Politics

Background Rohtak is a small district 50 miles (80 km) west of the Indian capital of New Delhi. The city is also known as the Jat heartland for its dominant Jat population. The second biggest community in the district is [Hindu] Punjabis who migrated to Haryana after the Islamic state of Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947. The Punjabis are primarily businessmen and live in the urban areas. They, notably, run the largest wholesale cloth market of Asia known as Shori market. The Jats primarily constitute the agrarian society and dominate the public institutions. The traumatic memories of 1947 have kept Punjabis suspicious of Indian National Congress (“Congress”) and hence, their love for nationalist BJP is well known. The Congress is the Grand Old Party of India and hence, is deeply entrenched in the Jat social institutional bodies, namely, the Khap Panchayats and educational institutions. The Jats’ love for the nation and hence, joining the Indian army is well-known. The nationalist spirit is implicit in the culture of the city district. So much so that while Congress leaders outside Haryana support anti-India rallies while the Congress leaders in Haryana fight court battles for the right to display Indian flags. ...

The book presents a generalists view of post-independent India. Unlike India Unbound, this book focuses primarily on post-independent India and takes a more pragmatic approach towards understanding the problems of contemporary India. The best parts of the book are the interesting contradictions that the nation went through - love/hate relationship with the English language, fear of technology, and neglected urban development. Overall, the book is divided into four sets of ideas, that have arrived, that are in progress, that are still being debated, and finally, that have yet to become part of public debate. I have highlighted the best sections of the book in bold.

Indian Govt. has asked RIM (maker of the BlackBerry smartphone) to provide access to the data going through its servers for intelligence purposes and it appears that BlackBerry has accepted the demands. Due to the lack of understanding of encryption on the part of Indian media, misleading and ambiguous reports have been published on the same. This blog post is an effort to clarify the same.