THE BYSTANDER

Those of you are from West Bengal and regularly go through vernacular dailies; must have noticed ads of various ‘Jotish’ cover mostly half of a page. Occasionally they cover even more! Don’t think they get any concession for putting ads on newspapers. Obviously they can well afford those expensive Ads; since they yield. I used to surmise in 2014; how come so many ‘Babas’or “Jyotish’ who promise to solve your problems within 3 minutes, dare to advertise publicly! Our democratic law is so lenient that anyone can claim anything putting advertisements publicly. They may sale residential plots in ‘moon’ at a cheaper rate. There is none to question! Off course; there are people who get duped and have no complaint over them or their practices. I have visited few of them; sometime on curiosity or other time being pursued by someone closed. Every time I felt convinced while sitting before them. Later when I recounted the whole thing, it came clear, the man talked a lot and initially he...

M.L.Shah, who upheld the cause of circulation of small and medium news papers and periodicals in our country; specially in the eastern region. I remember him as he inspired me to fight with pen; the man never thought that the days of pen was counted then; the key board arrived, soon after his departure from this earth!The present generation may not know there were many small local news papers published from many of our district towns even two decades ago. Some small periodicals or weekly like Blitz; enjoyed pan Indian popularity amongst educated middleclass. Mr R K Karanjia was the editor. In 60s and 70s; his weekly carried a fresh report every week with the title “ India’s do-nothing projects”. That revealed the scams and quantified the loots, pinpointing the looters! With no Anna Hazare or  omni present medias; they went on and on undaunted. In fact India has a history of looters except Mughals; so you cannot blame us for looting. It is in our genetic codes. Generations after ge...

Chetan Bhagat; the 'Three Idiots' fame writer wrote a letter that I received today. He wrote it to an organization ' India against crime, corruption and reservation'. He wrote about justification of Anna Hazare's move. Though I justify Hazaare's move considering the fact that what else one could do! But I am not sure about its effect. However let me share Chetan's letter with you .......... We have all had that one uncle who keeps on reminding you how India is terrible. He tells you about how every government authority takes bribes - from the RTO to the ration shop to the municipality. He will tell you how no government department does its job well - the potholed roads, abysmal conditions at government schools and poor healthcare all being examples to support your uncle's theory. It is hard to argue with him, for he is right. Things don't work. There is no justice. Power talks. Equality doesn't exist. All of this, even though uncomfortable to he...

The recent happenings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and few more countries in middle east and Africa; the uprising of people and global pressures; some from freedom loving people and others from those whose interests are harmed by such turmoil. Who belong the second category you  know, the same group of nations who first planted the poisonous plants like Osama Bin Laden or Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam in Iraq or Gaddafi in Libya when they grew lager, blew the poisonous fumes towards their mentors then blow war bugle to uproot them! And thousands of innocents lives are lost because of their repeating such exercise ever since their own war WW-II ended. The feelings of common men is best portrayed by one great poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Way back in 1959, sitting in Lahore jail he wrote this.................                              ...

The Egyptian fire of rebellion is engulfing vast region covering most of the countries under overt or covert dictatorial rule and Sheikhdom . Though late but I think what human efforts have failed so far, the internet could do! See now it is widely known that a 26 years old woman in Cairo first entered her intention in FaceBook to protest against President Hosni Mubarak and oust him. Her's was not a call to join her, a simple declaration that she is going alone even if others don't do that. And you know the result. Now one after another countries like Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain and more are following the suit. Mainly these rallies are made of new twitter, FaceBook generation; those who sans any political color but love liberation. I believe their very love for freedom is infused by web freedom , the freedom of information!! Don't you think so?

This what happening in Cairo at Tahir Square or Liberation Square where most of activities are on : There are few more photographs sent by my old friend Brinda Pant who is still there:

How many of you ever heard the name 'Lalgarh'; if ever you heard ,never felt it's a name worth remembering until recent past. It is an area covering cluster of few villages in Midnapore district of West Bengal. However this name has etched a permanent impression on the worn pages of history. Though public memory is short but in future the students of political science will definitely read the story of Lalgarh as an example of 'Fascism'. A group of ruling party's armed cadre, camped in a desolate house in the villege, opened fire killing eight innocent villagers and 17 injuring 17 others fatally. Nearly 1000 villagers on 7th Jan gathered around the two storied house at 10.30 AM in the morning. They were protesting against the diktats, imposed by those few 'armed thugs'; like guarding their camp in night , supplying ration and cooking for them. Villagers were asked to take part in physical exercise compulsorily and take armed training! Imagine, in dem...

Latest petrol price hike is the fifth price rise in past six months since government deregulated petrol price from its control. The total hike in past six months is around Rs 8.50/- and the petroleum ministry predicts further rise in future as the crude price in global market is on the rise. Since long the oil refineries were claiming deregulation of fuel price to cut down their losses. At last government gave in for petrol but diesel price is still under government control. So are kerosene and LPG as they directly impact the vote bank. But is it really so? Though the majority is not touched by the rise of petrol price directly but there are always indirect effects. So, any rise in fuel price fuels inflation. Hiking petrol price affects only middle class budget keep everyone else happy. Because government, in central or states garner more in terms of taxes. Let us see the approximate break ups of petrol price when it is Rs58.90 per liter. It is assumed that ex-refinery petrol price is ...

                                   As Bangldesh looks on the bank of Ichamoti, from TAKI, West Bengal. Take a closed look, a cattle corpse i s floating on the river bed, near the Bangladeshi bank. Victim of transborder cattle smuggling. I am not sure how young generation would react to the name of yester year’s one of the most popular writer portraying the essence of rural Bengal, its pains and joys, prosperity and poverty and off course the thread of society; Bibhuti Bhusan Bandopadhyay. His simplicity was eminent in is writing; that was best projected by famous film director Satyojit Roy in his internationally acclaimed films like ‘Pother Panchali’, ‘Aparajito’ et el.  At the age of 9, I read ‘Pother Panchali’. Though I was not matured, enough to comprehend its intrinsic message of the content but the very story left a pugmark in my mind. I became more interested about the author later. ...

Napoleon the III or IV (I forgot); is remembered with his famous quotation. It goes like this " some people are born great, some achieve greatness and some has greatness thrust upon them'; in fact that was he. Hear I mention this for Big 'B' or Amitabh Bachan; though I am not a regular cine watcher; but I find it irresistible when his film releases. Usually I watch them at home; not all those can exploit him fully but some like 'Black' and recently 'Paa'; do it. They just show how one can achieve greatness through his diligence. My kudos to Big 'B'. Hear I am going to show how difficult it was for him to take make-up for 'Paa'. There he played the role of a 13-year old boy Auro, suffering from a rare disorder called progeria. It used to take four hours for make-up and 10% of the total budget of film was spent for his make-up! Eight different types of clay were used for his make up. This was the image 'Auro" w...

French men are great lovers and French ladies are rarely fatty, with these facts keeping in mind I searched the secrets! It seems I met the success; here is book review about the diets of French women; hopefully you will agree with me... French women seem to enjoy breads, desserts, and wine, but then don't gain the weight. American women, on the other hand, just think about snacking and magically put on ten pounds. In her bestselling book, French Women Don't Get Fat : The Secret of Eating For Pleasure, Mirelle Guiliano reveals the secrets that French women have at staying healthy and trim. French Women Don't Get Fat begins with the account of the author, Mirelle Guiliano, growing up in France. By a stroke of luck she was sent to America in her teenage years as an exchange student. In America, she was introduced to brownies and cookies - which quickly became favorites. In no time at all, Mirelle put on twenty pounds. When it was time to return home she was a little nerv...

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English" . In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will e...

Indian economy appears to be elusive; the stock market is bullish so the consumer market and all other. It is incomprehensible how the poorest of the poor Indians manage to survive with the skyrocketed prices of all most everything; from potato to pea-nuts, salt to sugar and egg to meat! The prices of many vegetables, edible oils, cereals, grams have broken all time records. But surprisingly there is no much furor over this. Is it only the middle class who are affected by this price rise? Are the people living below poverty line (they may constitute more than 60% actually despite of any official figures) being adequately supplied with subsidized food stuffs? Keeping Indian standard of distribution system through the mechanism available with various states in mind, you can be rest assured that it has never happened. What might have happened; the plight of the poor is not highlighted either by media or any political party for the reason best known to them. Their voices are maimed in mos...

Over the years, power cut in West Bengal at this time of year is plaguing; sometime it is due to routine service of the power plants or uncalled for breakdowns. They are usual and seem out of control. But the other factor what is surprising is coal shortage! Coal shortage is equally a routine affair every year. The coal mines being nationalized way back 1969 by government headed by Mrs Indira Gandhi did good to miners as well as those coal mine owners who were handsomely compensated for handing over underground infernos to government. In fact, many underground fires and land collapses in coal mine areas are due to most negligent mining by the mine owners. It is well known fact to anyone who is associated with Indian coal mining industry. Now, the shortage of coal supplies to the power plants is causing power shortage, because numbers of power generating plants are kept idle. Year after year we the tax payers have to suffer for that! In the civil world, perhaps Indian example is unique...

Indian banking industries could avoid the global recession and its after effects like bankruptcy, liquidations that massacred US banking majors. No doubt the practice of prudential banking norm and government control what controlled their exposures to reckless banking practice. But what is ailing the industries is its policy and manpower. The wage in banking industries is one of the lowest amongst peer organizations under government control. For the past two years the employee’s fresh wage agreement is due. No doubt, the trade unions used to be super powers in this industries decade ago, but no more they are so now. As most of the trade unions are controlled by their political bosses covertly or overtly, so their influence in the government does matter. Unfortunately currently, most or all of these political bosses of trade unions sit in the bench earmarked for members of oppositions in Parliament; so there is none to consider their case seriously. Neither they are in any hurry as nex...

In one of my blogs I wrote about the social sites. There are plenty in the web now. Earlier there were few dating sites, grossly they were considered to be the social sites; it was Google first brought Orkut.com in the web and the social site revolution started. Initially Gmail account could only be opened by introduction, not as of now, anyone can open an account, so was the Orkut. I read the article about Gmail with email data storage capacity upto 6MB in one of the famous English newspaper in India "The Statesman" published from Kolkata. I contacted the writer of the article, whose g mail address was given in the article too. I am not sure how delighted he was, when I asked him to introduce me to Google for opening gmail id. Can you thing such stricture now! Incredible. But that was it. Now you know how easy it is, just click in, put anything in the space as your details, and the account is opened,.Good Luck!

Marriages are made in heaven ---- thus goes the old adage; but in reality we find otherwise. Though I know that there are very few people would agree to me openly but within they know what it is. Years ago I read somewhere that in Russia the marriages are conducted with much pomp and show as we find amongst the middle class and of course wealthy and riches in India or elsewhere in South Asia, but three out of five marriages breaks shortly. Now, it is evident here too in India, especially in amongst the middle class where marriages are solemnized as still something “holy.” Problems crop up for many things, amongst the middle class or the business class mostly it is on dowry (the goodies bride brings along at the time of marriage) counts, sometime torture on newly married brides follow for bringing more and more from her father’s house. The law enacted to protect them and punish the torturer, but that is also grossly misused. I have found men being held under anti-dowry law and taken...

Excess everything is bad…thus goes the old adage. Last century saw the emergence of deadly HIV virus as a result of free-sex; now it is one of the great threats to humanity. This century is taking the toll on our young generations, especially in the developed and developing countries. They are stripped off their capacity to scribe legibly! Obviously this is due to their overexposure to computers. The present generations are introduced to e-culture. They usually communicate more through SMS, e-mail or use likes MS Words to write anything they need to. A recent report suggests that thousands of teenagers are seeking `scribes’ to help them write their A-level and GCSE paper because they are incapable of answering questions in longhand themselves, a study has revealed. The number of people, in UK seeking `ghost writers’ to help do exams rose from 28324 in 2005 to 40215 in last year. The number of students asking to use a word processor or computer also soared by more than 50 per cent, to 2...

Everyday those of us belong to third world or developing countries like India, Pakistan, China, Brazil, Russia or any countries in the continent of Africa come across of poor. In many of these countries they are found, living in shanties, ghettos either sitting idle with a vacant look or working hard to keep their soul with body. Since this I write for my blog, presumably the readers do have access to internet, so for all of us it is difficult to imagine how it is to earn only $1 or $1.25 per day or how to live with that paltry sum of money! Believe it, as per a recent World Bank report no less than 723 million people are just pulling on with that kind of earning, there are more who even do not earn that amount! Their plight is unimaginable. There have been big successes I the fight to overcoming extreme poverty but economic estimates show that there are now more poor people around the world than it was thought previously, the World Bank said in study recently. The revised estimates s...

In India, banking industries are taking a paradigm change to compete with the global and private banks playing here. In Indian nationalize banking s scenario the White elephant State Bank of India, with its largest network and manpower sharing the market share much lesser than emerging private banks like ICICI Banks, or HDFC Banks. Though the nationalize banks are off late trying to shake off their slumber but as it seems unless the dead woods are out it is difficult to fall in line. On 18th August the Officer`s Union of State Bank of India and its other associate banks have given a strike call, protesting against merger. The most surprising part of it that most the staff members of the Associated Banks are in favor of merger with State Bank of India, since that will accrue them lot of benefits, like pension as 3rd benefits, higher pay scale , local transfer et al. So how come the Unions have given strike call? The union leaders, who are primary from political parties and most of them...