• A Samjhauta In The East
• 'India Gate' in Canada soon
• Internet shapes global Tibet protests
• Joint Naval exercise by India, Germany commences today
• Union budget hides more than it reveals: Gurumurthy

• Finally, Lanka to unveil memorial for Indian soldiers
• British MPs want 'US-style relationship' with India
• SC Upholds 27 per Cent For OBCs In IITs, IIMs
• Doing business in China: 850,000 lawsuits in the making
• Mahabharata, the new counsellor for British army

Two decades after it booted them out, Sri Lanka is preparing to unveil a memorial near its Parliament for Indian soldiers killed battling the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. The names of around 1,500 men, almost all of them from the Indian Army, are to be etched on black marble and topped by an eternal flame as part of a long-pending project now being executed by the Sri Lanka Navy. It will be the first memorial dedicated to the Indian soldier outside India. Final touches are being given to the memorial and it will be ready for a formal launch either May 22 or when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh goes to Sri Lanka for the South Asian Association for Regional Conference (SAARC) summit this summer. An Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was deployed in Sri Lanka's northeast following a July 1987 bilateral peace pact aimed at ending Tamil separatism. But the troops ended up fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from October that year, losing nearly 1,200 men until the last of the soldiers left Sri Lanka in March 1990. Nearly 2,800 men were also wounded, many maimed for life. The roll of honour at the memorial, which will bear India's National Emblem, will include names of Indian paramilitary forces, taking the total to some 1,500. While the IPKF fought the LTTE, Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene who invited them lost power. In a bizarre but bloody twist of events, his successor, Ranasinghe Premadasa, in June 1989 demanded the IPKF's withdrawal. When that did not happen, he provided arms and ammunition to the LTTE to take on the IPKF. Before the IPKF saga ended, it was also accused of killing large numbers of LTTE guerrillas as well as civilians, mainly Tamils, in the bruising war that earned the force the derisive name "Innocent People Killing Force". For years, many in the Indian military have grudged that Sri Lanka had not even bothered to acknowledge the role of Indian troops who died at the hands of the LTTE. That situation is about to change, Indian and Sri Lankan military sources say. "This will be in the memory of Indian armed forces who helped us to preserve the unity of our country," a Sri Lankan military officer told IANS in a telephonic interview from Colombo. "Our President (Mahinda Rajapaksa) was very particular that this memorial has to come up. He kept saying that 20 years have gone by and we had not fulfilled this pledge. It had dragged on too long. After all the (Indian) soldiers paid the supreme sacrifice." Work at the memorial began about six months ago. It will be ready in another two weeks. The military officer added that most Sri Lankans now appreciated the role played by the IPKF. But when its members were dying, it came in the firing line of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists who said its presence undermined their country's sovereignty. "Our people have realised what the Indian soldiers did," the officer said. "They died fighting to keep Sri Lanka united. We can never forget their sacrifice. Today there is a lot of appreciation of their role." Lt Gen. Ashok Mehta, who served in the IPKF in the island nation's east, said the memorial had been talked about for years. "Initially they said there was some problem of land, and then something else. Now it is coming up. Better late than never."

Courtesy: www.sify.com, April 28, 2008

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Recognising that "trade" and "takeovers" have become the buzzwords in UK-India relations in recent years, a key House of Commons committee wants the Labour government to forge a "special relationship" with India. "We need to establish a relationship as special with India as the one we have enjoyed with the United States," the Business and Enterprise Committee said in a report titled 'Waking up to India: Developments in UK-India Economic Relations'. The report, published this week, notes that there has been a "significant improvement" in economic relations between Indian and Britain since 2006, and mentions recent takeovers of British companies by Indian companies such as Tata and United Breweries. The committee comprising MPs across party lines is chaired by the Conservative MP from Mid Worcestershire Peter Luff. "The United Kingdom has woken up to India, but progress must not now be slowed in response to global concerns or expressions of doubt about India's future," the committee's report said. "Even if India grows more slowly than other emerging markets, in a country of over a billion people the opportunities created would still be huge. The United Kingdom is uniquely well placed to take advantage of them, to the benefit of both partners," it added. The committee had briefings from several stakeholders, including Indian-origin entrepreneur Karan Bilimoria and representatives of UK Trade and Investment, the department responsible for overseas trade relations.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, April 23, 2008

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Maitree Express, a direct train service between Calcutta and Dhaka, flags off on April 14
Bringing the two Bengals closer will be a direct train service between Calcutta and Dhaka. It is slated to be flagged off on April 14, the Bengali New Year. This is going to be the first-ever passenger train between the two countries since Independence. The service will operate on Saturdays from Dhaka and Calcutta with return trip on Sundays. The cheapest ticket will be Rs 319 and upper-class passengers will have to pay Rs 797 for the 538-km journey that will be covered in about 14 hours. Named Maitree Express, the much-awaited train will have 12 coaches, including airconditioned coaches and a pantry car.

Courtesy: Outlook, Apr 21, 2008

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SC Clears 27 Per Cent OBC quota, excludes 'creamy layer'
Giving a big push to reservation policy, the Supreme Court today upheld the controversial law providing 27 per cent quota for other backward classes (OBCs) in IITs, IIMs and other Central educational institutions but excluded the "creamy layer" from its ambit. With the court clearing the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 the IITs, IIMs and other Central educational institutions will have to provide 27 per cent quota for OBCs for the 2008-09 academic session. The five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan unanimously held that "creamy layer" must be excluded from the socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs) and there should be a periodic review after five years on continuing with the quota. The Bench held that the exclusion of minority educational institutions from the ambit of the Act was not violative of the Constitution as "they are a separate class and their rights are protected by other constitutional provisions". "We hold that the exclusion of minority educational institutions from Article 15 (5) is not violative of Article 14 of the Constitution".

Courtesy: Business World, April 15-21 2008

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Vancouver will soon have an India Gate to celebrate more than 100 years of Indo-Canadians in this country. British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell is likely to make this announcement on Saturday. The gate will be built in the city's Punjabi Market at 50th Avenue and Main Street at a cost of $3 million. It is expected to be ready before the Winter Olympics in the city in 2010. The Punjabi Market is famous for Indian sweets and merchandise shops. The most famous among them are the Indian Sweets and Restaurant and the Himalayan Restaurant. The first Indian settlement also came up here by the name of Paldi after a village near Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com, April 19, 2008

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The emergence of social networking sites has come as a boon for cyber-dissidents who use these internet tools not just to create a buzz on the web but also as a platform to organise protests and flash strikes. On Facebook, there are nearly 15 groups that come up on a word search for 'tibet'. But, the largest by far is that of "Free Tibet", which had a membership count of 88,460. When accessed on Thursday afternoon, it had over 8,700 posts, 1,727 photos, 360 discussions topics and 51 videos. The discussants naturally were critical of Chinese government policies, but there were also interventions from other Facebook users who claimed they were being fed by "western media lies". The photo-sharing site, Flickr, had several streams of photograph on the protests inside Tibet and outside. But, the majority of clicks were on the video-sharing site, YouTube, where pro-China activists have compiled videos of reportedly "false" news reported on western media channels on the Tibet situation. One of those uploaded videos was reportedly from an Indian website, which had wrongly translated a clip from Chinese television. "YouTube" has turned into a battlefield for all-out video war, as both sides uploaded their side of the story. When pro-Tibet sympathisers uploaded a clip "Tibetan monks embarrass China - 27 Mar 08", the pro-China lobby followed with a clip termed "Tibet - Cannibal monks reveal their true faces". Ironically, agencies from Beijing said that YouTube could not be accessed from the Chinese mainland.

The dominance of the Internet in the recent Tibet protests was noted by several blogs which found that the planning was done entirely on New Media tools in response to official surveillance. "First, there were the emails from friends planning to participate. This information was soon followed by Facebook feeds showing which friends, and which elected officials, had confirmed their presence in the street masses. While this took place, YouTube videos began to be uploaded from Tuesday night's rally. By early morning, my phone started vibrating with Twitter updates, starting slowly and then reaching overwhelming numbers, as protesters took to the streets to outsmart city officials and police," said a post on the website "Fog city journal" that tracked the San Francisco protests April 10. "Twitter" is a tool which allows its users to send updates to their profiles through SMS, Internet messaging or through other social networking sites. These updates can be viewed by those 'twitterers' who have subscribed to that specific feed. A website, "blog.reportwitters.com", which advocates journalism-twitter style has a post titled "Journalist's guide to finding Tibet twitters" that lists various links, including the Chinese version of twitter called "fanfou", where the Tibet situation is updated frequently from within China. The ground-zero for Tibet twitter feeds was "twitter.com/teamtibet" which shows the minute-by-minute tracking of the torch in the city of brotherly love. "Torch bearer at Van Ness & Chestnut just pulled out Tibetan Flag!! Had torch taken away. YAA!," said a post, followed six minutes later by "Torch turned onto Marina, heading West towards Crissy Field". During the Delhi torch relay, there were requests for information from around the world on the progress of the Olympic torch. Since the public was assiduously kept out of the route, the trackers had to make do with reports from media wire agencies or television channels.

Courtesy: The Week, April 13, 2008

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WESTERN firms are always complaining about the theft of intellectual property in China. From knock-off designs to copycat brand names, pirated music and fake drugs, China has a well-earned reputation as a free-for-all when it comes to patents and copyrights. Worse, there often seems little hope of redress: the courts are too distant and too incompetent; the laws are too weak or too vague; the culture is too resistant to the very idea of intellectual property. Yet help is at hand, in the form of Chinese firms with patents to defend. Since 2003 the number of trademark applications has grown by 60%; the number of patents has nearly doubled (850,000 are now active) and the number of lawsuits about intellectual property has more than doubled (see chart). The government is encouraging the trend in many ways, including signalling to the press to cheer it on. This enthusiasm marks a dramatic change. During the Maoist era, private property of any kind was seen as theft from the masses, and so subject to just expropriation. Only in 1985 did China begin to enact laws to protect patents. It did not enforce them much until 2001, when the authorities promised to crack down in order to win admission to the World Trade Organisation. China has since opened more than 50 courts that deal solely with intellectual-property cases, and Chinese firms are using them. Prominent litigants include a pram manufacturer protecting designs, a soya-milk producer defending an industrial process and a maker of Chinese medicines shielding a name that, roughly translated, means "mind and blood purge". As companies in China establish brands and develop products, the incentive to sue will grow, particularly because the cost of bringing a case is minimal. "If you can afford a car, you can afford a lawsuit," says Tony Chen, who works in the Shanghai office of Jones Day, an international law firm. In America, firms often settle intellectual-property cases out of court for fear of enormous awards by juries. That is not true in China, Mr Chen says, where a judge rules in the majority of cases and damages tend to be small. They normally cover legal costs, however, turning lawsuits into a self-funding method to battle piracy. Unsurprisingly, the main beneficiaries of the sudden interest in intellectual property are Chinese lawyers. Some reportedly earn more than $5m a year. Non-Chinese law firms sometimes provide advice on thorny cases. But they are not allowed to file patents or appear in court on behalf of a client-a proprietary process that Chinese lawyers are keen to defend.

Courtesy: The Economist, Apr 12, 2008

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India and Germany will begin a three-day Naval exercise in the Arabian Sea from today. An Indo-German Defence Cooperation Agreement in this context was signed in 2006. Over 700 personnel from the German Task Force comprising the Federal German Ship (FGS) Hamburg, which is an air-defence ship, frigate FGS Koeln, and FGS Berlin, which is a replenishment tanker, will participate in the exercise from the German side. The training ships "INS Tir" and "INS Krishna" and two frigates of the Indian Navy will take part from India. German Task Force Commander Captain Michael Budde, on Monday, said: "The German and Indian warships from the naval base here will jointly leave the Kochi Harbour on Tuesday for the joint exercises. Seamanship, replenishment at sea and exchange of ship personnel and flying exercises will be held in the sea off Kochi. More advanced manoeuvres like surface and submarine warfare will be held further northwards off the Goa coast, where the Indian frigates from the Western Naval Command will join." "We plan to have more joint exercises with the Indian Navy on a regular basis," Captain Budde added. The guests visited training establishments such as the Anti-Submarine Warfare School and the Navigation and Direction School at the Southern Naval Command here. German Ambassador Bernd Mutzelburg said: "Germany is looking forward to forge a strategic partnership with India in different sectors. We are willing to transfer high-tech weaponry to the Indian armed forces to help their modernisation drive. India will get top-end technology and it will be a win-win situation for both countries in this partnership of equals. Germany needs to retain her competitive edge by making good use of the economy products manufactured in India." Mutzelburg said bilateral trade doubled to 10 billion euros in the past three years. India sees Germany as a high-tech partner. Following the 2006 agreement, three working groups were formed, to enhance military-military, military-technical and military-political contacts. "India and Germany have many things in common like both are federal, secular democracies. Both nations are striving for a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council," he added. The German warships arrived in Kochi on Saturday after conducting joint exercise with South African forces.

Courtesy: www.webindia123.com, April 08, 2008

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Krishan Attri, the British army's first Hindu chaplain, uses extracts from the Mahabharata to counsel British soldiers going to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Attri was among the first four faith chaplains appointed by the army in November 2005. The other three were Mandeep Kaur (Sikh chaplain), Sunil Kariyakarawana (Buddhist), and Imam Asim Hafiz (Islam). Britain's armed forces have 300 regular commissioned Christian chaplains serving 183,000 Christian personnel, but the four new chaplains were the first such appointments in the history of the forces. Attri, who hails from Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, said that he uses the Bhagwad Gita to explain the necessity of going to war to British Hindu soldiers deputed in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are 470 Hindus in Britain's armed forces. ''I tell them, 'God has given you an opportunity to protect your country and maintain peace in the world'. They need to know they are not killing anybody but just performing a duty,'' Attri says. When Attri was interviewed at the Ministry of Defence for the job, he was asked what he would say if a soldier did not want to go to war. Hindu teachings, he responded, offered good guidance: ''Duty is our priority. It's our karma, and we have to face it.'' Hindu teachings have armed most of the soldiers, he told The Times. ''They know they've undertaken a contract to look after the boundary walls of the country,'' he told the newspaper. Among the tasks Attri performs in his role is conducting weddings, supporting soldiers and their families, and acting as a liaison between Hindu troops and their commanding officers. He explains small but symbolically important issues such as Hindu soldiers wearing 'rakhi', or why strict vegetarians do not want to use spoons that have touched meat at meals. The army keeps Attri busy. He has gone to Nepal to select chaplains for the Gurkhas, and this spring will visit troops in Afghanistan. ''I want to see what the soldiers go through, to help me advise them and support the families left behind,'' he says. Attri came to Britain in 1986 as a 22-year-old priest to serve at the Hindu temple in Newcastle upon Tyne. He spent nearly two decades at the temple, teaching Hindu texts, music and Indian languages. On Britain's Hindu community, Attri says: ''We are part of this British community and we want to be recognised. We're a hard-working society, and we want to prove it.''

Courtesy: www.indiainfo.com, April 07, 2008

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Leading economist, S Gurumurthy on Tuesday slammed Chidambaram's budget and said, "The budget accorded by the Finance minister in 2008 hides more than it reveals. India's Fiscal deficit is much higher than actually have been announced by Chidambaram." Speaking on the Union Budget 2008-2009: Reveals or Conceals, Gurumurthy said that there has been a dramatic change in the past few decades in the way the budget has been presented. "Earlier, it has had a theatrical effect and the Budget has now become more pamphleteering rather than a serious exercise on the financial health". Gurumurthy also slammed the debt waiver of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. He said that debt waiver in no way help to the needy farmers in India. "Farmers mostly take loans from local money lenders rather than banks. It is these moneylenders, who take loans from the banks and lend it to farmers at higher interest rates. So, we can know easily that debt waiver will help the needy farmers or the money lenders," said Gurumurthy. Gurumurthy also comment on the introduction of 'Derivative trading' announced by Finance Minister, which has been criticized by the major economists world over. He called the 'Derivative trading' as the 'financial disaster' for the country and the move to allow derivatives is like firing a missile into the financial market.

Courtesy: www.headlinesindia.com, April 01, 20088

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