India is a democracy, infact we are the biggest democracy in this world and we takes proud in the fact. I learnt in my civics lesson in my school that democracy empowers us with many fundamental rights one of which is “Right to freedom of speech”. Many a times the powerful people in our country try to silence the voice of media,print or visual and they all come all guns blazing crying foul. They bear the responsibility of keeping the citizens informed, keeping the wrong doers on their toes and to strenthen the people thereby. They do it with their right to freedom of speech. But the very instituion that relies on freedom of speech to criticize even the most influential people in the country cant stand the same right to be used against them.

This is exactly what happened in the case of ckunte and NDTV+ Barkha Dutt.

Mumbai terror strike on 26 Nov last year saw many bloggers around the globe joining along with those who were saddened and affected by the tragedy in criticizing the terrorists. The world took a renewed oath to wipe terror from its root. Attack also witnessed a huge social media participation and people were saying there were more lively pictures portrayed by twitter than the television media itself. So frequent were the tweets on twitter that the Indian goverment asked twitter to stop #mumbai tweets as they feared that the updates were assisting the terrorists. Update: As Patrix mentioned said,it turns out that it was just a rumour.
Apart from this, many blogger expressed their anger over irresponsible and insensitive journalism by many reporters. They felt that the information the journalists were giving out (regarding the positions of the security personnel) was helping the terrorists. Also they were appalled by the reporters sticking their mics in front of those who were affected, or to someone who just lost a dear one in the attack.

Chyetanya Kunte was a little known blogger who also happened to dislike the media coverage and expressed his anger over at his blog like many others did. He criticized NDTV and Ms. Barkha Dutt for revealing the deatails of the locations of the victims hiding in the hotels. He also alleged the reporters could also have ben responsible fo death of security personnel. Even though he is an Indian living in Holland, he had every right to raise his voice and express his views, whatever they were.
But Ms. Dutt and NDTV just could not take it,the criticism which is vital for improvement of every person on this planet. (more…)

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The shameful incident of 40 odd self acclaimed “protectors of Indian culture” attacking girls partying in a club in Mangalore has been drawing severe criticism from all parts of the country and from all intelligent and humane sections of the society.

The incident happened on January 24 2009 when 40 activists of  “Sri Ram Sena” (SRS), a hindu group attacked girls who were just having some quality time with their friends. They were brutally beaten and harrased at the hands of SRS goons. They were slapped,pushed,made to hear derogatory remarks about their conduct. So much hooliganism in the name of religion and culture.

We today claim to be a super power, we talk about giving reservations to women, giving them their rights, but the truth is that from inside we just dont respect our women. We still see (or a large section) them as someone who has to sit at home keeping our houses,feeding our children and bearing our non sense all the time. We treat them not as humans but as animals,or even as objects. These people are talking about culture? How civilised do they think when they lay their hands on a female. Do they think you are “men”? They are cowards. A man will never physically harass a women. I saw the pictures of the assualt and they were extremely terrifying and I could not post them here on my blog post.I find it hard to believe how can someone actually treat women like that.

I was watching the interview of one of the victim on news channel. She said that they were molested,harassed,their skirts were pulled down,were even called prostitutes (WTF!!!) and other derogatory remarks. Another victim described the whole incident as a traumatic expirience.

Which religion/culture teaches us to dis-respect women? Its just in the mentality of Indian men that we cant accept women working shoulder to shoulder with us. We may be in 21st century but our thinking is not in sync with the current times.

This is not just an isolated incident. These hindu groups and so called “keepers of the Indian culture” have been practising these kind of attacks for a long tme now. Couples have been repeatedly targeted,harassed, beaten since years, specially on Valentines Day. You can bet this will happen this time too. I am really sick of these groups;VHP,SRS,Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena etc.

These kind of incidents makes women believe they are not safe among us,that they can not walk freely even in daylight,they are not free to move anywhere they want or do anything they want. I read many news papers and activists have rightly called this “Talibanisation of India“. (more…)

Mumbai is getting back to normal after the unprecedented terror strike that lasted 60 hours. Mumbai found itself in mayhem when about 20 odd terrorists armed with heavy weopons like AK-47 rifles, hand grenedes attacked Mumbai on Wednesday, 26 November 2008.

The gunmen attacked 10 places like Chhatrapati Shivaji Bus Terminal (CST), a famous cafe (leopold cafe), railway stations, tourist spots, two 5 star hotels, cinema hall,hospital. Around 180 innocent people (including  foreigners) lost their lives and 370 were injured. ATS (Anti Terrorist Squad) chief, Mr. hemant Karkare was also shot dead.

The attack is unique in every sense. The world had never witnessed anything like this before.  Surely, this was the biggest, and most co-ordinated terror attack on India. Gunmen opening fire on civillians, policemen, and then holding hostages at three places, where the fight to thrash them lasted for more than two days. Terrorists also asked for people with British and American passports,another first of its kind.

According to initial reports, terrorists are thought to have come via a small boat to Mumbai’s coast, and then they dispersed in teams to their pre-decided destinations to create havoc.An previously unknown group, Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility behind the attacks. Speculations are also on regarding possible Pakistan link of the terrorists, though Pakistan has strongly denied any involvement. Though initial investigations point towards LeT (Lashkar-E-Taiba)

Terrorists held hostages at three places, including two luxuru 5 start hotels viz “Taj Mahal Hotel” and “Oberoi- Trident Hotel” and at Nariman House,a Jewish population dominated area. NSG, Army, Navy, marine commandos (MarCos) were deployed in addition to the local police to bring down the hostages who were holding hostages. This very difficult task took 60 hours mainly becuase of these reasons: (more…)

In the past few days, India’s lunar mission has accomplished many historic milestones. Like placing Indian tri color on the lunar surface by MIP (Moon Impactor Probe) on 14th November,it has also started sending pictures,its various scientific instruments are being sucessfully turned on, one after other.

It now has a operational TMC (Terrain Mapping Camera) and LLRI (Lunar LASER Ranging Instrument).

Here are the pics which Chandrayaan-I took recently: (more…)

Chandryaan-I, India’s first unmanned moon probe has successfully entered moon’s orbit today. Chandrayaan-I, which was launched on 22 November 2008 has completed one of the most difficult steps called “Lunar Orbit Insertion” or LOI to enter the moon’s gravitational field. LOI started at around 1700 HRS (IST). Earlier, the spacecraft completed five orbit raising manouevres to raise the apogee (farthest point of the orbit) to about 3,80,000 kms.

“The liquid apogee motor on board the spacecraft was fired for about 805 seconds to put Chandrayaan-1 into an elliptical orbit with 7,500 km aposelene (farthest from moon) and 500 km pericelene (nearest to moon),” ISRO director S. Satish told IANS.

This step is very critical in any mission. Nearly 30% of US and USSR’s mission have failed at this very step i.e. LOI, and ISRO has achieved this without any glitch. With that India’s first lunar mission has also been declared successful.

The probe which is travelling around moon at an height of 500 kms will have its orbit gradually lowered to 100 kms in the coming 2-4 days and then ISRO will attempt to send the “impactor probe” to the moon to place Indian flag on its surface.