I found excellent write up on the personality of India's 11th President hereKalam is a good human being with a soft heart inside. He has become the most distinguished personality of India with the unique honor of a devout Muslim, he prays twice a day. At the same time, he is also a ‘Ram Bhakt’ and plays the ‘Veena’. He loves the Shri Raga and loves to writes poetry in Tamil.
He loves to see India as a self-dependent country in every front in the future. He is clever, sensitive, amazingly creative and, above all, a soft-spoken patriot. He is India’s answer to Western technological arrogance and brilliance. He loves to dream and better knows how to fulfill the dream. He loves young India and India loves him a lot.
Children call him ‘Chacha Kalam’ and Kalam calls them as the future of the nation. He never forgets to advise them to become political leaders to lead the country from the front. For your loving inspirations all the time, India salutes you. We Indians love you…
In India, the farmers are being the worst victim of Indian economic growth. Till now they were committing suicides in different part of the country because of poverty and now they are being killed by the government in the name of industrial development on the farming lands.
Image: Google ImagesThe Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, whose autumn/winter edition opened today with the first major runway show featuring models dressed in flowing gowns of all hues created by reputed designers.
87 designers will preview their styles for the next season at the event, which would run till March 26 and boasts of attendance from over 80 international buyers from 19 countries, besides 100 domestic buyers.
India experienced one of the biggest Naxal attack on Rani Bodli police outpost in Bijapur in Chhattisgarh since its formation. The report says that more than 400 naxals were attacked on the outpost at 2 am and carried the attack till 5 in the morning. The naxals surrounded the police outpost and lobbed grenades and bombs, opened firing and then set the camp on fire. They fled with 50 weapons including AK-47s and SLRs from the outpost and before fleeing they had land-mined the area.
They killed more than 40 security personnel and caused an embarrassing situation for the state government.
The term Naxalites comes from Naxalbari that is a small village in West Bengal. In this village, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leaders Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal had tried to develop a revolutionary opposition against the CPI (M) leadership in the state. On May 25, 1967, the revolt started in Naxalbari when some local authorities attacked a tribal over a land issue. Then, the tribals attacked the landlords and the violence escalated.
Since then, the Naxal have their influence from 76 districts in nine states to 118 Districts in 12 States. On September 21, 2004, the CPI (Maoists) was formed after the merger of two major naxal outfits such as the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War (PWG) and the Maoist Communists Center of India (MCCI).
Now, they have been created a ‘Red Corridor’ that covers from Andhra Pradesh, through eastern Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, to West Bengal and Bihar. The red corridor covers 155 districts in India that is almost 25% of national territory. Further, the rapid growing of its expansion clearly betrays the fact that the security agencies as well as the political leadership, at both the center and states, are fighting with the Naxalites with full force.
The security agencies and state governments are clueless and lack enough force and will power to tackle India’s greatest enemy within.
The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has warned the central government that Naxalites have been made coordination with the LTTE and ISI and engaged in weapons transactions with them.
According to the intelligence report, the ISI is using naxal network in India for drug trafficking and pumping fake currency notes in Indian market. In return, naxalites are getting the sophisticated weaponry and the process to make and use spontaneous explosive devices.
Currently, India is facing a situation that may be defined as a serious threat to the stability and internal security. Former DGP of Punjab K P S Gill once had said that it does not make sense to build roads and bridges, which cannot be used for fear of death at the hands of Naxalites.
The biggest question is that what are the steps taken by the government till now against the rising problem of naxal insurgency. On 19 September 2005, the government had organized the first meeting of the Standing Committee of Chief Ministers of the Naxalite affected States of India in New Delhi. Home Minister Shivraj Patil had chaired the meeting. During the meeting, the central government and the states decided to make the Inter-State Joint Task Forces functional very quickly to facilitate coordinated anti-Naxalite operations.
As the first step, the States decided to appoint nodal officers for coordination with each other as well as with the Centre. The Home minister had concluded by saying that the problem of Naxalism has to be addressed by ensuring effective and sustained police action against the Naxal violence and, at the same time, accelerating socio-economic development of the affected areas too.
Despite its speechifying on socio-economic development of the problematic regions, the Central government and the State governments, most of the times, opted to go with militaristic approach to counter the Naxalite problems. This is the root problem.
Naxals are not terrorists but being used by the terrorist-minded people. The political leaders always kept these tribals away from the development of states and country. Now, the naxals look towards development as their biggest enemy.
Just look at the total annual expenditure from the Centre and States on the modernisation of police for anti-Naxalite operations. This touches Rs. 2,000 crores mark. And just look towards the contrast of the story, the central government has recently decided to allocate meager Rs. 2 crores per year to per Naxal-affected district to develop the socio-economic situation.
The cost of devastation is more than the cost of the construction. This is the basic problem with our national leadership.
The government’s call for taking steps for socio-economic development of the Naxalite affected areas is praiseworthy but the biggest problem is to understand that would the economic development be enough for areas where people have no any basic infrastructure.
Naxalism is growing in the undeveloped areas because of extreme poverty, unemployment and the collapse of the state structure. Government has failed to provide the access of basic human needs to the poor people living in those areas. Further, the atrocities by security forces and forest officials are adding fuel to the fire.
Land reforms are very important to tackle the Naxalite problems but the government has never thought to put this in her strategy. It seems, the government is treating Naxalism as mere law and order problem. This is more a social and political problem than a law and order problem. Unless the government takes rights based approach towards the poor people in the undeveloped region, Naxalism will continue to survive.
A new revelation came from the National Security Advisor MK Narayanan that the Terrorist organizations are manipulating Indian stock exchanges through fake companies. They are raising millions of dollars for planning and carrying out strikes against India with the support of Pakistan.
The jehadi outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen and Al-Badr are raising funds through a presumably legal route. The companies, which often exist only on paper with addresses in the Middle East, are fronts for Pakistani agencies.
This is nothing but a surprising disclosure that has showed the evolution of new kind of anti-India terrorism. The NSA MK Narayanana has spoken about it at the 43rd Conference on Security Policy in Munich last week.
He said;
Isolated instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock exchanges have been reported... stock exchanges in Mumbai and Chennai have, on occasion, reported that fictitious or notional companies were engaging in stock market operations.
Narayanan further given hints of a conspiracy by some official agencies in Pakistan and their agenda to destabilize the Indian Economy. He presented a detailed view of the unconventional threat posed by terrorists raising funds within India to strike against the country.
He outlined the complex mix of funding routes - through stock exchanges, banking channels, ordinary ATM withdrawals and hawala trails as well as operation of legitimate businesses like hotels and transport - used by modern terrorists to sustain and launch their operations. The challenge, he said, lay in forging cooperation between governments to choke terror funding.
The shocking disclosure has sent shockwaves through the entire economic setup.
The IBNlive has reproduced some part of his speech where he listed the more common methods employed by terrorist outfits to generate funds, as experienced in the context of South Asia.
# Voluntary contributions- receiving money from individuals, members of emigrant communities and groups that backed the terrorist organization.
The LTTE in Sri Lanka and the al-Qaeda regularly receive much contribution through such kinds of means.
# Forced donations- used by the Ethnic, ideological and religious terror groups on special occasions such as religious festivals. Compulsory subscriptions to pro-terrorists paper works have become an important way to generate funds.
The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba’s monthly, Majalah-al-Dawana, and its weekly magazine, Al Ghazwa, are two prime examples.
# State sponsorship- The terrorists groups operating in India such as Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Hizbul Mujahideen and Al Badr are well patronized through the provision of funds across the border.
# Extortion and use of coercive methods- Terrorists groups today working like criminal enterprises and getting money by threatening small businesses, individuals and even some state enterprises.
# Association with Criminal Syndicates- There are some signs coming about the the growing partnership among Jehadi and non-jehadi terrorist outfits with Organised Criminal Syndicates. It takes many forms, but mainly bank robberies and kidnapping for ransom.
# Using legal business enterprises- some terrorist outfits has set up legal business enterprises such as restaurants, real estate, shipping to utilise part of the proceeds to siphon off funds for terrorist activities. LTTE is the best example of this network of legitimate businesses.
# Stock market operations- Inaccessible instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported. Stock Exchanges in Mumbai and Chennai (India) have, on occasions, reported that fictitious or notional companies were engaging in stock-market operations. Some of these companies were later traced to terrorist outfits.
# Misusing banking channels- The banking channels are regularly being used to raise funds for terrorist operations. On many occasion, it has been proved about funds received via banking channels from Dubai and UAE projected for terrorist organizations.
# Counterfeit currency- Fake of currency is currently a favorite method being adopted to fund terrorist activities directed at India. Large amounts of high-quality counterfeit Indian currency are detected each year, the normal route being via Nepal and Bangladesh.
