Natwar Singh is minister without portfolio. Manmohan Singh holds External Affairs Portfolio. Previously too there were ministers without portfolios at certain times. Mamata Banerjee was minister without portfolio for some time. Dinesh Singh and Jaffer Sharief were ministers without portfolios when they did not resign. At the time of Nehru there were some ministers without…
Extradition conditions
Abu Salem is in India extradited by Portugal on conditions that he would not be given death penalty and imprisonment would not be more than 25 years. TADA court judge told CBI that there could not be conditional appearance before court. It is the government of India that gave the undertaking accepting the conditions. India…
Holidays
India is a country of people belonging to many religions. All the major religions have their religious holidays. Sometimes these holidays come together and combined with Saturdays and Sundays they stretch to three or more days. India should have only two public holidays Republic Day and Independence Day. Government employees have too many holidays. Those…
Brain and heart
Contemporary medical science believes brain is the seat of the person. A person who is brain dead is declared dead and other living organs are transplanted. Many times people who had heart transplantations had change of personality. They even remember some things which happened to brain dead person. This raises question about declaring a person…
Rape
National Council for Women (NCW) has recommended the replace the word “rape” with sexual assault in various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC). Women activists said the word “rape” was derogatory to women. Two of their recommendations are as follows: 1) The definition of rape should be widened and not be restricted to vaginal penetration….
Death penalty II
Wrong is wrong even if said by a Chief Justice. Justice Brennan of Supreme Court of USA was wrong when in 1981 he said “I believe that a majority of the Supreme Court will one day accept that when the State punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the victim.” Let us…
Death penalty
President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam‘s actions have reopened the debate about death penalty. Very often a vociferous minority dominates a silent majority. This should not be allowed to happen. Punishment should be proportionate to crime and death penalty is suitable punishment for murder, attempted murder, character assassination and acid throwing. Abolitionists put forward following…
Inculturation
NDTV 24X7 in its Mumbai Live on 26/10/2005 at 10.30 p.m. had news and discussion about inculturation. Srinivasan Jain was the anchor. Fr. Anthony Charanghat of Bombay Archdiocese, Fr. Dominic Emmanuel of Delhi Archdiocese and Swami Agnivesh took part in the discussion. Three persons outside a church were interviewed. Two were Christians. They did not…
Names and Surnmames – VI
Surnames A. Bengali 1) Banerjee (Bandopadhyaya) 2) Chatterjee (Chattopadhyaya) 3) Ganguly (Gangopadhyaya) 4) Mukherjee (Mukhyopadhyaya) 5) Basu 6) Mazumdar 7) Das 8) Bhattacharya 9) Chakraborty 10) Dutt B. Sindhi 1) Keswani 2) Lalwani 3) Vaswani 4) Tejwani 5) Khubchandani 6) Mulchandani 7) Bajaj 8) Bhutto 9) Zardari 10) Jethmalani
Names and Surnames – V
So far the names and surnames were mostly English. Now onwards there will be other names and surnames too. Irish surnames that begin with O’ or Fitz or Scottish surnames that begin with Mc will be excluded. O’ means son of. I do not know the meaning of Fitz or Mc. Indian surnames that end…