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We all were taught in school that humans have five senses. They are sound, sight, touch, smell and taste. Now forget what you studied and give it a serious thought. Do humans really have just five senses?

 I strongly feel that a historic entity like Assam Oil should be preserved. Afterall, we proudly boast of it as the oldest refinery of Asia, established way back in 1901. Unfortunately, the oil production in Assam has been declining steadily because of the prolonged insurgency in Assam and other parts of North-East India. But there is another reason to it, a much more prominent one.

North-East has always been in news for demand of separate states by many small or big tribes there. Most tribes have their own autonomous councils which control many social welfare departments apart from police, judiciary and other central government departments. Still, there are reports of agitation hovering demands of separate states. It must be mentioned here that, apart from Manipur and Sikkim, all other states were once a district of Assam. One by one, many states were created carving out areas from Assam.

I had found that Google stopped showing Jammu & Kashmir and Arunachal as a part of India. Infact, Google was playing  this dirty game for a long time. It was showing Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India to the Indians, a disputed land to the world, and a part of China to the Chinese. I read this in a mail sent by Rajat sir and was shocked!

The Mahatma was assassinated by a man called Nathuram Godse. After he shot him, instead of running away, he stood his ground and surrendered. He said, "No one should think that Gandhi was killed by a madman"

Every system needs injection of new blood for renewal. In the past, may it be the freedom struggle, Indira Gandhi’s battle against the Syndicate, the Jayaprakash Narayan movement, student agitations against reservations, or the intellectual appeal of ideology that keeps some political parties alive at the ground levels- it has always been carried out by new people.

School education in has been more or less sucked into the corporate market. The children of the privileged and rich study at the good and high-fee charging schools. Most of these schools look like retail malls or multiplexes. The school authorities look at the school education as a multi-crore market. They hire PROs etc, to help them penetrate the market and crores on branding. They have different business models; many of them adopt franchisee model.

For how can man die better than facing fearful odds?
For the ashes of his fathers & the temples of his gods.
-Rezangla Memorial (13 Kumaon)

Vijay Kumar as a part of the team during the cordon and search operation in Anantnag on 1st April 2008.

Recently our MPs had a friendly match in the Indian parliament. Their topic of concern was inflation. As expected, no result came out of the friendly match. The only thing they gained probably was in terms of vote bank. Even with the average annual incomes having doubled, the inflation has only worsened the quality of life for more than 70% of the population.

India had a glorious tradition of learning and education. I am particularly very proud of it. It is really unfortunate that we left this glorious tradition of knowledge and learning systems behind. What is tragic is that we today think that these systems are outdated and unsuited to the contemporary world. We have somehow established a strong connection between modernity and western civilization. We don’t realise how wrong we are when we think that to be modern is to be western and to be western is to be modern.