Thursday, June 02, 2005

This and that ...


Kamat has an article about India's arranged marriages. In another post, he says, "No discussion of arranged marriages is complete without touching upon the humiliation of the bride's father during the process", and presents a translation of a moving Kannada folk poem. Towards the end of this post, you find a link to a recent article by Anita Jain on a modern Indian woman's struggle with arranged marriage.

Gargi, over at POV, has an informative post on what went wrong with the FM radio revolution that we should all be experiencing -- but are not.

Today's Economic Times has a sensible editorial on the ban of smoking in movies and television shows. In particular, it points out the hypocricy of it all. First, "the government imposes heavy taxes on cigarettes and bans advertising, yet subsidises the cultivation of tobacco with free power, cheap water and financial rescues if the price falls sharply". Second, "while the cigarette industry is excoriated and taxed for being a killer, the bidi industry is subsidised, to kill", because, according to the editorial, the bidis account for an overwhelming part of the smoking market (cigarettes account for only 20 %). Finally, it points out that "smoking is only one of the many sins or hazards. Adultery, rape, corruption, violence, financial exploitation and many other such problems wreck the lives of people", and asks, "ill the government ban all these themes in films because they may glamourise undesirable, hazardous behaviour?" Is there any way to stop this crazy move?

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