Author: oiop

ONE of India’s biggest forts, the Mehrangarh Fort or the Citadel of the Sun, stands atop a 125-metre hill in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. It was built by the Rajput king, Rao Jodha Singh in the 1450s. Resplendent in pink sandstone, the fort looms over the city. It has seven massive gates. In the early days, the gates would be kept closed at dusk, after which no one was allowed to leave or enter the city. The fort’s walls are six metres thick and bear marks of the sieges and battles fought. Unlike other forts in the region this fort was invaded…

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IN 1937, when Rajaji was the chief minister of the erstwhile Madras province, he handed over an envelope to his assistant and asked him to paste a stamp on it. The assistant stuck the stamp, but upside down. Noticing this, Rajaji thumped the fellow on his back, saying, “Well done, my boy! For so many years we have been trying to overthrow the crown and here you’ve turned the crown upside down in a second!” The stamp featured the picture of King George.

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The valiant Colonel (1960- 1999) Vishwanathan was born in 1960 and educated at Kochi. He joined the National Defence Academy in 1977 and was commissioned into 18 Grenadiers in 1981. He served in the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka and UN Peace Keeping Force in Angola. The unit moved to the Kargil sector from the Kashmir Valley arriving at Mughalpura on 18 May 1999. They were ordered to capture 16,000 feet high Toloing feature. The zig-zag path leading to it had no cover and was under observation of the enemy occupying the heights. Movement was possible only during…

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N. Vittal proposes measures to restore the credibility of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, which has taken a severe beating in the last few years because of the brazen misuse by the UPA II government. More by accident than design, the UPA II (United Progressive Alliance) Government which governed from 2009 to 2014 became a textbook case of all round poor governance by making practically every organisation for governance dysfunctional. This performance of UPA II looks tragically ironical when we read the following passages in the recent best seller by Sanjaya Baru,…

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Analysing why India’s defence mechanism is under attack Lt. Gen.(Dr.) D.B. Shekatkar PVSM, AVSM, VSM (retd.), says the most important challenge to the top leadership is and will always remain, how to keep the defence forces isolated, untouched, unpolluted and uninfluenced from overall national environment of corruption, lack of trust and faith in the government mechanism. If not learnt, analysed and seriously acted upon, history has a ruthless tendency to repeat itself and punish the defaulters severely. The first decade after India’s independence witnessed a rather indifferent and lacklustre attitude towards India’s defence and security mechanism. This was probably due…

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As a new government takes charge this month at the centre, one hopes that in future elections will be fought on issues concerning the nation and its people rather than politicians indulging in personal attacks. The general elections of 2014 will go down in history not just for being the one that recorded the highest percentage of voting, but also for the acrimony that characterised the campaign, the low level of rhetoric, the free trading of insults and abuse, personal attacks of the worst kind, continuous violation of the poll code, attempts at polarisation and a scant regard for the…

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V. Gangadhar tells people to stop grumbling about the decline of our great institutions, as he admires the phenomenal growth of cricket as an institution, over chilled champagne and caviar, at an IPL match. Why do we complain and grumble all the time that several great Indian institutions are on the decline? Like our politics, civil service, education system, legislature, judiciary and what not. All the time the media is grumbling about this overall decline without even acknowledging that even the media has declined significantly. Cheer up, grumblers and cry babies. How can any proud Indian forget that the great…

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Emphasising the importance of values in our life, Dr. Ravindra Kumar says, it is values which give worth, glory and baseline to life. Values are imperative to life. That is why; analysis and discussion about the worth and significance of values has been there right from the beginning. A life without values is considered as useless, meaningless and baseless. In such a situation, i.e. indispensability of values in life, the first and foremost question that emerges in mind is: How to define values? “Let us work together, let us speak together, let our minds and hearts be united for a…

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The Indian Parliament has witnessed a steady decline in the standards of working in the past decade. There is an urgent need to arrest this downtrend and restore the sanctity of the temple of democracy, writes Dr. P M Kamath. Over the last 67 years, it is a well established fact that over the years the working of the Indian Parliament has steadily declined. The decline was gradual initially, but since the beginning of the 21st century, it has become very obvious and significant. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe in his book, Beyond a Billion Ballots: Democratic Reforms for a Resurgent India, categorically…

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The life of Dian Fossey, a gorilla lover and the extent to which she went to protect her love at the cost of her life. I saw the film, Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver, in the late 1980s. I had learned of Dian Fossey’s work with gorillas much earlier, in the late 1970s, and found myself instantly inspired by this incredible woman. In September 1963, she borrowed the astronomical sum of $8,000 and blew it up on a seven-week trip to Africa where she met the legendary William Holden, owner of the celebrated lodge, Tree Tops. Virtually in…

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