The importance of punctuation marks

What's in a name? A lot. Particularly if the punctuation marks aren't placed properly or not placed at all. e.g., A company by the name Anu's Laboratories came up with an IPO recently. Whenever this name was flashed, it elicited an awkward response. Why? Coz they would write Anus Laboratories for that company's name. That even includes some major newspapers and TV channels including Reuters (only a slight mention though in Top 3 by volume). It was only at the time of listing that I discovered it was Anu's Labs and not A*** Labs.

Breaking news: Journalism reaches heights!!

Breaking News #1: Amitabh Bachchan catches cold




Breaking News # 2: Commissioner's dog missing since 25th March



Breaking News #3: Delhi: Commissioner's lost dog is found



Breaking News #4: A cat climbs on the roof-top


Breaking News #5: Rahul (Gandhi) eats Dal-Puri for lunch

President's affection: All for the camera!

Image location: here

Gujjar Protests: Fight for the bottom of the pyramid

There's no denying that we (as a country) have had a history of discrimination. The rigid Hindu caste system had oppressed a few sections of the society. This was, no doubt, an extremely bad thing to have happened for social harmony. After gaining independence, the Indian constitution, drafted by a person from one of those oppressed sections, Dr. BR Ambedkar, recommended reservations for them but ONLY for a period of 10 years. This would help them to join the mainstream. He probably knew the repercussion (as we see now) if the time limit was not set. After his death, the subsequent governments, instead of taking stock of their progress, kept extending the period. Not just that, the vote-minded politicians even extended the scope of reservations by including all and sundry in the OBCs. Now, the whole country seemed to be backward. What next? Reservations in world jobs since 1/6th of humanity is backward, so 1/6th of the world's jobs should rightfully belong to us. Isn't it? Well, the world doesn't elect our politicians, so these guys haven't demanded it yet.

60 years on, people still feel it is a birth right to get reservation. What is worse is holding the rest of the country to ransom while doing so, like the gujjars did. They were demanding for inclusion of their community in the ST (scheduled tribe) list so that their are entitled to a different reservation. It is not that they are backward and denied reservation. Whether they are backward is debatable, the reservation part is not as they are already covered under the OBCs (other backward classes). Now they want to be moved to a different list as they feel the OBCs list has become extremely 'crowded' and getting jobs even there is difficult. Hence, the demand for inclusion in a list that is lower down the order and the protests to press for it. Now you know, what the unreserved or the 'general' category feels. Anyway, by doing so, they encourage discrimination of themselves and cry foul when others do that to them. The gujjar agitation is the scheme of things to come in the future. People will be willing to die for such things, but won't believe in such simple things as hard word. Hard work? What's that?