Je Suis Hypocrite...

On February 26th, 2015, writer Avijit Roy was hacked to death by assailants possibly linked to the Jamat E Islami on the streets of Dhaka. The attack on Roy and his wife—who is injured and in hospital—was not very different from that on cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, the weekly magazine, in Paris in January. What was different was the outrage. While huge support from all corners of the globe poured in for Charlie Hebdo on social and mainstream media, Roy’s murder has neither been covered well in the mainstream media at least in India nor is there is a similar outrage on social media.

I am leaving aside mainstream media because they are generally known for selective outrage and coverage. This is especially true of the Indian mainstream media. What has disappointed me more is the relatively muted reaction to Roy’s murder on social media, especially in India.

Alright, not many of us, including me, were aware of Roy’s work before his death. But how many of us in India were aware of Charlie Hebdo before the Paris attacks? And yet there were many Je Suis Charlies. Does Roy’s murder—he was killed for a reason not very different from that for Charlie Hebdo cartoonist—not deserve similar reaction?  Why no Je Suis Avijit trending on social media as yet?

I do not expect much outrage from the west although Roy was an American citizen and was visiting his native Bangladesh when he was attacked. The west is known for double standards when it comes terror attacks. Notice how they always speak of September 11th, Madrid bombings, London underground bombings but never about 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Was it not a terror attack? In fact, Mumbai suffered three major terror attacks between 1993 and 2008.

No, I am not worried about the muted reaction from western individuals on social media, who were outraged by Charlie Hebdo. It is obvious. For them life of a western citizen is more valuable than the life of a citizen from India or Bangladesh. In Roy’s case it is even more shocking because, as I noted earlier, Roy was an American citizen.

But more than the west’s reaction, my concern is the relatively muted reaction in India. Many Je Suis Charlies sprung up after the Paris attack. I don’t see a similar reaction to Roy’s murder. This tells me that either the Je Suis Charlies were just following a popular twitter trend, or to them events in Paris matter more than the events closer home.

Don’t get me wrong. The reaction to the Paris attacks was warranted. But do the events in Paris in any way pose a direct threat to India? No they don’t. But events in Bangladesh do. There are a lot of misconceptions about Bangladesh in India, one being that like Pakistan, it is a Muslim state. It is not. It is a secular state. Islam is by far the largest religion in the country but even the United Nations sees the country as “mainly moderate Muslim democratic country.”

Bangladesh is also part of the Next Eleven or N-11, a term coined by former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’ Neill. [O’Neill, who also came up with famous BRICs group of countries] He said in a research paper that Bangladesh along with the 10 other countries in the report could become the world’s largest economies in this century.

Of course, Bangladesh, like any developing country, has its fair share of problems. The country is marred by extreme poverty and corruption. But there is also a growing threat of Islamist extremism. This is why Indians should be worried about the attack on Roy. While there have been protests over Roy’s death, highlighting the fact that Bangladesh remains a largely tolerant country, Islamic extremism is a growing menace. Rising extremism in a moderate Muslim country in the neighborhood is more worrying than an attack in Paris. It should have got more coverage on the media. It commanded a stronger reaction.

The relatively muted reaction so far does come as a shock, especially after the outpouring of support for Charlie Hebdo. To all the Je Suis Charlies in India, if your support for Charlie Hebdo was more to do with following a Twitter trend then for your information, the most recent trend on Twitter is #The Dress. To those that have been selective in their outrage, you should consider changing your Twitter handle to Je Suis Hypocrite.....!!!!

How the Government might Recover more than 8 times the Money Lost in CoalGate Scam..???

In India, our attention is always on the negative aspect of things. In 2012 the Media was constantly reporting the infamous Coal-Gate scam where in the then Government had allocated coal blocks in an inefficient manner.  The crux of the matter was, while the Government did have a choice to auction the coal blocks, they chose not to, thereby causing massive loss to the country. The Final CAG report pegged the loss at an astounding Rs 1.86 lakh crores, making it one of the biggest scams in India. Finally through court intervention, the Coal allocations were cancelled.

Now the Government has finally begun the process of re-allocating these Coal blocks, in a transparent manner, and by adopting the auction route. Along with this, the Government has taken numerous measures to ensure the best possible result to this auction process. But sadly, the national media has not covered this with the focus it gave the Coal Scam.

The entire bidding system is a bit complicated but very rewarding to the consumer. The Government has introduced reverse bidding for bidding in regulated power. The Government first determines the cost Coal India incurs in extracting and processing the coal. This is called the ceiling price. Bidders take part in a reverse bid to bid the lowest price. For egs: if the Ceiling Price (Cost to Coal India) is Rs 1000, then the winning bid will be lowest bid below Rs 1000. So if there are 2 bidders, A bids Rs 500 and B bids Rs 400, B wins. The effect of this bid is B claims he can process the coal at Rs 400 only, as compared to Rs 1000 incurred by Coal India. Thus the Government pays the bidder only Rs 400 for processing the coal, which would have cost Rs 1000 to Coal India, and the differential Rs 600 cost saving gets passed on to the consumer.

Another move the Government took was pruning 50% of qualified bidders after opening price bids were received. This creates a fear of premature disqualification and forces the bidders to put forth the best possible price, thus ensuring that bidding is aggressive.

Now in the above Reverse Bidding model, there can theoretically be a case where the bid comes to zero i.e. two or more companies can say they will process coal at zero cost, which means they will pass on the entire benefit to the customer (Rs 1000) from above example. To resolve such ties, the Government devised a Forward Bidding mechanism. In reverse bidding we saw what amount the Government must pay the bidders to process coal. Once that comes to zero, the bidders start paying the Government to allow them to process coal! So now, the bid is for who pays the Government the most. For one of the non regulated sector mines, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Cement had to make a bid of Rs 1,402 per tonne, more than nine times the floor price of Rs 150 to bag a Coal block.

Thus, the auction is expected to earn much more than the Rs 1.86 lakh crore, which was lost thanks to the Coal Gate scam. The auction could fetch poor states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal Rs 15 lakh crore over a 30-year period, or Rs 50,000 crore a year on an average. Coal secretary Anil Swarup said that the current trend seen in the auction makes him believe the revenue could be more than Rs 15 lakh crore. We feel, even if this is being grossly optimistic and even just 20% of this is eventually recovered, that too will be much more than the money lost in the scam. But sadly, nobody from media seems interested in showing such positive news...!!!!

Courtesy : Extracted and Simplified from OptIndia.com ...

How Much Lower Can You Stoop For TRPs?

‪‎NDTV‬ calls Nirbhaya 'India's Daughter' and then goes on to offer her rapist and murderer a nice little platform to present his twisted views! How much lower can you stoop for TRPs?

Why give that twisted piece of crap legitimacy by telecasting his views?

I have a question to ask for the heads of NDTV. You call the show ‘India’s Daughter’. Is that what you do with the tormentors of your ‘daughters’? Give them a chance to come on camera and justify their actions?

Did you stop to think, even for a moment, about her parents? How they might feel when they read about this?

God forbid, if Nirbhaya were YOUR daughter, would you have done the same thing? Would you have telecast an ‘exclusive interview’ with her tormentor?

Even by the appalling standards of Indian Media, this is a low low blow.

And yeah, we know that the ‪‎BBC‬ did it first. One expected more sensitivity from an Indian channel, but then, I guess, you can hardly accuse NDTV of being an ‘Indian’ channel !!!!!