#i blame ravi singh entirely

[octopusoptimusprime]

someone needs to kill me i’ve been attacked with longing for a boyfriend

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

At the current moment, this article seems to have been taken down - it may be reinstated, or still available on archived versions of the site.

“Women in Dokowadai village, Maharashtra, reveal the scars of their hysterectomies 
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Revealed: India’s mass sterilisation drive

Thousands of women are sacrificing their reproductive systems in a bid to keep their jobs, bringing back memories of the country’s dark history of population control

Heavily sedated and lying on a dirty mattress inside a makeshift tarpaulin tent, Chanda Ravi, 32, gingerly opened her eyes.

The mother-of-three was one of 101 women to have undergone a rushed sterilisation procedure on August 27 at a camp in the central Indian state Chhattisgarh.

Ms Ravi recovered well, but the speed of the procedures – the 101 operations were done in just eight hours – have brought back memories of India's dark history of population control.

Sterilisations are legal in India, and four million were carried out between 2013 and 2014, the last year figures were available.

However, doctors are paid cash incentives to carry out the operations, and this causes some professionals to bypass safety regulations and rush surgeries to earn more money, risking women's health.

Saira Shekh, who had a hysterectomy at the age of 25, is one of many women underwent the procedure prematurely
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

A doctor is only mandated to safely carry out 35 daily sterilisations under Indian law. Dr Jibnus Ekta, the surgeon who carried out the 101 operations, is now under investigation for exceeding the allowed numbers.

When contacted by The Telegraph, the authorities in Chhattisgarh blamed a backlog of operations due to Covid-19 and said Dr Ekta was the only trained tubectomy surgeon – a procedure that blocks the fallopian tubes – in the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh, home to one million people.

“This doctor went out of the way to help these poor women and operated [on] them. Instead of being praised, he is now being hounded. Nevertheless, we have initiated the inquiry against him for conducting excess surgeries [than] approved for a day,” the state’s health secretary Alok Shukla told The Telegraph.

Assa Ugray, from Ghodka Rajuri village, Maharashtra, had a hysterectomy aged 29
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Nearly 30 sterilisation camps have been held in Surguja this year and 821 operations have been carried out.

In India, tubal litigation operations – known colloquially as tube tying – are done under general and local anesthesia, either via open or keyhole surgery.

In these sterilisation camps, the procedures are done under local anaesthetic, according to the Chief Medical Officer of Surguja district, Dr Poonam Singh Sisodia. They involve using a falope ring to block the fallopian tube, preventing eggs from reaching the uterus where they could be fertilised.

Leading Indian gynaecologist Dr Ifrah Aslam said it was possible to conduct a tubectomy within a little as five minutes, but the quicker the operation the greater the likelihood of complications.

“There are chances of internal bleeding and injury to other organs because safety measures get bypassed in these sterilisation camps,” Dr Aslam said.

In 2014, at least 13 women died after undergoing sterilisations at a health camp in Chhattisgarh. Tubectomy operations were carried out on 83 women in six hours.

There are other, darker still, sterilisation scandals in India's history.

Sugarcane cutters are encouraged to undergo hysterectomies so they will no longer menstruate, allowing them to work every day of the month during the harvest
Simon Townsley/The Telegraph

Back in the mid-1950s, it was the first country in the world to introduce a national family planning programme in an attempt to curb widespread poverty by limiting population growth – then, the average Indian woman had six children.

But, the policy quickly became one of the most hated in India’s history, as police cordoned off poor villages and dragged men to dingy operating tables where their genitals would be cut – whether or not they wanted the operation.

In 1976 alone, the Indian government sterilised 6.2 million men until the campaign was abandoned amidst massive public anger. Despite this legacy, permanent methods of birth control remain popular in India, particularly among poorer, remote communities that do not have regular access to condoms or birth control pills.

But, women now bear almost the entire sterilisation burden, constituting 93 percent of operations, according to 2018 government statistics.

“India is a patriarchal society and the sterilisation program is focused on women, reinforcing those same societal norms,” said Dr Sulakshana Nandi, national joint convener of the People's Health Movement.

“The government has to completely do away with the camp-based approach and ensure routine fixed day services for all those who choose to access contraceptive services.”

Population growth is less of a factor now; the overall fertility rate in India had already fallen to 2.2 children per woman by 2016 – narrowly above the replacement rate of 2.1, the number of births required to maintain a country’s population without migration.

However, women in India also face pressure to undergo equally dangerous hysterectomies – a more complex operation, where the womb is removed – to secure employment.

In the Beed region of the western state of Maharashtra, a staggering 36 per cent of women have undergone the surgery, according to a 2018 study by Maharashtra State Commission for Women.

There are few employment opportunities outside of sugarcane farming for poor women in the Beed. But it is backbreaking work. They are expected to gather 40kg bundles of cane and transport them to factories for processing, working 20-hour days in near 40°C heat, with no days off.

Many farm owners only hire female labourers who have undergone hysterectomies as some women request days off while they are menstruating due to the physical nature of the work, which has caused demand for the procedures, often unregulated, to surge.

While operations are carried out in a hospital rather than a makeshift camp, local activists say doctors again cut corners to maximise profits. The women are typically illiterate and don’t understand the risks involved.

“To save money they will use someone else’s syringe and put it in the next patient,” explained Manisha Tokle, the President of Jagar Pratishthan, an NGO in the Beed region working with sugarcane cutters.

“They will give them cheap painkillers and won’t give them pre and post-op care.”

When The Telegraph visited the house of Asha Ugray, 29, she was lying against the wall of her makeshift dwelling gasping for air. “I have a fever and I can’t move any part of my body because I don’t have the energy to,” heaved Ms Ugray.

“It feels like my whole body vibrates the whole time, I don’t have enough blood in my system and it is hard to breathe.”

Ms Ugray underwent a hysterectomy in the Beed after experiencing debilitating gynaecological pain and her employer wouldn’t grant her time off. Since the operation, she has suffered from internal bleeding, severe abdominal pain which makes it difficult for her to walk, and problems urinating.

In her village of Kasari 15 other women were also experiencing complications after undergoing surgery.

“To meet the demand for contraceptive services, the government must ensure adequate routine and quality services instead of resorting to mass sterilisation camps and unregulated operations,” said Dr Nandi.

“The dangers that mass sterilisations pose to women's lives and health are well known and repeating such violations is criminal.”

[retrobollywoodreviews]

NAAM (1986)

What can I say about this gem of a movie? It is a tough task, a very tough task. This movie makes one feel a gamut of emotions and leaves one in tears. This movie was a big hit back in the day, however I still feel it is grossly underrated as there is an entire generation who has not even watched the movie. That is probably because the movie was quite depressing, and the movie was not the typical Bollywood film, however that is what makes it all the more special.

Naam (1986) is an unconventional Bollywood film, aka it is a typical Mahesh Bhatt film. It has a pretty flawed protagonist, no prices for guessing that the flawed protagonist is Sanju, because it is a crime to show him non-flawed in a movie. LMAO, and why not? only Sanjay Dutt can pull off flawed yet innocent so well. Because this is exactly who is in real life too; flawed yet innocent.

Early in the movie when Kumar Gaurav’s character Ravi introduces Vicky (Sanjay Dutt), he says “Vicky mein gussa aur becheni toh bahut thi lekin nafrat nahin (Vicky was rough around the edges but had no hate in his heart)” and I have not seen a character been summed up so well in a sentence. This is what being Vicky aka being Sanjay Dutt is all about. There is no wonder that Mahesh Bhatt strictly told Sanjay Dutt to not play a character onscreen but be himself. Full marks to Mahesh Bhatt in shaping Sanju to being the actor he is today, this was Sanjay Dutt’s breakthrough performance. And quite obviously his personal experiences, traumas and his personality made for a perfect fodder for this character. 

The fact that Sanju’s very close friend and brother-in-law, Kumar Gaurav played the character of his brother in the movie was also icing on the cake. Talk about art imitating life, Kumar Gaurav has always been with Sanju through thick and thin, and asked his father to produce this movie so it could help his career and help him stand on his feet. This is exactly on the lines of his character Ravi who does everything possible to help his brother stand on his feet.

The relationship that Vicky and his mother (Nutan) share in the movie is  emotional. it mirrors the relationship Sanju shared with his father at the time. Sanju was constantly trying to win his father’s approval but was not really making headway, he came back to Bollywood after rehab on his insistence, but couldn’t really make him proud. This is the same case with Nutan’s character in the movie, she is tired of being disappointed by Ravi and has stopped trying, she gets angry at Vicky and discourages him at almost every given opportunity. 

Vicky also gets restless to prove his worth to his Mother.  It is pretty sad when he tells his Mother that he knows she has given up on him and he does not blame her for that.

Sanjay Dutt is flawless as Vicky. It is hard to believe a 27 year old can give such a natural performance. Sanjay Dutt truly makes one feel every emotion in the book. You cannot help but root for Vicky with all your heart. His trauma slowly becomes the audiences’ trauma. He takes the audience through a very rough journey in this movie. After Naam there has been no stopping Sanju, this movie brought him into his own.

This movie also belongs to Kumar Gaurav, who himself is a fantastic actor, it is a shame he didn’t do too well in Bollywood. The rest of the supporting cast comprised of Nutan, Amrita Singh and Paresh Rawal and all of them were amazing. 

A special mention to the scene when Amrita Singh’s character Rita cries inconsolably in front of Ravi and says that Vicky is innocent and begs for his help. Amrita Singh acted brilliantly in that scene. Interestingly, Amrita Singh is also pretty close with Sanju, and till date Sanju mentions her as his favourite costar. 

Talk about life imitating art, we all know that Sanjay Dutt did get into trouble with the law, just like shown in this movie. I can’t help but feel sorry for him and his near and dear ones, just like Ravi, all they could do is helplessly watch the tragedy and do nothing more. Kumar Gaurav stood like a rock behind Sanjay Dutt during all these ordeals just like how a brother should. 

Naam is a tragedy which makes one feel helpless, but it also provides important lessons. It provides the lesson of not being careless with one’s life, your family cannot save you every time, just like how Ravi couldn’t save Vicky in the end. It also teaches parents to be less harsh with their kids, if they are less harsh and less skeptical, it can truly save bad outcomes. 

Naam is a soul-stirring saga which is recommended to everyone who love this kind of cinema. For me it is a 5/5.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/politics/bjp-cong-bid-to-keep-their-flock-together/

BJP, Cong bid to keep their flock together

Benglauru: The power play between the ruling Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka continued on Wednesday, as the two sides escalated their war of words and went into an overdrive to keep their flock together.

The Congress and JD-S continued to present a picture of confidence about the brewing crisis blowing over, with Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy saying things were ‘under control and there was no reason for worry. 

As the ruling partners unleashed a scathing attack on the BJP for allegedly trying to topple the government, the saffron party MLAs continued to be ensconced at a resort in Gurugram, fearing poaching attempts.

According to Congress sources, a few ministers from the party have even offered to step down in the larger interest and to keep the coalition intact. The party leadership is also looking into the option, they added.

It was not known how long the 104 BJP MLAs, who went to New Delhi to attend the party’s national council meeting but extended their stay, would remain cooped up in the resort.

Meanwhile, sources said BJP’s Karnataka unit chief B S Yeddyurappa is likely to hold a meeting with the party MLAs who are camping at the resort and discuss the prevailing situation in the state.

They said the BJP legislators will stay put in Gurugram till the party top leaders give the green signal to return to Karnataka.

Around 20 Youth Congress workers led by party’s Haryana Pradesh Congress General Secretary Pradeep Singh raised slogans against the NDA government outside the resort.

The protesters alleged that the BJP was ‘disrespecting the Constitution and murdering democracy’ in the country.

Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy said in Bengaluru that it was not necessary for him to carry out ‘any operation’ (poaching) and that he had sufficient numbers with him.

“Everything is under control..don’t worry,” Kumaraswamy said, trying to present a picture of being relaxed.

Kumaraswamy, whose government received a jolt on Tuesday when two Independent MLAs withdrew support to it, was asked if the ruling alliance would also launch a counter-strike on the BJP to lure its lawmakers.

The chief minister wanted BJP state president Yeddyurappa to explain if his party MLAs have been shifted to Gurugram to celebrate Sankranthi or for any other reason.

Kumaraswamy said his party MLAs were not being shifted to any resort, as being speculated in the media.

“So I request media not to fool itself and the people of the state.”

On five Congress MLAs, who are in Mumbai allegedly under BJP’s control, Kumaraswamy said, “I have been saying for the past three days that they are in touch with me, I’m in the know of all the developments.”

“They may not be reachable to others, but they are reachable to me,” he said in response to a question whether the five MLAs were accessible.

In New Delhi, Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka is ‘stable and strong’ and accused the BJP of trying to destabilise it.

At a press meet, he said there was no crisis for the government in Karnataka.

Congress general secretary K C Venugopal asserted that none of his party legislators were going to quit.

“Not even one MLA is going to quit Congress. I have contacted my MLAs, and therefore, I am telling you this very confidently. In fact, by Thursday evening, you will have a clear picture about Karnataka,” he told PTI.

“It would be a big slap on the face of BJP as it is going to fail in its endeavour to bring the government down.

“Their shameless motive to destabilise the government is going to be a big failure. It will be a national shame for them,” he said.

Speaking to reporters, Minister B Z Zameer Ahmad Khan, considered a ‘trouble shooter’ for the Congress, said Kumaraswamy-led government faced no threat and Yeddyurappa was ‘daydreaming’ about becoming chief minister once again.

Claiming that seven to eight BJP MLAs were in touch with them, he said “Let them (BJP) leave MLAs, seven to eight of them are ready to come to us..that’s the reason they are holding up MLAs.”

Meanwhile, state Congress President Dinesh Gundu Rao told PTI: “The entire confusion has been created by the BJP. Was that really required? They did it brazenly throwing morality and ethics to the wind.It’s shameful and disgusting.”

Seeking to allay fears over the stability of the Congress-JDS dispensation, Rao said, “All our MLAs are intact and nobody is going anywhere. They are all with us together.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara and CLP leader Siddaramaiah met Venugopal and held discussions.

The Congress has convened a meeting of its MLAs in Bengaluru on January 18 to take stock of the ongoing political developments.

A political turmoil has enveloped Karnataka since Monday triggered by horse trading charges over an alleged bid by the BJP to destabilise the coalition government.

Countering the allegations, the state BJP blamed the ‘unnatural’ alliance between the Congress and JD(S) for the turmoil and said the ruling coalition was hiding its inability to keep its house in order by ‘unnecessarily’ finding fault with the saffron party.

State BJP general secretary C T Ravi said the Congress and JD-S that entered into an unholy alliance, promising good administration, have betrayed the people of the state.

“Legislators of both the parties have now realised that this government cannot achieve anything,” he said.

[deniscollins]

For Rajat Gupta, Returning Is a Hard Road

When criminal charges were filed against former CEO of McKinsey & Company’s Rajat Gupta for insider trading, the company removed his name from its alumni register. If you were a McKinsey partner, would you reinstate Gupta’s name back into the register after Gupta served a two-year federal prison sentence? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

One June evening last year, some of New York’s most prominent Indian-Americans gathered at a gated house in Rye, N.Y.

A few dozen Indian-American businessmen and their bejeweled wives, some decked out in colorful salwar kameezes, had arrived at the home of Ajit Jain, a top executive at Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, say people who were invited to the dinner. They were there to welcome back an old friend, Rajat K. Gupta.

Only two months before, Mr. Gupta had finished a two-year prison sentence for divulging corporate secrets to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund titan now serving the longest sentence ever for insider trading.

At this dinner were many who had known Mr. Gupta for years. Among them were Toos Daruvala, currently the co-chief of McKinsey’s investment office, and Ravi Trehan, an investor with whom Mr. Gupta had teamed up more than a decade ago.

There were notable absences, too. Indra K. Nooyi, the chief executive of PepsiCo, was invited but declined to attend. So too did Dinesh Paliwal, the head of Harman International. Even Mr. Jain’s cousin, Anshu Jain, the former co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank and now president of the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, passed on the evening.

(All those named above declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment.)

Still, to those invited, Mr. Gupta’s presence at a dinner given by an executive of Mr. Jain’s stature was a sign that he was to be embraced by the pantheon of Indian business leaders in the United States.

It was a striking show of support, especially as Mr. Gupta had been convicted four years earlier of tipping off Mr. Rajaratnam to a crucial 2008 investment in Goldman Sachs made by Mr. Jain’s company, Berkshire Hathaway. Mr. Gupta was a director on the board of Goldman Sachs when Mr. Buffett poured $5 billion into the firm at the height of the financial crisis.

Mr. Gupta, the former global head of consulting giant McKinsey & Company, became a pariah among many of the corporate chieftains who once craved his counsel. Now 68, he has been trying to restore his reputation and rebuild his fortune since being released from a federal prison medical center in Devens, Mass.

But he has struggled to reconnect with many former associates and clients in the United States.

His ties to India’s business community, and its diaspora of executives in the United States, have proved more durable. Many of them, like Ajit Jain, go back many years. Both Mr. Jain and Mr. Gupta were graduates of India’s famed breeding ground for chief executives, the Indian Institute of Technology, and they had been close friends during their rise up their respective corporate ladders.

While the friendships within the Indian community were forged decades ago and were rooted in kinship, Mr. Gupta’s relationships with non-Indian business leaders were usually newer and often driven by commercial considerations. When the commercial promise was shattered, the relationship broke down.

“The system in America had a stake in Rajat Gupta,” said Suhel Seth, the founder of the Delhi-based brand marketing firm Counselage. “There was a greater investment of respect and trust in the man, so they were the ones who felt a sense of deep betrayal.” By contrast, he noted, “the people who welcomed him with open arms in India had benefited more from him than he from them.”

During Mr. Gupta’s heyday, he was a sought-after board member and a regular attendee at gilded events like the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Now, Mr. Gupta cannot get his former firm, McKinsey, which he led for nine years, to even acknowledge him.

A few months ago, Herbert Henzler, a former colleague of Mr. Gupta’s at McKinsey, pushed to have Mr. Gupta invited to the triennial meeting in Boston in June of the firm’s retired and former senior partners. Mr. Gupta wasn’t invited.

Mr. Gupta also failed in his effort to be reinstated in the McKinsey alumni directory. When criminal charges were first filed against the McKinsey senior partner Anil Kumar and later against Mr. Gupta, McKinsey moved to remove both names from the register.

McKinsey declined to comment.

Mr. Gupta also declined to comment for this article.

The rebuffs by McKinsey have rankled him, friends say. He is upset that the firm at which he spent almost his entire career won’t even acknowledge him as an alumnus — a fact that his incarceration has not altered.

Since his release from prison, Mr. Gupta has been providing consulting services, mostly in India, for Purnendu C. Chatterjee, a wealthy entrepreneur who knows Mr. Gupta from their early days at McKinsey when there were few South Asians at the firm. Mr. Gupta has also been embracing some of the charitable and educational causes he once promoted.

When Analjit Singh, the founder of Max Group, a diversified Indian conglomerate focused on health care and insurance, learned late last year that Mr. Gupta was coming to India, he held a party for him at his home near Delhi’s fashionable Golf Links area.

“I don’t know of any other Indian — underscore any — who has done more for India than he has,” Mr. Singh said recently, in explaining the affection Indians hold toward Mr. Gupta.

Counselage’s Mr. Seth, who was invited to the party, said that when he told Mr. Gupta that he had dented India’s brand, Mr. Gupta didn’t argue with that assessment.

Perhaps that explains the reason some Indians are keen to help Mr. Gupta’s public rehabilitation. And none may be keener than Indian-Americans.

In June, Mr. Gupta and his longtime friend Deepak Chopra were invited to address the second annual IIT Bay Area Leadership conference at the Santa Clara convention center in California.

Even though the event was billed as an opportunity for the two “pioneers in the business community” to discuss “their paths to success,” Mr. Gupta, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, devoted his remarks to speaking about the “extraordinary last six years.”

“While I continue to fight the injustice in my case, I have to candidly admit that I made errors and misjudgments, and for that I take full responsibility,” he told an audience of about 1,000 people.

He detailed a number of the great institutions — the IITs, the Harvard Business School, McKinsey, among others — where he had the privilege to work. He noticeably omitted Goldman Sachs, a firm he privately blames for actively helping government prosecutors build their case against him.

Goldman too was angry at Mr. Gupta for dragging its name into insider trading headlines. But under its policies, Goldman had to foot the legal tab for Mr. Gupta’s defense.

As part of a 2015 settlement, Goldman’s insurer has agreed to cover nearly $42 million of Mr. Gupta’s legal expenses even though he was convicted.

Under the settlement, Mr. Gupta has agreed to waive any future claims against Goldman or the insurer, suggesting that he is personally funding his recent efforts to expunge his conviction. Mr. Gupta is awaiting a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which last year agreed to review his conviction.

Goldman declined to comment.

Speaking this spring at the Young Indians national annual summit meeting in Delhi, which was hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, Mr. Gupta was bitter about his experience with the American justice system.

He said he got “caught in the cross hairs between a very politically ambitious prosecutor” and “a judicial system and a system of juries that don’t really understand necessarily sophisticated financial crimes.” He blamed his legal troubles on being “fundamentally trusting of everybody.”

Though he didn’t offer details on his time in prison, Mr. Gupta, an avid bridge player, told friends in a letter in 2016 that he learned card games like spades in prison, discovered the art of poetry writing and even reignited his passion for chess after a long hiatus.

At the IIT Bay Area conference, his tone had mellowed a bit.

“During this time, I saw the underbelly of our justice system, endured imprisonment and eight weeks of solitary confinement but very importantly got to know who my real friends are,” Mr. Gupta told the gathering.

One of his greatest regrets, he said, is that he did let down young people who were part of the institutions he worked with.

“I want to apologize to all of you IIT alumni that I really did not live up to the highest standards that you would have likely expected me to do,” he said. “I genuinely ask for your forgiveness and understanding.”

The audience clapped, but after the panel was over, only a few attendees approached him, say two people in attendance. It was a very different scene from a decade ago when Mr. Gupta would be mobbed at events like these by aspiring young Indians.