Musings on India, the law, and policy
Posted in Court, Politics, Uncategorized on Aug 10th, 2010
The treatment meted out to two new transferred Chief Justices of High Courts is a study in contrasts. On the one hand is Justice J. H. Khehar, who is taking over the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court on a transfer from Uttarakhand. And on the other is Justice P. D. Dhinakaran, on a [...]
Posted in Politics, religion, Uncategorized on Aug 5th, 2010
Last week, the bulls in Spain made headlines. There is now a law in Catalonia, Spain that bans bullfighting. Thus anyone who indulges in this activity will have committed an offence under the Animal Protection Act. To any lover of Hemingway, this would perhaps imply the death of one of the charming features of this [...]
Posted in Human Rights, Politics, Uncategorized on Jul 28th, 2010
Anthropologists generally warn us against ethnocentrism. Witchcraft then is alien to you and I but as normal as normal can be to certain peoples. The celebrated Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande by E. E. Evans-Pritchard was a seminal work in understanding sorcery many years ago. His finding was that witchcraft is used as [...]
Posted in Foreign Affairs, Politics, Uncategorized on Jun 27th, 2010
Noong was not to be that day. From the UNMIS gate, we called the first driver. Land Rover No 1 had experienced a mechanical failure outside Abyei, stranding the Project Team. We called the second driver. Land Rover No 2 had got stuck in the mud near the River Kir, stranding the workshop participants. Crikey, [...]
Posted in Democracy, Foreign Affairs, Politics on Jun 14th, 2010
This morning, I awoke to a chorus of crickets, birds and frogs. Alarmingly, the compound’s amphibian friends shriek like demented babies. My tent does not zip-up, so I shined my head torch onto the floor (as the security brief urged), to verify that I had acquired no snake comrades. My tent was serenely peaceful. As I looked [...]
Posted in Democracy, Foreign Affairs, india, Politics on Mar 23rd, 2010
New Delhi is abuzz with rumours of Pakistan inking a civilian nuclear deal with the US (akin to the 2005 one with India). Here’s my take on why there’s much ado about nothing. The Possibility Very Unlikely. For starters, to get a civilian nuclear deal through, there must be unanimous approval from the IAEA, and [...]