Northeast nodal officer gets SMS threat

BANGALORE: Deputy commissioner of police (intelligence) VS D'Souza, the nodal officer appointed to address the fears of northeast communities in the wake of their exodus from the city, on Wednesday received an SMS threat on his mobile. D'Souza immediately filed a complaint with Cubbon Park police.

The SMS read: 'D'Souza, tu baahar ajao. Tere ko nahi chodoonga. Tumhe kutte ka mout mar daloonga (D'Souza, you come out. We will kill you like a dog)'.

"We are checking the origin of the SMS. The mobile from which it was sent is located in Bijapur. We have some suspects already on our radar," said a police source.

"We have a strong suspicion the SMS was sent to him after his mobile number was publicized in the media to serve as a helpline for northeast citizens in distress," the source said.

"We suspect the SMS might have been sent by a jailed suspect. The SMS trail led us close to Bijapur jail, but it is yet to be confirmed," said a senior police officer. Several terror suspects arrested by D'Souza are housed in the jail here.

TERROR EXPERT

D'Souza has been instrumental in cracking several cases related to terror modules in the state, with some sensational cases including those related to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

With over three decades of service, D'Souza was instrumental in arresting seven LeT members. He had also recovered a large cache of arms and ammunition, besides explosives, after the attack on the Indian Institute of Science in 2005. Among those arrested by D'Souza is LeT commander Bilal. They were sentenced to life imprisonment and are now lodged in Bijapur jail.

India evaluating China’s military exercises in Tibet

Proposal to raise strike corps for China border in pipeline

Even as the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) is seized of the Army’s plan to raise an exclusive strike corps for the China border in the eastern sector, the Army is evaluating the recent ground-air combat military drill by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on the Tibetan plateau.

The PLA has carried out four exercises in Tibet since March.

“We constantly monitor and analyse such exercises; there is no change in the pattern and no new areas are being opened by the Chinese military,’’ sources in the Army said.

On infrastructure-building by China along the border, Defence Minister A.K. Antony told Parliament last week that the government was regularly monitoring all developments in “our neighbourhood,’’ which have a bearing on national security. “Required measures have been initiated through development of infrastructure and operational capabilities to achieve desired levels of defence preparedness to safeguard the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of India,’’ he said in written reply.

Keen to get at least the Air Force also on board, the CCS is learnt to have asked the armed forces to further work out finer details and come up with a compact proposal for raising a strike corps. Discussions on planning a strike corps as well as two additional divisions for defence of Arunachal Pradesh began about six years ago and continued at various levels before the proposal was sent to the CCS in the form of a note a year ago, government sources familiar with the development on this front said.

Initially, the Army proposed raising three divisions — comprising nearly 45,000 troops — at an estimated cost of about Rs. 7,000 crore. It was proposed to have the corps headquarters at Panagarh in West Bengal.

The proposed strike corps will draw support from IAF fighters operating from renovated bases in the northeast. Sukhoi-30s have been posted at bases in Tezpur and Chhabua. In addition, Jorhat, Bagdogra, Hashimara and Mohanbari bases are also being upgraded.

“The PLA has held at least 21 exercises in the Tibet region over the past one-and-half years. These have been designed for specific scenarios. These exercises also convey to India that they are gearing preparations in high altitude conditions. China wants to convey that it is testing and strengthening its conventional deterrents and enhancing military capability in hostile territory,’’ said Srikanth Kondapalli, Chairman of the Centre for East Asian Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

“India is also conveying a message about its capabilities through Agni V test or deployment of SU-30s,’’ he said.

As perceptions of the Line of Actual Control differed on both sides, transgressions often took place, he noted.

Dear Mr Sibal, What Is Your URL No?*

The PIB today put out a release under the title "Govt Not Targetting Individual Accounts or Websites; does not want Restrictions on Genuine users : Sibal" and provided the following comments attributed to Mr Kapil Sibal, the honourable minister for communication and information technology:

The difficulty is that twitter is a site, which operates from outside India and the server of all such sites are outside the jurisdiction of India.

We are happy that Facebook and Google are cooperating with us and the names of the objectionable sites that we had provided them; they cooperated with us on them and decided to close down those sites. We have also imposed restriction on those sites.

But as far as twitter is concerned, now they have said that they are ready for talks with us.

But the solution to this problem should be a permanent one. That will only happen when we talk to all the stakeholders and form such a mechanism under which any objectionable content is removed.

We can take action but in that case restrictions are also imposed on people who are right on their part. So, we don’t want that to happen.

So, we have provided 28 URL numbers under which objectionable material is being shown. Now the government does not know that who is behind these URL numbers, only twitter and other sites are aware about it.

Later if those URL numbers are innocent, and then the accusations would be thrown at the government.

Actually we don’t have the identities; we have no way to find out the identities. So, the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone’s account or websites are incorrect.

***
A quick response:
Dear Mr Sibal,
Could you please help us understand the following:

So, we have provided 28 URL numbers under which objectionable material is being shown.

Sir, which are these 28 URLs? Could you be referring to the sort of URLs that were present in the directives sent by the department of telecommunications that functions under your ministry? Perhaps, in addition to the URLs of 20 Twitter handles, you were including those that were of Twitter searches? (Not that it still adds up to 28, but that, as you would undoubtedly tell us, is of zero consequence).
If not, could you please clarify what these "28 URL numbers under which objectionable material is being shown" are?
Also, Sir, when you go on to say:

Now the government does not know that who is behind these URL numbers, only twitter and other sites are aware about it...Actually we don’t have the identities; we have no way to find out the identities. So, the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone’s account or websites are incorrect.

While it is possible, Sir, that because many of these Twitter handles are, well, just handles and screen names, you may not know who is behind these "URL numbers", but surely, Sir, if not in your many years of public life, even you by now would have heard of people like Mr Kanchan Gupta and Mr Shiv Aroor, two journalists whose names are included in this list, if not some of the others who are clearly identified in the block list, including the likes of Mr Togadia etc. Surely, Sir, it is not your case that your government is so clueless?
Sir, I am not really sure what the following means:

Later if those URL numbers are innocent, and then the accusations would be thrown at the government.

Sir, I am not sure but perhaps an eminent lawyer such as you would be able to tell us better whether or not "URL numbers" can be criminal or innocent, and we do look forward to hearing from you. But even then, you would grant, Sir, that even you concede the possibility that these "URL numbers" might prove to be innocent. So why are you asking for them to be banned, Sir?
Also, Sir, a pedant would tell you there are no "URL Numbers", but that is only a trivial point.
***
*Post Script:
This post was earlier just titled: Dear Mr Sibal, but after receiving the following query on Twitter, I thought it actually made sense to change its title.

Internet analysts question India's efforts to stem panic

By Vikas Bajaj

MUMBAI, India -- The Indian government's efforts to stem a weeklong panic among some ethnic minorities has again put it at odds with Internet companies like Google (GOOG), Facebook and Twitter.

Officials in New Delhi, who have had disagreements with the companies over restrictions on free speech, say the sites are not responding quickly enough to their requests to delete and trace the origins of doctored photos and incendiary posts aimed at people from northeastern India. After receiving threats online and on their phones, tens of thousands of students and migrants from the northeast have left cities like Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in the last week.
The government has blocked 245 Web pages since Friday, but still many sites are said to contain fabricated images of violence against Muslims in the northeast and in neighboring Myanmar meant to incite Muslims in cities like Bangalore and Mumbai to attack people from the northeast. India also restricted cellphone users to five text messages a day each for 15 days in an effort to limit the spread of rumors.
Officials from Google and industry associations said they were cooperating fully with the authorities. Some industry

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executives and analysts added that some requests had not been heeded because they were overly broad or violated internal policies and the rights of users. The government, used to exerting significant control over media like newspapers, films and television, has in recent months been frustrated in its effort to extend similar and greater regulations to websites, most of which are based in the United States. Late last year, an Indian minister tried to get social media sites to prescreen content created by their users before it was posted. The companies refused and the attempt failed under withering public criticism.
While just 100 million of India's 1.2 billion people use the Internet regularly, the numbers are growing fast among people younger than 25, who make up about half the country's population. For instance, there were an estimated 46 million active Indian users on Facebook at the end of 2011, up 132 percent from a year earlier.
Sunil Abraham, an analyst who has closely followed India's battles with Internet companies, said last week's effort to tackle hate speech was justified but poorly managed. He said the first directive from the government was impractically broad, asking all Internet "intermediaries" -- a category that includes small cybercafes, Internet service providers and companies like Google and Facebook -- to disable all content that was "inflammatory, hateful and inciting violence."
"The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech," said Abraham, executive director of the Center for Internet and Society, a research and advocacy group based in Bangalore. "The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication."
In the days since the first advisory went out on Aug. 17, government officials have asked companies to delete dozens of specific Web pages. Most of them have been blocked, but officials have not publicly identified them or specified the sites on which they were hosted. Ministers have blamed groups in Pakistan, a neighbor with which India has tense relations, for creating and uploading many of the hateful pages and doctored images.
Indian officials have long been concerned about the power of modern communications to exacerbate strife and tension among the nation's many ethnic and religious groups. While communal violence has broadly declined in the last decade, in part because of faster economic growth, many grievances simmer under the surface.
Most recently, fighting between the Bodo tribe and Muslims in the northeastern state of Assam has displaced about half a million people and, through text messages and online posts, affected thousands more across India.
Officials at social media companies, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending political leaders, said that they were moving as fast as they could but that policymakers must realize that the company officials have to follow their own internal procedures before deleting content and revealing information like the Internet protocol addresses of users.
"Content intended to incite violence, such as hate speech, is prohibited on Google products where we host content, including YouTube, Google Plus and Blogger," Google said in a statement. "We act quickly to remove such material flagged by our users. We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible."
Facebook said in a statement that it also restricts hate speech and "direct calls for violence" and added that it was "working through" requests to remove content.
Others said the government could have been more effective had it quickly countered hateful and threatening speech by sending out its own messages, which it was slow to do when migrants from the northeast began leaving Bangalore on Aug. 15.

PFI under scanner over Assam exodus, MMSs

With the cyber security agencies reporting to the Union Home Department that Kerala-based Popular Front of India (PFI) was behind the Assam-related rogue SMS-MMS campaign along with HuJI, the Kerala Police have put the Islamist outfit under their scanner. Probe is already on into the departure of several Assamese workers from Kerala under alleged PFI threat.

PFI general secretary Abdul Hameed rejected the charge as State propaganda but the police have already started probing the departure of several Assamese migrant workers from Muslim-majority Malappuram district following threats and the origin of an MMS featuring visuals of strife in Assam, received by an employer of Assamese worker.

The police have registered a case over the complaint that 12 alleged Popular Front activists had on August 17 threatened some Assamese employed in the construction industry in Manjeri, Malappuram of grave consequences if they did not leave the State within three days. Several Assamese workers had reportedly left Kerala following this.

Sleuths are also trying to identify the origin of an MMS with Assamese visuals, received by a hollow bricks manufacturer, who had employed Assamese workers, in Manjeri on Monday evening. However, the PFI general secretary said, “This is not the first time we are being targeted. The PFI has proved the allegations wrong and had come out clean in all earlier cases.”

The Kerala Home Ministry directed the State police to launch a campaign to instill confidence in migrant workers from the North-East, especially Assam, living in the labour camps. The police would visit such camps to assure the workers of their safety in the State. Apart from the Malappuram development, there has been no exodus of North-Easterners from Kerala so far.

Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan on Tuesday asked Additional DGP (Intelligence) to cross-check reports on the role of the PFI in the SMS-MMS campaign with Central authorities. “We have taken note of the reports,” he said, adding that there had not been any reports of panic fleeing by migrant North-Easterners from Kerala.

The Popular Front had come into existence in its present full-fledged form after its former Avatar National Development Front (NDF), constituted in 1993, formed a human rights and backward people’s rights consortium with the Karnataka Forum for Dignity of Karnataka and the Manitha Neethi Pasarai of Tamil Nadu in 2006.

Though the PFI had been facing allegations of militancy all along, the first concrete suspicions on its involvement in such activities came out following the killing by security forces of four Malayalee militants in Kashmir in October, 2008. Some of those arrested in Kerala in connection with this LeT programme were allegedly former NDF men.

However, the first real picture of PFI ruthlessness was unveiled when its activists chopped off the right hand of TJ Joseph, a college professor in Muvattupuzha, some 50 km away from Kochi, on July 4, 2010 for the alleged blasphemy of Prophet Muhammad contained in a question in a test paper he had set for his students.

On July 17, Vishal Kumar, a local ABVP leader of Chengannur, Alappuzha was murdered by activists of the Campus Front, students’ wing of the PFI. On August 7, PFI operatives carried out another Taliban-model attack on Nasser Vaniyakkad, an hotelier, at Paravur near Kochi by hacking him in the right leg several times.

No sudden influx from Bangladesh to trigger Assam violence: Minority Commission

Guwahati: A delegation of National Commission for Minorities (NCM) that visited violence-hit areas of Assam has reported that it has not seen any evidence of sudden influx from Bangladesh to trigger off a major conflict. In its report (TCN has a copy of the report), NCM also made the observation that conflict was between the Bodos and the resident Muslims of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) and not Bangladeshi immigrants, as has been suggested by BJP politicians and media reports.

“The conflict was unequal because the Bodos had left over arms from the BLT (AK 47 etc.,). The Muslims are very poorly armed in comparison,” observed the NCM delegation that visited the area on July 11th and 12th.

NCM delegation consisting of Dr. Syeda Hameed, member, Planning Commission and K. N. Daruwalla, member, NCM observed the pathetic condition of camps that housed Muslim refugees. In one camp, there were just 10 toilets for 4,300 inmates. In Grahampur High School camp of Gossaigaon there were 6,569 inmates and just 25 toilets. Bodo camps were in much better condition, observed NCM.

It was not simply a conflict but an ethnic cleansing to remove Muslims from the area. NCM stopped short of saying ethnic conflict, however, made the observation, “the fact that when Muslims abandoned their villages their houses were looted and gutted might indicate a design to see that they do not return to their own villages.”

According to the NCM report, arms with Bodos also possibly made police reluctant to take action against them.

NCM delegation during their meeting with the Chief Minister Tarun Gagoi made a controversial suggestion that if security was not ensured then there is a “danger of Muslims in the BTC becoming militants in the future.” This point was brought home elsewhere in the report where it stated that “there can be grave danger in future in case militant Jihadi outfits from the rest of the country start supplying lethal weapons in this area.” It is not clear what “militant Jihadi outfits” and which part of the country, NCM delegation had in mind when they were writing this line.

NCM recommended setting up SIT for investigations, issuance of ID cards, filing of FIRs, long-term rehabilitation plans and also a directive to that more police should be recruited from the minority community and asked the state government to take all measures so that “forcible mass exodus of non-Bodos from the area, engineered through threats or killings will not be allowed.”

North-East students leave Karnataka, PM speaks to Karnataka CM

Gripped by panic following rumours of attack on some of their compatriots, about 5,000 people of North Eastern States, including students, on Thursday prepared to return to their home towns even as Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar assured them of security.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde spoke to Shettar on Wednesday night and were understood to have asked him to ensure the safety of people from northeastern states in the state.

The Bangalore City Railway station was flooded with people from North Eastern states to board the available trains as rumours spread that some people from the state had been subjected to attacks in the city, which was promptly denied by police.

Shettar said that he told the Prime Minister and the Home Minister that "there is no untoward incident nor is there any threat to people of northeastern states. I promised that necessary steps would be taken to give protection to these people".

In the wake of abrupt exodus of passenges, the South Western Railway decided to run a special train.

Shettar assured protection and deputed Deputy Chief Minister R Ashoka, who also holds Home portfolio to instill confidence in the panic-stricken people and convince them not to leave the city.

The Chief Minister said police officials have been using public address system at the railway station to reassure the north eastern people gathered there and assured them protection.

Shettar said Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi also spoke to him over phone and he assured him that all possible assistance and protection would be given to his state people.

Earlier in the day, State's DGP Lalrukuma Pachau, who also hails from the North East, said interest of these people will be protected and their safety ensured.

In Mysore, a Tibetan college student is battling for life on being stabbed in Mysore by two persons who suspected him to be from North Eastern region.

58,000 Bangladeshis went missing in India in 3 years

A report says as many as 82,585 Bangladeshis did not voluntarily return to their country between January 2009, and December 2011.

NEW DELHI: Actual figures of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are a political hot potato. But, official data revealed a disturbing trend, where over 58,000 Bangladeshi citizens came to India and became traceless in the past three years. Bangladeshis were also found to be the worst offenders among foreigners as far as overstaying in India was concerned. Data, shared by the government in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, showed that as many as 82,585 Bangladeshis did not voluntarily return to their country between January 2009, and December 2011.

Though they all had visited India using their valid travel documents, they chose not to go back. Alarmed over their overstay, the government machineries did swing into action. But, only 23,653 out of total 82,585 Bangladeshi citizens could be traced and deported, leaving the whereabouts of 58,932 of them unknown.

The figure assumes significance amid debate over status of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in the backdrop of the recent violence in Assam, where 77 people were killed in ethnic clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslims. In a written response to a Parliament question, the home ministry disclosed that 21,274 Bangladeshi nationals did not return to their country last year as compared to 28,667 in 2010 and 32,644 in 2009. Deportation figures revealed that 6,761 were sent back in 2011 as against 6,290 in 2010 and 10,602 in 2009.

Let us accept the truth

By Nirmal Shekar

Yogeshwar Dutt of India celebrates after beating Ri Jong Myong of North Korea for bronze during men's 60-kg freestyle wrestling competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, on Saturday

Let us not be afraid to face the truth. We are a one-sport nation, writes Nirmal Shekar

As a professional sportswriter, I am sick of hearing the question over and over and over again. I find it almost nauseating. If there are tens of millions posing the question, then, over the four decades that I have spent in the profession, there have been tens of hundreds of answers, from serious commentators and sports critics down to lay persons.

Why does a nation of over 1.2 billion people end up with just a few pieces of bronze and silver every four years in the most celebrated event in sport?

Psychologists often talk of something called paralysis through analysis in life. When you think too much about something and ratchet up your anxiety levels, the performance is bound to dip. When it comes to this clichéd question, this very much seems to be true.

Confused

While, some might believe they have the right answers/solutions, we have been left in such a confused state that there is no single ‘right’ prescription for the malaise.

But if you chose to leave aside all serious analysis as to why Indian track and field athletes, swimmers, gymnasts, hockey players and other Olympic participants fail to live up to our — and sometimes their own — expectations and came around to zeroing in on a rather reductionist, and surely controversial, viewpoint, the answer might be simple.

For, this question raises its ugly head for only about two weeks every four years. The rest of the time — for three full years and eleven and a half months — we are obsessed with, worship and shamelessly pay obeisance to a sport played with any degree of seriousness by eight-and-a-half nations.

Let us, then, accept the truth. We are a one-sport nation. And even a toddler would tell you what that sport is.

So, let us forget the London Games. In a few weeks, the Indian cricket team will be playing in the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka where the conditions will suit Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his boys to the hilt.

Another wild parade

Let’s look forward to another wild parade through the streets of Mumbai with the boys peacocking from an open-top bus. Let’s unabashedly hail their heroics, throw fresh flowers and encomiums at them even as my fellow professionals try to pull out every adjective in their vocabulary to celebrate the great achievement.

Meanwhile, Mary Kom would probably be running from pillar to post to find a cooking gas cylinder in Manipur, Yogeshwar Dutt would be walking to the nearest tea stall in his hometown, unmolested, his stellar achievement long forgotten.

The peerless Viswanathan Anand’s fifth world chess title would be a distant memory and he would be preparing for yet another tournament that nobody cares about even as Jeev Milka Singh tees off somewhere that nobody has heard of. Birdie and eagles…well, we haven’t been to a bird sanctuary in a while; should make it a point to visit one.

That’s who we are. That is what we are. That is India. Say all you want about how mediocre Indian sportspersons — cricket is advisedly left out of the description of sport because it is no longer a sport and hasn’t been in quite a while as it is on a par with things religious — are but we simply do no care for them for the most part.

We let them down

And when the Olympics come around, we are saddened, angry and aghast that we are not able to revel in reflected glory. We are ashamed that countries with one millionth of our population pick up gold medals. These guys have done us in, we say. We believed so much in them and they have let us down.

But the truth is, it is we who let them down. For, we don’t care about them for three years and eleven-and-a-half months. We don’t care about their impecunious circumstances, their heroic struggles, their fight against-the-odds and battles with cynical, self-serving sports administrators heading often corrupt sports bodies.

Instead, we spend sleepless nights over whether Chennai Super Kings would make it to the final of the IPL or whether a mediocre also-ran cricketer really did take recreational drugs at some rave party in Mumbai; or whether Yuvraj Singh is dating the latest Miss India or some other starlet whose only claim to fame is that she was seen with a cricketing superstar on a night out.

My dear readers, let us get real. We have failed the Koms and the Yogeshwars and the rest as much as we seem to believe that many Indian athletes have failed us. They don’t owe us as much as we owe them.

We need to follow their careers, cheer them from grassroots up, care about how they are treated by the administrators, worry about how they are ignored by the big corporate giants who would readily part with $10m for a 15-second TV ad campaign featuring a Sachin Tendulkar or a Gautam Gambhir. But we don’t.

We simply don’t give a damn most of the time and then bemoan their lack of success at the Olympics once every four years.

Believe me, it is not easy being an Indian and trying to achieve world-class feats in most sports, barring cricket, with its superb infrastructure public and corporate support and unmatched financial clout.

This is not to belittle what the Gavaskars, Kapils and the Tendulkars have achieved. But, tell me this: why is nobody canvassing for a seat in the upper house for Anand, why isn’t anyone talking about a Bharat Ratna for the genius of the 64-square game?

The world chess champion is an Indian — chess, my friend, chess, where the grey matter matters more than in any other game — and that should make us prouder than any other achievement by any Indian sportsman or team.

But forget it. By the way, when is India’s first match in the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka? I bet Harbhajan will be back with a bang. What a fighter the man is!

Nothing reflects our unity in diversity — and is a greater tribute to it — than our national obsession with cricket.

Sorry Mary, we forgot about your gas cylinder and the constant problems with power failures in your little house. But that is who we are.

Have you seen the rioters who desecrated the Amar Jawan memorial?

The Mumbai police force is now using MiD DAY lensman Atul Kamble's photographs in its massive hunt for protestors who damaged the memorial at Azad Maidan dedicated to sepoys martyred in the 1857 mutiny

August 14, 2012

Mumbai

The men you see in these photographs struck at the heart of the nation’s pride during the riots on Saturday, when they vandalised the iconic Amar Jawan Jyoti memorial near CST. Mumbai police, having drawn flak for its massive failure to contain the riots on Saturday, is now going on an overdrive to nab the miscreants.

According to reports, the entire force and its network is hot on the heels of these unidentified protestors, who kicked at the memorial, smashed it with a lathi, and then damaged the rifle and helmet inside the fibre glass casing.

Thoughtless acts: The miscreants damaging the Amar Jawan Jyoti memorial outside Azad Maidan during the violence that erupted on Saturday

The memorial, which was unveiled in 2009, was erected in memory of two sepoys — Sayyed Hussein and Mangal Cadiya — who were martyred during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.
These disturbing images were captured on Saturday by MiD DAY’s senior photographer Atul Kamble. Incidentally, Kamble became a victim of police violence while doing his job, even as the vandals went scot-free after sullying the iconic symbol of national pride.
Paradoxically, these photographs shot by Kamble have now become invaluable tools in the hands of the cops as they hunt for the vandals.
Crime Branch officials are now relying heavily on these shots, which are the only existing leads that can help trace these men. They will also act as evidence if and when the protestors are arrested.
Mumbai Crime Branch and local police are racing against each other to nab these hoodlums, knowing whoever makes these crucial arrests will reap rich professional rewards.
“Of all the miscreants, these men are the most wanted. They have hurt the sentiments of the entire nation. They must be arrested on priority,” said a senior Crime Branch official, on condition of anonymity.
An officer from Azad Maidan police station said, “In such a scenario, it is better if these men surrender before the police reach them. By giving themselves up, they would be able to avoid the wrath of the police as well as the public.”
“These photographs have been circulated among our informers. We are in constant touch with them for leads. Every policeman is on the lookout for them at present. If we manage to arrest them before Independence Day, it will be our tribute to the freedom fighters,” he added.
The photographs caused a furore in social media networks. Readers across the nation condemned the act, some even comparing the vandals to 26/11 militant Ajmal Qasab.
Confirming the report, joint commissioner of police (crime) Himanshu Roy said, “This man (top-right) has insulted the national monument of India, and arresting him is our priority. Several Muslim leaders have also condemned the act.”

Mumbai violence: Reinventing the Muslim victimhood stance

By R Jagannathan

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It is easy to blame the police for being unprepared for the huge crowd that turned out, but it is the leadership of the protest organisers who must be blamed more. PTI

Muslims in India and elsewhere have a right to feel concerned for their co-religionists anywhere in the world if they are targeted and discriminated against – whether in Myanmar or Assam is immaterial. But the violence in Mumbai last Saturday, where the media and the police were at the receiving end, shows that they are being taken up the garden path once again. Their leaders are creating in them a new sense of victimhood and anger that does not square with the facts.

It is easy to blame the police for being unprepared for the huge crowd that turned out, but it is the leadership of the protest organisers who must be blamed more, since they would have been even more aware of what was really going on in their mosques and bylanes in the run-up to the protest.

According to The Indian Express, a confidential report had been sent to the Mumbai Police Commissioner that he should expect “law and order problems,” especially because Muslims were being told in their mosques during Friday prayers to attend the Saturday protests. They were being pumped up on stories of atrocities on Muslims in Myanmar and Assam.

Of course, the police must be blamed for assuming that the permission given to an unregistered group to hold a prayer meeting at Azad Maidan would be a placid affair. But given the context in which the protest was being held, they were clearly underprepared. However, given also that 45 of the 50-and-odd injured in the violence were policemen, it is their extraordinary restraint that must be commended rather than just being apportioned the blame for not being adequately prepared.

Rather, it is time to throw the spotlight on the Muslim leadership for building up the anger and not doing anything to rein it in.

More than the police, no one in the Muslim community could have failed to note the misleading SMSes and MMSes doing the rounds in the run-up to the protest day.

One SMS was designed to make very Muslim in India feel like a hunted animal and angry and victimised. According to The Times of India, the SMS read thus: “Burma, Assam, Gujarat, Kashmir ke bad na jane kahan? Burma mein Musalmano ke qatl-e-aam or zulm ke khilaf Azad Maidan me Sunday ko rally hai. America me 5 Sikho ka katal hua to media or sarkar me hadkam hai, or lakhon Musalmanon ki zindagi ki koi keemat nahi. Sab ki ankhen band hai. Is SMS to Sunday se pehle Hindustan ki har Musalman or mantriyo or media tak pohchao..”.

The bashing of the media and destruction of television OB vans can be traced to this SMS message.
Look at the number of deliberate truth distortions here. The Indian media has been more than fair in reporting the Bodo-Muslim violence in Kokrajhar – in fact, it has been balanced, and did not overtly take the Bodo side even though the Bodos have as much reason to be angry as the Muslims, thanks to the influx from Bangladesh, some of them illegal immigrants. The fact that many people are infiltrators from Bangladesh is not even mentioned. Every word in the SMS is designed to feed a sense of victimhood without context.

It is easy to blame the police for being unprepared for the huge crowd that turned out, but it is the leadership of the protest organisers who must be blamed more. Reuters

As for the Myanmarese violence against the Rohingyas of the Arakan, the SMS assumes that it is somehow India’s job to take up the issue. This is why the murder in the US Gurdwara is mentioned – to show that if India can take up that issue, why not the riots in Myanmar? That many of the Rohingyas are taking shelter on the India side (some have even shifted to Hyderabad) is not seen as a reason to be grateful to this nation which has not so far discriminated against the flood of migrants from Bangladesh and even Myanmar. Would Indian Muslims be so angry if told that we are providing shelter to these victims of violence?

Then, there were the fake MMSes doing the rounds – many of them put up on social media – showing pictures that purport to show that Muslims were being slaughtered by the hundred. A Pakistani journalist-blogger – Faraz Ahmed – who is no friend of the Myanmarese, investigated these pictures and found that many of them were bogus, and possibly morphed by mischief-monger to enrage Muslims everywhere (Read Ahmed’s article, ‘Social media is lying about Burma’s Muslim cleansing,” here, and another related report here).

Ahmed’s conclusion: pictures taken during the 2010 earthquake in China, protests in Thailand and Tibetans setting themselves on fire against the Chinese atrocities in Tibet are captioned as cases of Muslims being victimised and killed. A Thai picture of teargassed protestors in 2004 is captioned “More than 1,000 people killed in Burma”

Writes Ahmed: “I do not deny the killings of Muslims in Burma – not even for a minute. I think it is horrific and I am sympathetic towards the immense loss being suffered by my Muslim brothers and sisters abroad. What I am against is being lied to. Imagine the amount of lies we are being fed through these pictures.”
The Muslim protestors who went on the rampage in Mumbai were also fed lies and half-truths by the circulation of these mischievous pictures and by their leaders.

The incendiary statement of Asaduddin Owaisi in parliament the other day, where he “warned the central government…” about a “third wave of radicalisation among Muslim youth” (read his full statement here), and another one right at the protest venue (where one speaker talked about biased media coverage) are clear examples of Muslim leaders trying to engender feelings of victimisation among Muslims.

When Owaisi said he was warning the central government about the radicalisation, he was forgetting one thing: was it not his duty to combat this radicalisation, to tell Muslims the whole truth rather than just the one he wants to convey?

It is no one’s case that Muslims are not discriminated against in India, or that they are not targeted occasionally in communal violence, but balance requires that Muslim leaders should speak the whole truth – that this is not a one-way street.

No Muslim in India is even told that Hindus in Pakistan are now being forced to consider seeking asylum in India. Owaisi, in fact, seemed to spread disinformation on the influx from Bangladesh. He told parliament: “I would say that the population of Bangladesh, when Bangladesh was created, Muslims were three crore; Hindus were three crore. As of now, Muslims in Bangladesh are 13 crore; and Hindus in Bangladesh are 1.5 crore. Sea cannot swallow so many Hindus of Bangladesh! Where have they gone? This is the question I leave it to the wisdom of Mr Advani.”

The facts: the population of Bangladesh in 1971 wasn’t divided 50:50 between Hindus and Muslims. The first census in East Pakistan after partition put the Hindu population at around 22 percent. It is now less than half the figure – below 10 percent (Read here).

So when Owaisi asks where did these Hindus go, he has a point. It is more than likely that they were among the early migrants to the north-east after 1971 along with many Muslims who entered illegally seeking better economic prospects.

But this nuance is lost, and Owaisi doesn’t even pause to reflect on the implications of what he said: why did so many more Hindus than Muslims leave Bangladesh, assuming that is the case?

He should also read Derek O Brien’s piece in India Today. He tells a tale where his extended Anglo-Indian family was split asunder after partition: one wing was in Pakistan, and another in Kolkata. In 1984, his brother visited the Pakistani branch of the family and found that most of them had converted to Islam.

His conclusion: “Most of my father’s generation and all of the next generation – my second cousins – had converted to Islam. The pressure had been too much. Being a minority in Pakistan was tough business.”
Then he reflects on being an Anglo-Indian in this country. “I thought of our life in India, the freedom to go to church, the freedom to practice my faith, the freedom that my country gave its minorities. I’ve never felt prouder of being an Indian.”

India’s Muslim leadership has a responsibility to highlight the grievances of their community, but it has an even greater responsibility to speak the truth about how much better it is to live in a secular state, despite the warts.

Fertility decline across India

Khasi women with their children in Shillong, Meghalaya. Meghalaya and Bihar are the only States where the average fertility still stands at above four children per woman.

A RECENT scholarly estimation on fertility rates at the district level in India shows that fertility has gone below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman in as many as 12 States and Union Territories, corresponding to 174 out of 621 districts, or 28 per cent of all Indian districts.
A vast majority of districts with fertility levels below the replacement level of 2.1 are in the five States in the south, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh in the north-west, West Bengal, Odisha and Tripura in the east, Maharashtra, Goa and less than 10 per cent of Gujarat in the west.
Kerala (Total Fertility Rate 1.58) and also Tamil Nadu and Goa have recorded fertility levels close to 1.5 children. There are 24 districts in India where fertility averages “below 1.5 children per woman”, according to Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), Thiruvananthapuram, and Christophe Z. Guilmoto of the Centre for Population and Development, Paris, who did the estimation on the basis of 2011 Census data.
Their paper on “Fertility at District Level in India: Lessons from the 2011 Census” shows that the lowest fertility level in India (of 1.2) is estimated in Kolkata. Similar unusually low fertility levels have been estimated from districts in other parts as well. They include cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Coimbatore; Kollam, Thiruvananthapuram and typically rural districts such as Pathanamthitta, Idukki, Alappuzha and Kottayam in Kerala; Chikmagalur and Hassan in Karnataka; and Kanyakumari and Namakkal in Tamil Nadu.
Such a situation of “lowest-low fertility” – of levels dropping below 1.3 children per woman – in these Indian districts has been observed earlier in developed countries of East Asia such as China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, and of Europe such as Germany, Poland, Russia, Italy and Spain.
Bihar and Meghalaya are the only States where average fertility still stands at above four children per woman. In four isolated districts of Meghalaya, estimated fertility levels are even higher than five children per woman.
There are 72 districts scattered across many other regions of India with fertility estimates above four, the study has found. Apart from Bihar and the north-eastern States, many such high-fertility districts are located in western Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. “We can see in this region a high-fertility area of north-central India, extending from the Indo-Gangetic plains to drier areas of the Deccan plateau,” Irudaya Rajan said at a recent seminar on emerging fertility patterns, held at the CDS.
The largest number of States and districts lie between these two extremes, with fertility ranging from replacement level to four children per woman.
These are also the areas where fertility decline has proceeded at a faster pace in the past decade. Unlike Bihar, several “Empowered Action Group” States such as Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had the fastest speed of fertility decline during the past decade.
Rajan said that in this intermediate category, on one side are districts where women will very soon have, or already have in 2012, less than 2.1 children on an average, considering the speed of their recent fertility decline. (Among these are several advanced districts in the otherwise lagging States such as Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.)
On the other side, there are a large number of districts with higher-than-average fertility levels and where below-replacement levels are unlikely to be attained within the next 10 years in spite of the real progress achieved during the past decade.

R. Krishnakumar

Olympic 'gatecrasher' Madhura Nagendra apologises

A woman who appeared in India's Olympic contingent in the opening ceremony has apologised for an "error of judgement".

Madhura Nagendra told the NDTV news channel she was a cast member at the event, and had not gatecrashed it.

Indian team officials were angered by the woman's presence and had sought an apology.

The head of the London 2012 organising committee, Lord Coe, said she was a cast member who got "slightly over-excited" and joined the ceremony.

Ms Nagendra became known as "the woman in red" because of the colour of the top she was wearing.

She said she had entered the cast after "rounds of audition" and did not walk into the stadium "off the streets".

"[It was an] error of judgement [that] I landed up walking with the athletes. I think I have hurt the sentiments of my people. I apologise," Ms Nagendra said.

"There was chaos. Thousands of people were walking. I was blinded and as a result there was an error of judgement."

Ms Nagendra said she was "hurt" by the criticism of her act on social media outlets.

"I am a proud woman of India with a lot of enthusiasm. I was taken aback by the criticism. I hope this incident will be forgiven and I want to move forward."

India is fielding 81 athletes at the London Games.

Govt planning data centres for states

IT companies HP and IBM are expected to benefit the most if India goes the cloud way, as most operational data centres have been built and are being operated by the two firms.
NEW DELHI: At a time, when private enterprises are only testing the waters around cloud computing, the central government has made a bold decision to migrate critical information infrastructure on the cloud.

The department of information technology is planning to set up a national cloud-based network that connects all state data centres, which would make that the backbone of national e-governance plan, which when completed would deliver many government-to-citizen and government business services via the internet. In effect, each of the 28 states and 7 Union territories will have a private cloud of their own.

The Department of IT has invited proposals from IT companies like HP, IBM, Cisco and Dell to set up and maintain private clouds in each state. The move may cost the Centre less than Rs 100 crore, and will help the exchequer prevent wastage on duplication of resources.

State data centres, built at a cost of Rs 4-5 crore each, are operational in about 16 states. UP, Punjab, Assam, Mizoram, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh are laggards , even as states in the south have fully-functional data centres.

The move will save taxpayer's money and time, as IT resources like servers and storage will be shared amongst departments and also provide elasticity and on demand services. "SDC will now be operated as a private cloud for each state and will be managed by a third party," said the draft tender put out by the Department of IT, last month.

An India-based e-governance official at a US-based IT firm told ET that the company had been making presentations to the government for the last six months on cloud adoption, as other governments are adopting across the world.

The official expects the final RFP to be out in 2-3 months, as the new IT Secretary J Satyanarayana has come on board. The public cloud computing market in India is expected to grow at $685 million by 2014, according to research firm Zinnov Management Consulting.

US IT companies HP and IBM are expected to benefit the most if India goes the cloud way, as most operational data centres have been built and are being operated by the two firms.

"The IT department at center has been talking about setting up cloud computingbased services for a while now but what remains to be seen is how fast these services will be set up," said Prof Sadagopan, Director of IIIT, Bangalore and Chairman, Core Committee Meeting at the Centre for E-governance , Karnataka. "Once established, it'll be a big shift from our current PC culture, but we also need greater understanding of the data security challenges that could arise out of this."

India to launch mission to Mars in 2013

Hot on the heels of China's announcement of its plan to launch a lunar rover in 2013 comes this news from India: in 2013, it'll be launching a mission of its own, not to the Moon, but all the way to Mars. Ambitious, to be sure, but India has even bigger plans in the works.
The Indian Space Research Organisation has just confirmed that it will be sending an orbiter to Mars in 2013. The $90 million satellite will carry about 55 pounds worth of science payload (made up of as many as nine individual instruments), and will "focus on life, climate, geology, origin, evolution and sustainability of life on the planet," the organization says. That's not much of a focus, if you ask me, but then, I'm not a Martian scientist or anything. Oh wait, yes I am!
Anyway, this Mars mission is just a stepping stone for India, which is gearing up to send a manned mission into space in 2016. That will make it the fourth nation to put a human into space using domestically-developed hardware, and the second in just a few years after a huge gap following the Soviets and the U.S. back in the 1960s. This is an exciting time for space exploration, with new countries and all sorts of private companies getting into the game, and we wish India the very best of luck at getting to Mars on its first try.
Via AFP

India: We DO have the BlackBerry encryption keys

RIM: Er, I think you'll find you don't

By Bill Ray

Indian government officials have apparently claimed that Research in Motion has handed over the skeleton keys used to encrypt BlackBerry communications – once again ignoring the fact that such keys don't exist.
The Times of India has reported that RIM "agreed to hand over its encryption keys" to the Asian nation, and allowed lawful intercept of all email, messaging and other communications. The paper claims to have viewed internal government documents confirming this. According to the Times:

[RIM] has now handed over this infrastructure to Indian agencies, internal government documents reviewed by ET reveal.

Canada-based RIM has, as usual, not only denied handing over any keys but also reiterated that it couldn't hand over keys that it doesn't actually have.
BlackBerry users come in two varieties: corporate users connected to a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), and consumers who connect to a RIM-managed BES. Corporate users create their encryption keys when setting up their BES, and communication between the handset and the BES is secured against all but the best-funded of governments. Consumers are issued a key by RIM, and connect to their geographically nearest – and RIM-managed – BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).
When BlackBerry Messenger (BBM - an instant-messaging service unique to RIM) was implicated in the 2011 riots, the UK police were able to wander along to the UK-based BES server and peruse all the messages and emails exchanged by rioters without breaking any encryption. The Data Protection Act provided all the power they need, with RIPA providing police with similar access to companies running their own BES – though in that case, the biz owners themselves hold the keys, hence the problem with the Indian government's claims.
The problem for India was that RIM had no local BES, so consumers were connected to one in Canada and subject to Canadian law. What seems likely, though RIM won’t confirm it, is that RIM now has a BES server located within India where the local authorities can browse communications just as easily as their UK counterparts.
But that's no help against companies, or groups, who run their own BES (the basic version of which is free). Where a local BES is used, RIM never has access to the encryption keys, and RIM has resolutely resisted informal requests to create a back-door in their software – rightly believing that if such a move became public (as it inevitably would) it would destroy the only area (security) within which RIM still has credibility.
The Times of India claims a government spokesman told them that RIM had provided such a back door, but it's not the first time we've heard a claim of this type. Back in 2010, the Indian government claimed RIM was providing access to communications, at least twice, then it made roughly the same claim in October 2011, and again in February this year, so these new claims have to be taken in that context.
The Indian government is trying to reassure its population (and voters) that no foreign company will prevent it from intercepting communications, but it risks its own credibility by repeatedly claiming to have access to encryption keys which simply don't exist.

Glad Team Anna's intentions are now in the open: Soni

Social activist Anna Hazare during the Team Anna's agitation against corruption at Jantar Mantar -PTI

With Team Anna deciding to end their fast and come out with a political alternative, Government on Thursday claimed that its stand that their movement was "inspired by politics" had been vindicated and their real intention has come out in the open.
Asserting that nobody can hold the government to ransom, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said, "We have always said that these people seemed inspired by politics. It is good that whatever the intention was has come out clear. Many of the stances they took seem to suggest this. I am glad that they have gone ahead."
Her reaction came after Anna Hazare announced that he will give support for a political alternative in the country. Soni also said that if Team Anna enter politics, "then they will themselves understand, the compulsions, responsibilities of politics, how much you have to work in politics and especially that if we work honestly in politics, it is not easy."
Soni said that it was not correct for anyone to use defamatory language against MPs or anyone holding constitutional position. The Minister said that it was everyone's right to enter public life and Team Anna should go ahead and contest elections if they wanted to change the system.
"Everyone has right to enter politics and fight elections. If they think that every member of parliament has a bad reputation (I don't want to use the words they had used) then they themselves should fight to become a member of Parliament," Soni told reporters here. Soni also said that she was happy that the fast had been called off and that it was not proper that a democratically elected government is held to ransom by such agitations.
"I am glad that they have agreed to call up their fast, its a good thing because things can't work under pressure in a democracy. You can't hold the government to a ransom. A government elected to office by people of the country," she said.
Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh, a bitter critic of Team Anna, also took a jibe at them, saying his opinion about their real intentions has now been confirmed.
"Just as I always said, Team Anna's political ambitions are out in open! People should see for themselves the reality behind this 'MOVEMENT'!" Singh said on his Twitter handle.
Soni was asked by reporters if she thought the decision to announce launching of a political alternative was an exit strategy used by Team Anna to end their fast.
"Only they know what was their motive to sit for fast. I had on two or three occasions in my personal capacity asked them that they should please clear their motives - whether they want to join politics or end the fast," she said.
Soni also said that those accusing the government of not having brought the Lokpal should understand that the Bill was now a property of the Parliament.
"Now they have made their point and accuse the government of not bringing the Lokpal. This isn't the truth. Lokpal Bill was passed by Lok Sabha, Lokpal Bill was passed by Rajya Sabha by government in office," she said.
"It wasn't passed because everybody wanted to discuss it further and further, Lokpal Bill is with a select committee of Parliament. It is the property of the Parliament, so they must understand before accusing the government from morning till night," Soni added.
Meanwhile, Team Anna on Thursday announced that it would end the indefinite fast on Thursday evening. Anna Hazare's announcement on calling off the agitation demanding Lokpal Bill at 5 PM Thursday came on a day when a group of eminent personalities, including jurist V R Krishna Iyer and former Army Chief Gen V K Singh, appealed for an end to the fast as the health of Arvind Kejriwal and two others deteriorated.

No game or sport has 'National Game' status: Sports Ministry

We may be assuming Hockey, the game which fetched six consecutive Olympic gold medals, to be our national game but the fact is none of the games or sports played in the country has the status of ‘national game.’

In an RTI reply, the Sports Ministry has made it clear that it has not declared any sports as national game whereas the web portal of Government 'www.india.gov.in' has posted an article glorifying field hockey under the heading National Game.

The curiosity about national symbols drove Lucknow-based 10-year-old Aishwarya Parashar to file an RTI application to the Prime Minister's Office seeking certified copies of orders related to declaration of National anthem, song, sport, animal, bird, flower and symbol.

Her queries were transferred to the Home Ministry, which forwarded the query related to National Sport to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

In a reply, Sports Ministry Under Secretary Shiv Pratap Singh Tomar wrote in Hindi to Aishwarya that the Ministry has not declared any sport or game to be the National Game.

Surprisingly, the government portal under the head National symbol has given details of 14 such symbols which include - flag, bird, flower, tree, Anthem, River, Aquatic Animal, State Emblem, Calender, Animal, Song, Fruit, Game, Currency Symbol.

The portal says,"Indians of all demographics backgrounds across the world are proud of these National Symbols as they infuse a sense of pride and patriotism in every Indian's heart."

I-T returns:Biggest power blackout makes some Indians happy?

Aug 1: The biggest power blackout in India, which also has been termed as the world's worst-ever power collapse, affected more than 60 crore people in more than 20 states in India. However, it seems that the power grid failure brought some good news for many Indians who have failed to file their Income Tax (I-T) returns on time.
The Income Tax department earlier had announced Jul 31 as the last date for filing returns. The department has made filing of income tax returns mandatory for all Indians especially for those whose annual income is Rs 10 lakh and above. Untill 2011, filing income tax returns was optional.
However, citing the pathetic condition of the country on Tuesday, Jul 31 the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) decided to extend the deadline and thus announced Aug 31 as the last date for filing the returns.
CBDT issued a statement saying, "This has been done in respect of assesses who are liable to file such returns by 31st July 2012 as per provisions of section 139 of Income Tax Act, 1961."
Tuesday's collapse was believed to have been triggered by four states withdrawing power from the northern grid at the same time. This led to a transmission failure at Agra.
Nearly, 500 trains stopped running all of a sudden. Vehicular movement was also affected. Traffic came to a grinding halt in many cities across north and east India.
Thousands of patients in hospitals suffered because doctors could not perform urgent surgeries in the absence of electricity.
Seeing how grave the situation was, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee even declared a holiday in her state to enable professionals and workers to reach their homes as soon as possible.
Due to the grid failure, hundreds of miners were trapped underground in Asansol and Sodedur. The mines are operated by the Eastern Coalfields Ltd.
Total 22 states including 9 from North India, 6 from East India and 7 from North-East India were affected over the power failure. The names of all 22 states have been mentioned below:

1. Jammu and Kashmir
2. Himachal Pradesh
3. Punjab
4. Uttarakhand
5. Haryana
6. Delhi
7. Bihar
8. Uttar Pradesh
9. Rajasthan
10. Chandigarh
11. Chhattisgarh
12. West Bengal
13. Jharkhand
14. Orissa
15. Assam
16. Sikkim
17. Meghalaya
18. Tripura
19. Nagaland
20. Manipur
21. Mizoram
22. Arunachal Pradesh