Prasanto K. Roy

So the die is cast. In a meeting on Thursday, India's home ministry asked the Department of Telecom (DoT) to read the riot act to mobile operators running BlackBerry services: Either provide full access to Indian law enforcement, or face a shutdown on Sep 1.

The terse release just said that union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai asked the DoT to tell service providers that Blackberry Enterprise Service (BES) and Blackberry Messenger Service be made accessible to law enforcement agencies Aug 31.

Else these services would be blocked. The DoT is expected to convene a meeting of telecom operators after receiving a written communication from the home ministry (expected on Friday).

BES is the system used by most corporate BlackBerry users. The service requires special software in a company's own servers, to connect to the company email system. Four out of five BlackBerry handsets in India are on BES, so a shutdown of this means an effective shutdown of BlackBerry services in India.

The world is conspiring against coffee and blackberry addicts. Till now, it was just research scholars or lab-coat specialists who came up with theories that coffee and smart phone usage was the root cause of all evil, whether migraine, impotency, heart attacks, ADD, nervous disorder. Anything. Name it and it was laid on the doorstep of the coffee cup or the cell phone.
And now, the government has joined up with the disbelievers. Indian Communication Minister A. Raja said in Parliament last week that security agencies were unable to intercept and monitor in readable format Blackberry services like messenger, chat and email because of their encryptions.

Prasanto K. Roy
You’re a Delhi-based wannabe terrorist needing to communicate with your handlers. What do you do? Invisible-ink notes are passe, as are carrier pigeons. You will, of course, use electronic options.

Like e-mail. Walk into a cyber cafe, log into a G-mail or Yahoo account. Don’t use an account in your own name. And don’t send e-mail. Simply read instructions left for you in an unsent mail, saved as a draft in your account. Then, to reply, just edit the unsent e-mail, and save it back as a draft. If e-mail isn’t travelling, it can’t be intercepted.

In the footsteps of India’s Tata Group - which is hunting for a successor right now - business houses across the globe are resorting to old world values of community service to sustain themselves in the long run, says British business historian Morgen Witzel.

“The house has always believed in service to community since it was set up in the early 19th century,” Witzel said.

Amulya Ganguli

Jawaharlal Nehru was a close approximation of Plato's philosopher-king. Of all other prime ministers after him, Manmohan Singh has the most distinguished academic record. Yet, the gentle Sikh lacks the communication skills of the patrician Kashmiri Brahmin.

Whereas the first prime minister, who was known for his eloquence, spent considerable time even during public rallies to explain India's multicultural heritage and digress into foreign policy to underline the meaning of non-alignment, Manmohan Singh has been unusually reticent for a leader of the government.

Maneka Gandhi
Dr Kristen Stilt is an Islamic scholar in Egypt. While visiting India she came to see me . She has written a book about Islam and animals, endorsed by Dr. Professor 'Abd Allah Mabrook Al-Najjar Professor of Shari'a and Law Member of the Council of Islamic Research At the Al Azha University .who says that 'is excellent in its scientific content, accurate from the perspective of Islamic law, and beneficial.'

She writes 'In my studies of Islamic law, I have always been impressed by the extensive rules that require humans to treat animals kindly and with mercy. These rules are wide ranging, and include significant protections for work animals like horses and donkeys,

Maneka Gandhi

Men and women come from different planets, this is now accepted theory because we are so truly different in how we see the world.

But are vegetarians and non vegetarians from different planets ? There is a difference in perception. Where some see a juicy steak, we see a dead cow. While some think of how good the meat will taste, we contemplate the way the animal suffered on its path to the plate.

Why the difference in perception? It turns out it vegetarians are wired differently from meat eaters and are much more moved by suffering in any form.

Mallika Sarabhai

How do you wake up a person who is pretending to be asleep? This sentence really struck me at the TED conference in Oxford where I have spent the last week, listening to some extraordinary people with extraordinary thoughts.

Kul Bhushan

"Oh nooooo!" groan many non-resident Indians (NRIs) as they stood in long queues for immigration after arriving at Delhi airport. Battling jet lag after a long-haul flight and then waiting in an almost immobile queue becomes their first experience of coming to their motherland. No more.

Amulya Ganguli

Knowingly or otherwise, the Maoists are engaged in a dangerous game which can ultimately prove disastrous for them. It is clear that their present tactics involve attacking the police and the paramilitary, mainly the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

After the deaths of 148 passengers as a result of the derailment of the Jnaneswari Express in West Bengal and an attack on a public bus in Chhattisgarh, the insurgents seem to have realized that such acts of terrorism against ordinary people could harm their cause and embarrass their sympathizers in the human rights groups.