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Showing posts from August, 2011

African Safari - Murchison Falls

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Murchison Falls is a famous african safari park in Uganda. Located around 300 - 350 KM from the capital city Kampala, the safari is accessible by a good road. one can take the car into the park and can move around the safari in a town car also though a four wheel drive is more preferable. The Albert Nile flows through the park and there is a cruise almost upto the rapids / water falls. The is a large variety of wild life like Lion, Giraffe, Elephants, Hippos to smaller animals. I have taken some photos though I lost more because of the bad quality and low battery charge of my mobile.

Should Rajiv Gandhi’s killers be spared of Hanging?

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Mr Rajiv Gandhi, a former Prime Minister of India was killed by a human bomb in 1991 during an election campaign in Sriperambudur in Tamil Nadu. The group of killers were sent by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE of Mr Velupillai Prabhakaran who was killed recently by Sri Lankan Government in an internal war). The reason being dispatch of Indian Peace Keeping Force to Sri Lanka for restoration of peace as a part of the accord with the then Sri Lankan President. In fact the Indian government was short charged by both LTTE and Sri Lankan government resulting in large scale killing of Indian soldiers and ultimate withdrawal of the forces by the next Indian government. It is also to be said that initially there was tacit support by the Indian government to LTTE and the then Tamil Nadu governments allowed them to run militant camps in their state. On the fateful day Mr Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a human bomb Thanu alongwith several others. There was a man hunt for the remaining mem

Janlokpal Bill - continuing saga

News came out yesterday evening that the Prime Minister has saluted Mr Hazare during his speech in the Indian Parliament and also that the government has agreed for a debate on the bill today ie 26th August 2011. There is a lot of media frenzy on this issue showing that Mr Hazare scored a victory over the government and this is a victory for the anti-corruption movement. Also there was news that he may break his fast on 26th which may or may not happen. Though this appears to be a positive development from the side of Mr Hazare's camp, this sets a very bad precedent.It can happen now that anybody who has some following can now hold the country's administration for a ransom to get their demands passed. Also will he go back and start the fast again, if the Parliament does not pass the bill in the format he wanted them to pass? Though the fight to end corruption is laudable, this kind of pressures will lead to bad decisions which will impact the country for a long time.

Anna Hazare’s Janlokpal Bill – Are we looking at Orwellian type of society?

India is in frenzy for the last 10 days with the anti-corruption rhetoric of Mr Anna Hazare. This is similar to the one witnessed sometime back over the issue of bringing back the black money from Swiss banks. The black money issue was first coined by Bharatiya Janata Party and later taken up by Mr Anna Hazare and Mr Ramdev Baba apart from sundry others. What we are witnessing now is not dissimilar to the earlier issue. Anti-corruption rhetoric is not new either in India or abroad. It was Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India who declared that a corrupt person should be hanged from the nearest lamp post around 100 years ago. We are yet to see a single hanging. It was taken up by the successive prime ministers but nothing has happened. In fact, all the governments starting from the first government post-independence have seen some scandal or other. The lamentable fact is nothing has happened in any of these cases be it the Jeeps scandal (of the first government) of th