Idle musings

THREE REMARKABLE SPEECHES     NOTE: This blog was updated on 04-Sep-13. It was originally published on 27-Aug-13. I added a couple of details more about Dr. R. Balasubramaniam in the first paragraph. I had mis-spelt "this" as "thos", which I corrected. I added the word "which", which was missing in the last sentence of the paragraph that introduces Ms. Madhu Kishwar. I also changed the font to "Verdana".     On Sunday, 25-Aug-13, I attended a seminar organized to commemorate Swami Vivekananda's 150th birth anniversary this year. The website http://vivek150.org/ has information about the celebrations. The theme of the seminar was "Intellectual Meet for Vision and Thought Leaders". The speakers were Manohar Parrikar, the Chief Minister of Goa; Madhu Kishwar, the Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), based in Delhi and founder editor of "Manushi" (more information is available at http