varnam

The Government policies for opening retail stores in India are restrictive and only single-brand retail stores are currently allowed. Due to this, companies like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco have been trying to get into partnerships with Indian companies to tap into the market. Most of India's retail sector is family run and politicians fear that a Wal-Mart could shut down these Mom & Pop stores.

These politicians under estimate the trading skills of Indians and believe that we are not capable of dealing with home grown competition. Two months back Wal-Mart got out of South Korea and this week out of Germany. The company, it seems was not able to generate profits after operating 85 stores for eight years in Germany

German shoppers are accustomed to buying merchandise strictly based on price, German retail consultants say. They are willing to buy laundry detergent at one store and then go to another to get a better price on paper towels. That behavior is called "basket splitting." It is the antithesis of what American shoppers like: one-stop shopping. A big plank of Wal-Mart's strategy in the U.S. and elsewhere is getting shoppers to turn to it for an increasingly wide array of goods.[With Profits Elusive, Wal-Mart to Exit Germany (subscription reqd.)]

It was last year in October that the Paul Volker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman released his report on the Iraqi Oil for Food programme. The report mentioned Natwar Singh, the Congress Party, and Bhim Singh as "non-contractual beneficiaries". The Iraqis had bribed political parties and people in position to influence their opinion.

When the report came out Natwar Singh immediately called it baseless. After that, just to prove that he genuinely had lost his marbles, he suggested that Paul Volker had political designs and was targeting opponents of the war. He also wanted to know why an American was appointed to investigate and not a person from a developing country. The Communists who are always in the race to show they are the benchmark when it comes to stupid statements contributed the gem that all this was due to the liberalization of the economy. Natwar Singh, then went so far, like George Galloway to suggest that he has no idea how a barrel of oil looks like.

It did not matter to these people that Table III in the report listed Americans, British, Italian and Spanish nationals (all from countries who made up the Coalition forces)  accused of similar crime. Since we don't trust Americans, a Committe was appointed to investigate the matter. Now the Justice Pathak Committee has found Natwar Singh and his son Jagat Singh guilty.

Andaleeb Sehgal, a friend of Jagat Singh, and Aditya Khanna, a relative of Natwar Singh, are understood to have received financial payoffs in the deal by getting oil coupons based on the letters of recommendation given by Natwar Singh.

The authority has found that Natwar and his son had misused their position in helping Sehgal and Khanna bag three oil contracts from the UN sanctioned Saddam regime.

Sehgal and Khanna, in turn, passed the contracts on to Swiss oil company Masefield AG which drew the oil and paid them a commission, the report says, adding that on a cut of five cents a barrel, Sehgal and Khanna received a total commission of $1,46,000, which they divided between themselves in a ratio of 4:1. [Natwar Singh, son indicted in oil-for-food scam

Google Calendar, besides having cool Ajax features like click and add, drag and drop also allows you to share your calendar with others. You can create a calendar for your local cricket team schedule, another one for  your Java Users Group and share it with the people involved. You can also import global calendars like the list of Indian Holidays and the Wimbledon schedule and view it alongside your personal calendar. These features are quite easy to use and one group which could benefit from this is the monkey brigade of the Kerala Communists (Official Motto: Taking Kerala back to Parasurama's time).

Recently members of DYFI, protesting against the recent hike in fuel prices decided to block trains. There was one problem though.

The young comrades of the DYFI here were not lucky enough to squat before a moving train that chugged on to the railway station.

Reason: their fellow agitators in other parts of Malabar had already detained a few trains in various stations. As a result, the DYFI activists in Kozhikode had to agitate in front of a stationary passenger train, shunted to the yard.[The not so lucky comrades]

Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj was covering the war between Israel and Hezbollah and took a photograph of an Israeli air strike on a Beiruit neighborhood. Somehow Adnan felt that the image was not good enough and he embellished it to make more darker smokes arising from it. He also added some extra buildings for more impact. Unfortunately for Adnan, his little trick was discovered by Charles Johnson of the blog  Little Green Footballs and now Reuters has admitted to the crime and has withdrawn all 920 images taken by him.

Another photograph by Adnan Hajj has also been found to be doctored. The photo shows an Israeli F-16 firing three missiles (according to the Reuters caption), which in fact turned out to be an F-16 firing one flare. The two other flares in the image are copies of the first one.
Soon after the draft of the Franco-American draft for a UN Security Council resolution was released, Reuters came out with an alert saying that the Lebanese had rejected the draft. Turns out the article was based on the comment of a single pro-Syrian, Hezbollah ally by the name of Nabih Berri.

All these incidents makes you wonder why Reuters is so bent on fanning this war and where their priorities lie.

Lab tests done by The Centre for Science and Environment in India have found large amounts of pesticides in various soft drinks.

The 2006 CSE study tests 57 samples of 11 soft drink brands, from 25 different manufacturing plants of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, spread over 12 states. The study finds pesticide residues in all samples; it finds a cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides in all samples �?? on an average 24 times higher than BIS norms, which have been finalised but not yet notified. The levels in some samples �?? for instance, Coca-Cola bought in Kolkata �?? exceeded the BIS standards by 140 times for the deadly pesticide Lindane. Similarly, a Coca-Cola sample manufactured in Thane contained the neurotoxin Chlorpyrifos, 200 times the standard. �??This is clearly unacceptable as we know that pesticides are tiny toxins and impact our bodies over time,�?� says Sunita Narain, director, CSE. [Soft Drinks Still Unsafe]

How the pesticides enter the drinks remains unclear. Indian farmers have used pesticides intensively for decades and there are detectable quantities of pesticide chemicals in the ground water, which enter many food products on sale. India has introduced guidelines for what are acceptable levels of pesticides for most products, but has yet to implement legislation regulating the soft drink industry.[Indian states restrict Coke and Pepsi sales]

Update Arjun Swarup writes(via IndiaUncut):

One also needs to examine where the adulteration is coming from. The common perception is that the contamination is at the ground water level, and the colas are contaminated, albeit very minutely, due to the water content. However, this is far from the truth. Both Pepsi and Coke�??s bottled water products, Aquafina and Kinley have not been found to contain pesticide. The pesticide content is due to the sugar, which is contaminated, like virtually every other agricultural product.

There is still a large variance between the results quoted by the CSE and those by the manufacturers. And this is something that is a reality, the same sample tested by different labs using the same method of analysis can give you differing results. And you�??d have to be very cynical to believe that these companies are intentionally poisoning us, for profit at that! And why have they chosen only soft drinks to target, why not bottled water too? The answer, of course, is obvious; it's far easier a target to tarnish.

Between 200 BCE and 600 CE people of the Nazca culture created gigantic geoglyphs in the the Peruvian desert of the same name. Such geoglyphs have been found around the world from California to Chile, but the Nazca ones are the largest and the most densely packed. The images drawn range from simple lines to monkeys and humming birds. It was as if the Peruvians had a giant Doodle-Pro. You don't understand what the lines mean unless you are high up in the air and there are various theories on why they drew the images.

The BBC has a report (via Anand) on the discovery of a giant Roman numeral VI on a hillock in Kutch, Gujarat with a speculative title connecting it to Peru.

The feature has evoked the curiosity of archaeologists because such signs have mostly been observed so far in Peru. The team, led by Dr RV Karanth, a former professor of geology at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat, has been involved in a palaeoseismological study of the Kutch region for the past 11 years.

The Kutch region is host to several archaeological findings belonging to the Harappan civilisation (3000-1500 BC).This has led to the speculation that this feature could be related to the Harappan civilisation.Dr Karanth clarifies that it is too early to arrive at any conclusion.

"It could be a manmade feature or may have been formed naturally due to erosion of the hill slope along a fracture formed by the movement of earth's crust," he says.

"However structures formed naturally due to erosion generally tend to be parallel to each other. But here, all three arms are in different directions. Besides, all the ditches are almost uniformly wide and deep." [Peru link to Indian archaeological find]

Fresh Air, one of the best talk shows on Public Radio had an interview with a British Diplomat Rory Stewart. At the  age of 30 he was appointed as the a provincial governor of some 850,000 people in Maysān in Iraq. Before this he had served as a British Infantry officer and had walked from Turkey to Bangladesh in 2002 through post-Taliban Afghanistan. He has written two books, The Places in Between based on his walk and The Prince of the Marshes based on his experience in Iraq.

According to him, the current problems are not due to bad planning as there was no way all this could have been anticipated. Even with all the planning, Iraq would have been a mess since it is difficult to govern a place if people do not want you there. The lesson he learned was that you have to think a lot before invading a place. He still sees a bright future for Iraq, if the westerners stop micro managing.

He had an anecdote about his time in Iraq. The province of Dhī Qār was under Italian control and had more peace  than the other provinces. Though not for the best of reasons, the Italians never left their bases and did almost nothing. The Italians did not confront the armed militia or influence the political process. Due to this, the local politicians were forced to find their own compromises resulting in stability. The idea is that the compromises reached between Iraqis among themselves is better than the ones enforced by the external forces.

A very interesting person and an excellent interview.

Arjun has more updates from Kishore Asthana on Cola banning and CSE, the lab which did the tests. According to his analysis Colas are some of the safest things to drink in India  compared to eggs, tea, rice, apples, milk, lassi and rabdi.

If someone tells you that if you drink one cup of tea, it will give you as much pesticide as 394 cups of cola, which one do you think would be the safer beverage? And are we focusing on tea? On eggs? On fruit or milk? No. CSE and our Parliament is busy trashing the drink which has the least amount of pesticide amongst all the things we consume. This is reason enough for us to put on our Sanity & Balance cape and jump into the fray.

To the best of our understanding, there are only about 20 laboratories accredited by the National Accreditation Board to undertake tests. The CSE Lab did not have this NAB accreditation three years back and does not appear to have it now. When we personally asked Ms. Sunita Narain about NAB accreditation after the NDTV program yesterday they tried to divert us by saying that they have ISO 9000 accreditation. Even a travel agency can get ISO 9000 accreditation and it does not qualify them as a certified laboratory.

Dr. Khandal, the highly reputed Director of the Sri Ram Laboratories has, in a TV interview categorically said that the equipment used at CSE cannot measure the level of Malathion which CSE claims to have measured with it. He also said that these results had not been re-validated by doing other tests, as was the norm. As such, the tests were not to be taken at face value.

Dr. Khandal then said that CSE have mentioned that they have used U.S. EPA protocols to test Colas. He pointed out that EPA has no protocols for Colas. They only have a protocol to test water. He said that if CSE has used this protocol to measure the pesticides in Colas then it is erronious, as the matrix of the test sample changes with the addition of the other ingredients and the protocol for testing water cannot be used for testing Colas

In an NDTV program yesterday, Ms. Narain said that the sample size of foreign Colas tested by CSE was just 2 bottles. As the scientists on the panel pointed out, on this basis she is not really qualified to make any comments at all about pesticides in foreign Colas vis a vis Indian Colas. Any good High School science student can tell you that the sample of two bottles is not a meaningful sample size, but CSE has no hesitation in announcing their comparison based on an analysis of a mere two bottles. [Cola Con]

Thanks to some brilliant intelligence work by the British, a mass murder by about 20 British Nationals and the masterminds in Pakistan has been averted. A plot in an advance stage to bomb planes bound for United States was almost weeks away from execution.

President Bush usually tells in his speeches that there are no Indians in Al-Qaeda since India has an excellent system of democracy to address grievances. If this were true, then there should absolutely be no terrorist activity in Britain which has a mature democracy than India. Sadly Britian fell into the trap of political correctness resulting in tolerance for radical preachers like Omar Bakri Mohammed. According to experts, London hosts more radical Islamic groups, cells and leaders than any other European capital and hence it is easy to influence youngsters to become suicide bombers.

Britain  learned the hard way that political correctness can result in death. Omar Bakri Mohammed moved to Lebanon and was banned from coming back to London so that he could not spread his hatred. (When the Israeli bombs started falling around him, instead of joining the suicide bombers he cheered, he asked the British Government to airlift him to safety). British authorities also tracked phone calls and wire transfers of these Islamic terrorists and had an undercover operative on the inside.

It has been shown again and again radical preachers can convert ordinary people to terrorists and it is important to take firm action against such activities.  On February 14th, 1998, before L K Advani was to arrive in Coimbatore, there were serial blasts and 58 innocent people lost their lives. The mastermind behind the attacks, Abdul Nasser Madani, was arrested and jailed. Kerala Assembly, at a special session on Holi, passed a unanimous resolution calling for freeing Madani on parole on humanitarian grounds. Aren't there other sick prisoners in various jails? Why is the assembly only concerned with Madani?

When the Home Ministry concluded recently that SIMI provided logical support for the Mumbai blasts, Mulayam Singh Yadav stated that it would be improper to call SIMI a terrorist organization. The DMK Government, two weeks after it was sworn in ordered that cases against twelve Muslim fundamentalists be dropped.

“Obviously, the accused committed the offence with the grave intention to create law and order problems and disrupt peace in Tirunelveli district, known to be communally sensitive. Also, all of them have links with Muslim fundamentalist outfits. The government should have allowed the law to take its natural course. For a new government to resort to such a move is rather demoralising for the police force,” said a senior police officer in Tirunelveli. [DMK govt ordered six cases dropped against Muslim hardliners in TN]

On June 17th, 1806, Mustafa Beg, a sepoy with the Madras Infantry in Vellore Fort in Tamil Nadu told his commanders that a revolt was being planned. This allegation was investigated by his superiors, but they did not find any truth to it and he was imprisoned. What Mustafa Beg was betraying was a military revolt against the British in India which happened  half a century before the more famous 1857 mutiny.

The Madras Army of the British East India Company came into existence to protect the Company's commercial interests. They were mostly untrained guards with only some bearing arms. They were combined into battalions with Indian officers commanding local troops and the Madras Army had made a name for itself in the battle of Wandiwash in 1760 and  under Clive in the battle of Plassey.

In 1799, in the Battle of Seringapattanam, led by Arthur Wellesley, who later defeated Napolean in the Battle of Waterloo, Tipu Sultan was killed. Tipu Sultan's two sons were held in British Custody in Vellore Fort, the same fort which was captured by Shivaji in the 17th century during his attacks on the Bijapur possessions.

In November 1805, the British ordered a change in the head dress of the sepoys from the turban to a round hat. Besides this, the British also ordered the removal of beards which had religious significance, face-paintings, and jewelery which had caste significance. Even though the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Craddock advised the Governor of Madras, Bentick, to cancel the order, he refused. The round hats were synonymous with Christians and the sepoys saw this as an affront to their religion. The sons and retainers of Tipu used this reason to raise the revolt.
 
On July 10th at 3  a.m, the 1500 strong Indian garrison at Vellore broke in revolt. The sepoys massacred officers, the sick in hospitals  and fired into European barracks. About a hundred of the three hundred and fifty British on garrison duty were killed and by 10 am, the fort was under Indian control. In the confusion Mustafa Beg escaped from  prison. An officer who was outside the fort went to the nearest military post in Arcot for help and the I9th Light Dragoons, commanded by Sir Rollo Gillespie rushed with a relief force.

They blew a hole in the gates with their galloper guns and deployed the cavalry. The massacre of the sick had made the British mad with anger that they spared no one. About 100 sepoys who took refuge in the palace were placed against a wall and blasted with canister shot. John Blakiston, an engineer in the army recalled that he could watch the scene with composure since it was an act of summary justice. According to him, due to the nature of combat in India, civilized conventions of European warfare did not apply. The revolt was quelled and the fort came back under British control.

Following this incident, the British started recruiting sepoys from Bengal, Bihar and the United Provinces.  The flogging of soldiers which was common was also abolished. Governor Bentick was recalled and new rules prohibiting the tampering of customs and traditions of the sepoys were issued. Still it led to the incident of 1857, in which the Madras Army did not revolt.  Mustafa Beg later reported for duty and was given a monetary reward and a subedar's pension.

In fact this was not the first revolt. On the eve of Baksar, the Company's Indian Sepoys refused order and were horribly executed by Hector Munro. Also during the Burmese, Sindh and Punjab wars, sepoys staged mutinies when denied compensation for the loss of caste while serving 'overseas'.[1]. Still the 1857 mutiny is more famous as the fire set by it, spread to other Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Jhansi, Delhi, Bareilly, Arrah and Jadishpur, while the other mutinies were very localized.

References: The First Mutiny, India: a history by John Keay

Creation: A Novel by Gore Vidal , Doubleday, 592 pages

Sometime in the 5th century BCE, the Persian Emperor Darius summons Cyrus Spitama,  a friend of his son Xerxes, and grandson of Zoroaster and commands him to be his envoy to India. At that time Persia was the superpower in the world and Darius had an empire extending from Turkey in the West to Bactria in the East.

The Greek Wars were going on and the Persian Emperor needed money to pay for the work he was doing in Persepolis and for the defense of the northern frontier. Darius wanted Cyrus to  make trade alliances, analyze the nature of Indian states and make plans to add all of India to the Persian empire. He had heard that India had lot of iron and wanted to control the mines to make his fortune. He also had got a message from King Bimbisara of Magadha for a trade alliance.

Thus Cyrus starts his journey on a ship from the delta of Tigris and Euphrates to the port of Patalene (somewhere in present day Sindh). Cyrus was a good choice as the ambassador for he knew Mathematics and had the ability to learn new languages. He was a seven year old child in Bactria with Zoroaster when Turanians murdered  the founder of Zoroastrianism. Since Darius was a follower of Zoroastrianism, Cyrus was treated with respect in his palace.

Besides having an interest in traveling, Cyrus was also concerned about the moment of creation. According to Zoroaster, the Wise Lord created an evil twin Ahriman. Once people are dead, the soul would cross the bridge of the redeemer and those who have followed Truth would go to the house of good mind and happiness and those who followed Ahriman would go to the house of Lie and suffer torment. The question then was why did the Wise Lord create evil? Why didn't he create a blissful world full of just happiness? Cyrus meets some very interesting personalities of the Axial age like, Buddha, Mahavira, Gosala, and Confucius to debate these issues.

Cyrus passes through Mathura where he meets Gosala, a leader of a group of Ajivikas. Gosala tells him that living a virtuous life does not speed up freedom from rebirths and one has to live the cycle of life from beginning to end. Cyrus moves to Varanasi where he meets Mahavira (a short thick man with a high compelling voice). According to him the cycles of creation ends and begins again and since this goes on without any ending, it has no beginning as well. Mahavira and Gosala had been like brothers and later they parted ways.

Patrix has a list of tools he uses for blogging. Once upon a time I used to use w.bloggar for composing my entries, but after starting to use multiple computers I gave up on installed software like Performancing. If you use multiple computers, then it might be worthwhile to look at Web Based editors and currently the one I am testing is Writley from Google.

While Bill Gates says that Wordpad has more features than Writley, it only means that he has never used it. Writley allows me to write articles as if I am in an HTML Editor, saves the document automatically every few seconds, and allows me to edit the HTML directly. It also has the ability to post directly to your blog. If you run a blog with multiple authors then Writley allows you collaborate on a document. It allows multiple authors to modify the same document in real time. You can have many versions of the document and revert back to a previous version or compare two versions.

Besides blogging, Writley can be used for storing your documents online. You can covert from Writley to doc, pdf and open office format. Writley, which is free,  is now open for new registrations

When The Da Vinci Code was about to be released in India,  some Christian organizations made a big fuss about it. Concerned about the consequences, the  some states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Meghalaya and Nagaland  banned the movie even though it was cleared by the censor board. Later the High Court of Andra Pradesh gave a well deserved lecture to the Government of YSR Reddy saying that "The Constitution does not confer or tolerate such individualized hyper-sensitive private censor intrusion into and regulation of guaranteed freedom of others". The Chennai High Court said that it would be dangerous to allow the State to straitjacket the right to freedom of expression.

Due to the intervention by the courts, the movie was released. Kerala did not join this madness and allowed the movie to be released and it did very well. Newton's third law states that if you don't have a knee jerk reaction for one controversy, you can always do it for another.

When an NGO lab came up with test results that 11 soft drink brands had pesticide residues more than permissible limits by BIS standards, Kerala State Govt. banned the production and selling of Coke and Pepsi. In a strange twist the other nine brands (Pepsi Caffechino, Mountain Dew, Mirinda Orange, Mirinda Lemon, Duke Lemonade, 7 Up, Thums Up, Limca and Fanta) in which pesticide residue was detected by CSE were not banned. Now both Coke and Pepsi are selling for large prices in the black market.

The state government did not even bother to wait for reports of testing from a Govt. lab before putting the ban order. They did not even question if CSE is qualified to perform these tests. What if I conduct some tests in my home tomorrow and clear both Pepsi and Coke? Will the Govt. withdraw the ban? The West Bengal Govt. in the mean time collected samples from state and sent it to different labs for testing and the results say that the drinks are safe. So why is one Communist state banning the product while the other has no problem with it?

"Bengal isn't Kerala. There is a lot of difference between the two states. The people in Kerala speak a different language,"Bose said after a Left Front meeting in Kolkata on Wednesday.[Colas get 'Lal Salaam' in Bengal]

Here is what Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart to improve its image had to say about the closing of Mom and Pop stores.

"Well, I think they should; they ran the `mom and pop' stores out of my neighborhood," the paper quoted Young as saying. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores." [Andrew Young steps down from Wal-Mart committee post]

Did you know that Al-Qaeda members had medical benefits and paid holidays. They had to submit requests in triplicate to get new tires or other hardware? Lawrence Wright wrote this new book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 taking almost five years and interviewing more than 600 people including members of Al-Qaeda and Osama's wives. It also talks about the effort of FBI agents to crack down on them.

The arrival, then, of Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower," a deeply researched history of al Qaeda, is welcome and timely. This is a largely Egyptian and Saudi tale, one that Mr. Wright intercuts with the stories of the small group of U.S. officials who early on understood the threat posed by the group. Mr. Wright focuses on the decisions made by certain individuals rather than on the play of great impersonal forces. At one point he considers "whether 9/11 or some other similar tragedy might have happened without [Osama] bin Laden to steer it." His answer: "Certainly not. The tectonic plates of history were certainly shifting, promoting a period of conflict between the West and the Arab Muslim world; however, the charisma and vision of a few individuals shaped the nature of the contest."

One of those individuals was Sayyid Qutb, a nebbishy Egyptian writer who arrived in Greeley, Colo., in 1946 to attend college. A priggish intellectual, Qutb found the U.S. to be racist and sexually promiscuous, an experience that left him with a lifelong contempt for the West. "Instead of becoming liberalized by his experience in America, he returned even more radicalized," Mr. Wright says. Once in Egypt again, Qutb joined the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and was later jailed and tortured.[Profiles in Terror (subscription reqd.)]

After India got Independence, the state of Jammu and Kashmir decided to remain independent. Once the British left, a revolt started in Poonch and was supported by tribesmen from North West Frontiner Province, who decided to give a helping hand to their Muslim brothers. Faced with this threat, the Maharajah of Kashmir had  to request help from India but the India would not intervene unless the Maharajah joined the Indian Union. So he signed the Instrument of Accession and the airlift of Indian troops began on 27th October. So instead of seeing the fruit falling into his lap , Jinnah saw it fall into India's lap.

According to a new account, it was this war that saved the Indian Army since Prime Minister J. Nehru wanted to follow the principle of ahimsa and not have a defense policy at all.

The Kashmir war saved the Indian Army from being scrapped, seems strange? Well, a biography of Major General AA "Jick" Rudra of the Indian Army by Major General DK "Monty" Palit claims so.

According to the book, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru blew his top when Lt General Sir Robert Lockhart, the first commander in chief of India took a strategic plan for a Government directive on defence policy.

"Shortly after independence, General Lockhart as the army chief took a strategic plan to the prime minister, asking for a government directive on the defence policy. He came back to Jick's office shell-shocked. When asked what happened, he replied, The PM took one look at my paper and blew his top. 'Rubbish! Total rubbish!' he shouted. 'We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is ahimsa (non-violence). We foresee no military threats. Scrap the army! The police are good enough to meet our security needs'," the Daily Times quotes the book as saying.['Nehru wanted army scrapped']

The presence of the Vanaras or monkeys, including Hanuman, has made the authenticity of the epic suspect. But this is the most plausible part of the story. The Vanaras were obviously tribes with the monkey totem: after all, the Ramayana belongs to a period when most of India was jungle with tribal forest-dwellers. India still contains several tribes with animal totems. An early issue of the Bellary District (now in Karnataka) Gazetteer gives us the interesting information that the place was inhabited by the Vanara people. The Jaina Ramayana mentions that the banner of the Vanaras was the vanaradhvaja (monkey flag), thereby reinforcing the totemic theory. Similarly, Jatayu would have been the king of the vulture-totem tribe and Jambavan of the bear-totem tribe.

Was Lanka the modern Sri Lanka? One school of thought places Lanka on the Godavari in Central India, citing the limited descriptions of the South in the latter half of the epic. Narada does not mention Panchavati or Rameshwaram, but refers to Kishkinda and Lanka. Living in the north, it is unlikely that Valmiki knew the south. But Valmiki would know the difference between a sea and a river. Lanka, says the author definitively, was across the sea.

All the places visited by Rama still retain memories of his visit, as if it happened yesterday. Time, in India, is relative. Some places have commemorative temples; others commemorate the visit in local folklore. But all agree that Rama was going from or to Ayodhya. Why doubt connections when literature, archaeology and local tradition meet? Why doubt the connection between Adam’s Bridge and Rama, when nobody else in Indian history has claimed its construction? Why doubt that Rama traveled through Dandakaranya or Kishkinda, where local non-Vedic tribes still narrate tales of Rama? Why doubt that he was born in and ruled over Ayodhya? [Did Rama exist?]

Following the discovery of Mohenjo-Daro along the banks of Indus and Harappa about 350 miles away, archaeologists started looking for other sites in the area. New sites were discovered, but they were buried under the sand in the desert. Archaeologists knew that these towns could not survive in the desert and satellite images have now shown that in what is now Thar Desert, once traversed a river with its own fertile banks[2]. Geologists have identified this river, an extension of the present day Ghaggar, as the Saraswati river mentioned in the Vedic scriptures. Originally the Saraswati flowed through Rajasthan and met the ocean  at the Gulf of Kutch near the Kathiawar peninsula.

Romila Thapar thinks that this identification of Ghaggar with Sarasvati is controversial since Sarasvati is said to cut through high mountains and that is not the landscape of the Ghaggar. She believes that early references to Sarasvati could be to the Haraxvati Plain in Afghanistan[3].

During the time of the NDA administration, Jagmohan started this Saraswati Heritage Project to conduct archaeological excavations in the region.

So far, excavation has already been undertaken in 10 places - Adi Badri, Thanesar, Sandhauli, Bhirrana, Hansi (all in Haryana), Baror, Tarkhanwala Dhera, Chak 86 (all in Rajasthan), Dholavira and Juni Karan in Gujarat. The project's action taken report claims that during the excavation, remains from the pre-Harappan, Harappan and even medieval times have been discovered. [Times of India]

Mr Surjewala will soon convene a joint meeting of experts from the Archeological Survey of India, the Geological Survey of India, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission, the ISRO, and other organizations to form a joint working group to trace the paleo-channel of the ancient sacred, Saraswati.

After watching a presentation on the Saraswati paleo-channel here yesterday, Mr Surjewala said the government had twin interests in launching this project — first to find out whether there was any under-ground aquifer in Haryana and secondly even if there was any slight possibility of it, then to harness the water of this channel.

He said the mythical Saraswati was described as the biggest water reservoir by the Rig Veda and Yajurveda and presently confirmed by the satellite images.

The focus was to discover new sources of water by linking the past with the future.

He said the satellite images had confirmed the major course of Saraswati was present through the present day Gaggar which further passed through parts of Haryana, including Kurukshetra, Kalayat and Kaithal. Finally, the channel passed through parts of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and adjoining regions in Pakistan before discharging into Rann of Kutch.

He explained that paleo-drainage system was an old channel through which river flowed and could hold thousands of cubic km of water. [Surjewala keen on tracing Saraswati]

See Also: A detailed map showing Indus Valley sites and Ghaggar-Hakra river

Often it is said that due to globalization, American companies will enter countries and create conditions in which local businesses cannot survive. This is not always true. Recently Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany since they could not adapt to German shopping habits and make profits in the eight years they were there. Now from China comes the story of online bookseller Dangdang.com, which is giving Amazon.com a run for their money.

Equally critical to success, analysts and executives say, is the ability of domestic companies to understand and adapt to some of the other peculiarities of China's market. Ms. Yu says Dangdang had to make adjustments to the model pioneered by Amazon.com and others. For example, the vast majority of Dangdang's Chinese buyers of books pay cash on delivery -- a result of the fact that credit cards still are relatively uncommon in China.

Dangdang faltered early because of a failure to recognize the uniqueness of China's market. Ms. Yu, a longtime credit-card user from her years in New York, felt they were essential to selling products online. But credit-card use in China was paltry, meaning many prospective customers couldn't pay. "We didn't get much business," Ms. Yu says now.

So Dangdang switched to two other payment methods: cash on delivery and postal money orders. Now, only about 15% of Dangdang's transactions are paid for with credit cards.

"Don't try to change consumer behavior," Ms. Yu says she learned from that experience. "If consumers don't want to pay with credit cards, then ask them how they want to pay. If they want to pay cash, then figure out a way to get their cash."[China's Web Retailers Beat U.S. Rivals At Their Own Game(subscription reqd)]

Amazon.com now allows associates to create customized online stores. Called aStore, it behaves  like Amazon.com and allows the associate to feature nine products on the front page. I have chosen a few books I have read and some which I would like to read. You can buy books off the site and the payment and shipping are all handled by Amazon.com

So here is the varnam Bookstore

With their testing  CSE has bought into discussion the amount of pesticides we consume in Colas. Though the war fought by CSE was against Coke and Pepsi, it has provoked discussion and bought into focus the issue that we consume larger quantities of pesticides in daily foods such as milk, tea and sugar than Coke and Pepsi.

To avoid pesticides either we will have to harvest our own crops or switch to organic foods. Currently in United States, organic food and organic farming are gaining ground. Apart from health conscious stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, you can get organic food in regular grocery stores like Safeway and Albertson's also.

The United States Department of Agriculture sets very strict standards for food which can be labeled organic. First, the farmers must avoid chemical fertilizers and pesticides for three years. There are strict rules for transporting, processing and selling food. Factories that process both organic and non-organic food need to stop their machines and clean them with an organic solvent before the organic processing starts. Even in stores, non-organic food cannot be store above organic food since the water that drips through non-organic food can pollute the organic food.

Though expensive compared to non-organic food, the prices are expected to fall soon as Wal-Mart is planning to enter this market a big way.

Wal-Mart says it wants to democratize organic food, making products affordable for those who are reluctant to pay premiums of 20 percent to 30 percent. At a recent conference, its chief marketing officer, John Fleming, said the company intended to sell organic products for just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents.

Food industry analysts say that with its 2,000 supercenters and lower prices, Wal-Mart could soon be the nation's largest seller of organic products, surpassing Whole Foods. Already, it is the biggest seller of organic milk. [Wal-Mart Eyes Organic Foods]