The gag on Greenpeace

For a while now, Greenpeace has been in the cross hairs of the government, first under the UPA and now under the BJP, as it championed civil liberties and causes. Its activists have been prevented from travelling abroad. The non-governmental organisation (NGO) stands accused of concealing and mixing foreign contributions with local contributions. The latest step by the Ministry of Home Affairs simply cancelling Greenpeace’s registration was but an expected next stage in the chain of events leading to a gag that is meant to choke. The obvious assumption is that without funds Greenpeace in India will not be able to function. This has come even as a petition from Greenpeace seeking release of funds to pay its staff, and alleging arbitrariness in the government’s action, is before the Delhi High Court. The action taken under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) — which many NGOs say is a bad application of a poorly drafted piece of legislation — means Greenpeace will not be able to receive any foreign donations. The move has made other NGOs vulnerable too; they face a tough choice, of either complying with the government’s line, or fading out. The media have reported that the invoking of the provisions of the Act followed certain actions by Greenpeace that were deemed inimical to the economic interests of the state. Everything from placing advertisements in newspapers to organising protests against the Kundankulam nuclear plant to anti-nuclear activism, was deemed inimical. Already there is word of some NGOs trying to tailor their activities to suit the interests of the government. What can a democratically elected government possibly achieve by enforcing such compliance and conformity?

Also, it is time to have another look at the FCRA. Passed in 1976 and amended in 2010, it has come in for criticism not only for the overarching control it seeks to have over people-based movements but also for the guidelines framed around it. The MHA is now changing the rules, spelling out what NGOs are required to do, even seeking to scrutinise their social media engagement. Whether the MHA should be looking into expenditure incurred by an NGO to teach street children, for instance, is a moot question. There is hypocrisy involved when some political parties are free to receive corporate donations, especially from abroad, without any questions asked. Equally, all NGOs must respect the law of the land, maintain transparency and remain above board: admittedly, there are some black sheep. Most of them comply; some don’t. But that should be no excuse to gag. Civil liberties and free speech go hand in hand. The government will be ill-advised to trample on these.

Keywords: Greenpeace, NDA government, FCRA

the speaking tree - How To Bridge The `Generation Gap'

Swami Parthasarathy





Children from birth to around twelve years are virtually captives in their own home. Their parents control them entirely . Every child is on a leash. It is told what to do and what not to do. What to eat or what not to eat. What clothes to wear and what not. Every step of its life is directed, controlled. Their control seems quite legitimate as children lack the wherewithal to fend for themselves.But the problem arises when parents and guardians exceed the limits in using their power to govern their children. A common weakness among people is to use their power freely . One needs strength of character to have all the power and not use it unless essential to do so.Children are the most common victims of the abuse of power because of parents' inability to relate to their children. Parents believe the younger generation has turned defiant, aggres sive and even rebellious. Parents fail to realise the problem of relationship in most cases, invariably stems from the lack of intellect to assess the psychological traits of their kids. They operate from emotional pressures arising from their cloying attachment and possessiveness towards their children, virtually strangulating helpless children with their `love' and `care'. Parents therefore need to realise their inherent weakness and make a careful study of the individual natures of their children.
Children have no worries of the past or anxieties for the future and so they have extraor dinary energy whereas adults are infested with worry and anxiety rendering them tired and fatigued. Both the young and old are unaware of this natural disparity between them. The solution is not in stifling children's actions but in giving their irrepressible energy a proper direction. Besides the disparity in energy levels between the young and the old, there is a difference in their temperaments as well. Children possess the power of grasping new concepts and ideas sooner than their elders. That explains why youngsters take to new trends and fashions earlier than grown-ups. Parents take much longer time to accept, absorb anything new. This disparity in time for absorption of in novative ways of living caus es what is commonly referred to as the generation gap.
Hence it becomes the parents' obligation to under stand, to realise the existence of the natural disparity of levels both in the physical and mental makeup of the young and the old. Unfortunately , the shing and well-meaning well-wishing and well-meaning parents fail to recognise the existence of these glaring differences in natures.Instead, they try to treat this nagging problem with an iron hand.
However, if the parents, guardians desire their young to adopt a better lifestyle, change from a licentious to a disciplined way of living, they must possess and live those values themselves. They must set the example of living the higher values of life and refrain from giving sermons to their wards. But parents more often than not do not set the example of a disciplined life and keep ordering their children to be disciplined.Therein lies a double fault. It can never work that way .
The famed German scientist, Albert Einstein observes: “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means“.
(From Swami Parthasarathy's new book, `The Holocaust of Attachment'.)

LEGALLY SPEAKING - Refugees have a universal right to seek asylum

Dhananjay Mahapatra





In the aftermath of the terrible Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, renowned photographer Raghu Rai's lens had captured the picture of a toddler's body buried neck deep in a half-filled pit. The photograph became the iconic picture of world's worst industrial disaster.It stirred human sensitivities. But the surge of emotions was momentary . It did not stir the emotions enough to stop irregular running of chemical plants like LEGALLY S Union Carbide or production of chemical weapons, which was used on the Kurds to deadly effect in 1988. A picture of a Syrian refugee's lifeless son was published recently in newspapers. A soldier watched from a distance the body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed ashore at Turkish beach resort Bordum.
The heart-rending picture narrated the tragic story of refugees that has been told repeatedly over the decades by those who abandon their homes, leave behind their culture and are forced to flee to a foreign country to escape death.
World War II saw massive exodus of people from war-ravaged states to other countries. In 1948, countries signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 14(1) of the declaration guaran teed the right to seek and enjoy asylum in other countries. In July 1951, nations adopted the Convention in Geneva relat ing to the Status of Refugees, which was later amended by the 1967 Protocol.
Article 1(A)(2) of the 1951 convention defined a refugee as an individual who was outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence and unable or unwill ing to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, reli gion, nationality , political SPEAKING opinion or membership in a particular social group.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is now entrusted with the task of looking into refugee is sues, but countries also have a protecting role, even though their material inter ests are not engaged, and notwithstand ing their common reluctance.
India figures among the countries plagued with refugee problem. Right af ter partition, India saw a massive influx of refugees from across its eastern and western borders. Rehabilitating them was a gigantic task.
The rehabilitation of refugees echoed in the Supreme Court till 1970.
Rehabilitation is an intricate socio-eco nomic issue that invariably assumes po litical overtones. Carving out pieces of land for the refugees from the shrinking land bank evokes highly emotional reaction from local residents. It gets accentuated when the refugees compete for jobs and a slice of the economic benefits.
India had barely come out of the humongous task of settling partition refugees that it faced another massive influx from then East Pakistan. This became the justification for India's military intervention. Then PM Indira Gandhi spoke in Parliament in December 1971. “About three-and-a-half million people have come into India from Bangladesh during the last eight weeks... They are not refugees in the sense we have understood this word since partition. They are victims of war who have sought refuge from the military terror across our frontiers.“
She stressed the financial burden on the country from the massive influx of refugees. “On the present estimate, cost to the central exchequer on relief alone may exceed Rs 180 crore for a period of six months. All this has imposed an unexpected burden on us,“ she said.
The large-heartedness towards Bangladeshi refugees did not last long. Agitations erupted in north-eastern states over settlement of refugees, who had in a decade readied themselves to compete with the locals, creating social friction and employment insecurities.
The burden Indira Gandhi had talked about is enough in the present economic scenario to break the financial backbone of a developing country . Especially so, when refugee influx becomes massive and unending, as was experienced by Turkey and its neighbouring countries. It is one thing to accept refugees temporarily but quite another to recognize their rights. The Supreme Court has stood firm on this.
In Arunachal Pradesh vs Khudiram Chakma [1993 (3) SCR 401], the SC recognized the right to life of Chakma refugees who migrated to Assam from East Pakistan in 1964. In 1966, the Centre drew up a resettlement scheme and rehabilitated them in NEFA, now Arunachal Pradesh.
Later, the state received complaints about Chakmas encroaching on land and indulging in illegal collection of arms and ammunition in contact with militant groups. The state ordered Chakmas to vacate encroached land and move back to their earmarked area. It was challenged in the SC. The SC held that Chakmas had a right to rehabilitation under Article 21. But it said it could not scrutinize the government policy providing the procedure for their rehabilitation.
In National Human Rights Commission vs Arunachal Pradesh [1996 SCC (1) 742], the SC had sternly dealt with the ultimatum given by All Arunachal Pradesh Students Union to the Chakmas to either flee the state or face death.
The SC warned against any threat to life of Chakmas and told Arunachal Pradesh that it was the state's duty and obligation to protect “life and liberty of every human being, be he a citizen or otherwise, and it cannot permit anybody or group of persons, like the AAPSU, to threaten Chakmas to leave the state“.
Will the top courts of other countries emulate our Supreme Court in giving refugees a dignified existence that will help toddlers like Aylan Kurdi dream of a better future?

India gets its first UNCRC chair in Dr Asha Bajpai

Thursday, 27 August 2015 - 8:05am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition

The UNCRC chair holder Prof Asha Bajpai is located in the school of law, rights and constitutional governance, center for law and society, which was set up at the Mumbai Campus in June 2012.

·        

Dr Asha Bajpai from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences has been chosen to hold India's first chair of UNCRC Policy Center. Designed for Universities and Research Centers' work towards the protection and promotion of children's rights, the chair is initiated by "Hope For Children" UNCRC Policy Center, a Humanitarian institution based in Nicosia, Cyprus whose mission is to advocate and to protect children's rights based on the standards and principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and European Union Law.

The UNCRC chair holder Prof Asha Bajpai is located in the school of law, rights and constitutional governance, center for law and society, which was set up at the Mumbai Campus in June 2012. The Centre for Law and Society is conducting a LLM course in access to justice for the marginalised and underprivileged. The course includes a module on legal strategies for empowerment and legislative reform in support of vulnerable groups including children. It has a field action project called The Chunauti (meaning The Challenge) which is involved in rehabilitating and reintegrating mentally challenged orphan children, who were abused. The Centre for Law and Society also runs a Legal Services Clinic to provide legal aid and mediation services to the underprivileged and marginalised. It is involved in teaching and research related to laws and rights of the vulnerable sections of society like children, women, disabled and HIV/AIDS affected, and unorganised labour. The centre is also involved in legislative reform, drafting rules and policies and assisting in Public Interest Litigation related to children.

The chair will act as an agent of knowledge on children's rights within the academic community through policy and practice, by teaching, conducting research and providing services to community, such as specialised courses and training for professionals.

The establishment of the chair of the UNCRC Policy Center seeks to nurture cooperation and collaborative action between organisations and agencies around the world. This is in the hope and expectation that working together would enable more effective implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the enjoyment of children's rights to the fullest extent.

Expressing happiness at the honour Dr Bajpai told dna: "That this is happening in the 25th year of the UNCRC is very special. The General Assembly adopted this convention in 1989. India took till 1992 to ratify it. We have a long way to go in the areas of child malnutrition, trafficking, abuse and adoption laws. I feel this chair will give me the opportunity to amplify these issues more and more at all fora."

Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) is a premier social science institute in Asia with a pan India presence across four networked campuses. It is a deemed university and has a legacy of 77 years of transformative education for addressing critical social issues. TISS has dedicated schools and centres for various disciplines of the development sector. The schools foster a transdisciplinary approach in their teaching methodologies. In addition, centers and field action projects are interlinked with various schools. It currently offers 45 Masters degree programmes, which include integrated MPhil--PhD and direct PhD programmes in a variety of subject areas. TISS has been involved in promoting child rightsin its teaching, research, field action projects and advocacy through its various schools and centres.

Surprising benefits of reading before bed

In today’s social media world where one usually spends time on their phone before going to bed, here are a few important points to keep in mind. This will surely make you ditch the phone and go for a book
We’reall commitment phobes. We scan, we skim, we browse, but rarely do we read. Our eyes ping pong back and forth from Facebook posts to open chat boxes, un clicked emails to GIFs of dancing cats, scanning for keywords but barely digesting what we see. Average time spent on an online article is 15 seconds.
In2014, the Pew Research Center revealed that one-quarter of American adultshadn’t read a single book in the previous year. And that’s a shame because those who read exhibit significantly greater memory and mental abilities at all stages in life. They’re also better public speakers, thinkers and, according to some studies, better people in general.
Cracking open a book before you go to bed could help combat insomnia, too: A 2009 study from researchers at University of Sussex showed that six minutes of reading reduces stress by 68 per cent, thus clearing the mind and readying the body for sleep.
There asoning by psychologist and study author Dr. David Lewis is that a book is“an active engaging of the imagination,” one that “causes you to enter an altered state of consciousness.” It doesn’t matter if your book of choice is by James Patterson or James Joyce, fiction or fact, so long as it you find it fully absorbing. Because when the mind is engaged in a world constructed bywords, tension evaporates and the body relaxes, paving the way for sleep.

Source | AsianAge | 2 September 2015

Book Lovers Dream! AmazonIndia Launches Kindle Unlimited at Rs.199 p.m

For those who do not carry hard copies along, and also don’t want to invest in eBooks at the same time – a service like Kindle Unlimited is too good to be true. Living in a digital world like ours, where users prefer eBook or mobile reading, the service of having an ‘unlimited’ subscription is a sheer boon– also when it comes from a big name like Amazon where one has a plethora of choices to pick from.
Kindle unlimited first came to light when it was unveiled in July 2014. A concept, which let users have their way on the store in the form of an unlimited access to books and audio books with a nominal monthly fee, was a hit in the US.
It was priced at $9.99 per month in the States. Today, it has announced its launch in India at a monthly fee ofRs.199, which is ridiculously low than that in the U.S. It’s a total taker for what it has to offer as once can read about anything under the sun, spanning all genres across literature, fiction, health, productivity, business and economics, biographies, children books and more.
The service is certainly priced that low to attract a wide range of customers, which could be an excellent ploy. In the past, we’ve seen how companies have significantly reduced subscription charges for their services in India compared to a country like the US (Apple Music is a fine example), though it did not gain much, thanks to the piracy market in the country.
Very annoyingly, for a person like me, who reads Chetan Bhagat books to just make fun of the hyped author, Amazon’s starter at the press release states, “Enjoy all of Chetan Bhagat’s works including his latest work Making India Awesome”,oh well, not all Indians are naïve readers, dear Amazon.
However,it even further mentioned that books from some India’s favourite authors like Ashwin Sanghi, Amish Tripathi, Rashmi Bansal, Preeti Shenoy, Robin Sharma andDeepak Chopra would also be available at the app store for free.
Soto know which book falls in the scheme, you need to look out for the Kindle Unlimited logo on eligibletitles and click ‘Read for Free’ on any Kindle device or thefree Kindle app for Android, iOS and more.
Onecan also up for six months for only Rs. 999 (Rs. 195 savings) or 12 months forRs.1799 (Rs.589 savings). From today through September 30th, readers can get their first month of subscription for only Rs.99 by visiting Kindle Unlimited Micro site.
“With Kindle Unlimited, we’re making reading more accessible than ever. For less thanthe average price of one hardcover bestseller, we’ve made the best digital library in the world available to every corner of India,” said Sanjeev Jha,Director, Kindle Content, “Whether you like thrillers, romance novels, Sci-Fior children’s books, with Kindle Unlimited everyone will have the chance to discover not only well-established but also new authors of every genre.”
Kindle Unlimited features include:

- Unlimited reading of over a million of books.
- Exclusives (books found only on Kindle)
- Short reads, which are books of just 100 pages or lesser.
 
Though over one million books are available in the ‘unlimited plan’, there certainly are some drawbacks to look upon. Overseas, it lacked some blockbuster titles, hence it wasn’t the preferred choice for many. Also, there is a high possibility that Amazon India will have a different collection of books thanthe American Kindle store. So if Indians too have complains of missing titles,time will tell.Fornow, we’re going to wait and check out the complete list of books it has onboard before pronouncing verdict! 
Source| http://trak.in/tags/business/

the speaking tree - The Theme Of Parthasarathi Krishna's Life

Shri Shri Anandamurti





What did Krishna's worldly existence signify? He was an embodiment of tremendous karma shakti, energy for service. He was determined to overpower whatever was harmful for humanity by application of his indomitable strength and commanding force, while facilitating the growth of all that was good and helpful. Those of noble intentions who are weak and lack the ability to provide for themselves should be supported and cared for by society . This was the theme of Parthasarathi Krishna's life.Many people remain weighed down by numerous cares and anxieties as well as the lack of the basic necessities of life.Parthasarathi took birth at a critical juncture in the history of human society, towards the end of the Vedic Age, when exploitation had reached its zenith, with opportunists finding ample scope to prey on those weaker. At such a moment could he afford to teach people that all was Maya? That their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters did not really exist? Rather, he expected people to sympathise with the poor and the miserable and help to alleviate their suffering.
Parthasarathi never preached the vairagya message of the mohamudgara. This nihilistic philosophy has made the people of India and Southeast Asia averse to reality and has been the cause of untold misery in their lives. The life of Parthasarathi was the antithesis of this nihilism. He advised people, “Move collectively; look after the welfare of all; develop yourselves in the physical, psychic, and spiritual planes while maintaining proper adjustment among them; follow the dictum, `Varttamanesu vartteta' ­ `Live in the present' ­ meaning that while you engage with your mundane problems collectively, you should direct your minds towards subtler spheres.“
The body you possess in this relative world requires food, water, and so on to maintain its existence, and vital energy in order to function properly. To increase your vital energy you need a suitable quantity of food. If you cannot provide food through your own efforts, then society should do it for you. For this, Dharmarajya, rule of righteousness, must be established, and that is why Parthasarathi devoted his entire time and energy to establish it. His message is, “Do all your mundane duties with utmost sincerity, but keep your mind constantly engaged in the thought of Parama Purusha, the Supreme Entity.“
To make significant progress you must remain in the company of Parama Purusha not just for a fleeting moment, but constantly, round the clock.But if you look upon this world as mithya, then your existence will also be unreal, and then to whom will you turn to for company with your heavy load of unreality? What is the benefit of keeping company with good people only for a moment, if your very existence is negated?
Parthasarathi taught people that this body exists, and vital energy also exists.People should always try to develop the body, mind and vital energy that they have been endowed with, and should always bear in mind that Parthasarathi is always with them. He has continued playing his flute to draw your mind towards the internal world, and he who held the flute also held the sword to promote the greater welfare of humanity.
One who is devoted to Ishvara, who meditates on Parama Purusha with madhura bhava, sweetest intimacy, need not go on a pilgrimage, for he remains constantly with Parama Purusha. Such a person will say: “I am always in Vrindavana, I am never without Hari, the Lord.If you call him, he will respond.“