Javagal Srinath (my fav cricketer)

Srinath on ICC panel from The Hindu

Colombo: India's former pace spearhead Javagal Srinath will be part of the three-member Bowling Action Advisory Panel (BAAP) which will identify bowlers with potentially flawed actions at the ongoing ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup here.

Indo-US joint aggriculture research

Wal-Mart and Monsanto on Indo-U.S. Agriculture Initiative board from The Hindu

NEW DELHI: The United States-based multinationals, Wal-Mart and Monsanto, are on the board of the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture Research and Education. It will set the agenda for collaborative farm research with Indian laboratories and agricultural universities. In India, the universities on their own and through Krishi Vigyan Kendras serve as extension agencies for farmers on the field and have a wide reach.

The influence of the American private sector became obvious to Indian scientists during the first meeting of the board in Washington DC in December 2005. Representatives of the Wal-Mart food chain and the Monsanto Seed Corporation were keen on using the Initiative for retailing in agriculture and on trade aspects. Transgenic research in crops, animals and fisheries would be a substantial part of the collaboration in biotechnology, requiring India to pledge huge funds.

Issues of Intellectual Property Rights and Benefit-Sharing were also discussed. India is endowed with rich biodiversity and has a huge bank of germ plasm and genetic resource material in the public research system.

India is looking for joint ownership or joint patents, whereas in the U.S. much of the transgenic and hybrid agricultural technology is with the corporates.

Indian Council of Agriculture Research Director-General Mangala Rai is the co-chair of the Board along with Ellen Terpstra, Administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agriculture Services. There will be seven members on each side.

The Alchemist

Day before I was reading the alchemist while on the plane... A few people had recommended me the book and I have been wondering what the whole deal was about. Finally got chance to read it since it was gifted to me :)

It is a very simple story but it has so many implications to life. So many place I had to stop and think what did I do when I was in such a situation? Where is this applicable? All in all that tiny book has a lot of meaning. And more so for me... since probably I have to figure what is my "Personal Legend". Kind of reminds me of "The Little Prince" Which on the surface seemed to be just a cartoon but was a lot more.

Now I have moved to Memoirs of a Geisha. Another gripping book.

I agree and disagree

Democracy in a Cartoon via ALDaily

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.

This raises another more general problem: the inability of the West to defend itself intellectually and culturally. Be proud, do not apologize. Do we have to go on apologizing for the sins our fathers? Do we still have to apologize, for example, for the British Empire, when, in fact, the British presence in India led to the Indian Renaissance, resulted in famine relief, railways, roads and irrigation schemes, eradication of cholera, the civil service, the establishment of a universal educational system where none existed before, the institution of elected parliamentary democracy and the rule of law? What of the British architecture of Bombay and Calcutta? The British even gave back to the Indians their own past: it was European scholarship, archaeology and research that uncovered the greatness that was India; it was British government that did its best to save and conserve the monuments that were a witness to that past glory. British Imperialism preserved where earlier Islamic Imperialism destroyed thousands of Hindu temples.

On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes.

Each of us should have the right to speak against things that we don't agree with... be it religion, morals, laws, anything at all. But I wonder if that will work for the better and will the two sides of the story be heard?

anonymuncule

kabhi to rukhna,
kuch to khana,
dhire se palat ke phir tum guzar lena.
kabhi to muskarana,
kuch to sarahana,
dhire se akhen mila ke phir tum chura lena.
--शोभना

quote

Comedy is a simply funny way of being serious.
--Peter Ustinov

Going to be another year older in few hrs...

As each year passes it seems that it was more eventful that the previous one... And by that rule last year was the most eventful that I have had and I think next will be more so.

Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.
--Jennifer Yane