The Brave Pedestrian

New Delhi, 25 April 2016: This weekend was a nightmare for 33-year-old media professional Mukund Prabhakar, because his new car – a one-year-old Hyundai i20 Elite Sportz – went up in flames where it was parked. Mukund, who works for multinational media and communication agency Dentsu Aegis Network at Gurgaon, recounts his ordeal. "I got home early from work around 6 pm on Friday, and parked the car at the nearest possible location from my residence at Khirki Extension, Malviya Nagar. On Saturday, around 2 pm, the person who washes my car called me to say that my car was in flames. When I reached the spot, a big crowd had gathered, including the police. Within minutes, firemen rushed to spot and put out the blaze with water-hoses, leaving behind a junk heap of ashes." Photo: the burning Hyundai i20 in Malviyanagar, new Delhi, before arrival of the Delhi Fire Brigade. Thankfully, other cars were not parked too close to this Hyundai i20, otherwise the fire might hav...

21 April 2016, Mumbai: With the backdrop of the Union Labour Ministry's tripartite consultations reported to be happening today to “assess the impact of the mandated larger pictorial warnings covering 85% of packaging space on the livelihood of 1.50 crore bidi workers”, nine bidi smokers who suffered from cancer, and their bereaved relatives, today wrote a letter to Mr Virjesh Upadhyay, Secretary of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which claims to be the bidi workers' trade union. Download a copy of the open letter on behalf of bidi victims . (Incidentally, bidi-rollers are not the enemy of bidi smokers and their   families, although it is in the name of bidi-rollers that Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh is trying to help the bidi industry evade the 85% pictorial warnings. Bidi-rollers are themselves a downtrodden and exploited lot -- largely dirt-poor child labourers, especially girls, often pushed into debt by the bidi industry contractors, and they have no genuine spokesmen. Bidi...