Sunita Rocque

News junkie, avid follower of political and world affairs

[Rizwan Arshad @ArshadRizwan]

A new chapter is taking shape at Hafeezia BCCC School in Shivajinagar. Inspected the ongoing developmental works. It is encouraging to see that all the works are now at the final stage, and the school is nearing completion.

Over the years, we have worked consistently to strengthen government schools in Shivajinagar with better infrastructure and improved learning facilities, because every child deserves the very best.

These schools are not just classrooms—they are places where dreams take shape and futures are built.

We are delighted that the school will soon be inaugurated, marking another important milestone in our commitment to providing world-class learning facilities for children in our constituency.

Our commitment remains unwavering: to make every government school in Shivajinagar a place where children receive quality education, equal opportunities, and the confidence to achieve their fullest potential.

#Shivajinagara #EducationForAll #GovernmentSchools #QualityEducation

[The Better India @thebetterindia]

Satish Dhawan, the man who helped shape India’s space programme, cared about trees as deeply as he cared about rockets.

When plans for the SLV-3 launch complex at Sriharikota meant cutting 10,000 trees, he refused to simply accept it as the price of progress.

He spent two hours with his engineers asking one question: Could they find another way?

They did.

By redesigning the site, they brought the number down to 1,000 trees. Dhawan then asked them to plant 10,000 saplingsand later made tree removal at ISRO establishments subject to the Chairman’s specific clearance.

Perhaps it came naturally to a man who spent his free hours studying birds, their wings, muscles, hovering, gliding and soaring. His fascination with flight eventually became Bird Flight, a book exploring how nature had already mastered what he spent his life trying to understand.

Then, on 18 July 1980, SLV-3 placed the 40-kg Rohini satellite into orbit.

After the celebrations, Dhawan and Kalam quietly sat on the launcher, watching the waves of the Bay of Bengal.

No grand celebration between them. Just a quiet moment after eight years of failures, patience and perseverance.

That’s the kind of progress worth remembering: the kind that builds something new without forgetting what was already there.

#SatishDhawan #ISRO #IndianSpaceHistory #SpaceExploration #SustainableDevelopment

[How Satish Dhawan saved trees at Sriharikota, Why Satish Dhawan refused to cut 10000 trees, How SLV-3 launch site saved trees, Satish Dhawan and Kalam Rohini satellite story, The inspiring story of Satish Dhawan]

[Manu Rishi Guptha @manurishiguptha]

THE OWNERS WILL ALWAYS REMAIN OWNERS

Put the chair down!
Because if you dont, your name will outlive your legacy - not as a chairman, but as a verb. And the promoters will ask themselves only one question this leaves behind

Who could do a Chandra on you? https://t.co/teBs2jqEbW

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Japan is not a small city. It is a large, crowded country of islands, mountains, farms, and huge train stations. Even so, it looks unusually clean.

That does not happen by chance.

The first lesson is taught to children. They clean their own classrooms and often the toilets. Many walk to school and learn the road. They are told that a shared place belongs to them too. A child who has wiped a floor is less likely to treat the street like a dustbin.

The second lesson is social. Litter is not only against the law. It is shameful. Neighbours, shopkeepers, and station staff notice. Public bins are few, so people take their rubbish home. You carry what you create. That one habit does more than a thousand campaigns.

The third lesson is daily work. Stations are swept before the morning crowd. Shopkeepers wash the pavement outside their door. People remove shoes at the entrance of a home. Toilets are built so they are easy to keep clean, and they are checked often.

Culture helps. Dirt was long seen as something that stains more than the floor. Washing, sorting trash, and not walking around dropping food became ordinary manners.

After the war, Japanese cities were messier. Campaigns, rules, and a better standard of living rebuilt the habit. A big country is not kept clean by one authority. It is kept clean by routine.

Every school, every rail company, and every local office repeats the same small acts. A large country stays clean when millions of ordinary people do a small duty every day, and when leaving a mess costs you respect.

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

@krishnabgowda entire stretch from Sharada Math to Mekhri Circle no street lights on #NandidurgaRoad a major arterial road connecting the city centre to the airport. Kindly direct the concerned officials to help resolve

[Krishna Byre Gowda @krishnabgowda]

140 out of 222 street lights on one of Bengaluru’s most important roads were not functioning. This is not a lack of funds or projects - it is a failure of responsibility and accountability.

Basic services must work. Those entrusted with delivering them must be held accountable. Hence, strict action will be taken against the officials responsible for this lapse.

[Vikas Vij @TheClubJunto]

R&D Lessons from China: After Reliance, JSW Halts Battery Mfg Plans

(a) RIL & JSW: “China has weaponized access to battery tech” (b) FACT: Chinese firms failed for 30 yrs doing R&D, while we focused on quarterly EBITDA (c) Renting vs Owning Mentality.

India’s Licensing Mentality

a. On Aug 26, 2026, Parth Jindal (36 yrs) told reporters that JSW has halted its ₹40,000 cr planned investment to manufacture LFP (lithium iron phosphate) battery in India. Parth said: “China is guarding LFP technology like a weapon.”

b. At Reliance AGM 2026, Anant Ambani (31 yrs) told shareholders: “Access to battery tech is being weaponized.” Reliance was forced to halt its mfg plans for LFP battery after China refused to license cell technology.

c. Indian industry prefers non-export items like oil, steel, cement, power, ports, airports because a known playbook exists. Foreign competition disallowed, 100% domestic capture, predictable profits, multi-billion mkt cap, zero R&D.

China’s R&D Mentality

a. China controls 94% of global LFP capacity. Chinese Companies: CATL: 37%; BYD: 23% (BYD became a car-maker); Others: 34%

b. LFP technology did not fall from heaven into China's lap. 30 years ago nobody wanted LFP. LFP was cheap and safe, but it had a failing. Its conductivity was so poor it could hardly deliver current.

c. US researchers gave up on LFP after a long struggle as it looked impossible to crack. But it was obvious that LFP would one day win because it involved abundant, low-cost raw materials.

BYD 2002-2020: Lessons in R&D
18 Years of Blood, Sweat & Tears

2002: BYD was a small battery-maker founded by Wang Chuanfu, an orphan from one of China’s poorest provinces. Wang chose the long and painful road of LFP when everyone else believed it was the road to bankruptcy.

In 2002, BYD’s earliest investor was Charlie Munger. Charlie said: “I invested because Wang was a “chemistry genius” and a “fanatic who worked 70 hrs a week.”

2005: In 2005, BYD developed its first in-house LFP cell.

2008: BYD launched the world’s first hybrid electric vehicle running on its own LFP – three months after Warren Buffett bought $230 million of BYD stock.

2009-2012: Commercial testing was critical to scale up the technology. But car owners were not ready to buy EVs. Chinese govt backed the technology with “10 Cities, 1000 Vehicles” program, which put LFP on municipal buses and taxis.

2016-2018: The Darkest Years: Conventional NMC technology raced ahead due to govt subsidies. Competition intensified. Industry slogan became: “LFP is dead; stop burning money.”

2019: Near-Death Experience: BYD's net profit to shareholders fell to $267 million, while R&D expenses swelled to $1.25 billion. BYD had bet its last shirt on the technology.

2020: Redemption at Last: BYD’s legendary Blade Battery was born. It worked like a dream, having survived years of failures, bottlenecks, countless iterations, rebuilding of entire production lines, and a devastating lab fire.

R&D: How to Conquer the World

a. Dozens of Chinese EV and battery startups living off govt subsidies disappeared. BYD and CATL emerged as the survivors of a domestic bloodbath.

b. In 2025, the world’s largest EV seller BYD spent 9% of its sales revenue (not profit) on R&D. CATL spent 6%. To understand the scale: In 2025, CATL had 20,000 research staff and 43,000 patents & applications.

2025 BYD R&D Expense: $9B
2025 BYD Profit: $4.5B (Half)

c. China has innumerable companies today with such suicidal R&D expense ratios. India has ZERO because with a license raj DNA, the Indian promoter has no mad desire to change the world. He just wants to die rich.

India's Ambani-Adani Equation

The following equation sums up India's economic curse:

When you have zero R&D, your profit becomes:

$4.5B + $9B = $13.5B

India's family-owned conglomerates, thriving on protectionist policies, do not wish to waste even one dollar on R&D and innovation.

Their vision for India is to leave billions to their children. And the children think licensing another's IP is their birthright: “China has weaponized battery technology against us.”

@arabicatrader

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

After independence, Lee Kuan Yew looked for a cheap, visible way to set Singapore apart from other poor countries. He settled on clean and green. Later he called greening the most cost effective project he ever launched.

A First World look, he believed, would draw investors and tourists and make Singapore a base for business and travel in the region.

It began in a drought. On 16 June 1963 he planted a mempat sapling at Farrer Circus and launched an island wide tree planting campaign.

He chose the trees, demanded gaps in flyovers so plants could live underneath, and watched the road from the airport. “I thought the best way to convince them was to ensure that the roads from the airport to their hotel and to my office were neat and spruce, lined with shrubs and trees.”

He also said, “You can’t just plant a tree and walk away. The tree will die. You need tree doctors. You need to understand what the soil has to be and how much sunlight it requires.”

He refused a pretty centre and neglected estates. Working class neighbourhoods had to be as green as the rest.

A well kept garden is daily work.

Investors and citizens both notice who does that work.

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

@krishnabgowda @ArshadRizwan #NandidurgaRoad is a major arterial road leading to the airport

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

After independence, Lee Kuan Yew looked for a cheap, visible way to set Singapore apart from other poor countries. He settled on clean and green. Later he called greening the most cost effective project he ever launched.

A First World look, he believed, would draw investors and tourists and make Singapore a base for business and travel in the region.

It began in a drought. On 16 June 1963 he planted a mempat sapling at Farrer Circus and launched an island wide tree planting campaign.

He chose the trees, demanded gaps in flyovers so plants could live underneath, and watched the road from the airport. “I thought the best way to convince them was to ensure that the roads from the airport to their hotel and to my office were neat and spruce, lined with shrubs and trees.”

He also said, “You can’t just plant a tree and walk away. The tree will die. You need tree doctors. You need to understand what the soil has to be and how much sunlight it requires.”

He refused a pretty centre and neglected estates. Working class neighbourhoods had to be as green as the rest.

A well kept garden is daily work.

Investors and citizens both notice who does that work.

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Tamil Nadu should start this in Chennai and then extend it across the rest of the state.

Nothing is impossible if the government strongly decides to implement and enforce good practices.

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

Photograph today on location. No 10 #NandidurgaRoad @GBAChiefComm @ArshadRizwan @krishnabgowda awaiting a clean up of this growing garbage dump

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

⁦@GBAChiefComm⁩ attached is a newspaper clip highlighting two vacant sites on Nandidurga Road which we as residents have been complaining about for the last few years. Official complaint also lodged with your office. No action to date. Please help get this resolved

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

@GBAChiefComm @ArshadRizwan @krishnabgowda #NandidurgaRoad

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

@ArshadRizwan

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

@ArshadRizwan

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

⁦@GBAChiefComm⁩ attached is a newspaper clip highlighting two vacant sites on Nandidurga Road which we as residents have been complaining about for the last few years. Official complaint also lodged with your office. No action to date. Please help get this resolved

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

⁦@GBAChiefComm⁩ attached is a newspaper clip highlighting two vacant sites on Nandidurga Road which we as residents have been complaining about for the last few years. Official complaint also lodged with your office. No action to date. Please help get this resolved

[Sunita Rocque @Sunitarocque]

⁦@GBAChiefComm⁩ attached is a newspaper clip highlighting two vacant sites on Nandidurga Road which we as residents have been complaining about for the last few years. Official complaint also lodged with your office. No action to date. Please help get this resolved

[K. C. Singh @ambkcsingh]

Why don’t @KapilSibal & @DrAMSinghvi etc ask Supreme Court to bar all MPs, whose defections are under court’s scrutiny, from voting, especially on constitution’s amendments, till their final decision?

[Muthukrishnan Dhandapani @dmuthuk]

Not going to share any personal details. Just want to highlight how perception is different from reality. This is not to support any political party or leader. Want to let you know things are not as they look.

In 2013, my client who was professionally working for Rahul Gandhi suggested my name to him to handle his mutual fund investments.

From 2013, when UPA 2 was in power to till date when Vijay was sworn in with Congress support, Rahul continues to be my client for mutual fund investments.

We have exchanged many mails and has spoken over phone lot of times. And as you are aware, I've been a strong Modi supporter from 2014 to 2024. Never once Rahul or his office staff brought that subject to me. I believe my tweets are regularly seen by his staff. They clearly differentiate between my professional service and political beliefs.

And in every single conversation I've with Rahul, he addresses me with respect and never behaved in any haughty manner.

Despite knowing my BJP support, he took my input few years ago for choosing a key professional .

This post may lead to Rahul terminating our professional relationship. That's ok. Everything should end one day.

Wanted to post this to show how main stream media and IT cells of parties can make someone look completely inhuman.

I do not know Rahul Gandhi as a politician. Based on last 14 years interaction, all I can say is he respect professionals a lot and a nice human being to interact with.

Don't go by media or IT cells - for any party that matter.

[Kartikeya Bhatotia @bhatoti]

Our white paper on extreme heat in India just got published by @HarvardSalata and yes, the timing is rather unfortunately suitable:

https://t.co/ZD7IL9qoNf

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Real forests, the kind that cool land, hold water and shelter life, cover just over 3% of India. The official number says 21%.

The gap between those two figures is not measurement. It is a definition that was quietly rewritten in 2001 to make a crisis disappear on paper.

The missing 17% is orchards, coconut groves, bamboo plantations, tea and coffee estates, rubber farms, eucalyptus plots, roadside tree lines and urban parks. All counted as forests.

A tea estate in Assam. A coconut farm in Tamil Nadu. A eucalyptus plantation in Andhra Pradesh. A bamboo grove in Odisha. All forests, on paper.

Because in 2001, the Forest Survey of India decided that any land with 10% tree cover qualifies.

They just forgot to mention that the FAO, whose standard they claim to follow, explicitly excludes fruit plantations and orchards.

This is not a rounding error. This is a policy decision. And it is why nobody fixed what was broken.

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[Siddharth @svaradarajan]

The path from Budapest to New Delhi is neither linear nor comparable in any simple sense and the differences are real, writes @AnandTeltumbde about Viktor Orbán's stunning defeat. "But Hungary delivers a stark lesson: even a deeply entrenched system under Orbán was not permanent. Power, however fortified, ultimately rests on consent. When that consent is withdrawn—organised and channelled by a credible, united force—seemingly unassailable regimes can fall with surprising speed."

Teltumbde analyses the similarities and differences between the situation in Hungary and India with razor sharp clarity, producing one of the finest pieces of political analysis you can read about India and also Hungary!

Five strategies from the campaign which unseated Orbán that matter most for the Opposition in India: (1) Unity before Ideology, (2) Contest the Strongholds, Not Just the Base, (3) Name the Corruption, Concretely, (4) Reclaim the National Flag, (5) The Insider Defector is Uniquely Powerful

PS: It is worth remembering that the author, a globally renowned scholar, was imprisoned by the Modi government for nearly three years on the bogus charge of conspiring to overthrow the State and is currently out on bail!

https://t.co/I4cmTbiqlj