The people of Bihar have finally woken up and given Laloo Prasad Yadav the drubbing he deserves. I often used to wonder how they tolerated him and for such a long time. Granted, he was the master of caste politics and, until now, had managed to successfully potray himself as the protector of the backward castes and minorities. But on any scale of development he had dragged Bihar into the pits. From a resonably governed state it became the worst governed state in India. No rule of the law, private armies, caste wars, rampant kidnapping, breakdown of infrastructure, everything pointed to a government that did not care for the people and was only concerned with staying in power.

I’m no suppporter of the BJP and I wish they were not part of the coalition as this might again lead to the communal clashes that were common before Laloo Yadav came to power and (to his credit) put an end to such violence. But Nitish Kumar seems a much better alternative than Laloo and it is nice to see that at last someone else has been given the chance to govern Bihar. I hope he does not waste this golden opportunity. He won the elections mainly on the lack of development agenda. If he can deliver on that and improve the law and order situation at the same time he will mark the beginning of a new era for the people of Bihar.

Is this for real? Do countries still exist, which will allow only “healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress”? And this is the same country with which the world is bending backwards to do business with? The engine driving global growth, subject of innumerable economic encomiums and the standard bearer of globalisation. What ever happened to the endless posturing on human rights and democracy, espoused especially by Western media?

Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair (and others of their ilk) are you listening? What happened to your noble sentiments of standing up for democracy and even defending it with war? But I forget. This is a world built on the twin pillars of hypocrisy and capitalism. Idealists, go drown in a glass of whiskey.

Here is an extremely well written article by an Indian software developer, who is also a Muslim, putting across the real idea of Islam and how terrorism and its critics have taken things out of context to justify their respective actions. Islam is not a violent religion. Like all religions it promotes peace and brotherhood. To criticize all Muslims for the acts of a few is unjust and ignoring the larger picture.

Yes, there have been few voices of dissent in the Islamic world against terrorism but one has to understand the situation before pronouncing judgment. This article provides a much needed and balanced view of the issues surrounding Islam today. Let us hope more ordinary Muslims come out and speak their minds in this manner.

A petition seeking dissolution of so-called parallel Islamic Courts has been filed in the Supreme Court of India, resulting in the apex court issuing notices to the Center, All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Islamic seminary Darul Uloom, and the High Courts of various states.

If this establishment of the parallel religious courts turns out to be true then why not throw open the gauntlet to others? Let us flush our constitution down the toilet. We can give the Sringeri Mat similar legal hold over Hindus and the Church over the Christians. Let us integrate religion into the State. What fun that will be!

Hindus will be banned from eating beef. Reservations will be abolished and the Brahmins will rule again. Abortion will be illegal for Christians. Women, in general, will become second-class citizens. Now, let us all contemplate this brave new world in quiet and peace.

The film ‘Matrubhoomi – A nation without women’ is an exceptionally powerful one by new comer Manish Jha. The theme dealt with is female infanticide in rural India. It is a fictionalised description of a village where there are NO women left because whenever a girl child is born she is disposed of. The director tries to imagine what life would be in such a setting. How would the absence of women affect life? What would the nature of interpersonal relations between the men be? The setting is eastern UP or Bihar.

The film is extremely well crafted. Cinematography by Venugopal is excellent. The ambience is authentically recreated and the lighting is marvellous. The background music is amazing. You can feel an undercurrent of tension running through the film which hits you with the force of a sledgehammer later on.

I found some flaws in the film. One of the criticisms is that the lone female protagonist is depicted as a helpless persone and the director has not given her any agency. I would argue that that is the reality in villages, particularly in North India, so whats wrong with depicting it? And I thought that the way he depicted the caste violence was a little amateurish. And ‘kalki’s(thats the name of the female protagonist – newcomer Tulip Joshi) hindi sounds a little out of place. The others in the film are obviously theatre people and authenically manage to carry off the dialect prevelant in the area.

Apart from these flaws, I think the film is a genuine attempt at exploring one of the burning issues in ‘Bharat’, unfortunately one that not many people in ‘India’ care about. But I would be interested in getting a feminist perspective on the film. I want to know what women think about it. So please watch this movie.

In its latest issue, the science journal Nature has produced a special Outlook section on the current state of science, and in particular life science research in India. The articles are uniformly well-written and objective with very little of the usual condescension shown by Western scientific establishments towards Indian science. Together, they give us an insight into how research is done in India and the many problems plaguing it. From a scientific culture which frowns upon independent thinking and instead rewards conformity and obedience to the lack of accountability and appropriate funding, from the lack of proper regulatory frameworks for critical areas like stem cell research and human clinical trials to the heart-warming stories of a handful of research institutes leading the way in life sciences the issues are many.

To name a few; India is still way behind in research spending as a percentage of GDP even when compared to other developing countries like China, Brazil or South Korea. Ayurveda is another crucial area where India is sitting on a goldmine of traditional medicine that could be a potential source for new drugs if only the traditional knowledge is subjected to rigorous scientific analysis. The education system also needs to be upgraded and revamped. The present emphasis on only the theoretical aspects of science should be changed and equal emphasis needs to be placed on the experimental aspects, which are what makes a good scientist in the long run. This is one crucial area, I feel, where science graduates from India in general are behind their Western counterparts. I am a product of the Indian scientific education and have experienced first-hand the deficiencies of the existing system. Most of the crucial experiments in Genetics and Molecular Biology were either demonstrated to us or worse only described. We rarely had hands-on experience over techniques which would be considered standard laboratory work elsewhere and this was in a central university where the standard is much much higher compared to state universities!

But do not despair yet. Things are slowly but surely moving ahead in the right direction. The success of independent research institutes like National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune and few others is reason enough to hope for more change. Scientists from these institutes regularly publish in high-impact, peer-reviewed international journals and their numbers are steadily increasing from year to year. Start-up biotech companies like Biocon, Avesthagen and established pharma companies like Dr. Reddy’s, and Ranbaxy are also growing in strength and stature. All that India needs now is good support and direction from the government in terms of funding, less bureaucratic hurdles, and last but not the least, for a critical mass of life-scientists to develop to give research the right push. This could usher in the next revolution, for after IT it might just be the turn of BT!