Priya Rai Is an Indian born American. Rai grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. She attended Arizona State University but left school to become an adult model. Priya started her career modeling fashion and swimwear.
She was a stripper and erotic dancer for 12 years prior to getting into pornography.
Ojas S.V. as Irom Sharmila in the play le Mashale
Introducing Manipur as the land of strong women, recounting tales of its past glory and misery, Ojas S.V. takes on the role of one of the strongest the North Eastern state has produced — Irom Sharmila Chanu.
She steps onto the stage with a lamp and begins the story of the ‘Iron Lady of Manipur’ who has been on an indefinite fast for nearly 11 years, demanding the Indian Government to repeal the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958.
Ojas, as Irom, narrates the violent acts by the army that prompted the latter to fast until her demands were met.
“Irom used her body as a medium of expression (by fasting) and as a theatre artiste, I too am doing the same to communicate to people,” says young Ojas, after staging the play le Mashale (A woman with a torch) — for the 115th time — in Kochi.
The aspirant actor adapted the story of one of the most inspiring women the world has seen into a play.
“When I first came to know about Irom, I could not believe it was true, yet it was real. At 28 years of age, when it was time for a young woman to realise her dreams, Irom devoted her life to a cause. I wanted everyone to know her story.”
And she has taken the story around the country, bringing people closer to the cause Irom has devoted her life for.
The play, a soliloquy, also talks about the struggles faced by such women as Manorama Devi, who was allegedly raped and killed by the armed forces, and of the nude protest by 40 women.
Known as ‘Meira Paibi’ women groups began taking up issues relating to militarisation and military excesses since the 1980s.
Based on them and Irom’s protest, Malayali writer Civic Chandran wrote the play Meira Paibi two years ago.
It is this story that Ojas had adapted in the form of an activist play. “The problem of North East is our problem. Tomorrow it may come to Kerala,” says Civic.
Ojas is taking her play across Kerala across ten districts from till August 25.
The theatre artist, among her other work, brings to light the Bhopal Judicial Tragedy (which was enacted as a mock play) and social movements by young people, in the form of letters written between two people.
Social activists are deeply divided over the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare. While human rights activist Swami Agnivesh says the movement has a groundswell of popular support, activist and columnist Shabnam Hashmi feels Hazare has adopted an authoritarian attitude and is supported by right-wing groups.
'Hazare arrest repressive, anti-democratic'
By Swami Agnivesh
The arrest of Anna Hazare is anti-democratic and repressive. The government's authoritarian act will cost it dearly.
Government should not stand on false prestige. It should gauge the public mood and the aspirations of the youth, students and the ordinary people.
The government should realise that the proposed Lokpal bill draft falls much short of the people's aspirations. Instead of sitting on technicalities that the bill is the property of the parliament and so on, the government should immediately rectify the bill and make it an effective legislation.
Parliament should be respected, but the supreme parliament - people - should get higher respect.
There is a groundswell of support for the movement against corruption. I and other colleagues in the India Against Corruption movement, personally felt it during Hazare's fast in April. Despite all gloomy predictions, hundreds of people came out to back him today also. There have been demonstrations in various states and even outside India. The movement is irresistible now.
Public sentiment is against corruption. Now, nobody can stop this yearning for transparency and accountability. Among individuals and groups, families and communities, the talk narrows down to one point: Corruption and the mounting corruption in the country.
The government should not invent arguments for delaying and evading an effective Lokpal bill. Every day delayed will recoil on the government. It will have to pay a huge political price.
'Hazare movement linked to right-wing'
By Shabnam Hashmi
I don't support Anna's movement at all, neither does he represent me any way. He has adopted an authoritarian attitude in his fight against corruption and is affiliated to right-wing Hindu groups.
I have myself been fighting the government pressing for some legislations like the communal violence bill. But that doesn't mean you can undermine the existing democratic institutions of India.
Framing laws need deep engagements, holistic consultations. Bills aren't Maggie noodles that you cook for two minutes and are ready to eat.
What Anna is proposing is an anti-democratic Lokpal. It would take away all the power from existing institutions and suddenly we will have an over-arching and super-power like institution.
I myself don't agree with the government on various issues. The prime minister should come under the ambit of any anti-corruption institution.
There is nothing that the proposed Lokpal will bring to bear in the form of greater sense of transparency and accountability in the system than what the existing institutions have achieved or not achieved.
For that, a necessary condition is the creation of a social consciousness which would decisively disapprove and reject the culture of favouritism and nepotism.
You also need to define corruption. Are you only worried about the monetary corruption? What about the suppression of poor in the name of development. Land is being grabbed from poor farmers. Look what is happening to minorities in Gujarat.
Does your Lokpal cover all that? Or you are ignoring morally corrupt behaviour of people?
And then there is the issue of covert support by right-wing Hindu activists to the Hazare movement.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activists have been participating in the movement. And Anna likes to stand with Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Is his movement really that clean?
New Delhi, Aug 12 : Strongly defending the arrest of Anna Hazare, Home Minister P. Chidambaram Wednesday said the social activist was taken into custody to prevent him from violating prohibitory orders imposed ahead of his indefinite mass hunger strike. He also said the Indian public has no right to make laws.
Replying to the discussion on the Prime Minister's statement on the issue, Chidambaram assured the House that the government would now deal with the issue "administratively and politically" but underscored that Parliament would have to stand together in ensuring that its lawmaking function does not get appropriated by those who are not members. "The people have the right to vote us in and vote us out of Parliament but no right to make a law. That right has been given to us by the people," he said.
He agreed with remarks made by the prime minister and his ministerial colleague Kapil Sibal that "the real issue is who drafts the bill, who makes the law".
He said the supremacy of the parliament ought to be "upheld".
He said the remark by Team Anna that they have faith in parliament but not in parliamentarians was "astonishing" and that at no point of time could the government allow the supremacy of parliament in making legislations be undermined.
But he defended the government on its consultations with Hazare and his team of civil society representatives for drafting the Lokpal Bill, saying the contribution of civil society to the legislation was significant.
He gave the examples of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Right to Information Act and the Right to Education Act that had significant contributions from the civil society.
Defending the Delhi Police, Chidambaram said Hazare was picked up from his residence at Mayur Vihar Tuesday morning in "preventive detention".
The minister was replying to a day-long debate in the Lok Sabha with opposition MPs criticising the government for curbing Hazare's right to protest by invoking prohibitory orders under section 144 - that prevents the gathering of five or more people - at the protest venue.
"It is not the first time section 144 was imposed. We all, as political activists, have been arrested on many occasions for violating section 144," the home minister said, asking Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani that he too was arrested as a preventive measure in Bihar when he was on a rath yatra in 1989.
"Was that arrest also not prohibitory," Chidambaram asked, even as both Advani and RJD leader Lalu Prasad, who were present in the house, smiled at the reference.
Lalu Prasad also intervened to remind Chidambaram that current Home Secretary R.K. Singh was then the district collector who got Advani arrested. This invited laughter from the MPs.
When reminded by BJP leader Sushma Swaraj that the prohibitory order was not imposed in the area from where Hazare was arrested, Chidambaram replied: "He was arrested for intending to violate section 144. There was an apprehension of breach of peace."
Elaborating on the sequence of events that led to the detention of Hazare and his being taken to Tihar jail, the minister said the Gandhian was asked before being arrested if he accepted the conditions set by police for allowing him to hold his protest.
"He said no and wanted to continue his protests in JP Park. He said he will violate the police order," Chidambaram said, adding that he saluted Hazare for speaking "frankly like a true Gandhian".
"The police acted on their best judgement, no force was used and not even lathi charge," he said winding up the discussion that began shortly after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a statement over the issue.
He maintained that the government had "high respect" for Hazare and regretted the arrest that was "inevitable though unfortunate".
Chidambaram also explained that it was not the prime minister or the home minister who decide on preventive and prohibitory arrests, but the local police that did so on the basis of their assessment of the likelihood that peace and tranquillity would be disturbed.
He said the decision to arrest Hazare was taken by police officers as the government would not interfere with the day-to-day functioning of the law and order enforcing agencies.
What is impeachment?
Impeachment literally means being charged for misconduct. Under the constitution, judges, chief justices of the Supreme Court and high courts can only be removed after being charged with 'proven misconduct and incapacity' by the president of India on a motion adopted in both houses of parliament by two-thirds majority.
What is the procedure?
Each Rajya Sabha member will vote on the impeachment motion against Justice Sen, who is the first judge to face impeachment proceedings in the Rajya Sabha. Since the MPs will be acting as jury members they will face no whip.
The motion will be passed if at least 50 percent of the MPs are present and two-thirds of them vote for the motion. If the Rajya Sabha passes the motion, it will then go to the Lok Sabha within a week.
What has Sen been accused of?
Justice Sen is accused of misappropriating around Rs.24 lakh in the 1990s when he was a lawyer and was appointed receiver by the Calcutta High Court.
Other impeachment motions in the country?
The first case of impeachment of a judge in India was of Justice V. Ramaswami of the Supreme Court in May 1993. The motion fell through in the Lok Sabha as the ruling Congress abstained from voting. Kapil Sibal, a senior Supreme Court advocate, and now a cabinet minister, defended Justice Ramaswami before the bar of the Lok Sabha.
By M.A. Taslim
There is no ambiguity about freedom of transit to land-locked countries:
"Land-locked States shall have the right of access to and from the sea for the purpose of exercising the rights provided for in this Convention including those relating to the freedom of the high seas and the common heritage of mankind. To this end, land-locked States shall enjoy freedom of transit through the territory of transit States by all means of transport." (UNCLOS 1982, Article 125 Clause 1)
However, transit from one coastal state to another is less clear. GATT 1947 stipulates:
"There shall be freedom of transit through the territory of each contracting party, via the routes most convenient for international transit, for traffic in transit to or from the territory of other contracting parties. No distinction shall be made which is based on the flag of vessels, the place of origin, departure, entry, exit or destination, or on any circumstances relating to the ownership of goods, of vessels or of other means of transport." (Article V, Clause 2)
The use of the term 'international transit' above is significant. It seems to suggest that GATT calls for freedom of international transit. The important question then is whether goods travelling between two points of the same country through the territory of another country qualify to be called international transit.
GATT (and its current incarnation World Trade Organisation or WTO) was a multilateral organisation for promoting international trade through uniform laws. Nothing in GATT relates to exclusively internal matters of a Contracting Party. Since transit between two points of the same country, albeit through the territory of another country, is essentially internal trade, it is unlikely that GATT would have contemplated regulating such trade. This seems to be the broad international understanding. UNCTAD Trust Fund for Trade Facilitation Negotiations states:
In the WTO context, goods are defined to be in transit when the crossing of the territory of another WTO Member constitutes only part of the journey between departure and final destination country ... . GATT Article V therefore only refers to so-called through-transit, i.e. transit in the GATT context, normally involves at least three states. (Technical Note 8, rev 2, February 2009, emphases added.)
Thus, transit between two points of the same country through the territory of another country does not fall within the purview of Article V as it is commonly understood by the international community. It seems nations were aware of the political and security aspects of transit and therefore avoided multilateralisation of the issue. Bangladesh is under no international obligation to offer transit to India which has a much larger coast than what Bangladesh has. Hence, transit to India must be decided bilaterally or sub-regionally.
It is customary to begin a discourse on transit by pointing out the limited scale of trade in the South Asia region relative to other regions such as South-East Asia. This is attributed to restrictive cross-country regulations and trade logistics problems. Without mentioning which countries are imposing these restrictions, the authors jump to the conclusion that if Bangladesh offers transit between North-East and rest of India (i.e. East-West transit through Bangladesh), it will melt away the trade barriers and thereby substantially increase trade and investment in the entire region.
Actually these arguments do not fully apply to Bangladesh. India is the largest trade partner of Bangladesh with two-way formal and informal trade putatively in the region of $6.0 billion. India is the second largest source of formal import of Bangladesh accounting for 15 per cent of the total import in 2009-10. If probable informal import is added, the figure rises to around 25 per cent, which makes it the largest source of import for Bangladesh. Bangladeshi export faces substantial non-tariff hurdles erected by India, but nonetheless export to India exceeded half billion dollars last year. But for these hurdles export to India would have been much greater and total trade greater. There can be no doubt that there is scope for substantial expansion of trade with India if the trade barriers are relaxed.
It is claimed that transit to India will enhance regional connectivity and thereby promote greater trade and investment. However, a little reflection will reveal that East-West transit to India does not do much for regional connectivity; it only improves internal connectivity of India by making traffic movement from the West to North-East India quicker and cheaper. It is unlikely that Bangladesh will gain greater access to either the North-East or the rest of India due to transit.
Currently access to North-East India is hampered by various non-tariff barriers and infrastructure bottlenecks. The Ministry of Commerce (MoC) has been complaining about these barriers for a long time without much success in reducing them significantly. It would seem that India is not particularly keen about Bangladesh having extensive economic and commercial ties with North-East India. East-West transit will enable India to prevent Bangladesh from gaining a sheltered market in North-East India by largely offsetting its geographical comparative advantage. India could transport goods from the rest of the country to the North-East quickly and cheaply through the transit corridor, but Bangladeshi goods could be made unattractive through an appropriate choice of non-tariff barriers.
It should be very clear that connectivity of Bangladesh with Bhutan, Nepal and North-east India is not automatically enhanced by East-West transit unless India makes it a pre-condition of connectivity, and it does. What the Core Committee is suggesting is that East-West transit to India will pacify India to give Bangladesh better access to the North-East. East-West transit is neither necessary nor sufficient to secure access to North-East India. Bangladesh may end up losing its principal bargaining chip without much tangible gain.
While East-West transit does not automatically enhance regional connectivity, North-South transit does serve this end. Both Bhutan and Nepal gain by having North-South transit routes through Bangladesh. Bangladesh also gains direct access to these countries unless India creates hurdles.
The biggest gainers from North-South transit are the North-East Indian states. Their international trade (though not internal trade) will be greatly facilitated by access to Chittagong port. Bangladesh will gain from providing transit services including port services. The magnitude of the gain will depend on the skills of the negotiators on both sides. Trade and investment in the region are likely to be promoted by such transit. As economic development of the North-East is accelerated by the transit, trade and investment should flourish.
The geographical location of Bangladesh gives it a comparative advantage in trade with the North-Eastern states vis-a-vis other states of India as well as other countries of the world. This advantage should be protected as far as practicable to exploit the trade benefits. East-West transit dilutes this comparative advantage to a large extent. Hence, such transit should not be granted without ample compensation. However, North-South transit appears to benefit the entire region including Bangladesh. These considerations should be borne in mind when negotiating a deal with India.
A major obstacle to transit is the inadequacies of the transit infrastructure on both sides of the border. Roads and rail tracks of Bangladesh that might be used for transit are in an appalling condition. They can hardly bear the load of domestic traffic, which is increasing at a rapid rate. The total breakdown of transport services along some of the arterial roads recently is a stark reminder of the need to very substantially improve the transport infrastructure of the country. It would be a mistake to allow transit traffic without first ensuring that the transport infrastructure can bear the load of both domestic and transit traffic.
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The writer is a professor of the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka. He can be reached at e-mail: m_a_taslim@yahoo.com
After the state cabinet took the decision to send empty trucks to Jiribam along National Highway 53 to ferry in essential commodities in order to offset artificial inflation spun by the ongoing agitation under the aegis of SHDDC demanding declaration of Sadar Hills ADC into a full fledged district, about 300 empty trucks left for the Assam-Manipur border town Jiribam last week.
It is worth noting that the economic blockade that was imposed by SHDDC beginning midnight of July, tentatively for seven days, quickly spiraled into an indefinite general strike across Sadar Hills, barely two days after the blockade began, following the death of three women in a blockade related incident.
The 336 loaded trucks that arrived here included 45 oil tankers, besides several FCI-detailed trucks that brought in essential commodities. The convoy also brought in about ten passenger busses that were stranded in Jiribam owing to the agitation.
At about 3:10 pm suspected volunteers of the agitation rolled down a huge bolder from a hilltop near Sinam area and damaged a convoy vehicle of Thoubal police commandos. The occupants of the Maruti Gypsy however escaped unhurt miraculously.
By Sinlung
Don’t forget INDIANS are LOUD. They talk on the phone loudly, they flaunt their stuff’s LOUDLY. What Anna is doing is a good thing? Fighting CORRUPTION? But he is too LOUD it breaks my ear drums.
Every living Indian hates corruption, yet every living Indian is corrupted. Starting from Religion, school, education and work. I have hardly seen an Indian who is not corrupted. So the next question is fighting corruption? Is it just money? NO
Corruption is everything and everywhere? What is Anna Fight for? The Money…that’s my reply.
If he really is in a fight against corruption, why does he not sit front of school that ask for donations, in front of Engineering colleges that ask for huge sums of money. In front of queues where we pay bribes daily…Why is trying to hit parliament..Does he have ulterior motives? Yes..He is an opposition party puppet.
To fight corruption, fight the Sai Baba’s, the hundreds of God-men in Hindu religion fooling people.
Politicians are more honest in many ways in India…Why? They spend money to buy votes during elections and they need to get their investments back.
SO who is Anna?
Just one Indian, who is a puppet of political outcomes…
Can he change India? No…Never..Not from outside Parliament.
