The Fact File-Let the Good Time Roll

Let the Good Time Roll                                                                                           18 June 2014

Not just good governance, people must also show their better selves for ‘acche din’

A catchy slogan of the new government was ‘Acche din aane wale hain’, translating to ‘good days are about to come’. There are other nebulous elements of acche din. What exactly does it mean? Is it enough we don’t have a scam-tainted government anymore? Or that we have a PM who asks babus to come on time and clear files fast? Is the rising sensex a sign of acche din? Well, perhaps to a certain extent. However, there’re clearly more expectations Indians have from these acche din.

The generic term carries with it a massive burden of aspirations, across socio-economic categories. A slum dweller wants running water, a graduate wants a good placement, a village lady wants a toilet in her home, a stockbroker wants the stock market to rise, parents want a good school for their children, a commuter wants good public transport, a businessman wants lower taxes and regulations-the list is endless.

One, care for those beneath you.

Two, have a certain civic sense. As a general rule, follow rules. Never litter, disobey traffic norms or do anything at the expense of society.

Three, respect women. No respect doesn’t mean you fall on their feet and start calling them devi or ma or behen (goddess or mother or sister). Respect means treating them as human beings.

Four, respect talent, innovation, creativity, risk-taking and entrepreneurship. Instead, we respect power, money (no matter how it is attained), connections, and the well-settled.

India has tried its best to put a government in place that seemed to be the best alternative available. However, acche din needs a little more than an acchi sarkar. It also need acche log.

                                         An extract of an article by Chetan Bhagat, TOI June 14, 2014

Comments & Observation:

Very cleverly Modi or new “Modi Sarkar” has defined any time frame. “Acche Din” the most important aspect is “We the People”. Unless the quality of people improves nothing is Possible. The most important factor is Population Control & Stabilization. Any initiative honor’ble PM Sir? 

The Fact File-IRAQ IS BURNING

IRAQ IS BURNING                                                                                                  18 June 2014

Stem this dangerous tide

The extremist takeover the several Iraqi cities threatens to plunge the volatile region  into further chaos

This is the stuff of nightmares. An al Qaueda affiliate is taking over major cities in northern Iraq. Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Mosul on Tuesday, sparking the exodus of half a million Kurds living there. The ISIS is now in control of Falluja, The oil refinery town of Bayji, and Saddam Hussein’s stronghold, Tikrit. The Sunni extremist group is believed to be moving towards Baghdad from both the north and west. Iraqi forces are failing to put up a fight, feeling in places and leaving behind a huge cache of weapons. The ISIS created havoc in the Syrian civil war in recent years. Its energies have now been directed to the Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict in Iraq, which has ravaged the country since the US invasion in 2003. The Americans invaded the country and left hastily, leaving the Shiite majority that suffered under Saddam, a Sunni, in charge. Analysis believe the Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made matters worse by openly backing the Shiite majority in the sectarian conflict, thus setting the stage for a Sunni counter-reaction through ISIS.

This development has a huge bearing on the future of Iraq and the region. ISIS is expected to continue its surge in Sunni areas, where the invasion is said to enjoy a measure of popular support. There is a fear that Iraq, in time, will effectively splinter into three parts controlled by the Kurds, Shias and Sunnis. It remains to be seen if Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi forces will take the fight to non-Shia areas and retake lost cities.

The US has termed the situation as “extremely serious” but it is not clear if Western nations will take steps beyond exporting weapons and urging Iraqi forces to fight. The Obama administration is facing criticism for failing to leave a troop presence in Iraq that could have ensured stability. But Washington will be wary of getting drawn again into a Sunni-Shiite conflict. Instead, it may oddly hope that Iran tackles this crisis. The US must, however, do what it can to prevent the break-up of Iraq. It is the least it can do for a country irrevocably scarred by its ill-conceived invasion.

By the time these lines are put in black & white may be Baghdad would have been run over by ISIS elements.

Having visited IRAQ may a times between 1978 & 1988 (when Saddam Huaasin was the President Dictator) one feels sorry to read IRAQ in such a sorry and delipated state. IRAQ was a very prosperous and progressive Islamic state is the West Asia region IRAQ was the most liberal Islamic state. There were “Belly Dancing” Bars, liquor was not a taboo. Women were dressed in a fairly modest western style dress. Women would wear skirts up to knee length with a scarf around their head. They could be seen in Belly dancing Bar. Nobody dare stare at them or be indecent to them. IRAQI Dinar was a strong currency one ID could fetch 3-5 dollars. There were no terror attacks since Saddam Hussain was a head of state-with a firm hand.

India provided great assistance in building IRAQ specially the Railways, Health services. At one time nearly 100 top class (A1+A2) pilot instructors of the IAF were on deputation to train the Iraqi Air Force.

What have you done Mr. Bush to IRAQ? You went in 2003 to eliminate Saddam Hussain and take over the OIL FIELDS and left suddenly IRAQ to fend for themselves IRAQ is nearly heading for decimation. Will you intervene US & NATO?  

The Fact File

03 June 2014 was a sad day. Nation lost a ground based leader a mass leader, risen from the lowest ebb by his hard work. The Nation mourned, the political party mourned the family mourned.  A spirited man who cared for his people was lost. The sadness of the accident, at early hours of the day. The vehicle he was travelling had jumped the red light may be he was in a hurry to catch the flight. The best part of the story was, the driver of the vehicle which had bumped, into the minister’s car did not leave the scene of the accident. This driver only informed the police. The minister’s car had immediately left-for AIIMS, rightly so. The driver of the Indica Car waited for the police. The only person who acted responsibly.

Since then the minister of transport ( Shri Nitin Gadkari) is bent upon to overhaul the traffic laws, the road safety norms and other related issues.  As he is going to control and bring down the road accidents. Nearly 500 people die in road accidents perday (As reported by NCRB) If it was so simple the rape laws were changed dramatically & drastically after NIRBHAY case on 16 Dec 2012, rapes are on the rise every day. Causes are:

(a)   Rising rather exploding population

(b)   Larger no of vehicles on the road increasing day by day

(c)    And we are indisciplined ¼vuq”kklu jfgr½and irresponsible citizen ¼xSj ftEesnkj ukxfjd½

Mantri ji a Nation becomes great only by its quality of people. Do we have any agenda on:

(a)   Population control and stabilization

(b)   Agenda to create masess with discipline ¼vuq”kklu½ and sense of responsible citizenship. ¼ftEesnkj ukxfjd½

We need a change of ATTITUDE change of law only would have negligible effect.

Denounce these Hindutva groups                                                                                   

The Centre must crack down on communal violence and make sure Pune murderers pay the price. It could not get more frightening or uglier: A Face book post could cost the life of an innocent person in as cosmopolitan a place as Pune. A young Muslim techie was attacked and beaten to death after someone else put up an FB post allegedly derogatory to the late Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray and the Maratha warrior king Shivaji. Mohsin Mohammed Sadique Shaikh has nothing to do with this, yet the goons from a Hindu extremist outfit (Hindu Rashtra Sena) thought nothing of murdering him. Not content with this appalling violence, the alleged killers then exchanged sickening messages saying “Pahili wicket padli” (the first wicket has fallen)/ This suggests that these criminals are under the impression that they are in some sort of position of power and can do pretty much what they like to the minorities. The police have arrested a number of persons in connection with the murder and seven have been charged. But the crux of the matter is that the goons, allegedly from the Hindu Rashtra Sena, acted with no fear of the law. If they had any misplaced sense of confidence that they could act like this since a Hindu nationalist party was in power at the Centre in alliance with the Shiv Sena, they must be disabused of this notion immediately. Such ultra right outfits would become more and more visible and more aggressively and ostensibly-unless controlled and tamed. May be unprecedented electoral victory is making them feel abrasive and protective. 

A Battle for India’s soul

                                                                            A Battle for India’s soul      

The  rejection of the UPA is being interpreted as the rejection of secularism and welfarism. This is a misreading of the message of the voters. In the puzzling arithmetic of India’s first-past-the-post election system, only one in three voters backed the winning side, whereas two voted against it. Who are the winners of the 2014 elections, who voted for the ascendant political formation and who celebrate its conquest as their own? They include not just large numbers o f India’s urban middle and upper classes-its influential cheerleaders-but also people Narendra Modi describes and the ‘neo-middle class’ or the aspirational class: Those who have not yet entered the middle class, but are hopeful, impatient and ambitious to benefit from India’s growth story, dreaming of well-paid jobs, plastic cards, bulging shopping-bags and mounting EMIs. Many among these are first –time voters, between 18 & 22 years. The third and most decisive support has been of a unified and significant recruitment even from the subaltern castes.

Who then are the losers of this election, the two in three voters who opposed the victorious political formation? There is first the secular India; an anguished friend wrote to me that she hoped history would forgive us for what we have become. The second set of losers are India’s minorities, a especially Muslims but also Christians, who are stunned and frightened by the scale of majortarian consolidation, unmatched even by the aftermath of Partition and the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the two lowest points in communal relations in independent India. Muslim friend’s confessed to have wept when they heard the result. The third set of losers are India’s very poor people-footloose migrant workers, landless farm labourers, forest dwellers displaced from their depleting forests, farmers driven to despair and suicide, weavers and artisans threatened to extinction, and women in unpaid or under-paid work, over 2000 million people who still sleep hungry, over 100 million people condemned to the squalor of slums, young people for whom each health emergency is a catastrophe which pushes them further into penury. These forgotten exiles from hope are also exiles from the triumphs and promises of this election.

Many also interpret the election mandate as the death knell of the idea of welfare and social protection. In the development model on offer, the State will encourage private investment and pull back or direct State interventions for good-quality universal government schools and health centers, direct job creation and nutrition. But India’s high-growth years threw up few jobs. The experience of no country in the world demonstrates that the health and educational needs of poor households can be met adequately by private profit-let enterprises instead of the State. Ideologies centered on majoritarian domination and the individualist material progress may have won this round of battle. But the larger battle for the hearts and minds of our young people must and will be won in the end by the ideas of justice, solidarity, public compassion and reason. I am convinced that today’s masses of losers are ultimately-in the battle for the soul of India-on the right side of history.

Extract of an article by Harsh Mandher HT May 20, 2014

jktuhfr vkSj cktkj ds fj”rs (A comparision of last five Govt’s- The economic indicators are worth noting.

ns”k dh fofHkUu ljdkjksa us fodkl ds nkos fd, gSA exj dSlh jgh fiNyh ikap ljdjksa ds nkSjku cktkj vkSj vFkZo;oLFkk dh fLFkfr\

uke	GDP	CAD	Sensex rise
ihoh ujflagjko	5.7%	9.6%	23.4%
,p Mh nsoxkSM+k	6.1%	4.5%	2.3%
banz dqekj xqtjky	4.3%	4.4%	0.6%
vVy fcgkjh cktisbZ	5.9%	4.9%	4.3%
eueksgu flag	7.9%	6.2%	16%

As reported in Amr Ujala 29 May 2014  
                                  

Shpaing India's outlook, A Tribute to Nehru on 50 years of his death anniversary (27 May)

A Tribute to Nehru on 50 years of his death anniversary (27 May)

In his book The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote: “It is surprising how internationally minded we grew in spite of our intense nationalism. The international mindedness that grew in the Congress refers to the foreign policy and the international mindedness of India’s freedom struggle, the legacy of which independent India inherited. It is important to remember that the leading figure in the shaping of India’s foreign policy was Nehru.

One of his earliest speeches on foreign policy was delivered at the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities in Brussels on February 10, 1927. Nehru represented the Indian National Congress and his speech, published under the title ‘India’s Freedom a World Necessity’. Made a great impression. “Try to conceive for a moment what it would have been by now if Britain did not hold India. There would have been no British Empire. Naturally, therefore, from their capitalist and imperialist point of view they wanted to do everything in their power to hold on to India. All their foreign policy has been largely shaped with this object in view…On account of India, a large number of countries have suffered and are suffering . You have heard of the most recent example of British imperialism in regard to India - The sending of Indian troops to China…I must remind you that Indian troops. Unhappily to my shame I confess it, have been utilized many times by the British in oppressing other people.”

Nehru wrote brilliant and moving accounts of tragic happenings in Europe, many of them during his visits to Europe where he took part in anti-fascist and anti-Nazi protests and conveyed Indian people’s expression of solidarity with the victims of aggression. Nehru wrote about the coming war: “But this coming war was likely to be different from the one that had been envisaged before Hitler had arisen. Even so, British policy had been almost continuously pro-fascist and pro-nazi….

It can perhaps be argued that two dominating trends were reconciled by the Quit India resolution passed by the AICC, which stated ‘that the ending of British rule in India is an urgent necessity for the success of the United Nations’ and ‘A free India will assure the success by throwing all her great resources in the struggle against the aggression of Nazism, fascism and imperialism’. The Asian Relations Conference (March 23 to April 2, 1947) is important to the understanding of what was going to be the broad framework of independent India’s foreign policy. Nehru said in his inaugural speech: “We have no designs against anybody; ours is the great design of promoting peace and progress all over the world. Far too long have we of Asia been petitioners in western courts and chancelleries. That story must now belong to the past. We do not intend to be the playthings of others.

“ Asia stretches her hand out in friendship to Europe and America as well as to out suffering brethren in Africa. We in Asia have a special responsibility to the people of Africa. We must help them to their rightful place in the human family. Universal human freedom also cannot be based on the supremacy of any particular class.” Nehru, as Prime Minister, inherited the legacy of the foreign policy which India’s freedom struggle had developed. Basing himself on that rich legacy, he began shaping independent India’s role in world affairs. The main objectives of this role consisted of strengthening the independence of the country and her independent role in world affairs, elimination of all forms of imperialism, colonialism and racialism, preservation and strengthening of world peace through general and complete disarmament and creation of new international order based on mutual cooperation and equality between nations. The Nehruvian period was full of great achievements and a continuing source of pride and inspiration.

Extract of an article by Prof Arjun Dev, The Week  May 18 2014. 

Modi-How he emerged a GIANT?

Modi-How he emerged a GIANT?                                                                      May 29, 2014

A RSS volunteer, and then RSS Pracharak for 27 years, Introduced as a RSS inductee at National Level in BJP in eighties. Directed by RSS to take over the regional head of BJP in Gujarat in the Nineties. Feel good philosophy started eliminating top leaderships of Guajarat BJP who could be a threat to his (NaMo’s) political rise. Became CM of Gujarat in the year 2000 and continued till he took over as PM.

Rise as a National Leader and became PM of India.

A highly ambitions & ruthless with absolute clarity of his aim- to become the undisputed leader of BJP and the PM of India. Garnered full support of the RSS. RSS has been working for last 4 years on the strategy and planning for the purpose. A special task force was set up within RSS under the complete direction of Mohan-Bhagwat- “Sarsangh Chalak” of the RSS. It was first planned to project him leader of the BJP. He (NaMo) orchestered the RSS to declare him the undisputed leader of the BJP. The PM Candidate. Finally NAMO was declared the PM candidate of the BJP, on 13 Sep 2013 this was against the wishes of the top leadership of the BJP Lal Krishna Adwani/Murli Manohar Joshi/Sushma Swaraj. They all stand dwarfed and eliminated against the great HINDU Nationalist Bhai Narendra Das Modi.

Master minding the election process

 RSS galvanized 42000 shakha ¼”kk[kk½ all over India. More than 6,50,000 volunteers ¼Loa;lsod½ kept working for about last 4 years which saw the biggest polarization of Hindu votes. The political parties like BSP, SP and even the congress stand decimated in the largest state UP (with 80 parliamentary seats). For the first time, not a single muslim is represented in UP in the “16^th Loksabha”.

RSS has turned a Nationalist Hindu MODI to a Hindu/Nationalist. People like Giriraj Singh of Bihar/Araidyanath and Vinay Katiyar from UP/Uma Bharti of MP (though now elected MP from UP) would remain unleashed. Only time would say how and where we are headed.

Wish NaMo and his team well

Sabka Vikas/Sabka Sath

Lkcdk fodkl] lcds lkFk\

Will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all the pursue religion as they wish?

Will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all the pursue religion as they wish?

India is not Gujarat. We are not talking about size of scale alone; it’s the sheet diversity of the nation that makes leading India such a challenging task. Even though in victory he rode the crest of a wave that seems to have washed over so many differences of caste, creed, language and ethnicity, across the country, he would do well to remember that over time waves recede leaving behind the sands of reality.

India is not China, Be in pressed by China’s growth and modernization by all means but any attempt to manage India in an authoritarian manner with in a structure of centralized power will run a risk of explosion. The constitution upon which Modi will place his hand to swear allegiance contains a couple of contentious words in its preamble. One is ‘socialist’ the other is ‘secular’. They were not in the original document; they were inserted later. But the national adventure began with the spirit of those words inspiring the idea of India.

It’ s  Modi’s apparent lack of conviction in secularism  that could be a problem. The Sangh Parivar Portrays  Indians who adhere to secularism as ‘pseudo secular’. By which they mock those who say they are secular but pander politically to religious minorities. But will the BJP’s new leader practice true instead of pseudo-secularism by keeping politics and religion strictly apart while ensuring the freedom of all to pursue religion as they wish and as guaranteed under Article 25 of the Constitution?

Mohandas Gandhi arrived to merge the streams into a mass movement for liberation by using aspects of Hindu doctrine, for instance by making the Bhagwad Gita a central text of belief or by singing ‘Raghu Pati Raghav Raja Ram’, while stipulating uncompromised tolerance and respect for all religions and faiths.

Along came the RSS to keep alive Hindutva. MS golwalkar, called Guru by the Sangh, wrote that “foreign races in Hindustan” should adopt Hindu culture and language, must entertain no ideas but those glorifying the “Hindu race” and should be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights”

The framers of the Constitution eventually opted for the secular stream. When naming the new territory, they chose “India, that is Bharat” and not Hindustan which would have made India a mirror image of Pakistan.

Extract of an article by Gautam Adhikari, TOI 19 May 2014