INDIA POST NEWS BUREAU

SAN FRANCISCO: The first ever one day cricket series in North America concluded at the Kezar stadium here August 10 with the World XI beating Asia XI by eight wickets and winning the three-match series.

Ignoring light rain and poor light the penultimate day and night match of the Post Media Group's (PMG) International All Star Cricket Cup was watched by some 1,000 highly enthusiastic spectators. The World XI, powered by 87 from Kenyan batsman Ravindu Shah's bat, wrapped up the modest total of 177 runs by the Asia XI before 40 overs ended. Shah was adjudged the man of the match. The World XI lifted the trophy 2-1. It won the New York match August 6, while the Asia XI won the Toronto match in a close finish August 8.

The match was kicked off by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown along with PMG CEO Romesh K Japra. It started a little after 3 pm even as it drizzled. The Asia XI batted first struggled to score runs, except for Pravin Amre who displayed some strong through and over the fence hitting. Kapil Dev, one of the greatest all-rounders of the game who captained the Asia XI, disappointed as he did not score much.

The Asia XI lost wickets regularly and that too without putting too many runs on the score board. The World XI got down to its business pretty quickly scoring at will from the word go. Ravindu Shah and Jimmy Adams of the West Indies went after the Asian bowling with gusto. Shah hit four sixes. Adams finished his second 50 of the series in style when he scored a boundary that also overtook the Asia XI score.

The spectators, that included many Australians, Britons and a few Americans, cheered at every good shot, ball or good show of fielding.

Dr Japra, who handed trophies to the two teams, said "Although the number of people who attended the three matches was modest, we are encouraged by the fact that series place. I believe this series will be an important beginning for the game's introduction to North America."

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI - The Pakistani patrol plane shot down by an Indian fighter jet over an inlet of the Arabian Sea was the latest in a stream of aircraft sent to spy on air defenSes, India's national security adviser Brajesh Mishra has been quoted by reuters as saying.
``They want to know what our air defences are, and they have been doing it since the month of May,'' Brajesh Mishra told Reuters in an interview.
Mishra, who is also principal secretary to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, said he expected the latest flare-up of tension between the nuclear-capable rivals to die down in a few days.
But the incident was one more hindrance to the process of resuming peace talks, which was derailed by the two sides' bloody confrontation in the mountains of Kashmir and a surge in militancy on the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan territory.
``...the resumption of the dialogue was already becoming difficult because of the increased level of violence in Jammu and Kashmir, through the terrorists they have sent in,'' Mishra said. ``But there is no doubt that it has raised the temperature.''
Mishra said there was no chance of political-level talks between the two sides before India's general elections, which end on October 3. Even a meeting between foreign secretaries would inevitably break down if Pakistan was still sponsoring terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir state, he said.
``As long as you keep on this kind of terrorism which is happening in Kashmir -- and mind you it's not a condition -- then talks will never be meaningful at all,'' he said.
He defended India's decision to shoot down the Pakistani plane on Tuesday, killing all 16 people on board. He said the aircraft had intruded 6.25 miles inside Indian territory off the coast of the western state of Gujarat.
``Are you saying to me that after it had fingerprinted all the electronic radar defences we should have allowed it go back?'' he said, adding that of eight aerial incursions since May, Tuesday's was the deepest.
Mishra said the French-built Berguet Atlantique ignored signals from two Indian MiG-21s to land, and instead ``turned in such a way as if it was going to take a hostile action.''

U.S. asks India, Pakistan to respect 1991 accord
 

WASHINGTON: The United States urged India and Pakistan on Wednesday to observe a 1991 agreement banning military flights close to the border without advance notification of the other side.
U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said the two countries had clearly violated the agreement over the past few days, when an Indian plane shot down a Pakistani reconnaissance plane close to the border and when Pakistani planes fired on Indian fighters said to be intruding on Pakistani airspace.
Under the April 1991 agreement, Indian or Pakistani military aircraft should not fly within six miles of the border without telling the other side in advance.
``We urgently call on both sides to reinstitute this agreement in order to avoid further loss of life and further escalation and heightening of tensions,'' Rubin said.

Top ISI officers held; spy ring busted in Assam

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

GUWAHATI: A Pakistani spy ring in Assam has been busted with the seizure of a coded wristwatch from one of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency's best field operatives in India.

Mohammad Javed Wakhar, an expert spy handler and the ISI's chief recruiting officer in India, is a prize catch, say officials. While Wakhar is from Karachi, the other ISI `officer' arrested, Mohammed Fasih Ullah Hussaini, belongs to Hyderabad-Sind.

The coded wristwatch revealed the names and addresses and led to the arrest of 27 Harkat-ul Mujahideen agents in Assam. The mechanism to decode the watch contained the addresses and contact numbers of agents in Assam while an electronic diary held a list of more than 180 addresses of ISI agents all over the world. Some are Abu Dhabi, Dubai and American addresses, the official said.

Chief minister Prafulla Mahanta told reporters that one of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen activists, Qari Salim Ahmed from Uttar Pradesh, is the "chief recruiting agent for the ISI in India". The militants were in Assam to coordinate with the Ulfa, he said.

Besides the Harkat-ul-Muhahideen, militants from outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Karkat-ul-Jehad were also held, he added. The other Harkat-ul-Muhahideen functionary was identified as Maulana Hafiz Md. Akhram Mallick, a resident of Mukam Shahwali in Kashmir. All of them had entered Assam "illegally" from Bangladesh through Karimgunj district of the Barak valley.

During the follow-up, the police held the Assam-based "chief organizer of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen in India", Maulana Mohammed Fakaruddin. Fakaruddin is "second-in-command" in the outfit, after its Pakistan-based chief Afzalur Rahman Khalilee, N. Ramachandran, inspector-general of police (special branch) said.

Inspector-general (operations) G.M. Srivastava said when the police were tailing the suspects, they intercepted phone calls made by the ISI officers from Guwahati and "taped" the conversations. "The tapes clearly indicated their involvement in the ISI."

Commending the "major breakthrough", Mahanta said the two ISI officers and the
Harkat-ul-Muhahideen activists had been deputed by the Pakistan agency to carry out "specific anti-India operations in Assam and other parts of the country".
The two ISI "officers" told interrogators that carrying out "high-intensity bomb
explosions" was "one of the assignments" given to them by their superiors in Pakistan.

Blowing up oil installations in Assam and snapping the Leh-Manali highway was on
"top" of their list of priorities, the sources said. They quoted Fasih Ullah Hussaini, as saying that he and his colleague were "on a very important mission, the Assam mission".

The duo "disclosed" that apart from "attacking oil installations", the ISI's "Assam mission" included :

* A two-pronged economic war, first by siphoning off money collected by the
underground outfits of Assam to Pakistan and other "likeminded" countries, and secondly by pumping in large quantities of fake currency notes.

A plan to foment communal tension in the state by inciting law-abiding members of a particular minority community against the majority community.
· Training youth belonging to a minority community to cause disturbance in Assam and complicate the problems the state has been facing since the past two decades.

The ISI "officers" also "disclosed" that over 300 militants from Assam received training in Pakistan over the past few years. The duo said 30 youth owing allegiance to the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen returned to the state recently after being trained by the ISI. Sixteen of them have already been arrested. They are among the 27 "subversives" apprehended following the arrest of the ISI "officers Interrogation of the ISI "officers" had revealed that the Pakistani agency and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had spread its tentacles to as many as six districts of Assam. Of the 27 "subversives" who have been arrested, 12 are from Dhubri, seven from Goalpara, four from Barpeta, two from Karimganj and one each from Nabari and Kamrup.

The police claimed that the arrested ISI "officers" had made a "startling revelation" about the Kargil conflict as well. They told interrogators that the Harkat-ul Mujahideen sent 400 youth, "several" of them from Assam, to fight for Pakistan on the snowy heights of Kargil.

`Kargil-like' situation developing in India's north-eastern state

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

AGARTALA: Expressing his concern about the serious situation in the north-east, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has warned of a Kargil-like scenario if the federal government fails to check militancy sponsored by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the region.

"Having failed to achieve its objective in Kargil, the ISI is trying to recreate the situation in the Northeast by aiding various militant outfits," he told reporters here. Sarkar said Tripura was bearing the brunt of ISI-sponsored militancy, thanks to the withdrawal of army units from the state. He said the state required additional security forces immediately, but New Delhi appeared to be unaware of the gravity of the problem.

"Instead of dispatching additional forces, the Center is withdrawing Army units," he said.The chief minister said the abduction of four Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders here was an indication of the law and order situation in the state. "The Center(New Delhi) has asked for a report on the abduction of the RSS leaders, but was silent on the killings of our Health Minister Bimal Sinha last year," he said.

The four abducted RSS leaders remained untraced, causing panic among the
organization's rank and file. In a faxed message to the Left Front government, RSS leader Rajendra Singh said his four abducted colleagues should be rescued at any cost.

Bugaboo: A movie about escaping the Indian tech-geekdom

By May Chooki
INDIA POST NEWS BUREAU

SILICON VALLEY: To steal ketchup from a McDonald's or not does not seem like a profound question that can fundamentally alter life. But it underscores a restless quest of a bunch of Indian engineers in Silicon Valley to escape from the tech-geekdom and turn into an 82-minute movie "Bugaboo."

A group of Indian engineers has chosen to externalize questions that confront those who live life as "good boys, who wake up in time, drink milk and study", as described by Mahesh Umashankar, an engineer-cum-actor.

The film, whose first public screening begins August 12, is a product of Natak, an amateur Indian theater group drawing its talents from engineers, and Pygmy Mammoth Productions. Natak was formed in 1995 by Sujit Saraf, who is also the director of "Bugaboo", and Sanjay Rajagopalan. It brought together Berkeley Indian students and professional from South Bay. After they did some half a dozen successful plays, "Natak" became too comfortable and boring. That is when the group decided to do "something different" as Saraf and Rajagopalan decided to make a film.

"The film's theme is something we all identify with. We were all good boys, who would wake in the morning, drink milk, study hard and become engineers. Although there was nothing wrong in leading a good routine life, we realize that we hardly had any fun. The film's main character Bapu, played by Sujit himself, is even angry and wonders about the point in being so regular. That is when we think of randomizing our lives," Umashankar says.

"Would you ever steal ketchup from a Mcdonald's ", asks Bapu while his friends Keshav and Arvind, played by Umashankar, look on.

Just as Bapu is looking to introduce some uncertainty to his routine life, enters Jeevan Ullaas, played br Rajiv Neema, a professional "Life Randomizer" who has the right medicine to add "Issspice" (in his own words) in one's life. "It all leads to an eventful 7 days before they all find simple solutions to their seemingly complicated problems," the theme says.

The choice of the movie's name works on two levels. On the one level it takes off on the word bug that computer professionals are so familiar with. On the other it deals with an imaginary fear of breaking the status quo. "In a computer it is a bug. In human mind it is bugaboo," explains Umashankar.

Saraf and Rajagopalan knew that no one at Natak had any experience in making movies. So they contacted Tony Sehgal, a free lance cinematographer, moviemaker, and owner of Pygmy Mammoth Productions.
Sehgal's recent production "No Laughing Matter" had impressed the Natak folks. Sehgal too was looking for such an opportunity.

A pilot was made with a skeletal cast and crew on video was made in November, 1998. "But it was a disaster. A lot of lessons were learnt." The group, however, persisted and raised money among themselves and friends. A budget of $21,000 seemed miniscule but it had to do. Everyone had to double up and that too without charging.

Actors were chosen such that their personalities would match those of the roles they were playing.
"It made it a lot easier to prepare for the role", says Umasankar, "I pretty much had to be myself and wear my own clothes". Since many of the cast members were used acting in plays rehearsals came naturally to them and so did memorizing lines. This helped cut down the number of takes and expenses as well.

The making of Bugaboo had all the problems of starvation budget movies. While shooting they had too wait for planes to pass or children to stop crying. "We begged and borrowed from friends" says Lalitha Rajagoplan who along with Bharathi Ramavarjula and Priya Krishnan took charge of the production
management and set designs. With a cast and crew size of 10, "Bugaboo" was filmed in a record time of 6 weekends.

The movie was editor on the computer using Film Logic software by Saraf himself, but the actual cutting of the 16 mm negative was done by a professional editor. After making the movie Saraf has gone back to India for good to take up a teaching assignment at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

The young professionals are now looking for distributors for commercially releasing here and in India. The movie will premier on Aug 12,14

India rejects Kashmir talks as army camp hit
 

NEW DELHI - Separatist guerrillas attacked an Indian army camp in Kashmir overnight and New Delhi said August 8 there could be no talks with Pakistan while it sought to stir up fresh trouble in the restive region, Reuters reported.
``Attempts are on to create trouble in parts of Jammu and Kashmir ...violence cannot be the road to talks. There must be an atmosphere,'' Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told an election rally on Sunday.
``Talks should be fruitful and take us to results, not (be just) for the sake of talks,'' he said.
One soldier was killed and three were injured in the rocket attack on the 68 Mountain Brigade camp at Trehgam in the Kupwara district late on August 7, the third raid on security forces' camps in India's Jammu and Kashmir state in 72 hours.
The Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted Home (Interior) Minister Lal Krishna Advani as saying that Pakistan had started reviving a ``proxy war'' in Kashmir after the debacle suffered by its forces in the recent two-month confrontation in Kargil.
Indian police say hundreds of militants have crossed into the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir from Pakistan recently, and Vajpayee said India would give a fitting reply to the militancy in the state. ``We will fight this strongly,'' he said.
The PTI said Pakistan's envoy to India had proposed that the two countries' leaders hold their first meeting since the recent conflict in divided Kashmir during the U.N. General Assembly session in New York next month.
Pakistani High Commissioner Ashraf Jehangir Qazi told the news agency in an interview that dialogue between the two arch-rivals ``need not be held hostage'' to India's general election, which gets under way on September 5.
He said pre-conditions set by New Delhi for talks could only impede the process of normalizing relations agreed by the two prime ministers in the Pakistani city of Lahore last February.
India and Pakistan came close to war in May, when India launched a massive ground and air offensive against hundreds of guerrillas who had infiltrated into the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) dividing the Indian- and Pakistani-run sectors of Kashmir.
The infiltrators withdrew from the Kargil sector on the northern heights of Kashmir last month under a combination of military and diplomatic pressure.
The August 7 attack on an India army camp came amid Indian newspaper reports that hundreds of militants had crossed over to the Indian side of the Kashmir Line of Control.
The Indian Express quoted the Border Security Force's inspector general in Kashmir's Baramullah region as saying that about 1,200 foreign militants were occupying high ridges on the Indian side of the ceasefire line, waiting to strike.
The Asian Age quoted the state's director-general of police, Gurbachan Jagat, as saying about 1,000 infiltrators had crossed into the Indian sector since mid-May this year.
Jagat told Reuters last month that an estimated 800 militants had entered the Indian side from Pakistan during the previous two months.
More than 25,000 people have died in the decade-old insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Moslem-majority state.

Vajpayee says too many elections hurting country
 

NEW DELHI - Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said India has had too many elections in the last few years and this had started to hurt development and national security, according to Reuters.
``In the last ten years, elections have taken place five times,'' Vajpayee said during an election campaign meeting for his Bharatiya Janata Party. ``Political instability of this kind is an obstacle to development, affects security and law and order,'' he said.
Each election cost the government ten billion rupees ($236 million) besides the amount spent by candidates, he said.
India holds its third general elections in as many years when it goes to the polls in a vote staggered over September and October. Elections in recent years have not produced a decisive victory for any one party.
Vajpayee's coalition government lost a confidence vote in parliament by one vote after just more than a year in office, triggering off mid-term elections.
He urged voters to give his party a clear mandate. ``This is your chance to steer the country to stability...think of the country,'' he said and added voters must not be swayed by narrow considerations.
This summer, India was faced its most serious military confrontation with arch rival Pakistan in nearly three decades after hundreds of infiltrators occupied high ground in northern Kashmir.
Vajpayee's caretaker government launched a massive air and ground offensive to evict the infiltrators in a bloody campaign that left over 400 young soldiers dead.
``Let us not forget the blood our brave soldiers have shed on the mountains,'' he said to applause from hundreds of men gathered inside an indoor sports stadium for the first election meeting in the Indian capital.

Meanwhile, an opinion poll said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies could win by a slender majority national elections due in September and October.
``The opinion poll predicts between 279 to 289 seats for the BJP and its allies. The Congress and its allies come a distant second with a tally of between 152 and 162 seats,'' said the poll conducted by Outlook magazine and the Centre for Media Studies.
Socialist and communist groupings are expected to win between 63 and 68 of the 543 seats for which elections will be held. The Nationalist Congress Party, a splinter group of the Congress, is expected to get between 34 and 39 seats.
The survey was conducted in 71 constituencies spread over 16 major states and reflects the opinions of 10,650 voters.
The poll said the popularity of Vajpayee and his BJP-led government's successful handling of the Kashmir crisis would propel the BJP past Congress.
``The poll has revealed that for the first time in independent India, the BJP is likely to ovetake the Congress as the single largest party in terms of votes polled,'' the survey said.
``It is his (Vajpayee's) image across the country which has given an advantage to the BJP. In fact, 51 percent of those polled felt that he is the best bet to lead the country.''
It said 52 percent of the respondents felt the BJP would ``definitely benefit'' from its handling of the Kashmir crisis.
India in July wound down a two-month operation to flush out infiltrators from its side of the control line which divides the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir with Pakistan.
India said the infiltrators were a mix of Pakistani army regulars and Islamic militants. Pakistan said they were freedom fighters in struggle to liberate Kashmir from Indian rule.

California Congresswoman proposes special 
visa for high-tech professionals

INDIA POST WASINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON D.C.: A Silicon Valley Democratic Representative has proposed a new category of visas called T that allows foreign graduates, a large number of whom are from India, to stay in America for five years.

Rep Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill, HR 2687, titled "Bringing resources from Academia for the Industry of Our Nation Act (BRAIN Act) that calls for such a special visa category. Lofgren said the T visa denoting Tech Visa would have no cap like theH1-B that currently allows companies to employs specialized foreign professionals. The T visa would have no cap unlike the H1-B, whose current ceiling is 115,000.

Lofgren said it was pointless complaining about the shortage of skilled foreign workers in the computer and hi-tech industries while many foreign nationals graduating from American universities go home for lack of sponsors.

Although the bill is not expected to be voted this year, it has already attracted strong support from Silicon Valley corporations such as Intel that depend on the H1-B visas. Lofgren said she was determined to push the bill.
Jennifer Eisen, manager of government affairs for Intel, was quoted as describing the Lofgren proposal "very promising" because it offers a "creative solution" to a problem that has direct bearing on the future growth of high-tech businesses.

If passed, the bill will offer T visas that will enable foreign students with US degrees in computer science, engineering, mathematics and science to work for American companies if they are paid more than $60,000 per year. The H-1B visa allows foreign workers to work in America for three years with the option of one time additional three-year extension at the expiry.

Currently only students with master's degrees are allowed one-year's "practical" or training visas. Under Lofgren's proposal top-scoring students with bachelor's degrees too would be offered the T visas.

"It has never made sense to me that after allowing foreign students to study at our fine American universities we force some of the best and brightest minds in the world to leave America and compete against us," Lofgren said.

Perhaps with her eye on potential opposition she has suggested that the firms using T visas pay a $1,000 fee for each visa. The money raised from this can be used by the federal government to enhance the standard of mathematics and science in American schools and universities.

The Lofgren proposal could run into some tough opposition from labor unions that are already opposing a proposed increase in the H1-B visas from 115,000 to 200,000. Even a conservative Republican Senator like Phil Gramm from Texas is calling for the H1-B cap increased to that number. He introduced a bill last week. A similar bill was introduced by Republican David Dreier, chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee. Even the hot favorite presidential candidate and Texas Governor George W Bush has supported the increase.

"It has never made sense to me that after allowing foreign students to study at our fine American universities we force some of the best and brightest minds in the world to leave America and compete against us," Lofgren said.
Lofgren has suggested that the firms that use T visas pay a $1,000 fee for each visa, to be used by the federal government to enhance the standard of mathematics and science in American schools and universities.

Trains crash even as safety is derailed in India

By VINOD DHAWAN
INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Over half a dozen official inquiries into India's frequent train accidents have produced nothing more than cynicism among people who say safety has never been an issue.

The human cost of the eight week Kargil conflict was notched up by a callous and negligent Indian Railways in a few minutes when two loaded passenger trains collided head on at Gaisal, about 50 miles from Siliguri in northern West Bengal, killing nearly 300 people.

Had it not been for the imminent elections, this incident would also have been pushed out of attention, like other so many mishaps, with an eyewash of an inquiry whose report would never be made public.

The resignation of Railway Minister Nitish Kumar set off speculations whether he was motivated by genuine remorse or cynical political calculation. "It was a human blunder which caused the tragedy. Almost 70 per cent of the accidents take place due to human failure, a clear indication that there is something terribly wrong with the railway system," warned the outgoing railway minister.

Railway officials called it " a colossal multi-level failure." The Brahmaputra Express was on the Down track, on which it was supposed to be. The Up-track was clear for the Avadh-Assam Express heading towards New Jalpaiguri. Both trains were travelling at a reported speed of over 50 miles per hour.

"Due to some reason, the Awadh-Assam Express was allowed to travel on the wrong
track by the station master two stations before Gaisal," said a railway official. The key witness to the third biggest train accident tragedy is absconding. He is the assistant station master of Gaisal station who received both the ill-fated trains on the same line causing them to telescope into each other.

The Vajpayee government, acting tough in the aftermath of the disaster, took several steps to enhance the safety and mitigate the suffering of the rail traveler. Five senior officers of the North East Frontier Railway were suspended and its general manager Rajendra Nath was asked to proceed on leave. The union cabinet decided to set up a one-man inquiry commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge. The cabinet secretary was asked to work out within six months a disaster management scheme for natural as well as man-made calamities.

It is a sobering thought that the world's largest railroad system is also among the least safe and perhaps the most disaster-prone. A booklet on the safety performance of the railways says that between 1993-94 and 1997-98, there were a total of 2,196 railway accidents. In as many as 1,460 of these, the cause of the accident was "failure due to railway staff". In other words, more than two-thirds of all railway accidents are because of the negligence of railway staff and over 85 per cent due to human error.

At least 35 major train accidents have been reported in the last decade and a half, claiming the lives of more than 2,000 people. The number of those maimed and rendered invalid for the rest of their lives would probably be much higher. Unfortunately, however, successive railway ministers, instead of taking measures to make the existing rail routes safer, have added to the traffic for narrow populist considerations. As a result, resources have been directed towards increasing the volume of traffic, with little thought for infrastructure development. Going by the record of rail accident probes, there isn't much to show that action will be taken against the guilty. More than 200 people were killed in the railway accident at Khanna in Punjab on November 24 last year. Justice G.C.Garg - then a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court was asked by former Railway Minister Nitish Kumar to look into the tragedy and submit a report in four months after it was notified on March 8.

The probe is yet to take off. "It will begin soon," said railway officials. The delay had been due to some "infrastructural problems." A railway safety review committee, instituted in August last year - headed by Justice H.R.Khanna - is yet to submit its report. It was to have done so within six months. Yet
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced another commission to go into railway safety." The Prime Minister was probably not informed about the committee already going into the entire gamut of railway security," an official said.

Even when the reports are submitted, they gather dust. Reports of the three previous safety review committees -the first one was in 1962 - are yet to be implemented.

Madhuri Mahima to campaign for Congress

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: The Congress has roped in Bollywood film stars Madhuri Dixit and
Mahima Chauduhry to campaign for the party ahead of the elections.

Congress campaign managers said Madhuri will canvass in Maharashtra, where the party is involved in a three-cornered contest with the Shiv Sena-BJP combine and Sharad Pawar's breakaway group, and the key seats of Amethi, Lucknow, Allahabad and Farukhabad in Uttar Pradesh. Mahima will confine herself to Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh.

Sources in the Congress said party president Sonia Gandhi approached Madhuri, Mahima and Dilip Kumar to strengthen the party's campaign in the politically-significant states of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Congress leaders said they were eyeing film personalities willing to "revolt" against Shiv Sena's stranglehold over Bollywood. They alleged that the Sena was using "strong-arm"
tactics to dissuade film stars from coming out in support of the Congress.
Both Dilip Kumar and Madhuri have defied the Sena's diktats. Dilip Kumar refused to return Pakistan's Nishan-e-Imtiaz award, while Madhuri sided with painter M.F. Husain when the Sena launched a campaign against him for depicting a Hindu goddess in the nude.

Husain's Gajagamini, starring Madhuri, is ready for release. The actress, who has several hits under her belt, now wants to take up issues close to her heart. Politics, it seems is one of her passions. Before taking the leap into Bollywood, Madhuri, who has a degree in bio-technology, wanted to be a scientist.

Former Congress Member of Parliament Sunil Dutt will extensively campaign for the party. The Congress wants him to contest from Mumbai or East Delhi.
The Congress is finding it difficult to field candidates in several seats. It has not found candidates to fight A.B. Vajpayee in Lucknow, M.M. Joshi in Allahabad, Mulayam Yadav in Sambhal, Mayavati in Akbarpur and Sharad Pawar in Baramati.
 

No group behind missionary death

NEW DELHI, -- An inquiry into the murders of an Australian missionary and his two sons in India this year has dismissed suggestions that a Hindu extremist group was to blame.
The Wadhwa Commission said in a report that a lone religious fanatic had killed Graham Staines, 58, and his sons -- all burnt alive as they slept in their jeep in January.
``There is no evidence any authority or organization was behind the gruesome killings,'' the commission report said.
Indian police had initially blamed activists of the Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal group for the murders and arrested 51 people in connection with the case.
Bajrang Dal denied involvement in the murders in India's eastern Orissa state which prompted worldwide protests.
The man the report identified as the killer is now wanted by police, who have launched a massive hunt for him.
The report said preliminary police reports on the case had been doctored and dozens of people had been arrested without any reasonable basis.
``As a missionary he was also involved in spreading the gospel and was behind the church movement in the two districts of Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar,'' the report said.
``He himself was not involved in conversions,'' it said.

US should support India's entry into APEC: Bouton

By ANTARA NANDA
INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: The new high in Indo-US relations is partly the result of the growing influence of the Indian community in America, a leading expert has said.

This is an ideal opportunity for building a more broad-based and constructive relationship between the world's two largest democracies. Crucial to this relationship is immediate suspension of sanctions against India by the US and signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by India, said Marshall M Bouton, executive vice-president, Asia Society, a leading US organization
devoted to improving ties between the two countries.

Like India, the US wants security in South Asia based on regional balance of powers. Bouton said the consensus on the issue of cross-border infiltration, as in the case of Kargil, coupled with the growing influence of the Indo-American community and the economic liberalization in India have all added impetus towards improving bilateral ties.

Outlining an 8-point agenda to strengthen ties, Bouton urged the US government to consider supporting India's entry into the Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC). The two countries should move beyond Pokhran and the US policy towards India should be broad-based and not hinged on a "single issue", Bouton said.

ISPs rush to grab chunk of the Internet pie

By ANTARA NANDA
INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Ever since the government has thrown open the Internet Service Provider (ISP) sector to private players, a host of big and medium companies have queued up to grab the licenses. Till August 6, 1999, the government had issued 142 licenses for ISPs, according to N Parmeswaran, deputy director general, Department of Telecommunications.

There is a waiver on the license fee for the initial five years after
which a token annual fee of Re.1 will be charged for the next 10 years. In other words, the ISPs will have to pay a negligible license fee for the first 15 years - an offer that has attracted investors by the droves. Twenty ISPs have already started services.

"The Internet traffic in India has increased by 30 percent in the past few months. Recognizing India's growing Internet market potential, many servers hosted abroad are now coming back to India. This may help in reducing the current imbalance in Internet traffic tilting it towards India and South Asia. Connectivity between the ISPs have also increased. All leading cable operators have taken ISP licenses," Parmeswaran told the annual conference of the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) here.

Kerala tops in human development index

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Kerala, the state with the highest literacy rate and lowest population growth has emerged as the state providing the best quality of life as measured by the human development indicators, such as health care and education facilities.
According to India's human development report brought out for the first time by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana are doing better than Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and West Bengal. "Kerala exhibits the best human development characteristics," the report says.

The sample survey covering 33,000 rural households in 1994 took into account about 90 indicators of human development that reflect various dimensions of the quality of life. Indicators such as income and assets, employment and wages, consumption expenditure, literacy, demographic rates and healthcare utilization, were compared to highlight disparities between the selected states and between the eight selected population groups.

According to the report, barely 8 per cent of household income is spent on health and primary education. Several districts in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have an adult literacy rate of less than 5 per cent among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. A meager 43 per cent households have domestic lighting and 25 per cent have access to tap water.

Tropicana offers special blend of orange juice for Indian palate

INDIA POST'S ASIA BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Indians used to fresh fruit juice churned out of roadside stalls will now be getting a taste of canned American orange juice with a hefty price tag of Rs.57 per liter.

To ensure repeat purchase of this premium product, the $2.3 billion Tropicana Products Inc, the world's largest juice company, has reworked it to suit the sweet-friendly Indian palate developing for the first time, a special blend of orange and white grape. It will be marketed under the brand name Nature Sweet.

"What we do not want to do is force global formula in local markets (like India). Nature Sweet will be introduced within the next two weeks," Tropicana Products Inc's president and chief executive officer Gary M Rodkin said.

Tropicana, the third Pepsico Inc venture in India after Pepsi Foods and Frito Lay, intends to project its "100 per cent juice" as a premium product here. After entering Delhi and Bangalore this summer, the company is now venturing into Mumbai, come September. It is also including pineapple, grape and apple juice in its product basket.

"For us the Indian market is the first priority in the Asia-Pacific region and we expect a 15 to 20 per cent market share here over the next five years," Rodkin said. "We'd be surprised if we do not achieve a double-digit growth figure per year." The company has projected a 20 per cent market share in India over the next five years. This would make India one of its top five markets in the Asia-Pacific region after Japan, China and Taiwan.

Tropicana aims to break even over the next 3-5 years if they manage to achieve the economies of scale of India by focussed marketing.