It's Mela time folks!! Announcing the 12th edition of the Bharateeya Blog Mela - the best of Indian blogosphere this week!!



Holy Cow!! The humble cow has been the subject of many a posts this week after the Central Government said "Ok" to enacting a law banning cow-slaughter in India! Here are a select few of those cow chronicles...

Shanti is irritated by the Government's attempts to mix religion with politics when it tries to ban cow-slaughter. She consider that This is so stupid!. This post generated a lot of discussion as can be seen from the number of comments to it.

Sandeep delves into the annals ancient Indian history to look at the Beef-Eating Brouhaha from various angles. A very well researched and exhaustive post indeed!

Jayakrishnan Nair has a brief extract from the book, Gem in the Lotus by Abraham Eraly, in his post titled, Holy Cow! to show that "beef" was a normal article of contemporary Brahmin diet during the Vedic times. In another of his posts, Buddha, A Non-Vegetarian, JK again quotes from the same book to highlight the fact that non-vegetarianism was a common practice in Hinduism as well as Buddhism.

After paying due respects to the Kamadhenu, we move on to other, worldly affairs...

Suman Palit is Weary of GM activism as he hopes that the backlash against the anti-GM activism grows from a few muted voices to a roar across the globe.

Niraj explains the futility of the attempts to Ressurect the Non-Aligned Movement by certain ex-UN "officials", claiming that NAM will just be another white elephant.
In another post, Niraj declares that Arundhati Roy doesn't want to help Iraqis.

Rohini's post on summer Specials takes a look at the "dumbing down" phenomenon affecting the Indians today... something to which the proliferation of newspapers and TV channels is contributing generously.

Kingsley Jegan offers a clue in his post to determine whether a computer user is an expert or a novice, based on the user's pre-emptive mouse movements.

Mahesh, in his post titled Socially backward, idiotically forward [dated 10^th 2003] tells a funny incident in which an ignoramus wrote to him asking for the $500 that BlogShares was supposedly giving away for registering with their site!!

JK features once more in this list as he discusses some More Praful Bidwai Jokes.

Ravikiran pokes holes in Praful Bidwai's arguments about McCarthyism's rise in India, in his post titled, Deafening Silence.

Gaurav Sabnis [permalinks not working, post dated 12^th 2003]proposes an interesting alternative plan to promote tourism in India. He calls it Libertourism!!
Same day, another great post!! Gaurav writes another interesting post on the same day [May 12, 2003], titled Citty Bitty in which he talks about the character of some Indian cities. Nicely done, Gaurav!!

Dina has a slew of great posts this week. I shall make a list!!...
1. Creativity - what we play is life : Dina laments the lack of creativity in our daily lives.
2. Marketing Blogs to Corporates : Dina attempts to bridge the chasm between blogs and business organizations by suggesting how blogs could be effectively used as Knowledge Management tools.
3. Then she goes on to give a round-up of some excellent posts on Weblogs and Knowledge Management

That's about all we have for this week!! Thanks to all of you who sent in their nominations for this week's Mela. And another round of thanks to Ashwini and Shanti who let me host this week's BBM.

Cheers!