The world is celebrating the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day today. Apart from the purely symbolic felicitation ceremonies, newspaper supplements and TV programming geared to cash in on women power here, India is also hoping to make the day count by enacting historic legislation.

The Women's Reservation Bill is being tabled in Parliament today, and, if passed, it will reserve 33 percent of all seats in our Parliament and state legislatures for women. The bill was first introduced in September 1996, and has been re-introduced three times since but never passed, mainly due to staunch opposition by some regional political parties who have demanded ‘quotas-within-the-quota’, or special reservations within this for lower caste women.

But, it’s set for a smooth passage today, with both the ruling Congress Party and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party committed to the bill. If the bill passes, India will become one of the few countries in the world to reserve seats for its women at the parliamentary, state and local body elections. It already has in place a reservation of 33 percent for women in local body level elections (panchayat, gram) which is seen as having been extremely successful in broadening representation.

So is this the best gift Indian women could ask for? Well, maybe. Last year's parliamentary elections saw a record 11 percent of female representation, entering double digits for the first time. But, India still lags behind the world average of 18.4 percent of all parliamentary seats occupied by women.

Of course, the Women's Reservation Bill will correct that. But, there are worries that the political space given to women will be usurped by a few ‘families’ in politics. And, it does pigeonhole women into a reserved category. More importantly, though, it's the need to even have the bill that I think we need to feel worst about - isn't it sad that more than 60 years after India became a republic and constituted equal rights and opportunities for women, we need more legislation to ensure that happens?

The threats posed by global warming and climate change need to be tackled with much more urgency by governments worldwide than they have been thus far, despite the recent hoopla on the subject by the international community. One specific area where the governments have to put their act together is water. Irrespective of the authenticity or accuracy of international scientific research on the subject, one fact is indisputable: water is going to be more precious than gold or ‘black gold’ (petroleum) in the not too distant future. South Asia is set to face acute water shortage in the coming decades.

Water tables are constantly falling across the Indian sub-continent. As a result, there is a distinct possibility that India will face a water deficit of 50 percent in 2 decades. Pakistan’s case is no different. In fact, the Pakistani province of Sindh, that is projected to be with worst sufferer of water shortage from 2020 onwards, has already become restive on the water issue. And because of the Sindhis’ sensitivities about this topic and their perceived notion of India as ‘a water terrorist nation,’ Pakistan actually raised the ‘water issue’ during the February 25 India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary-level talks. The current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari hails from Sindh, the main constituency of his Pakistan People’s Party.

It is time that South Asian nations address the water problem collectively, with cohesion and convergence, rather than scoring political brownie points against one another. As South Asian economies are largely agrarian, they should use water for agricultural purposes sparingly and innovatively. By more scientific and judicious use of water for irrigation of crops, almost 80 percent of the projected water deficit can be plugged by canal-lining and such methods like ‘crop per drop.’ Israel, where agri-operations are in desert-like conditions, is a global pioneer in ‘crop per drop’ method. Another Asian country, Singapore, has unveiled plans to be a global hydro hub with government-private sector partnership with the objective of offering a range of value-added water services.

This week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded a state visit to Saudi Arabia. Four years ago, King Abdullah had been the chief guest at India's annual Republic Day celebrations. The seeming bonhomie between these two states is nothing short of curious.

Historically, Saudia Arabia—a deeply conservative Sunni-dominated monarchy where clerics wield much influence on everyday life—should have little or nothing in common with a constitutionally secular, democratic republic like India. More to the point, it is well known that the Saudis on more than one occasion have been quite sympathetically inclined toward India's long-standing adversary, Pakistan.

Yet, perhaps because of these very differences of both ideology and interest Singh feels it necessary to court the secretive, monarchical state. Without a working relationship with Saudi Arabia, India can’t hope to protect its interests in Afghanistan and work toward restraining Pakistan's continuing support for a range of scrofulous jihadi elements. In recent years, after having dallied with jihadis of various stripes, the Saudis are now becoming more circumspect in their dealings with such individuals and organizations. The monarchy seems to be realizing that uneasy lays a head that wears a crown, and especially when the very subjects and acolytes that they had encouraged to take up the jihad may now be coming home to roost.

Singh is obviously capitalizing on these concerns and offering to work with the Saudis to rein in the jihadis both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This diplomatic strategy requires India to overcome its reservations about the many unpleasant domestic features of the Saudi state and focus more on a possible convergence of interests. Neither India nor Saudi Arabia stand to benefit from jihadis running amok in their adjacent neighborhoods. Consequently, it may be possible for two states with markedly different ideological orientations and domestic politics to find common ground.

A deeply thoughtful, determined and imaginative prime minister may have yet broken new diplomatic ground after his deft and unyielding pursuit of the US-India nuclear deal in 2008. It will bear watching to see how this nascent relationship between India and Saudi Arabia unfolds.

For all the diversity of our population and myriad cultures, we are dangerously united it seems in our aversion to homosexuality. Two recent incidents brought this sharply to light again.

Last month, a professor of modern Indian languages at the historic Aligarh Muslim University was suspended after a video emerged of him having consensual sex with another man. Some students at the university had set up cameras in the professor's home supposedly to catch him ‘in the act’. They sent these tapes to the university management who were quick to suspend Dr. Srinivas Ramchandra Siras, even as he was close to retirement. The episode generated numerous headlines, with gay activists and pockets of the liberal media putting the university in the dock. But, Siras remains suspended.

And just this week, a Delhi Court handed out tough punishments to two people for brutally stabbing to death two affluent, well-placed homosexuals in August 2004. Murdered for being gay?

But the picture is mixed. In July last year, Delhi decriminalised homosexuality in what was regarded as a landmark judgement and a highly delayed sign of justice for India's gay community. A British colonial law still operational in India says sex between people of the same gender is illegal as it is ‘against the order of nature’. In fact, gay sex in India is punishable by 10 years in prison!

There have been few criminal prosecutions, but the legislation has still provided ammunition for the victimization and harassment of homosexuals, while the need to be surreptitious has also given the community a somewhat tawdry image.

Unfortunately, the Siras drama suggests this unfair portrayal is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Just following up on Shreyasi's post on our best-known painter. In my opinion, the Manmohan Singh government has blundered on a point where it was least expected to. The reports of M F Hussain accepting the offer of honorary citizenship from Qatar, in the face of his persecution from right-wing fundamentalist forces like the Shiv Sena, should be viewed as a shocker by the government.

It is indeed strange and beyond comprehension that Hussain is handed out ‘fatwas’ by the Hindu outfits for focusing on the boobs, thighs and buttocks of Hindu goddesses. One wonders what these Hindu Taliban forces would have done if the 4th century Sanskrit literature doyen Kalidasa were alive and writing today, because Kalidasa had given elaborate and juicy descriptions of the curves and curls of Hindu goddesses in his plays. The behavior of these fanatics is all the more questionable in view of the fact that the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court in 2008 had quashed some of the obscenity cases against Hussain.

The Indian art and iconography has the millennia-old tradition of being liberal. Hussain’s persecution makes the situation all the more absurd and inexplicable where the Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen, fleeing from persecution in her own country, is allowed a form of refuge in India, while MF Hussain is hounded out. First of all, the Government of India must create conditions for the immediate return of Hussain to his homeland. He is a role model for younger generations with stars in their eyes, as he rose to fame after starting his career as painter of Hindi films in the sixties and seventies. If nothing else, the government must use this instance to re-examine the grounds for disallowing dual citizenship.

In an interesting bit of Indian diplomacy, 30 young journalists from Afghanistan are in India for two weeks of journalism training. Drawn from different media groups in Afghanistan, these professionals are getting training at one of the best mass communication centres in New Delhi, while some senior journalists from the war-torn country are also in Delhi at the invitation of the Indian government.

This quiet diplomacy of engaging Afghan civil society and promoting large reconstruction programmes has been going on for many years, and no doubt Afghans nurture lots of goodwill toward India.

Still, in the great game, India seems to be losing out to Pakistan. Security analyst and editor-in-chief of the strategic affairs magazine, WordSword, Col, Anil Bhat (Retd), bemoans India’s lack of aggression in its foreign policy.

According to critics such as Bhat, India behaves like a lover who does its best for its beloved but doesn’t want the world to know about it, and so fears expressing its feelings openly. Meanwhile, it’s not sure how Pakistan feels for the girl, but that country still openly claims to love her and wants to possess her unabashedly. America, meanwhile, pretends to care for the girl.

It’s clear that Afghanistan, for its part, doesn’t mind enjoying the attentions of so many suitors. Poor India needs to learn that hesitancy in love doesn’t yield results. Even a girl prefers a guy who is firm and resolute and vows to be with her forever.

In this age of satellite television—there are some 280 24-hour news channels alone in India today—the media often dons the mantle of a mediator between two sides. Such is the power of the ubiquitous media in India these days that it is difficult to conduct serious talks without the media glare—be it India, Pakistan parleys or negotiations between the Indian government and the Maoist guerrillas. The latter is a case in point. Sample this.

There was much hype when a caller identifying himself as Kishenji, the top Maoist leader, proposed a ceasefire last week. What’s more, the Naxal leader gave a mobile phone number (9734695789) to the media, asking Union Home Minister P Chidambaram to call up for peace negotiations. Indian intelligence agencies went into a tizzy over the audacity of the Maoists whose core philosophy is to bring about changes in governance through the bullet rather than the ballot. Now the intelligence agencies have reportedly established that Kishenji did not talk to any TV journalists in recent days. It has also come to notice that Kishenji, who contacts the media frequently, has used as many as 18 different mobile phone numbers since June last year when the hunt for him was launched. Each time, Kishenji calls from a stolen mobile phone. Even the Vodafone number, 9734695789, given out by the Maoists for the Ministry of Home Affairs to call up for peace negotiations belonged to one Sisir Kanti Nag, a constable who was abducted by Maoists on September 26.

The bottom line is that the Maoists are past masters in the art of using the media and deliberately dished out a ceasefire offer in the name of Kishenji just to sow seeds of confusion among the Indian security top brass. They knew that the intelligence agencies would eventually call their bluff but howsoever sooner or later that happens their purpose would have been served: to obfuscate as much as they can. And the media is always there to help—a Vodafone catch-line.

Free speech, a vibrant media and a no-holds-barred democracy are India's ready rejoinders in any comparison with China. But, news of our most celebrated artist, M F Hussain, deciding to accept honorary citizenship of Qatar, an emirate state in the Persian Gulf, must force us all to think: how free and more importantly, how fearless really is our speech? 95-year-old Hussain has been living abroad, mainly in Dubai, as a fugitive over the last few years. He left India after receiving death threats from Hindu hardliners who were angered by his portrayal of Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude or in sexually suggestive manners. His self-imposed exile began in 2006 after a Hindu group put a out tag of $11.5 million for his death. Hussain is no ordinary Indian. He is an icon, somebody who has been called 'India's Picasso.' His works have sold for millions of dollars in auctions around the world.

In an interview carried in newspapers here, Owais Hussain, M F Hussain's son, said his father 'missed home in India terribly,' but having a 'sense of belonging' was important at this stage of his life. He added, 'He will continue to miss his real home wherever he is. You can take M F Hussain out of India, but you can't take India out of M F Hussain."

Because India does not permit dual citizenship, Hussain is set to lose his Indian passport after becoming a Qatar citizen. Can artistic freedom and personal liberty reside in an India that a Hussain can't call home anymore?

After the hurly-burly of talks between the Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries in New Delhi on February 25--a dialogue of the deaf, sceptics might say--one is left wondering: what next? And what are the options for India in addressing the terrorist threat it faces, apart from talks with Pakistan?

Crudely put, India has at least three options in dealing with terrorist threats: (i) to go for targeted non-military covert options, (ii) launch swift surgical strikes against terror camps and locations, or (iii) total military engagement--an all-out war. Yet all these, in my considered opinion, are a perfect recipe for disaster.

The non-military, covert option can’t yield the desired targets because the nature of these targets is temporary and mobile. Moreover, swift surgical strikes will not remain limited—they will quickly flare-up into a full-scale war. So these options have to be ruled out. The military option should be exercised by a state only when its territorial unity and integrity is under threat. And India is not facing any such threat. The diplomatic interactions under the Composite Dialogue process have not been exhausted fully, even though this process started way back in May 1997 during the Prime Ministerial tenure of I K Gujral. It has not been given its full run.

As for the Pakistanis, they certainly could have done better diplomatically. It was not a good sight to see Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir grandstanding before the media in New Delhi, talk which might have been aimed at Pakistan’s domestic constituency. But India should be big-hearted and broad-minded in giving Islamabad leeway, even though the timing of Bashir’s remarks was not right, especially as he had just heard the Indians describing two serving military officers of Pakistan as terrorists.

This was the first India-Pakistan diplomatic with such brutal frankness from the Indians and so Bashir going ‘ballistic’ during his 90-minute press conference at the Pakistan High Commission needs to be seen from this perspective.

From Pakistan’s point of view, if the February 25 talks had succeeded, which was anyway unlikely, Pakistan would have been under immense pressure to remove a large chunk of its military force from its eastern border with India. This is a red rag for Islamabad and the Pakistani establishment has always been wary of such a scenario. Even during the best of times when India and Pakistan under General Musharraf were talking honey and sugar to each other, especially from 2005 to 2008, Pakistan did not prune its military deployment along its eastern borders with India.

Once upon a time long, long ago, Delhi used to be a car city. Its wide, sprawling, tree-lined boulevards and road surface ratio that was (and is) higher than most other Indian cities, made it a city perfect to buy cars and take them out on long drives. Of course, these joy rides have now become nightmarish sojourns from and pretty much through hell. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, rage driving and venal fumes keep you company instead. Each week many of us end up adding 5-10 minutes to our commute time, and during peak hours, Delhi looks like a sea of cars or an army of ants that can hardly scurry along. Ask me. Last month, it took me 5 full hours to cover an 18 kilometre distance from Connaught Place, the heart of the city that houses old colonial buildings, government establishments and company headquarters, to my home. Along with losing patience, I also lost a bit of my love for the city that has been home for nearly 15 years. Unfortunately, the relationship is unlikely to get better with every commute becoming that much more unbearable.

Traffic experts say Delhi has nearly 2,000,000 automobiles, more than the number of cars Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai combined! And it adds a whopping 1,000 automobiles a day, every day to its congested road network that inexplicably seems to get worse every time a new flyover (overpass) opens, or a new spanking line of the metro is commissioned. We all foolishly thought these would give us reprieve. Alas, they haven’t. Often, in fact, I feel they have made things worse with diversions, road blocks and construction hubs that stall traffic even more. Delhi municipal corporation officials say preparations for the Commonwealth Games (now on a war-footing because there is such little time left, and so many deadlines missed) that India is hosting in October this year have added to traffic woes. We all know things get worse before they get better. But, can we take any more?