Farming or Gardening

Women irrigating vegetable field in Sangli [IE].
One hopes it rains soon.

Bhishmapitamaha is 85

Atal Bihari Vajpayee is 85 today

Sucking Up to The Clintons

Lakshmi Mittal made the news in most headlines on Clinton donors by giving over $1millon. Of course Amar Singh, who bought the opposition MPs to keep the incompetent Manmohan government floating for few more months and of course exonirated by self-proclaimed august body of parliment, gave more than a $1millon. One remembers the high profile visit that Bill Clinton made to UP with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh at his flank. There are a few more. Entire list is here.

There is a stronger-than-expected Indian presence in the donor list. In the $1 million to $5 million category --- specific amounts are not mentioned in the list --- three Indian names appear: steel tycoon Laksmi Mittal, wind power company Suzlon Energy and Samajwadi Party politician Amar Singh.

The Confederation of Indian Industry has given between half a million and a million dollars. Ajit Gulabchand of Hindustan Construction and the late hotelier Lalit Suri wrote Clinton cheques of between $250,000 and $500,000 each. Vinod Gupta, NRI businessmen and an old "Friend of Bill" did likewise.

Between $100,000 and $250,000 was the contribution of at least three Indian companies --- Ranbaxy, Reliance Europe and the India Today Group. Also in this category are Lata Krishnan, a California-based technology fund manager and member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), and Mike Patel, former chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association.

Having given the Clinton Foundation between $50,000 and $100,000 are the Hinduja Foundation and New York-based lawyer Bal G Das, who was active in Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) politics in the early 1990s.

Hope Next $1000 Will Be Much Faster

I hadn't looked at Bharatiya macro economic data in a long time. I knew the GDP crossed a $1 trillion sometime last year. But here is some data, I think, that should be celebrated, except for population growth rate.

Annual data 2007(a)
Population (m) 1,130
GDP(US$bn; market exchange rate) 1,132(b)
GDP(US$bn; purchasing power parity) 3,094(b)
GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 1,000
GDP per head (US$; purchasing power parity) 2,740
Population growth (5-year average) 1.7

(a) Economist Intelligence Unit estimates. (b) Actual.
Source: Economist.com Country Briefings

Sure there is a long way to go before poverty is controlled under a manageable 5-10% of population. One hopes the next $1000 GDP per capita will be achieved much much faster, say, in 7 years, if we can hit the real Hindu Rate of Growth of 10%.

I also worry about population growth rate of 1.7 because it is below 2.1 replacement level. To be sure, I don't consider India's populations to be excessive. Silly people (and politicians who get nothing done) blame population for the sins of bad governance and non-management of urban and rural living spaces. If low population was only key to development, African nations with much smaller populations would be highly developed and Japan with a population density larger than Bharat would be poorer. The answer to degraded infrastructure and scare resources is better governance and better management of both, not shrinkage of population. I think the huge land of Bharat can easily sustain a 100 or 150 crore (1-1.5 billion) people. So population growth should be at least at a replacement level to make the country productive and balanced for the foreseeable future.

Quote: How B-G Trophy Was Won

Captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni speaks:

"Ek Chhoti sa baat bolna chahunga. Mahabharat main bola gaya tha ki pakshi jo hoti hai us pakshi ki aankh dekho. Border-Gavaskar trophy jo hai who pakshi ki aankh hai aur hum sirf us par concentrate kar rahe hai and kya strategy se aayegi us par hum zyada concentrate nahi kar rahe hai. (In the Mahabharat, there was a saying which said concentrate on the eye of the bird. Similarly, for us, the Border-Gavaskar trophy is the bird's eye and we are concentrating only on winning it and not on what strategy we are using.)"

General Musharraf Memoir Is, Apparently, Not Unique

In US, beyond the primary session and Obama fawning (okay, love-fest) by the American media, is news of fake memoirs - a Jewish girl living with a pack of wolves after her parents were killed by Nazis and a dope peddled life from South Central LA apparently are fake, but wait, they are reality to memoir writers!!

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Pack of lies: It's been a bad week for memoirists, as two women who published accounts of incredible lives turned out to have lied. Misha Defonseca is not a Holocaust survivor raised by wolves but is actually Monique De Wael, a Belgian Catholic whose parents were indeed murdered by the Nazis. And Margaret Jones—er, Seltzer—did not spend her youth running drugs in South Central but at a private school in the well-off San Fernando Valley.[Slate]

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General Musharraf is not alone in peddling his fictional memoir as fact to everyone - it's the latest "in" thing. While Nitin catagorized General Musharraf's memoir in fiction, here is something to ponder on where to put the fake, but real-to-me (won't that be surreal) memoirs:

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Alex at the Museum of Hoaxes rolls his eyes at Defonseca's dud apologia that "This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving." Alex says: "This excuse is used so often that bookstores might soon have to start separating books into a third category: fiction, non-fiction, and non-fiction in a metaphorical sense."[Slate]

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Happy Half-Republic Shastipurti

At this moment in history, at least half the time we are a republic - with only one dominating national party controlled by Queen Sonia's party. The other still looks to popular vote, and popular interest and welfare.

It's certainly a good omen to have Nano appear at the cusp of the new cycle of the country's life. Hope there are more truly local innovations yet to come, to change people's life, in the next 60-year cycle.

So, Happy Half-Republic Shastipurti!

What Are You, If You Read This Blog?

(via Ajay Shah)

Now When is He Going to Give It All Away

With the booming stock market, chief of Reliance India Ltd, Mukesh Ambani is the latest richest man on the planet.

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New Delhi: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani today became the richest person in the world, surpassing American software czar Bill Gates, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and famous investment guru Warren Buffett, courtesy the bull run in the stock market. Following a strong share price rally today in his three group companies -- India’s most valued firm Reliance Industries, Reliance Petroleum and Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd -- the net worth of Mukesh Ambani rose to $63.2 billion (Rs 2,49,108 crore). In comparison, the net worth of both Gates and Slim is estimated to be slightly lower at around $62.29 billion each, with Slim leading among the two by a narrow margin. Warren Buffett, earlier the third richest in the world, also dropped one position with a net worth of about 56 billion dollars. [PTI - Livemint]

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So when will Mukesh give it all away just like Gates and Buffet are?

Sixty Years of Freedom

Achieved Little with Lack of Cultural Anchor

Shasti purti, ie completing sixty years, is a special year. It symbolizes the end of the cycle of years and the beginning of the new cycle. It marks culmination of a life time in a person's life. I guess in a secularized, anything but our culture, world one will not hear the significance of 60 year cycle in any writings or media - precious metal jubilees matter more now. But still, for some reason, it seems like this year there is lot more introspection about the country then usual - may be because it's a multiple of a decade.

There are some good ones, Sumit Ganguly, and some sore ones, Jaithirath Rao.

While during the past 60 years, sovereign freedom was brilliant with a sovereign flag flying high and there was amazing political freedom with little interruption, economically of the country was in bad shape, socially the country was a bid stable, and, importantly, culturally the country did not have a mooring.

Lack of economic freedom is clear case. Any freedom to start and run a business was throttled crushing at least two generations of economic or personal aspirations, energy, and talent, and created a vast legacy of corruption that is now attributed to being part of culture.

Political freedom is also a clear case. Whether one likes the party that ruled party for most of 60 years (and I don't), there was freedom to form a new political party and contest in elections. The vast majority of the regional parties, the continued existence of communists parties, and rise of BJP were clearly because of this political freedom. It's another matter if these parties performed and people demanded performance from these parties. At least they chose their representatives.

Social freedom or stability was of a more muddle. While caste system was still in place, there was some escape from it, especially for sudras, if one fled to a city. And government helped in it's own bureaucratic and incompetent way. We still have a long way to go on the caste system. But the religious stability- all though there were frequent riots (egged on mostly by the current, apparently, secular Congress I) between various religious groups - the overall situation was stable, although was based on false veneer.

The veneer was a distortion of pre-British history. It was possible to keep the stable veneer as long as the one ideology was in control of the history lessons, the media, and the bureaucracy and there was little independent history research or voices heard. Rise of BJP shattered the veneer. Hence the current appearance of religious and social uneasiness, if not turmoil. As the long the veneer exists, officially anyway, there will be social instability. Only after the country digests it's various layers of history openly will some semblance of social stability return in another state or format. The current version of social instability has a long way to go and has to undergo transformation, hopefully not a violent one, before stability returns.

But the most important aspect, failure, if you will, of the shasti purthi is cultural. Because of the checked history, invasions, adaptations, and colonialism, the country has little cultural moorings. One can identify a broad Hindu or Bharatiya (including Islamic influences) culture, but there is little connection to it for vast majority of people. I am not talking about the religious aspects of the culture, but the social, political, scientific, linguistic, business, and philosophical aspects of culture. There is a huge detachment between an enlightened Bharatiya pre-colonial culture and the current culture. And this gap has, and is, being filled by Euro-centric culture - call it enlightenment, western, white, or colonial culture.

One can easily find quotations that in analysis on independence that Indians started fighting for independence only after absorbing enlightenment ethos of the British and Europe. Of course, this is nonsense. The fight for, and spark for, independence started after the British changed - from being partners in a Bharatiya way of life, like the Mughals did, to becoming colonial white masters and started treating people as slaves. But beyond that example, in every life, post-independence, one doesn't look to pre-colonial Bharatiya culture for reference but to European culture and, increasingly, to American culture. One can easily find a quote from European philosophy or to European historic reference than from Bharatiya philosophy or to historic references when reading an article in a newspaper or magazine. Most college educated can quote Aristotle or Shakespeare or Kipling rather than Vyasa Maharishi or Kalidasa or Sardar Patel.

Being closed to the world for sixty years under socialism and self sufficiency ideology disallowed most Indians to find their cultural moorings. The sixty years were a precious loss because the world was more distant place then. Now with globalization, the influence of the west is in everybody's face all the time. It's hard to find a culture mooring that is any different from the west, ie based on European enlightenment. But unless we can make that culture connection to the pre-colonial enlightened Bharatiya era, our society will be destined to be culturally second-class and will always be at the receiving end from the west. I look to pre-colonial enlightened Bharatiya era not because it was a golden age, but because we have to pick up our moral and culture center, from where we left off, to continue to evolve and improve culturally and solve our unique social and political problems. We'll never make clear break from our past to take the western enlightenment, because it was not our experience or historic baggage, but unless we make that connection back to our historic past, we would always be in our current muddled state of politics with a corrupt way of life and amoral anchor.

Becoming a rich nation from a growing economy and higher per capita will ultimately do little to finding our own cultural moorings. But an open, confident, and a rich society may have chance to pick up the historic pieces and enable the engendering of a proud civilization with it's own cultural center. That really was the real tragedy, the missed opportunity, of the first shasti purti of a newly free, but a closed socialistic, country.

Happy Independence Day. Enjoy the existing freedoms and work for new ones.

Related: Atanu Dey provides an excellent quote from Sri Aurobindo, who was born on August 15th too, at IEB. Also read the quote in Chaitanya's comment.

One Wonders, What Does Media Drink?

This in Indian Express Editorial yesterday:

Left parties have, justifiably, prided themselves on two attributes: probity in public life and a secular, modern outlook that takes a particularly dim view of public religiosity.... All this may have been par for the course in parties far less scrupulous about their normative parameters. But for the comrades brought up on a diet of Marxian strictures against religion, it is important to be seen influencing the somewhat shambolic polity, given to capitalist corruption and irrational forces, for the better. [IE]

You have to wonder, what does our media drink?

Finally Some Bharat Rail Toilet Etiquette

Not just bathrooms, tracks and stations won't stink either

My pet peeve about traveling by rail has always been the toilets. Stations stink because the tracks are used as sewers. Toilets themselves stink because of poor design. But that may change soon.

Bharat Rail launched a pilot project to take the stink out from railway toilets using bio-septic tanks. Instead of using the usual septic tank system, like most railways in the world do, that is used to collect waste, which is later pumped out to be treated in a waste treatment plant, Indian Railways is trying a new approach.

The pilot project is being implemented on one of the 25 carriages of the Prayag Raj Express by the Railways’ Research, Design & Standardisation Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with Microphor of US, and Aikon Technology of India. The waste is collected in a stainless steel tank divided into two sections. The first contains a patented man-made bacterial culture that breaks down wastes by enzyme action. The resulting liquid — mostly water, and entirely free of pathogens — is led into the second section where it is purified by chlorine and other chemicals before dispersal. A flap valve in the commode prevents the odour generated during the process from reaching the toilet and inconveniencing users. The only undesirable by-product is some methane gas, but the amount is negligible in comparison to that generated by normal degradation of wastes. But the toilets don’t come cheap. Installing four such toilets in each carriage costs Rs 8 lakh and and annual maintenance for each coach works out to Rs 2 lakh. Contracts have been awarded to Microphor and Aikon Technologies to install 80 such toilets. “Results have been good so far,” said Northern Railway spokesman Rajiv Saxena, adding that another spinoff was less corrosion of tracks, which could mean lower track maintenance bills. Shriti Shukla, co-ordinator in India for the World Wildlife Fund’s climate change and energy programme, said, “Since we have one of the largest railway networks in the country, this environment-friendly idea will help. It will also improve lives of people whose homes are next to railway tracks.”[IE]

You can say the last bit again. Hope the project is rolled out nationally fast to clean up railway air at the earliest.

They Would Be Some Lucky Pilots

Meanwhile, some lucky air force pilots, who either recently joined or will soon join IAF, and probably all men, will get to see moon, up close and personal.

India is examining the feasibility of launching a manned mission to the moon by 2020, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Thursday. Such a mission could cost more than Rs 10,000 crore and a feasibility report was being prepared on the proposal, Nair said...[IE]

The time-line would probably depend on the success of Chandrayaan scheduled for next year.

Aside: H1B Office website - Googlebomb

Fighting a Googlebomb

Anthony's Mirror found a Google bomb for the search string "H1B Official Website" on Google search. Helping to diffuse the bomb and giving a boost to Google search engine results:

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis
http://www.h1b1.com/welcome.htm
http://www.infinitilaw.com/h1bquotacount.html

INI Launchs Pragati - A Blog Magazine

Indian National Interest has launched Pragati on April 1, 2007. This blog magazine, first of its kind in the nation, I think, is a publication of blog articles/commendatory about issues facing the nation without idealogical bias.

It is available for distribution is various formats - pdf, hard copy, email, as well as on internet, mainly because most people in India may not have access to internet blogs. The idea is to reach as many people as possible to explore issues generally ignored, or from a different point of view, in our national print and television news media.

Here is part of the editorial:

This first issue of Pragati expresses several of the themes that we care about dearly: economic freedom, realism in international relations, open society, a culture of tolerance and an emphasis on good governance. The environment, poverty eradication and rural development have long been appropriated by vested ideological and political interests, over which they have come to assert an exclusivity of sorts. We challenge these claims of intellectual monopoly: Pragati will deal with these issues with the seriousness they demand.

Here is the first issue.Enjoy.

Four Facets of Bharatiya Intellectuals

I am sure the intellectuals that we're talking about here won't liked to be called Bharatiya intellectuals - Indian intellectuals would be more apt. More on that below.

Peter deSouza offers an excellent dissection of the intellectual life in India, taking forward Pratap Bhanu Mehta's absolute ripping of left wing intellectuals. (Rohit blog on Mehta's article at Retributions.)

Because intellectuals are almost left wingers in India - those that occupy the chair, head , or dean positions in all the better known universities nationwide, the practices here are about them. And, according to Peter, they are four categories:

The first is the ‘if you are not with us then you are against us’, or what can be provocatively called the ‘camp follower’ syndrome, which divides the world of ideas into distinct camps — black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. Each side is infused with missionary zeal and its sole purpose is to vanquish the other, the enemy. All means are legitimate in this battle... This is the defining practice of the Left intellectuals in India and so, while it may have opened up many and valuable new vistas of understanding, it has no patience with dissent or intellectual openness.

I think the intellectual hollowness of Indian intellectuals become apparent here - yes, they are on par with George Bush. They have all the right answers. But in case they don't, it's not appropriate to bring up the right answer, at least not now -

The second is what can be referred to as ‘the moment is not opportune’ syndrome where critical comment, asking inconvenient questions, and challenging established orthodoxies, are to be avoided since it will aid the enemy. Let me call this the ‘strategist syndrome’, where truth is trumped by a strategic calculus. The truth can be dangerous. It can be misused. Timing, here, is important. The inconvenient data, the necessary product of any intellectual enquiry, must be kept out of the public domain lest it strengthen the campaign of the other side. So while US imperialism in Iraq must be rightfully condemned, one must be silent about Baathist tyranny, and while Hindu majoritarianism in India must be rightfully opposed one must say little about Muslim fundamentalism.

We could see this in the derision of the intellectuals during Bush's visit to India in March '06. But this relates to the forth point. Peter gives Khushwant Singh a pass at this point which I think is unwarranted because, even though his stance during violence in Punjab is highly commendable, lately he has become an undeniable caricature of left wing intellectualism with his nostalgia for the heydays of India's socialism and statism - just like his brethren. But first the third category:

The third is what can be called the ‘comprador syndrome’ according to which Indian intellectuals adopt a different disposition when dealing with overseas academic institutions than they do in India. They make time, write papers on short notice, mentor young scholars, adjust curiosities to suit the projects of these institutions. This is particularly galling since the same intellectuals will not devote time to their own students, will decline seminar invitations from Indian institutions, will be more harsh and critical in their response to papers of local scholars than they are with overseas scholars, and will join research projects with overseas institutions on terms which are blatantly asymmetrical. Here truth is trumped by glamour. C’est la vie, monsieur.

Need I say more? Anyone who went to college or watched a media debate on culture would know this. And finally:

The fourth is the ‘poverty of imagination’ syndrome where intellectuals adopt an idiom and participate in a discourse which is fashionable in the West ignoring all the while the local and the vernacular. That it is imitative has been said before. It is charged with having no engagement with the social and cultural imaginary of India. This is indeed a pity because India is perhaps one of the most fertile fields for social science scholarship. You can work on local level issues that are multi-dimensional and you can be absorbed in issues that have civilisational scope. For example, it is unfortunate that we have not done to our epics what the West has done to theirs. If Ulysses Unbound can be the title of a book by Jon Elster, which can look philosophically at the issue of rationality, pre-commitment and constraints, would it not be fascinating to have a book titled Yudhisthir’s little lie: Why the chariot dropped only by six inches to look at the issue of political truth. But unfortunately we still do not have the intellectual culture to support such scholarship.

This affliction in social and culture areas is widespread and increasing. Peter refers to intellectuals historically.

But, now, it's not just the intellectuals, in their high chairs separated from normal Indian life, but everyone is lining up. Seeing gowns worn by Hindi movie stars to award shows while they imitate their Hollywood counterparts in mannerisms (absurdity of the utter artificiality of imitation is laughable), or reading about one's perception of what enjoying life is all about, or reading argument for national priorities based on social needs and capabilities of other societies makes me wonder will we be ever able to keep, nurture, grow, and advance our own culture or is our culture on the path to extinction taken over by the utterly monotonously boring largely western culture.

(Peter's analysis on why India has maintained democracy while our neighbours haven't, while I don't agree completely with it, is well worth reading.)

It's Also The Intense Pressure

Yes, it was the fielding, it was the batting, it was the format, and the coaching, but, primarily, it was also the intense pressure. From everyone and everything.

Anyone who ever went to an interview or took an intense time-constrained exam knows the feeling. You prepare really hard for that exam or for that interview with a company that you really want to work for - and create intense pressure on yourself. But once you start making mistakes early on, those first two or three questions, or start babbling in that interview, most people just loose it and give up. If you went in there with lower expectations or with a I have nothing to lose attitude, you may recover from those unanswerable early questions and go on to complete the rest of exam or the interview. But with intense pressure irrationality takes over and most don't recover.

That's what Indian cricket team went through, especially in the third match, the game with Sri Lanka. As a batting team, they kept it up until 15-17 overs but broke down completely under pressure of high expectations and can't lose this cup attitude. None of top players have the cup and all of them will be gone in four more years. With no time to relax, just as in high pressure exam or interview, there was just no chance of recovery, once the fumbles started. It's not the same as weakness or blinking first. Nor does experience from normal cricket matches help. World cup is just not another game, not for us anyway. The hysterical pressure took away any appetite for risk; perfection was only option. As Vivian Richards says it takes mental strength to fight back in a match, but that's not the only burden these guys were carrying.

As Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara says, from his first hand experience with the team, in his wonderful review of the match that India lost :

Of course, when you prepare for key games like last Friday you don't think about such things. We would have stayed in the tournament even if we had lost, but we were determined to claim the two extra points. There was no doubt in our minds that we would win the game. We were completely focused. The same cannot be said about India's players. I thought our body language, right from the warm-ups to the conclusion, told the story. We were up for it, positive and very upbeat. India's players looked under pressure and their body language betrayed their edginess. This is completely understandable, of course, because they were under an incredible amount of pressure. [I feel sorry for India's cricketers - Circinfo]

A former fan - CricInfo

I am sure players from other countries are envious of the earning power and celebrity status of Indian players, but, I am also sure they don't envy the extreme pressure that the players have to play under. Yes, support for the team is important for the moral of the team, but hysterical pressure to win is unwise and, ultimately, backfired. The entire media which now preaches that it's just a game, after the exit, could have helped lay off some of the pressure with, "we support you but it's just a game," attitude before the games began.

Unfortunately the whole cycle is already well placed to repeat in four more years.

Update: Ajay Shanker, in IE, has background analysis of the relationship between coach Chappell and the players.

As for the senior players, at least one of them was not very enthused by the bookish” captaincy of Dravid, but stressed that the team would rally behind him in this time of crisis. And both made their disgust at the coach’s methods very clear - they blamed the Aussie for repeatedly leaking team plans and his opinion on various players to the media; they said this finally led to an atmosphere of divisiveness within the side. “He played around with our minds,” said one of them. [How the war was lost before India began its first World Cup battle - Ajay Shanker]

Can a foreign coach think the way Indian players do and even understand Indian cultural physcology on what motivates them, when to apply pressure, and when to back off?

If Doordarshan had Won the World Cup Bid...!

"Over a week after the World Cup began, Doordarshan is yet to send a team to the West Indies.

Admitting this at a press conference here on Thursday, Prasar Bharati Chief Executive Officer B.S. Lalli, however, refused to divulge details as to why a team had not been sent till date.

Awaiting clearances

But, he did indicate that a team was to have been sent and that the public broadcaster was awaiting clearances." [The Hindu] :) Dumb bureaucrats.

Nehru's Foreign Policy in a Sentence

We are told Jawaharlal Nehru, our first prime minister, was a worldly man. He knew the vast history of India expressed in his Discovery of India. He understood the secular nature of our nation. He understood our neighbourhood. And he understood the importance of technology in a modern nation - the five IITs and government-owned monster steel and power plants are a testimony of his superior intellect. Sure he lost a war to China and let Pakistan keep occupied Jammu & Kashmir. But the general conclusion is, overall, his near two decades in power, leading a young nation, was positive force.

After reading one episode in a recent book on the history of Indian foreign policy, I am not so sure. Thirty years before P.V. Narashima Rao's Look East Policy, Badruddin Tyabji, an IFS senior policy adviser to Nehru, proposed, in early 1961, in a meeting with Indian ambassadors posted to Southeast Asian countries, that India needs to create and nurture close relations with Southeast Asian countries. Historians and linguists have known for centuries about the close cultural and trade ties between former Indo-China region and India. And one would expect it to be natural that India pursue close ties with this region.

But Nehru's unbending closeness to Soviet Union, which he developed while living in an Utopian socialism period in England, early in his life, had a peremptory response, "Do you gentlemen want India to become friendly with Coca Cola governments?" Thus single handedly killing any initiation of significant diplomatic contacts with Southeast Asian countries making India blind to the amazing rise of Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and others from poor deprecate nations to rich to middle-income nations.

The significance of Nehru was not in his actions, while important at the time and now, but the precedents he set: 17 years in unquestioned power (by contrast, George Washington run for two terms, for a total of eight years, as US president, about 200 years prior, and was well aware of any precedent he was setting as a leader of a new country) , path to economic socialism, non-response to Pakistani and Chinese aggression, and much more. We are, more than 40 years after his death, still unable to get out from under his shadow.

Only Call Received by One Victim’s Family

Apparently Pak ministers and babus are more interested in telling us what to do than consoling their own. Only call received by the family of one of the victim of Samjhauta Express was from Indian Consulate. Apparently our much maligned MEA comes through, again, to help people in distress, as during Lebanon war. A neighbour of that family writes to Dawn:

According to him, his relatives are still with the charred bodies waiting to return to Pakistan.

Despite ringing the helplines and contacting the relevant offices, he says he has not received a single call in reply. The only call he received was from the Indian high commissioner’s office to condole the death of his relatives.[Dawn]

Via TOI