Yesterday, the Shiv Sainiks attacked the offices of the news channel IBN Lokmat in retaliation to the channel’s remarks against the Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. This is yet another attack by the far-right Shiv Sena after several attacks on the media over the years, for any remark passed against the party.

In India, you would often face a problem using old, worn out or perhaps slightly torn banknotes. Typically, Indians refuse to accept such banknotes, but unfortunately, such banknotes are in wide circulation. Paper banknotes have an estimated lifetime of around 1 year. Given the population of India and the dominance of cash over credit/debit cards and cheques, the lifetime of paper banknotes in India could very well be less than a year.

I was rather amused by the news on NDTV this evening, when I learned that a hot topic of debate in India was Shashi Tharoor’s comments on Twitter. I couldn’t help thinking about the British sitcom Sorry! and its catchphrase "Language Timothy!"

Well, this was the dialogue between Minister Shashi Tharoor and the veteran journalist Kanchan Gupta on Twitter, that caused a storm in a teacup:

Kanchan Gupta: Tell us minister, next time you travel to Kerala, will it be cattle class?

Shashi Tharoor: Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows.

I love wit and especially when it comes from an Indian politician, which is seldom.

I believe that education is one of the most important factors contributing to a country’s development. Education can weed out or scale down problems such as poverty, crime, communalism and suppression of freedom. So, I was excited when the Indian HRD minister (Kapil Sibal) recently announced that he was reforming the education system in India as this was a long time coming.

Kapil Sibal’s mantra of “expansion, inclusion and excellence” along with his announcement of a few reforms such as optional Class 10 board exams, accreditation agencies for schools, free education and private sector involvement in primary learning is certainly a step in the right direction and if such reforms are implemented with passion and perseverance, then they will contribute towards giant strides along the road to India’s development.

You may wonder “Does India really need to overhaul its education system?

One of the hot topics in the Indian news media over the past couple of weeks, was Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the BJP due to the release of his book titled “Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence”.  It seems the book blames Jawaharlal Nehru for the partition in 1947 and claims that Jinnah was wrongly portrayed as the villain of the partition.

Not long after the book’s launch, the pro-Hindutva State government of Gujarat banned the sale, publication and distribution of the book in Gujarat.