D-Day: It's Time To Bring Him Back

How many of you have watched D-day, a 2013 spy thriller by Nikhil Advani?

After the watching the movie most of us should have illusory thought of making the made-up story of the movie as a real life incident, after all it was about capturing the India's most wanted criminal.

Now, let me tell you another story, just that this is well documented in Hussain Zaidi’s book ‘From Dongri to Dubai’, and can also be referred at wikileaks.

On July 2005, India’s most wanted and hated don, Dawood Ibrahim was back in the news. Reason, was the marriage between his daughter and cricketer Javed Miandad’s son. Mystery surrounded whether Dawood Ibrahim, will going to attend the post marriage reception to be held in Dubai. To quote the then telegraphindia.com’s report:

“Even the hotel where the reception was to be held remained unknown. Dummy bookings were made at several leading hotels of Dubai in order to draw a smokescreen……Around 9.30pm, a few guests, both Indians and Pakistanis as well as some Arabs, had arrived at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, one of the hotels where a booking had been made.”

Someone sitting here in India, wanted to send a gift from India, thus to make this a pregnant moment in the Indian History. Game was to make this as the last event in the life of Dawood Ibrahim, and it job was outsourced to the Chhota Rajan gang. Indian Intelligence agency wanted to only ghostly operate this mission, and hence a retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer was drafted to coordinate it.  Vicky Malhotra and Farid Tanasha, the two sharpshooters of Chhota Rajan gang who had arrived in India for this mission.  

To further quote from the book, ‘From Dongri to Dubai’

“At the same time Mumbai’s Crime Branch received a tip-off that two top sharpshooters of the Chhota Rajan gang, Farid Tanasha and Vicky Malhotra, had entered India through 24 Parganas in West Bengal, they were raring to go. DCP Kamlakar thought that the duo was on its way to Delhi to eliminate some top businessman or politician. After seeking consent from his superiors, Kamlakar and his crack team of Crime Branch officers left for Delhi.”

Then came the news of Mumbai policemen travelling to Delhi to picket out Vicky Malhotra, who had been charged with numerous crimes, including murder, extortion and arms smuggling, and was on run for several years. On July 11 a team led by DCP Dhananjay Kamalakar of the Mumbai crime branch arrested Malhotra while he was driving through central Delhi. Accompanying Vicky Malhotra was the retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer, who tried his best to get this D-Day mission accomplished, but all in vain.

Sadly, D-Day still remained a fictional story and Dawood Ibrahim would have watched it and would have rejoicing commenting about the silliness of our imaginations. However, we might see the light after darkness, after all that retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer is back in news. The Master Spy, the legendary of many covert operations, widely known for solving conflicts in States like Mizoram, Kashmir and Punjab. He was the first police officer to be awarded the Kirti Chakra, a military medal awarded for courageous action away from the field of battle.

Meet veteran intelligence hero Ajit Doval, our new National Security Advisor.

The story behind the Modi Surname

Today, everyone in this world are inquisitive about a certain surname, i.e MODI.

To begin, we will have to understand the art of naming in Gujarati. The Gujarati surnames seem to derive from four main sources: place names, trades or occupations, nicknames and traditional Hindu castes. 

Names such as Khambhata (remember, the famous Persis Khambatta), are derived from Khambhat, a municipality in Anand district of Gujarat. Surnames, such as Gandhi were ‘perfumer’, Jhaveri, were ‘jeweller’, Kapadia (Dimple Kapadia), were Cloth (Kapada in hindi) seller.

Further, there are many Gujarati surnames which started as the nicknames for a certain generation, for example, Mankad (Vinoo Mankad) means bug, or Hathi (Jaisukh lal Hathi). Lastly, surnames were based on Hindu castes (sub-castes, mini castes, etc), like Joshi, Gohil, Vaghela, etc.

Now, coming back to our main story, the story of Modi. Well the origin falls under the second category, i.e. it is named after an occupation. It connotes of all the caste and religion who traditionally were ‘grocer’.  Coincidentally South Asia’s two greatest leaders (Gandhi and Jinnah) were also from Gujarati mercantile castes. While, Gandhi (derived from gandh गंध, meaning smell) was a Hindu perfume seller bania, Jinnah, a Lohana-converted into a Shia Muslim (Ismaili Khoja). According to many, even Modi is a part of Lohana, along with various other surnames such as: Daiya, Dattani, Kotak, Kothari, etc.  

Thus, since Modi indicates a profession. A Modi surname can be a Hindu bania (Lalit Modi) or OBC, Jain, or even a Parsi (Rusi Mody) and Muslim (Syed Modi, the eight-time National Badminton champion).

Narendra Modi is a Ghanchi, which is considered to be a backward caste, since originally they were oil-pressers (teli). Ironically, the Muslims involved in the Godhra incident were also Ghanchi.

Further, the outgoing Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's surname is also derived from merchant community (Khatri) . Their ancestor were also said to be from oil-pressers (teli) community. His gotra is said to be Kohli, which has come from Kolhu (कोल्हू).

Indian Prime Ministers & average GDP growth in their tenures

The young faces of UP's General Election 2014

The beauty of any political movements/political party's wave is that they most of the time give us many new faces. These new faces ridding on the movements and wave raises a lot of expectations from the general public. In this 'Modi Wave' also, there are a lot of such faces, in this post we would be talking about five such faces from Uttar Pradesh.


1. SADHVI SAVITRI BAI FOOLE, Bahraich, 39, Female


This Mayawati look a like Sadhvi is like a young Uma Bharti. She came into headline when she won the assembly elcetion in 2012 from Balha (Bahraich). This time she defeated Congress MP Kamal Kishor.

2. PRIYANKA SINGH RAWAT, Barabanki, 28, Female





During last election, many had glorified B L Punia's victory at Barabanki, after he made a remarkable come back. Punia, came third during 2007 assembly election. Without been perturbed, he decided to stay on and winthin a two years, he was in news for winning Barabanki seat, afterall in was in 1984 that Congress last won this seat.

Now, in this election Punia was defeated by another new comer, that to by over 2 lakh votes in Barabanki. Once working with a news channel, she joined the BJP last June. Her husband Raghunath Rawat is with the Indian Revenue Services an dis posted in Nagpur.

3. REKHA VERMA, Dhaurahra, 32, Female

She is the wife of late Arun Verma, a BSP leader. Her husband joined the BJP last year and was in consideration for a Lok Sabha ticket until he died about four months ago after suffering a heart attack. Riding on the Modi Wave she defeated union minister Jatin Prasad, who came fourth behind BSP' Daud Ahmad.


 








4. ANUPRIYA SINGH PATEL, Mirzapur, 33, Female

This alumnus of Lady Shri Ram College had already grabed the news when BJP decided to go with pre-poll alliance with her party. She is the daughter of Dr.Sone Lal Patel, who founded the Apna Dal. She has a Masters degrees in Psychology and also Masters in Business Administration (MBA), and has taught at Amity University.

5. ANJU BALA, Misrikh, 34, Female

BJP was able to win this closely contested reserved constituency from BSP, a seat which they last won in 1996.


The story behind the Modi Surname

Election 2014| Numbers | NOTA & AAP

NOTA, short for none-of-the-above option was introduced for the first time in this Lok Sabha election. I thought of studying the NOTA numbers.

Across India, NOTA garnered a countrywide vote share of 1.1% ( or 6000197 votes) in this Lok Sabha polls, which is more than what CPI  {0.8%,4327298} or JD(U) {1.1%,5992196}. The Top 30 seats where NOTA got the maximum votes are:

 At the same same I decided to compare the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) performance against the NOTA vote share, after all it was these so honest fellows who thought that after there entry into Indian politics, we the people of nation will find an alternative to chose for. Here is the comparison:

Though UP polled the highest 5.92 lakh votes in favour of NOTA, this translated into just 0.7 per cent vote share. In fact, barely 19 of UP's 80 seats recorded more than 10,000 NOTA votes. However when we compared the NOTA performance with AAP, here is the 51 seats where NOTA got more votes than AAP:

Infographic of UP's General Election Since 1951

Will we going to witness a saffron wash tomorrow and everyone else would submerge under NaMo Tsunami, these statements would get cleared in few hours. In the mean time here is few data pointers to showcase the historical performance of various political parties in the general election. 

Haathi or Haath, the story behind congress's election symbol

Congress started with a pair of bullocks and a plough as their election symbol during first election in 1952.

After Indira Gandhi broke away from the Congress in 1967, she chose a calf and a cow as the symbol of her faction. She won a landslide victory in the 1971 elections with this symbol.

Now, this new congress/government was in the control of Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her son, and opposition parties started criticizing the symbol as the real state of the congress: Indira as Cow, and Sanjay as Calf. Thus, Indira decided to look for an alternative election symbol.

After the emergency of mid 1970s, Indira finally opted for fresh elections in 1977. So, Indira had decided to discard that symbol and later come up with a new one this time.

They went to the Election Symbol just two days before the deadline, the task was assigned to Buta Singh, and he came up with the three options: Elephant (haathi) , Bicycle, and Open palm (haath). EC had insisted Buta to select the symbol by the next morning, failing which, the party would have to contest without a symbol.

Indira was out in Vijayawada, with Narasimha Rao, when Buta was asked by the Election Commission to pick an election symbol. Buta was not sure which symbol he should choose, so he booked a trunk call to seek Indira's approval," says author Rasheed Kidwai in his book, 24 Akbar Road. He was the AICC general secretary then.  "The line was not very clear or, perhaps, Buta's Hindi pronunciation was so thick that Indira kept hearing haathi (elephant), instead of haath (hand).  "She kept saying no to it even as Buta kept trying to explain that it was not the elephant, but the open palm symbol that he was advising her to pick.  "The comedy of errors continued till an exasperated Indira handed the telephone over to Rao. In a matter of seconds, Rao, master of more than a dozen Indian and foreign languages, understood what Buta was trying to convey. He shouted, "Buta Singhji, panja kahiye, panja' Indira was relieved, took the receiver and said, Haan, haan, panja theek rahega (yes, yes, the open palm symbol will be appropriate).'