BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indecency guide for tourists to India

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indecency guide for tourists to India: "Do not hug or kiss in public - even when meeting at stations and airports - and do not smoke or consume alcohol publicly either.

These are some of the guidelines being given to tourists visiting a popular part of India's north-western Rajasthan state to ensure they can respect local culture.

The guidelines come after a number of unfortunate cultural faux pas, including an Israeli couple kissing at their Hindu wedding ceremony and a Finnish woman walking naked down the streets of Pushkar.

Officials say the list of these dos and don'ts has been prepared by the local administration in Ajmer district to 'educate foreign tourists about local culture and sensibilities'.

Prithvi Raj Sankhla, Ajmer city's sub-divisional magistrate, told the BBC: 'We have asked hotels and restaurants across the city to hand out the 20-page booklet to tourists as soon as they check in.'

The guidelines say:

* Men should never touch women in public, even to help a woman out of a car, unless the lady is very elderly or infirm

* In Indian culture... men socialise with men, and women with women

* Married couples in Asia do not hug, hold hands or kiss in public. Even embracing at airports and train stations is considered out of the question

* Generally it is improper for women to speak with strangers on the street and especially to strike up a casual conversation

* Drinking alcohol or smoking in public, no matter how innocent, are interpreted as a sign of moral laxity and are not acceptable."

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Symbols

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Symbols: "Pink Triangle

As most everyone knows, the pink triangle is a symbol taken directly from the Nazi concentration camps. Usually when concentration camps and Nazis are mentioned, most people tend to think of Jews and the Jewish Holocaust (for good reason). But the fact that a large number of homosexual prisoners were in those same camps is an often ignored or overlooked fact of history.

The real story behind the pink triangle begins prior to World War II. Paragraph 175, a clause in German law, prohibited homosexual relations (much like many states in the U.S. today have laws against 'crimes of nature'). In 1935, during Hitler's rise to power, he extended this law to include homosexual kissing, embracing, and even having homosexual fantasies. An estimated 25,000 people were convicted under this law between 1937 and 1939 alone. They were sent to prisons and later concentration camps. Their sentence also included sterilization, most commonly in the form of castration. In 1942, Hitler extended the punishment for homosexuality to death.

Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were labeled according to their crimes by inverted colored triangles. 'Regular' criminals were denoted by a green triangle, political prisoners by red triangles and Jews by two overlapping yellow triangles (to form the Star of David, the most common Jewish symbol). Homosexual prisoners were labels with pink triangles. Gay Jews- the lowest form of prisoner- had overlapping yellow and pink triangles. This system also created a social hierarchy among the prisoners, and it has been reported that the pink triangle prisoners often received the worst workloads and were continually harassed and beaten by both guards and other prisoners.

Although homosexual prisoners were not shipped en mass to the Aushwitz death camps like so many of the Jewish prisoners, there were still large numbers of gay men executed there along with other non-Jewish prisoners. The real tragedy thou"

Stonewall Revisited: Homosexual, Lesbian & Gay Issue of Sex & Sexuality

Stonewall Revisited: Homosexual, Lesbian & Gay Issue of Sex & Sexuality: "About Stonewall. For gay, lesbian and bisexual activists, the word 'Stonewall' signifies quite possibly the most important, single landmark in the worldwide struggle for gay rights. Most chroniclers of the homosexual rights movement trace the beginnings of the movement's militant phase to 1969 and New York's lower-Manhattan (largely gay-frequented) Stonewall Bar. There, for the first time on record, homosexual patrons fought back when Stonewall was raided one hot summer night by New York City policemen, who came hoping to arrest gay individuals for engaging in then illegal homosexual acts.

Eyewitnesses claim that the homosexual patrons' counter-riot began when one burly, Stonewall patron hurled a lidded, metal garbage can filled with empty liquor bottles through a police car window.

Ever since that night, Stonewall has been revered as an enduring symbol of the gay militant spark lit that night, which has become a gay/lesbian/bisexual militant conflagration setting America -- and the world -- aflame with gay rights issues and conflicts. "

First result of the SNLS

First result of the SNLS: "WAS EINSTEIN'S BIGGEST BLUNDER A STELLAR SUCCESS? The genius of Albert Einstein, who added a 'cosmological constant' to his equation for the expansion of the universe but later retracted it, may be vindicated by new research. The enigmatic dark energy that drives the accelerating expansion of the universe behaves just like Einstein's famed cosmological constant, according to the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), an international team of researchers in France and Canada that collaborated with large telescope observers at Oxford, Caltech and Berkeley. Their observations reveal that the dark energy behaves like Einstein's cosmological constant to a precision of 10 per cent. 'The significance is huge,' said Professor Ray Carlberg of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at U of T. 'Our observation is at odds with a number of theoretical ideas about the nature of dark energy that predict that it should change as the universe expands, and as far as we can see, it doesn't.' The results will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics."

Bihar - Rama Bijapurkar

I hadnt heard of Rama Bijapurkar before. Seems like a very smart person and the article is a pretty interesting read. Its at times like these (change in bihar) that I miss all the noise from the Indian News Channels.

[via Indian Express.]

Relaunching Brand Bihar

Key question for marketers: will children of 'social justice' behave like regular guys?

Rama Bijapurkar

I remember a discussion a few years ago at a strategic planning session of a multinational consumer goods company on how people of India were changing. Lots was said about the positive effects of liberalisation and all its spin-off effects, on the attitudes of the people of India. Until someone suddenly broke the spell by asking, "If all this is true, then why do millions of people vote for Laloo in Bihar? Do we even know for sure?" An expat sitting through the meeting asked for clarification on Laloo and Bihar. And, with huge relish, got told all the Laloo and Bihar jokes and war stories, starting with an introduction to the word Bimaru. The joke about how we would happily hand over all of Kashmir to Pakistan, provided they took Bihar as well; the one that said that Laloo asked the people of Bihar why they needed roads — did they have cars? Motorcycles? Even bicycles? "No? Then why on earth have roads on which the rich man can drive along in a car and spit on you?" The old favourite one of Japan offering to turn Bihar into Japan in three years, and Laloo scoffing and replying that with his superior efficiency he could turn Japan into Bihar in just three months. Another told us the (unverifiable) story of how he was being taken to Singapore for a roadshow by CII, and how he is supposed to have worn his suit and called a "railla" ("rally" being too effeminate a word for his rallies), and said to his people that he was going through all this pain just for them. A journalist friend of mine witnessed one of his earlier election rallies, and said it was a bizarre combination of a mega rock concert ambience and shockingly poor illiterate people who comprised the audience. Why then, asked the expat, do so many millions of people vote him, in the progressive and rapidly progressing India that you have just described? Total silence for a while. Because the Laloo brand, said one person, is about giving identity to an underclass that has been exploited by the upper class forever. It is a brand that emerged to innovatively serve the needs of a post-Mandal society in a state that was the most deeply impacted by virtue of its caste demography and caste history. A qualitative researcher said, "Because he tells the poor that it's okay to be who you are, it's okay to come riding on your cow, carrying your spittoon, you don't have to strive to be like Them." The sales manager explained: "Laloo created bonding through innovative rituals like the 'chhat' festival, making it to Bihar what Ganapati is to Maharashtra; a ritual that even the Shiv Sena borrowed to serve its Bihari migrant votebank, with a mega-event at Juhu beach earlier this year!" A media researcher said, "because they only have 20 per cent reach of television in Bihar, far lower than any other state", so they don't know any better about the world outside. "Because they are Biharis," said someone else, and clinched the argument. But what of the Bihar and the Bihari brand? The Bihar brand was, till today, perceived as a blot on the New Indian landscape. Perceived as a place that was stuck in a time warp, a bullock cart in a world of cars and jet planes, a jungle of lawlessness where power came from the barrel of the goonda's gun, and a land which was the feudal fiefdom of a ruthless and eccentric raja, lording it over his half-starved, uneducated, 80 million-plus people. What was worse was that this eccentric raja was repeatedly being elected back by his subjects, who seemed to want to be trampled all over. But some people were quick to point out, that the "wanting to be trampled all over" view is an uninformed, elitist, chattering view. That in reality, Bihar was the land of the brave that chose, as NDTV said yesterday, perhaps dignity over development. Somehow, when you look at all economic and human development metrics of Bihar, this view is a bit hollow — where's the dignity? Also when you see all the migrants from Bihar, it appears that it is defeatism rather than dignity that was the hallmark of the brand. In the past two days I have read and heard a totally different view of the image people seem to have of Brand Bihar. It has become a re-launched, new improved Bihar. It is seen to be someone who after many years is stirring to life, has shaken off its shackles, woken up from its deep hibernation, and decided to join the rest of India. One of the key shifts we have been seeing in the rest of India, post-liberalisation, is the shift from "demanding social justice" to "grabbing economic opportunity". It is the shift best epitomised by Amitabh Bachchan. The shift from fighting for the social justice underdog in Deewar and Coolie to grabbing the economic opportunity of Kaun Banega Crorepati. Frankly, consumer marketers are relieved. If aspiration for a better life can triumph over everything else even in Bihar, then we know that this brand is in sync with the rest of Consumer India, and there's no looking back on the onward march to deepening consumption. The safety perception of Brand Bihar has just gone up several notches. If bijli, sadak, paani, padhai, vikas and governance are what people want here too, and not caste-based revenge as in "an eye for a past eye", then the Bihar brand is not an unpredictable time bomb that could blow up in the face of the rest of India at any time, but a regular guy, who is wanting to do what regular guys do to improve their lot in life. However before we bring out the champagne and look forward to the Bengal elections, there is this nagging feeling in some of our minds: is this just another trick of electoral arithmetic and split votes? Of upper classes revenging themselves by voting out the patron saint of the lower classes? To borrow a line from an Indian Express editorial, has Bihar truly cast its vote or is this version 2.0 of the state voting its caste? Either way, there is a window of opportunity and I hope we seize it and make our early impressions of a New improved Bihar a reality. The writer is a market strategy consultant