Thanka Maa-A Must Watch Movie

'Thanks Maa' is a story about a 12 year old boy named 'Municipality' finds and saves a two day old abandoned baby from becoming the prey to a ferocious street dog. Failing to find any takers among the people whom he deemed responsible and respectable, Municipality takes up the onus of finding the mother of that abandoned baby himself. Municipality's rock steady determination ultimately helps him emerge a winner against all odds as he reaches that baby's mother but in bargain he loses his most precious possession, the flawless and god-like image of a mother he used to see in his dreams and probably the hope that he'll ever find his own mother again.

official website of the movie
http://www.thanksmaa.com

Decline In Gender Based Discrimination

Gender-based disparities have shown a decline in the country in the last decade with the national capital scoring the highest, according to a report by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

There is an overall improvement in the performance on the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) over the decade, both in the all-India score and in the scores achieved by the States and Union Territories, the report titled “Gendering Human Development Indices: Recasting the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure for Index” says.

The GEM is calculated on political participation and decision-making power, economic participation and decision-making power and power over economic resources of women.

The GEM score for India, which was 0.416 in 1996, increased to 0.497 in 2006.



The National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi had the highest score of 0.564 in 2006, jumping from rank three to occupy the top slot. Nagaland, on the other hand, got the lowest rank, both in 2006 and 1996 with GEM scores of 0.289 and 0.165 respectively.

While 13 States improved their ranks over the decade, 19 lost their respective position during the same period.

The newly formed Jharkhand and Uttarakhand achieved large gains of 0.157 and 0.132 respectively and improved their ranks by six positions each. While Uttar Pradesh and Bihar performed slightly better, the improvement in their GEM was lower in comparison (0.118 and 0.101 respectively). Chhattisgarh improved its score by only 0.058, compared with an improvement of 0.056 by Madhya Pradesh. These States lost four and five ranks respectively.

However, the biggest GEM rank losers are Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Chandigarh and Lakshadweep.

Courtesy-The Hindu

My Favourite Hindi Movies Posters

Netaji currency

A currency issued by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s Bank of Independence has been made public in Bhopal on the eve of his 113th birth anniversary.

In the 1980s, Ram Kishore Dubey, a retired contractor with the State Irrigation Department, discovered the note in his grandfather’s Ramayana book.His grandfather used to stay away from the family for months on end working covertly for the INA [Indian National Army] in the Bundelkhand region on a recruitment drive for its Jhansi ki Rani Regiment, led by Lakshmi Swaminathan. He gave up his land for the cause of the army and so Netaji rewarded him with this note promising him the amount in independent India.
The currency, of denomination one lakh, has a photograph of Bose on the left side and a pre-independence map of the Indian territory with the inscription “ swatantra bharat” in Hindi on the other. In the middle are inscribed the words “ Jai Hind” in English, with the words “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of one Lac” below it.
On the top of the note is a series of flags of the Azaad Hind Fauj over a bold inscription saying “Bank of Independence” with “good wishes” inscribed at the bottom.
Several historians contend that in April 1944, Netaji established the Azad Hind Bank or the Bank of Independence in Rangoon (now Yangon) to manage funds donated by the Indian community from across the world.

courtesy-The Hindu





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Three Passions

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.


With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of people.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.
Bertrand Russel

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines-A Poem by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Pablo Neruda

Where is the rain?where is the sunshine?

Give them sunshine,give them some rain,give them another chance they wanna grow up once again.






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India has the highest number of labourers in the world under 14 years of age. Although the Constitution of India guarantees free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 to 14 and prohibits employment of children younger than 14 in any hazardous environment, child labour is present in almost all sectors of the Indian economy.child workers comprise of more than 30% of total hired workers in the beedi manufacture sector.At least 3000 children work in the firework with wages as low as Rs 20 per day. Thousands of children die each each in the firework buisness.Child labour working as domestic labour and in restaurants is more than 2,500,000. The Government of India expanded the coverage of The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act and banned the employment of children as domestic workers and as workers in restaurants, dhabas and hotels.

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Homeless-All is not well

DELHI's population has been growing over the years, and with it the number of people braving the icy North Indian winter. Cold waves are an annual feature and so are the frozen bodies of homeless people.

According to reports in the media, in 2002 the police found 3,040 corpses during the winter. Of these, no fewer than 400 were those of people who died in a single cold wave.

However, the government has done precious little to build a comprehensive policy on urban homelessness or even conducted a proper census of the homeless.

According to a survey, in 2000 there were 52,765 people out on the streets. But we missed at least half. Currently, 12 shelters are run by the MCD [Municipal Corporation of Delhi]. Ten of these are only night shelters, and about 2,500 people can be accommodated. All of them are pay-and-use ones, with Rs.6 for 12 hours' occupancy.

Last year, about 70 deaths were attributed to severe winter cold

The total homeless population in India is 78 million (based on the 2001 Census). "This problem was more acute in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi, which put together were reported to have 78 per cent of the houseless population," the report states.

At least 1 per cent of the population in Delhi is homeless. This means that no fewer than 140,000 people live on the streets of Delhi. This figure does not include those who sleep in carts or rickshaws or under flimsy plastic-sheet roofs.

At least one lakh jhuggis (slums) have been demolished since 2000. In Yamuna-Pushta alone, we estimate that around 50,000 people have been rendered homeless. Only 30,000 were rehabilitated.

The ultimate goal of the National Policy on Housing and Habitat is to provide the basic need of shelter for all, but until such objective is achieved, it is necessary to provide some kind of shelter to the absolutely shelterless urban poor, particularly street children, destitute women and migrant labourers, etc.



The National Slum Development Programme sanctioned Rs.14,053 lakhs to Delhi between 2000-04. The entire amount has been listed as `unspent balance'.

Palika Ashray Grih was a shelter that catered to women and was run by the AAA. But the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) took it away just before the onset of winter, rendering the inhabitants homeless again.

The government has no definite policy on housing in Delhi. we have a grave crisis of housing. Every time the municipality demolishes slums, the vast majority are rendered homeless. This is a violation of human rights.

Bravo!

Reena Kaushal is the first Indian woman to ski to the South Pole.

Ms. Kaushal, 38, settled in Delhi, made the historic ski-run as part of an eight-woman Commonwealth team that crossed a 900 km Antarctic ice trek to reach the South Pole to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth.

Skiing eight to 10 hours a day, Ms. Kaushal and her teammates from seven other countries covered the frozen southern continent to the pole in about 40 days.

Each skier towed a sledge with food and gear weighing some 80 kg.

The skiers, Ms. Kaushal said in a statement online, braved blinding blizzards, jet speed winds blowing in excess of 130 km an hour, hidden crevasses and temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius to reach their “destiny.”

Besides India, the expedition comprised women from Brunei, Cyprus, Ghana, Jamaica, New Zealand, Singapore and Britain.