Sunday, July 18, 2010

It can happen only in India!

What start with dogs barking at some boys ended in two deaths, including that of a physically challenged girl.
In India's hierarchical society even an unsuspecting dog must have a caste. So it seemed when in Mirchpur village of Haryana, some dogs of low caste dwellings dared to bark at Jat boys. There was an angry backlash by the Jat boys and counter protests by the Dalit owners of the dogs.
To demonstrate their physical and social might, the Jats rallied around and attacked the Dalit dwellings, resulting in the death of two people, including one physically challenged girl.

The incident strained the sensibilities of Justice G S Singhvi of the Supreme Court who pointedly asked how "a dog of a Balmiki basti barking at a child become a cause of violence and murder of a physically challenged girl". "A dog could not have been killed on this ground. If that was the case then all the dogs would have been killed".

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Russians spend the longest in queues every day

In my school days one joke on the erstwhile USSR went like this:
Tired of waiting in a queue for essential goods, one Russian swore that he is going to Palace to kill the President. Soon he returned. Asked why he came back so fast, he said, "There is an even longer queue outside the Kermlin."
The situation does not seem to have improved after Glasnost and Peristroika, according to a survey.

Russians spend an average of 27 minutes every day waiting in queues, longer than anywhere else in Europe. This statistic is mainly due to huge numbers of people at post offices and banks, a survey said. The study conducted in 18 countries examined queues in grocery stores, banks, post offices, drug stores, fast food restaurants, bus stops and train stations.
The poor show in Russia is also due to the fact that officials at places where people line up "never do anything to reduce the lines", Oksana Aulchenkova, head of Nextep company, which carried out the survey, was quoted as saying by The Moscow Times.