Vedanta's benevolent enterprise!

Vedanta's Vedanta might appear as a benevolent enterprise to Verghese, but life has taught the adivasis what it stands for. Even as Verghese comes forth as an apologist for the worst perpetrators of crimes against humanity, we find organisations like the Church of England, and several shareholders in Vedanta exhibiting better rationale by withdrawing their shares from Vedanta. Even the colonialists seem more humane and rational than the slavish intellectuals in their former colonies! Moreover, even the Supreme Court of India and the environment ministry have raised objections to the proposed Vedanta University and mining venture. Only a Chidambaram, who served as a member of its board of directors until 2004, and Verghese, with his “compassionate” colonial mindset of “civilising” the backward people, can stand up in support of vultures like Vedanta, Tata, POSCO, Jindal....
--In A last note to a neo-colonialsit by slain Maoist leader Chemkuri Azad Rajkumar

India's International prestige

Mani Shankar Aiyar has an interesting article in the OUTLOOK on India's current economic policies.

our value system has become so distorted that we link our international prestige to providing a 10-day Commonwealth Games whose chief characteristic is hiding beggars from public gaze so that foreign dignitaries will perhaps be fooled into believing that India has no beggars. This distortion of values is proved by Suresh Kalmadi getting Rs 1,600 crore for the games while the victims of Bhopal have now been given a supplementary amount of 1,500 crore. The games, for which the perfectly good roads of Lutyens’ Delhi are being paved all over again, get Rs 100 crore more.