So, President Obama is coming to town. And how!
Over the past 24 hours, the nation has been treated to a blitz of fawning headlines and breathless commentary about how, thanks to Narendra Modi's "out of the box thinking" and "unconventional diplomacy", a US President would be attending the R-Day celebrations for the first time.
In its excitement to play up the event ("unprecedented", "momentous", "unthinkable") the media has not allowed facts to come in the way resulting in a deluge of half-baked theories, absurd analysis and disputed claims.
L&T said it might exit, there are rifts aplenty, how is Hyderabad Metro still upbeat on target?
Sitting in his office at Cyber Towers, HiTec City, L&T Hyderabad Metro Rail CEO Vivek B. Gadgil seems slightly on edge. Talking about L&T’s work in construction of Metro lines across several of India’s cities, Gadgil wonders why only in Hyderabad the media is “nosy”, and keen to run down every aspect of the Metro.
If a woman's complaint accusing her husband and in-laws of cruelty under the dreaded Section 498A of Indian Penal Code turns out to be false, then the man is entitled to divorce, the Supreme Court has ruled.
Allowing dissolution of marriage between K Srinivas and K Sunita, the court said, “We unequivocally find that the respondent-wife had filed a false criminal complaint, and even one such complaint is sufficient to constitute matrimonial cruelty . We accordingly dissolve the marriage of the parties.“
INNLIVE brings you the first instalment in The Great Indian series. We start by tackling the Chamcha, that infuriating species which lurks in every office. `It' usually surfaces when the boss is around and holds a PhD in LBDN -Looking Busy Doing Nothing. If you're part of Sycophants Anonymous, stop reading now. The India of today might well be called the `India of toady'.
Many years ago when he was accused of being a `chamcha' of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, with characteristic aplomb Khushwant Singh said that he was not just her `leading chamcha' but an entire cutlery set. The savvy sardar knew only too well that in India chamchagiri had long replaced Gandhigiri as the unofficial code of state conduct.
Wrapped in cultural taboos, nudity has mostly been off-kilter with the increasing notion that it is necessarily sexual and therefore immoral.
Shots of Kim Kardashian's ample derriere in Paper magazine have ensured all round opprobrium for what many are calling an attention-deficit act. Apart from ensuring she remains the most talked about ("I want to break the internet," she'd said), commented and shared across both mainstream and social media, particularly given the racist overtones of the shoot, it has also opened the floodgates on debates around nudity. Is it art or porn? Obscene or beautiful? Sexy or sensual? Empowering or objectifying?
Just a month after the drug pricing regulator, National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, imposed a fine of around Rs 300 crore on Novartis for overcharging consumers for its painkiller medicine 'Voveran', Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai has admitted to overcharging cancer patients for a Novartis-branded oncology medicine over the last nine months.
According to the media report, Tata Memorial Hospital was selling the oncology medicine, Sandostatin LAR for Rs 48,296 – a 26 percent discount to the retail price of Rs 65,499. However, during the October-December quarter of 2013 Novartis slashed the price of the injection to Rs 32,000 but the hospital continued to sell the medicine at Rs 48, 296 even though the same vial was available for Rs 32,000 in nearby pharmacies.
The brutal murder of 21-year-old Bhavna Yadav on the night of 15 November by her parents for marrying outside has once again brought into focus the deeply entrenched, but sadly real idea of 'honour' in our society. Education and exposure to modern life seem to have little impact on mindsets defined and dictated by the larger community to which the parents and their children belong.
Bhavana, a Yadav girl, had secretly married Abhishek Seth, a well-placed Punjabi while her parents had arranged her marriage to a boy of their own caste. She was under pressure from her family to call off the relationship but she decided to formalise her relationship with Abhishek. She had to pay for it with her life. According to police sources, she was strangled by her mother while her father held her legs in a tight grip.
Faking photographs is not a new phenomenon. The Cottingley Fairies seemed convincing to some in 1917, just as the images recently broadcast on Russian television, purporting to be satellite images showing the MH17 airliner being fired upon by a jet fighter, may have convinced others.
In fact, recently there’s been a proliferation of images appearing in the media that are not all they seem. Did Malaysian politician Jeffrey Wong Su En really receive a knighthood from the Queen? Has Iran exaggerated its missiles, or North Korea its assault hovercraft? Was this cover of Nature manipulated for artistic symmetry? The widespread use and high quality of digital cameras and photo editing software has made the art of faking a whole lot easier and more commonplace – whether convincing or not.
