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Michael Clarke and his wife Kyly are all smiles at the Taj Mahal last month A gesture that had touched the ‘Iron Lady’ in India

Margaret Thatcher did not approve of the state of emergency in force during her visit to India in 1976. But she was so touched by a gesture of her host and prime minister Indira Gandhi that she made it a point to mention it in her memoirs.

“I lunched with Indira Gandhi in her own modest home, where she insisted on seeing that her guests were all looked after, and clearing away the plates while discussing matters of high politics,” Thatcher, who died recently, wrote in The Path to Power.

“Both her sons, Sanjay and Rajiv, were present, although it was the former who had most to say for himself. He had, indeed, allegedly been responsible for many of the abuses such as forced sterilisation and compulsory re-housing which had provoked such bitter opposition,” she said.

“But in spite of everything I found myself liking Mrs Gandhi herself. Perhaps, I naturally sympathised with a woman politician faced with the huge strains and difficulties of governing a country as vast as India.”

Thatcher had visited India in September 1976 as an opposition leader, three years before she became prime minister, at the invitation of Indira Gandhi. The British press had criticised her for her comment post-visit, “I came to learn and not to comment.”

Yet, in her memoirs, Thacker did say that she did not see eye-to-eye on Indira Gandhi’s emergency and the restrictions on the press.

“In spite of a long self justificatory account she gave me of why the state of emergency had been necessary, I could not approve of her government’s methods,” said Thatcher, who was called the Iron Lady for the way she handled some pressing labour issues.

“She had taken a wrong turning and was to discover the fact at her Party’s devastating election defeat in 1977,” Thatcher added.

The fact that Indira Gandhi’s gesture of clearing the plates herself had touched Thatcher is also mentioned in the declassified documents from British archives that were released in December 2006.

Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Britain died on April 7, after suffering a stroke. She was 87.

Delhi Police turn to yoga as stress buster

Battling crime day in and day out, Delhi’s policemen are a totally stressed out lot. So now the men in khaki are turning to yoga as a stress buster.

After yoga classes showed positive results at one police station, Delhi Police are planning to take them to more men in the capital.

“Our men daily deal with crime, criminals and work for abnormal hours on occasion. All this is bound to lead to stress,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northwest Delhi) P Karunakaran.

It was his initiative to conduct a yoga camp at the Jahangirpuri police station.

At the camp March 18-April 2, around 35 police personnel participated. The session was held between 4.30 pm-5.30 pm every day. The exercise will continue in the district’s 17 police stations.

“We got a very good response, and now similar yoga camps can be organised in other police stations across the city,” Karunakaran added. Delhi has 180 police stations.

“The classes were successful and satisfying. I am getting feedback from participants that they feel a change in themselves after attending the yoga classes,” Assistant Sub-Inspector Pushpendra Kumar, who conducted the class, said.

He said the policemen found it “very helpful”.

“We could notice the slight changes in them due to yoga. They look more tensionfree, relaxed and have more energy for work. We also noticed an improvement in their day-to-day health problems, including depression,” Kumar said.

Kumar, 30, who has been practising yoga for the last five years, said he used to instruct policemen on yoga wherever he was posted.

Another senior police officer said, “such classes also help in increasing the working capacity of the policemen”.

The idea of yoga was explored when it was noticed that policemen were feeling stressed due to being overworked.

There were complaints of sleep-related problems, headaches and indigestion.

“A policemen has to be on duty for more than 10 hours a day, specially those on the law and order duties or posted at a police station. Yoga is very helpful in relaxing and rejuvenating the person,” stated Constable Satender Singh, who attended the classes.

Australian know-how for Jaipur’s Man Singh museum makeover

A five-member heritage delegation from Australia has arrived in Jaipur to collaborate with the Maharaj Sawai Man Singh II Museum Trust on heritage conservation and cultural tourism. The delegation will tour the Pink City and “assess the condition of the museum and the artifacts”.

The Australian and Indian teams will take part in a joint forum on museum collections and conservation, heritage architecture and conservation, and cultural tourism, the embassy of Australia said.

AusHeritage chairman and Australian cultural heritage expert, Vinod Daniel, set the tone for the forum with an address on “the Museum of the 21st Century”. He said museums had to move out of the conventional spaces and reach out to people and conservation technology had to be upgraded to control depreciation of heritage and cultural artifacts with time and extreme Indian weather.

The participants visited the Jaipur City Palace and the Jaigarh Fort.

Australian Deputy High Commissioner Bernard Philip, said in New Delhi, that he was delighted to be at the City Palace for the forum.

“Initiatives such as this one, funded by the Australia-India Council, are an important part of the ongoing conversation between our two countries,” he said.

Aditi Mehta, Rajasthan’s additional chief secretary, will inaugurate the forum, hosted by the secretary of the Museum Trust, Diya Kumari. “This forum is yet another effort on the part of the trust to learn the scientific and modern methods to conserve our heritage architecture as well as promoting cultural tourism,” she said.

“We are happy to join hands with AusHeritage in this endeavour,” Divya Kumari added.

Vinod Daniel said the five-member AusHeritage team had a wide range of expertise and he was delighted to collaborate on a project involving the City Palace, a site on every Indian visitor’s wishlist.

In addition to Daniel, Australian experts visiting Jaipur for the forum are collections specialist Charlotte Galloway, heritage architecture specialist Roger Beeston, materials scientist Jim Mann and cultural tourism academic, Keir Reeves.

The Australia-India Council (AIC) established in 1992 to encourage peoplepeople links between the two countries, has been supporting AusHeritage members to work on many projects in India, including providing assistance for designing an international exhibition gallery for the Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai, developing a charter for conservation of buildings for the Indian National Trust for Art and Culture, providing capacity building for museums in Assam, Kerala and West Bengal, besides Mumbai and Delhi, and developing a function brief for a Tagore museum in Shanthinketan.

AusHeritage has memoranda of understanding with INTACH and the Madras Christian College.

India successfully test fires nuclear-capable Agni-II missile

India successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable Agni-II strategic ballistic missile from a military base in Odisha on April 6, a defence official said.

The test was conducted from Wheeler’s Island in Bhadrak district, around 200 km from Bhubaneshwar, at about 10.20 am by army personnel as part of routine usertrials, said M.V.K.V. Prasad, director of the Integrated Test Range.

“The missile successfully hit the target. It was a perfect launch,” he said.

The medium-range missile with a range of over 2,000 km has already been inducted into the army, and is part of the Strategic Forces arsenal for nuclear deterrence. The Agni-II is part of India’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme.

The two-stage surface-to-surface missile, equipped with an advanced high-accuracy navigation system and guided by a novel state-of-the-art command and control system, is powered by a solid rocket propellant system.

The missile weighs 17 tonnes and its range can be increased to 3,000 km by reducing the payload. It can be fired from both rail and road mobile launchers. It takes only 15 minutes for the missile to be readied for firing.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation first tested Agni-II in 1999.

However, the Indian Army’s Strategic Forces Command, which operates the missile, could test it only May 17, 2010 after two successive failures in 2009.

The failed tests did not meet the mission’s desired objectives as, on both occasions, the missile lost speed and deviated from its flight path.

Since then, it has been successfully tested several times. The latest successful test once again proved the reliability of the missile, the official said.