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All Sections Issue Archive February - March 2005Political NewsNews & ViewsManmohan Singh announces Dual citizenship to all NRIs Pravasi Diwas was celebrated on 9th January, in Mumbai . Some 2,000 overseas Indians were taking part in the three-day conference. Inaugurating the conference, he said, "I am happy to announce that we have decided to extend the facility of dual citizenship to all overseas Indians who migrated from India after January 26, 1950, as long as their home countries allow dual citizenship under their local laws." The announcement was welcomed by the delegates who considered it more liberal than the previous government’s decision to grant dual citizenship to overseas Indians in selected developed countries. ____________________________________________________________________ Simultaneously, the Tamil Nadu police summoned Shankaracharya for further interrogation in a murder case. On the objections of the lawyers for the defence, summons were withdrawn; but the Tamil Nadu government has applied to the Supreme Court that the seer should not enter the premises of the Math at Kanchipuram. Meanwhile, as many as 183 bank accounts of the muth have been frozen, virtually paralysing its activities. BJP leader, LK Advani told reporters that he along with former president R Venkataraman and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him that the Central Government ought to intervene on the issue. "It is the question of sentiments of crores of Hindus, hurt by invetigations being conducted with a vindictive attitude and the ill-treatment meted out to Jayendra Saraswati." He also demanded that the cases against the Shankaracharya should be shifted out of Tamil Nadu. __________________________________________________________________ Pakistan rejects any ‘made in India, solution to ‘made in Pakistan’ Dispute Pakistani
President Mr. Pervez Musharraf again declared that a third party mediation
is the only alternative if the present bilateral talks donot make any
headway. He outright rejected any solution offered by India. ____________________________________________________________________ Tsunami in Indian Ocean We
have read so much, heard so much and seen so much of the tragedy brought
by tsunami in Indian Ocean that there is now fear of paralysis of senses. Dear
God, ______________________________________________ At
the dawn _____________________________________________________________________ Narendra Modi - first to help Following the terrible Tsunami disaster in South India states, while deliberations were being held at the Centre, to convene the meeting of Crisis Management Group (CMG), the dynamic Chief Minister of Gujarat, was presiding over the meeting of its CMG. The meeting of CMG of Gujarat was held first and that of CMG of Central Government later. The high speed with which the CM of Gujarat made preparations to meet the coming calamity has left the officers of Central Government amazed. After
all his state had suffered a lot only a couple of years ago. Tsunami waves had hit Tamilnadu, Keral, and Andaman-Nicobar. But the lightening speed with which Modi was engaged in the relief work, has earned the admiration of the Central Government officers. Modi
established a control room for relief work in Gandhinagar. In this
work, he took a very important step. To keep contact with Tamilnadu
Government, he selected Tamil speaking officers from Gujarat, for coordinating
with Kerala, he selected Malayalam Officers and he did the same thing
about Andaman. He was in constant touch with Lt Governor of Andaman,
Ram Kapse to get a chance for the planes from Gujarat to land on the
Port Blair aerodrome. While the Disaster Management team of Central Government was surveying the areas, Modi selected 67 highly affected talukas and appointed 67 Officers. Every officer was directed to look after his own Taluka. He also directed them to take the cooperation of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and other voluntary organization. We salute Narendra Modi for such efficiency unknown in the corridors of power in New Delhi even in the times of Vajpayee and LK Advani. We hope the next Prime Minister of India may come from Gujarat. (Please give us your comments on editor@indialink-online.com.) ____________________________________________________________________ This article by Jeremy Seabrook of the Guardian will be of great interest to our readers. In death, imperialism lives on The number of fishing boats from Sumatra, Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu at sea when the Boxing Day tsunami hit will never be known. There is scarcely any population tally of the crowded coasts. Nameless people are consigned to unmarked graves; in mosques and temples, makeshift mortuaries, people pull aside a cloth, a piece of sacking, to see if those they loved lie beneath. As in all natural disasters, the victims are overwhelmingly the poorest. This time there was something different. The tsunami struck resorts where westerners were on holiday. For the western media, it was clear that their lives have a different order of importance from those that have died in thousands, but have no known biography, and, apparently, no intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings. This is not to diminish the trauma of loss of life, whether of tourist or fisherman. But when we distinguish between “locals” who have died and westerners, “locals” all too easily becomes a euphemism for what were once referred to as natives. Whatever tourism’s merits, it risks reinforcing the imperial sensibility. For this sensibility has already been reawakened by all the human-made, preventable catastrophes. The ruins of Galle and Bandar Aceh called forth images of Falluja, Mosul and Gaza. Imperial powers, it seems, anticipate the destructive capacity of nature. A report on ITN news made this explicit, by referring to “nature’s shock and awe”. But while the tsunami death toll rises in anonymous thousands, in Iraq disdainful American authorities don’t do body counts. One of the most poignant sights of the past few days was that of westerners overcome with gratitude that they had been helped by the grace and mercy of those who had lost everything, but still regarded them as guests. When these same people appear in the west, they become the interloper, the unwanted migrant, the asylum seeker, who should go back to where they belong. A globalisation that permits the wealthy to pass effortlessly through borders confines the poor to eroded subsistence, overfished waters and an impoverishment that seems to have no end. People rarely say that poor countries are swamped by visitors, even though their money power pre-empts the best produce, the clean water and amenities unknown to the indigenous population. In death, there should be no hierarchy. But even as Sri Lankans wandered in numb disbelief through the corpses, British TV viewers were being warned that scenes they were about to witness might distress them. Poor people have no consoling elsewhere to which they can be repatriated. The annals of the poor remain short and simple, and can be effaced without inquiry as to how they contrive an existence on these fragile coasts. What are the daily visitations of grief and loss in places where people earn less in a year than the price that privilege pays for a night’s stay in a five-star hotel? Western governments, which can disburse so lavishly in the art of war, offer a few million as if it were exceptional largesse. Fortunately the people are wiser; and the spontaneous outpourings of humanity have been as unstoppable as the waves that broke on south Asia’s coasts; donations rapidly exceeded the amount offered by government. Selflessness and sacrifice, people working away at rubble with bare hands, suggest immediate human solidarities. But these are undermined by the structures of inequality. Promises solemnly made at times of immediate sorrow are overtaken by other urgencies; money donated for the Orissa cyclone, for hurricane Mitch in Central America, the floods in Bangladesh, the Bam earthquake — as for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq — turns out to be a fraction of what is pledged. Such events remind us of the sameness of our human destiny, the fragility of our existence. They place in perspective the meaning of security. Life is always at the mercy of nature —whether from such overwhelming events as this, or the natural processes that exempt no one from paying back to earth the life it gave us. Yet we inhabit systems of social and economic injustice that exacerbate the insecurity of the poor, while the west is prepared to lay waste distant towns and cities in the name of a security that, in the end, eludes us all. Assertions of our common humanity occur only at times of great loss. To retrieve and hold on to it at all other times — that would be something of worth to salvage from these scenes of desolation. (Jeremy Seabrook courtesy The Guardian) Jeremy Seabrook is the author of Consuming Cultures: Globalisation and Local Life comment@guardian.co.uk |
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