In the wake of Prime Minister’s flagship project ‘Make in India’, where he is going overseas to promote it, the gruesome situation in the country compels one to ask ‘Is the Make-in-India’ initiative just a namesake programme?’

KS Kalyanasundaram, a first-generation entrepreneur in his blogpost wrote his grievances against the government where he mentioned about the hurdles he has been facing to run his newly-launched company ‘Whistle TV’.

In 2014, Kalyanasundaram, who has previously worked with several media companies, quit his job to launch his own music channel for which he had applied for a loan from the Bank of India.

He wrote in his post, “I had to offer my own flat, which I got from my father as, collateral. Bank of India, as a professional bank, did all the due diligence, conducted internal TEV, took my interviews several times, and finally sanctioned the loan.”

Having gotten the sanction, he invested all his savings, around Rs 7 crore to set up the channel and received license form the Ministry of I&B and in order to obtain the license he had to incur huge expenses on the project.

“We had to pay a hefty amount to uplink the channel. We had to do this as the bank said it would disburse the loan only after the license was obtained,” he added.

Since, then he approached the bank twice to get the sanctioned money but the bank told him that the loan disbursement would not be possible.

“When we approached the bank for disbursement with the license in hand, we were told that due to mismatch in bank’s Capital Adequacy Ratio, we would have to wait till September 2015. When we next approached the bank, we were told that the loan disbursement would not be possible!!! And this time there was no reason offered!!!”

Kalyanasundaram expressed his grief towards the situation of the government and lashed out by saying “How can a bank approve of the loan, make the entrepreneur invest heavily in the venture, and then back off citing internal policies? This amounts to not only the killing of the business but also the spirit of entrepreneurship.”

This blogpost is a wake-up call for government officials where the writer says “While our honourable Prime Minister Shri Modiji is promoting Make in India and Ease of Doing Business, the Government of India officials are being the biggest roadblock.

Recently, one Sarfraz Alam had uploaded a picture of himself with his daughter on the occasion of Janmasthami. He had dressed her up as Radha. The Facebook post has gone viral and has nearly 1000 shares and 2000 likes.

While most people were supportive of the post, Sarfraz Alam responded to the negative comments quite amicably and reasonably. Check out some of his responses:

Brother that what I wanted to make you understand That I am not doing wrong I just copied a character for time to teach my daughter.

Alhamdullilah Allah know our heart is pure and have fear of Allah. We respect all. Cause everyone created by Allah but this is other thing they believe to call things in different ways.

We in Islam Believe: There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s prophet. But Same time Islam teach us to respect every ones Belief. So lets live the life by giving respect, Spread love and peace. Keep me remember in your DUA.
In many ways, Sarfraz Alam’s post reminds us of an India where despite our different religions or beliefs or lack thereof, we learn to respect each other and live peacefully .In fact, it’s quite common to see such pictures reminding us that we are all part of one country and culture.

If only the various hardliners, in politics or religion, could realise that religion was a stick that the British used to divide the people of this great nation. Divide-and-rule was one of the most important sticks that the British used to rule over India for so long.

Lord Elphinstone had reportedly said to a commission investigating the 1857 riots: “”Divide et impera (divide and rule) was the old Roman motto, and it should be ours”. In Political Thinkers of Modern India: Lala Lajpat Rai, Volume 15 By Verinder Grover, Sir John Maynard, a retired Senior Member of the Executive Council of Punjab says: “It is, of course, true that British authority could not have established and now could not now maintain itself but for a fissiparous tendency, of which the Hindu-Muslim antagonism is one manifestation. It’s also the true that the mass rivalry of the two communities began under British rule. Persecuting rulers made their appearance from time to time in the pre-British era, levying tribute on unbelievers or punishing with masses — before they had eaten of the tree of knowledge and became religion-conscious — worshipped peacefully side by side at the same shrines.” Now the same tricks are used by people in power to divide society based on our religious or caste identities. It’s time we stop being blinded by those people who claim they have our best interests at hurt but continue to poison our mind against people of different religions.

Scientific efforts are being made to find the possibility of life at Mars and while NASA’s announcement of liquid water on the planet was deemed as one of the most important discoveries so far, there are organisations with absolutely bizarre findings.

UFO Sightings Daily, involved in researching on aliens, claims that there is a giant statue of Gautam Buddha on Mars. By this alleged ‘discovery’, UFO Sightings is trying to imply that Mars has already gone through life and it probably even had religion.
The image that Scott C Waring has presented as a reference was taken from a YouTube video uploaded by a channel called Paranormal Crucible. It’s the same channel that recently showed Obama’s head, a ghostly women and a military bunker on Mars. (Read: US Airforce officer claims she was abducted and raped by aliens on the moon)

Scott alleges that NASA doesn’t want anyone to know the truth because in that scenario it will be asked to share the info and technology that it has found. “This photo alone should be enough to convince the United Nations that intelligent life once existed on Mars,” Daily Mail quotes him as saying. While there is little possibility of any truth to the claim, it provides material for conspiracy theorists.

The test flight of India’s nuclear-capable ‘Nirbhay’ long-range subsonic tactical cruise missile, launched from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur in Odisha on Friday, was aborted nearly 12 minutes after lift-off, defence sources said. The missile took off from a specially-designed launcher at launch complex-3 of ITR at 11:38 hrs, a defence ministry statement said. All initial critical operations such as booster ignition, booster separation, wing deployment and engine start were successfully executed and Nirbhay reached the desired cruise altitude, the statement said.

During 700 seconds of flight, all sub-systems of the missile functioned satisfactorily and met all the desired functions. However, The mission was aborted after 700 seconds of flight, it added. Powered by a solid rocket motor booster, the missile has a strike range of more than 1000km. Nirbhay missile, with a turbofan engine, is guided by a highly-advanced inertial navigation system, sources said.

The 1000kilometer class cruise missile, capabile of striking deep into the enemy territory, has been designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation at it’s aeronautics R&D laboratory ADE (Aeronautical Development Establishment) based in Bengaluru, they said.

The maiden test flight of Nirbhay on March 12, 2013 also had to be terminated midway for safety reasons due to malfunction of a component. However, the second launch on October 17, 2014 was fully successful. Both the trials were conducted from this base.

The 1000kilometer class cruise missile, capabile of striking deep into the enemy territory, has been designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation at it’s aeronautics R&D laboratory ADE (Aeronautical Development Establishment) based in Bengaluru, they said.

The maiden test flight of Nirbhay on March 12, 2013 also had to be terminated midway for safety reasons due to malfunction of a component. However, the second launch on October 17, 2014 was fully successful. Both the trials were conducted from this base.

After the drama which brought the house down yesterday, the housemates are ensuring they spend quality time with each other during the day. With Bigg Boss throwing in the biggest twist of the week, giving a chance to contestants to exchange their partners, all hell breaks loose and cracks start to appear in most of the pairs. Here’s what happened!

Prince ka prank!

During a conversation with the housemates, Prince reveals a peevish prank he played as a kid. As a ritual in the pre-monsoon season when Prince was setting fire to the dried up leaves, he saw that a long-haired woman was drying her hair and his evil mind lit her Rapunzel-like hair on fire. Laughing out loud at his little prank, the housemates are surprised at how Prince is wired.

Numerous writers and creative personalities across India are busy returning their achievement awards to the Sahitya Akademi. A Padma Shri Awardee from Punjab has also done so. This has rattled the government, though the Sahitya Akademi is not the government and the revolt was against the Akademi Council not protesting the murders of their tribe, purportedly by right wing fanatics.

However, I have decided not to return the Padma Bhushan awarded to me in 1987 for my Punjab sojourn. I have no intention of rocking the boat of the BJP government any more than what is already being done by its own hot heads within the party and the Sangh Parivar. I understand that Narendra Modi is confronted by a Hobson’s choice. He cannot discipline BJP party extremists who have been spouting rubbish because they belong to the RSS stable, since these stables assure him of 20 of the 21% national votes that the BJP polled in the last Lok Sabha general elections. He must be worried about the 11% additional votes that helped him attain power – these votes came mainly from the youth whose aspirations for a better life propelled them into his camp. He realises that mere rhetoric will not suffice with these new converts. However, Modi requires time. He cannot produce miracles. He cannot change the economy overnight. A lot is being done in the infrastructure segments by good people in his cabinet like Piyush Goyal, Suresh Prabhu and Nitin Gadkari. They are doing it very quietly, but very effectively. If the amendments to the Land Acquisition and labour laws go through, they will be enabled to do it much faster.

India deserves a chance. Modi deserves a chance. Let us not make it more difficult for him to deal with the intransigent elements in his own party. He managed it in Gujarat, but now the stakes are much higher and the obstacles much greater. I want him to succeed for the sake of the country and hence I will hold back on making known my own displeasure about the intolerance levels that have risen abnormally since the extremist elements have been feeling emboldened. We did not harbour any type of fear about these elements in the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. On the contrary, we were positively happy that there was a change in government after many years of Congress rule and we anticipated the proverbial whiff of fresh air.

Vajpayee was a moderate. He did not frighten the minorities in the same way as Modi does, despite his professed intentions of taking everyone along. Vajpayee, for example, retained an old Gandhi loyalist as Governor of Maharashtra, though he was a Christian. He appointed Muslims and other minority representatives to constitutional posts. LK Advani, his Home Minister, had asked me to chair a committee on police reforms and later nominated me as member of one of the four committees that went into different aspects of national security after Kargil happened. Perhaps, Modi should make some such small gestures for minority communities, Muslims in particular, as a token of not distrusting them. I am not sure if it will work in the present charged atmosphere, but it is worth trying.

I do not know how Sahitya Akademi awards are dished out. I presume there is an expert body appointed by the Council which decides on the merits of writers and artistes. As regards government awards, I do know if patronage plays a large part in the selection process. I served on one such committee with the Vice President of India as the Chairman. He was an old BJP chief minister but very straightforward and fair. Our committee had a Muslim MP from the Congress party and all the discussions were very cordial. I was impressed with the proceedings.

As regards the Padma Awards, I found many individuals approaching me at different times for endorsements and recommendations. I did not know that such gratuitous expressions of opinions about work you are not familiar with have any effect at all and incidentally they did not! When I was in Punjab, the Governor SS Ray asked me to recommend three of my officers for the Padma Shri. I recommended my Intelligence Chief who happened to be a Sikh and who was really an outstanding officer. He later became the Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission and even later, the Governor of Manipur. The other two officers I recommended were on the frontline in the fight against the terrorists. Since they were more taxed than others, I sent in their names. One happened to be a Muslim and the other from the Scheduled Castes. The government, I later learnt, checked out my selections with the CPM leaders of Punjab. Obviously, they endorsed my judgement.

The very next year, the Cabinet Secretary, who was my own very dear friend BG Deshmukh, called to tell me that the head of the NSG had succeeded in convincing the authorities to award him the Padma Shri for his part in the Black Thunder operation. Sardar Buta Singh, who was the then Home Minister, demanded a similar honour for KPS Gill, the DGP of Punjab. KPS was facing allegations of sexual misconduct made by a Punjab cadre IAS woman officer. I felt that if the NSG chief, who had a very minor part to play in the entire Black Thunder operation, was going to be given the Padma Shri, then KPS Gill who had worked day and night for more than a week and was the actual hero of the operation, could not be left out on any criterion of justice and fair play, despite the case against him. This is my experience of how the Padma awards are apportioned!

Meanwhile, Modi will have to deliver on his promises, which will be difficult as long as the fanatical elements of the Sangh Pariwar create trouble for him on the ground. Nevertheless, he will have to deal with them if he wants to continue as Prime Minister for the next two terms or more, in order to fulfil his vision of ‘acche din’.