Incorrect Reporting - Financial Times

An article by Mr. Reed and Ms Singh appeared in Financial Times. Headline of the article "The Hindu temple central to Narendra Modi’s vision for India".

Portions of the article appeared to convey incorrect truth about what happened in India. One by one and side by side a clarification is issued in this blog.

The attempt is to provide a correct understanding to the western readers.

I wish to state that select portion from the article is reproduced here to explain the position. 

Authors wrote in FT	Ground Reality
Three decades after Hindu zealots tore down a mosque at Ayodhya…	It was Hindu activist. The mosque was brought down. A  wrong narrative. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj0dMceYYhM Must watch video for Foreign and Indian writers.
Modi, who has ruled India since 2014…	Modi has governed India. Will Reed use the same term for Mr. Biden or other western Heads of state. Modi was elected by crores of Indian in a election.
“What Modi is trying to do by developing Ayodhya is [make this] . . . Hinduism’s Vatican,”	This is biased selection from the authors to explain their writing to western readers. He could have used “Cultural centre of India or as Uttar Pradesh CM stated Ram Mandir will be symbol of cultural, spiritual and social unity of India as ‘Rashtra Mandir’ https://organiser.org/2024/01/02/213955/bharat/ram-mandir-will-be-symbol-of-cultural-spiritual-and-social-unity-of-india-as-rashtra-mandir-up-cm-yogi-adityanath/
“Temples are not the government’s business; unemployment, inflation, public welfare and national security are,” Shashi Tharoor, an MP…..	Authors are ignorant or not writing about Indian Government collecting taxes and governing only Hindu Temples and not Christian, Muslim places of worship. Please read this article Indefinite state control of temples is unjust – Hindustan Times. This is select reporting of truth.
Politicians representing India’s roughly 200mn Muslims say the temple project is part of a drive by Modi’s BJP government to push their own mosques and history aside--	Does the authors   capture the truth for western Christian and Muslim readers that Muslim invaders destroyed around 30,000 temples. Advise to authors,   Muslim invaders ruled India and not PM Modi. Pleas read : 'We will never know the number of temples desecrated through India's history': Richard Eaton www.scroll.in
“This is a symbolic celebration of showing Muslims their place in today’s India,” said Asaduddin Owaisi, an MP and head of the All India majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen party. “This has opened the floodgates for many more masjid (mosque) issues…	Owaisi brother Akbaruddin stated in 2013, the junior Owaisi had said that if police is removed for 15 minutes, “we (Muslims) will finish 100 crore Hindus” India Today. The western Christian and Muslim readers will never know this truth about Owaisi as they will not know the ground reality about the symbolic celebration. I urge western readers to go to YouTube and type Ayodhya Ram Temple celebration to know the ground reality about how ordinary people across India celebrate consecration of Ram Temple.
Hindu nationalists have been fighting to demolish or demote mosques built during India’s centuries of Muslim domination…	Here the authors   does not write Muslim Invaders but use the word domination. This is incorrect. The invaders came from outside and they ruled, converted, killed and destroyed India / Bharat.
Some of the disputes predate India’s independence; others are more recent and rode on India’s wave of Hindu nationalism….	Not some, all disputes are not prior to India’s Independence but they date to Mughal Invaders who ruled India before August 24, 1608.
…..years of litigation, the Supreme Court in 2019 approved the construction of Ram Mandir, despite a lack of conclusive evidence that there had ever been a Hindu temple on the site….	Here I request the legal fraternity to look into the matter as written by the authors that Supreme Court of India approved construction of Ram Temple despite lack of conclusive evidence. This appears to be a disrespect of Indian Supreme Court and whether this needs to be taken up.

Politicians and their businesses

Business is more important. Political narratives and shouting's are just noises to be ignored.

Sharad Pawar thanks Adani for contributing ₹25 cr to Baramati Tech Centre : Hindustan Times.

Article states "After the inauguration, Pawar thanked Adani and Vijay Shirke of Shirke Construction for donating a combined ₹35 crores to set up the centre. (HT PHOTO)"

Duplicate Language / Copy

An article in New York Times reported "Harvard Finds More Instances of ‘Duplicative Language’ in President’s Work"

Scratching head and wondered as to what is Duplicate Language?. 

On reading the article it stated that "Harvard University, in the face of mounting questions over possible plagiarism in the scholarly work of its president, Claudine Gay, said on Wednesday that it had found two additional instances of insufficient citation in her work.

The issues were found in Dr. Gay’s 1997 doctoral dissertation, in which Harvard said it had found two examples of “duplicative language without appropriate attribution.”.

Okay we ordinary people call it Copy.

Media calls it Plagiarism.

Harvard calls it Duplicate Language.

Duplicate language in layman's term is copy. 

Zoya's ignorance.

In a recent interview Zoya Akthar (daughter of Javed Akhtar) stated:

“My dad came from nowhere and made a life for himself. I was born and bred in the industry, and I have every right to follow whatever I want to do. As part of his network and what he made, I know those people. What am I going to do, disown my dad because I want to be a filmmaker? Are you saying I can’t choose my profession? It makes no sense. The actual problem is something else, and this is just like beating a dead horse… it’s not going to do anything. If every kid born into the film industry never worked in cinema, it’s still not going to change your life,” she added.

Father of Javed Akthar - Jan Nisar Akhtar.

He was the son of Muztar Khairabadi and great grandson of Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi his career spanned four decades during which he worked with music composers including C. Ramchandra, O.P. Nayyar, Datta Naik also credited as N. Datta and Khayyam and wrote 151 songs. Notable among them were songs from his breakthrough film, AR Kardar's Yasmin (1955), Aankhon hi Aankhon Mein in Guru Dutt's CID (1956), Yeh dil aur unki nigahon ke saaye in Prem Parbat (1974) and Aaja re in Noorie (1979) and his last song, Ae Dil-e-naadaan, in Kamal Amrohi's Razia Sultan (1983).[2] (Source: Wikipedia).

Javed Akhtar son of Jan Nisar Akhtar was born on 1945. Jan Nisar Akhtar wrote lyrics for movie Baap Re Baap (1955 movie) and other movies.

When Zoya Akhtar says her father came from nowhere it appears she is ignorant. Very Unfortunate.

To know about relationship between Javed Akhtar and Jan Nisar Akhtar please read the interview Javed Akhtar on troubled relationship with his father, not getting along with step-mother: ‘He was a good poet, but…’

A glitch to worry about - UCO Bank

An article in Indian Express titled "UCO Bank recovers INR 649 crore ‘erroneously credited’ to customers", appeared on November 16. 2023.

What happened:

During the period from November 10 to 13, the bank observed that due to technical issue in IMPS, certain transactions initiated by holders of other banks have resulted in credit to the account holders in UCO Bank without actual receipt of money from these banks, UCO bank said in another filing. Money is instantly transferred in the IMPS system from one account to another account.

The Key part is the bold underlined words, credit to one account without actual receipt of money from other banks.

Uncomfortable thoughts on what if this is other than a plain technical glitch:

1. System allowed credit to one account without debit to other account ignoring the double entry concept, unacceptable.

2. Did this technical glitch is a patch uploaded by hackers to steal money / exploit the weakness,

3. Is this the testing phase of what is going to be how to destabilize the world economy by digital terrorism / theft.

4. Is this going to be a question of excess of anything is a problem i.e. excess digitization will cause similar issues as vulnerabilities in a system will be exposed.

5. Will this spread into UPI where billions of transactions worth trillions of dollars are taking place? When you steal a small amount of INR 10 from select account, users will stop using the UPI in a big manner?

6. Is this an attempt to destabilize India growth by attacking Indian strength i.e. Digitalization of India?

7.  Cyber threat / Network / Software robustness / Third party system control needs to be one which is more important than anything else in the future.

Above are only thoughts with possible conspiracy connection and can be ignored. 

Let this be a technical glitch and nothing more.

Comparing Investment Returns - Avoid

An excellent statement appeared in an article  Comparing Your Portfolio to the S&P 500 Can Be a Losing Game in investing.com by Lance Roberts:

The financial services industry is predicated on upsetting people so that they will move money around in a frenzy. Money in motion creates fees and commissions. The creation of more and more benchmarks, products, and style boxes is nothing more than the creation of more things to COMPARE with. The end result is investors remain in a perpetual state of outrage.

The lesson we want to drive home here is the danger of following Wall Street’s advice of beating some arbitrary index from one year to the next. What most investors are taught to do is to measure portfolio performance over a twelve-month period. However, that is absolutely the worst thing you can do. It is the same as being on a diet and weighing yourself every day.

Worth reminding ourselves everyday.

Source: alphaideas.in

The "Biased" Guardian

The problem with The Guardian newspaper is to spread a story which will earn them more clicks.

Recent article in The Guardian by Barney Ronay on Cricketer M Shami "Mohammed Shami the outsider in full bloom for India’s final World Cup fling"

The author has clearly stated Shami is the outsider. This is ridiculous. Since independence Muslims have played in this game at national level at various capacities. Azharuddin was captain of the cricket team for many years, Kirmani was the main wicketkeeper for many years. Zaheer was the main fast bowler.

Does the author knew about it or deliberately titled it so that a rift can be created and get click for his writing from a particular community. It appears this article is written for a particular section of readers only.

Disgraceful.

Further the article states:

Before this becomes too much of a feelgood story there are two things that stand out. Shami is also India’s most prominent Muslim cricketer, at a time of rising Hindu nationalism. He was abused relentlessly online, called among other things a “Pakistani traitor”, after the T20 World Cup defeat against India’s neighbours last year.

The abuse was so sustained that Virat Kohli was moved to defend his teammate, stating that “attacking someone over their religion is the most pathetic thing that a human being can do”, a significant intervention given Kohli’s profile. This week it felt like a moment of cultural significance to see Narendra Modi of the BJP party posting “well played Shami!” on social media. Sometimes sport actually can send a grappling hook across the divide.

The author does not have knowledge regarding how to address the Prime Minister of a nation. He stated Narendra Modi of the BJP instead of Prime Minister Modi, which he has earned by way of getting elected.

Pathetic writing.

The article is a politically motivated, revengeful and jealous oriented write up and not a sports write up.  

As a Bhartiya, it appears the writer is jealous that England ended at the bottom four of the table and can't digest that fact that India is rising economically and in all spheres.

In India we refer to as a Burnol moment.

The labelling of the article should be Politics, Motivated, Biased , Sports.