Modi Enterprises, Samir is an executive director in Godfrey Philips. He pushed the group’s diversification by launching a string of new ventures such as Modicare, Colorbar and Twenty Four Seven.

His BVI company is called Gilvin Rock Enterprise Limited. He and his wife, Shivani, are joint directors and shareholders in the firm ,which has an authorised capital of $50,000. “The company was set up as a route for investments but hasn’t done any business or trade transactions,” he said.

CHETAN BURMAN

Chetan Burman is a fifth-generation member of the Burman family, which owns the Rs 1,500 crore ayurvedic and food products brand Dabur. He was executive director of Dabur Nepal but has now branched out into other ventures.

Burman registered a BVI company in 2007 called Heavenly Bloom World Ltd. He is both director and shareholder of the company, which started with an authorised capital of $50,000.
Burman said the BVI firm was set up to route exports, mainly of honey, through Singapore but that plan didn’t take off. “The company was set up through a verbal communication since I wanted to make Singapore the export hub for my products. But no trade transactions actually materialised and the company has thus remained dormant,” he said.

GAEKWAD RADHIKARAJE SAMARJITSINH

In January 2008, members of the former royal family of Baroda opened a BVI firm with an authorised capital of $50,000. The directors and shareholders of the company, called Brentwood Consulting Limited, are Gaekwad Radhikaraje Samarjitsinh, wife of Samarjitsinh Gaekwad, and her sister Kumari Meenal. The Laxmi Vilas Palace, one of the largest residences in the country, is given as Radhikaraje’s address in documents.

She did not respond to questions sent to her.

RAHUL MAMMEN MAPPILLAI

The founder of MRF Tyres, the late K M Mammen Mappillai, was among those on the list of 18 people who had accounts in the European tax haven of Liechtenstein. It has now come to light that members of the MRF family registered a BVI company, Moon Mist Enterprise Limited, in 2007 with an authorised capital of $50,000. Its directors are Mammen Mappillai’s two sons, MRF chairman Kandathil Mammen and its MD Arun Mammen. Kandathil’s son Rahul Mammen Mappillai, also an MRF director, is the third shareholder.

Rahul did not respond to questions sent to him.

GURBACHAN SINGH DHINGRA

Dhingra is vice-chairman of Berger Paints, the second largest paint manufacturer in the country. In the BVI, Dhingra is the beneficial owner of a company called Crossley Hill Corporation. It was incorporated in 2008 with an authorised capital of $50,000.

Dhingra, however, denied any links with the company. “I have nothing to do with this company even though the address being quoted by you is my address. You must have got wrong documentation,” Dhingra said.

RASHMI KIRTILAL MEHTA & BHAVIN RASHMI MEHTA

The Mehtas are prominent Mumbai-based diamond traders, with a base in Belgium, and are facing allegations and action for parking money in offshore accounts. Rashmi is the son of patriarch Kirtilal Mehta and Bhavin is Rashmi’s son. Some of their relatives, including Rashmi’s brother Prabodh Mehta, were named in the list of 18 Indians who had accounts in the LGT Liechtenstein Bank. In April 2011, the family was raided by tax authorities and their tax evasion cases are under assessment.

Rashmi and Bhavin are directors and shareholders in a BVI company called Bapaji Inc. The company was incorporated in 2004. Another BVI company, called Dimension Worldwide Ltd, is linked to the Mehta family but its status is described as “defunct”.

The Mehtas did not respond to questions sent to them in Belgium.

LANKALINGAM MURUGESU & REETA LANKALINGAM

Known as the Papad King, Murugesu is the chairman of the Lanson Group, involved in the manufacture and export of papads. The group also owns Lanson Toyota, a Toyota car dealership of which Reeta, Murugesu’s wife, is the joint MD. They also own a biotech firm called Lanson Biotech involved in ayurvedic research.

Murugesu and Reeta are joint shareholders in a Hong Kong-registered Portcullis TrustNet company called Ready On Company Limited. The company was “sold” to the couple in 2008 and began with an authorised capital of HK $10,000.

Murugesu confirmed having set up the company. “We started the company for better tax planning but with full tax now required to be paid by export units like ours, no trading through it really materialised. We just thought it is better to pay full taxes,” he said.

THIAGARAJAN MURUGESAN

Breaking away from his family business of cotton trading and textiles, Murugesan launched the now-defunct Paramount Airways, a niche airline catering to the southern sector, and was its MD at the age of 28. He started five BVI companies in 2008, each with an authorised capital of $50,000. He is director and shareholder in all of them.

Thiagarajan confirmed the existence of the five BVI companies but clarified that they are “wholly owned” subsidiaries of Indian companies of the Paramount group and not individual holdings. “The BVI companies were opened with the aim of getting foreign investments in the textile business but that did not happen. So these are just companies on paper with very little or hardly any capital. Since the investments did not come in we did not activate the companies,” he said.

MAITREYA VINOD DOSHI

Doshi is the chairman of Premier Ltd, formerly Premier Automobiles Ltd, one of India’s oldest automobile manufacturers. He opened a BVI company called McGuffin Ltd in 2006 with an authorised share capital of $50,000 and is named as the beneficial owner.

“McGuffin Ltd has invested FDI in our Indian company with prior approval of the RBI. We regularly file all the required disclosures with the RBI as per their rules. All details of McGuffin have been given to the income-tax authorities as part of my local company’s routine tax assessment, including audited balance sheets, shareholders list certified by auditors and details of investments made by it. All remittances by McGuffin have been made through HDFC Bank after due KYC checks,” Doshi said.

YASHOVARDHAN LOHIA

Lohia is the CEO of Chamong Tee Exports, one of India’s largest tea exporters. Lohia registered Golden Charm Universal and Golden Success Offshore Inc in the BVI in 2007 but these are now shown as “defunct”.

Lohia did not respond to questions sent to him.

MEENAKSHI JATIA

One of the three daughters of the late jute baron Arun Bajoria, Meenakshi and her husband Sharad Kumar Jatia are among the claimants to Bajoria’s empire, valued at Rs 2,500 crore and the subject of family disputes.

The couple are named jointly as directors and shareholders in two BVI companies, Supreme Bonus Enterprises Limited and Plazzo International Management Ltd. Each was acquired in 2007-2008 with an authorised capital of $50,000. She did not respond to questions.

SAURABH MITTAL

Mittal is a co-founder and vice-chairman of Indiabulls, the country’s first e-commerce and Internet brokerage company.

BVI documents show Mittal registered a company named Alta Vista Development Corporation in 2008. He is both director and shareholder in the company, which began with an authorised capital of $50,000. He did not respond to questions put to him.

NEESHA SUNIT KHATAU, PANNA SUNIT KHATAU & REENA SUNIT KHATAU

They are heirs to the 150-year old Khatau empire. Panna is the wife of Sunit Khatau, the late chairman of the group who was shot dead in 1994. She is chairman of their flagship textile firm, Khatau Makanji Spinning and Weaving Company. Neesha and Reena are her daughters and directors of the company.

In 2007, the three registered four companies in the BVI through Portcullis TrustNet and are either together or individually named as beneficial owners of the firms. In each case, the authorised capital is $50,000. Neesha did not respond to questions sent to her.

How international journalists' team analysed offshore files

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/indian-expressicij-probe-vijay-mallya-ravikant-ruia-in-tax-havens/1097494/

SIVASANKARAN and Many CHIDAMBARAMs

This is Aircel Sivasakaran's a/c : http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/97049

http://offshoreleaks.icij.org/search?q=chidambaram&ppl=on&ent=on&adr=on

brings out

See all links at: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ten-offshore-leaks-database-including.html

Indians named in tax haven scoop: British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and Singapore -- ICIJ

↧

If Jairam Ramesh is scared of Narendra Modi, he should join BJP: Congress MP

Maternal and Child Nutrition

Published June 6, 2013 See:

Executive summary

Comments

Nutrition: a quintessential sustainable development goal

Maternal and child nutrition: building momentum for impact

Delivery platforms for sustained nutrition in Ethiopia

Only collective action will end undernutrition

Nutrition-sensitive food systems: from rhetoric to action

Global child and maternal nutrition—the SUN rises

Early nutrition and adult outcomes: pieces of the puzzle

Series Papers

Maternal and child undernutrition and overweight in low-income and middle-income countries

Evidence-based interventions for improvement of maternal and child nutrition: what can be done and at what cost?

Nutrition-sensitive interventions and programmes: how can they help to accelerate progress in improving maternal and child nutrition?

The politics of reducing malnutrition: building commitment and accelerating progress

Articles

Mortality risk in preterm and small-for-gestational-age infants in low-income and middle-income countries: a pooled country analysis

Associations of linear growth and relative weight gain during early life with adult health and human capital in countries of low and middle income: findings from five birth cohort studies

Dear MPs, please heed Lancet and debate the Food Security Bill

Food Security Bill: Where’s the money for this colossal waste?

Sardar Patel's anger against Gandhiji over his celibacy experiments

Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing Beyond the Mahābhārata incident in which Vidura is said to have alerted Yudhiṣṭira in Mleccha bhāṣā, evidence is provided on mleccha (cognate meluhha) language from ancient texts.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-jangad-accounting-for.htmlAncient Near East jangaḍ accounting for mercatile transactions-- evidence of Indus writing presented.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/06/ancient-near-east-bronze-age-legacy_6.htmlAncient Near East bronze-age legacy: Processions depicted on Narmer palette, Indus writing denote artisan guilds

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Why Manmohan Singh failed: neta who remained a babu

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges as Harappan site

Khirsara in Gujarat emerges prominent mature Harappan site

Press Trust of India | New Delhi April 6, 2013 Last Updated at 17:00 IST

Govt has initiated probe against expose made by global org: FM

Will tax havens fall apart?

investment managers and advisers. LATEST NEWS

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Please read the statement below before searching.

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Mahendraparvata, 1,200-Year-Old Lost Medieval City In Cambodia, Unearthed By Archaeologists (VIDEO)

It was constructed from the early to mid 1100s by King Suryavarman II at the height of the Khmer Empire's political and military power.

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AFP | Jun 16, 2013, 03.20 AM IST

1,200 years on, lost Cambodian city found

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Ancient Near East writing systems: Indian sprachbund and Indus writing
Beyond the Mahābhārata incident in which Vidura is said to have alerted Yudhiṣṭira in Mleccha bhāṣā, evidence is provided on mleccha (cognate meluhha) language from ancient texts.