Lalit Modi outsourced the IPL-2 to South Africa

The second edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is being played in South Africa since April 18, 2009. We bought the series of 59 matches on Willow TV for $79 here in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Every morning bright at 6:00 AM my wife and I are ready to watch the games with a hot cup of bed-tea and our lap-tops. We don’t want to miss even the toss. Are we really the exceptions? We are kind of retired and don’t have to go to office every morning but our regular chores suffer as neither of us is willing to miss any excitement. Most of the days there are 2 matches and the whole excitement would finish around 1:30 pm. The seven and a half minute strategy breaks after every 10 overs were annoying in the beginning but now it has become a welcome relief to refill your cup of tea and take a quick visit to the bathroom! It does not bother us whether the league is being played in India or in South Africa because even if we had to watch in the middle of the night, we would still watch it. So here is the message to Shri Lalit Modi, “you go girl!” Who cares if P Chidambaram was bitching or not? We do not care if ‘India Today’ thinks it was a bad idea. We are all having a lot of fun!

Founding Fathers of Indian Institutes of Technology…

Sir Ardeshir Dalal (member, Viceroy’s Executive Council), Dr Humayun Kabir, Sir Jogendra Singh, Dr B C Roy (Chief Minister of West Bengal), Sir J C Ghosh and Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar were the Founding Fathers of Indian Institutes of Technology in India. The idea of setting up the IITs originated even before India gained independence in 1947. Viceroy Lord Wavell invited Sir Ardeshir Dalal of Tatas to join the Executive Council in June 1944, as Member-in -Charge of Planning and Development. Dalal proposed to establish laboratories in India, to develop science & technology under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). To man these laboratories, he persuaded the US government to offer hundreds of doctoral fellowships under the Technology Cooperation Mission (TCM) program. Ardeshir Dalal was aware that such assistance would be temporary and that India had to learn to develop it’s own technologists. This was the beginning of the concept of the ‘Indian Institute of Technology’, based on the reputed MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) of Boston, USA. Dalal did not live to see his vision fulfilled.

The war on terror needs new direction…

The United States may not have faced a terrorist attack on it’s soil since September 11, 2001, but it faces the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan every day. The war on terror is completely undermined because of the safe sanctuaries available to the terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This is a no win situation for both, Pakistan as well as the United States. Pakistan has no control over these areas, never had. United States would face the same situation that the British faced and failed, all through the last two centuries. These areas are home to the ethnic Pashtuns who are angry with Pakistan and hate Americans. These Pashtuns sympathize with the Talibans, as they are predominantly Pashtuns too. The only way to fight this ‘Taliban Insurgency’ is to rapidly develop all Pashtun occupied areas, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Traditionally, the Pashtuns are kind and largehearted people. For the past few centuries, they became pawns of the ‘Great Powers’ game (Great Briton and Russia) and were thoroughly exploited by Russia, United Kingdom and the United States. The Pashtuns have been poor and insecure for a very long time. It is time that there is a long term “Marshall Plan” for this area and the ‘Pashtun People’. Fighting this menace with sophisticated weapons and high-tech equipment would yield very little. Pakistan may be complicit in some ways but can do virtually nothing to help the Americans. I hope some people in the State Department have brains to understand what I am talking about! These people are not terrorists. Terrorists have infiltrated their societies. Senator Barack Obama is absolutely correct, the focus must shift to Afghanistan.

President Bush is not a bad person at heart, he is being mis-informed and mis-led by the people around him. There are not many Afghan Americans in his administration who could help him better understand these societies. Even if John McCain becomes the next president, he would do the right thing. I have great confidence in either of these two candidates for President of the United States. My hope is that either one would chose a person like Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary of State. Senator McCain must be very careful and not take advise from people like Robert Kagan. This lout, Kagan, is as dumb as a door knob and is very much responsible for the “War on Iraq”. There are plenty of such characters in various ‘Think Tanks’ around Boston, New York and Washington. Please be careful this time.