Today's International Tiger Day. Did anyone tell you?
It is hardly surprising that International Tiger Day, today – September 28, has almost passed by without even a purr. Few know about it, still fewer remember. In all likelihood that is what is going to happen to the tiger too – it will disappear sans even a protesting growl. Its howls, when trapped or killed mercilessly, are never heard anyway. For a nation that cannot even remember its own national animal on International Tiger Day, perhaps that is the fate that starkly awaits the royal beast. Our Prime Minister is too busy getting ready to sleep himself cosy with George W Bush in Washington. Our political leaders back home are too busy tarnishing each other with communal brushes. Our media is too busy writing about them. And in this din, the tiger can hardly make its voice heard.
ISI in Assam: Not a wolf cry anymore
The frantic air-dashes by Union home ministry officials to Assam is telling. The possibility of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence fishing in the troubled demographic waters of the state is not a mere bogey any more. What was an impending threat only a few years back is now a reality. What was a pernicious pathogen till yesterday, has today infected the host and spread to such an extent that its debilitating effects are already beginning to show. The days of crying wolf for politicians are over -- the most subversive activities in Assam today carry the ISI mark.
Demographic realities in the state are murky enough. Ethnic equations are always difficult to understand. But the ISI understands it better than most. Well, enough to upset the wavering demographic equilibrium beyond redemption -- throw life so much out of gear that peace will never return.
Sexist jokes will co-exist with a veneer of hypocritical morality
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Rakesh Shukla, a Supreme Court advocate, has interesting comments to make about morality plays [Link]
It would be no exaggeration to say that 90 per cent of the programmes would fall within the ambit of Section 19 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, which empowers an authorised officer of the rank of sub-divisional magistrate to prohibit any programme or channel not in conformity with the programme code. In addition, Section 16 provides that individuals and companies can be punished with two years' imprisonment for a first violation and five years for a subsequent offence.
How mirthless can some people be
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Some people have no sense of humour. That's fine if they keep to themselves. But not when they literally coerce the police to arrest someone whose sense of humour may not be the same as theirs.
That's what has happened in Mumbai where the so-called Sikh Media and Culture Watch (SMCW) staged a demonstration and forced the police to arrest a publisher of a Sardar jokes book.
The Santa and Banta Joke Book is disappearing off the shelves of shops in Mumbai, and an emboldened section of the Sikh community there has even asked the cyber crime cell of the poliec to "ban jokes on the internet" which portray Sardars as objects of ridicule.
The Times of India reported [Link]: