The Decaan Herald reports a brewing legislative battle in Karnataka on the subject of home toilets. The 1993 Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act lays down that you cannot contest village panchayat elections (about eighty thousand will be elected all over the state and nominations have just been made) unless you have a loo at home. This is a progressive measure meant to ensure that those who propose to speak for the public have some sense of public health and sanitation. But Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly in Bangalore, Jagadish Shettar, has objected to implementation of the Act, for "the compulsory toilet rule would allow creamy sections alone to contest elections". So now I am having second thoughts. If the objective of the Act is to keep the impecunious from running for village office, then better that this rule be scrapped, and the nomination be open to one and all. In age-old fashion, there is always the maidaan.
From the mail column in Kuensel comes heartening news of the ascendance of Bhutanese music over Hindi and Nepali tunes. Chewang Rinzin from Quilon, Kerala, on a trip home recently, found that the public buses were playing local development music rather than imported cassettes. "Unlike previously when Hindi and Nepali music dominated every other sounds, there are now some sensible cassettes being played like the one from the video ´Music for Health´, whereby very significant health messages on sanitation and hygiene, dangers of drug abuse, protection against STDs, etc, are conveyed to the public, besides entertaining them throughout the journey." My only caution to Mr Rinzin would be that development messages, howsoever nicely prepared, have a very short life on the popularity charts, and hopefully the popular culture of Bhutan will produce enough modern music to counter the Hindi and Nepali imports.
Nadarajah Jeyakumar, a 38-year-old hunk living in England, steals "ladies underwear, meaning G-strings, thongs, swimwear, tights and camisoles", according to The Colombo Island. The police in Middlesex had been foxed by the lingerie snatching that had gone on for more than four years. So some "outraged women laid bait in the form of a washing line full of smalls and waited for the panty perv strike". An intrepid ex-police dog sniffed out Jeyakumar and a paratrooper boyfriend of one of Jeyakumar´s victims captured him. He was wearing a pair of panties and ladies swimsuit when caught, and he told police that the garments were supposed to ´support´ his hernia. In his house, officers found 15 sacks of underwear. We) there are much, much worse things you can do that snatch a few sacks of harmless underwear.