The Water Cooler

  • A distant mountain lover struggles to piece together what’s going on exactly in Uttarakhand

    If the extraordinary swell of the Ganges had not mowed down everything that came in its path, be it temple, road, building or bridge, then for Uttarakhand too, this would have been a day of celebration. For Tuesday is Ganga Dussehra, a day when Ganga is said to descend to the earth from her hidden abode. Some say to purge. Not many doubted it with scenes like these washing over Uttarkashi and other places.

    And Uttarkashi is the district take-off point for Gangotri, from where the Ganga descends.
    Less than a week ago the Chief minister of Uttarakhand was in Delhi asking for a review of a recent notification declaring vast stretches between Gaumukh to Uttarkashi in the state as an eco-sensitive zone.

    A PTI report of June 5 says, ‘Citing ongoing protests by locals against the Centre's recent notification declaring the area as eco-sensitive, the Chief Minister said the move will adversely affect the

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  • Narendra Modi making the announcement that shocked the media.Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi dropped a bombshell as he announced his exit from the prime ministerial race leaving both his supporters and opponents stunned. The out of the blue decision of the Gujarat chief minister has left the BJP's political opponents Congress in a tizzy as they now don't know whom to attack in the run-up to the upcoming general elections in 2014.

    Modi, when asked about reasons for his surprising move, said he is just not satisfied by Gujarat's development and he wants the state to become more prosperous than the United States of America and Europe combined, and it will be only then that he will be mentally ready to pursue the bigger role.

    Despite its top performing chief minister quitting the PM race, the BJP heaved a sigh of relief as it feels it can now attack Congress without any fear of any retaliation. A BJP spokesperson said that the party at present can relax and not worry about being accused of being communal. "The BJP can now go all out

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  • Rahul Gandhi's average speech at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was slammed by his critics and even by some of his admirers, rather secretly. In an attempt to save face, the Congress party, surprisingly, has shifted the blame on Rahul's speech writers.

    A source within the Congress stirred the hornet's nest when he informed the media that writing an ordinary speech such as this takes a lot of guts and is the work of a "himmatwaala" (courageous one).

    Taking cue from the source, the media immediately rushed to Bollywood filmmaker Sajid Khan, who recently has been censured for his latest film, Himmatwaala and its outrageous dialogues.

    On Friday morning, a frustrated Sajid Khan was seen eschewing a number of media personnel surrounding him outside his Mumbai house, pestering him with a number of questions about Rahul's CII speech and its relation to his film.

    There was only one question that the reporters were constantly shooting at Sajid - "Did you write Rahul's speech?"

    "Yes, I

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  • The Indian government has come up with an interesting proposition to form a new state ‘Baniya Pradesh’ for the ever-increasing number of banned people and groups in the country.

    Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde made the stunning revelation in a press conference. “In the view of growing number of people getting banned in the country, the Indian government is mulling to form a separate state to maintain decorum in the country,” he said. “We have decided to send such a prohibited population to this new state, which, if formed, would be known as ‘Baniya Pradesh’. Let these banned men and women exercise their Freedom of Expression here, thereby ensuring peace and order in the rest of India.”

    The Home Minister admitted that the Indian government has been meek in acting against the morale police in the country who have been announcing bans left, right and centre. “However, with such a new state formed to represent banned people, we can ensure that there is peace and order in the rest of

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  • GM crops and the food security fig leaf

    By Yahoo! India News | The Water Cooler – Tue 5 Feb, 2013

    GM corn is threat to the environment, argues Greenpeace



    By Shivani Shah

    Let's talk about genetically engineered/modified (GE/GM) foods. And why the Indian Government is so adamant to have these foods commercialised in India. And why it has nothing to do with food security.

    Genetic engineering is the artificial transfer of genes from one species to another – plant or animal. This results in a genetically ‘modified’ organism (GMO). As a result, the genetic makeup or the genetic blueprint of the organism is completely and permanently altered. The objective of modifying is to bring about a certain function – for instance, in plants, producing toxic proteins to eliminate pests, developing a tolerance to agro-chemicals like herbicides, etc. In simple words it's about creating a new organism using molecular biology techniques, which will otherwise not be found in nature. So one might wonder what’s wrong. Growing scientific evidence shows that GM crops are a potential threat to human health and natural biodiversity. Moreover, once released into theRead More »

  • Apathy was just another word for me until recently. And then three leaders, two of them at the helm of the sled-team drawing our nation through these cold, unfeeling times, broke the silence – and expanded my vocabulary. Apathy is no mere word; it is not just the gloomy, all-consuming emptiness in place of an emotion. It is in fact a god for our politicians – a worshipful, omnipotent deity that must be propitiated and appropriated to win those much-coveted keys to the nation’s governance -- and, I say this contentiously, for its coffers. And just as the rest of us may worship Ganapathy or Venkatachalapathy or Umapathy, our netas worship Apathy.

    And just as some of us believe that God made Man in his image, Apathy, too, manifests in a face. Witness, hereunder, the three faces of Apathy that we have seen in the week that was in these Grim Fairy Tales for Troubled Times.

    Grim Fairy Tale # 1 – Nero’s Fiddling Lesson
    Grim Fairy Tales - Nero's Fiddling Lesson - Bijoy VenugopalGrim Fairy Tales - Nero's Fiddling Lesson - Bijoy Venugopal
    Great Nero was in the midst of his fiddling lessons administered by his

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Pagination

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