But the Oxfam report should give food for thought to a government that ostentatiously proclaims its commitment to the poor and whose flamboyantly-attired head boasts of starting out as a lowly chaiwallah. Nor do police stations and law courts baulk at accepting obviously fabricated charges.If the Senate chaplain looked at our governance, he would probably pray not just for the country but for the world.There are several explanations for what outsiders might regard as self-indicting candour.V.The Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh reforms opened the gates to the creation of new wealth. As in post-Soviet Russia, the subsequent capitalism blurred the distinction between the government and tycoons so that it is often not clear whose is the upper hand, who orders and who obeys. But these 70 years, especially the last 30 since the reforms initiated by P. Until 1952 the Maharaja of Baroda owned a controlling share of the equity in Fortnum & Mason, the chic food shop in Piccadilly that a footman of Queen Anne’s started in 1707 and which is still grocer to Queen Elizabeth II. If stem-cell therapy was common then like plastic surgery and artificial insemination, and if Ram piloted his own aircraft while Arjun felled his foes with nuclear darts, there is no reason why the credulous should disbelieve pretty but not especially moral tales like the legend of Ashwathama or the ocean being churned for its nectar.”

That might well be said of India’s legislatures as our republic steps into its 71st year.No wonder Indian courts do not admit the common law doctrine of Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, “false in one thing, false in everything”, meaning witnesses who testify falsely about one matter can’t be believed when testifying on any matter.Not that flirting with falsehood is a serious impediment to development. They have always been with us. The epics bestow respectability on legends in which the simple place implicit faith. Our lawyers argue that falsehood is often necessary to establish the truth. Another is the calibre of politicians.The Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh reforms opened the gates to the creation of new wealth.Victorian England bristled with social China Cadillac Medium Grille contrasts and conflicts but it was also the age of scientific inquiry, technological innovation, social experimentation and imperial expansion, with no constraints on thinking and scholarship. Deploring the imposition of British jurisprudence, Penderel Moon of the Indian Civil Service cited instances of witnesses who were for sale and their concocted evidence leading to innocent people being executed.Although it’s fashionable to call India a rich country of poor people, a more accurate description would be a poor country of ultra-rich people.Some hardened criminal-politicians are actually proud of their record. Not only does the economy seem to be stagnating back to the so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, but India’s poor performance is dragging down global progress.

They themselves set down the information regarding murder, attempted murder, crimes against women including rape and kidnapping, culpable homicide, house trespass, robbery and criminal intimidation in their sworn affidavits, even to listing the 204 criminal cases that didn’t prevent a Kerala politician being elected to Parliament.. Others who have been weaned on the myths and legends of the supposedly golden age of Hindu ascendancy to which India is being dragged back innocently believe that the Mahabharat and Ramayan sanction and even glorify cleverness on the shady side. Others argue that litigation is so commonplace as to be meaningless, and cite the old story of the villager who had four annas left in his pocket after visiting the weekly fair and couldn’t think of a better way of spending it than making a police diary against his neighbour. False allegations occasion neither surprise nor shame. Credibility matters. However impeccable the high courts and the Supreme Court might be, India’s lower judiciary must be the worst in the world. The colourful Republic Day floats concealed many of the basic weaknesses of our situation — the infrastructure is worn, foreign investment is shrinking, agricultural production is far from robust, “Make in India” hasn’t taken off, banking is in a mess, unemployment is rising, corruption is rampant. It’s forgotten amidst the excitement of an upsurge of billionaires — 63 tycoons who own more money than the 2018-19 Union Budget of `24,47,200 crores, according to Oxfam’s latest report Time to Care — that for many years Mir Osman Ali Khan, the last ruling Nizam of Hyderabad, was reckoned to be the richest man in the world with an estimated wealth of 230 billion.

Criminal charges hang over the heads of 233 Lok Sabha members — a 44 per cent increase since 2009 — who are not at all coy about their alleged misdemeanours. Being astute practitioners of the art of the possible, politicians have their finger on the public pulse, and know it has been dinned into generations of orthodox Hindus that it was smart to call an elephant after a great warrior and kill it in order to trick and vanquish the warrior’s otherwise invincible father. That interaction is one factor shaping the future. Seven decades is of course only a blip in the countless millennia of Indian nationhood. Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh laid the foundations of the modern state, could be crucial in defining the future. P V Narasimha Rao (Photo: PTI/File) Asked if he prayed for America’s senators, a chaplain to the United States Senate once replied: “No, I look at the senators and pray for the country. Some would say that the candidates had to come clean because they would have been found out otherwise, which might have been worse. The fear here is that our universities and other academic institutions are being brought under official control, with the democratic consensus behind the government faltering as independent thinking yields to empty bombast. It’s also forgotten that Ratan Tata’s forays with Tetley Tea and Jaguar Land Rover are not India’s first ventures in international commerce

Most people think of Siberia as one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth. Most people think of Siberia as one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on earth. It also has accomplished groups of “laughtivists”, activists whose trademark is hilarity, famous political activist Srdja Popovic tells us in his seriously funny book Blueprint for Revolution.These laughtivists were not born so; they were made. And Vladimir Putin’s Russia has a lot to do with it. In 2012, ahead of the presidential election in Russia, the Siberian city of Barnaul was suddenly in the news. Local authorities had said “no” to rallies. But they had not counted on people gathering in the centre of town with their children’s toys — plastic elephants, toy tigers and Lego men carrying banners against Mr Putin’s 12-year rule. Snapshots were taken of the “nanoprotests” to highlight the restrictions faced by many groups.The toy protest was eventually also banned but not before most of Russia and the rest of the world had learnt about it, and laughed heartily.It does not come as a surprise to know that authoritarian regimes all over the world are wary of comedy, especially of its subversive power. But what about free societies Comedy thrives on breaking taboos. How tolerant should we be Can comedy be ever deemed a crime What if it is truly low-grade and tasteless You would not think such questions would dominate the national discourse in India at a time when huge swathes of the country are ravaged by drought, when a jobs drought threatens to knock the shine out of the “fastest growing economy” tag.

That was before last week’s knockout blow by l’affaire Tanmay Bhat. Comedian Bhat’s Snapchat video mocking two of India’s greatest icons, Lata Mangeshkar and Sachin Tendulkar, is now a big story in the traditional and social media.There was a time when one could get away by staring blankly if one was asked “How do you do Face Swap on Snapchat Only millenials were supposed to know such stuff. No longer.Today, there is no getting away from Faceswap or Snapchat. Bhat has ensured that. The over-the-top reactions of some of his critics who want to hang him, whip him, jail him and probably toss him to the lions have kept the story alive.And we find ourselves in this strange situation where a Snapchat video created at 3 am by a bored Bhat is national news. The expletive-laced video, called “Sachin vs Lata Civil War” seeks to enact an imaginary conversation between Tendulkar and Mangeshkar using the face-swap feature, resulting in the two Indian icons vigorously jousting with each other. In the video, the face-swapped Mangeshkar is at the receiving end of lines like “Have you seen your face It looks like someone has kept you in water for, like, eight days.” And “Jon Snow (Game of Thrones) also died, so you should also die.” Tendulkar comes in for some corrosive ribbing about whether Virat Changan Automobile B pillar Body Factory Kohli is better than the Master Blaster. And suchlike.This is clearly about hitting at holy cows. Much of the humour in the video is crude and tasteless. The real comedy, however, is the disproportionate reaction to the video with Mumbai cops seeking legal opinion on how to crack down on comedian Bhat. The cops vs comedian story popped up in the wake of a complaint from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).

The MNS is not the only party who is breathing fire and brimstone. Sanjay Raut of the Shiv Sena has said people like Mr Bhat “should be whipped in public”. And do not single out the saffron groups. The Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar is equally upset. So are many who profess their secularism.The Mumbai police has asked Facebook and YouTube to remove the video. Can a FIR be filed against comedian Bhat Legal opinion is being sought.How does the system which is so slow to respond on so many vital issues act so quickly in the case of a spoof Bhat later said he was just fooling around and that he obviously loved Mangeshkar and Tendulkar but there is no let-up by the angry brigade. Mumbai’s political analysts darkly hint at the shadow of next year’s municipal elections in the city.This is not, of course, the first time that comedy is being bracketed with crime in this country.Earlier this year, Kiku Sharda, another Indian comedian, was jailed for two weeks after he appeared to mimic Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, the motorcycle-riding flamboyant religious guru who leads the Dera Sacha Sauda sect. Sharda was taken into custody for offending the “sentiments” of the Baba.Last year, a group of Muslim youths vandalised the office of a leading Marathi daily because they were angry about a “derogatory” cartoon and an article. Kanpur-based cartoonist Aseem Trivedi shot into fame after he was charged with sedition.

Fortunately the Bombay high court offered relief subsequently by noting that Trivedi’s cartoons did not incite violence and that they only expressed anger with the state machinery.The jury is out on whether this is Indian stand-up comedy’s darkest hour or its most glorious moment. That depends on how you look at it. Bhat is being roasted but he has also become a household word, as has Snapchat. And in recent days, numerous stand-up comedians have been holding forth on television. Bhat is a member of the comedians’ group All India Bakchod (AIB). It would not be incorrect to say that AIB is laughing its way to victory. It has put up another spoof, “Unoffended”, which claims to be a special news report on a horrifying terror group with the motto of never taking undue offense to things.India has a rich heritage of humour but are holy cows still too holy to be hit Twitter, that repository of contemporary wit and wisdom, put it crisply.

Hyderabad-based Shashank tweeted: “It is simple — you don’t like a joke, turn a blind eye to it. Like you do to poverty, patriarchy, child labour, racism and sexism.”That, actually, is the point. Comedy, especially of the parody and satire kinds, provide an unforgiving mirror to society. As a result, they are potent political weapons, used for centuries, though many anglophiles like to trace the origin to 1726, when Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels.If nothing else, that book shows how comedy endures all attempts to stifle it, especially if it is good. Not many people think Tanmay Bhat’s piece was any good. In that case, it will die a natural death. Attacks on the comedian have only given it a longer than natural lease of life.The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com

So far, police have arrested four persons in the case namely Azad Rajhbhar, Pradeep Rajhbhar, Vijay Rajhbhar and Shivkumar Rajhar alias Sadhu.Rajbhar was detained in Varanasi and was brought to Mumbai on Wednesday morning. Also, it will shed light on the involvement of Hema's estranged husband Chintan Upadhyaya, if any, in the murder, police said.A hunt was launched for Vidyadhar soon after detention of Sadhu by the UP Special Task Force in Varanasi on Monday following a request by Mumbai police.According to police, the trio along with two other accused -- Sadhu and Vidyadhar-- had killed the artist and her lawyer.The tempo driver had claimed that he was unaware of the contents inside the boxes.

Except Sadhu, who was detained in Varanasi on Monday, the remaining three were picked up from Kandivali on Sunday.On Wednesday, the trio was remanded to police custody till December 19. These boxes along with other details including call records of Hema led police to a fabrication shop (run by Vidyadhar) near Borivali where the accused were based, a senior police official said."Interrogation of Sadhu--the fourth to be arrested in the case--is likely establish the roles of each of accused in the killings.Sadhu had gone public with the claim that the two were killed under instructions from Vidyadhar. He has been arrested and shall be produced in the court shortly, added Bharti.The boxes were generally used for transporting idols.Bodies of noted installation artist Hema (43) and her lawyer Harish Bhambhani (65) packed in cardboard boxes were found in a drain in Kandivali on Saturday.Vijay Rajbhar was the person who allegedly ferried the cardboxes containing the bodies of the deceased in China low-pressure injection molds Manufacturers a tempo from the warehouse of Vidyadhar in Kandivali (W)..

Based on leads provided by the three during their sustained questioning, teams of Mumbai Police have been dispatched to various locations in and outside Maharashtra to nab Vidyadhar, who used to make the material required by Hema for her work.Hema, a Baroda-born painter, was locked in bitter divorce proceedings with her husband Chintan. Mumbai: Two days after he was detained in the double murder case of artist Hema Upadhyaya and her lawyer, the Mumbai Police on Wednesday formally arrested Shivkumar Rajbhar alias Sadhu even as the prime accused Vidyadhar Rajbhar still remains at large. Bhambhani had represented Hema in this case.The three arrested accused are in the business of manufacturing and selling fibre glass used by Hema and Chintan for their installations. On Tuesday, the trio — Azad, Pradeep and Vijay — were placed under arrest after being booked under IPC sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention). Their bodies were wrapped in plastic and stashed into two separate cardboard boxes before being dumped there.

According to police, the three accused — Azad, Pradeep and Vijay — were tracked down on the basis of manufacturing details and batch number of the cardboard boxes which were used for disposing the bodies of the killed duo.On whether there was any headway in the investigations and whereabouts of Vidyadhar, Bharti said, "Our probe is still on and we have just got a few insights about the crime.She had in 2013 filed a case against him alleging that he painted obscene pictures of women on the walls of their matrimonial home in Mumbai to harass her. We don't have complete details about the way in which the crime was carried out and which of the arrested and wanted accused have played what type of role.Sadhu was brought to Mumbai on Wednesday morning by a team of Mumbai Police which had gone to Varanasi and detained him, JCP (Law and Order) Deven Bharti said. (Photo: PTI) Rajbhar was detained in Varanasi and was brought to Mumbai on Wednesday morning

He, himself, began doing so and has been picking up litter every day since.Their idea Automotive molds Suppliers is simple: anyone who picks up at least one item of trash a day qualifies as a Wastebuster."Now it's become a part of me," she adds, pointing to the plastic bottles, beer cans, empty cigarette cartons and sweet wrappers poking out of the grass..She says they do not stop at one piece of trash a day.Participants post selfies on a social network each time they pick up a piece of litter and put it in the rubbish bin."When people see us picking up trash, they never join in."You can do it on your way home, on the way to the cinema or while waiting for the bus. It's people's mentalities that should change.Slovak financial analyst Rastislav Krul launched the campaign from his hometown Rovinka The Slovakian couple get up and about any time they see people littering the the area they move through.

No instant results but he is optimistic about change down the line.Boss on boardTheir crusade began two years ago, when Rastislav was living in the capital Bratislava and overheard his neighbours complain about litter on the block."When we go for a walk, bike ride or hike, we usually take some gloves and bags with us."No one joined in."Before I met Rasto, I thought garbage on the ground didn't concern me."One person's a litterer, another's a cleaner."Last month, the Slovak Wastebusters launched a website to further spread the word. He's shown me that it doesn't take any extraordinary effort to pick up trash," she says.Their main piece of advice, however, is one that may sound like a no-brainer but makes a world of difference: all it takes is one piece of garbage a day."For us time flew by, for them it went slowly," he adds, picking up yet another plastic bottle on a weekend stroll around a lake. You drop litter, I pick it up. (Photo: AFP) Rovinka (Slovakia): Slovak financial analyst Rastislav Krul and his wife once waited out an hour-long traffic jam by picking up several bags worth of rubbish around a rest area off the motorway.

"I realised that if fewer people complained and instead each picked up one piece of garbage off the ground and binned it, our city would not be as polluted," he tells AFP.How much of it ends up thrown out on to the streets is hard to say, but the couple feel they still have plenty to do and say the Wastebusters project is a good option for those who hate organised cleaning. Since last year, they have been spreading their philosophy online."In the same vein, the 1 Piece of Rubbish campaign, launched by British expatriate Eddie Platt in the southern French city of Marseille has won cyber fans around the world from Buenos Aires to New York. Then if we see something we can just stop, pick it up and walk on." Anywhere, anytime Slovakians rank among the least worst offenders for piling up rubbish in the European Union, according to Eurostat figures, which showed each of the country's 5. Instead, I brought a glass water bottle that I fill up and use," says Rastislav."Rastislav has even managed to win over his boss: "When he's out with his kids, they sometimes pick up trash."Laws and fines don't solve anything."I took the first step by no longer buying bottled water for work.

Their Facebook page now has thousands of followers, who post stories and photos of cleaning up the streets and countryside."They don't have to plan anything or specifically go somewhere to pick up trash," he says.Rastislav says setting an example is like a long-distance run. People just watched us from their cars," recalls the 30-year-old, who has launched an anti-litter campaign from his western village of Rovinka.4 million inhabitants produced about 321 kilos of household rubbish in 2014. He also encouraged his wife, Veronika, 30, to join in."Maybe it'll stop them from tossing their next beer can or bubble gum wrapper. But I think it does make them start to reflect on what we're doing," he says. Most of the comments are positive. They also plan to provide tips and tricks on how to reduce waste