January 27, 2004
 

Politics

Jim Hoagland wrote a few days back in the Washington Post about how romantic it'd be if Vajpayee and Musharraf were given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Frankly, I think this really is jumping the gun. All it takes is for one explosion either in India or in Pakistan for the whole relationship to plummet yet again. In fact if they had any sense they'd decline the peace prize. Yitzhak Rabin and Anwar al-Sadat haven't exactly had long lives after they received the peace prize for their efforts at bringing peace to Israel and Egypt respectively.

The BJP has been exhorting the CMs of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Bihar to have early Assembly elections coinciding with the general election, so that public money would be saved. Clear hypocricy. Valuable public money could have been saved by not dissolving the Lok Sabha nearly 6 months in advance. If every government only lasted 4.5 years instead of 5, then over a span of 45 years we'd have gone to the polls 10 times rather than just 9. Besides if the BJP (or NDA) is in favour of simultaneous polls, why not go through the entire 5 year term and have elections coinciding with the Assembly elections for those 3 states in November? Why wasn't the LS dissolved in November last year to coincide with the Assembly polls of a few states?

Pramod Mahajan is at it again. Now he says neither Priyanka nor Rahul Gandhi should be allowed to become Prime Minister because they dont satisfy the newly created rule that both parents need to be of Indian origin. Given that Advani's antecedents were in Pakistan, does that rule him out? Perhaps MGR should never have been Tamil Nadu's CM given that he was born to a Malayali father in Sri Lanka. Try forming an alliance with 'Amma' now, Mr. Mahajan.

Just as we go to press, I notice that the AIADMK no longer owns the aiadmk.org domain. Instead it is now owned by some unofficial Kerala police site. Hmm ... the mallu connection, eh?

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Cricket

In an interesting move, the Zimbabwe Cricket Union has directly written to English counties about the possible ramifications of the ECB cancelling the tour to Zimbabwe.

Where do I stand on the issue? I think England (or other countries) are justified in cancelling tours based on security issues. Moral issues are untangible. Security is not. However England are completely unjustified in promising Zimbabwe a tour to ensure that the Zimbabwe cricket team would fill the ECB's coffers earlier last year and now backing out. The ECB deserves any punishment/penalty that is imposed on them. I hope the ECB forfeits the right to host the ICC Champions Trophy, to be held in England, in a few months, which would really deny them millions of sponsorship and advertising revenue.

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Technology

Well not entirely technical, except that WH Gates III has been given a honorary knighthood for "his outstanding contribution to enterprise, employment, education and the voluntary sector in the United Kingdom." as well as "significant contributions to poverty reduction in parts of the Commonwealth and elsewhere in the developing world."

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General

Germaine Greer, a noted feminist author, on why she felt that the average Australian couldn't be bothered about important matters of life or philosophy.

Rambled @ 12:23 PM

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