sexiest figure

An historic change in the offing; but India’s ruling party may be overreaching itself

YELLING dementedly, seven lawmakers mobbed the chairman of the Indian parliament's upper house on March 8th and tore at the document, containing the women's reservation bill, he was reading from. Yet the bill passed the next day, with the two-thirds majority needed to change India's constitution. With broad political support, including from the Congress party that leads India's coalition government and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the bill could soon clear the lower house and win the support it needs in at least 15 out of 28 state assemblies. The president would then sign it into law: imposing a 33% quota for women in India's federal and state assemblies.

This would be momentous, especially for India's half a billion, badly served women. Today's Lok Sabha, or House of the People, as India's lower chamber is known, contains 58 women, a record number, but fewer than 11% of the seats. By greatly boosting women's membership of India's legislatures, the proposed amendment, its supporters say, will also begin to make a dent in their more grievous suffering—in a country where female fetuses are often aborted, where wives are battered and women earn on average $1,200 a year, less than a third of the male average. A woman can take credit for this: Sonia Gandhi, Congress's leader, who has pushed the long-mothballed bill against a furious band of dissenters—of a kind that persuaded previous BJP- and Congress-led governments not to touch it.

Yet this triumph must be qualified. Even setting aside the question of how effective such affirmative action is—and an existing reservation of 22% of seats for wretched tribal Indians and dalits, Hinduism's former untouchables, is discouraging—the proposed amendment is flawed. With a supposed shelf-life of 15 years, it would cover a different tranche of seats in three successive parliamentary terms. So each time one-third of India's elected members would know they had no chance of being re-elected to the same seat. The women with reserved seats might also think their re-election hopes slim. This arrangement will discourage hard work on a constituency's behalf.

Another reasonable fear is that male politicians will put up biddable wives and daughters for election. They already do—as Mrs Gandhi hinted at when facing down one of the bill's main opponents, a former chief minister of northern Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who, after being sent to prison, installed his wife to rule the state on his behalf. “Your wife has been chief minister. You have seven daughters. What's their view on the bill?” Mrs Gandhi asked him.

Unconvinced, Mr Yadav, whose party was among the hooligans in parliament, withdrew its support from the government. So did another north-Indian, low-caste party, Samajwadi. Both parties say the reservation should be dedicated to low-caste women. They also fear it will benefit educated, high-caste women, who are more likely to stand for Congress or the BJP. If, as expected, a third opponent of the bill, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the pro-dalit ruler of northern Uttar Pradesh state, also forsakes the government, it would be reduced to a majority of two in the Lok Sabha. In the worst case, it might even fail to get the necessary support for the budget announced on February 26th, and fall.

Recent grumbling from Congress's two biggest allies, West Bengal's Trinamul Congress (TC) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu, have raised fears of this. Both parties oppose a proposal in the budget to raise petrol and diesel prices, and the TC abstained over the women's reservations bill. But the government will probably survive. Most opposition parties, including the BJP, still feel bruised after a thumping general-election victory by Congress last year, and none wants an election soon.

Yet the government's reduced support is worrying. Barely ten months after Congress was returned to power at the head of a more solid-looking coalition than it had previously led, it will struggle to pass any contentious legislation. And it will have to pay a heavy price to its, now indispensable, allies to do so. Liberal reform of India's state-controlled financial and overprotected retail sectors, for example, looks unlikelier than ever. In announcing the budget, Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister, said India's priorities were to return to the annual 9% growth it achieved for most of the previous government's term, then “find the means to cross the double-digit growth barrier”. Without bold reforms, that will be impossible, and even 9% may be out of reach.

So the timing of Mrs Gandhi's push for women's quotas might seem reckless. It suggests an overestimation of Congress's strength, and the party's failure to reassure the TC's irascible leader, Mamata Banerjee, is careless at best. Mrs Gandhi has picked her political fights carefully since taking over her murdered husband Rajiv's party in 1998, and won most of them. So she may not be too perturbed. The economy looks healthy enough, with growth forecast at 7.2% for the financial year ending this month. She will be more concerned by the government's failure to introduce more crowd-pleasing measures, like the lavish welfare schemes, paid for with the bumper revenues that rapid growth affords, launched in its previous term. With this year's budget deficit nudging 10% of GDP, if you include the state governments, these are harder times. Yet reservations for women should at least please half the crowd.

Devout Congressmen, buoyed by last year's election result and the havoc it has played with the BJP, are pleased merely to see a Gandhi calling the shots. Many have a jaundiced view of Mrs Gandhi's technocratic prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and look forward to her 39-year-old son, Rahul, taking over. This is likely to happen in Congress's next government—but when that will come is hardly worth guessing. The party has been doing well. But with only 208 of the Lok Sabha's 545 seats, Congress, and its government, are weaker than its leaders seem to think.

Biggest Rangoli

Biggest Rangoli Golden Book of World Record Singrauli Sheela Foundation DM Collector NCL

The World Record of making World’s Biggest Rangoli has been achieved by Mr. Manickam Selvendran- Collector & DM Singrauli; in association with Mr. Tejinder Singh- Chairman, Sheela Foundation and Northern Coalfields Limited, Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Logo of ‘Save Girl Child Campaign’ was made in rangoli; measuring 22,863 square meters (2,46,095 square feet). On April 14, 2013; more than 1500 students at the NCL stadium Jhingurdah, Singrauli, made the Rangoli in which about 50,000 kg of rangoli colors in seven shades were used.
This world record was supported by Chhavi Bhardwaj IAS Commissioner Municipal Corporation Singrauli M.P.

Previous Record:
World’s Largest Rangoli made by Prajapita Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya, Ahmedabad (India) on 26th November 2011.It was created at the Ashokbhau Firodia School ground and measured 9,028 square metres (97,176 square feet). More than 2,500 students and members of Brahma Kumaris youth wing from all over the country participated in the mega event.

A dedicated call centre and an information technology (IT) forum are among a slew of measures announced by police and Society for Cyberabad Security Council (SCSC) on Wednesday for enhancing security of women employees in the IT Corridor. Apart from an 'IT Women Forum', the SCSC has decided to set up a call center under the chairmanship of additional deputy commissioner of police Janaki Sharmila. This was announced by Cyberabad police and honchos of IT companies during the launch of 'Education Campaign On Women Safety' with five videos in the presence of hundreds of IT employees on Ascendas campus to announce the security measures exactly two moths after the 23-year-old techie's abduction and rape case.

Speaking on the occasion, Cyberabad police commissioner CV Anand said existing 47 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras and soon-to-be acquired CCTV cameras would have night vision facility. SCSC authorities said it would be done in the next three to four months. Both police and IT honchos appealed to IT employees, especially women, to prefer APSRTC as their mode of transport as it was safe compared to other private transport facilities. However, SCSC secretary V Srinivasa Prasad said that plans were afoot to set up pre-paid auto stands like the ones at major railway stations. The authorities assured that it would be risk-free since only auto drivers whose background check has been checked and registered would be allowed at pre-paid stands.

"We want all malls, business establishments in the IT corridor to get their CCTV network connected to the Cyberabad police network so that monitoring can be done by police too,'' Anand said. Tennis star Sania Mirza said, "Men who commit atrocities like the ones perpetrated on Abhaya and Nirbhaya are animals. I suggest all women use pepper sprays whenever someone stares at you.'' Sania, who acted in one of the five short films, said. Along with Sania, director-general of police (DGP) B Prasada Rao and other participants stressed on the need for woman employees to always carry a pepper spray. In the IT corridor, a team, comprising of 80 dedicated police personnel, would perform their duties and the government would spend Rs two crore per month for meeting security needs of the corridor. On the occasion, the Cyberabad police have started a women helpline 9494731100.

The five videos demonstrate how gullible females could fall prey to the designs of miscreants out of negligence and not taking proper precautions. The videos dwell on how to avoid getting into trouble and how to deal during the crisis. In her video, Sania Mirza dwells on dos and don'ts. These videos would be played through various media and they would be used by IT companies to educate their employees and during induction programme for new employees. A special mobile app (Application) has also been developed. APIIC managing director Jayesh Ranjan said as of now there was only 17% green cover in the IT corridor and it would be improved to 30%. He said APIIC would soon come out with four campaigns 'Cycle to Work', 'Every Building has to be Green Building', 'Disabled-Friendly Buildings', 'Improving Green Cover, Save Water'.