They are a lot kinder than the bloodsuckers:
"Lawmakers’ bid to boost pay creates a firestorm in India" by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post | July 4, 2010
NEW DELHI — Politicians have an image problem in the world’s largest democracy. They are blamed for everything — airline crashes, poverty, terrorism, hunger, cricket scandals. They are lampooned in movies, stand-up comedies, and street plays. In opinion polls, they often rank lowest as youth icons and highest as those viewed as most corrupt.
Yeah, the POOR POLITICIANS, huh?
Many Indians cling to the image of a frugal and bare-chested Mahatma Gandhi as the epitome of a politician, even as the burgeoning middle class experiences new wealth and conspicuous consumption.
SINCE WHEN?
So when a committee of federal lawmakers submitted a proposal recently seeking a fivefold pay increase, people were shocked....
Not me.
Related:
"Hunger is widespread in India. It is said that at least 50 million Indians are on the brink of starvation and over 200 million Indians are underfed"
And here the politicos are giving themselves raises.
“We cannot forever be stuck in Gandhi’s image from the freedom movement. In comparison, people think we are all corrupt crooks looting the nation,’’ said Sanjay Nirupam, a Congress Party lawmaker from Mumbai, who wrote an op-ed in the Indian Express newspaper arguing for a raise.
Which would go into HIS POCKET, right?
And SINCE WHEN has INDIA been stuck in Gandhi's image?
That DIED right about the TIME HE DID!
Nirupam calls himself a “professional politician,’’ a near-blasphemous term in India.
Yeah, we have the same slime here.
“My expenses are enormous. About 200 people come to see me every day. I have to offer them all at least a cup of tea, or they will abuse me and call me a miserly politician,’’ Nirupam said. “Most of Mumbai’s politicians own beer bars to supplement their incomes.’’
But in a country where about 300 million people earn less than $1 a day, the thought of a politician enjoying a meal in a five-star hotel or traveling in luxury cars still rankles the masses.
As it should! It's THEIR TAX MONEY!
“Our members of Parliament already enjoy VVIP status in India. They don’t serve us, they lord over us. They do no work, and most are already so corrupt that they do not deserve a salary hike,’’ said C.P. Rai, 71, a New Delhi resident who in the past three years has filed three queries about legislators’ salaries under the Right to Information law.
“All Pay, No Work,’’ an editorial in the Times of India said about the proposed raise. Lawmakers’ take-home pay might be low, the newspaper said, but the perks they enjoy — like free housing, health care, power, water, and air travel — add up to almost $88,372 annually.
And the GREEDY BASTARDS want MORE?
Yeah, Gandhi would be rolling over in his grave if he had not been cremated.
Since May, lawmakers have also been exempt from paying tolls on national highways....
Any other perks?
“Politics is a high-stakes game in India. Each candidate spends millions in the election campaign. Where does all this money come from? If they already have all this money, why do they need more?’’ asked Trilochan Sastry, founder of the watchdog group....
While POOR INDIANS SUFFER and STARVE!
Some say that low salaries force lawmakers to depend on business interests and lobbyists to sustain their lifestyles....
Then STEP ASIDE and LET SOMEONE ELSE do the JOB!
But not all members of Parliament want more money.
Lawmakers from Communist parties, many of whom live in modest apartments and often carpool to work, told the prime minister that they do not want a big raise....
That's why they are on the comeback trail !
Related: The Boston Globe's April Bookends From India
Yeah, the MAOISTS are the REAL THREAT, not the set-up patsy Muslims!
Who votes against their own raise?
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(Sucking sound)
"$3 billion terminal at airport unveiled
NEW DELHI — Officials unveiled a multibillion-dollar airport terminal in the Indian capital yesterday, a steel-and-glass structure intended to show that the country’s infrastructure is finally catching up with its rapid economic growth. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dedicated the ultramodern, $3 billion terminal at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. Terminal 3, or T3, was built in 37 months and will open for international passengers on July 14. Domestic passengers will shift to the new terminal on July 30 (AP)."
Yeah, forget those starving people.
But they are not forgetting you....
"Strike over hike in fuel prices cripples transportation, business across India" by ASSOCIATED PRESS | July 6, 2010
NEW DELHI — Transportation ground to a halt and businesses were closed in many parts of India yesterday as the main opposition parties led a strike to protest a government-imposed rise in fuel prices....
Now THAT is something Gandhi would APPROVE!
Train and air services were affected in Mumbai, India’s financial and entertainment capital, where taxis were forced off the roads by street protesters belonging to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena.
They killed Gandhi!
The opposition called the daylong protest after the federal government did not roll back the 6.7 percent rise in fuel prices announced 10 days ago.
So the government vampires also SUCK OIL!
The fuel price rise came as the government struggled to stem losses at state-run oil companies and tame the fiscal deficit while facing double-digit inflation.
There was no major violence reported in the country during the strike, although minor scuffles erupted between demonstrators and police.
Protesters also clashed with police in Lucknow in northern Uttar Pradesh, where authorities detained two Hindu nationalist leaders, Arun Jaitley and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, said Surendra Srivastava, a police spokesman.
Thousands of people were stranded for hours as protesters stopped trains in West Bengal, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh states by blocking the railroad tracks.
Worst-hit were the states governed by communist groups and the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is seen as generally pro-market....
Top BJP and communist leaders led hundreds of their supporters in street protests in the Indian capital.
“We will continue our protest until the government takes back its decision,’’ said D. Raja, a leader of the Communist Party of India.
That is the KEY, America!
You need to STAY PUT when you protest until GOVERNMENT GIVES YOU WHAT YOU WANT!
Otherwise, they just wait you out and nothing changes!
The government dismissed the strike as opposition posturing.
Do you know what has happened to governments who do not listen to their people throughout history, readers?
“Is this strike a constructive solution to the problem? Does it help poor people in any way?’’ Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a spokesman for the ruling Congress party said at a news conference in New Delhi.
Does GIVING YOURSELF a RAISE, s***ter?
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And now some REAL BLOOD DRAWN!
"3 killed as Indian troops clash with protesters in Kashmir" by Associated Press | July 7, 2010
Muslims threw stones at police after a funeral procession in Srinagar, where protests against Indian rule have intensified. (Mukhtar Khan/Associated Press)
They are THROWING ROCKS?
WTF is this, Gaza?
SRINAGAR, India — Government forces fired on hundreds of rock-throwing protesters in Indian Kashmir yesterday, killing two young men as authorities reimposed a curfew in the region’s main city, locals and officials said. A woman was also killed, possibly by a stray bullet, in the clashes.
Protests against Indian rule in the Himalayan region have intensified in recent weeks with Kashmiri people accusing government forces of killing at least 15 people during street demonstrations. The recent unrest had prompted authorities to impose a curfew in most parts of Kashmir for a week.
And this is the first I'm reading of it, Globe?
You guys really do hate Muslims, don't you?
I can only imagine the reaction were it Iran that mowed down protesters.
It was lifted yesterday except for in one southern town until the latest clashes in the main city of Srinagar prompted authorities to enforce it there again.
Kashmir is divided between Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan and is claimed by both. Separatist politicians and armed militants in Kashmir reject Indian sovereignty and want to carve out a separate homeland or merge the predominantly Muslim region into Pakistan.
I am ALWAYS for LOCAL CONTROL!!!
It's called FREEDOM, didn't you know that?
The latest protests broke out over accusations that government forces killed a teenager Monday.
Police contend that Muzaffar Bhat, 17, died after he slipped into a stream by accident.
Yes, POLICE seem to LIE EVERYWHERE, don't they?
Resident Abdul Gani said Bhat was playing cricket when Indian paramilitary soldiers beat him with sticks and threw him into the stream.
Government forces initially used tear gas to try to disperse the rock-throwing protesters, a police officer said on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. When that failed, paramilitary soldiers fired on the demonstrators, he said.
Fayaz Ahmed Wani, a 35-year-old protester, was killed on the spot, and two others were wounded, the officer said.
As the news of Wani’s killing spread, separatist activists in Srinagar used the public address systems of mosques to ask people to join the protest.
Oh, THAT is why mosques are SO CONTENTIOUS in Amerika and Western European nations!!
They can AWAKEN the PEOPLE!!!!
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I do, sob!
FLASHBACKS:
"Report says bodies of 2,600 found in Kashmir" by Aijaz Hussain, Associated Press | December 3, 2009
SRINAGAR, India - Nearly 2,600 bodies have been discovered in single unmarked and mass graves throughout mountainous Indian Kashmir, human rights activists said yesterday, alleging some of the dead were civilians killed by security forces.
More than a dozen Kashmiri rebel groups have been fighting for independence from India or a union with predominantly Muslim Pakistan since 1989. Rights groups say there have been more than 8,000 disappearances since the rebellion began. Researchers from the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, an Indian Kashmir-based rights group, said they found the graves in 55 villages during a three-year survey that concluded last month.
So WHEN are the WAR CRIMES TRIALS, U.N.?!!
I guess there will not be any.
In a report titled “Buried Evidence’’ released yesterday, the group documented 2,373 “unmarked and mass graves’’ containing nearly 2,600 bodies. It said 177 of the graves contained more than one body. “We’re not saying who is in each grave. But we’re saying these are unnamed graves and its imperative to investigate the issue by an independent international body,’’ said Angna Chatterji, one of the group’s members.
I wouldn't hold your water waiting for one, readers.
The report also said it found evidence of 47 civilians being killed by security forces, who later contended they were militants.
Yeah, ALL GOVERNMENTS seem to say that!
I mean, everyone AmeriKa kills is a militant?
Human rights workers have complained for years that innocent people have disappeared and been killed by government forces in staged gun battles.
STAGED gun battles?
What IS NOT STAGED in this world?
ANYTHING?!!!!!
About 68,000 people have died in the 20-year conflict.
HOLY CRAP!!!!
That is a LOT of PEOPLE!!!!!!!
Ali Mohammed Sagar, Indian-Kashmir’s law and parliamentary affairs minister, said yesterday the government would respond to the report after reading it.
Haven't heard back yet.
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"It is now the focal point for seemingly bottomless Kashmiri rage at the continuing presence of the roughly 500,000-strong Indian security force here.... a full-scale occupation..... They remain even though violence.... has fallen to its lowest point in two decades....
rapes by soldiers, extrajudicial killings, and a lack of redress are endemic, not least because security forces are largely shielded from prosecution by laws put in place when Indian troops were battling a once-potent insurgency here."
"2 brutalized bodies, 1 coverup, limitless rage; Murders stoke Kashmiri anger at Indian forces" by Lydia Polgreen, New York Times | August 16, 2009
A sister of murder victim Nilofa Jan tended to Jan’s 2-year-old son, Suzain, in Kashmir, India. (Candace Feit/ The New York Times)
SHOPIAN, India - On a sunny late spring afternoon, Asiya and Nilofa Jan left home to tend to their family’s apple orchard. They passed police camps wreathed in razor wire as they crossed the bridge over the ankle-deep Rambi River.
Little more than 12 hours later their battered bodies were found in the stream. Asiya, a 17-year-old high school student, had been badly beaten. Blood streamed from her nose and from a sharp gash in her forehead. She and her 22-year-old sister-in-law, Nilofa, had been gang raped before their deaths. The crimes and allegations of a bungled attempt by the local police to cover them up set off months of sporadic street protests.
Gee, this is TRULY the FIRST I'M HEARING OF IT in the Boston Globe -- and the LAST!!!
It is now the focal point for seemingly bottomless Kashmiri rage at the continuing presence of the roughly 500,000-strong Indian security force here. They remain even though violence by their target - separatist militants allegedly supported by Pakistan - has fallen to its lowest point in two decades.
“India says Kashmir is a free part of a free country,’’ said Majid Khan, a 20-year-old unemployed man who has joined the stone-throwing mobs. “If that is so, why are we being brutalized? Why are women gang raped?’’
I think the answer is to be found in that blue highlight above.
Or below....
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and the Himalayan border region remains at the heart of the 62-year rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbors. With a very different approach to each.
Some might think it is hypocrisy and a double standard, but that's not the gist of this post.
Settling the Kashmir dispute is the key to unlocking the region’s tensions, something the United States hopes will eliminate Pakistan’s shadowy support for militant groups and allow its army to shift attention toward fighting Taliban militants.
You of course SEE WHO is in the FRAME JOB, right, world?
USRAELI and INDIAN COVERT ACTIONS must be HIDDEN to the AMURKN NEWSPAPER READER!
Despite Kashmiri rage and the damage to India’s image, the Indian government has bridled at any outside pressure to negotiate a solution, let alone reduce its forces here. Caught in the middle are Kashmir’s 10 million people.
And THAT is who I CARE ABOUT!!! SELF-DETERMINATION! AUTONOMY!
Whatever THEY WANT!
They want INDIAN TROOPS to LEAVE?
Then BYE-BYE!!!!!!!
The case of Asiya and Nilofa Jan is only the latest abuse to strike a chord with Kashmiris, who say it is emblematic of the problems of what amounts to a full-scale occupation. Kashmir has its own police force, but it works closely with the Indian forces and is seen by many as virtually indistinguishable from them. Four Kashmiri officers are suspected of covering up the crime.
Kashmiri activists and human rights groups say that rapes by soldiers, extrajudicial killings, and a lack of redress are endemic, not least because security forces are largely shielded from prosecution by laws put in place when Indian troops were battling a once-potent insurgency here.
Last summer, a dispute over land for Hindu pilgrims between Kashmiris, who are mostly Muslims, and the region’s Hindu administrators set off weeks of massive demonstrations.
Oh, it is CLEAR! GET OUT of KASHMIR, India!!!!!!!
The question for India today, Kashmiris say, is whether the huge security presence is doing more harm than good.
“Maybe at some point in time, when the militants were in the thousands, it made sense to have so many soldiers here,’’ said Mehbooba Mufti, leader of a major opposition party here. “But at this point they are not helping in any way. Their mere presence has become a source of friction.’’
Then ABOUT FACE and HARCH!!!!!!!!
Indian government officials disagree and point to statistics showing a decline in infiltration from Pakistan as proof that their tough methods have worked.
According to the government, 557 civilians died in 2005 in what the government calls terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir. By 2008 that number had fallen to 91. The number of militants killed has fallen by nearly two thirds, while the deaths of security personnel in the region have been more than halved.
Where tens of thousands of armed men once roamed, government officials now estimate there are as few as 500. Analysts say that other events have also played a role in reducing militancy and infiltration.
Like CALLING OFF the FALSE-FLAG DOGS for now, 'eh?
After two decades of militant separatism, in December voters ignored separatist calls for a boycott and cast ballots in huge numbers in state Assembly elections. It was a sign that Kashmiris believed they could influence their destiny by peaceful means.
Despite the JUSTIFIED RAGE, 'eh, j**smedia?
The election brought Omar Abdullah, the scion of Kashmir’s most famous political family, to power as chief minister of the state. He promised to roll back the laws that shielded Indian security forces in Kashmir from oversight and to put Kashmir’s police force, rather than federal police and troops, at the forefront of securing the region.
But that has not happened, and the details of the Shopian killings and the initial coverup have fed the darkest and most personal fears of Kashmiris.
“Who does not see their wife in Nilofa, their daughter in Asiya?’’ said Abdul Rashid Dalal, who lives in Shopian. Other residents say the troops themselves are the only threat.
“The only thing I can do now is hope justice will be done,’’ said Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger, who is struggling to care for his 2-year-old son, Suzain after the slaying of his wife, Nilofa.
“Nobody is safe in Kashmir, even a child, an elderly man, a young girl,’’ Ahanger said. “Nobody is safe.’’
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Yeah, WHY is INDIA EVEN THERE ANYMORE?
More bloodsuckers on the way!
"India gains bigger role in drug production; Cost pressures, new laws add to country’s appeal" by Heather Timmons, New York Times | July 7, 2010
HALOL, India — India’s drug industry — on track to grow about 13 percent this year, to just over $24 billion — was once notorious for making cheap knockoffs of Western medicines and selling them in developing countries. But India, seasoned in the basics of making medicine, is now starting to take on a more mainstream role in the global drug industry, as a result of recent strengthening of patent law here and cost pressures on name-brand drug makers in the West.
And while the Indian industry has had quality control problems, it nonetheless benefits from growing wariness about the reliability of ingredients from that other historically low-cost drug provider — China. The United States is India’s top export customer for drugs.
India is becoming a “base for manufacturing for the global market,’’ said Ajay G. Piramal, the chairman of Piramal Healthcare, a drug maker based in Mumbai. Eventually, in Piramal’s perhaps overly optimistic forecast, only the very first and very last steps of the business — molecular drug discovery and marketing — will be run by the West’s global drug giants.
Analysts, research groups, and consultants have been making similar predictions.
Big Pharma has come calling, too, in a string of takeovers and joint ventures here.
Related(?):
"The company said it would eliminate roughly 16,000 jobs."
I guess they won't be moving to India.
The shift to pharmaceuticals is part of a subtle, broader shift in the Indian economy. Moving beyond less sophisticated, outsourced services like telephone call centers, India has been advancing up the business value chain, particularly in law and medical diagnostics.
Maybe THOSE JOBS will RETURN to America!!
Now it is showing a flair for manufacturing, too, particularly when it comes to goods demanding high-skill production and super low prices.
Oh, so we TRADE MANUFACTURING for PHONE CALLS, huh?
The next opportunities for India could come at the more sophisticated end of the drug-making spectrum, including research and development for the world’s drug giants and even development of proprietary medicines.
For all the potential, though, India’s drug industry has a long way to go to fulfill its promise.
Then why did the NYT spend the first two-thirds of the article telling you how great this is?
Recent growth has been shadowed by quality problems. Intellectual property is also an open question. Trying to change its outlaw image as a maker of illegal knockoffs....
Dozens of intellectual property suits are still being fought between Indian and foreign firms in courts around the world. And big pharmaceutical companies still find securing protection of their intellectual property in India difficult. Meanwhile, outright counterfeit drug making remains rampant in India, executives and analysts here say.
The FDA, in response to India’s growing influence, has opened two offices in this country.
WTF, Americans?
I don't want your poison pills.
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For more on the Globe's coverage of all things India go HERE
