India: Of, by, and for NGOs

September 26, 2005

Rejoice, all ye! India has scored another first.

The government has become a non-government, and non-government organisations (NGOs) have become the government.

The Mother of all NGOs in India, of course, is the National Advisory Council. It devotes itself to what Victorian parish priests used to call the 'good works.'

Its writ begins and ends in charity -- but with a crucial difference. Whereas the cost of real charity is private and the beneficiary is the public, the cost of NAC charity is public and the beneficiaries are private (e.g. the Rural Employment Guarantee Act).

That, too, must be another first.

The latest attempt at good works comes in the form of a Bill that may get passed in the winter session of Parliament. It is called the Older Person's (Maintenance, Care and Protection) Bill.

The purpose is to ensure that children don't treat their parents badly when the latter grow old and infirm and vulnerable. The law says that they must provide for financial and other kinds of support, including companionship.

If they don't, parents can sue in tribunals. If they win, any transfer of property from parents to children will be declared void.

Deserving retribution for undeserving progeny, I am sure. But how much will the fellow who heads the tribunal charge to give a ruling? And if the property is already with the son (daughters are excluded, I must presume) who can bribe better, the parents or the sons?

Heaven knows what else is brewing but one thing is proven: it is not the ministers and political parties that are setting the national social agenda. It is the NGOs acting through their Mother, the NAC. We mean well, ergo, we will do well.

That's what Lenin and Trotsky also thought, talking of whom one cannot help observe that while the social agenda is being set by the NGOs, the economic agenda is being set by the Communists. Not being in government, they are a different kind of NGO. Just as the RSS was when the NDA was in power.

These cheering thoughts in such depressing times led me to do some research on NGOs. It was a rich harvest that I reaped.

The phrase non-governmental organisation came into use in 1945, when the UN was established (Article 71 of Chapter 10 of its Charter), because everyone said there was a need for consultations that went beyond governments.

According to the UN, NGOs are independent of governments, in that they are not supposed to receive any funding from them.

But most Indian NGO, like their European counterparts, receive a very high proportion of their money, sometimes as much as 90 per cent, from governments. This, when you come to think of it, is rather clever of the governments.

Originally, the funding was supposed to be from membership dues, but it now comes from grants from international institutions as well, some of them quite dodgy. And even the ones that are clean have their own agendas, which are promoted by some NGOs. Money is never given for nothing.

How interesting, I thought. A non-governmental organisation funded by your own government -- or if the poor dear is broke, foreign ones.

Indian NGOs are not alone in this respect, though. But they are different, in that more of them are dependent on governments than NGOs elsewhere.

There is another irritating vanity that NGOs affect, even though they depend so much on government funding. They call themselves 'civil society', usually defined as 'the space between the government and the people.'

Civil society is one of those nice-sounding terms that make everyone feel virtuous. But, in my experience, these 'civil society' NGOs are pure dictatorships: ein NGO, ein fuhrer, and so on. In that sense, they are as bad as newspapers, where the editor can be a complete dictator.

It was Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, two grumpy British philosophers from the 17th century, when the Brits had a lot to be grumpy about, who used it first.

Hobbes said that people's lives were nasty, brutish, and short and that only fear drove them. But Locke said they were actually quite nice chaps, really, ready to co-operate with each other, and so on.

Nevertheless, they needed a well-established law, not to mention judges and an executive to enforce things.

It was, he said, the duty of the state to provide for these. It was never to forget that it existed for the people, and not the other way around.

Our NGOs have, quite rightly, adopted this last bit. But alas Locke also said that the state had to be 'liberal, tolerant and limited.' Strange, then, is it not, that our NGOs are bent on making it as intrusive as possible?

I also found that there are different acronyms to describe various types of NGOs. Thus, according to Wikipedia, you have:

* INGO, for international NGO;
* BINGO, for business-oriented international NGO;
* RINGO, for religious international NGO;
* ENGO, for environmental NGO;
* QUANGO, which is quasi-government NGO; and the most irresistible of all,
* GONGO, the government-operated NGO!

To which may I add SONGO?

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/27guest1.htm

http://www.indiasocial.org/jigyansu/activities.htm



Jigyansu Tribal Research Centre was established in 1979 and has since been working for the welfare and development of scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and other backward classes and economically weaker sections of the society. JTRC works in the interior tribal belts all over the country through its 11 state branches and about 30 project offices and is currently operating in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, H.P, M.P, J&K, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujrat, Rajasthan and Delhi as well as all the North Eastern Himalayan States of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim. The reputation and prestige of JTRC has increased over the years due to its hardwork and commitment to the people it serves and excellent cooperation amongst the executives and staff. During this period JTRC has worked with about 115 major tribes and 275 minor tribes in India and in South East Asian Countries. JTRC is extremely proud of people's trust and participation in its activities in the remote areas and is deeply grateful to its friends and sponsors in Government of India, Inter – governmental Organisations, State Governments and NGO's for their support during the last two decades in this struggle for achievement. During this period JTRC has served about 50 lakh ST/SC people and about 4,00,000 children in the remote areas through its research, training and development divisions.The year 2004 is the Silver Jubilee year for JTRC.

<b>ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD......STAY IN OWN COUNTRY HAVE SOME SELF-RESPECT DAKTAAR BABU !</b>


<b> Indian doctors out of work in UK
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------</b>

Sucharita Ghosh

Sunday, November 7, 2004 (East Ham):


A number of Indian doctors go to the UK every year with the dream of getting a good job but the dream has turned into a nightmare for many of them.

Several doctors there are overqualified but unemployed.

Every evening hundreds come to the Mahalaxshmi temple in East Ham, London to offer prayers and gratitude for their free evening meal.

They are not the homeless but in fact doctors from India who have come in thousands in answer to a call for recruitment from Britain's National Health Service or NHS only to find unemployment and have ended up living in London slums.

In many houses, 8-11 doctors live together in accommodation meant for only two infested with rats, cockroaches and bedbugs. Their stories are all chillingly similar.

"Some go to the temple, some to the Gurudwara, so 99 per cent of the people depend on them for lunch and dinner. Some people I know haven't got a job in 2 years. We've already paid so much money, we can't go back to India, so we have to struggle and somehow get into the NHS," said Dr Papanna.

"The living standards here are not good. The problem for doctors like me and people from other Asian countries is that we can't spend a lot as our money is limited and unless we get a job it becomes difficult to go to other parts of London and stay. This area has the cheapest accommodation and we have to accept whatever they give us," said another doctor.

Shattered dreams

With each unemployed doctor sending out over 10 applications for jobs and attachments per day, an estimated 50,000-80,000 postal applications go out each day. But even as the numbers of unemployed overseas doctors rise, the NHS continues to actively seek recruitment for a third of its posts from countries like India.

"The kind of doctors the NHS is looking for are senior doctors but the kind of doctors that seem to be coming from India are doctors who have just qualified and don't have any experience. They are competing with their own class fellows nobody else," said Dr Guneet, Indian doctor.

Many blame the internet for their wrecked dreams. As a primary source of information for most overseas doctors, they are easy prey to the flourishing business of crammer courses and estate agents who make their living off overseas doctors.

"Hassle-free" package deals are peddled on the internet - complete with sponsorship letters, accommodation, a guaranteed pass and a glamorous option to the Indian system. But it's the guarantee of employment that gets lost in the fine print.

"If you look at the entire UK saga - PLAB is the beginning - the membership, training is there for us to consolidate and then you may be able to use the UK to move on to the US," said Dr Sanjay Revankar, Indian doctor.

Difficult to resist

Admittedly, the maths is attractive and the dream of the big job in the big city is one that many find difficult to resist.

"In India it would have taken at least 10 years to get a degree and start earning a good sum that would satisfy my family needs. So I calculated that if I come to this place and I get a job even in a year's time, I will settle down and get a degree sooner and then decide to settle here or go back," maintained another Indian doctor.

But for many, the gamble doesn't pay off. Having staked over two years of their professional lives in preparing for Plab 2 and nearly all of their personal and family savings, most are left with little option but to play on.

"If I am sure of a job I am ready to spend as much as it requires. Because even if I go back home there is nothing back there - because I am just an MBBS and everyone knows the plight of MBBS graduates there," said Dr Mahadeo Bhide.

No one knows exactly how many unemployed overseas doctors there are in the UK. Estimates vary between 3,000 and 8,000. And as the wait for them gets longer and grimmer, what is becoming clear is that the more doctors take the PLAB exam, the more doctors are out of work.

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory...txtsrch=doctors

can someone please tell me about the real connections between india and iran.

whether iranians went west from india, or the other way round. is sanskrit and avestan derived from the same language pool (ie. same root word pool) ??

whether the avesta was written prior to the rig ved (as the AIT proponents claim. they also came indians moved in FROM iran and not the other way round) or was it the other way round.

did persia have a caste system??

how come zorastrianism is so ostentibly monotheirtic??

the westerners have a double reason for putting persian on a pedestal.

cos they somehow feel the need to show how the vedic hindus came from persians.
(though if i remember right the name persia come from purush/puru, descendant of manu.

does anyone know of a book or website from where i can learn about the descandants of manu and who went which way??)

and they also feel the need to show that hinduism is a rip off from zorastrianism.

for them abrahamic types, zorastrianism holds a special place - since its a delivered religion, and is also monotheistic.

only the jews consistently keep debunking zorastrianism - cos they (the jews) did infact rip off a lot of stuff from zorastrianism, esp during the babylonian captivity.

the influence that zorastrianism had on the judaism, X-ianity and i-slam - as well as on roman mithraism (which is almost entirely of zorastrian manufacture - and then itself went on to influence x-ianity as we know it today) - is undeniable.

the reason the western pseudo-scholars keep dating the avesta before the vedas, is because, if the avesta is itself post-rigvedic, then ALL major religions will be shown to be unquestionably influenced by or derived from hinduism.


so whats the real truth?? how's hinduism and zorastrianism similar and how are the different apart from the monotheistic and 'delivered" bit.

i'd appreaicte a few valid links or exerpts from authoritatiove books.

especially books from the horse's mouth - like say what records the iranians themselves have about their history and what records indians have about them.


finally, all this is very ancient history.

iran and india have been close 2 more times (or in two other different eras) too.

one was when the sakas and dhruvas came to india and established kingdoms, and then was when the present day parsees fled from islamic carnage to india.


also indian music and iranian music have common roots. (as does indian and irish music)

can anyone tell me more???

VIEW: East Asia — more discord than accord —Mohan Malik

In the absence of a thaw in Sino-Japanese and Sino-Indian relations or great power cooperation, the EAC is unlikely to take off because multilateralism is a multi-player game. If anything, the first EAS may well have had the opposite effect, intensifying old rivalries. If such rivalry continues, there is every risk that community building would be fatally compromised

Optimists see the East Asian Summit as the first step toward establishing an East Asian Community (EAC) along the lines of the European Community. However, competing geopolitical interests and historic suspicion make the goal unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Instead of creating a common bond, the first summit may have intensified old strategic rivalries and forced smaller Asian nations to choose sides.

The long-awaited summit (EAS) held in mid-December brought together China and India with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). With several rising and contending powers, the Asia of the 21st century resembles Europe of the early 20th century, and for now, any Asian free-trade zone to rival Europe seems farfetched.

Despite the ongoing Sino-Japanese feud, Sino-Indian rivalry, discord over membership, and wariness about China’s emerging power, leaders did agree to hold the EAS annually with the ASEAN. But challenges remain: On the eve of the summit, China proposed dividing EAS members into core and secondary categories, and Chinese and Korean leaders refused to hold bilateral or trilateral talks with Japanese counterparts. China’s stance provides insights into Beijing’s insecurities regarding the momentum for a broader East Asian Community shifting power alignments within Asia.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad first proposed the summit as the East Asian Economic Caucus in 1991. But the original proposal, with its narrow membership definitions, floundered mainly due to opposition from the US, which was being excluded from what was called a caucus without Caucasians.

Almost a decade later, Mahathir’s successor, Abdullah Badawi, resurrected the idea of an East Asian Community at the 2004 ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea) meeting, and immediately won backing from China’s Premier Wen Jiabao. Perceiving declining US power due to the preoccupation with the War on Terrorism, an assertive China saw an opportunity to steer East Asian multilateralism along the lines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), to serve Beijing’s strategic goals and further weaken US influence in East Asia. However, Beijing’s enthusiasm alerted those countries that remain wary of becoming divided into Chinese and American blocs in East Asia or establishing an East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere under China’s leadership. This alarm prompted a campaign to include India, Australia and New Zealand and to ensure that ASEAN remained central to any future East Asian Community.

Membership remained a contentious issue well into 2005. With the exception of Kuala Lumpur, Southeast Asian countries supported India’s participation in the EAS, seeing it as a useful counterweight to China’s growing power and backed Australia’s participation provided that Canberra acceded to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which it did.

Failing to exclude India, Australia and New Zealand from the EAS, the Chinese Foreign Ministry proposed on the eve of the summit that the existing ASEAN Plus Three (APT), and not the new 16-member East Asia Summit, control the formation of any Asian community-building exercise. In other words, China insisted that EAC formation remain the responsibility of the core group, or APT. A proposal to divide EAS into two blocs — the core states with China as the dominant APT player, and the peripheral states with India, Australia and New Zealand, “outsiders” according to a recent People’s Daily editorial — led to a major rift.

A People’s Daily commentary listed reasons for the Chinese proposal. The commentary criticised Japan for dragging countries outside the region into the Community to serve as a counterbalance to China and rejected any plans to “dish out the ‘human rights’ issue... to build up US-Japan centred Western dominance... in an attempt to... weaken Chinese influence in East Asia.” China regards Japan and India with substantial antipathy, and not just because the two Asian giants are China’s principal peer competitors. China-Japan relations, always prickly, have lately worsened due to Beijing’s opposition to a permanent UN Security Council seat for Japan and rival claims to petroleum deposits and islands in the East China Sea, not to mention Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine commemorating Japan’s war dead.

Beijing remains leery of India’s power pretensions and attempts to extend influence in China’s backyard, regarding New Delhi’s “Look East” policy as part of a wider “congage China” strategy unveiled by the Washington-Tokyo-New Delhi axis. Beijing seeks to confine India to the periphery of a future East Asia Community. The People’s Daily commentator reacted sharply to India’s proposal for an Asian Economic Community: “India’s proposal is not warmly responded as each country has its own considerations.” Apparently, China’s considerations are primarily geo-strategic in nature. Beijing fears that India’s participation would shift the balance of power and make the EAC less susceptible to domination by China. China’s proposal for a two-tiered EAS structure found some support from South Korea, Burma, Thailand, and more importantly, host country Malaysia, albeit for varying reasons.

In the end, China won a partial victory with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi’s announcement that APT, which originally proposed the idea, would be “a vehicle for realising the dreams of forming the East Asian Community.” However, the support came with a caveat: ASEAN spurned Beijing’s offer to host the second summit, and decided that the EAS will be held annually with the ASEAN Summit in Southeast Asian countries only. Thus, ASEAN will be the hub of the EAS and the key driver within the APT.

The reaction was mixed: An Indian diplomat expressed disappointment over the decision to entrench the ASEAN Plus Three framework: “To state that ASEAN is in the driver’s seat, the passengers have a right to know where they are going.” With Australia relegated to the outer circle, Prime Minster John Howard downplayed the summit’s significance relative to the APEC. And Japan expressed its preference that newcomers India, Australia and New Zealand be more than mere passengers on the road to an East Asian Community. Realising that its original goal of establishing an East Asian version of SCO to counter Washington was a non-starter, China quickly lost enthusiasm for the new grouping. As a distant hegemon, the US remains the balancer of choice for countries on China’s periphery. Of the 16 EAS members, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia and South Korea are military allies of the US, while New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India are hedgers more concerned about China than the US. So on the last day of the summit, the Chinese premier and diplomats suggested that anyone with interests in the Pacific — Russia, perhaps, or even the United States — could eventually take part, a move that would make EAC indistinguishable from the ASEAN Regional Forum or the APEC.

In the absence of a thaw in Sino-Japanese and Sino-Indian relations or great power cooperation, the EAC is unlikely to take off because multilateralism is a multi-player game. If anything, the first EAS may well have had the opposite effect, intensifying old rivalries. If such rivalry continues, there is every risk that community building exercise would be fatally compromised. At best, the EAS will be just another “talk shop” like the APEC or the ARF where leaders meet, declarations are made, but little community building is achieved.

Mohan Malik is professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the policy or position of the centre or the US Department of Defense. This article appeared in YaleGlobal Online (www.yaleglobal.yale.edu), a publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and is reprinted by permission. Copyright © 2003 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Even big editors have small vanities. Mr. Natwar Singh, the foreign minister of India, telephoned the ‘big’ editor of the ‘secular’ newspaper, although it was to clarify his position vis-à-vis the Volcker report. The call merited front paging with a banner headline. In India that is Bharat the word ‘secular’ defies dictionaries - but writing about it is digressing from the main theme. The BE did not have a crystal ball and could not know the twists in the tale which seem to continue to unwind.

Returning to our main story, there are two components in it. The first is Natwar Singh’s denial. What else do we expect him to do? He would and did. He still does although the ‘old faithful party’ led him to the gallows in the larger cause. ‘Caesar is an honourable man’ and his honour should be protected even if one foreign minister is made an errand boy and another a fall guy.

Sometime in April 1987, the Swedish national broadcaster fired its Bofors. The salvo came in handy for one of India’s greatest Machiavellians. For him all was fair in politics and power (power comes after politics in the dictionary - to use a hackneyed pun) including fragmenting the ‘body politic’ in his pursuit of power. He used it to do a Brutus on Caesar. Caesar was dethroned but in spite of thundering protestations, could not regain his honour in his lifetime or after. The needle of suspicion still hovers in the direction of his grave. Caesar is (or was) guilty or not depending on your angle of vision - the perspective parallax (does it sound like an oxymoron?).

Shortly afterwards, Geoffrey Archer, the British novelist published a collection of short stories entitled ‘A Twist in the Tale’. One of the stories in the collection is a spoof on India’s Bofors saga. The story runs like this: The finance minister of a third-world country approaches a Swiss bank ostensibly to investigate the account one of his country’s politicians had with the bank. The senior official of the bank whom the finance minister approaches refuses to confirm or give any details of the account. The finance minister’s pleas in the name of ethics, morality, humanity and what have you and threats to close down all his country’s accounts with the bank and even the threat to kill him were of no avail. The finance minister makes to give up and walk out but suddenly heists (pun intended) his brief case on to the table and says ‘how about opening an account?’

In another part of the story two third-world finance ministers meet in an international conference held in one of their capitals. They become friends and the finance minister of the host country invites the other to his mansion for dinner. The guest marvels at the opulence of his host’s mansion and wonders how he could build such an opulent mansion in so poor a country. The host takes him to the top of the building and shows him a nearby river and a dam on it. He asks him ‘do you see the dam?’ The guest replies he does. “Well! Ten percent of it’, he says.

The next conference was held in the guest’s national capital and naturally the earlier guest now plays host and invites his friend to dinner. It was the turn of the other to marvel at the opulence of his friend’s palace. So the host takes him to the top of the building and points at the panoramic expanse of the nearby river. ‘See the dam there?’ he asks. ‘But I do not see anything there!’ replies his guest. ‘Precisely!’ says the host, ‘Ten per cent of it!’

By the by, Geoffrey Archer believed there was no corruption in the first-world, till ...

Much water has flown the Rhine and Ganges since 1987. India’s foreign minister was used as an errand boy to deliver letters to the Swiss requesting them to stall the Bofors’ investigation, as Caesar’s honour could not be sullied; the dynasty has done so much for the country. J. Nehru billed the nation for his stay in ‘Yarawada gaol’ (as he loved to spell it) and collected an inexhaustible supply of post-dated cheques, which the dynasty is cashing.

A former Japanese prime minister was convicted for corruption. It happened in the Philippines, in Italy, in Israel and Britain. Two British Prime Ministers had to abdicate because of their cabinet colleagues’ sexual misdemeanours - not financial malfeasance. In India such misdemeanours are not reported. After all in India that is Bharat the high and mighty have the privilege of different social codes of conduct. J. Nehru’s escapades with Edwina Mountbaten surfaced long after both of them met their maker.

In the US a President was convicted for spooking his opponent’s headquarters. In India, Indira (no, it does not mean Indira is India) famous for her keeping dossiers on her opponents did not have to do it. In India that is Bharat, law enforcement agencies are their political masters’ fiefdoms. And fund collectors (e.g. Rustum Shorab Nagarwala and Lalit Narain Misra) disappear if their presence is inconvenient for their masters.

Now the second part of the press parallax. The country’s socio-political philosophy is mind-boggling. The country’s founding fathers wanted a casteless society. India today has myriad castes and they keep mutating. Today the political class is the Kshatriyas. All paths are cleared for their movement. The bureaucracy is the Brahmins. They preside over all social activity. The business class is the Vysyas. Everything spins around their money that pervades the ether. The rest - us all comprises the Sudras. The original Brahmins are untouchables today. What goes up has to come down in a topsy-turvy world.

The founding fathers wanted a secular society - meaning that the state has no religion. Indira inserted the word, which the founding fathers forgot to write into the constitution. When she declared a nineteen-month holiday for political parties and received all opponents as government guests - with the noble intention of running trains on time and her second son practiced castrating extra productivity - Indian parliament had to do something. India, today therefore competes with Saudi Arabia.

The press in India today mirrors the socio-political milieu including its hypocrisy with a few honourable exceptions but like internet passwords they too are case sensitive. A press baron is reported to have said ‘I can hire editors a dime a dozen, I want marketing managers who can sell the paper’. A wise editor agreed that there is nothing called objectivity. Objectivity like beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder! Or objectivity like consistency is a virtue of the asses!

The Bofors saga was unearthed by Arun Shourie but taken forward by the ‘big editor with the small vanity’ and his Swiss correspondent. They led us through the mazes of accounts routing and rerouting kickbacks. Indian governments’ lethargy and inactivity ended up in blank walls. No Caesar could be indicted for a ‘Caesar could do no wrong’. That is the divine privilege Indian society confers on its political class.

Time has turned full circle. Now a ‘secular’ government supported by workers’ angels (sounds like Marx and Engels, does it not?) is ruling. Natwar Singh has secular credentials. He wants to reverse the clock and take the country back to the days of the non-aligned movement and an independent foreign policy. An independent foreign policy in the lexicon of the workers’ angels is kowtowing to the dictatorships of the banana republics and the Orwellian paradises - a.k.a. the non-aligned movement. He supports Iraq and Iran not because they are great democracies but because they are Muslim nations. That gets votes for his party although Indian Muslims are appalled by the suggestion that for them a foreign nation - whatever its religion - is more important than their own national interest. All angels must come to the aid of the party - and - Natwar Singh called to clarify that he did not mulct. So ‘I’ believe he did not. Q.E.D. But then, in hindsight………

In the end Natwar had to be excavated from the chair, with him kicking and screaming. There is a twist in the tale, which good old Geoffrey might some day add to his collection. Mitrokhin finally confirmed what many of us suspected all along, that some of those liberal hearts were paid to bleed like the crowds that are arranged to cheer our netas’ orations. Long live KGB! Matherani confirmed that a ‘liberal’ foreign policy could also be milked. Long live AMAM!

<b>UPA govt plans job quota in private sector</b>
Subodh Ghildiyal
[ Sunday, December 18, 2005 11:43:26 pmTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: In a significant departure from its oft-repeated stance that implemention of quotas in private sector should be "voluntary," the UPA government is considering enacting a law to extend job reservations to the non-government sector.

Sources say government, which had so far maintained that it would leave it to the private sector to consider introducing job reservations, is now bringing both an amendment to the Constitution, as well as enacting a new law for the purpose.

Law ministry has already brushed aside the view of attorney-general Milon Banerjee that there’s no room in the Constitution for getting the private sector to implement quotas.

Unlike the law officer who felt that government would’ve to amend the Constitution to satisfy the clamour for pushing the quota frontiers, the ministry has held that the purpose can also be achieved by enacting an ordinary law and placing it under the 9th Schedule of the Constitution for immunity from legal challenge.

It has cited the example of Tamil Nadu, which put the Tamil Nadu BC/SC/ST Reservation Act, 1993, under the 9th Schedule to ward off litigation on the ground that it exceeded the 50% ceiling laid down by SC on the quantum of reservations.

Before Banerji, legal experts Fali Nariman and Justice (retd) K Ramaswamy had also ruled that the Constitution in its current shape did not allow for a Central law to bring in private sector quota.

Government, however, doesn’t agree. This marks a shift from its stand so far, which, in keeping with the "hands-off"ethos of the liberalisation era and recognising the role of merit in boosting productivity, seemed inclined to leave the issue to the sense of "social justice"of the captains of industry.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...336539.cms

The current negotiations in Hong Kong has once again shown to the world that the developed nations are always ready to adopt double standards . While, they want the poorer nations to open up their market yet they are not ready to remove the various advantages that they are giving for the protection of their own products , notably agricultural products and cotton.

I could not help wonder if the cooling off of the hindu emotions had something to do with Mahatma Gandhi's assasination. From what I read (I was not born then), the average hindu was more pro-hindutva and that event push the secular agenda on hindus. It was as though hindus were ashamed to be associated with a ideology that killed the father of the nation. That made it easy for commies and congress party to push the secular agenda. Commies, who during the freedom struggle, considered Gandhi and hinduism as the greatest obstacles to "the revolution", used the death of Gandhi to suppress hinduism. The congress party, which was to be dissolved as per Gandhi's wishes, under the socialist Nehru became pro-minority after Sardar's death. Many of the constitutional amendments that were made could possibly be traced to suppressing the hindu unity. Government control of temples was one such measure.

My idea of starting this discussion is following:

1) What if Gandhi had not been killed

2) How his death impacted hindu psyche

3) How to correct this change and make hindus pro-hindutva

There will be a lot of overlap with Missionary, British etc problems in NE India, but this thread is to focus on NE India alone.