16th Lok Sabha to be the most tainted yet

16^th Lok Sabha to be the most tainted yet

DUBIOUS DISTINCTION

·        A study of election affidavits found that 34% of the member

     elected to Lok Sabha this time have been booked in criminal cases

·        In 2009, 30% of elected MPs were tainted , and in the term prior to it, the figure was 24%

·        Shiv Sena has the highest proportion of winners with criminal cases (83%), followed by the BJP (35%), and Trinamool (21%)

·        In terms of sheer numbers, 98 of the 186 winning candidates with criminal cases are from the BJP

The Challenges Ahead-Fact File (THE 3 BIG JOBS FOR NEXT PM)

THE 3 BIG JOBS FOR NEXT PM                                                                  20 May 2014

The BJP has won the big battle-the elections-but a bigger war awaits it. India’s 1.2 billion people are looking to Team Modi for solutions to some serious problems. How he deals with them will determine the country’s future.

Taming inflation and slaying price monster

By all indications, the price situation could worsen in the coming months, given a high likelihood of below-average mansoon this summer threatened by the EI Nino weather phenomenon that affect wind patterns and can trigger both floods and drought.

Creating jobs and spurring growth

The biggest challenge facing India is to spin jobs and multiply incomes in a sustainable way. Productive jobs is the best form of financial inclusion.

Showing minorities they’ve nothing to fear

For most of India, these elections were fought around bread-and butter issues and those related to governance. However, minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, looked at them through a completely different prism. Muslims have been historically wary about Hindutva-based parties, whom they view as a threat to their identity. Modi’s candidacy for the top job only heightened these fearsin the run-up to the polls. Now, that the Narendra Modi-led BJP has got a thumping verdict, it ought to demonstrate that minorities have no reason to fear.

AFTER POLITICS, OVER TO ECONOMICS

HIGH PRICES- 5.20% Wholesale inflation in Apr, Down from 5.70% in Mar

Rising prices hit family budgets hard. The same amount of money now buys fewer goods. Clothing, medical care, education, eating out and most other services have turned dearer.

JOBLESSNESS-15mn Jobs added during 2004 and 2012

About 12 million people join the queue of young hopefuls every year. Finding jobs from them is a key challenge

INDUSTRIAL DECELERATION- 0.1% Fall in India’s industrial output in 2013-14

Higher prices and need to find additional money for EMIs force curbs on purchases of televisions and cars.

NaMo has been elusive, non committal vague in his utterances like a “Master Tactician” how and when will he fulfill or reach near to all the aspiration & expectation  of the people.

“As the Vodafone add says Ulloo Benoing mYyw cuk jgs gSA**

As I Saw It- (NaMo’s plan to cleanse Ganges)

As I Saw It-eqaxsjh yky ds lius (NaMo’s plan to cleanse Ganges)

Rs. 20,000cr spent, Ganga still a flowing mess                                               17 ebZ 2014

Ma Ganga aur Benares se mera rishta purana hai,” BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi said, pledging his intent to restore the Ganga to its original glory while campaigning in Varanasi, Plans to clean to the 2,500 km holy river too date back to older times-the first Ganga Action Plan was announced in 1986-but activists claim the stretch flowing through Varanasi is in worse shape today than it was five years ago, with “river squatters” staking claim to its banks.

GANGA: THE LIFELINE OF INDIA Length 2,525km (longest river of India) - It traverses a length of 450km in Uttarakhand, 1000km in UP, 405 in Bihar, 40km in Jharkhand, 520km in West Bengal and remaining 110km stretch touches the boundary between UP and Bihar

Catchment area of Ganga basin-8,61,404 sqkm (26.4% of India) Average annual discharge 4,93,400 million cubic metre. TRIBUTARIES/SUB-TRIBUTARIES- Yamuna, Ramganga, Gomti, Ghaghara, Gandak, Damodar, Kosi, Kali, Chambal, Singh, Betwa, Ken, Tons, Sone and Kasia-Haldi

MAJOR CITIES LOCATED ON ITS BANK-Rishikesh, Haridwar, Roorkee (in Uttarakhand), Bijnor, Narora, Kanauj, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mirzapur (in UP), Patna, Bhagalpur (in Bihar)  Bahrampur, Serampore, Howrah and Kolkata. The Ganga River Basin supports nearly 43% of India population. Two phases of Ganga Action Plan (GAP) launched/implemented to clean the river in the past 28 years:

GAP-I : It was launched in June, 1986 and declared closed in March, 2000

GAP-I: I covered 25 cities/towns: 6 in UP, 4 in Bihar and 15 in West Bengal

GAP-II It was started in stages between 1993 and 1996: implementation finally commenced on April 1, 2001

Ganga got the National River status in 2008-09

Government set up National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) in February, 2009 as a planning, financing, monitoring and coordinating body of the Centre and the states.

At Varanasi, the Ganga is little more than a cocktail of groundwater & sewage discharge. Houses and parks on the banks have reduced its width by almost half.

Ganga project was conceived, initiated and planned during the year 1986. “At what stage is Ganga” is well articulated by Manjari Mishra in TOI news report dated 15 May 2014.

Modis dream can he take off? No such plan could be a success-without people’s participation.

Population is exploding and the people are becoming less and less, sensitive towards “National Cause’.  Can NAMO articulate effectively and forcefully measure towards population control and the importance of being ‘Responsible Citizen’ ftEesnkj ukxfjd. If his rhetoric’s of “Nation First”   was a reality as a Statesman Leader.

Otherwise like a normal politician whose aim was to win election.

Sins Of Commission?

 

08 May 2014

Sins Of Commission?

Modi is testing the Model Code of Conduct’s limits in the final phase of campaigning

The reason why EC is so irksome to politicians is because it has steadily expanded its regulatory authority, granted under Article 324 of the Constitution, over everything related to elections. However, it wasn’t always so. Before T N Seshan’s tenure as chief election commissioner in the 1990s, EC was an organization primarily concerned with ensuring fair and smooth voting. This it did remarkably given the scale of elections in India.

So long as the Code does not have legal sanction, EC can take immediate remedial action. This it has done by handing out public censure to both candidates and government officials and in rare cases cancelling elections. In this election campaign we have already seen EC banning for a period BJP’s Amit Shah and Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan. Similarly for the past few elections it has been commonplace for EC to transfer government officials, something which always raises the hackles of ruling parties.

The lack of legal sanction has, however, led to haps in the enforcement of the code, Provisions in the Code itself are also hard to enforce. For instance, it says that criticism of other political parties “shall be confined to their policies and programme, past record and work” and that is must “refrain from criticism of all aspects of private life”. But anyone following the mud-slinging in this election campaign knows that this being ignored.

Before Modi’s unprovoked comments against EC in West Bengal, he got into another tangle with EC for flashing BJP’s election symbol near a polling booth. But that, we must remember, was not a violation of the Code but of RPA, something which can attract punishment. An FIR has been filed and the law will now take its own slow course. To come back to the Code, however, there was a feeling that Modi might test its limits in the final phase of campaigning when most of the country had already voted. That is precisely what is happening.

Following his remarks in West Bengal, Modi delivered a speech in Ayodhya with a huge portrait of Lord Rama as a backdrop and repeated references to Rama. That potentially violates the clause in the Code which advises against aggravating differences between different communities as well as Section 123 of RPA which prohibits appealing for votes on the ground of religion. Indeed the latter was a bone of contention in the long-drawn case over use of Hindutva, which Supreme Court eventually upheld, in election campaigns.

To be sure some of the provisions in the Code and RPA are restrictions on freedom of speech. These provisions are also notoriously difficult to enforce and often result in lengthy legal battles, as in the case of use of Hindutva, where the final judgment comes years after the actual election took place.

That, however, is no excuse for Modi to launch a frontal attack on EC By doing so he might be scoring some cheap election points. But potential damage to one of the few credible state institutions in India betrays acute short-sightedness on the part of Modi.

Extract of an article by Ronojoy Sen, TOI, May 07, 2014

The Fact File

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D;k ;g lkaiznkf;drk eksnh ds vkus ds ckn gh ‘kq: gqbZ\

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D;k dHkh cnysxh ;g fLFkfr\

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Extract of an interview with Mr. Bandookwala-published in “Amar Ujala” Hindi Daily 28 April 2014

The fact file- Fooling Everybody Modinomics is the stuff of nightmares

The fact file- Fooling Everybody                                                                              14 April 2014

Modinomics is the stuff of nightmares

For those who are worried about the environment, Modi’s ascendance to the post is a cause for worry

Narendra modi as India’s prime minister will be a development disaster. In Gujarat, his tenure as chief minister has seen worsening or stagnation of the health and livelihood prospects of the poor, and widespread ecological damage.

In a recent report, labour and environmental activists Rohit prajapati and Trupti Shah laid bare the Modi government’s deliberate dispossession of farmers to create cheap labour for industries, and the dubious distinction of having 30% of India’s major accident hazard’ industries as also its most ‘critical polluted areas’. Other analysts have brought out the abysmal state of health and education, especially among the state’s adivasis and Delits.

Modi’s ‘developmentalism’ includes sidestepping all norms to make land and water available to corporate houses. It means taking over the land and water of 70 villages to promote the patel statue as a tourism zone. It involves Project kalpasar, a 30 km dam across the Gulf of Khambhat, ignoring potentially colossal social and ecological costs, ignoring also the much chaper, more sustainable, and more democratic alternatives to water security such as those demonstrated by civil society groups in kachchh and Saurasdhtra. Given all this, it will not be a surprise if, as PM, he instructs the Union ministry of environment and forests to dilute or sidestep environmental, laws to enable corporate take-overs.

The UPA at least brought in some progressive legislation and schemes, under the influence of civil society. Will Modi be open to such in influence? Activists in Gujarat report an atmosphere of intolerance and authoritarianism that discourages dissent. Activists peacefully protesting against the Patel statue, or a proposed nuclear power station in Bhavnagar district, or industrial expansion into ecosystems that fisher folk, farmers, adivasis are dependent on, have been dealt with by heavy police bandobast are repression. The largest number of RTI activists killed or injured in India belong to Gujarat.

Those who will cheer most if Modi becomes PM are the corporate sector and a part of the upwardly mobile middle classes. To them, people’s struggles for justice, movements by the poor to resist displacement and land acquisition, and environmental activism, are all ‘hurdles’ to profits and further enrichment. Unfortunately a large section of the population may also vote for him dreaming of joining the 10% of India that own 53% of its wealth. But for those who worry about the ‘jobless’ growth of today’s development model, about half of India still deprived of basic needs, and how future generations are being robbed of their right to a healthy environment, Modi’s ascendance to India’s to position is a cause for nightmars.  

As seen & reported by a Social Activist HT 31 March 2014

The Fact File-Here Are Some Shocking Truths

Here Are Some Shocking Truths                                                   12 April 2014

The person who invented dynamite, Alfred Nobel, went on to establish 90 armament factories and amassed huge amounts of wealth through the arms trade. Then an incident took place which totally changed the course of his life.

In 1988, the death of his brother caused several newspapers to mistakenly publish obituaries of Alfred. One French obituary stated: “Le marchand de la mort est mort’ (“The merchant of death is dead”). The obituary went on to day, “Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday. “ Alfred, shocked at what he read, then took a positive decision about his life. In 1895, at the Swedish-Norweigian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his estate to establish the five Nobel Prizes, including the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

Shock is a great educator, It sets off such a process of brainstorming that a whole new mindset takes shape and as a consequence a new human personality emerges: if in the pre-shock period  he was just a man, in the post-shock period he emerges as superman. Shocks, great or small, are very common. Almost everyone has had experience of them. But the majority take these as negative experiences and are unable to learn a lesson from them. However, shock is not an accident: shock is the language of nature. Nature specials in the language of shocks. If one saves oneself from becoming negative after suffering a shock, this can be highly creative experience. Shock will stimulate your mind, and will unfold your potential. It initiates creative thinking processes. It helps you to take better decisions in your life by bringing you from a state of total derailment to being right back on track. In other words, it makes you realistic in your approach. Shock is the greatest positive factor in one’s life, provided one responds positively to it. Everyone can become inspirational like Alfred Nobel; the only condition being that one should take shocks as a source of learning rather than a source of anger.

One such example is that of MK Gandhi, who spent 20 years in South Africa. In June 1893, he had to undertake a trip to Pretoria in the Transvaal, a journey which took Gandhi to Pietermaritzburg. There, Gandhi took his seat in a first-class compartment, since he had purchased a first-class ticket. The railway officials ordered Gandhi to remove himself to the van compartment, since non-whites were not permitted in first-class compartments. As Gandhi refused to comply with the order, he was pushed out of the train, and his luggage was tossed out on to the platform in the extremely bitter cold of the winter.

What happened with Gandhi was an example of violence. Yet he decided to work for peace. He returned to India and started his movement which was based on ahimsa, non violence. Soon, he became a champion of Non-violent activism. According to the law of nature, life is not a smooth journey: it is a journey through shocks. One has no option but to accept this as a reality. Indeed, the course nature takes is determined by shocks and challenges. Anyone who seeks to make himself successful should understand this reality and take shocks as stepping stones in life. Follow Maulana Wahiduddin Khan at speakingtree. in and post comments there.