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Women and religion: The politics of it
The polls are here – now is the time to fabricate politically correct statements. So the BJP prime minister-in-waiting Atal Bihari Vajpayee pledges to hasten in the Women’s Reservation Bill and goes on to add, “Rapists should be hanged.” Don’t ask why this man never came out with such radical assertions all these years. For pretty much the same reason, PR Kumarmangalam, when cornered on a TV show about his party creating an issue of Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots, comes out with a patriarchal defence “...bahu akhir ghar ki hoti hai (the bride, after all belongs to the family).”
To save these people, you need to keep them out of our sight
The most recurring, quoted number in India today is 1,411 – the mean count of tigers ostensibly remaining in the wild in the country. Everyone knows and everyone seems pretty upset. The number, of course, can be disputed and refuted too if needed; but that can be the topic for another discussion. What is evident is that given the rate of decline, it might be just another 20, or maybe 50, years by when tigers would vanish from our landscape. This number, till the other day, remained in the knowledge domain of wildlifers – conservationists, activists, enthusiasts. Thanks to the biggest ad campaign of the year, most people now know that 1,411 is too small a number in itself. Alarming, is how most ordinary people have been describing the number as.
