Some thoughts about 11/3

Which was, despite being my birthday, a relatively sad day as GWB was elected for a second term. Given all the hand-wringing following the US presidential elections, a number of people were quick to jump on to the 'trust the American people to be dumb enough to vote for Bush' bandwagon. I will admit that I was disappointed by the election results, and appalled by the intolerance towards gay marriage. But I don't think it's good politics (no matter where u stand on the political spectrum) to denounce your opposition as 'stupid' simply because they surprised you. Dilip D'Souza, whose book The Narmada Dammed is a fantastic summary of the issues involved, and a book I used for my Oxford thesis, has this to say about the results of the elections. I couldn't agree more.

The Best Bakery case- what's the truth

I've been following the Zaheera/Best Bakery case intermittently, and can't provide any kind of informed analysis. I'm quite clear about where my sympathies lie- both with Teesta Setalvad and with Zaheera. She's obviously really brave to have agreed to testify in the first place, and given that she's under the protection of the Gujarat police (what a joke, you assign the protection of the witness to the very same body that stood by and did nothing while the riots happened) one can only imagine the pressure she's under. What amazes me is that given that 2000 people died in Gujarat, all attention is now focussed on this one trial. What happened to the rest of the cases? What about justice for all those affected by the Gujarat riots?

Trying to get back to this blog

I've seriously neglected this because I've realised it's really hard to follow politics from so far away. But what I'm going to do is I'll post (from my other blog) as well as some other newer posts, about things, usually political that interest me. If I do write/read anything about Indian politics that I think I need to write down, I'll also use this blog. Sorry for the absence but grad school is a killer.