in the news

Don't think I realized until living in Zambia, that freedom of the press and the ability for media to criticize the government wasn't a universal thing.  Reading today's Deccan Chronicle and spying an op-ed by Maureen Dowd on the same page as the NYTimes crossword, with a political cartoon lampooning the government's inability to address swine flu and an article about a politician's indiscreet twittering on the front page was nice evidence that with the +1 billion voices in India, a variety of them are making it into the news.

 Political cartoon reads: "The government is still blind to the spread of swine flu!"*

And below, article on how the Union (a major political party) minister tweeted about the austerity measures being taken by political leaders to show their respect of public funds.  He wrote he would travel in "cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows," leading to the current pending Congressional disciplinary measures against him.  Maybe it's not that surprising that in a tech-booming country, the next means for bringing down a politician would be Twitter?

*The high mortality of swine flu here is actually pretty alarming.