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A report published in DARE says that India has a low per capita ice cream consumption of 300 ml per annum. According to the report the trend is slowly changing due to a number of reasons. I thought why shouldn’t I find out how often politicians in India eat ice-cream. Believe me, I found none.
We used Google search to get pictures of Indian politicians but every time Mr. Obama teased us with his choppy choppy images. We found Michelle Obama chumming with her son and daughter and flavoring Vanilla on the roadside. I should say Obama family tops the list of Ice-cream lover politicians.
Apart from Obama I saw Joe Biden bantered with his manager at Kopp's Frozen Custard. Mr. Bush was maintaining an aura of grace and poise at all times with an ice-cream in his hand. In one of such pictures Prime Minister of Italy Mr. Silvio Berlusconi looks like a creep with ice cream.
I didn’t stop here. I was worried about our country, India and more of politicians. I searched for few site exclusively running information regarding politicians eating ice-creams. It’s a matter of great surprise, I found few.
A site www.politicianseatingicecream.tumblr.com is a dedicated site serving information on politicians who eat ice creams in public. www.huffingtonpost.com serves 45 exclusive pictures of politicians with a ice-cream cone in their hands.
Though we couldn’t find any Indian Uncle at the end (maybe Obama eat all of it). But no worries, I stole few pictures for you, thought you would definitely like it.
(This article is first published in I-Next Live website)
Alok Dixit
Journalist
Dainik Jagran
CWG: Pak holds her hands with India
Athens Olympics were the example of last minute rush where the country could not finish the preparation work before time. But country finally hosted the games and successful completion got appreciation from many world countries
India for its Commonwealth games has been criticized all over the world. Starting from Indian media to western media it became a trend to find out flaws in the preparation of the Games. England, Australia, Scotland, Boston, Malaysia, New Zealand and many other countries expressed their deep concern over the security and hospitality provided by Indian commonwealth games federation. Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates went one step further saying that India should not have been awarded the XIXth Commonwealth Games. It was only Pakistan then to hold hands with India. Not only have officials from the Pakistan given a thumbs-up to the arrangements and security preparedness for the Games, but also accused “Westerners” of being overly critical. Now with such statements from Pakistan it is clear that neighboring athletes are ready to hold affirmative relations with us. Moreover it shows the positive game spirit of Pakistan.
Earlier Kalmadi and his team kept on saying that India will host the games like any other country in the world. He regularly increased the budget (Rs. 30,000 crore, 17 times of its original budget) with the excuses that he is providing world-class facilities and it cost high to buy things from international market. But when media exposed the truth behind the game played by his team it held the attention of the western media. Many commonwealth countries expressed their unwillingness to play in India. Some of the world-class players withdrew their names from games and a time came when it became doubtful to get green signal from commonwealth federation. Indian government immediately came into the action and prime minister held meetings to insure the good image of India. But president of Pakistan Olympic Association Syed Arif Hasan appreciated the efforts of Indian commonwealth federation. He said, “We have been given complete assurance by the organizers and our security liaison officer is in India at the moment. We trust the Indian government to provide full protection, and we have no security concerns. Hopefully our entire 75-member contingent will be in India on the 29th as planned.”
Athens Olympics were the example of last minute rush where the country could not finish the preparation work before time. But country finally hosted the games and successful completion got appreciation from many world countries. “Countries hosting such games first times should be encouraged by the developed countries”, added Hasan to express his anger over the attitude of western players. He says, “Things cannot be perfect. Facilities provided at the 2002 Melbourne Games were not very much satisfactory as such. We should not always see the negative side. Here we come to play game not the politics.”
Star Players who withdrew from CWG
Greg Henderson: New Zealand (cyclist)
Peter Kennaugh: Isle of Man (cyclist)
Geraint Thomas: Wales (cyclist)
Chris Hoy: England (Cyclists)
Victoria Pendelton: England (Cyclists
Ian Stannard: England (cyclist)
Ben Swift: England (cyclist)
Peter Waterfield: England (Diving)
Elena Baltacha: Scotland (tennis)
Travis Meyer: Australia (Cyclist)
Stephanie Sang: Australia (tennis)
Dani Samuels: Australia (Discus)
David Rudisha: Kenya (800 metres)
Phillips Idowu: England (triple jump)
Christine Ohuruogu: England (triple jump)
Cate Campbell: Australia (swimmer)
Usain Bolt: Jamaica (Sprinter)
Veronica Campbell-Brown
Reservation in Private Sector
Reservation in Private Sector
New Delhi has recently witnessed numerous hunger strikes and fast unto deaths in 2009. Reason was the demand for reservation in private sectors. Associations of SC-ST employees under the banner of confederation as well as Indian Justice Party were sitting on Dharana and fast unto death since November 19th in Delhi for speedy implementation of the quota. Thinkers say that this Gandhian tool, fast unto death is becoming a new instrument to highlight the issue and compel the ‘insensitive’ authorities to activate it, but let us think beyond that too.
Reservation in government sector has now become too past for everyone because new debate for reservation in private sectors in on nowadays. Most probably because private sector constitutes a big chunk and the government has itself disinvested many of its public sector companies. In past few years there were very less opportunities in government sector. So it becomes essential to discuss whether reservation should be there in private sector or not. First thing big companies in India are major job providers in India. Now if there will not be any specific policy for underdeveloped chances for discrimination in such companies will be higher. For example Sahara Company employs nearly 10 lakh persons. Nobody knows that how many of them are Dalits? If there is no fixed quota and no constitutional guarantee, there may not be many SC-STs. They may recruit one or two voluntarily but then who will stop the discrimination? The second is the globalization and economic liberalization in India. Due to this backwards, poor and tribal are losing their livelihood, their lands, their work, their forest, water and their jobs. We can’t remain insensitive to not think of this massive onslaught. International Business never thinks about society or social upliftment and by this way also backwards are again not in agenda.
Now if somebody doubts on the essence of reservation in private sector then here are some more facts. Siddhartha Shome says that in India admission to educational institutions is primarily based on obtaining high scores in designated examinations. Can we seriously claim that these exams are truly accurate mechanisms for measuring merit? To a certain extent, examinations in India do measure a candidate’s level of education, but to an even larger extent doing well in these exams depends on joining the right coaching classes and learning the appropriate exam-writing techniques. If, by “merit” we mean innate talent or ability, then our exam system fails miserably to measure it accurately. There is a very interesting study of Santosh Goyal who studied the caste composition of 3,129 top executives of 1,100 large companies in the Indian corporate sector. He could ascertain the castes of approximately two-thirds of these officers from their names. He found that Brahmins accounted for 41% of the total, even though according to the 1931 census Brahmins comprised only 4.32% of the total population. Siddhartha Shome takes out some interesting conclusions from this. He says if one rejects the idea that upper castes are in some way genetically superior, one has to accept that the social mechanisms through which innate ability is translated into certifiable skill are inherently biased in favour of the upper castes. In reality these unfair social mechanisms work as a form of reservation in favour of upper castes. He believes that any program of affirmative action that seeks to correct this historic unfairness should actually be seen as a form of de-reservation.
Many complain that reservations reduce the efficient functioning of organizations. But for them here is an example. In Southern states such as Tamil Nadu reservations are much more extensive than in Northern states. However, the state administrations as well as the industrial sectors in the Southern states have performed much better than in the Northern states. There is one more example of US. Moreover, in the U.S., one can see that some of the most competitive and efficient companies such as GE, IBM, and etc. follow affirmative action policies to increase diversity without any apparent loss of efficiency or competitiveness. So this excuse also doesn’t really works.
Reservation helped to put Diversities together. It brought evolution in Indian society. Now people who were untouched are someway ruling in the offices, workplaces and even in societies. They got some chance to bring them back in the race. I aggress that reservations may cause some small reductions in efficiency in certain situations and may impose some costs, but I believe that on the whole the benefits to society are likely to be even larger. Each policy has some limitation and the same reservation do has but for a broader perspective India need this drawback.
Credits: file:///L:/anti-reservation-protests-in-india.html, file:///L:/index.htm, ND TV, Mr. Vidya Bhushan Rawat, countercurrent.org and Miss Munmun Bhattachary
By
Alok Dixit
Journalist
writeralok@gmail.com
