Haven’t we ignored such herds before? (remember demands of referendum/freedom?). If Anna’s group is able to arm-twist a government, then tomorrow we should be ready for other such “civic societies” coming up with their own sets of demands, we are opening a pandora’s box really. Imagine the mining mafia coming in thousands and forcing a reinstatement of their favorite leader. IMHO, it should be OK in a democratic setup to debate, oppose, resist, pressurize against, differ or agree with other’s views but we cannot ignore that ultimately the laws should be made by the elected representatives of the nation and not by the members of society, who lead but won’t contest elections to join active politics. When they are sitting on the fence we don’t even know which political party/ideology they might be representing, or whose business interests might be behind them. Why is not a single MP or MLA part of Anna’s team? (we cannot just say that none o the politicians want this bill, that’s an easy way out. Anna’s team should have the capability to convince the parliamentarians, they cannot wage a war to get their things done.)

Valleywag reports that Mark was actually here to follow on the footsteps of giants and take blessings from his spiritual guru Baba Neem Karoli. You & I may have never heard of this Baba, but he has been an inspiration for people like Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs and Google’s Larry Page, to name a few. Apparently Baba, who is actually knows as Neeb Karori in India, likes his Amreekan name of Neem Karoli better. He even has websites booked for all versions of his name at http://www.neemkarolibaba.com, http://www.neebkaroribaba.com and http://www.neebkaroribaba.org. With high profile clientèle from Silicon valley at his disposal, Baba can’t afford to be off line, anytime. So apart from all other things there is even a Christmas Bhandara in his ashram.

So what did Mark actually ask Baba for? If he had an inkling of the scalability issues Twitter is facing, he would have asked for some tips to deal with ever growing userbase. But probably he just sought blessings for a win over arch rival Orkut. But who would Baba have favored from his disciples: Larry and Mark? Well, it all depends on what they offered to the divine Baba

Recently while adding some information (link to a Hindi Podcast that dwelled on the subject of the first stone pelting student at the “Reliance Fresh” outlet at Ranchi) to the English Wikipedia article Reliance Fresh I came across a user “Ril editor” who would repeatedly delete my entry. The user is apparently a worker of Mukesh Ambani who keeps an eye on anything “malicious” towards the company and promptly deletes it. When conveyed to an administrator no action has been taken so far.

I doubt Mr Ambani has any idea about what Wikipedia stands for? If he had, he wouldn’t probably have hired people to bully around on the largest free wiki on the earth.

Here is the what the profile of the said user proclaims adamantly on Wikipedia:

This id is being used by the Chairman’s office (Office of Mr. Mukesh D Ambani) at Reliance Industries Limited from Mumbai – India. Information updated from this ID should not be changed or removed as the information from this ID originates from Mr. Mukesh Ambani’s office and will be authentic.

I am Nahid Khan the personal assistant to the late two time prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto. I am assume you are aware of the sad event that occurred during our campaign in the month of December last year when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, I am not writing you to discuss the former prime minister’s assassinations but to lay a proposal that will benefit you and I.Please if you are interested email me at my personal email address : NahidatGvt@hotmail.com I will go into details as soon as i have your response.

With great anticipation I await your response.

Ingenious! And and we thought only Mr ’10 percent’ Zardari benefited cent percent from this

The parade itself was more of advertising podium with companies ranging from Kingfisher, Sahara, Zee to Shaadi.com pushing their products, and yes the Religion & Spiritualism shops were also there. I heard only a few songs with Nationalistic flavor, even those limited them to RDB. By the time the parade concluded the road and sidewalks were full of pamphlets, newspapers and Indian flags. And as soon as the parade ended I was impressed to see the sanitation squad come in. They removed the barricades and cleaned up the road within minutes. Probably this is what makes America what it is.

And here are some more pictures:
]]> http://nullpointer.debashish.com/video-india-day-parade-2007-ny/feed 0 http://nullpointer.debashish.com/bird-flu-strikes-again http://nullpointer.debashish.com/bird-flu-strikes-again#comments Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:58:05 +0000 Debashish Chakrabarty http://nullpointer.debashish.com/bird-flu-strikes-again You may have noticed a sarkari advertisement doing the rounds on the Indian tele for almost two weeks now. The advertisement shows a sutradhaar along with a chicken puppet urging people to alert the government of any cases of unnatural death of chicken. It did alarm me coz there was no buzz in the newspapers or the news channels about it. Evidently the lesson that the government has learnt from past episodes of Bird Flu and Chicken Guinea cases is to keep mum. Such news obviously affects the Poultry industry, the demand for packaged and ready to use products has been on steady rise in urban sector many of these are chicken based. Big names such as Godrej and Venky’s are associated with the trade, so it’s a matter of millions of rupees.

It’s scary that the Government decided to announce only on 20th March that India too faces the risk of Avian flu. Neighboring Bangladesh has gone for wide-scale culling operations consequent to the spread of the H5N1 virus. I recall that even last time Venky’s people had paid heavilt to the poultry farms to prevent the news of dying livestock reaching the media, there was evident pressure that they had put on the government as well to let the sales of chicken product continue unhindered. Venky’s head also happened to be the president of the National Egg Coordination committee so the Eggs were being sold liberally as well. When the matter subsided a bit bollywood biggies Sanjay Dutt and Sunil Shetty were roped in an expensive ad campaign to preach that everything is well with the poultry.

It’s not difficult to guess that the money hungry companies and an irresponsible government don’t give a damn about the health of its consumers. The only way out for us consumers then is to exercise all the precaution.

The Indibloggies 2005 edition BTW has started with a whopping 28 member Jury to rate the nominated blogs. Nominations would be done using Delicious this year and a detailed notification will follow on 15 Dec at the Indibloggies website. Like last year, there has been a tremendous response from the sponsors with prizes worth more than INR 50000 to be claimed.

A reader Sharad C. Misra quipped

“the Finance Minister’s statement is confusing. There would be no salaried person who does not have “Income from Other Sources” under Section 56(1) of the I.T. Act which includes interest on Fixed Deposits, Bonds, Saving Bank account etc. Thus, the exemption would benefit only those who do not have even a Savings Bank account. We think that such a character would be a rarity in India!