Brown Pundits

We have been consistent in our opinion that something really extra-ordinary has to happen to enable BJP to cross the 200 seat threshold. The experts group appointed by Outlook are a left-neutral bunch and they were in agreement on this point six months ago.  

A state by state analysis at that time came up with 187 seats. Now the experts have re-assembled and the revised seat count is up by (42) to 229.  

We happen to agree, this was a personal observation of the local electoral proceedings that the hindu vote has been effectively mobilized, at least in the North and West. In the South and the East the BJP may not get many seats but the voters are firmly in favor of Modi Raj. This will help remove the “untouchability” factor associated with the BJP (in reality  the threat of muslim votes evaporating).

What about the Congress? The battle plan called for a three-pronged (proxy) attack, hold the southern forts of Kerala, Karnataka and Telengana (also score a draw in Maharashtra), hope that the Aam aadmi party stops the BJP in Delhi and other urban centers, pray that the caste equations in Northern India enables Team B (Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal) to stop the BJP in rural seats.

In our opinion Congress will do poorly in Maharashtra and only a draw in Karnataka and Telengana. That leaves the star performers as Kerala and Axom. It will perhaps win only a single seat in each of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Odisha. It will be completely wiped out in the north except for Punjab where it may put up a strong showing (still a draw). 

All of this adds up to less than 100…a complete disaster for Rahul Gandhi. The prince is unlikely to recover from this as he has lost touch with the people and they are unimpressed by him (they are a bit more well disposed towards his sister…but only if the honorable jamai babu is held under lock and key).
………

North
J/K: Total (6) BJP 2004 (0), 2009 (0), 2014* (estimate, change after revision) (2, +2)
Punjab: (13) 2004 (3), 2009 (1), 2014* (7, -3)
Himachal Pradesh: (4) 2004 (1), 2009 (3), 2014* (2)
Uttarakhand: (5) 2004 (3), 2009 (0), 2014* (4, +1)
Haryana: (10) 2004 (1), 2009 (0), 2014*  (8, +5)
Delhi: (7) 2004 (1), 2009 (0), 2014* (2)
Uttar Pradesh: (80) 2004 (10), 2009 (10), 2014* (30, +10)

West
Rajasthan: (25) 2004 (21), 2009 (4), 2014* (16, +4)
Madhya Pradesh: (29) 2004 (25), 2009 (16), 2014* (26, +6)
Gujarat: (26) 2004 (14), 2009 (15), 2014* (19, +2)
Maharashtra: (48) 2004 (13), 2009 (9), 2014* (32, +7)

South
Karnataka: (28) 2004 (18), 2009 (19), 2014* (18)
United Andhra: (42) 2004 (0), 2009 (0), 2014* (10)

East
Odisha: (21) 2004 (7), 2009 (0), 2014* (4)
Bihar: (40) 2004 (5), 2009 (12), 2014* (14)
Jharkhand: (14) 2004 (1), 2009 (8), 2014* (7)
Chattisgarh: (11) 2004 (10), 2009 (10), 2014* (7)
Axom: (14) 2004 (2), 2009 (4), 2014* (4)

……..
 Link: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?290587
…….

regards

Perhaps a Modi regimen (no drinking allowed) will be good for executives like Gurbaksh Chahal and Rakesh Agarwal. Note to R.A. – stay away from Twitter if you cant handle technology after having imbibed a peg or two, and stop making up silly excuses if you cant handle the truth.

Today is the 85th birthday of Audrey Hepburn and Google is celebrating the most beautiful, gracious lady that we can remember.

It was 1992 and both Hepburn was dying from cancer (she passed away in 1993) and Satyajit Ray was also in his death-bed (he died 24 days later on 23 April). The Academy honored Ray with an honorary Lifetime Oscar award and he requested that his favorite actress present it to him (virtually). It is an emotional moment …even after all these (22) years.
………

SATYAJIT RAY: Well, it’s an extraordinary experience for me to be here tonight to
receive this magnificent award; certainly the best achievement of my
movie-making career. When I was a small, small school boy, I was
terribly interested in the cinema. Became a film fan, wrote to Deanna
Durbin. Got a reply, was delighted. Wrote to Ginger Rogers, didn’t get
a reply. Then of course, I got interested in the cinema as an art
form, and I wrote a twelve-page letter to Billy Wilder after seeing
“Double Indemnity.” He didn’t reply either. 

Well, there you are. I
have learned everything I’ve learned about the craft of cinema from the
making of American films. I’ve been watching American films very
carefully over the years and I loved them for what they entertain, and
then later loved them for what they taught. So, I express my gratitude
to the American cinema, to the motion picture association who have given
me this award and who have made me feel so proud. Thank you very, very
much.
…………..
Google has celebrated Audrey Hepburn’s 85th birthday with a pink doodle.


The Breakfast at Tiffany’s star – and fashion icon – became a big screen legend during Hollywood’s so-called ‘Golden Age.’

She
was born on May 4th 1929 in Brussels to a British father and Dutch
aristocrat mother, before moving to London in 1948 to continue training
as a ballet dancer.

Widely considered to be the world’s most
beautiful women ever, Hepburn rose to film stardom after appearing in
several British movies.

She won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a
BAFTA for her lead role in Roman Holiday (1953) and starred in other
classics, including Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) and My Fair Lady
(1964).

She won a record three BAFTA awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role.
Hepburn
appeared in fewer acting roles in later life, devoting much of her time
to working with UNICEF on good causes in the developing world.
She died in Switzerland aged 63 in 1993 after a battle with cancer.
…….. 

As the backlash grows in Beijing (Christianity’s
growth… “too excessive and too haphazard”), multiple
churches destroyed in (Chinese) Jerusalem.

The Chicoms will not be deterred by weak minded protests but why not hit them where it really hurts? It
is surely the case that the persecution of Christians in China is
multiple times as compared to Muslims in Palestine (the first and most
important issue is freedom of worship). Even a visit by Ariel Sharon to the Western Wall was supposed to have been the trigger for the second Intifada.

Why not the people of the book(s) join and launch a BDS-II against China? They
can also think of a BDS-III against India if Modi comes too power. An
ever expanding BDS regime can be considered similar to the NATO expansion
movement in Eastern Europe (the results will be just as bloody). But
at least the faithful will live in hope that one day they will rule
heaven as well as all corners of the (yet to be civilized) earth.

……………………….
A City known as China’s Jerusalem has had its holy statues depicting
biblical scenes destroyed, removed or “hidden” by authorities, adding to
fears of a renewed offensive against Christianity and drawing
comparisons with the Cultural Revolution.


 
About 50 government workers sealed off Wenzhou’s Longgang Hill, a
site of Roman Catholic pilgrimage, and used bricks to “hide” statues
portraying moments from the Passion of Christ, including the
Crucifixion.


 
Statues of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, each weighing up
to five tons, were “bricked around to hide them from public view” while
cranes were used to remove other holy statues and tablets from the park.


 
“All other religious decoration was demolished,” reported UCA news, a news agency covering Catholic issues in Asia. “About 100 Catholics who came to watch the removals were blocked at
the entrance,” said one witness, who asked not to be named because of
“security concerns”.

“Some who managed to sneak in sang hymns and prayed while watching. Some could not hold back their tears.


 
“The authorities’ behaviour is reminiscent of the smashing of church
property during the Cultural Revolution,” another member of the city’s
Catholic community told UCA News’s Chinese-language service.


 
The removals, news of which emerged Wednesday, took place on
Saturday, 48 hours, before government demolition teams razed a
Protestant church in the same city.

Wenzhou’s Sanjiang church became a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian religious policies in early April.

Thousands of Christians formed a human shield around the place of
worship after plans to demolish it were announced, but the building was
eventually levelled on Monday evening.


Christians accuse Communist Party leaders in Zhejiang province of
attempting to slow their faith’s rapid growth by destroying churches
deemed too “conspicuous”.

 
They believe the “anti-church” campaign reflects Beijing’s extreme
discomfort with the rapid spread of Christianity in China, which one
leading academic recently predicted could have the largest Christian
congregation in the world by 2030.

 
A list compiled by Christian activists and shown to The Daily
Telegraph this week names more than 20 churches that are facing or have
already suffered some form of demolition work.


Officials deny the demolitions are an attack on Christianity,
claiming their campaign is aimed at illegal constructions “including
factories and Buddhist temples”.


 
However, in an internal address to party officials earlier this year,
a senior Communist official in Zhejiang complained that Christianity’s
growth had been “too excessive and too haphazard”.


 
A document purportedly issued last December by Communist Party
officials in Taizhou, another city in Zhejiang province, also appeared
to suggest that Christian churches were being singled out.

Local communist leaders should take “rapid actions” against illegal
buildings, “especially the Christian sites privately established without
proper paperwork or approval,” said the directive, which was obtained
by China Aid, a US-based Christian rights group. The demolition of
“Christian gathering sites” and nunneries are listed as key priorities.

Authorities this week indicated that the campaign was likely to
continue, promising to “aggressively push on with the demolition of
illegal buildings,” the state-controlled Zhejiang Daily reported.


 
The motive for what appeared to be a “widening crackdown” was unknown
but “an increasingly violent stand-off between authorities and the
Church” was taking place, UCA News reported.

Four Catholics were beaten and injured by government officials in
Wenzhou last week when an argument broke out during the forced
demolition of a church, the news agency claimed.
……………………..
Link: http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/05/02/chinas-jerusalem-sees-massive-church-torn-down-statues-of-jesus-hidden-by-authorities/
……….
regards

Please exercise caution while visiting the land of all-MERSi-full camels and people who act all-too-familiar with the camels.This is just like SARS which came from close proximity of humans to pig/birds in China.

Actually there are no known cures for MERS…..yet, so a complete travel ban is warranted. As if one needed an excuse for not visiting Saudi Arabia.
…..

……
Along a stretch of rust-belt suburbia in Indiana, the Community
Hospital in Munster now claims the dubious distinction of being the
first U.S. facility to admit a patient with the deadly Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

U.S. state and federal health officials confirmed the first American
case of the virus on Friday. The patient, a male healthcare worker, had
travelled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and began exhibiting symptoms upon
his return to the United States, they said.

Separately, Saudi officials on Saturday said the rate of infections
was on the rise in the country, where MERS was first discovered in 2012.
The total number of cases in the kingdom is 396, of whom more than a
quarter have died.

The MERS patient had traveled via a British Airways flight on April
24 from Riyadh to London, changing planes at Heathrow airport to fly to
Chicago. From there, he boarded a bus to Indiana. Munster, which is
close to Indiana’s border with Illinois, is about a 45-minute drive from
downtown Chicago.

Health officials in Britain were contacting any passengers who may
have sat next to the patient. U.S. health authorities stressed the case
represents a very low risk to the public.

But concerns remain, given how little is know about the way MERS is
spread, other than it can be transmitted between people who are in close
contact. That has made healthcare workers particularly susceptible to
falling ill with the MERS virus, for which there is no treatment.

But citing “an abundance of caution,” Indiana health officials urged
people who had visited the hospital’s Emergency Department between 6:30
p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on April 28, the night the MERS patient was admitted,
to watch for symptoms such as cough, fever and shortness of breath.
……
Link(1): http://www.cbc.ca/news/mers-virus-indiana-hospital-treating-u-s-patient-still-bustling
Link(2):  http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/watch/coronavirus-arabian-peninsula-uk
….
regards

regards

This is indeed one amazingly diverse country, in Kashmir the army protects Hindu pilgrims from being murdered by Punjabi jihadists and in Axom the army protects Bangladeshi migrants from getting killed by Bodo millitants.

The problem supposedly is that muslim migrants voted for the non-Bodo candidate and the attacks on the family of four year old Taslima Khatun and others are to ensure that people will not repeat the same “mistake” again. But here is a larger question: if these people are truly migrants, who issued voting cards for them? All parties have taken advantage of the plight of migrants, they get ration cards etc in return for the promise of votes. And one day the “natives” decide that enough is enough and go for the kill. This is sadly the story of the North-East.

It is also important to remember that this picture has acquired an unnecessary religious color (in the press and by the politicians). In Tripura it is the Hindu Bangladeshis who have displaced tribals from their land and are facing attacks in response (though not on the scale in Axom).

Modi is on record stating that after the elections all Bangladeshis must pack up and leave. All secular politicians from Omar Abdullah to Mamata Banerjee are (justifiably) outraged. But ultimately this wedge issue will work in the same way as all others- unite non-muslims against muslims. The polarization also works in both directions, muslims in Mumbai feel free to run riot out of sympathy with their Bangladeshi compatriots. And we are back to having the army protect the Taslima Khatuns from terrorists everywhere.
……
A
Bodoland People’s Front leader said, “Everything was fine till April 23.
We were assured that we would get about 80% Muslim votes in the third
phase of the Lok Sabha elections in Kokrajhar on April 24. But all
Muslim votes went in favour of Naba Kumar Sarania alias Heera Sarania.”

Sarania, a reformed ULFA militant, was supported by non-Bodos, who are
opposed to the creation of Bodoland state as demanded by Bodo groups.  ……….
India deployed
troops Assam on Saturday after 31 Muslims were gunned down in three days
of what police said were attacks by tribal militants who resent the
presence of immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

The unrest in the tea-growing
state comes towards the end of a marathon election across India that has
heightened ethnic and religious divisions and which the Hindu
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to win.

Security
forces found the bodies of nine people with bullet wounds on Saturday,
six of them women and children, the third day of violence that police
have blamed on Bodo tribesmen attacking Muslim settlers as punishment
for opposing their candidate in the election to the Indian parliament.

Bodo people are followers of the local Bathouist religion.

“We
are scared to live in our village, unless security is provided by the
government,” said Anwar Islam, a Muslim who had come to buy food in
Barama, a town about 30 km (20 miles) from the villages in the Baksa
district where the violence erupted on Thursday and Friday.
He
said men armed with rifles had come to his village, Masalpur, on
bicycles and had then fired indiscriminately and set huts on fire.

Bodo
representatives say many of the Muslims in Assam are illegal immigrants
from Bangladesh who encroach on ancestral Bodo lands. In 2012, clashes
erupted in which dozens of people were killed and 400,000 fled their
homes.

Election
candidates, including the BJP’s Narendra Modi, the front-runner for
prime minister, have been calling for tighter border controls.
Modi said last week that
illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in the nearby state of West Bengal
should have their “bags packed” in case he came to power, accusing the
state government of being too soft.

“Modi
should have been more responsible in his utterances,” said Sabyasachi
Basu Roy Chowdhury, a political science professor at Rabindra Bharati
University in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.“His
words can be very damaging since, even if we consider that Bangladeshis
are living here illegally, there is a question of human rights too.”

Soldiers
in convoys of trucks mounted with rifles were patrolling on Saturday in
Baksa district, where some of the attacks took place.
Bodies
covered with white sheets were laid out in a row at a police outpost on
the edge of Barama for identification by relatives.
Most
Muslims were staying together in big groups, villagers visiting the
market in Barama said. Security forces found three children hiding in
forests near the border with China.

The
Bodo region faces what residents say is a tight race between a Bodo and
a non-tribal candidate. A policeman was killed during the voting when
the region went to the polls on April 24.
…….
Link:  http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/03/uk-india-attacks-assam
……
regards

Priyanka Robert Vadra is the first beti (and sister of local MP, the first beta) and the voters dont even know who she is and what she looks like. The ultimate low-information voter, or is it? If a VIP constituency lacks power after 65 years of independence it will not come as a surprise that voters remain indifferent to VIP appeal.

We are ambivalent about the overall outcome in this general elections but not so about specific cases. It is our fervent wish that in the coming ballot in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi (INC) loses from Amethi, and so does Sonia Gandhi (INC- Rae Bareilly), Varun Gandhi (BJP- Sultanpur) and Narendra Modi (BJP- Varanasi). This is the only time the voters can deliver a bloody nose and it is high time they do so in a very powerful and symbolic manner.
………..
Outside
the Ramlila grounds in Nasirabad, the weekly vegetable market is on.
Clad in sneakers, salwar-kurta and a BJP cap, Anu Chaudhary, the state
chief of BJP’s women’s unit in Haryana, distributes campaign material
and pamphlets to vegetable vendors. “You have a right to development. If
Amethi is a VIP constituency, question the vote-seekers on how your
lives have improved,” she says. People hear her out. Then someone asks,
“Are you Priyanka?”
…….
Hours later with a generator powering the
mike, in the same grounds, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra talks about the Gandhis
bringing electricity to Amethi. The mike fails several times and people
complain. “In this area, electricity supply is nearly non-existent.
She’s talking about educational institutions but we do not have an
inter-college,” Mohd Iqbal, a fruit vendor said. Priyanka acknowledges
that there are complaints but says it was the opposition that foiled
attempts to bring power.

In Gauriganj, the headquarters of
Amethi district, senior administrative officials are discussing the
latest entrant into Amethi’s political fray, BJP’s Smriti Irani. At
least a few times, she is referred to as Tulsi, TV’s most popular bahu, a
role Irani played about eight years ago before she entered politics.

“Her arrival created quite a stir in the initial days. As a celebrity, she drew large crowds,” says one of them. Traveling more than 200km every day, Irani has stationed herself in
Amethi since early April and plans to stay till May 7, polling day.

With the help of the Sangh Parivar, Irani has begun sharing space with
Priyanka in drawing room discussions over politics. Nudging the real
contestant – Rahul Gandhi – out of the picture, people say Amethi’s 2014
electoral battle is all about the real beti versus the reel bahu.

The beti invokes all that the first family has done for the people of
Amethi in the many decades it has ruled; the bahu harps on everything
else they could have done, but didn’t. Both are using more than just
celebrity-hood and charm to strengthen their election campaigns. In
Irani’s case, she has craftily kept the old Jan Sangh hands close,
knowing they can help her build her base. In a more personal gesture,
Irani applies tilak to every supporter who goes out campaigning for her.
Anu Chaudhary, the Haryana unit volunteer, said, “Our focus is on
making personal contact with people. We’re touching villages the Gandhis
have not visited even once in all these years.”

As Irani goes
on a mission to bring down a 40-year dynastic rule, Priyanka is hard at
work trying to fortify it. Spending 15 hours daily campaigning, she’s
been on door-to-door visits, addressed corner meetings and made
unscheduled halts at villages.
………
Link: http://www.livemint.com/Politics/jCJKGgrT5FdGVkyd0b8MIL/Dont-need-a-56inch-chest-to-run-country-Priyanka-Gandhi.html
…….
regards

South Bengal goes to elections just as the Saradha chit fund scam is exploding in the face of Mamata “Didi” Banerjee. Millions of poor were robbed, and the daku-in-chief Sudipta Sen cultivated favors with the one (wo)man ruling party by buying Didi’s paintings for a few crores. A most ingenious way to rob Peter to pay Paul.

What makes the hypocrisy so glaring is that this is the same lady who is supposedly fighting 24/7 for the poor. She refused to raise train fares and caused the Indian railways to nearly collapse from a lack of funds. As Chief Minister of Bengal she refuses to raise bus fares, so much so that bus owners have reduced frequency and even stopped plying their vehicles. In the absence of buses, poor people have  to pay ten times the cost and travel by auto-rickshaws (who are often non-cooperative and rude). It is difficult to believe that even Communists were not so moronic.

……….
Those training guns against the UPA-II for a
series of scams — 2G, Coalgate, the Commonwealth Games — may find it
amusing but in Bengal, the Rs 2,400-crore Saradha Ponzi muddle looms larger
than the other scams. Mamata Banerjee’s “honest” brand image has
taken a beating in the last two phases of the LS polls spread over 23
constituencies in south Bengal where the “twin flowers”, the TMC symbol,
have a monopoly.

On Friday, a group of Saradha victims were
beaten up, allegedly by Trinamool supporters, when they blocked railway tracks
at Garia station.

“The government has cheated us. It
promised us compensation. But we are yet to get it,” said an injured Bijoy
Sapui. Ashim Chatterjee, a former Naxal leader who is now the president of the
Chit Fund Sufferers’ Association, lodged a complaint with the police.  The
Saradha story is not just about a Ponzi bubble that burst a year ago,
devastating 18 lakh people who had parked their money in the schemes. Bengal
had had a similar experience in 1980, when the chit fund Sanchayita Investments
mopped up more than Rs 120 crore from small depositors, only to shut shop
later.

But the recent Saradha scam has drawn into
its vortex a host of individuals and institutions — from senior politicians and
bureaucrats to football clubs, Tollywood and even the media, where some of the
ill-gotten money was sunk.

The embers of resentment were fanned by BJP’s
Narendra Modi during his campaign in Bengal. While Congress president Sonia
Gandhi had earlier harped on the loot by the Saradha Group and the alleged
inaction by the state, Modi touched a nerve because he hinted that
politicians had directly benefited from the Saradha money. Modi didn’t name the
Saradha Group, but he hit the right notes by raising an obvious question:
“Who bought Mamata Banerjee’s paintings for Rs 1.8 crore?” Saradha
boss Sudipta Sen, now in custody, muddied the waters further by coming up with
a rebuttal: “I didn’t buy Mamata’s paintings. I don’t know who bought
them,” Sen said.

Taking a cue from Modi, former CPM minister
Gautam Deb hit the TMC chief where it hurt the most. Deb revealed the
income-tax returns filed by Trinamool that show that the party earned Rs 2.53
crore by selling Mamata’s paintings in the 2012-13 fiscal. “How could
then Mamata give Rs 3.93 crore to party mouthpiece ‘Jago Bangla’ in the 2011-12
fiscal?” Deb asked.
…….
Link: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-will-the-saradha-scam-be-mamata-banerjee-s-achilles-heel-this-lok-sabha-poll-1984119
…….
regards

Garvit Goel is a lucky kid, he got a match for blood stem cells from a stranger and was saved from a life of pain. Wonderful news and hopefully more people will register with Datri (and the Tata Memorial registry) and qualify to save lives (too easy).

Given the complications caused in South Asia due to endogamy, health experts believe that at least half million donors required. NGOs should consider partnering with religious bodies (similar to the intervention for polio drops) to remove myths about stem cell donation (will cause pain and weakness in donors).
………

…….
Currently,
there are four registries in India but only two are functional – DATRI, a
south India-based stem cell registry started in 2009 which has around
56,000 registered donors, and Marrow Donors Registry India at Tata
Memorial Hospital in Mumbai.

“As
a result of evolutionary history, endogamy and consanguinity,
populations of the Indian subcontinent demonstrate high genetic
differentiation and extensive sub-structuring. Ancestry is unique to
India,” said Dr N.K. Mehra, head of Immunology and Immunogenetics at the
All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

“Indian groups have inherited different proportions of ancestry from
the ancestral North Indians and the ancestral South Indians. Hence,
consistent with social history, northern regions show closer affinities
with Indo-European speaking populations of central Asia as compared to
those inhabiting southern regions.”

Mehra said the southern Indian population may have been derived from early colonizers arriving from Africa. “This genetic matching is difficult to find for an Indian donor,” he said.

A
transplant from a healthy unrelated donor replaces flawed stem cells
with healthy ones that can generate healthy red blood cells and cure
Thalassemia. The goal of the transplant is to rebuild the recipient’s
blood cells and immune system and cure the underlying ailment, and avoid
or obviate the need for frequent blood transfusions.

“The existence of a large variety of alleles and haplotypes (genetic
components), both unique and representative of other ethnic groups in
the Indian subcontinent, poses additional challenges in the
transplantation context, particularly with regard to hematopoietic stem
cell transplantation,” Mehra said.

Even
after patients find suitable donors, there are low chances of the donor
turning up due to myths related to donation like pain and weakness,
doctors claimed.

For a
successful transplant, the donor and recipient should have a matching
set of genes known as Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). At least one third
of patients have a chance of finding an identical set of HLAs within
their family while two-thirds are dependent on unrelated donors.
…..
Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2600057/Wanted-half-million-donors-Indian-patients-miss-life-saving-stem-cell-therapy-lack-matches.html

……

regards