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| THIS
OUR NORTH AMERICA |
| Whither Canadian housing
market? |
Khushwant Singh writes
from Toronto
ONE year back, the
Toronto-area realtors had good reason to celebrate.
It record sales the housing bubble looked bigger
and bigger. It was all over Canada. Home buyers
formed long queues. At the end of 2007 prices
rose by 7 per cent and sales by 12 per cent over
the previous year. But in September, as the global
credit crunch started to exact a toll, the market
finally registered a 3 per cent price decline,
the first such drop in ten years. By November
end, the average home was some $25,000 cheaper
than it was during the same time last year.More
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| All party meeting held
in BC |
Gurpeet Singh writes from Vancouver
Setting aside
all ideological differences, the representatives
and the supporters of the major political parties
of India have resolved to send a message of peace
and unity back home in the wake of Vienna shootout
and its fallout in Punjab. A shootout at a Sikh
temple on May 24 in Vienna left Sant Ramanand
dead. Since he was the cleric of the Dera Sach
Khand sect, which has a massive following among
the low caste groups or dalits of Punjab, this
has resulted in a large scale violence in Punjab
and its neighbouring Haryana in India.More
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| ANALYSIS |
| Who
pockets your taxes? |
Professor Vinod Anand
GOVERNMENT receipts have two major components:
revenue receipts and capital receipts. The former
are grouped into two categories: tax revenue and
non-tax revenue. The latter include market loans,
external loans, small savings, and government provident
funds besides accretions to various deposit accounts,
depreciation and reserve funds of departments like
railways.More |
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| Guantanamo still needs
to be closed |
TWO days after entering office, President
Obama issued an executive order announcing his
intention to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba within one year. Obama's order called for
a cabinet-level panel to grapple with issues including
what locations inside the United States prisoners
might be moved to and which courts they could
be tried in. But Obama's efforts have hit a roadblock
when the Senate voted 90 to 6 to approve an amendment
barring the use of funds to transfer detainees
to the U.S.More |
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| Free Aung San Suu Kyi |
 ALL
of Burma's international trade and aid partners
should strongly condemn the renewed imprisonment
of the democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in
the notorious Insein Prison, Human Rights Watch
said today. Human Rights Watch called on the UN
secretary-general, members of the Association
of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, and
India in particular to press the authorities for
her immediate, unconditional release.More |
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| ART, MEDIA & LITERATURE |
| Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi
and his soulful music |
Harjap
Singh Aujla
 SINCE
the days of Sri Guru Nanak Dev and his lifelong
musician, Bhai Mardana (a Muslim Rababi maestro),
there has been a long association of the Rababi
Muslim musicians with the Sikh community. By tradition
since ages (roughly a thousand years from now)
the Rababi families consisted primarily of hereditary
musicians and one of them Bhai Mardana enjoyed
the unique privilege of becoming a life long musical
companion of a great social and religious reformer
Sri Guru Nanak Dev.More |
| Tips to get USA Visa |
WHAT'S
the most important thing to do when applying for
a visa to travel to the United States? "Listen
to the consular officer carefully. Listen to the
question being asked, and answer it truthfully
and briefly, rather than telling some long story,"
says Vivek Joshi, vice consul at the U.S. Embassy
in New Delhi.More |
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India ready to help overcome global economic crisis:
PM | Taliban could spread into India, Persian
Gulf: Pakistan | Punjab BSP chief, incharge roughed
up by party workers | Sell-off in RIL pulls Sensex
below 15K | BCCI stands by Dhoni despite T20 debacle
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| India ready to help overcome
global economic crisis: PM |
Leaving
for Russia on his first foreign visit after assuming
office for a second term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
on Monday said India is ready to play its part in coordinating
global efforts to overcome the economic slowdown.More
Updated on June 15, 2009 at 01:00 p.m.
|
- Taliban could spread into
India, Persian Gulf: PakistanMore
- Punjab BSP chief, incharge
roughed up by party workersMore
- Sell-off in RIL pulls Sensex
below 15KMore
- BCCI stands by Dhoni despite
T20 debacleMore
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| E D I T O R I
A L |
| Why Punjab burns? |
|  PUNJAB
has witnessed once again gory scenes of rioting,
firing, burning and looting of public and private
property for over a week. At least three persons
died in clashes with the police and many more
injured. Several trains passing through Punjab
were cancelled. Buses and other vehicular traffic
was off the road and in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar
and many other places normal life came to a stop
with schools, offices, bazaars and closing indefinitely.More
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| FOCUS |
| Making sense of elections
|
Gobind
Thukral
 OUT
of 714 million eligible voters, over 62 per cent
cast their votes during India’s five-phase
Parliamentary election, spread over a month, involving,
4.7 million polling staff and 2.1 million security
personnel. India’s electoral scale is gigantic
by any standard. It has used 8.2 lakh polling stations,
15 lakh electronic voting machines.More |
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| The victory of Congress,
a big setback for the Third Front |
| Sawraj
Singh
THE recent election results in India showed that the
emerging trend of an alternative to the two party systems
got a major jolt. The Congress party regained the ground
lost over the last two decades. Results were equally
shocking for the BJP, the Hindu Nationalists party.
The Congress party was also able to attract the minorities
who were increasingly disillusioned with it.More |
| Sri Lanka: What’s
next for the Tamil community? |
|  NEARLY
three decades of war ended in Sri Lanka last week and
a victorious President Mahinda Rajapaksa has extended
a fresh hand of friendship to the minority Tamils, but
most members of this community feel it will take a long
time for the wounds to heal after years of mistrust
and alienation.More |
| LTTE defeated, what now? |
| AFTER 26 years, Sri Lanka
claims it has defeated the feared Tamil Tigers, but
the tide of refugees driven into internment leaves legacy
of hate. It had been talked about for months, its slow
inevitability played out against the most savage of
backdrops. Last night, on the blood-soaked sand on the
north-eastern coast of Sri Lanka, it appeared to have
finally happened.More |
| FEATURES |
| Baba Bhagat Singh Bilga
and Vimla Dang: Pride of Punjab
|
| Chaman
Lal
BABA Bhagat Singh Bilga, lone surviving
Ghadrite revolutionary of India breathed his last
on 22nd May 2009 in England at his son’s
house. He was 102 years old last month. He was
as alert as ever when I met him last on Ist November
2008 at Desh Bhagat Yaadgar Hall, of which he
was President. He had unfurled the Ghadar[Revolutionary]
party flag on that day as usual to mark the Ghadar
party memorial day, formed in USA, way back in
1913.More
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| Will U.S. make a difference
on Human Rights Council? |
| Thalif
Deen
WILL the election of the United States to the
47-member Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC) make
a significant difference to the cause of human rights
worldwide, or will Washington be thwarted by the Council's
politically-repressive countries accused of being serial
abusers? Both questions will be put to a test when Washington
takes a seat on the HRC for a three-year term beginning
Jun. 19.More |
| Tata car rides on government
subsidies |
| Paranjoy
Guha Thakurta
 INDIA’S
Tata Motors, makers of the ‘cheapest car ever
made’, say they have received more than a million
bookings for the first batch of cars said to roll out
of its factory in a few months. The company is a part
of the Tata Group, an industrial empire with interests
in steel, hotels, chemicals, computer software, telecommunications,
energy and various consumer products, with an annual
turnover exceeding 60 billion dollars.More
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| Can't stop the beat: Bhangra
on U.S. college campuses |
| Erica
Lee Nelson
 EVERY
spring, around the same time as the Baisakhi festival
in Punjab, college students from across America gather
in a historic theater a few blocks from the White House.
Some hail from India, some from Pakistan, and others
from New Jersey, but today they are united in a common
purpose: bhangra.More |
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| Means,
ends and penance |
| Anupam
Mishra
AT the very outset I must confess that these
Hindi words are difficult to translate. They represent
the means, the ends and a kind of penance. I did not
choose this title to score a point or satisfy my ego.
I chose it because all NGOs, their coordinators, workers,
generous funding agencies- whether desi or foreign-
and people's movement, regardless of size and reach,
should ponder over these three words.More |
| LAW & JUSTICE |
| Law: Alternate system
to redress disputes |
|  Joginder
Singh Toor
AN effort to decide disputes though arbitration, for
cheapness, convenience, simplicity of procedure and
speediness, has encouraged a healthy trend in evolving
a new branch of law; ‘Alternate Disputes Redressal
Forum’. In ancient India, the disputes used to
be redressed in the village council (Kulani), Corporations
(Sreni) and assemblies (Puga).More |
| COMMENT |
| North Korea and Iran challenge
American hegomony
|
| Sawraj
Singh
 THE
rising tensions in Korea and an increasingly defiant
Iran pose a very serious challenge to America. These
two countries not only threaten the regional American
interests but can also upset the American global strategy.
South Korea and Japan are very important countries for
America to contain the growing influence of China.More
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Peasants protest
against goverment's anti labourer and farmer policies
in Mansa district of Punjab, India.
PHOTO GALLERY - Rupinder Gill
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