There are feverish talks happening here in India about going out for a war with Pakistan due to last week's terrorist attacks in Bombay.

Here is my analysis (first 3 paras' content are also repeated in one of my comments in the Bombay post on Agonist front page) :

Pakistan's ISI is perhaps the worst official agency in the world that cleverly aids terrorists' activities and has been doing so for many years. For India to put pressure on Pakistan's current democratic pressure is being foolish. The ISI in Pakistan, closely affiliated to the Pakistani military, is a law unto itself and has to be tackled directly bypassing whoever is the Pakistani government. For this, in fact, India should shed its cowardliness and take on the United States of America that in the past and even now (discreetly though) has looked the other way if not actively coordinated with the ISI.

And if the US can attack Taliban inside Afghanistan, and if Israel can carry out operations inside its neigbouring countries including Palestine, and if Russia can carry out operations inside Georgia, then India can too carry out operations in the mountains of Pakistan where these terrorist groups receive their training.

Rajesh lives in NW Bombay. More after the jump.

The US president George Bush has attracted a lot of flak here in India for his statement the other day that India's middle class is responsible for rising food prices. See Bush now blames Indian middle class for rising food prices.

There are many Bushisms that are outrageous and this one too at first sight seems to be the same. But except for the fact that only India and only middle class has been targetted and that only food prices are being shown concern about I agree with the underlying thrust. Many of my posts in my blog (http://natant.blogspot.com) have talked about the mindless and excessive consumerism but I recognise the fact that it is a global phenonmenon.

Gajra is a writer in Mumbai

Below is the gist of a real-life phone conversation in India between a journalist and his/her editor (unfortunately, I can not reveal identifies, but if you are/become a reliable friend of mine I can disclose it on the phone):

Editor (angrily): "Why haven't you managed to arrange for a column article by any popular chief of AAAA (one particular corporate sector)? There is no time to wait. Get it fast."

Journalist: "I have approached 2-3 corporate heads that fit your criteria and even followed up with them continuously but have not received any confirmation from them; in fact one of them has explicitly declined to contribute."

elevated from the diaries

Agonistas,

I hope it's not too late to share my thoughts on the bomb blasts in suburban trains in Bombay on Tuesday July 11.

As a Bombayite who travels in the first class compartments [there are four categories among 12 compartments in every local suburban train in Bombay -- Gents Second Class which occupies 7.5 compartments (62%), Ladies First Class with 2.5 compartments (20%), Gents First Class with 1.5 (12%), Ladies First Class with 0.5 (4%), and these are not in a sequence, they are intermingled with each other, for instance, Gents First Class is located in three different compartments--half of each] and residing in the western suburbs and commuting in the trains of the western suburban railway (there are two other branches of suburban railways called 'central' and 'harbour' which caters to eastern and east-central suburbs of Bombay), I can say that I could very well have in any of those seven trains. Except that the bombs were placed in the trains leaving Churchgate station (the starting station in south Bombay from where the train heads north and in which direction commuters head back home in the evening) between 5 pm and 6 pm, and I rarely leave my office in south Bombay before 7-10 pm.

I get a sense that Bush administration is preparing for another 9-11-like event and this time it could be a nuclear device shipped through the US ports that are being handed over to Arab (UAE) hands.

Sean-Paul had posted on November 19 2004 (http://scoop.agonist.org/comments/2004/11/19/10447/528/0/post#here) about India, Bush and my question to him. My apologies for taking two months to respond to it. But here it is now.