THE SOCIAL BLOG

My good friend Rahul Narayanan wrote on his Gtalk tagline;

We do not protect our civil liberties by sacrificing them

I asked him whether he wrote this in a particular context and he asked me to google ‘David Davis’. I found out that David Davis is a former British MP who resigned after the new legislation to extend the detention of suspects without charge from 28 to 42 days was passed by a narrow vote.

In a little reading that I’ve done on the issue, I’ve started liking David Davis. If there is no political motive behind this, then I gotta say that this man has some character.

Ally Fogg from the Guardian has written an interesting piece on this issue. Readers may read it here.

Both the teams left towards Konta camp at around eight in the monrning. Now the road to Konta is one where the maximum camps are located in the area. In fact, a few months ago in Errabol camp a mass killing of 25 people including women and children had occurred at point blank range.
At Injram camp, the two teams split ways and I was on my way to Andhra Pradesh to meet some of the 13,000 odd Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who fled the Salwa Judum. Out of horror and shock I dont want to recount most of the stories I documented but Sanchita documented one of this young woman who was literally beaten and sexually abused with her hair being pulled and I can’t even imagine what not (Sanchita can give a better picture of it).
I documented the testimonies of people from Naindar village; a village that had been burnt and built twice and to my knowledge most of the men had been killed and daughters reported missing. In one instance, the forces from Chattisgarh crossed the state border to Andhra Pradesh to hunt down and kill three people allegedly suspected to be naxalites.

On our way back we were stopped by 14-15 year old children carrying .303’s and AK-56s. When you ask them their age they tell you that they’re 30 years old and that they’re appointed by the police at Special Police Officers (SPOs). That is when you smile at their plight and at the same time wonder what has happened to the political and legal structure and its working mechanism in this country. Nobody gives a damn about the constitution or numerous SC judgments of Bhagwati or so out here and they just want to live. The worst is, we fail to provide them even that sense of security.

We returned at night while it was raining heavily to find that around 60-70 victims and families had come over to the ashram to depose before the National Human Rights Commission the next day. One the fun part, I joined Sridevi and Sanchita to get wet in the rain and got myself involved in a mud fight. Certain subtle child like pleasures of me I would say.

The Social Blog now features in the list of the Top 100 civil liberties blogs. conducted by the Criminal Justice Degrees Guide.

For my readers, Thank you. This is a welcome incentive to blog more regularly.

Somebody should feed George Bush a morsel of plain rice with red chilli powder. This should act as a substitute for his ordinary diet of beef, pork, potato chips, beacon, bread and numerous sauces. He should know that 200 million people in India still have that as their staple food and 200 million more are forced to remain hungry. He dare accuse us of eating a lot of calories while he sits in the Oval Office, away from the reality in the average Indian household.

TOI reported;

An average American consumes 1012 Kg of food in a year.

An Average Indian; merely 172 Kg in a year.

More than a third of the world’s poor live in India and 40% of our population lives below the internationally recognised poverty benchmark of 1$ a day. If we are eating a little more food on an average, then more than the growing middle class and their tastes; its to stop the starvation deaths, farmer suicides and people from going hungry everyday.

I was reading Gurcharan Das’s India unbound where he wrote that the poor seem to be at the forefront of every economic policy, election manifesto in India; but they just don’t seem to be coming up and being uplifted. Other than on paper, the poor in our country just don’t seem to matter; neither to the Indian bureaucrats or George W Bush.  We all live such shallow, superficial lives that we seem to ignore the existence of those few who should matter. And there are times when we must care.

If the above picture is the cause of inflation and the world food shortage, then its good. Because in India, below is how most of the people generally live;

So I think George Bush should retract his statement and P Chidambaram shouldn’t Tact worse and attribute it to the use of bio-fuels. There is a limit to stupidity and both of them are crossing it.

Self : I think I’m losing my sanity in this place. This place is getting on my nerves.

Manav : Ah well ! I had a fleeting glimpse of sanity three years ago. We waved at each other and parted ways…

………………..

This is what law school does to you.

PS: The Supreme Court is out with its judgment on the reservations case.

It may be downloaded here. I advise my readers to look at Blogbharti for some interesting posts on the subject.