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A verbal deal and 'two contracts' -- Aneesha Mathur

December 18, 2013, 7:08 pm
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Sangeeta Richard, who has complained against Devyani Khobragade, with her husband Philip in this January 2010 photograph. (Express Photo)

A DIPLOMATIC AGREEMENT: If diplomat Devyani's Khobragade's transfer to India's permanent mission in the United Nations goes through smoothly, India might consider proposing an agreement to extend full diplomatic immunity to all personnel of the two countries regardless of whether they are posted at consulates or the embassy.
THE COMPLAINT: Devyani Khobragade had first struck a verbal agreement with Sangeeta Richard and then signed two successive contracts, with a different wage specified in each. Aneesha Mathur looks at what the dispute is all about in Leading to Devyani's arrest, a verbal deal and 'two contracts'

For stronger immunity, Delhi moves Devyani to UN mission in New York

PranabDhalSamanta Posted online: Thu Dec 19 2013, 04:10 hrs
New Delhi : The First contours of a resolution of the Devyani Khobragade case emerged Wednesday with New Delhi transferring the IFS officer to India’s permanent mission in the United Nations from her present post of deputy consul-general in New York, giving the US an opportunity to grant her full diplomatic immunity.Hours later, US Secretary of State John Kerry called National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Wendy Sherman, called Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and expressed regret and remorse over the episode.
Kerry and Sherman, sources said, were both conciliatory and hoped steps would be taken to push the India-US relationship forward. Kerry, they said, wanted to speak to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid but New Delhi preferred this to be dealt at the official level.
If Khobragade’s transfer goes through smoothly, sources said, India is considering proposing an agreement to extend full diplomatic immunity to all personnel of the two countries under the Vienna Convention for Diplomatic Relations, regardless of whether they are posted at consulates or the embassy.
Russia is said to have such an agreement with the United States.
Having already asked US diplomatic staff posted in consulates to return their identity cards by December 23, India has taken the first step to ensure there is status parity on both sides.
An agreement, therefore, will be beneficial to both. More importantly, if such an understanding is not reached, India will have to issue a different card for US consular staff.
Explaining the decision to transfer Khobragade, sources said, she would have to apply for a fresh diplomatic card through the UN Secretariat, which would ultimately go to the US State Department for clearance.
This would give Washington the opportunity to show some positive intent by issuing the card and, in doing so, extend full immunity to her. Indications are that the State Department is inclined to approve the card.
Also, the move brings the UN into the picture which has its own stature in New York. For instance, the US was not keen to give then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a visa to attend the UN General Assembly. But the UN insisted and said its area cannot be treated as a domain to express US policy objectives. The visa was eventually given.
Being in India’s UN mission would ensure that Khobragade would not be subjected to any arrest or custodial interrogation in the future as diplomats posted there enjoy the protection provided in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. There will, however, still be one area of uncertainty which relates to the fate of the case and charges filed against her in case she is granted full immunity.
While India will continue to insist the charges be dropped, sources said the case can also be fought simultaneously like many others.
US authorities last week arrested Khobragade, 39, for alleged visa fraud on grounds that she did not honour the commitment to pay minimum wages as per US rules in the visa form to her domestic help.
The move to arrest her was justified on the grounds that Khobragade was covered under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations which applies to officials working in consulates as opposed to those working in the embassy. According to this, the diplomatic immunity is only confined to consular work and not to personal conduct. It also allows for arrest in case of a “grave crime”.
Obama Briefed
US President Barack Obama has been briefed about the diplomatic row with India over the alleged treatment meted out to Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade.
“He has been briefed on this issue, and I can tell you that the safety and security of our diplomats and consular officials in the field is a top priority,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.
“I want to say that the United States and India enjoy a broad and deep friendship, and this isolated episode is not indicative of the close and mutually respectful ties that we share,” Carney said.
Carney said the US has conveyed at high levels to the government of India “our expectation that India will continue to fulfill all of its obligations under the Vienna Convention...” — PTI, Washington
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/for-stronger-immunity-delhi-moves-devyani-to-un-mission-in-new-york/1209431/0?SocialMedia

Leading to Devyani's arrest, a verbal deal and 'two contracts'

Aneesha Mathur Posted online: Thu Dec 19 2013, 03:05 hrs
New Delhi : According to the complaint against her in the US, Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade had first struck a verbal agreement with Sangeeta Richard and then signed two successive contracts, with a different wage specified in each.The complaint was submitted to the US Department of Justice by the Diplomatic Security Services. A December 11 affidavit by a special agent of the DSS states it is based on statements by Sangeeta and her husband.
Under the verbal agreement in India, it is alleged, Sangeeta would go to the US as Khobragade’s personal employee, working as a babysitter and housekeeper. Khobragade, deputy consul general in New York, would pay her Rs 25,000 per month plus Rs 5,000 overtime, the total equivalent to about $573 and lower than the minimum wage requirement there. In the visa application form submitted on October 15, 2012, however, Khobragade made a statement that she would be paying Sangeeta around $4,500 per month, the complaint says.
Khobragade also provided her employee with a contract of employment, which set out the terms of payment, allowed a weekly holiday, sick leave, medical care, boarding and lodging and other benefits to the employee, the complaint says. “Khobragade told Witness 1 (Sangeeta) that Witness 1 would be questioned about the terms of the first employment contract at her interview and that Witness 1 should say that Witness 1 would be paid $9.75 per hour and would work 40 hours per week,” reads the complaint, filed before a magistrate’s court in New York.
It alleges that Khobragade had instructed Sangeeta not to say anything about their verbal contract.
The DSS alleges that in a second contract, signed a little before departing for the US, the wage was changed to Rs 30,000, which translated to about $3.31 per hour at the then exchange rate. The second contract, according to the complaint, did not specify any maximum working hours for the employee either, and was also “silent” on the provisions of holidays, sick days and vacation days”.
The complaint also notes that the DSS agent consulted the protocol section of the Department of State to confirm that Khobragade “enjoys limited diplomatic immunity with respect to only those acts undertaken in her official capacity”.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/1209391/
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Retroactive immunity for Indian consul Khobragade? -- Alison Frankel

December 18, 2013, 7:40 pm
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Column - Retroactive immunity for Indian consul Khobragade?

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6:33am IST
By Alison Frankel
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The December 12 arrest of Devyani Khobragade, a deputy consul general at India's consulate in Manhattan, has precipitated quite a diplomatic brouhaha.
Khobragade, who is accused of underpaying her nanny and falsifying documents to get the nanny into the United States, was handcuffed by diplomatic security staff, turned over to U.S. Marshals and strip-searched before being released on $250,000 bail. As anger escalated in India on Tuesday, with reports that Khobragade was forced to undergo a cavity search, Indian authorities retaliated by removing protective concrete barriers in front of the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. (The Marshals Service has said there was no cavity search.)
On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed "regret" and "concern" to his Indian counterpart, and the White House told reporters that it is looking into Khobragade's arrest "to ensure that all standard procedures were followed and that every opportunity for courtesy was extended."
It's a big mess, but there could be a relatively easy way out for both Khobragade and the State Department: retroactive diplomatic immunity. It's a rare but not unprecedented State Department device to grant foreign officials full immunity for their actions even if they weren't entitled to such broad protection when they committed the supposed misconduct.
VIENNA CONVENTIONS
As a consular official, Khobragade has only limited immunity, unlike high-level embassy personnel and their families. Diplomats and consulate officials are actually covered by two different international treaties, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963. And as the State Department explained in its guide for law enforcement on diplomatic and consular immunity, consulate personnel are protected just for actions connected to their official duties. If Khobragade had been an Indian diplomat, she could not have been arrested for mistreating household staff, but a deputy consul is not immune from those charges because they're not related to consulate work.
After the arrest, India appointed Khobragade to its permanent United Nations mission, according to her lawyer, Daniel Arshack of Arshack, Hajek & Lehrman. Arshack told Reuters Wednesday that the transfer to a new post "clothes her in diplomatic immunity, which provides immunity for acts before or after the appointment." In a text message to me, he cited a section of the State Department guide addressing termination of immunity, which says (in part): "Criminal immunity precludes the exercise of jurisdiction by the courts over an individual whether the incident occurred prior to or during the period in which such immunity exists."
That's helpful language for Arshack and Khobragade, but from conversations with a couple of experts and a review of precedent on retroactive diplomatic immunity, I think the issue is more complicated than one sentence in a State Department guide. There are really two questions wrapped up in the Khobragade case: Is she entitled to full diplomatic immunity by dint of her appointment - by India - to a post at the UN? And if she is entitled to broad protection, is the immunity retroactive?
Under the Vienna Conventions and the U.S. law implementing them, the Diplomatic Relations Act of 1978, diplomatic status is conferred on foreign officials by the State Department, not by the countries sponsoring the officials. It is up to the United States, in other words, to decide whether to credential Khobragade as a full diplomat entitled to broad immunity.
THE ABDULAZIZ CASE
By itself, India's designation is not sufficient. There's federal precedent on this point: In 1997, Gambia asserted that a special advisor to one of its missions in the U.S. was immune as a diplomat from criminal bribery charges. Federal prosecutors said he hadn't been designated a diplomat by the State Department. U.S. District Judge Michael Moore ruled that the Gambian official wasn't entitled to full immunity because he wasn't credentialed by the State Department. (The official pleaded guilty and there's no record of an appeal by Gambia.)
A State Department representative indicated in a press briefing Wednesday that it would be up to the U.S. to decide Khobragade's diplomatic status. Deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said it was premature to discuss any change in the consulate official's immunity because the U.S. government has not been notified of her new appointment. She also said that the State Department would have to sign off. "It is not an automatic thing by any means," she said.
But let's assume that the State Department, which has clearly been rattled by India's rage at Khobragade's treatment, agrees to credential her as a full diplomat. Does her immunity reach back to shield her against actions predating her new appointment? It can, according to Peter Rutledge, associate dean of the University of Georgia School of Law and an expert on international dispute resolution. Retroactive diplomatic immunity, Rutledge said, is quite rare - but it's not unprecedented.
The best-known example dates back to 1982, when Miami-Dade police officers attempted to search the home of Prince Turki Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, who was suspected of holding an Egyptian woman against her will. At the time of the raid, in March 1982, Abdulaziz had no diplomatic credentials. He did have a burly security staff, which scuffled with police and fended off execution of the search warrant on the prince's home. Abdulaziz and his family sued Dade County for violating their civil rights. County officials countersued, claiming they were injured in the scuffle with the prince's staff.
KOWTOWING TO ROYALS?
In April 1982, about three weeks after the failed search, the State Department granted Abdulaziz and his family full diplomatic immunity. The prince withdrew his suit against Dade County and moved to dismiss the county's counterclaims, arguing that his diplomatic status shielded him from the suit.
Despite arguments by Dade County that Abdulaziz hadn't been a credentialed diplomat when his guards blocked police from entering his house, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld dismissal of the counterclaims, holding that the prince had been eligible for diplomatic status at the time of the botched raid, even if he hadn't yet received it. In effect, the ruling endorsed the concept of retroactive immunity.
Skeptics later accused the State Department of kowtowing to the Saudi royal family, but that hardly mattered to Abdulaziz, who faced neither criminal nor civil consequences from allegedly detaining a woman against her will and blocking a police investigation. The Khobragade case has some clear distinctions, especially because the State Department has been involved with her investigation since at least early September, when, according to spokeswoman Harf, U.S. officials first alerted Indian authorities of allegations against their deputy consul general.
It was also diplomatic security officers who arrested Khobragade, not local cops without foreign policy sensitivity. For all we know, the State Department intended to send a message to the international diplomatic corps, which is often accused of cloaking itself in diplomatic immunity to avoid claims of mistreating domestic staff.
On the other hand, retroactive immunity would quell Indian outrage and permit the State Department to save face.
I exchanged texts with Khobragade's lawyer, Arshack, but wasn't able to speak with him.
(Reporting by Alison Frankel; Editing by Ted Botha)
(The opinions expressed here are those of Alison Frankel, a columnist for Reuters.)

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Intern season. No sex. Just slur. SC says, 'no jurisdiction'.

December 18, 2013, 8:24 pm
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After AK Ganguly, another ex-Supreme Court judge faces sexual slur

HARISH V. NAIR  | New Delhi, December 19, 2013 | 06:15
At a time when the demand for action against former Supreme Court judge A.K. Ganguly is at its peak, Mail Today has learnt that Chief Justice of India P. Sathasivam had received another complaint of sexual harassment by an intern against another recently retired judge of the apex court. Mail Today has learnt from a highly placed source that this intern had sent the complaint against this judge around two weeks ago, when a panel of three judges was hearing the accusations against Justice (Retd) Ganguly.

But, it is learnt, the second intern has been told by the apex court that it can't take any action to help her in this case. "A senior law officer sent an affidavit to the Chief Justice affirming in a sealed cover that another intern had levelled allegation of sexual harassment against another recently retired Supreme Court judge," said the source. "But in a full court meeting (which comprises all the judges of the Supreme Court) convened to take a call on the Ganguly issue, a decision was taken that no more complaints against retired judges will be entertained by the court," the source said. This effectively has shut the door for any response to the second intern's complaint from the court.
Mail Today contacted Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising, who has led the charge against Justice Ganguly, but she said that she had no comment on this matter. Supreme Court Public Relations Officer Rakesh Sharma and Secretary General Ravindra Maithani said they did not have any information of a complaint sent to the Chief Justice of India.

In a statement posted on the official website of the Supreme Court on December 5, 2013 after the full court meeting, Chief Justice Sathasivam said it did not have jurisdiction over retired judges. "As decided by the full court in its meeting dated 5th December, 2013, it is made clear that the representations made against former judges of this court are not entertainable by the administration of the Supreme Court," the notice said.
Justice Sathasivam had said the three-judge panel which probed the allegations by an intern against Justice Ganguly was set up after her blog and a media report created an impression that the person involved was a serving judge when the incident took place. The three judge committee concluded that Justice Ganguly had indulged in unwelcome verbal and non-verbal conduct of sexual nature, but did not suggest any action saying it had no jurisdiction in the case.

"Considering the fact that the said intern was not an intern on the rolls of the Supreme Court and that the concerned judge had already demitted office on account of superannuation on the date of the incident, no further follow-up action of is required by the court," the statement issued by the court had said. The intern who had accused Justice Ganguly had said in her blog on November 11 that that she had information that "four other girls face sexual harassment from other judges".

All these have been mentioned in a complaint pending before the Delhi Police filed by a former Dean of the Law Faculty, S.N. Singh, demanding an FIR against Ganguly and probe into role of other judges. He said the intern's statement disclosed an offence under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code which says "whoever assaults or uses criminal force on any women intending to outrage or knowing it will outrage the modesty shall be imprisoned for a term which may extend to two years".

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/after-ganguly-another-ex-sc-judge-faces-sexual-slur/1/331841.html
 
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Negative effects of same-sex marriage on Indian families -- Dr. Babu Suseelan. Say no to perversion.

December 18, 2013, 9:19 pm
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NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF SAME-SEX – MARRIAGE ON INDIAN FAMILIES

Dr. Babu Suseelan December 19, 2013

Issues pertaining to same-sex marriage, and the Supreme Court decision not to legalize such sex perversion caught the attention of number of Hindu professional’s worldwide. The issue of same sex-marriage, lesbianism, and homosexuality and other deviant and perverted sex acts has polarized Indian society. There are few psychologically perverted elements in India favoring equality of rights for homosexuals. Hindu society generally is against the same-sex-marriage   for religious, social, political, economic and ethical reasons.

Western nations, converted Christians in India support such perverted same sex- marriages as part of their cunning strategy to destroy our spiritual culture. Converted Christians in India woo

Who are serving their slave masters quote meaningless and absurd stories from our puranas to justify their absurd sense? Their sense is based on hypocrisy and double speaks. Their arguments can be dismissed as false, unreasonable and irrelevant. Their support for same sex-marriage is not based on anything strictly rational. Converted Christians in India and homosexual advocates say that same sex-marriage is universal. They argue that Homo-sexual act is universal, and it is a learned behavior and should be part of our cultural life too.
Sonia the uneducated Catholic lady and the Prime Minister Manmoham Singh her and her Christian crony, are planning to introduce a bill in Parliament to legalize all same sex marriages. The twisted aim of such legislation has an obvious relationship to perverted sex. Pornographic cinema, videos, phone sex, lap dancing and their deviant life style is organized around sex. Our national culture is based on heterosexual relationship. Our fail life is sacred and based on Vedic culture. Our life span development is clearly and every rules and regulations of life are clearly prescribed for life. From Balya (early Childhood) Kaumara (Late childhood) grahastasrama (Adolescent period)Grahiastrasama (Married Family Life) Vanaprastha (Retired Life) and death and dying is prescribed for every Hindu. Each stage of life has to follow certain Vedic principles, rules and regulations.

The extreme policy option is introduced in India with a nefarious goal of destroying our screed spiritual culture. Evangelical group bent on uprooting Hindus and converting innocent people are behind such legislative agenda.  Sonia, the uneducated Italian catholic and her son and Man Mohan Singh and her catholic cronies are behind such sinister plan. Same - sex-marriage is unthinkable for Hindus, radical, unacceptable, and insensible. The very notion of same sex marriage is a radical departure from pressing national issue. Hindus, judge for you, what the very notion of same sex-marriage means for our children for the family and our scared culture.

Introduction of perverted sex is simply to interpret our culture and reshape our dharma and religious practices negatively. Why our enemies and their agents in India are digging dirty data on our past?  But I think tinkering with the moral stories of the past is a clear disservice to the study of our cultural history. We need a reform of our society the past is dead. We cannot change it. What can we change is our future.

The way to a better India requires an accurate understanding of what happened in the past one thousand years, and why? A more civilized and humane modernity will not be achieved by misreading the brutal, inhuman attack on our culture by Muslims and European Christian colonialists. We should overcome our denial, apathy and indifference and think clearly whether our irrational tolerance and our deep desire to avoid conflict, and our innate quality to compromise anything with evil has led to the present predicament.

Hindus as a group have adopted, to significant extent, the values, mores and guidelines of our sacred Vedic culture.. That certain segment of Hindus (pseudo secular, phony Hindus)reflect an exaggerated mimicry of Christen culture (alien)  behaviors and values. It is a truism that pseudo-secular Hindus influence by aliens may be supporting same sex-marriage in India,

Why should a man go against nature and family values and marry another man anyway?
Hindus must make it clear that the institution of marriage—one man and one woman, must be preserved and promoted. It  is an urgent necessity for the wellbeing of our children, families and for the community good of society.
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EVM: ballot system, flawless really? If printed ballot not introduced, EC should revert to paper ballot

December 19, 2013, 1:09 am
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Most countries world over may follow Indian system
 
Sabir ShahThursday, December 19, 2013
From Print Edition
  
While Pakistan is still struggling to devise a mechanism to overcome electoral frauds, India has gone miles ahead by successfully using the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) during a fairly recent September 4, 2013 bye-election held in Nagaland.

The remote Tuensang district of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly constituency, where this new system was installed, had 12,088 electors distributed across 21 polling stations, which had collectively seen 8,553 votes polled.

According to a November 8, 2013 report of the “Zee News,” the initial price of this machine was about Rs13,000 (equivalent to Pakistani Rupees 22, 427), but because of fall in value of rupee, the new price is estimated to be around Rs18,000 (equivalent to Pakistani Rupees 31,052) per machine.

On the contrary, if one goes through the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) website, it proudly boasts of having successfully implemented the Multi-Biometric National Identity Card and Multi-Biometric e-Passport solutions for Pakistan, Passport Issuing System for Kenya, Bangladesh High Security Driver’s Licence and Civil Registration Management System for Sudan and the National Identity Management System (NIMS) for Nigeria.

It is well-known that Nadra won the Sri Lankan Identity Card project through a competitive bidding process.

During the September 4, 2013 bye-election held in a Nagaland constituency, Indian Election Commission had gone on to use the VVPAT system developed by Messrs Electronics Corporation of India Limited and Bharat Electronic Limited.

A printer was attached to the balloting unit of the voting machine and the device was kept along with the balloting unit inside the screened voting compartment.

Prior to the voting exercise, the voters were systematically educated to cast their votes by pressing the candidate’s button against the name and symbol of the candidate of his choice, apart from the red light glowing against the name and symbol of that candidate.

The attached printers then generated a paper slip containing the serial number, name and symbol of candidate for whom the votes were cast.

This paper slip remained visible to the voters through a window covered by glass on the printer.

After some time, the paper slip was witnessed getting cut automatically and falling into the box permanently attached below the printer.

This mechanism had thus enabled the Nagaland voters to verify and satisfy themselves that the vote cast by them for the candidate of their choice was actually recorded correctly for that candidate.

Certain doubts did arise during the whole process, but at the time of the counting of votes, these paper slips were counted and tallied with the number of votes recorded in the control unit of the voting machine.

The results were excellent as the number of votes displayed in the voting machines against each of the two contesting candidates tallied with the paper slips generated by the printers of the VVPAT system at the time of counting on September 7, 2013.

It is pertinent to note that on January 17, 2012, prior to the above-cited Nagaland polling exercise, the Delhi High Court had ruled in a case that the Electronic Voting machines (EVMs)used in India for electoral purposes were not “tamper proof.”

The petitioner in this case was Dr. Subramanian Swamy, a renowned Indian politician and President of the Janata Party.

Just two days after this court verdict, on January 19, 2012, the Indian Election Commission had ordered Messrs Electronics Corporation of India Limited and Bharat Electronic Limited to make Electronic Voting Machines that could generate a “paper trail” of the vote cast.

However, the Delhi High Court had refused to order a VVPAT system and this verdict was challenged in the Supreme Court of India by Dr. Subramanian Swamy in September 2012.

On September 27, 2012, the Indian Election Commission’s advocate Ashok Desai had submitted before a Supreme Court bench that field trial for the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail system was in progress and that a status report would be submitted by early January 2013.

Advocate Desai had said that on pressing of each vote, a paper receipt would be printed, which would be visible to the voters inside a glass, but could not be taken out of the machine.

Remember, the Electronic Voting Machines were partly used in the 1999 Indian General and State polls, and in total since the 2004 ballot exercise.

However, these Indian Electronic Voting Machines had come under a cloud of suspicion, especially after the 2009 General Elections, when allegations had surfaced that they could be tampered with and had security issues. These accusations had then led the country’s Election Commission to introduce machines with VVPAT.

Powered by an ordinary 6 volt alkaline battery, these Electronic Voting Machines were first used in 1981 in a Kerala by-election.

Each Electronic Voting Machine in India can currently record a maximum of 3,840 votes, which is sufficient for a polling station as they typically have no more than 1,400 voters assigned.

These machines can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates. There is provision for 16 candidates in a balloting unit. If the total number of candidates exceeds 16, a second balloting unit can be linked parallel to the first balloting unit and so on—- till a maximum of 4 units and 64 candidates. The conventional ballot paper/box method of polling is used if the number of candidates exceeds 64.

It is not possible to vote more than once by pressing the button again and again.

As soon as a particular button on the balloting unit is pressed, the vote is recorded for that particular candidate and the machine gets locked. Even if one presses that button further or plays with any other button, no further vote will be recorded. This way these Electronic Voting Machines ensure the principle of “one person, one vote.”

These Indian EVMs cannot be pre-programmed to favour a party or a candidate because the order in which the name of a candidate/party appears on the balloting unit depends on the order of filing of nominations and validity of the candidature and this sequence cannot be predicted in advance.

Moreover, the selection of EVMs for polling stations is randomised by computer selection preventing the advance knowledge of assignment of specific EVMs to polling stations.

Through these EVMs, the vote-counting becomes very fast and the result can be declared within two to three hours as compared to 30–40 hours, on an average, under the ballot-paper system.

It goes without saying that bogus voting can be greatly reduced by the use of these EVMs, because in case of ballot paper system, a bogus voter can stuff thousands of bogus ballot papers inside the ballot box.

An EVM is programmed to record only five votes in a minute. This will frustrate the bogus voters. Further, the maximum number of votes that can be cast in a single EVM is 3,840, as stated above.

Similarly, the number of Invalid votes can be reduced by use of EVMs. In India, as various references confirm, the number of invalid votes has been less than 0.02 per cent.

Interestingly, these Indian EVMs had a flaw as a candidate could know how many people from a polling station had voted for him from a particular area. But then, the Indian election commission had stepped forward by introducing the VVPAT.

A November 8, 2013 report of the “Zee News,” After getting the Supreme Court nod, the Election Commission will soon be seeking about Rs2,000 crore from the government for introducing a voter authentication system called Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) before 2014 general elections. The commission will need about 14 lakh VVPAT machines to introduce the system in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies in 2014.”

According to R. Tiwari and C. Herstatt’s book “India: A lead market for frugal innovations? Extending the lead market theory to emerging markets,” each of these machines was costing just Indian Rs8,670 Indian per unit to the election Commission a few years ago.

This book published by the Hamburg University of Technology states that various countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Namibia, Ghana, Bangladesh, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Kenya etc had either purchased the India-manufactured EVMs, or were pondering over to ink Memorandums of Understanding with the Indian Election Commission in this context.

However, numerous foreign media outlets like the “Daily Beast,” “The Irish Times” and the “Huffington Post” etc have reported in recent years that in October 2006, Holland had banned all Electronic Voting Machines (with or without paper print-out).

Problems in ensuring secrecy of ballot and the risk of electronic eavesdropping were cited as the reasons behind this Dutch move.

In March 2009, Germany had dubbed these devices unreliable and the country’s Supreme Court had termed their use “unconstitutional.”

Ireland had followed suit by banning these devices in April 2009.

But there are chances that with the recent Indian experiment of using the VVPAT system with Electronic Voting Machines, many more countries would be interested to learn from the experiences of the world’s largest democracy and who knows—the European nations banning the use of these devices may have to reverse their decisions after the flaws have been removed!

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Devyani Khobragade row: Washington's inexplicable interest in the Richards family -- Sandhya Jain

December 19, 2013, 1:32 am
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Sangeeta Richard, who has complained against Devyani Khobragade, with her husband Philip in this January 2010 photograph. (Express Photo) Devyani Khobragade row: More to it than meets the eye

Sandhya Jain

19 Dec 2013

Devyani Khobragade, the diplomat who was publicly handcuffed, arrested and subjected to indecent body searches and locked up with lumpen drug addicts and other convicts prior to receiving bail last week, could have inadvertently compromised Indian security by harbouring a mole in her domestic establishment. A top strategic expert, who wished to remain unnamed, says it is important that India understand how Khobragade engaged Sangeeta Richards, the nanny-cum-housekeeper behind the trouble, and took her to America.
That there is a larger conspiracy behind the episode is evident from the fact that on December 10, two days before the diplomat’s arrest (December 12), Sangeeta Richards’s husband, Philip, and two children quietly flew to America by an Air India flight. Somebody in Washington had helped them procure visas, a highly unusual development, since the Indian Government had revoked Sangeeta Richards’s official passport in July and asked for her to be deported to India. Usually such a dramatic evacuation is done only to protect US spies; hence it is important to investigate the Richard family, its associations, and bank accounts.
The Richard family seems well networked with the diplomatic community. Sangeeta’s father-in-law reportedly works in the American embassy in Delhi; her mother-in-law is said to have worked for a senior US diplomat; her husband, Philip, was a driver with the Mozambique embassy. Philip was granted a T-visa, which allows victims of human trafficking and immediate family members to remain and work temporarily in the United States if they agree to assist law enforcement in testifying against the perpetrators. This suggests a larger conspiracy.
Sangeeta Richard arrived in the US in November 2012 to work as a domestic help for India’s deputy consul general in New York. She allegedly wanted to do extra work outside on her off days, but was told it was illegal under her visa status and because she had an official passport. But on June 23, she simply walked out, and two weeks later turned up at an immigration attorney’s firm in Manhattan, New York, alleging that she was overworked and underpaid. She had clearly rustled up some powerful support, or was known to the US authorities all along, given the employment profile of her marital family.
The MEA has since revealed that on July 1, Devyani Khobragade received a telephone call from an unidentified woman who said Richards would not go to court if her employment was terminated and she was paid for 19 hours of work per day. On July 2, the diplomat informed the Office of Foreign Missions and the New York Police Department about the call, in writing. But on July 8, she was called by the immigration lawyer’s office and asked to pay $10,000, convert Sangeeta Richards’s passport into an ordinary one and help her get a visa to stay on in America.
Alarmed at this development, the Indian Government revoked Richards’s official passport, which made her status illegal in the US, and asked the State Department to locate and send her back to India. The request was repeated in September; the same month, the Delhi High Court issued an interim injunction restraining Richards from instituting any action or proceeding against Khobragade outside India regarding her employment and to settle all disputes in India as both women worked for the Government of India. The Indian mission informed the US authorities that as the maid was seeking a US visa, she was violating laws in both countries. On November 21, the Saket district court issued a non-bailable warrant for Sangeeta Richards, and India asked the US to help serve the warrant and repatriate the maid.
The MEA clearly erred in not issuing an immigration alert for Richards’s husband and children once the State Department proved so uncooperative, and since Philip Richards initially filed a missing persons report about his wife but later withdrew it. The authorities took six days after Khobragade’s arrest to realise that the family had flown the coop.
With hindsight, it seems that Richards’s walkout was part of a plan in concert with American authorities; the luckless Indian diplomat seems collateral damage. New Delhi must figure out the US game plan and enlighten the nation. Sangeeta Richards has received US hospitality for six months and now her family has surreptitiously been taken to settle in America. This makes a mockery of the US claim that Khobragade was arrested because she was not paying her staff according to the hourly minimum wage in America.
The Sangeeta Richards episode brings to mind the 2004 affair of Army Major and CIA mole, Rabinder Singh, who was serving as a joint secretary in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW), when he escaped to the United States with his wife after causing untold damage to India’s national interests and security. Former R&AW special secretary and head of the counter-intelligence unit, Amar Bhushan, uncovered the scandal in his book, Escape to Nowhere. It seems Indian intelligence was aware of Singh’s betrayal and was monitoring him closely for three months when he suspected that he had been unmasked and escaped via Kathmandu with the help of the CIA station chief there.
The lesson which India never learnt is that the US compulsorily retired the Kathmandu station head to punish him for failing to evacuate Singh covertly and exposing CIA’s hand in the episode. But in India, the 57 employees of R&AW who regularly shared information with Singh remained in the organisation; 26 were not even asked for an explanation and 31 who had shared operational details with him were posted abroad.
After Dr Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister, the CIA tried to infiltrate the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office. Some NSCS staffers were suspected of having clandestine links with an unnamed lady CIA officer posted as a diplomat in the US embassy in Delhi. Her task was to liaise with concerned Government departments in connection with the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum set up when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was Prime Minister. She reportedly used this opportunity to allegedly recruit moles in the NSCS, which coordinates the work of the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum.
Previously also, the Indian intelligence community has been suborned by the CIA at middle and senior levels. Just eight months after Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1984, India’s biggest and most serious spy scandal broke, resulting in the arrest of 15 officials, including TN Kher, personal assistant to Principal Secretary PC Alexander. The scandal involved thousands of top secret documents and code books being photocopied and faxed from the PMO itself. Alexander resigned on ‘moral grounds’.
Then, the head of the R&AW office in Chennai, an IPS officer in the rank of director, was found to have clandestine contacts with a CIA officer posted in the US consulate there. Tipped off by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), R&AW immediately detained and interrogated him for one year at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail, but he was not prosecuted.
In the 1990s, when PV Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister, a very senior IPS officer serving in the IB was suspected to be working for Heidi August, a CIA officer posted as a diplomat at the US embassy in Delhi. He was exposed when a junior IB officer accidentally discovered that Heidi August had a mobile phone registered in the senior officer’s name. The officer was sent on premature retirement after the IB and R&AW confirmed his treason.
This brings us back to Devyani Khobragade, who has been unjustly accused of underpaying an employee who is possibly an ‘asset’ of a foreign agency. The Indian Government, which failed to retaliate when former President APJ Abdul Kalam was double frisked at an American airport, former Defence Minister George Fernandes was strip searched, and attempts were made to humiliate diplomat Hardeep Puri, must ensure that Washington release the diplomat unconditionally and with full apology, and explain its inexplicable interest in the Richards family.
The initial Indian reaction to the arrest – snub to a visiting Congress delegation; revocation of diplomatic IDs to US consul staff and their families; withdrawal of airport passes and import clearances; removal of security barricades around the American Embassy on Shanti Path; and demand for information about wages paid to Indians employed by the US mission and by individual diplomats in India – is inadequate given the enormity of the provocation.
The Government of India, backed as it is by the entire nation, must respond in a more muscular fashion, commensurate to the offence in which the US Government has knowingly helped Sangeeta Richards commit an immigration fraud and evade Indian justice. In these circumstances, Secretary of State John Kerry’s telephonic apology to National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon is a meaningless diplomatic nicety since the US is standing by the arrest. Worse, the US marshal service seems to have flouted its own rules by subjecting the diplomat to intrusive strip and cavity searches, when these can be done only if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person arrested is carrying contraband or weapons, is a repeat offender or is considered a security, escape or suicide risk. None of these conditions apply to Devyani Khobragade.

http://www.niticentral.com/2013/12/19/more-to-devyani-khobragade-controversy-than-meets-the-eye-170273.html
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Devyani and Adarsh scam -- Ivor Soans

December 19, 2013, 2:37 am
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How about some outrage over Devyani and the Adarsh scam?

by Ivor Soans 17 mins ago  Dec 19, 2013 3:58 PM

Now that temperatures over the Devyani Khobragade arrest in the United States are cooling down, perhaps it's time to take a more measured look at the entire affair and look at the larger controversy that Devyani is involved in, or at least the one that more common Indians would be interested in, given the widespread frustration with corruption.

The US has made soothing noises about what happened in New York, even while it strongly holds to its position that Khobragade violated US law and US Attorney and prosecutor Preet Bharara seemingly terming Devyani a liar by claiming she wasn't handcuffed or restrained and was accorded courtesies well beyond what other defendants are accorded, which extended to use of her phone.
]Devyani Khobragade. Devyani Khobragade.
While a strip search seems way too excessive, the Indian government and various political parties have been all sound and fury on Devyani's US arrest, with some like Yashwant Sinha even saying partners of gay American diplomats should be arrested as homosexuality is a crime in India, perhaps not realising that this would put India in the august company of the most repressive regimes in the world as also the infamous Taliban. However, as a columnist points out in a measured article on the question of diplomatic immunity in DNA, the fact is the Indian government is yet to deny the fraudulent visa application for which Khobragade has been charged. The columnist goes on to add that the US would be well within its rights to declare Devyani persona non grata.

So, even as it's clear that there are two sides to every coin, how about looking at Devyani Khobragade and the infamous Adarsh scam that rocked India a few years ago and which is again in the news thanks to the Maharashtra government seemingly trying its very best to avoid tabling the Adarsh Commission Report in the legislative assembly and thus making it public? Added to this is the fact that the Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan has refused to allow the CBI the mandatory go-ahead for prosecution of former chief minister Ashok Chavan who lost his job in the wake of the Adarsh scam. This decision seems suspicious, given that CBI sources told The Times of India they had strong evidence against Chavan and they had made an extensive presentation to the Maharashtra governor to back up their request for sanction to prosecute Chavan.

Adarsh leapt to the national limelight in 2010 when the co-operative housing society built on allegedly defence land and supposedly for Kargil war videos and defence personnel, was found to have flats owned by politicians and their relatives as well as relatives of bureaucrats, clearly pointing to a land grab at one of Mumbai's most lucrative locations.

Devyani Khobragade owns a flat in the infamous Adarsh. Her father Uttam Khobragade was one of the bureaucrats who allegedly misused their positions to help Adarsh. It was during his tenure as general manager of BEST, the civic-owned bus and electricity utility in Mumbai, that the Adarsh Society got additional building rights from an adjacent BEST bus depot. This allowed the society promoters to increase the original plan of six floors to a massive 31 floors. While the Khobragades may want us to believe this is mere coincidence, only other bureaucrats and politicians caught with their hands in the Adarsh till may take such a claim at face value.

That's not all when it comes to Devyani's real estate holdings in Mumbai. When she got the Adarsh flat, she already owned a flat in another government housing society in Oshiwara, which too was allotted under the state government's 10 per cent quota where recipients get flats at extremely cheap rates as compared to Mumbai's stratospheric market prices, and which is another fount of corruption in Mumbai, with most flats cornered by politicians and their relatives, and of course bureaucrats and their relatives, and those connected to their powers that be, making a mockery of the 10 percent quota supposedly for helping citizens who need it most. As the Economic Times reports, a massive 42 percent of such flats allocated in the past 10 years were resold by allottees at much higher prices, making a killing in the bargain at the expense of the taxpayer and the common Indian. Things have become so bad with the 10 percent quota that the Bombay High Court recently warned the Maharashtra government of contempt if it continued to stonewall requests to name double and multiple allottees of such flats.

In Devyani's case, what makes the issue even murkier is the guideline which states that no one can get flats in two housing societies which get land on concessional rates and they have to give an affidavit to this effect. However, when Uttam Khobragade was asked about this violation and material non-disclosure of facts on the part of Devyani by the Adarsh Commission, he said that it was not his duty to inform the Adarsh Co-operative society that Devyani had also been allotted a flat in Oshiwara under the 10 percent quota. However, does this mean that Devyani has submitted a fraudulent affidavit at Adarsh to get the Adarsh flat? This is a question that needs to be answered and paper trail can easily prove this.

Meanwhile, leave alone Devyani and her possible aspirations to become a Mumbai real estate mogul, the Maharashtra government is trying its very best to push the 31-storey Adarsh jack back into its box even when it's clear that the judiciary and the opposition in the state is in no mood to let this come to pass.

In a shocking flip-flop that might be funny if it were not for the fact that the government has spent Rs 7 crore on the Commission enquiring into the scam and the many more crores may be lost in illegal gains sought to be made by beneficiaries of Adarsh, the Maharashtra government first told the Bombay High Court it would table the Adarsh Commission report as required in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and then backtracked by claiming it was only a verbal promise.

When the Bombay High Court was not amused with the contortions being performed by the government and this was belatedly realised by the state, a new promise was made that the report would be tabled in the winter session of the Maharashtra assembly that ends on 20 December.
So, more worms will likely come out of the woodwork when the report is tabled and while Devyani Khobragade's New York arrest and the resulting fracas may be close to being pushed under the carpet as saner heads take over in Washington and New Delhi, the last has not been heard on Devyani Khobragade's Adarsh controversy that includes not just her but many powerful politicians and bureaucrats and is definitely the controversy the common Indian would be more interested in getting to the bottom of.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/how-about-some-outrage-over-devyani-and-the-adarsh-controversy-1296429.html?utm_source=ref_article

http://mea.gov.in/Portal/IRPDocuments/626_2012_Immovable_Property_.pdf 

Statement of immovable property returns for the year ending 31.12.2012 Name of officer: Dr. Devyani Uttam Khobragade, IFS 1999, Dy. Consul General, CGI, New York. Present salary Rs. 50,350/ (including grade pay) -- 11 items listed. Statement signed dated 28.2.2013 (Item 10 valued at Rs. 90 lakhs refers to Adarsh flat)

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Devyani Khobragade row: MEA response to Manhattan US Attorney's statement

December 19, 2013, 6:37 am
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Official Spokesperson's response on the statement issued by Manhattan US Attorney on December 18

December 19, 2013
In response to a question on the statement issued by Manhattan US Attorney on December 18, the Official Spokesperson said:
"We have seen the statement issued by the Manhattan US Attorney on December 18.

We need to keep in mind the simple fact that there is only one victim in this case. That victim is Devyani Khobragade - a serving Indian Diplomat on mission in the United States.

The action taken against her was not in keeping with the Vienna Convention. There were no courtesies in the treatment that was meted out to the diplomat, under the normal definition of that word in the English language.

The statement includes remarks about equality before the law of both the rich and the poor. Not only is this a rhetorical remark that is not conducive to resolving "inaccuracies", it is also not a feature of the law that is exclusive to the office of the Manhattan US Attorney.

The statement in question acknowledges that legal processes were in place in India. Yet, incredibly, it invites speculation about why it was necessary to evacuate the family of Ms Richards and about the action purportedly being taken against them. The implication of this remarkable admission needs to be considered very carefully with regard to the implicit comment it makes about the Indian legal system, Indian law enforcement authorities, and the responsibility that legal officials of a foreign government seem to arrogate upon themselves with regard to the nationals of another country. It needs to be asked what right a foreign government has to "evacuate" Indian citizens from India while cases are pending against them in the Indian legal system.

The statement underlines the compulsion that is felt by the Manhattan US Attorney's office "to make sure that victims, witnesses and their families are safe and secure while cases are pending."

This is precisely why, when there is a prior legal process already underway in India, the Manhattan US Attorney should consider it obligatory to enable justice to take its course in India in the first instance. When the legal process in another friendly and democratic country is interfered with in this manner, it not only amounts to interference but also raises the serious concern of calling into question the very legal system of that country.

This statement is one more attempt at a post facto rationalization for an action that should never have taken place in the first instance."

http://mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm?dtl/22682/Official+Spokespersons+response+a+question+on+the+statement+issued+by+Manhattan+US+Attorney+on+December+18
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Jaya 'qualified' to be PM: AIADMK

December 19, 2013, 5:04 pm
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Chennai Express unveiled: Jaya pitches for PM

India Today Online  Chennai, December 19, 2013 | UPDATED 20:26 IST
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa
AIADMK supremo and Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa made her prime ministerial ambitions clear on Thursday.

At a general meeting of the party in Chennai, it was resolved that there have been PMs from other states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, etc, and this is the time when somebody from Tamil Nadu must lead the country.

Highlighting her party's victorious march to power in the state on many occasions, Jayalalithaa said, "Our party was converted into the St George's Express and has reached St. George Fort (Tamil Nadu secretariat) six times. We had successful journey. Three times under MGR's leadership and thrice under mine. Now the 2014 elections are approaching. We should change ourselves into the Red Fort Express to reach the Red Fort in Delhi."

Hinting at the support from other parties for a possible formation of a Third Front, She said, "People have given us the green signal. I am there to be the engine driver. We would take them safely to reach Delhi."

It is to be noted that Jayalalithaa has said a curt 'no' to the recent overtures of BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and has refused to enter into a pre-poll truck with the party. It has decided to go alone in the Lok Sabha polls. (Must Read: NaMo shouldn't underestimate Amma's southern challenge )

It was also decided in the meeting that the party must strive to win all 40 seats in Tamil Nadu in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and decimate Karunanidhi.

The party leaders envisage a greater role for their supremo at national level and want Jayalalithaa to take up the reins at the Centre to ensure the rights of the Tamils. Even Jayalalithaa has on many occasions said there would be a regime change at the Centre and that she would throw out the anti-people policies of the Congress-led UPA.

At AIADMK's general meeting, partly leaders criticised the Centre's stand on CHOGM and fishermen issue and also for its offer to train Sri Lankan Naval officers while Jayalalithaa was given the power to decide on alliance.

In a style which seemed to have been borrowed from Narendra Modi, she hit out at the weak policies of the Central government. "Not just China but even small countries like Sri Lanka are threatening India. The Centre is perplexed and not able to handle. There is a need a strong leadership to handle economic and other crises. A strong government is needed to put down the other countries," she said.

In the aftermath of the ethnic civil strife in Sri Lanka, Jayalalithaa has claimed to have brought to the Prime Minister's attention the strong sentiments in Tamil Nadu on a range of issues relating to India's relations with the present regime in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly has already passed four resolutions condemning the continuing discrimination against the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka and violation of their human rights.

NaMo shouldn't underestimate Amma's southern challenge

The Logger  December 19, 2013 | UPDATED 20:23 IST
A ruling alliance at the Centre is incomplete without either the DMK or the AIADMK. A study of the coalitions which have formed governments for the past many years would show that.

The DMK was with the UPA in its two successive terms. Before that, the AIADMK was with the NDA when it was in power. In fact, this theory has been so unmistakable that political pundits have followed the state politics closely to be able to predict the outcome of Lok Sabha polls.

A Poster of Jayalalithaa. Reuters


This time they are baffled. The scenario in Tamil Nadu is very different from what it has ever been.

The Congress's ally at the Centre for 10 years, the DMK, has officially declared that it is not going to ally with the Congress. The DMK pulled out of the Centre on March 19, 2013, over the issue of a draft resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council on the alleged human rights' violations of Sri Lankan Tamils. But things had been coming to this end for a long time.

On October 17, 2012, 14 DMK MPs, including Union Ministers TR Baalu and A Raja, were forced to hand in their post-dated resignation letters to the head of the party, following the 2G spectrum scam. Party chief M Karunanidhi was livid with the UPA following the arrest of his daughter Kanimozhi and Raja for their involvement in the scam.

The DMK is also ruling out an alliance with the BJP.

DMK chief M Karunanidhi.


On the other side of the state politics' axis is the AIADMK, which has said a curt 'no' to BJP PM nominee Narendra Modi's overtures for a pre-poll truck. Its supremo Jayalalithaa has her own PM ambitions and one of the resolutions proposed at the AIADMK general meeting in Chennai on Thursday is that there have been PMs from many other states and this time it must be one from Tamil Nadu. She also said later in the day that she will lead the train to the Red Fort.
While her supporters believe she can emerge as a PM candidate in case of the Third Front forming a government at the Centre, former PM Deve Gowda has already backed her claim for prime ministership recently.

The wily Karunanidhi knows the scam-tainted Congress might not get good numbers in the face of a Narendra Modi wave and wants to keep the option of a post-poll alliance open.

Gujarat CM Narendra Modi


Jayalalithaa knows she has very strong poll prospects in the state and wants to dictate terms with whoever needs her support in the post-poll scenario. With an impressive number in the Lok Sabha, she can easily lead a Third Front to government formation.

The southern state has refused to help the tarot readers of politics this time. Who knows if in 2014 it is their turn to chart destiny?
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Crafting in Bronze-Iron Age Europe (EAA, Istanbul 2014)

December 19, 2013, 6:25 pm
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T03S001 Metal in Human History

Names :Ünsal YALCIN,Hayat ERKAANAL, Hadi ÖZBALTitles :Prof. Dr.Prof.Dr,Prof.Dr.
Addresses of their affiliations :German Mining Museum, Anaka University,Ankara, Boğaziçi University,IstanbulContact Email addresses :uensal.yalcin@bergbaumuseum.de
Contact Person:Ünsal YalcinSession Type :Regular
Metal in Human History/Placing the role of metallurgy in the history of civilization Metals, as raw material, are important factors for the development of the human race. Ores are unequally distributed around the world; thus, some civilizations lacked precious materials in their territories and had to import them. The possession of metals and being capable of using them as a trading commodity increased the influence of nations. Metal technology influenced the development of many cultures, symbolized power and led to social disparities among early societies. Metals were used in standardized forms as a medium of exchange. They were imported across far distances and became a status symbol among the elitist societies. On one hand, the importance of metal came from its physical properties; on the other hand, metal was recyclable and thus reusable. The study of metal finds requires close cooperation among different scientific fields. There are questions concerning the art and historical aspects of metal objects, but technologies, the history of the society’s economy, sociology and conservation techniques also have to be considered. For this purpose, the researcher harks back to the methods of science. Thus, in this session different aspects and questions concerning archaeology and archaeometalurgy will be discussed, such as mining, material composition, production, provenance and also trade. For this session special projects and find complexes will be selected https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/sayfa/140
Forwarded from <a.n.brysbaert@arch.leidenuniv.nl>:
==========================================

One of the upcoming session themes that will feature in the programme
of the EAA 2014 in Istanbul, “Ancient technologies in Social Context”,
has repeatedly resulted in widely debated topics, both within its
sessions and far beyond. Built upon one of those discussion sessions
of last year’s meeting in Pilsen (2013) we like to present our session
at Istanbul next year, titled:

 T03S005 Nobility versus artisans II. Crafting during the Bronze and
the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean: the archaeologist's
trowel and brain.

 Organised by Dr. Ann Brysbaert (Leiden University), Dr. Alexis
Gorgues (University of Bordeaux III) and Ms. Beatriz Marín Aguilera
(Complutense University Madrid) we welcome papers from across Europe
and the wider (E and W) Mediterranean that cover the Bronze and Iron
Ages in which crafting is the central theme through which social
issues are discussed. Please find the abstract here below. Interested
contributors can submit abstracts of maximum 200 words by the deadline of January 27, 2014. By February 18, 2014, participants will be informed about the acceptance of their abstract by the EAA Scientific Committee. For more detailed information on important dates, travel, accommodation, and other practical information, please consult the following webpage link:

https://www.eaa2014istanbul.org/site.

Dr. Ann Brysbaert

Senior Marie-Curie Research Fellow (Gerda Henkel M4HUMAN programme)

Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden

Reuvensplaats 3-4

2311 BE Leiden, The Netherlands

T03S005 Nobility versus artisans II. Crafting during the Bronze and
the Iron Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean: the archaeologist's
trowel and brain.

 ABSTRACT:

 Recently, the dichotomy ‘elites-artisans/labour’ with their social
and technical interactions in the context of the so-called hierarchic
societies of the European Bronze and Iron Ages was reconsidered. The
often-stated idea that elites had total control of all craft
production and interaction and thus remained removed from the
technical sphere altogether, have rightly been challenged in view of
re-examining both archaeological and limited textual evidence from
2nd-1st millennium BC Europe. Without wanting to abandon theoretical
models, we emphasize and invite papers on thoroughly contextual-driven
approaches. "Context" here is understood as (1) the
archaeological-stratigraphic context and (2) the sociological context
of the researcher. Choices made and filters used in both affect which
and how finds are found and interpreted. Are our methods,
interpretation frameworks and concepts adapted to context-specific
investigations so that we can pick up the fine nuances between e.g.
domestic versus workshop activities, and are we in positions to
recognise technical transfers and innovative interactions of past
people with each other and their materials during their day-to-day
activities? Papers, reflective of methodological approaches and
choices, and interpretative papers based on contextual analyzes that
allow the rich mosaic of technological activities and social practices
to emerge from their data, are welcome.



_______________________________
Prof. A. Bernard Knapp
Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute
11 Andreas Demetriou
1066 Nicosia, Cyprus
bernard.knapp@glasgow.ac.uk
_________________________
New Cambridge World Archaeology volume: www.cambridge.org/9780521723473

ABK webpage:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/bernardknapp/
TÆSP webpage: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/archaeologyresearch/projects/taesp/
SCSP public webpage:   http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk
Phorades webpage: http://www.scsp.arts.gla.ac.uk/Phorades/
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Bharara: Conspiracy and cover-up on Devyani row. Untold spy story. Gates open: Imran Ahmed Siddiqui

December 19, 2013, 7:06 pm
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Bharara: Conspiracy and cover-up on Devyani row. Untold spy story. Who is the informant? Who is being shielded?
Who kept the doors open for evacuation?

Kalyanaraman


| Friday , December 20 , 2013 |

How India left gates open for ‘evacuation’
- Devyani filed complaint on July 3 but officials waited and did little to plug loopholes

IMRAN AHMED SIDDIQUI
New Delhi, Dec. 19: If America “evacuated” the husband of the nanny from right under the nose of the Indian establishment, an unsuspecting New Delhi appeared to have unwittingly facilitated it by leaving the gates wide open for as long as three months.

Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat who was arrested in New York, had sent a complaint against housekeeper Sangeeta Richard and her husband Philip to Delhi police on July 3 this year. Two days earlier, the same mail had been sent to the external affairs ministry, too.

But, for some reason, Delhi police registered the first information report only in October. The long delay suggests Indian officials reposed unquestioning faith in the Americans or did not take the complaint seriously — suspicions that are strengthened by the fact that Philip was not arrested even two months after the FIR had been registered.

Which meant Philip, accused of being a co-conspirator in an extortion bid, could be “evacuated” without any daredevil operation by the Americans. He applied for a visa, they issued it and he flew out with the couple’s two children on December 10, unchallenged by the hawk-eyed Indian immigration.

On July 3, Devyani had lodged a complaint with Delhi police against Sangeeta and Philip for cheating and hatching a conspiracy “to procure Indian passport and enter the USA to work as freelance servant and earn huge money”.

The diplomat had also sent a draft of the complaint to the ministry of external affairs in Delhi on July 1, a little over a week after the maid disappeared from her official residence.

“I am sending an FIR against Sangeeta Richard and Philip Richard… for fraud, wilful deceit, harassment and extortion,” said the opening line of Devyani’s mail to Delhi police.

But the FIR was registered only on October 9 at Fatehpur Beri police station in south Delhi. The FIR was registered under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), 387 (an extortion-related charge) and cheating (420) against the couple.

“Had the police acted promptly on the basis of Khobragade’s complaint, he would have been behind bars,” said an IPS officer.

In her email complaint to then police commissioner Neeraj Kumar, Devyani said Sangeeta and Philip, both residents of 45/S 1, Sultanpur Colony in Mehrauli in south Delhi, cheated her. The mail lists an accusation of making an attempt to “earn huge money” but does not elaborate on the extortion demand mentioned in the opening sentence.

Indian officials had yesterday said that a demand for $10,000 (Rs 6 lakh) was made when Devyani met Sangeeta at a Manhattan attorney’s office on July 8 — five days after the email was sent to the police. It is not known if Delhi police were later updated on the fresh allegation.

Asked about the FIR delay, senior Delhi police officers said they were asked to “go slow” in the case by officials of the foreign ministry.

The ministry officials attributed the delay to “ongoing negotiations” between Devyani and Sangeeta. “The police were told to register an FIR in the case after the negotiations failed in September,” said a senior official of the foreign ministry.

But the official did not explain why the police did not arrest Philip even after the FIR was registered on October 9. A Delhi court had issued an arrest warrant against Sangeeta in November. Yet, neither the police nor other agencies kept track of her husband.

In September, the diplomat had moved Delhi High Court, which passed an injunction barring Sangeeta from filing any criminal or civil charges outside India. Some police officers said the guarantee might also have made the ministry complacent.

M.V. Kini, counsel for Devyani, said: “Given the way police work in our country, it is not surprising that the cops took three months to act on the complaint and lodge an FIR.”

In the complaint, Devyani said that on August 17, 2012, she was posted in New York and was looking for a domestic help to take care of her household. “Both accused approached me stating that they are not having jobs and need money for children’s education,” according to the email to the police.

In the complaint, Sangeeta is mentioned as Accused No. 1 and Philip as Accused No. 2.

The complaint said Sangeeta told Devyani to take her to New York as household assistant for a monthly salary of Rs 30,000 and free accommodation and food.

On this promise, Sangeeta was given an official passport. “Both the accused were fully aware about the official passport and that it is the property of Government of India and she can hold it as long as she works with her as domestic help,” the letter said.

Sangeeta was provided an air ticket by the government because of her status as domestic assistant. “She was in charge of kitchen, baby-sitting and other domestic work from her landing at New York,” the letter said.

In mid-March 2013, Sangeeta asked Devyani whether she could work outside on her off-days, to which the diplomat told the nanny that her position as a domestic assistant on official passport with dependent visa did not entitle her to such work, according to the complaint.

“On June 18, Sangeeta went to Devyani’s office at the consulate-general of India for the first time and said that that she felt overburdened by work at home and would feel happy to stay and work outside her employer’s house from 7pm to 7am,” the complainant said.

Devyani again explained to Sangeeta that her well-being and conduct during stay in New York was the diplomat’s responsibility and she could not allow her to work outside. On June 21, the complainant went to New Jersey for the weekend.

When she returned on June 23, Sangeeta was not at home. “As every Sunday, Sangeeta used to go to church and meet friends at beauty parlour, Devyani treated her absence as routine…,” the complaint said.

However, when she did not return on Sunday night, Devyani tried calling Sangeeta over phone but there was no response.

On enquiry, Devyani’s husband told her that Sangeeta had left the house on June 21 afternoon, saying she was stepping out for shopping.

The diplomat called Sangeeta’s husband on June 24. Philip said he was not aware of the whereabouts of his wife. Thereafter, she checked Sangeeta’s room and found that she had left with most of her belongings and the passport.

Devyani then requested Philip to send a missing person complaint by email so that a case could be registered with the local police in New York. Philip refused to do so, the complaint said.

“After repeated requests, Philip confirmed to the complainant that his wife contacted him on June 28 but he did not give the phone number. It is evident from the conduct of both accused that they made a false promise to work as domestic assistant just to procure official passport and enter the USA by misusing position as domestic assistant and thereafter to work as freelance servant and earn huge money,” the letter said.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1131220/jsp/frontpage/story_17701442.jsp#.UrO0idIW02c

Published on Dec 19, 2013
Devyani the only victim in this case India rebuts Bharara
Responding strongly to Preet Bharara, the US federal prosecutor whose decision to charge highly ranked diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York last week created a storm in India, the government said that the 39-year-old diplomat is the only victim in this case.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devyani_Khobragade_incident

Diplomat's arrest: US distances itself from Preet Bharara's comments; India wants apology, case dropped

TNN | Dec 20, 2013, 01.59 AM IST



NEW DELHI: The American "regret", conveyed on Wednesday night by US secretary of state John Kerry, has left India unimpressed. New Delhi on Thursday clarified that it has two demands - that the case against Khobragade be dropped and that the US tender an apology for the diplomat's humiliation.

This nudged Washington to follow up Kerry's call with more overtures. Late on Thursday evening, US under secretary of state for political affairs Wendy Sherman called up foreign secretary Sujatha Singh to convey that the US government does not share US attorney Preet Bharara's views on this case. She also offered a consular dialogue between India and US to resolve the problems of domestic staff and immunity issues.

Sherman indicated that Khobragade would get her new diplomatic ID card from the State Department. Khobragade applied for her UN accreditation on Thursday and expects to get it in a day, following which she will apply to State Department for her US ID card. Indians are now confident she will get it within days, which will grant her full diplomatic immunity.

That will also enable her to retrieve her passport and India could bring her back or post her elsewhere. For the longer term, India has asked the US for full diplomatic immunity to be extended to all consular officials of both countries. At present, Indian officials in consulates don't enjoy immunity, while after India's retaliatory steps, US officials have been denied theirs.

India is also keen that the US makes necessary amends to bring back bilateral ties on an even keel. While demanding that the Khobragade case be dropped, foreign minister Salman Khurshid also said, "Our relationship has a lot of investment, it is an irreversible matter and we have to deal with it sensibly."

Khurshid said the only logical step the US can take at this point is to drop the case against Khobragade. "The case does not deserve to be pursued," he told journalists. Earlier, minister for parliamentary affairs Kamal Nath said that India was expecting an apology from the US.

Although John Kerry tried the healing touch by expressing regret over the treatment in a phone call to India's National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon, New Delhi indicated it was not enough. In fact, India snubbed Kerry by not making available his counterpart, Salman Khurshid, and said nothing short of an outright apology would suffice.

The White House too stepped into the picture after President Obama was briefed about the spat. The President's spokesman Jay Carney repeated the State Department brief about understanding "that this is a sensitive issue for many in India, and we are looking into the intake procedures surrounding this arrest," but a more sincere expression of unqualified regret and contrition were absent.

On not taking Kerry's call, Khurshid said, "I was not available when John Kerry called. We are trying to lock a time for a call this evening or may be tomorrow. Kerry is in the Philippines and there is a huge time difference." He added he was "looking forward" to the conversation.

The window of opportunity for both countries is actually until the indictment hearing on the case which is scheduled for early January. The Indian priority is to retrieve Khobragade's diplomatic passport so she can be brought back to India. Khobragade had to submit her passport to the court and furnish a $250,000 bond, signed by other diplomatic colleagues, also unprecedented.

Sources said the US could utilize the transfer of Khobragade to the UN mission as a way to restore full diplomatic immunity and tell Bharara's office that the case does not hold and be allowed to lapse. Since India has not contested the fact that there was a discrepancy in the statements made by Khobragade for the visas, it is possible the Indian government could use this to get Khobragade out of the US.

The maid, Sangeeta Richard could continue to file another case against Khobragade at another court. Even if the State Department agrees to a change in Khobragade's immunity status, she would continue to be dogged by court summons.

Indians point to two instances. In the first, Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor in Lahore who had been arrested for murder was declared to have full diplomatic immunity by no less than US president Barack Obama. Lahore is a consular post, and by US law Davis was not eligible for immunity.

The second is a more recent case. A group of Russian diplomats targeted by Preet Bharara's office for social security fraud were not arrested at the last minute, because the State Department stepped in and told Bharara's office that all of them enjoyed full diplomatic immunity, even though many of the diplomats were nowhere as senior as Khobragade.

In recent times, former ISI chief Shuja Pasha was also declared to have full immunity, even though he was listed as an accused in a 26/11 case in a New York court. Sources said it happened because Pakistan threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation. India and US are yet to get to that stage.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Diplomats-arrest-US-distances-itself-from-Preet-Bhararas-comments-India-wants-apology-case-dropped/articleshow/27666819.cms
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Khobragade affair: Moth-eaten zamindari structure that we label as the Indian republic -- Jay Bhattacharjee

December 19, 2013, 9:49 pm
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Khobragade affair: Shadow boxing and charades all around

By Jay Bhattacharjee on19 Dec 2013

Khobragade affair: Shadow boxing and charades all around
Given the Maharashtrian flavour of the entire affair, it would be more appropriate, one supposes, if we were to label the current charade playing out in New York and Raisina Hill as a tamasha. However, I can vouchsafe from my childhood memories of watching tamasha performances in the typically Marathi parts of Bombay like Dadar or Parel, where our family friends would invite my parents, that the overall cocktail of boisterous humour and suggestive songs had much more dignity than the burlesque that we are seeing in the capital in the last few days.
Bearing in mind the other key element in the desi polity, one cannot but feel that it is also appropriate to view the recent events in Delhi through the Italian prism of the Commedia dell’arte, the theatre form which was founded entirely on the notion of extravagant emotions, however contrived they may be in reality. The principal characters in these shows were servants and masters and this is clearly reminiscent of the present situation in our hapless country.
To get back to the current shindigs, the following are the uncontested facts:
(1) An IFS officer of the 1999 batch, Devyani Khobragade (39), posted in the Indian Consulate General in New York, was arrested by US Marshals on charges of committing Federal offences.
(2) These offences relate to her allegedly filing false visa applications of her maid who was in her personal employment in New York. She was also accused of paying the maid a salary much lower than the statutory minimum level prescribed under US laws.
(3) The charges were levelled by Preet Bharara, the U.S. District Attorney for Manhattan, New York. Bharara, an Indian-origin American, is a Harvard law school graduate, and has successfully prosecuted many high-profile white- collar criminals, including Bernie Madoff, who carried on a billion-dollar scam for many years, and Rajat Gupta, a great favourite of the Delhi power circuit for decades. Therefore, any loose talk of American racism, in this instance, goes out of the window.
(4) As an Indian diplomat posted in the New York consulate, Khobragade is not covered by the Vienna Convention for Diplomatic officials, which provides complete immunity to diplomats of one country posted in another. The young lady falls under the purview of the Vienna Convention for Consular staff, where the immunity is much more restricted. Only acts done in pursuance of official duties and functions are protected under this treaty. There is definitely no immunity in the case of offences that Khobragade has been charged with.
Unfortunately, the desi pundits who have been pontificating on the idiot box, and also in Parliament and in the print media, are blissfully unaware of this major distinction between these two international treaties. It is also possible that they are aware of the legal scenario but are playing their usual games. In any case, they look like a bunch of demented Don Quixotes charging at imaginary targets.
(5) The young lady was arrested in front of her daughter’s school and then handcuffed before being taken to the local version of the lock-up. Inside the police precincts, she was strip-searched and subjected to other “indignities” according to her complaint to the Foreign Ministry in Delhi.
Now, we should remember (and this is hard to believe) that in one major area of criminal law and justice, we are actually ahead of the Americans. Our Supreme Court, very wisely and humanely, banned the use of handcuffs on accused persons, unless there is a definite security threat and very serious offences are involved.
The American criminal justice system, on the other hand, is much more robust and crude in these matters. Handcuffing of accused persons is routine and legal ; there is no distinction of major and minor crimes in Uncle Sam’s land. There is also the nauseating practice of a “perpetrator walk”, where the accused is made to march, handcuffed and all, in front of the public at the scene of the crime. Readers will remember that the former IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was made to go through this humiliating procedure on a number of occasions. And it must be pointed out the French government, including the Quai d’Orsay, the French Foreign Ministry, did not drive themselves into a frenzy on that issue.
Diplomat row: Politicians slam John Kerry, say mere regret won’t work
As far as the other indignities suffered by her are concerned, the Americans have categorically stated that she only went though routine procedures that all arrested persons in that country are subjected to. In any case, the Indian government, not to mention great votaries of human rights like Mulayam Singh, should be reminded that we recently had a case of a convicted prisoner in UP’s Dasna jail who was branded on his back with a hot iron and one did not hear a whimper from the desi political establishment to condemn this horrendous brutality. More on this later.
However, what one should mention here at this stage itself is that the Americans are very egalitarian and class-neutral when it comes to their criminals or those who are accused but not convicted. Getting privileges like the ones our upper echelons obtain in the justice delivery system at the drop a hat are impossible. There would not be the ghost of a chance for an American counterpart of Sanjay Dutt to repeatedly get parole after being convicted of terrorism-related offences.
This entire episode brings out the glaring differences between the world’s oldest Republic and a moth-eaten zamindari structure that we label as the Indian republic. I will now come to the role that has been played by the Indian bureaucracy in this complete non-event that is now being touted as a major human rights issue.
The IFS, among all the national services, is definitely the cosiest and most convenient life-time employment opportunity that this hapless country and its equally exploited tax-payers can offer. I can confidently state that every IFS officer rises to the rank of Ambassador by the time she or he reaches retirement. Never mind that His Excellency or Her Excellency is our “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary” in Burkina-Faso or Somalia. This extraordinary upward mobility has distinct post-retirement advantages – all these retired flunkeys flaunt the title of “Ambassador” before their names and pirouette around in Delhi’s salon circles and talking shops. I have had to remind some of these characters that the only persons who are legally allowed to retain their ranks after retirement are members of the armed forces. I regret to say that these fellows don’t show the slightest dismay when their absurd self-aggrandisement is exposed. I have nightmares of other babus emulating the IFS lot and going around with titles like “Deputy Secretary” or “Under Secretary (Special Grade)” appended before their names.
But we digress. It is the character of the service that I was analysing. Whether it is the IFS A cadre (those who made it in the initial examination) or the IFS B cadre (referred to disdainfully by the former as “promotees”, an Indian-English word that is jarring and obnoxious), the entire bunch is usually out to lunch. You get the gist. It is only the good life in foreign lands at the taxpayer’s expense that this lot cares about. The result is that we have a bunch of under-performing and overpaid babus whose professed task is to represent our country’s interests but who do nothing of the sort. There are honourable exceptions, of course. It would violate the laws of probability if this had not been the case. But, here again, we should allow the figures to guide us.
How many of us during our travels in foreign lands have had occasion to seek the assistance of our diplomats for whatever problems or difficulties we have faced ? If we have had to go through this experience, without the benefit of the presence of someone we knew or were referred to, I would wager my last rupee that we have would have emerged sadder and wiser. Because, just inside the door from the main entrance where the tricolour proudly flies, is the stench of Indian babudom. From the top to the bottom, in every Indian diplomatic mission, all the talk you can hear is about the techniques of maximisation of personal benefits and privileges. Now, in Raisina Hill, this is par for the course and creates few ripples. In the great wide world outside our shores, these people are always under stringent scrutiny not only by their host country but also by the international community. And they care a fig.
To take young Khobragade’s case, she has already proved she has a tainted legal record. By applying for a flat in Mumbai’s “Aadarsh” complex and getting the flat allotted, she has, prima facie, committed an offence, because she was neither a military person nor a dependant of a military person. The crime would be more serious, if she had another residential property in the city, which has also been alleged. Clearly, a person like this is quite capable of signing papers showing a monthly salary of $4500 to her maid but actually paying her some $540 or so. She presumably thought that the American State Department was like the Maharashtra Registrar of Cooperatives and would just forget about the little discrepancy. Moreover, in New York, she did not have the benefit of her dear father’s protection and assistance.
This brings me to the crux of the whole issue. Did the great Bharat Sarkar react with any palpable indignation when Indian soldiers were murdered on the LOC and decapitated ? Did we have a squeak of protest from the Prime Minister who is now going ballistic? When Sarabjit Singh, the brave Indian prisoner, was murdered in a Pakistani jail, did we see the GOI reducing security around the Pakistani Embassy ? Or Shiv Shankar Menon harrumphing on the media ?
No, we did not. This is because the interests of the babus were not affected and the government had not been trounced in a series of state elections. The current high-voltage actions by Raisina Hill are nothing but bad drama. Yes, there are many things about the U.S. Government and about the great USA that we need to protest about. But this is not one of those issues or occasions. What we are now seeing is appalling theatre and shadow-boxing.

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Preet Bharara sours India-US ties -- MD Nalapat. Have SoniaG, MMS learnt that India is no ally of choice for USA?

December 20, 2013, 2:13 am
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Preet Bharara sours India-US ties

Geopolitical notes from India
M D Nalapat
Friday, December 20, 2013 - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh makes no secret of the fact that he works under the guidance of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who despite her primary school education has managed to establish absolute control over the party and the government. Her foreign policy has been completely different from that of mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, who sought to retain independence in action for her country. Prime Minister Singh himself has what in India is called a World Bank (and since Kofi Annan era, the UN) mindset, which looks with exaggerated awe towards Washington, and bends over backwards, forwards and sideways in order to avoid offending what is both world’s biggest economy as well as the country holding the most people in prison, even more than China, a country with four times the US population. 

The Prime Minister shares with Sonia Gandhi an eagerness to visit the US and its NATO allies at every opportunity, despite the fact that such trips have not resulted in any concessions to India from any of these countries. On the contrary, there have been numerous concessions made by India to the NATO bloc economies, especially since 2004,the year when the Sonia-Manmohan took charge Those who behave in a servile fashion are treated as servants, and it therefore ought to have occasioned no surprise that Washington humiliated Delhi a few days ago by sanctioning the arrest by a New York prosecutor, Preet Bharara, of Deputy Consul-General Devyani Khobragade, a brilliant young lady officer with an impeccable record of service to the country.

There have been reports, all unconfirmed, that Bharara’s relatives include several who - allegedly - backed the 1980s and 1990s movement for an independent Khalistan out of parts of the Punjab State. Several US,UK and Canadian citizens made huge donations to “Khalistan Liberation Movement”, which entered upon more than a decade of insurgency in India,in which several hundred people lost their lives.

However, those close to Bharara say that the charge that he has a Khalistan connection is false, and that he is “100% American”, with no interest in politics except within the US. It is a fact that the youthful attorney has made a name for himself by going after powerful names in the finance industry, sending them to jail on the basis of painstaking investigation of wrongdoing. To allega a Khalistan angle to his arrest of the Indian diplomat may therefore do an injustice to a zealous crime fighter, unless clear evidence is brought of a Khalistan link. However,there is no doubt that neither Bharara nor those in the State Department who gave permission for the arrest of the Deputy Consul-General of India in New York had any qualms in humiliating not only the diplomat but her country.

That they felt emboldened to do so reflects the fact that since 1998,the year when Atal Behari Vajpayee took over as Prime Minister of the National Democratic Alliance government, the Government of India, whether led by the BJP or by the Congress Party, has sought to forge an implicit alliance with Washington the way Delhi had with Moscow for decades, until the USSR itself collapsed in 1992. Indeed, the first serious effort at a US-India alliance was during the aftermath of the 1962 war with China, when a chastened Jawaharlal Nehru sent several supplicatory messages to President John F Kennedy. Had the latter not died in 1963, such a partnership may indeed have taken place, with Kennedy going beyond the State Department line that India must first “settle” Kashmir with Pakistan before close cooperation took place.

However, his successor Lyndon Johnson had very little regard for India, and the opportunity was missed, just as it was in 1992-96,when President Bill Clinton once again insisted on the “solving of the Kashmir issue” before accepting Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao’s outstretched hand of friendship. The third chance came and went in 2001,after President Bush and Vice-President Cheney heeded the advice of the Saudis and the CIA and chose Pakistan over India as the ally of choice for the war against the Taliban, after India had indicated its readiness to join the battle. By far the best chance came in 2004,when Manmohan Singh took over as the Prime Minister, determined to craft a new partnership between India and the NATO bloc.

While George W Bush and Condoleezza Rice were broadly sympathetic to the concept of an India-US alliance, they could not persuade sceptics such as the State and Commerce Department to go long. The result was that all the deals on offer were 95:5, with the US side asking for 95% and leaving the Indian side with just 5% of the total concessions made. The mistake made both by the Bush White House as well as by President Obama was to ignore the role of public opinion in a democracy. They saw that Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi were eager for any deal, even a 95:5 split, and could not understand why the two who jointly ran the Government of India could not deliver their country to Washington. Public opinion in India, although filled with invective about Yankee perfidy, is in reality very pro-American, and even an 80:20 deal may have passed the public opinion test, but the most Obama has been prepared to go has been 90:10. Hence, once again, a US administration has squandered an opportunity to convert India into as reliable an ally of the US as it has been in the past for Moscow. The Khobragade episode has shown the Obama administration the limits of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in seeking to accomodate the US.

The manner of her arrest has touched once again what may be described as “colonial nerve” in India, bringing out a bubbling lava of discontent at shabby treatment given to the lady diplomat. Preet Bharara may not have ever been a supporter of the Khalistan movement, but by his action in indicting Devyani Khobragade, he has helped one of the core objectives of that movement, which was to keep India and the US far apart. Thanks to Bharara and the State Department officials who backed him, 80:20 will no longer work. It will have to be at least 60:40 if the US is to make India an ally, the way it did China (with a 40:60 deal in China’s favour) in the 1970s.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=227421#.UrP7tDG-mJo.gmail7

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Gay rights: Govt files review plea on SC's verdict, wants open court hearing

December 20, 2013, 2:25 am
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See link:  http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/debate-on-section-377-and-sexuality.html 

 

Govt files review plea on SC's gay sex verdict, wants open court hearing

PTI Posted online: Fri Dec 20 2013, 13:36 hrs

New Delhi : Government on Friday moved the Supreme Court with a review petition seeking re-examination of its verdict on Section 377 of IPC, reviving the penal provision making gay sex an offence punishable with life imprisonment.

The review petition contended that the December 11 judgement of the apex court setting aside the Delhi High Court verdict decriminalising sexual intercourse between same sex of consenting adults is "unsustainable".

The Centre's petition settled by Attorney General G E Vahavati sought that oral arguments be heard in an open court before disposing of its review petition.

The review petitions are generally decided in chamber hearing.

In the petition filed through advocate Devdutt Kamath, the Centre has taken 76 grounds to contend that the judgement passed by Justice G S Singhvi (since retired) and Justice S J Mukhopadhaya "suffers from errors apparent on the face of the record, and is contrary to well-established principles of law laid down by this court enunciating the width and ambit of Fundamental Rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution."

While setting aside the July 2, 2009 judgement of the Delhi High Court, the apex court had held that Section 377 (unnatural sexual offences) of the IPC does not suffer from the vice of unconstitutionality and that the declaration made by the High Court is legally unsustainable.

The review petition filed by Ministry of Home Affairs said Section 377 of the IPC, insofar as it criminalizes consensual sexual acts in private, falls foul on the principles of equality and liberty enshrined in the Constitution.

"It is further submitted that Section 377 which criminalizes intercourse 'against the order of nature' is a reflection of outdated sodomy laws of the United Kingdom which
were transplanted into India in 1860.

"They do not have any legal sanctity and in any case are unlawful in view of the constitutional mandate of Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution," the petition said, adding this court has held that "a statute which was justified when enacted could, with the passage of time, become arbitrary and unreasonable."

Further, the Centre contended that the apex court arrived at various conclusions which are contrary to well-established canons of law as laid down by this court.

"The Union of India, in the present review, will deal with each such conclusion to show errors apparent on the face of the record, being wholly contrary to well-established canons of law," it said.

While assailing the verdict, that came under attack as being "medieval and regressive," the review petition said the submissions of the Centre made during the hearing of the appeal that the high court's judgement did not suffer from any legal infirmity were not at all considered by the apex court.

"The Union of India, through Ministry of Home, had taken a categorical stand at the time of hearing of the appeal before this court that there was no legal error in the judgement of the High Court dated July 2, 2009, and, therefore, no appeal was filed by the Union of India against the said judgement," the review petition said.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/govt-files-review-plea-on-scs-gay-sex-verdict-wants-open-court-hearing/1209907/287


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Khobragade row: inferiority complexes, 'secular' masks -- Rajiv Malhotra

December 20, 2013, 3:35 am
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Khobragade row: India must try good-cop, bad-cop approach with the US

by Dec 20, 2013 Rajiv Malhotra

The latest scandal of the US suddenly arresting an Indian diplomat and humiliating her should cause the Indian government to learn how China and other countries operate from a position of strength. It is unfortunate that the Indian authorities seem to focus only on the technicalities of her arrest as if the main problem was merely procedural.

It is horrific enough that she was arrested outside her daughter's school in order to maximise the sensationalism, then subjected to sexual cavity exams (though this has been denied by the US Marshal Service), and placed in a cell with criminals, prostitutes and drug dealers. The bail, set at $250,000, is at a level typical for hardcore criminals.
]Devyani Khobragade. APDevyani Khobragade. AP
Clearly, Preet Bharara, the US top prosecutor in charge, lived up to his reputation for wanting to make a political career by hitting at high profile targets (including an abnormally large number of Indians). I anticipate another Bobby Jindal in the making here.

It should also shock Indians that New York Times, CNN and other supposedly “liberal” US media have constantly brought in guests and experts to parrot only one side of this story over and over again. The framing of the story is of human rights abuse by elitist Indians; and these Indians must be taught to be treated just like everyone else in the US - because, after all, “we Americans” are the world's beacon of egalitarianism, are we not? This plays well as what is known as “atrocities literature” of the “frontier” people - explained in my book, titled, “Breaking India”.

The blatant racism that usually remains well hidden has been forced to come out not only in print and TV media, but also on the internet buzzing with this controversy. Many white Americans cannot help rubbing their hands in glee at Bharara's action. They cite irrelevant points like how Indians are robbing them of jobs, how Indian civilisation is inferior to the West, how India ought to be indebted to the US as its big brother and benefactor, and so on.

The anti-Hindu stereotypes that I have been trying to expose for 20 years, and which many Indians want to deny or claim are no longer applicable in this "flat world", have all of a sudden shown their ugly head. Let this be an opportunity for Indians to learn.

Regarding the allegations against the Indian diplomat, one must note that such abuses are very common among diplomats everywhere - as much in New York as in Delhi and elsewhere. Of course, this does not justify any such abuse. But it points to the arbitrary and draconian action taken in this one case as if to make a public statement. Every law can be applied in a wide range of levels of severity, from extremely harsh for one's worst enemies, to very mild application for friendly situations.

This particular application of the US law, even if one assumes all the charges to be valid, which I am unwilling to assume, is at the harshest level one has seen it ever used in similar cases. By contrast, India has applied its policies towards US diplomats in India at the most friendly end of the spectrum - and certainly well above the level of privileges enjoyed by Indian diplomats in the US. It is vital for India to firmly downgrade US diplomats' privileges to the same level that Indian diplomats enjoy in the US.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that Indian households do not treat maids like “employees” in the American sense where rent, food, entertainment, holidays, gifts, cable TV, etc would each have to be paid by the employee. A decent one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan easily costs $2,000 - $4,000 per month plus utilities, and food is not cheap in Manhattan. Indian domestic servants are given these things free whereas American employers operate more formally at arm's length. Even after factoring all this, I assume the compensation was less than officially claimed. But such labour disputes typically get sorted out as civil cases. The plot here runs much deeper.

The maid, an Indian Christian whose relatives had close connections to the US embassy in Delhi, was being secretly nurtured by the US government for some time, and her family given a special visa and moved quietly to the US a few days before the arrest. All this is far too much importance to be given to a maid in US society if this were an ordinary case. If Bharara really wanted to help poor Indians, this approach has hardly made any such impact.

The question to raise is whether the maid was an intelligence asset either from the very beginning, or turned into one after the Indian government tried to take action against her through US authorities. Through access to her employer's laptop at home, and by other means of surveillance, her profile would certainly fit the pattern of NSA and CIA operations. The overly aggressive protection by the US and the help given secretly to send her family to USA make this question very important - and the Indian external affairs ministry's talk of conspiracy suggests that they know something we don't.

Contrast this drama with the fact that Bharara has not subjected any other minority community women to such insulting treatment. This is largely due to the heavy Muslim lobbying in the US to respect Islamic sensitivities in dealing with their community, especially women. Indians have never pressed for cultural sensitivities because of their pride of being “assimilative” and hence, the “same” (ie potentially white). Cultural difference embarrasses many Indians except in the safety of events with other Indians only. Especially when it comes to projecting a Hindu identity in such matters, the Indian is likely to hide his inferiority complexes behind “secular” masks.

There is a much broader pattern in India's servility than just one isolated event. India failed to take strong action against the US when it was denied access to David Headley, an acknowledged mastermind in the Mumbai terrorist attack by Pakistan. It pleaded like a child and settled for the crumbs offered by Uncle Sam. When Wikileaks exposed widespread US espionage against India, once again India felt awkward and scared to have a direct faceoff with the Americans.

By contrast, Brazil, Germany and others took the matter seriously and let the Americans experience their anger. When Pakistan wants to express its disapproval to the US, it abruptly stops Nato supply lines to Afghanistan, and ultimately it always ends up in the driver's seat. China's audacity in putting the US in its place started decades before China's economic and military rise, and hence China commands and deserves American respect.

India has behaved like an American doormat and pleaded for merciful treatment as a reliable satellite and junior partner of the US.

The core problem is that Indians simply do not understand the psyche of Americans in the same manner as Chinese, Pakistanis, Russians and many others do. Indians in positions of importance - in diplomacy, media, industry, spirituality, etc - tend to suffer what I have called “difference anxiety” from the West. They would rather not claim their own distinct selfhood. Indians have failed to gaze back at the West through their own lens and for their own vested interests in the same way as most other major nations and civilizations do.

The challenge is that the politically correct, pseudo-secular posture has made it impossible to articulate any such thing as an “Indian civilisation” in the first place. All such claims at a unified, coherent Indian civilisation get attacked as chauvinistic and anti-minority (because the exclusivist Abrahamic religions of many minorities cannot respect Indian civilisation's tenets).

My forthcoming book, titled, Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity (Harpercollins, 2014), scheduled to be launched in India in January, 2014, deals explicitly with this issue of “who we are” as Indians. Though the British left decades back, the colonised minds of Indians in important posts has merely shifted to the nexus across the Atlantic - from London to Washington, DC.

Given the overwhelming defeat of India's ruling party in the recent elections and its likely debacle in the forthcoming general elections, this is an important window to demand strong action in dealing with this situation. India must appoint a Good Cop team and a separate Bad Cop team to deal with the US. These are terms every American with a basic knowledge of history is taught, and I explained them in a book, “Invading the Sacred”.

The Bad Cop team could comprise RAW, CBI and a tough Indian prosecutor to investigate and arrest US diplomats who violate or take liberties with Indian laws, and to apply the same harshness that was faced by India in this case. The Prime Minister or someone else can play Good Cop, but never interfering with the Bad Cops who are merely performing their “jobs” under Indian laws. Meanwhile, it would be important to limit this fight to the US government and not let it impact relations between businessmen in both countries. Indians must know that many US businesses also have their own serious problems with their government and would gladly side with India as allies.

American media, however, is aligned with their government stand in this case. Indian think- tanks have their work cut out if they want to start seriously studying the US complexities on Indian terms.
Rajiv Malhotra is the author of Being Different, and a regular blogger on The Huffington Post. You can access him through his twitter handle @RajivMessage, on Facebook - RajivMalhotra.Official, and the following weblinks: www.BeingDifferentBook.com;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajiv-malhotra/;  and http://www.firstpost.com/author/rajiv
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Thorium and the dream of clean nuclear power -- David Lague & Charlie Zhu

December 20, 2013, 7:30 am
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SPECIAL REPORT-The U.S. government lab behind China's nuclear power push

9:03am EST
HONG KONG, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Scientists in Shanghai are attempting a breakthrough in nuclear energy: reactors powered by thorium, an alternative to uranium.
The project is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a government body with close military ties that coordinates the country's science-and-technology strategy. The academy has designated thorium as a priority for China's top laboratories. The program has a budget of $350 million. And it's being spearheaded by the influential son of a former Chinese president.
But even as China bulks up its military muscle through means ranging from espionage to heavy spending, it is pursuing this aspect of its technology game plan with the blessing - and the help - of the United States.
China has enlisted a storied partner for its thorium push: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The U.S. government institute produced the plutonium used for the Manhattan Project and laid important groundwork for the commercial and military use of nuclear power.
The Tennessee lab, as it happens, helped pioneer thorium reactors. The Pentagon and the energy industry later sidelined this technology in favor of uranium. The Chinese are now enthusiastically tapping that know-how, in an example of how the rising Asian superpower is scouring the world for all sorts of technology needed to catch up to America in a broad array of scientific fields.
Thorium's chief allure is that it is a potentially far safer fuel for civilian power plants than is uranium. But the element also has possible military applications as an energy source in naval vessels. A U.S. congressman unsuccessfully sought to push the Pentagon to embrace the technology in 2009, and British naval officers are recommending a design for a thorium-fueled ship.
In a further twist, despite the mounting strategic rivalry with China, there has been little or no protest in the United States over Oak Ridge's nuclear-energy cooperation with China.
"The U.S. government seems to welcome Chinese scientists into Department of Energy labs with open arms," says physicist and thorium advocate Robert Hargraves. He and other experts note that most of the U.S. intellectual property related to thorium is already in the public domain. At a time when the U.S. government is spending very little on advanced reactor research, they believe China's experiments may yield a breakthrough that provides an alternative to the massive consumption of fossil fuels.
The technology's immediate appeal for China, both Chinese and American scientists say, is that thorium reactors have the potential to be much more efficient, safer and cleaner than most in service today.
The Chinese plan to cool their experimental reactors with molten salts. This is sharply different from the pressurized water-cooling systems used in most uranium-fueled nuclear plants. The risks of explosions and meltdowns are lower, proponents say.
"If a thorium, molten-salt reactor can be successfully developed, it will remove all fears about nuclear energy," says Fang Jinqing, a retired nuclear researcher at the China Institute of Atomic Energy. "The technology works in theory, and it may have the potential to reshape the nuclear power landscape, but there are a lot of technical challenges."
Other advocates agree on thorium's peaceful promise. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, introduced legislation in 2010 calling on the U.S. government to share its thorium expertise.
The unsuccessful bill said it was in U.S. "national security and foreign policy interest" to provide other countries with thorium fuel-cycle technology, because doing so would produce less long-lasting waste and reduce the risk of nuclear proliferation.
Oak Ridge has been free to proceed in spite of that bill's failure.
TURNING BACK THE CLOCK
What China is attempting is to turn the nuclear clock back to the mid-1960s, when Oak Ridge successfully operated a reactor with fuel derived from thorium and cooled with molten salts. The lab also produced detailed plans for a commercial-scale power plant.
Despite considerable promise, the thorium test reactor was shut down in 1969 after about five years of operation. Research was effectively shelved when the Nixon Administration decided in the 1970s that the U.S nuclear industry would concentrate on a new generation of uranium-fueled, fast-breeder reactors. For a range of technical and political reasons, not least the public's fear of nuclear plants, these new uranium reactors have yet to come into widespread commercial use.
The die was cast against thorium much earlier. In the early 1950s, an influential U.S. Navy officer, Hyman Rickover, decided a water-cooled, uranium-fueled reactor would power the world's first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus. Rickover was instrumental in the 1957 commissioning of a similar reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania - the world's first nuclear-power station.
Admiral Rickover was a towering figure in atomic energy and became known as the father of the U.S nuclear navy. He had clear reasons for his choice, engineers say. The pressurized water reactor was the most advanced, compact and technically sound at the time. More importantly, these reactors also supplied plutonium as a byproduct - then in strong demand as fuel for America's rapidly growing arsenal of nuclear warheads.
"The short answer is that uranium was good for bombs and thorium wasn't," says Kirk Sorensen, president of Flibe Energy, a privately held thorium-technology start-up based in Huntsville, Alabama.
With the launch of the Nautilus in 1955, a course was set that is still followed today, with most of the world's nuclear power generated from this type of reactor.
Although it does not yield byproducts that can be readily used to make weapons, thorium does have military applications.
The fuel could be used to power Chinese navy surface warships, including a planned fleet of aircraft carriers. China's nuclear submarine fleet has struggled with reactor reliability and safety, according to naval commentators, and thorium could eventually become an alternative.
Top British naval engineers last year proposed a design for a thorium reactor to power warships. Compact thorium power plants could also be used to supply reliable power to military bases and expeditionary forces.
Thorium also has military potential for the United States, experts say. But the world's most powerful military is reluctant to pursue alternatives to its uranium-fueled reactors, because it has operated them successfully for almost six decades.
Joe Sestak, a former U.S. congressman and retired two-star admiral, failed in an effort to get the Pentagon to reconsider thorium in 2009. "It is very hard to effect a change in something that has been established for a long time," he says. Sestak says he was unaware of the extent of cooperation between the U.S. and China on thorium technology.
INTELLECTUAL HOME
Flibe Energy's Sorensen, a former NASA engineer, has plans to build thorium-fueled reactors for commercial use in the United States. Sorensen has been instrumental in reviving global interest in the groundbreaking work of the late American nuclear physicist Alvin Weinberg.
It was Weinberg who led research into molten-salt cooled reactors and thorium when he ran Oak Ridge from 1955 to 1973. Weinberg was eventually fired for his persistent thorium advocacy. But he had some powerful supporters. In his last scientific paper, published shortly after his death in 2003, nuclear-weapons pioneer Edward Teller called for the construction and testing of a small, thorium-fueled reactor.
Oak Ridge remains the intellectual home of this technology. The U.S. Department of Energy lab still has a small research project under way on the use of molten-salt coolants for uranium-fueled reactors. The Energy Department is also funding related research at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But the ambitious project under way in China could be the best bet to unlock thorium's promise of safe, cheap and abundant nuclear fuel.
Jiang Mianheng, son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin, visited Oak Ridge in 2010 and brokered a cooperation agreement with the lab. The deal gave the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has a staff of 50,000, the plans for a thorium reactor. In January 2011, Jiang signed a protocol with the Department of Energy outlining the terms of joint energy research with the academy.
An electrical engineer trained at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Jiang told a conference on thorium in Shanghai last year China's thorium project "is 100 percent financed by the central government."
The protocol stipulates that intellectual property arising from the joint research will be shared with the global scientific community. It excludes sharing commercially confidential information and any other material that the parties agree to withhold. The pact also specifically rules out any military or weapons-related research. "All activities conducted under this protocol shall be exclusively for peaceful purposes," it says.
Jess Gehin, a nuclear-reactor physicist at Oak Ridge, says the pact allows the two sides to share information about their research.
"The Chinese are very aggressive, very determined and programmed to move forward with this technology," Gehin said. "Right now we agree that we should meet routinely, maybe a couple of times a year."
Jiang did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement posted on the Chinese Academy of Sciences website, he said China and the United States "should boost mutual trust and carry out complementary and mutually beneficial cooperation in the study of thorium-based salt reactors, hybrid energy systems and other cutting edge science and technology."
AN ENERGY HEDGE
Beijing's long-term goal: commercialize the technology by 2040, after building a series of increasingly bigger reactors. The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics is recruiting nuclear physicists, engineers, project managers and support staff, according to a regular stream of job advertisements it publishes online. Its team is expected to expand to 750 by 2015 and eventually include 1,000 researchers.
A director at the Shanghai Institute, Li Qingnuan, and other senior researchers are wooing top young talent across China to join the project. After lecturing on molten-salt reactor technology at Sichuan University in April, Li invited students from the audience to apply for positions at the institute, according to a report on the university's website.
China's sprawling network of nuclear-research and industrial companies are gearing up to assist. In early June, the China National Nuclear Corporation, the body overseeing all Chinese civilian and military nuclear programs, announced that state-owned China North Nuclear Fuel Company had signed an agreement with the Shanghai Institute to research and supply thorium and molten salts for the experimental reactors.
The push into thorium is part of a broader national energy strategy. The government wants to reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants, which account for about 80 percent of the nation's electricity but have darkened its skies. Nuclear energy is a big part of the plan: China aims to have 58 gigawatts of nuclear power on the grid by 2020, an almost five-fold increase from 12.57 gigawatts today.
Thorium is a hedge on that nuclear bet. China has 15 conventional nuclear reactors online and 30 under construction. But energy authorities are also investing in a range of different technologies for the future, including advanced pressurized water reactors, fast-breeder reactors and pebble-bed reactors. China has little uranium but massive reserves of thorium. So, the prospect of cheaper nuclear power with secure supplies of fuel is a powerful attraction.
At last year's Shanghai thorium conference, Jiang described how clean nuclear power would allow China to make a "revolutionary" move towards a greener economy.
The bet on unconventional nukes, he said, explains "why China is the first one to eat a crab" - citing an old Chinese proverb about the individual who dares to make a discovery important to civilization. (Editing by Bill Tarrant)


Thorium and the dream of clean nuclear power

Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:05am EST
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(This story is part of a series, "Breakout," and accompanies a special report, "The U.S. government lab behind China's nuclear power push")
Dec 20(Reuters) - China isn't alone in turning to thorium as a potential source of power. Enthusiasm for exploiting this alternative to uranium is on the rise across the world, even as the cleanup continues from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.
A new generation of scientists and nuclear engineers argue that thorium could be the key to realizing a dream of safe, cheap and plentiful nuclear power for an energy hungry world.
Thorium deposits, estimated to be about four times more abundant than uranium, are widely distributed: Substantial reserves have been found in China, Australia, the United States, Turkey, India, and Norway. About 6,600 tonnes of thorium used to power the most efficient proposed reactors would provide enough energy to replace all of the fossil fuels and nuclear energy consumed globally each year, proponents say.
Uranium-poor India has a long-term research effort under way and has decided thorium will become the mainstay of its nuclear energy industry later this century. The French government has a research program. Companies in the United States, Australia, Norwayand the Czech Republic are working on reactor designs or thorium fuel technology.
Energy from thorium is not just scientific theory. On April 25, Thor Energy, a private Norwegian company, began producing power from thorium - named after the Norse god of thunder - at the Halden test reactor in Norway.
"It is the fundamental first step in the thorium evolution," says company CEO Oystein Asphjell. The tests are aimed at showing the fuel could be a valuable alternative to uranium for existing reactor operators. Nuclear giant Westinghouse, a unit of Toshiba Corp, is part of an international consortium that Thor Energy established to fund and manage the experiments.
A Westinghouse spokesman said the company was "providing viewpoints" on the research.
Asphjell says burning thorium in current pressurized water reactors could boost safety and provide greater fuel security, especially for countries with limited access to uranium. Eventually, proponents want to pair thorium with a new kind of reactor, cooled not by water but by molten salt. That, booster say, would realize thorium's full potential as a fuel.
Thorium is a shiny, slightly radioactive metal. In its natural form, thorium isn't fissile - meaning that, in contrast to uranium, it can't split to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
But if thorium is bombarded with neutrons from a small amount of fissile nuclear fuel acting as a starter, either uranium-235 or plutonium-239, it is converted to uranium-233 - a form of uranium that is a first-rate nuclear fuel. Once started in a reactor, the process is self-sustaining, with subsequent fissions of uranium-233 in turn converting more thorium to nuclear fuel.
In the kind of molten-salt cooled reactor favored by many thorium proponents, the uranium-233 fuel would be dissolved in a coolant of liquid fluoride salts contained in a graphite core. Surrounding the core would be a blanket of thorium, also dissolved in liquid fluoride salts.
When the fuel in the core fissions, it produces heat and a barrage of neutrons that pass through the graphite and convert some of the thorium in the blanket to uranium-233. This is then removed from the blanket and fed into the core, while fresh thorium is supplied to the blanket. The coolant and fuel mixture from the reactor core is circulated through a heat exchanger, so that the energy can be extracted to power a turbine and generate electricity.
One advantage of this system is that the fluoride salt coolant has an extremely high boiling point of 1,400 degrees Celsius, far higher than the reactor's operating temperature of about 750 degrees Celsius. That means the whole system can operate at close to normal atmospheric pressure.
In a conventional water-cooled reactor, the cooling system must be designed to withstand high pressure. That means reactors also must have massive, heavily engineered and expensive containment structures to minimize the danger from leaks or pressure explosions.
Because the core in a thorium molten-salt reactor is already liquid, it can't melt down. The design calls for a plug of frozen salt at the bottom of the system. If the reactor overheats, the plug would melt and the fuel and coolant would drain into a containment vessel below, where it would rapidly solidify and could be recovered for future use, proponents say.
These reactors could be much more efficient than most current nuclear plants, which extract between three and five percent of the energy in uranium fuel rods. In a molten salt reactor, almost all the fuel is consumed.
One tonne of thorium fuel would deliver the same amount of energy as 250 tonnes of uranium in a pressurized water reactor, according to a briefing paper published by the United Kingdom All Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium, a group of UK lawmakers who advocate adoption of the alternative fuel.
Also, because most of the fuel is consumed, thorium yields little waste and is much less radioactive, proponents say. Most of the residue will become inert within 30 years, with about 17 per cent needing secure storage for about 300 years.
The most dangerous waste from current generation reactors requires storage for 10,000 years.
The molten-salt reactor may have one further benefit. Some advocates believe they can be used to burn off existing nuclear waste.
A privately owned U.S start-up, Transatomic Power of Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it plans to build molten salt cooled reactors to burn some of the 270,000 tonnes of nuclear waste accumulated worldwide. "There is enough waste just in the U.S to power the country for a century," says Russ Wilcox, company CEO and co-founder. (Reporting By David Lague; edited by Bill Tarrant)

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Congress hatchet job on Modi fails -- Bipin Shah

December 20, 2013, 7:55 am
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Dec 20, '13 Congress hatchet job on Modi fails
By Bipin Shah 
Indian voters are asking when are they going to realize freedom from the corruption and the poverty that has affected since independence was granted in 1947 from the British. 

The Congress Party, which marched into narrow victory at the last general election, is mired in corruption scandals. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a head of state appears powerless to act without party chief Sonia Gandhi’s consent, and her immature and inexperienced son Rahul seems not even ready to win the trust of the Indian voters. 

Corrupt media tycoons have forgotten their enshrined responsibilities and have become mouthpieces for politicians. Journalists who write for their well-connected bosses are being paid off one way or another, disseminating misinformation to the public on behest of the politicians. 

The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) have repeatedly used national investigative agencies to taint opposition Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Narendra Modi - and found nothing. 

After their failure to implicate Modi through the judicial system, they have now switched their tactics to summoning media tycoons to pick up the gauntlet and drown Modi with baseless accusations. The tough-minded Modi has stood firm and will continue doing things for which he is known for in Gujarat. 

Indian voters have had enough and cannot take it anymore. The ill-conceived hatchet job has probably backfired with Indian voters. The United Progressive Alliance -Congress alliance has created a "Hindu Hero" for the Bharatiya Janata Party that never existed. Elsewhere, Muslim groups funded by oversees monies and Congress connive to join the "Stop Modi" movement with unsubstantiated charges. 

The 2002 Godhra riot in Gujarat was not a solitary phenomenon in the subcontinent's history. The ruling party driven media always conveniently omits the root cause of the riot, which was started by Godhra Muslims. Overseas-funded Islamists torched a train full of Hindu pilgrims, with possible involvement of the some Muslim Congressman. 

External threats
It is a known fact that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan's spy agencies are using the Hawala system of money transfer that has aided and abetted anti-national elements of India, perhaps with Chinese blessings. This would not have been noticed by the general public, if 9/11 and Mumbai massacre had not occurred and Americans had not caught up with the Inter-Services Intelligence for protecting the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. 

In spite of these external threats across the border, the Congress Party has chosen to focus his police and investigative power on politician who has the same mission in mind - eliminating the external threat posed by terrorists across the border. The Indian voters find this behavior of the ruling Congress very disturbing and it appears more and more as indirectly providing aid and comfort to enemies. Their own failure to bring justice to those responsible for the Mumbai massacre is a colossal failure of their leadership. 

The "Godhra Campaign" against Modi has become a political tool for Congress and its allies as a vehicle to maintain their own power base and deny the BJP a reasonable chance. The communal label that has been affixed to him since the Godhra riot has no expiration date as long as Congress has anything to do with it. He represents a sharp contrast to India as a whole and other state run by his competitor Nitish Kumar. Modi has a proven track record of double digit growth, increasing prosperity for Gujaratis and lowering unemployment among Muslim and the Hindu youth. 

The ruling UPA coalition has initiated a series of inquiries using national agencies to uncover just about anything that could to dislodge Modi. The incidental benefit is to exploit the Muslim as a vote bank, but it has only raised Modi's status. 

Communal violence that has tainted the subcontinent's history was planned by Congress' loyalists and stalwarts in several instances. There is enough blame to go around in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. 

Rajiv Gandhi, who was the former prime minister and the husband of Sonia Gandhi, did not do anything when mob took the revenge on defenseless Sikhs for assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi. This 1994 massacre of Sikhs took the lives of over 8,000 innocent Sikhs who had nothing to do with the lone Sikh assassin body guard that she had picked herself as a proof of her love for Sikh community. 

The media aligned with Congress offered all kind of excuses for this ugly event. Only after a Supreme Court's directive and efforts launched by the human-rights commission have some congress members been brought to justice. 

Those who are serving prison sentences include some faces familiar to the Gandhi family. The double standard of justice when it comes to the Congress Party is nothing new and the Indian media never bothers to expose those culpable with the same intensity that they have chosen to apply in Modi's case. 

It appears now that Indian voters see Modi bashing as overdone, baseless and pointless. The majority of Indian voters will conclude that the dysfunctional mouthpieces of Congress and its alliance partners are reaching a zenith that portends their own decline. 

It appears that there is spring in the air. The defeat of Congress in the November's provincial polls serves as a good indicator of change for India's stalled economic future. The unapologetic star of Gujarat still may rise to remove the darkness of injustice. However, Indians cannot lower their guards down until the old guard who thrived in corruption are permanently excised from the national life and brought to justice. 

However, an additional explanation is needed for the ascendancy of Modi. Through his own efforts and deeds, he had emerged as a progressive, non-corrupt leader over the old guards and became a rising star of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). Every single obstruction placed before him by the opposition has miraculously strengthened his position as if it is God's will and that made Time magazine to consider him as a "Person of the year". Seasoned Muslim politicians have sensed the change of wind and accordingly jumped onto Modi's band wagon. 

The smaller regional parties who wish to survive the Modi wave should take a cue from these people. If the recent reports of parties' realignment are true then there is a large scale defection in work to BJP's direction, thereby assuring an eventual ascendancy of Modi to the premiership that will put India to the correct course of economic and social reforms. 

If Modi becomes prime minister, the battle waged by Islamists in America to prevent him visiting there will hardly matter - as visa application will no longer be a requirement for a head of state and a White House dinner invitation is automatic. 

Ultimately all nations follow their own national interest. There is a lesson to be learned; if hardcore militants are either captured or killed in Gujarat or in Afghanistan by Barack Obama's drones or Gujarat Police - it has the same beneficial effects of saving innocent lives in the US, India, Israel and other countries facing the common threat. Some collateral damage and mistakes are anticipated. India, just like Israel, lives in a difficult neighborhood. 

Another aspect of Modi's rise is there are no other creditable leaders who could get India moving again and make the decisions that are necessary to emerge as a major regional power. In order to gain its rightful status in the world, economic strength is an absolute necessity and Congress has failed miserably in this in their second term. 

Some Congress apologists have described Modi as anti-incumbency, a term borrowed from the American political vocabulary. This is far from the truth. The massive shift in age and education level of voters is one important factor and performance of Modi as a head of Gujarat state is another. 

The Congress Party will fail not because of Modi's performance at state level but due to its own hesitancy and lack of clarity and coalition members whose common goal was to hold power for personal gain without taking the responsibility of good governance or implementing economic or security policy that fulfills their own promises to voters. 

On several key issues, the bills in parliament have been stalled by lack of support from allies and the implementations of key projects have been halted. The rupee has declined and inflation has persisted. Foreign direct investment has dried up and economic growth is nearly halved at national level. 

Until the all the stages of the 2014 election are completed, there is no way to know for sure if Modi will have commanding majority to alter the direction of the country. One part of the problem is a defective constitution that allows unlimited number political parties to be formed and contest at national level. 

These parties are often bought out by majority party by monies and other incentives sometimes at treasury's expense. Parliament is a rule-making institution and responsible for formulating policies that will advance the country's economic, military and social policies while reducing poverty. 

What India is practicing is dysfunctional democracy rather than organized democracy. This has slowed down everything when the nation has to be very competitive internationally. The rethinking of the constitution is not a bad idea and a good start. After 60 years of independence, it deserves another look at how it fits modern India and India's place in the world. 
Bipin Shah is a US- based freelance historian and writer. His primary areas of interest are the ancient history of India, geopolitics and national security. He can be reached at beeper1520@hotmail.com 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-02-201213.html
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Ram Rajya: Modi’s shankhanaad at Varanasi -- Sandhya Jain

December 20, 2013, 3:59 pm
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Modi’s shankhanaad at Varanasi, calls for Ram Rajya

By Sandhya Jain on20 Dec 2013

Modi's shankhanaad at Varanasi, calls for Ram Rajya
Narendra Modi today gave a clarion call for Ram Rajya from the civilisational heartland of India, telling denizens of Varanasi that this was the vision of their ancestors, which they had the qualities to make real. Enchanting a mammoth gathering in this historic city at the Vijay Shanknaad Rally, he spared neither person nor party as he launched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s countdown for the general election of 2014 with a pronounced emphasis on the rise of social underdogs as the yardstick to measure the progress of the nation.
Carefully calibrating his combativeness towards the Congress and the UPA, and the family that has presided over the destiny of the nation for 45 years, Narendra Modi said it is insulting that some people think Uttar Pradesh is important to form the Government (at the Centre). Should a State be used only to harvest MPs and form Governments, he asked, and replied, “My own thinking is much larger. I say that India needs UP for stability, because we cannot progress as a country if UP does not progress”.
Uttar Pradesh, he indirectly chastised the Congress, is not a playground for politics; the people here have the energy to galvanise the nation. Your ancestors, he told his rapturous audience, dreamt of Ram Rajya, it is your heritage (virasat); the difficulty is only because the State has not elected the right leaders or the right Government. The day this changes, he promised, the energy and drive of the people will take the nation to new high.
Striking a personal and emotional rapport with the people, Narendra Modi said he had come from the land of Somnath (Shiva) to take the blessings of Baba Vishwanath (Mahadev). Noting the excitement of the gathering, he said he was probably witnessing such atmospherics before elections for the first time; people are so keen, so aggressive, to throw out the regime in Delhi. In 2014, it is the people and not political parties that will fight the election.
Narendra Modi addressing Vijay Shankhnaad Rally in Varanasi, UP
Standing in the eternal city, he said one cannot talk of India without mentioning the Ganga, as India is incomplete without the Ganga. It may be just a river for some, but for us she is a Mother. The eternal significance of Varanasi, as the devout know, is that it is here that the Ganga bends back north towards its Himalayan source. Naturally, Narendra Modi lambasted the Congress for its inability to clean the river despite umpteen schemes, endless committees and wasted budgets, which have not even been able to stem the steady decline of the river. He challenged the Prime Minister to submit details of the thousands of crores spent on the pretext of the Ganga from the public exchequer from the reign of Rajiv Gandhi. Citizens were cheated in the name of the Ganga, so the nation should know who got the money; he asked if such people should be tasked with governing the nation.
Uttar Pradesh, he said to the delight of his listeners, is not responsible for the pollution of the Ganga. Until Delhi and Lucknow are purged (of the respective Governments) there can be no purity in the Ganga. Pro-Congress persons, he mused, sometimes ask him what he will do if he comes to power in Delhi. The answer, he said, is to come to Gujarat and see the Sabarmati; it was once a dirty stream, but today the pure waters of the Narmada flow in it, and if the Sabarmati can be cleaned and made pure again, so can the Ganga; this will purify not just the river but the whole of Hindustan. The BJP, he thundered, does not make empty promises, “we have come with intent, irada not vada. The country is fed up of promises, it now wants its wishes fulfilled”.
Continuing the policy of emphasizing the importance of agriculture and farmers in national life, the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate said that under the leadership of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the farmer was inspired and filled the granaries of the nation. The UP farmer alone had the ability to feed all of Europe, but today governance is so poor that the nation is limping and the farmer is starving. It breaks the heart of our hardworking farmer when he sees his rice rotting on railway platforms. The farmer does not just feed the people, he feeds the animal population as well. But the Government callously lets the grain rot and then sells it to alcohol producers at a pittance of 0.80/quintal. This, he charged, is the reason why the Government refused the advice of the Supreme Court to distribute the excess grain among the poor; is this why our farmer toils, he lamented.
The Congress and similar parties remember the poor only at election time, just as students remember god at the time of examination. They think that once they get votes they are through for another five years; they have no love or respect for the poor, and cannot understand the grim struggle of their lives. One family, he charged, which has been in power for 45 years, is responsible for the plight of the nation. ‘One family has ruined the nation’.
The very mentality is flawed. Striking a powerful rapport with the audience, he said, “we don’t have to go and look for poverty the way they do; our childhood was in poverty” (alluding to Rahul Gandhi’s televised visits to the huts of the poor). One leader, he pointed out, said, “chai bechne wala” (wants to be PM). Expressing astonishment at the attitude, he countered that if the nation wants, a farm labourer or a shoe shine boy can lead the nation. Taking a dig at the corruption bedeviling the nation, he said to thunderous applause, “my upbringing, my sanskars say that I can sell tea but not the nation”. Only those who mock the poor can say that poverty is a state of mind, he continued. Those whose children are crying of hunger know what poverty is. Young children, he said, alluding to his own childhood, work to feed their parents; the nation should throw out leaders who do not understand this. Addressing the older generation, he asked if parents who have struggled in life want their children and grandchildren to suffer and struggle in the same way.
Just before he came to Varanasi, he said, a Muslim wrote to him saying that he was a resident of Kashi and since he (Modi) was coming to the city, could he make a mention in his speech of the difficulty of sleeping in the weaver’s bastis because power looms ran the whole night? The Banarsi sari, Modi responded, drape our ladies and can make our economy, yet such a huge industry has been ruined due to lack of vision. In Surat, he said, the power looms were silenced by upgrading the whole sector to soundless machines. This could also be done in Varanasi so that the huge employment potential of the sector engages the youth and puts an end to outward migration for jobs. The Government of India, however, imports yarn from China and ignores Varanasi.
BJP president Rajnath Singh gave a combative speech to huge cheers from the audience, and lauded the history and civilisational luminosity of Varanasi as a land associated with the Buddha (nearby Sarnath); Tulsidas, Kabir, Raidas, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Bismillah Khan and Madan Mohan Malaviya. Varanasi MP Murli Manohar Joshi made a pointed attack on the state of our national security, particularly the danger from China, Pakistan, and more recently, the shameful insult to a woman diplomat abroad. The UPA, he charged, failed to protect women at home and now it has failed to protect our women overseas.
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Devyani row: exposing India's US lackeys -- Gautam Sen. India's chamchas, US chamchas

December 20, 2013, 4:09 pm
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SHAFTING INDIA AT WILL

Posted by Gautam Sen  /   December 20, 2013  /   
Devyani_Khobragade
There are grounds for suspecting that the arrest, humiliation and assault against Devyani Khobragade may not have been about an underpaid maid and technical violation in a visa application. Something is amiss, but it can be inferred that the Manhattan public prosecutor has a real problem with Indians. Of course the US provides refuge to Khalistani terrorists and trained the ones, dispatched from their close ally Pakistan, who bombed Air India’s Kanishka. US involvement in terrorism is nothing new, as passing familiarity with its Latin American policies demonstrates, although it suffers the occasional blowback, the price Boston paid for harbouring anti-Russian Chechen terrorists.
Astonishingly, a respected Indian author has just published a disingenuous and mean-spirited article praising the nasty piece of work, “Preetinder Singh” Bharara, Devyani’s tormenter, for his alleged probity. No sign of the divine wrath that Draupadi’s disrobing called forth, which ended with the drinking of the blood of the assailant. It simultaneously decried all things Indian, with spurious, self-serving arguments that are being bandied about currently in redneck America to justify rape by its public officials. This was not the time to hyperventilate about India’s undoubted shortcomings to give comfort to the enemy. The quality of said Indian author’s judgment at a sensitive juncture, on a crucial issue of national dignity, leaves much to be desired.
India is full of mediocrities beholden to foreign jurisdictions, whether Anglophiles, Francophiles or the many merely besotted with US $$$. The sheer exhilaration of receiving an invitation to a minor event in the Delhi embassy of a European country seems to extinguish all decorum. And the thoroughly racist Americans have sensed divisions in India over Devyani’s fate, with its purchased media at pains to rationalize the venal US position on intrusive cavity searches. Its actual respect for women is minimal and all the feminist pretence a historic subterfuge that allows vile sexual exploitation in a different guise.
All of India’s moles and agents are crawling out of the woodwork, with scandalous apologetics for Uncle Sam’s propensity for sexual violence against non-white women from insubstantial countries. Presumably, these oh so, superior individuals would have no problem with a woman of their own household being subjected to what is effectively legalised rape. Is this why Delhi is vying for the title of world rape capital? India’s US lackeys refuse to accept that the only issue is the treatment meted out to Devyani. Whether the maid was underpaid and visa rules violated are a separate issue, which can be adjudged by the appropriate authorities. These unspeakable ‘Yankophiles’ are also engaged in mea culpa over poorly paid maids in all of Indian history, for which Devyani must somehow pay!
Contrary to the rubbish being purveyed by the semi-literates who now dominate the public space in India, John Kerry did not apologise, as I pointed out elsewhere. He did regret the consequences of Devyani’s treatment, which was a transparent rebuke for India’s reaction to it. Since morons, loyal to the waitress now royally misgovern the country on her behalf failed to sense John Kerry’s sophisticated command of the English language and its idiom. They also messed up over the appropriate level of retaliatory indignation, perhaps deliberately so because we have a suspect, third-rate EAM.
It was not necessary to remove the largely ceremonial barriers outside the US Delhi embassy since applying strict reciprocity on status accorded to its diplomats would have sufficed for the present. It provoked unnecessary US anger and India is now hoist by its own petard because the US has decided to make the natives crawl, which they duly will in time. The whole point is to come out ahead—not wet your pants in feigned anger for some other reason, which in this case happens to be the pending Maharashtra elections.
Why the US chose to rub India’s nose in the ground is an interesting question to which the MEA almost certainly has the answer although it is unlikely to disclose it. One thing is abundantly clear: the US is not a friend of India and has never been except in the importunate fantasies or self-serving delusions of Indian politicians and bureaucrats, whose extended families increasingly reside there permanently, the prime minister’s included. Their interests have a bigger impact on Indian behaviour towards the US than Indian national interest.
As it happens, the US ruthlessly extracts the last pound of flesh from every country. Even the utterly supine British have been given no quarter despite shared hereditary roots. The US demanded an immediate repayment of all loans from a prostrate Britain the moment WWII ended, indifferent to its parlous situation. India means nothing to the US except that it is now a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard, in their rivalry with China. And like a pawn it will be sacrificed instantly should geopolitics dictate. Indians should seek to recover a modicum of the dignity in its relations with the US that Indira Gandhi, to her eternal credit, fearlessly asserted.
Dr. Gautam Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics for over two decades.
  1. Veeru December 20, 2013 11:20 pm Reply
    I guess this episode has more to do with the US sailors who got arrested for bringing in a vessel full of arms and got caught on our shore. May be US is trying to use Devyani as bargaining chip. I also suspect there is something else, may be UPA is trying to bury something else quietly when everyone is discussing Devyani case.
- See more at: http://www.indiafacts.co.in/shafting-india-at-will/#sthash.aAmE6gmb.Mv0ycmKq.dpuf

http://www.indiafacts.co.in/shafting-india-at-will/#sthash.aAmE6gmb.dpuf
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Devyani row: timeline - Chris Francescani. Migration project of Sangeeta Richard family is complete -- Ashok Malik.

December 20, 2013, 4:33 pm
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See for the untold spy story :  http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/12/devyani-khobragade-row-washingtons.html 

 


Timeline: Case of Devyani Khobragade, Indian diplomat arrested in New York

Photo

BY CHRIS FRANCESCANI
NEW YORK Sat Dec 21, 2013 3:59am IST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The arrest of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, 39, deputy consul general in New York, on charges of visa fraud and lying about payments to her housekeeper, Sangeeta Richard, has sparked outrage in India and protests this week in both countries. The following is a timeline of events emerging in New York:

Fall of 2012 - At Khobragade's home in India, the diplomat meets at least twice with Richard to discuss potential employment as her housekeeper in New York. September 27, 2012: Khobragade electronically files with the U.S. State Department for an A-1 visa, available only to persons traveling on official business for their nation's government.

October 15, 2012 - Khobragade electronically files for Richards with the U.S. State Department for an A-3 visa, which is typically given to personal employees and servants of A-1 visa holders and requires an interview. November 1, 2012 - Richard appears at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to be interviewed in connection with the visa application, but is told she needs to return at a later date "with the necessary paperwork," according to papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. November 11, 2012 - Khobragade and Richard go to Khobragade's residence in India "to obtain an employment contract to bring to her interview at the U.S. Embassy," court papers said. The contract, dated November 11, 2012, states that Richard "will be paid wages at the prevailing or minimum wage as required by law, whichever is greater. The expected hourly salary in the U.S. would be $9.75," the court documents said.

November 14, 2012 - Khobragade and Richard appear at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and provide the contract which "represented that understood she would make $9.75 per hour working as a domestic helper in the U.S." and would work 40 hours a week in New York, court documents said. November 15, 2012 - Khobragade receives an A-3 visa for Richard.

November 2012 - "Shortly before departing to the airport in India," Khobragade calls Richard to her residence to sign "an enlarged and electronically edited version of the firstcontract," court papers said. The second contract is altered to say that Richard would be paid 25,000 rupees a month, with an additional 5,000 rupees a month for overtime, for a maximum monthly salary of that "will not exceed 30,000 rupees," according to court documents. That's about $480 a month, or about $3.31 an hour for a 40-hour week, or less than half the $7.25 legal minimum, according to prosecutors. The so-called second contract makes no mention of maximum or minimum hours per week that Richard will be required to work. November 23, 2012 - Khobragade signs a contract with Richard in New Delhi in which Richard agrees to come to the U.S. as Khobragade's domestic servant. June 22, 2013 - Richard, who is scheduled to return to India, leaves the Khobragade apartment on Manhattan's East 43rd Street, and has not returned since. Devyani Khobragade goes to the New York Police Department's 17th Precinct on East 51st Street, seeking to file a Missing Persons report on Richard, who she claims has disappeared from the home. Police decline to take the report because Khobragade is not a direct relative and Richard is an adult. June 24, 2013 - Khobragade contacts U.S. State Department officials to report Richard missing.

June 25, 2013 - Khobragade sends a letter to 17th Precinct NYPD Deputy Inspector James Sheerin, informing him that her housekeeper has gone missing and again requesting assistance from the NYPD to locate her.

Late June 2013 - Aakash Singh, Khobragade's philosophy professor husband, takes the couple's two children on a vacation to the U.S. Southeast. He returns to New York with the children sometime before July 8, 2013.

July 8, 2013 - Singh arrives at the 17th Precinct, but the New York police and Khobragade's attorney offer different accounts of what happened next.

Police said Singh reported that Richard had stolen property from his home and he asked to file a grand larceny complaint against her, but he could not identify the missing items. An officer sent him home to get a list of the missing items and their monetary value, explaining that grand larceny complaints require itemized documentation of at least $1000 worth of property. Police said Singh never returned and didn't respond to a follow-up call.

Khobragade's attorney Daniel Arshack has challenged this account, saying that Singh did in fact provide police with a list of the items on July 8. Arshack said Singh is not overly familiar with U.S. laws, denies using the term grand larceny and thought he was simply reporting a theft to police. Arshack said when a detective asked him whether he wanted to press charges, Singh became reluctant and decided he would first speak with consular officials and return to the precinct later to complete the complaint process. He concurred with police that Singh left without completing a theft report, and failed to respond to a follow-up attempt by New York police. That same day, Khobragade, accompanied by consular officers, speaks with Richard in Midtown Manhattan at a meeting Richard initiated through Access Immigration, a New York immigration assistance organization. Arshack says this is the last face-to-face meeting between the two women before Khobragade's arrest. During the encounter, Khobragade urges Richard to honor her visa requirement and return to India, while Richard demands cash and new immigration documents, Arshack said. The meeting grows so contentious that Access Immigration officials who are present call New York police to escort Richard out of the room. Access Immigration has declined comment other than to say the group is no longer working on Richard's case. July 2013 - Dana Sussman, staff attorney with Safe Horizon, a group that fights human trafficking, is contacted by an unidentified community organization seeking "immediate services" for Richard, the lawyer told Reuters. She meets with Richard, contacts U.S. State Department officials and soon is speaking to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Khobragade criminal investigation begins. September 9, 2013 - India's Hon'ble High court of Delhi orders an injunction against Richard, restraining her from initiating legal proceedings against Khobragade.

December 11, 2013 - Preet Bahara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, files a criminal complaint against Khobragade with a federal magistrate court judge on one count of visa fraud and one count of making a false statement. If convicted on both counts, Khobragade faces a maximum of 15 years in prison. December 12, 2013 - Sometime between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. local time, Khobragade is approached by U.S. State Department Diplomatic Security Service agents near her children's school on Manhattan's East Side. "Ms. Khobragade was accorded courtesies well beyond what other defendants, most of whom are American citizens, are accorded," Bharara said in a statement released late on December 18. "She was not, as has been incorrectly reported, arrested in front of her children. The agents arrested her in the most discreet way possible, and unlike most defendants, she was not then handcuffed or restrained. In fact, the arresting officers did not even seize her phone as they normally would have. Instead, they offered her the opportunity to make numerous calls to arrange personal matters and contact whomever she needed, including allowing her to arrange for child care. This lasted approximately two hours. Because it was cold outside, the agents let her make those calls from their car and even brought her coffee and offered to get her food."

After being transported to the U.S. District Court building in downtown Manhattan, Khobragade is turned over to U.S. Marshals Service personnel, and strip-searched and placed in a holding cell in the courthouse.

Bharara, in the December 18 statement, said that Khobragade "was fully searched by a female Deputy Marshal - in a private setting - when she was brought into the U.S. Marshals' custody, but this is standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not, in order to make sure that no prisoner keeps anything on his person that could harm anyone, including himself. This is in the interests of everyone's safety."

Khobragade is arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra Freeman, and released around 4:30 p.m. after posting bail, surrendering her passport and other measures. December 20, 2013: Richard is believed to still be in New York City.

Sources: Indian court order, criminal complaint by U.S. Attorney's office, Bahara's statements from December 12 and 18, Reuters interviews with Khobragade attorney Arshack, Safe Horizon attorney Sussman, interviews with NYPD officials.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Barbara Goldberg)

MAID IN MANHATTAN: A MIGRATION PROJECT

Saturday, 21 December 2013 | Ashok Malik | in Edit


Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, accused of violating US labour laws, seems to be the victim herself, entrapped by her domestic help on the one hand and an over-ambitious district attorney on the other

Why did the Devyani Khobragade case blow up into a diplomatic crisis? Three factors have to be kept in mind. First, Ms Khobragade’s arrest has so angered the Indian system because there is genuine belief in the Ministry of External Affairs that she did no wrong. She is not guilty of any individual crime. If she used a short-cut — and one a clever lawyer can defend in court — it was with the approbation of both countries.

Contrary to media reports, Ms Khobragade’s contract with her housekeeper, Sangeeta Richard, does not promise her a composite sum of US $4,500 a month or anything of the sort. It promises an hourly wage — “minimum wage in New York or prevailing wage, whichever is higher” — and agrees to make deductions for perquisites such as medical insurance, room rent, food and so on. This contract was shown, not submitted, to United States Embassy officials by Ms Richard to get her visa. Ms Richard also submitted a form that stated her employer’s salary — a third figure altogether and if considered strictly in terms of its cash component, itself in violation of New York’s minimum wage.

Some but far from all Indian diplomats posted in the US take along domestic staff. These employees are paid high salaries by Indian standards and all expenses are taken care of. Obviously hourly wages in New York (or Washington, DC) are much greater and some of the domestic employees are tempted to moonlight. On occasion, they have alleged mistreatment by the diplomat, gone to human rights NGOs and sought to institute legal proceedings. In some cases, Indian diplomats have been indicted. In some cases, the police has found no case against them and recognised the charges are false. However, so strong is the organised human rights/anti-trafficking lobby that in all cases — irrespective of the veracity of their charges — the cooks or housekeepers have got their green cards or legal resident status in the US.

So why didn’t Ms Richard allege the Khobragade family was beating her up and why did she bring up the salary discrepancy? This is because Ms Khobragade had done something different from other Indian Foreign Service colleagues who take along domestic staff. She had signed a second contract, promising to pay Ms Richard Rs 30,000 a month. The entire money was transferred to a bank account — since Ms Richard had no expenses in New York — and the second contract was signed to make the employee feel secure. Such second contracts are certainly not usual practice. The MEA believes Ms Khobragade signed the second contract in good faith. Ms Richard’s insistence on this is now being viewed as ‘entrapment’ and part of a pre-conceived migration plan.

Second, it is likely somebody in the US Embassy — probably an official or a family member, acting in a private capacity and knowing Ms Richard and her in-laws personally — advised Ms Richard to exploit the two-contract loophole, use anti-trafficking laws to bolster her case, approach certain anti-trafficking NGOs and then District Attorney Preet Bharara’s office. This person possibly made Ms Richard aware that if, at this stage, the district attorney’s office asked for Ms Richard’s family to be ‘evacuated’ to the US as witnesses in an anti-trafficking case, their visas could not be denied. Adult family members would be given the requisite T category visa to live and work in the US.

In South Block, there is belief this elaborate plan was drawn up even before Ms Richard left for the US. That is why External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid called Ms Khobragade the victim of “a conspiracy”. The end purpose of the conspiracy was to facilitate the Richard family’s permanent migration.

Third, the motivations of Mr Bharara and the State Department are different. Mr Bharara is an ambitious man in New York, looking to take on the high and mighty — usually white collar criminals on Wall Street — project himself as ‘Mr Clean-up’ and build a political career. Targeting a diplomat who seemed to violate a contract, especially a diplomat from the country of his origin, appealed to him. New York is home to hundreds of diplomats, working in consulates or at the United Nations. Some can be pushy, emboldened by their immunity status. This has made the diplomatic corps unpopular with ordinary New Yorkers. Ironically, Indian diplomats are relatively well behaved in this construct. Nevertheless, Mr Bharara grabbed his chance.

The State Department was asleep at the wheel. Old India hands had moved out in recent months and a new team was handling New Delhi. Its communication channels were blurred. It clearly did not anticipate the Indian reaction. As for the US Embassy, it has known for years that the contract shown by domestic employees while applying for a visa is not necessarily indicative of true cash wage. It informally advised this subterfuge as part of an arrangement between two foreign offices, which gave each other privileges that technically may have violated local laws.

So what happens next? Ms Khobragade’s lawyer will contest Mr Bharara on grounds of jurisdiction, contending the contracts can’t be adjudicated by a New York court. Mr Bharara will push for conviction. The State Department can back Mr Bharara’s legal case or it can grant Ms Khobragade a G-1 visa and agree to her transfer to the Indian mission at the UN. This will give her full diplomatic immunity. Alternatively, it can declare her persona non grata and expel her. In that case India will similarly expel a US diplomat.

Whatever happens, the Indian system is determined to walk down the path of reciprocity. Unilateral privileges given to US diplomats have been withdrawn. The blanket airport passes for US officials have gone. The barricades outside the US embassy in New Delhi, which blocked a major city road, have been removed. They were not there because of any specific threat perception but followed a verbal request made to an earlier, expansive Lieutenant Governor of Delhi by the then US Ambassador.

The US gives officials at the Indian embassy in Washington, DC, full diplomatic immunity but denies this to diplomats at Indian consulates in other cities. In India, however, it has sought full diplomatic immunity even for its consulate officials in say Chennai or Mumbai. India has revoked this. Consulate officials will have lesser consular immunity. Their identity cards will be stamped with “No immunity from felony”. This is exactly what cards of Indian consulate officials in the US say.
Next, the Indian taxman will get into the act. Indians employed by the US Embassy and by US diplomats in a personal capacity will be required to submit income as well as tax documentation. If irregularities are found, to assist the course of justice their American employers may be ‘requested’ to come to the tax office to help ‘clarify doubts’.

A host of privileges, some of them extracted in the aftermath of the 1962 war with China, when India was vulnerable, are being reconsidered. Foreign nationals (like spouses or friends of diplomats) teaching in the American Embassy School in India are allowed tax-free salaries. This regime is being re-assessed. Foreign teachers at such schools do need work permits. Do they have them? Are Indian teachers too being paid tax-free salaries, which would be illegal? These are all questions the tax bureaucracy will ask. It will not be a picnic.

Lastly, what of Sangeeta Richard and her family? Frankly, their migration project is complete. India will never see them again.

(The accompanying visual is of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade’s absconding domestic help Sangeeta Richard along with her husband Phillip)
malikashok@gmail.com
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