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The Julto Pull or swinging ropeway bridge of Morbi, a historical landmark, collapsed on Sunday killing 90 people in the town about 200 km west of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The toll has gone up to 141 now, hundreds still missing. Gujarat is going to the polls this year, some thought along with Himachal Pradesh on November 12 but the dates for Gujarat haven't been announced yet.

More updates here: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/gujarat-bridge-collapse-live-updates-bridge-collapses-in-morbi-november-1/liveblog/95216804.cms

The Supreme Court has been moved for an investigation into the tragedy. The PIL will be heard on November 14.

More on that here: https://www.indialegallive.com/constitutional-law-news/supreme-court-news/morbi-bridge-collapse-pil/

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Assembly Elections for Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur were wrapped yesterday March 7. Results are to be out on March 10 but in the meanwhile, the exit pollsters have given the BJP all states except Punjab. There is a AAP sweep there, say pollsters. Do exit polls set the narrative for other machinations?

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Jumbo dies

The elephant stuck in the Mahanadi river has died. Orissa Post report here

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June 21. Summer Solstice. International Yoga Day. Strike a pose. Breathe in, breathe out.

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Foodgrain scarcity?

Over 1 million tonne of wheat is lying in the OPEN in Jabalpur, Satna and Rewa regions alone. https://www.livelaw.in/news-updates/madhya-pradesh-high-court-food-grains-protection-rains-175959#.YM2rFmK1OWk.whatsapp

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Delhi Metro notes increase in passengers after unlock

Sitting ducks again?

The Indian Express reports: “Records maintained by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) show that 13.26 lakh passengers travelled on the network on June 18 — up from 6.38 lakh on June 7 when services commenced after nearly a month.”

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/delhi-metro-records-sharp-spike-in-footfall-as-city-unlocks-7366053/

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Coronavirus variants to impact India in a month or two, says the chief of India's biggest hospital

"As we have started unlocking, there is again a lack of Covid-appropriate behaviour. We don't seem to have learnt from what happened between the first and the second wave. Again crowds are building up... people are gathering. It will take some time for the number of cases to start rising at the national level. Third wave is inevitable and it could hit the country within the next six to eight weeks... may be a little longer," Dr Guleria said. Full story

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Soumitra Chatterjee tests corona positive

2020 isn’t done with us yet. https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/iconic-actor-soumitra-chatterjee-in-hospital-with-covid-19-2305811?pfrom=home-topstories

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Yeti ahoy!

Oh my dear Yeti! You seem to have popped up at the right time. The days are dismal and debilitating hot. You may have bounced about in the relative cold slopes around the Makalu base camp. Or you may have wandered too far in search of more brethren. The Indian Express mocked you, it headlined its story Yeti foot, Army mouth. Che, che, how can the Express mock the Army. 

In other news, a Hindu woman saint, terror accused in a blast case, is contesting elections but the soldier who called out despicable trash for canteen food along the forward positions along the border has been told he may not contest elections because he was dismissed for calling the food bad. 

From somewhere over the Himalayan rainbow, a yeti laughs at all of us. Maybe it’s short of oxygen and its death laugh has no meaning from the dust-heavy plains of Delhi. Everything is transient, so is democracy.  

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Sonia says no to Congress foisting son Rahul as PM candidate

The Indian National Congress shied away from naming party vice-president Rahul Gandhi as its PM candidate. The Congress will be up against a resurgent BJP under Narendra Modi and the Aam Aadmi Party, which professes a back-to-the-roots democracy as its calling card. The Congress is notorious for not holding inner party elections for quite a few decades.

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And we thought the Pakistanis were kind

All through the evening of June 12, news channels in India were over the moon that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari had pardoned Sarabjit Singh, a cause dear to the media here in India. It took all that coverage and more for Zardari's spokesman to wake up after the multiple whiskies he must have had on a Tuesday evening to trudge in front of the cameras and say what he did. Sorry folks, not Sarabjit, we are freeing Surjeet Singh. For more on the confusion: http://tinyurl.com/75mqkzs

Sarabjit's family must have built castles with fairs and moats with lurking dragons in them during the meantime. But as is with such castles, they collapsed like reels of old celluloid film in the harsh heat of reality.

How does one deal with such an obdurate obfuscating neighbour. Beats me.

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Did you know?

Did you read about the schoolboy who stabbed his teacher dead in Chennai? Did you read about the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court give a clean chit to Narendra Modi? Did you know how much Modi’s gained by this clean chit? Did you know people want the schoolboy punished for killing his teacher?  Did you know the boy’s Muslim? Did you know the teacher was Hindu? Did you know murder has to be punished? Did you know Gandhi’s three monkeys have fled the scene? Did you know corruption is a dastardly thing? Did you know life’s all a waste of time?

Did you know what we lost? Did you know how the gains pain? Did you know the West's won? Did you know the rest of us are done? Did you know there's a price for biting the bait? Did you know there's no turning back from that gate?

There are ministers watching porn on their handhelds as legislatures debate key issues. There are people run over by trains, twice a man was run over on the track that goes from Delhi to Agra.

There is democracy squelched in the Maldives. The regional superpower dithers on sending in a destroyer to bring status quo ante.

Too many contradictions in a short time.

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Jarawas

My fellow Indians are mighty upset about the Guardian/Observer video on Andaman tribal women dancing on the orders/bossy nudges of an ex-cop or some authority figure. They see a "conspiracy" to malign the country which is fast becoming a superpower (hey who cares for those caught under the tank’s caterpillar tracks, those who are already poor and backward and illiterate) and this sure looks like the ancient enemies of India ganging up and focusing on the reprehensible practices/cruelties that continue to this day (did any one ask if Jarawa tribals were okay with being called naked savages)?

The government in all its wisdom maintains the video was shot aeons ago. But no one is coming on record to say if tribal safaris are organized now? Even if its an old video, is the sight of Indian citizens doing a jig after prodding from an authority figure okay? I sure don’t hope so.

The Jarawas, post their rediscovery following the 2006 tsunami, are a proud people who are untouched by modernity and what we understand as civilization. They might prefer to walk bare-torsoed given the repressive heat on the island they live on. But they are not monkeys to dance when peanuts are thrown? But tourism has made them just that.

Let’s leave the Jarawas alone. Let’s stop these tribal safaris, tourism potential be damned. They are, after all, Indian citizens. It’s another matter that there are enough Indians on the mainland who would dance naked on the street to get into one of those mind-numbing reality shows. 

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Richest deity in poor India?

There is an abundance of wealth in India, am not talking the immense spiritual wealth in this case. Hardcore bullion. Gold, ornaments etc etc. Found in four secret vaults of the Sri Ananthapadmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, the haul is worth Rs 60,000 crore (US $13.45 billion with $1 equal to Rs 44.58 the exchange rate on July 4). It took me a while with the computation since the zeros just kept piling up. Imagine this wealth sitting in a temple for generations without earning interest, unutilisable for the welfare of India’s many million poor. The evaluation is not yet complete with two more vaults left to go. There's already a spirited debate whether the deity (which means the temple trust, controlled by the state government) keeps the money or it goes to the state entirely. Kerala is one of the few states in India where the Communists have a strong presence. The Communists were recently voted out in a very close election.

Whatever happens to the money is yet to be seen but it would mean that Lord Ananthapadmanabha will overtake Lord Balaji of the famed Tirumala-Tirupati shrine in the richest billionaire sweepstakes of the deities. Imagine Indiana Jones gawping at the Ark, the court-appointed evaluators must be having a hard time keeping their mouths shut. More on this story here: http://bit.ly/lsZW6T

India’s also “world-famous” for another type of wealth-the famed black money. But that’s worth another post.