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Issue :   
All that Kisan Baburam alias Anna Hazare who went on the fast had was moral authority. He holds no office. He undertook a fast-unto-death to force the government to concede the drafting of a bill that would create a watchdog that would make people in high places accountable. Veteran journalist MAHENDRA VED profiles the man of the moment
Issue:December'2011
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FROM FAR & WIDE
  India rocks, plunges on Forbes' list

   Have the financial scandals that have triggered an anti-corruption campaign in India caused its leading lights to take lower positions on the famous Forbes’ list?

   India rocks with five names in the list of 70 “World’s Most Powerful.” Congress and ruling UPA chief Sonia Gandhi, often touted as “India’s most powerful", dropped two notches from her ninth position last year to be ranked the 11th most powerful person and 7th powerful woman.

   Manmohan Singh, 79, too has dropped a notch to be rated the 19th most powerful.

   Having two top people in the list is some recognition of the pace at which India is moving. And if Indians look within, their lower ranking is thanks to the name being sullied by scams.

   Other Indians on the list are Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani ranked 35th, India's top billionaire ArcelorMittal chairman Lakshmi Mittal in the 47th spot and Wipro chairman Azim Premji at the 61st spot. Incidentally, they also find places among the Forbes’ list of the World’s Richest.

   Tibetan spiritual leader, Dalai Lama, 76, living in exile in India, is ranked 51st, a notch behind former US President Bill Clinton.
Canada’s Punjabi Press bats for hubbies
  Amanpreet Dhaliwal, 23, at her aunt's   Brampton home. She says her   estranged husband used the Punjabi   media to run a smear campaign   against   her.
   The powerful Punjabi press in Canada is a willing ally of men with marital problems, terrorizing the wives by maligning them.

   Take the case of a 33-year-old bride who landed in Toronto after her husband sponsored her arrival from India. She left him within weeks, alleging abuse, and the spurned husband went to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, saying she had married him only to come to Canada.

   When the local Punjabi media got wind of it, they sided with the husband. They talked about the ‘shameless’ bride for weeks, whipping up public sentiment against her. Her photographs were published in a slew of Punjabi newspapers and callers to radio talk shows demanded just one thing: deport her. “It was a public trial,” says Shalini Konanur, executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

   Konanur told Toronto Star newspaper that the young bride was never contacted by the media and was so terrified she refused to leave her home. “The media is becoming judge and jury,” Konanur says of the more than dozen Punjabi daily radio shows, as many weekly newspapers, two dailies and several TV shows. “That’s not their role.”

   Ron Cohen, national chair of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, says the board hasn’t received any complaints regarding Punjabi media’s handling of the marriage fraud issue.

   People would complain if they didn’t fear more victimization, insists Konanur.
  No “sexual freedom” in Malaysia
   The very talk of same-sex love and marriage is a big no-no in Malaysia. The Royal Malaysia Police ban any functions organised by any group relating to the 'Seksualiti Merdeka' (sexual freedom) programme “in the interest of public order.”

   Behind the programme is an Indian origin lawyer, S.Ambiga, who has been a former Bar Council President and a human rights activist who has time and again irked the government.

   Multi-racial Malaysia styles itself as a moderate nation and Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak has in fact been calling for a “movement of moderates” the world over to fight all forms of extremism.

   However, anything considered ‘deviationist’ is not allowed. And the police are the arbiter in this. It acts firmly once conservative elements lodge protests. Then the “public order” and even “national security” come into play.

   Deputy Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar called everyone involved including Ambiga and warned them against holding a planned programme at a Kuala Lumpur city centre that among other things called for equal rights for the homosexual and transsexual groups such as the gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersexual and transgender groups.

   He said the law in the country did not recognise “any deviationist activity that could destroy the practice of religious freedom.”

   The progrmme was called off and the organizers said: “We are citizens who are being denied our rights to our identity and self-determination. The false allegations and ill-intended remarks made to incite hate towards us are completely unjustified,” it said.