I was barely into my eleventh year when Indira Gandhi imposed emergency on a nation that had done nothing to deserve it. India was not at war with any other state and the only reason why Mrs. Gandhi sought to take away the basic rights of her citizens was because she feared that her political opponents had started exposing her administration that was involved in rampant corruption in the garb of socialism. The ‘Total revolution’ theme enunciated by the popular social leader, Jai Prakash Narayan (JP), had caught the imagination of the nation and people had begun rallying around him to give a body blow to the hitherto unchallenged Congress party. Another maverick leader who went by the name of Raj Narain, had also gone hammer and tongs against Mrs. Gandhi and had taken his case to the High court alleging that she had used the state machinery to defeat him in the 1972 elections. The court found the allegations to be true.A whimsically frightened Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, declared the state of emergency on the citizens of a free country.I recall that a friend’s father who was pursuing his Ph.D. on the ‘JP’ movement had to burn his years of research work because he feared that he too would be arrested by the police. He had witnessed many of those who were associated with the movement being sent to the gallows.In my young mind, I developed a sense of rejection for the Congress party since then. I disliked Congress for its vulgar display of authority and for its inept administration and most of all for its dependence on just one family for its survival. I was aghast when Congress chose Rajiv Gandhi to take over as its Leader when there were at least a dozen senior and able Party leaders who could have been at the helm of the party after Indira Gandhi’s unfortunate assassination. But the Party couldn’t see beyond the Gandhi family.Just as the party can’t see beyond Sonia Gandhi even today!My dislike for Congress party’s over reliance on the Gandhi family naturally led me to dislike Rahul Gandhi from the very beginning of his political career.But when I look around the political landscape of various political parties then I find that there is hardly any party which is not on a son/daughter/nephew promoting spree.Sharad Pawar has been promoting the political careers of his daughter and his nephew vigorously and so is Bala Saheb (though the latter is scuttling his nephew’s career). Mulayam Singh’s myopic vision doesn’t go beyond his Yadav clan and Laloo’s love for Rabri is legendary. Karunanidhi’s family is at the heart of all that happens in DMK. Perhaps the only exception here is BJP as neither Advani, nor Vajpayee have made any efforts to promote the political careers of their close relativesThere is a significant difference between Congress and the other political parties though. Whereas the leaders of other parties are thrusting their close relatives upon their hapless parties, in the case of Congress, the hapless party is virtually begging the Gandhis to take up the leadership positions!However over the past several months, Rahul’s political activities have come like a breath of fresh air and I have to concede today that I have started admiring Rahul Gandhi by and by. My new found admiration is based upon following observations• I haven’t seen a political leader make so much sustained efforts to connect with the rural India as Rahul is doing. He has been travelling to the remote villages and spending time with the poorest and most down trodden segment of the villages in an effort to understand their problems and identify himself with them. No one from the Gandhi family has ever tried to be as close to rural India as Rahul is trying to be. Not the Great Nehru who practically never spent a day, leave alone a night, in a village. Rajiv Gandhi too was far removed from rural India. A popular joke that went around about his understanding of rural India is that he once asked a village woman, “Do you carry an empty pitcher to the river to get water for your home or the pitcher is provided to you at the river bank?” Rahul Gandhi is trying to connect to the rural India. He realizes that inclusive growth can’t come by just the growing affluence of select few in large cities and towns. Rahul Gandhi has lived a opulent and luxurious life and to me his spending so much time in the villages is not just tokenism. There seems to be a sense of sincerity and a sense of service in his efforts. • Skeptics might say that Rahul Gandhi is just trying to get close to rural India for gaining political mileage. But the business of politics is all about gaining political acceptability and if Rahul’s spending time in villages leads to political gains then I will urge the leaders of all the parties who are more of ‘drawing room variety’ to move to the real political arena and gain political advantage.• No member of Gandhi family ever threw himself/ herself so passionately into the hard task of mobilizing the grass-root workers like Rahul has. His passion for party-building is matched by his stamina and I find this quality very noteworthy.• Rahul has emerged as a risk-taker who is putting himself in line by taking full responsibility for changing the fortune of his party in Uttar Pradesh. If Congress does poorly in the next year’s U.P. assembly elections, Rahul Gandhi will find it difficult to search for a scapegoat as he is the one and only person fully in-charge of all that will happen to the Congress party in that state. The Rita Bahugunas, the Pramod Joshis and the Beni Prasad Vermas are irrelevant in comparison to the stature that Rahul Gandhi has acquired in the state. I like Rahul’s appetite for such huge risk, given the fact that he could have just chosen to be a silent, behind-the-scene leader, the unchallenged “Prime Minister- in-waiting”• Rahul Gandhi’s unequivocal position on allowing majority stake to foreign companies in the retail sector speaks of his ability to take a stand on contentious issues.            It is praiseworthy that he recently spoke so much convincingly in support of FDI bill at a rally somewhere in Western UP. Everyone knows that UPA had put FDI bill in the back burner because it feared a backlash from the strong trader community in forthcoming the UP polls and yet Rahul Gandhi has come out openly in favour of the FDI policy. It is indeed a big risk that Rahul has taken and I am sure that the old guard must have pleaded with him not to pontificate on this subject but Rahul Gandhi chose to ignore them.  The most heartening thing is the manner in which Rahul Gandhi is trying to convince the people on why the country needs FDI in retail sector. He is cutting out the numbers and dispensing with the jargons that the Economists use. He is speaking in common man’s language to explain his point of view. In a country where the leader of the principal political party, the Congress, hardly ever speaks and where the Prime Minister is hardly ever heard and where the party spokespersons make enemies whenever they open their mouths, it is only Rahul who is making a deliberate attempt to speak to the nation about his party’s ideological position in a language that is lucid and is shorn of any shrillness.I like Rahul’s steadfast embracement of his ideology. Let me mention here that the party that I rate very highly, the BJP, has been doing several flip flops on FDI, much to my chagrin• On the issue of Lokpal, I personally believe that Rahul Gandhi’s idea of making ‘Lokpal’ a Constitutional body (akin to CVC) is rational & worth trying. Though this is an idea which came late, yet I am sure that if all the stakeholders, who are on either side of the Lokpal debate, ponder over it without any bias, will find the idea worth a second look.Many of us have a history of being strongly anti-Congress and I remain one till today but this can’t come in my way of giving the devil his due. I would like to appreciate Rahul Gandhi for his ‘against-the-grain’ stand on many issues, for his courage to take strong challenges and his willingness to do the back-breaking hard work I wish RG success, though I am far from being enamoured of the way his party is running the country. 

The Times Of India, Delhi edition carried a half-page advertisement on page 5 on February 17th edition which shows two women, one old and the other young, making chapattis on a LPG stove. The Chairperson UPA, Mrs. Gandhi and the Prime Minister are also there on the top corner of the advertisement, smiling benignly.
The older woman in the advertisement is saying, “Now, cooking food brings a smile to my face and not tears in my eyes”
The advertiser is the government of India which is blowing its trumpet (very justifiably, I feel) by announcing that under the Rajiv Gandhi Rural LPG Distribution Scheme, many rural districts have blessed with LPG agencies and by 2015 almost 75% rural areas will achieve LPG availability. I am sure that considerable amount of money must have been spent on conceiving this ad and putting together the final artwork. The publishing cost in TOI is also substantial but this advertisement has one major FLAW. The advertisement completely ignores the safety aspect of the position of the LPG cylinder in respect to the LPG burner.
1. LPG or liquefied Petroleum gas is a propone-butane mixture and a special additive mercaptan is added to it to give it a rotten-egg like odor. This makes it possible to detect the leakage if any.
2. Since LPG is heavier than air, its leakage from the cylinder, valve or from the rubber tube can lead to accumulation of LPG in the floor area.
3. Even if there is minor leakage in the LPG system then lot of combustible LPG can accumulate on the floor and even near the burner area, if the LPG burner plate is kept on the floor.
4. The mere lighting up of a match stick will lead to an explosion and the floor area would be engulfed with fire in case of any small leakage.
5. If however the LPG burner is kept at a level higher than the cylinder level, then the chances of such mishaps are a bit reduced. This is because the gas has accumulated at the floor level while the match stick is lit away from the leaked accumulated gas.

Government oil companies organize safety clinics for LPG consumers frequently and this aspect of keeping the LPG burners at a level above the LPG cylinders is much emphasized during the clinics.
The advertisement violates the following two basic tenets of LPG safety:
• The LPG stove must always be installed on kitchen slab at height above the cylinder
• The cylinder must be kept away from other sources of heat
The government agency responsible for the advertisement has ignored these basic safety issues in the advertisement and the lapse is very glaring.
It is hoped that the stakeholders concerned will do more research before placing such advertisements in future.

So the Commonwealth games have been concluded. Even the most vociferous opponents of CWG would say that games have been stupendously successful, with the Honorable exception of Mani Shankar Aiyar of course. 

Thank you, Madame Secretary. I want to thank you and President Obama for the many efforts that you´ve invested to bring us to this moment.
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My friend, Senator Mitchell, thank you for your consistent effort, for your and your staff´s efforts, to bring a lasting and durable peace to our region.
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President Abbas, as I said yesterday in our meeting at the White House with the President of the United States, the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan, I see as you a partner for peace. Together, we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict.
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Now, this will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, would be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides: from the Israeli side, from the Palestinian side — from my side, and from your side. But the people of Israel, and I as their prime minister, are prepared to walk this road and go a long way — a long way in a short time — to achieve a genuine peace that will bring our people security, prosperity and good neighbors — good neighbors — to shape a different reality between us.
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That´s going to involve serious negotiations, because there are many issues in contention. The core issues that you outlined, Madame Secretary, are things that we have disagreements on; but we have to get from disagreement to agreement — a big task. Now, two years ago, or rather a year ago, in a speech I gave in Bar- Ilan University in Israel, I tried to outline the two pillars of peace that I think will enable us to resolve all the outstanding issues. And these are legitimacy and security.
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Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.
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There are more than a million non-Jews living in Israel, the nation state of the Jewish people, who have full civil rights. There is no contradiction between a nation state that guarantees the national rights of the majority and guaranteeing the civil rights, the full equality of the minority.
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I think this mutual recognition between us is indispensable to clarifying to our two peoples that the conflict between us is over. I said, too, yesterday that a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel that have changed; they´ve changed since I was last here. You spoke about the veterans who are gathered here — around this table. We´ve been here before. We fashioned the Hebron agreement and the Wye Agreement.
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Now, this was 12 years ago. In these 12 years, new forces have risen in our region, and we´ve had the rise of Iran and its proxies, and the rise of missile warfare. And so a peace agreements — a peace agreement must take into account security arrangement against these real threats that have been directed against my country — threats that have been realized with 12,000 rockets that have been fired on our territory and terrorist attacks that go unabated.
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President Abbas, I am fully aware and I respect your people´s desire for sovereignty. I´m convinced that it´s possible to reconcile that desire with Israel´s need for security. We anticipate difficult days before we achieve the much-desired peace.
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The last two days have been difficult. They were exceedingly difficult for my people and for me. Blood has been shed, the blood of innocents. Four innocent Israelis gunned down brutally, two people wounded, seven new orphans. President Abbas, you condemned this killing. That´s important. No less important is to find the killers, and equally to make sure that we can stop other killers. They seek to kill our people, kill our state, kill our peace.
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And so achieving security is a must. Security is the foundation of peace. Without it, peace will unravel. With it, peace can be stable and enduring.
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President Abbas, history has given us a rare opportunity to end the conflict between our peoples, a conflict that has been lasting for almost a century. It´s an unprecedented opportunity to end a century - - conflict. Well, there have been some examples in history, but not many.
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But we face such a task - to end the bloodshed and to secure a future of promise and hope for our children and grandchildren. In the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, there is a story of how two brothers in conflict — brothers — Isaac and Ishmael — join together to bury their father, Abraham — our father, the father of our two peoples. Isaac, the father of the Hebrew nation, Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, join together in a moment of pain and mutual respect to bury Abraham in Hebron.
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I can only pray — and I know that millions around the world, millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians and many other millions around the world, pray — that the pain that we have experienced, you and us, in the last hundred years of conflict, will unite us not only in a moment of peace around a table of peace here in Washington, but will enable us to leave from here and to forge a durable, lasting peace for generations.
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Shalom. Salaam. peace