As I Saw it The Black Sunday- 08 Dec 2013

As I Saw it  The Black Sunday- 08 Dec 2013

Indian team was being thrashed by South Africa in their second ODI. The top team in ICC ranking. Some of the Indian batsman rated as the best were crumpling down as they were novice to this game of cricket.

Back home the four states (MP/Rajasthan/Chattisgarh/Delhi) were bringing in the most humiliating out come. The 125 years grand old party congress was thrashed and beaten down to most tragic low. The hallmark was corruption ¼Hkz’Vkpkj½ inflation eagxkbZ and women’s safety.

How and why?

·         The trend started with 2010 “Common Wealth Games” when number of small and big corruption cases were brought up. Top officials of IOA and GOC were put behind bars

·         This was followed by CAG report on 2G and coal mine allocation. Whether right or wrong the complete blame was attributed to the existing Govt (UPA-II)

·         Mishandling of Ramdev’s agitation at Ramlila Maidan and followed by Anna’s Lokpal bill agitation when he was arrested added fuel to the fire.

·         Gangrape of Damini in Delhi on 16 Dec 2012 and neglect and poor presence of top leadership of the congress did not associate with agitating young generation at India Gate and around. While Delhi remained paralyzed for nearly two weeks no central Govt or political leader “Connected” with the young agitating crowed in and around India Gate. 

·         Rising prices, devolution of Re further aggravated the situation.

·         Janta is angry and anguished with the ruling party (UPA-II)

Other reasons

• Loose and controversial utterances should be avoided by senior leaders.
• Lack of strong leadership at the state levels. People at the late stage being projected, Jyotirmay Scindia is an example in MP.
• We must appoint state presidents strong committed with orational skills who are good communicators.
• Such appointment should for full five years who are accepted by all class understand state politically well.
• They should build cadres have full authority to appoint district, block, and Gram Panchayat Level organizational structure.
•  It has to be a continuous process. Some bold decisions are required.
• Non political forces to be encouraged. One such example is that of Ex serviceman. They project an honest and committed force and well respected by the people.

Next General Elections are 5-6 months away. Still time for the “Congress Party” to build up and come back as a “formidable Force.”

Our depleting and degrading politics and political environment

Our depleting and degrading politics and political environment

Party time in India: 140 new ones up in 60 days                                                

2014 RUSH EC insiders fear many floated launder money; pleas for more powers to check wrongdoing fall on deaf ears.

In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, it’s party time in India. No less than 140 new political parties have been registered with the Election Commission in the last two months. From 1,392 parties in August-September, the number swelled to 1,534 by mid-November.Godmen, builders, property dealers and retired bureaucrats are among those who have floated the parties, ostensibly to have a say in the world’s largest democracy. Election Commission insiders, however, fear it may not be all politics, but actually business-even of the shady kind-driving this rush into a field where the entry is all too easy. An unrecognized political party needs just 11 members to gt registered for all times. In the last Lok Sabha elections, 1,150 of the 1,250 registered parties accounted for only about 1% of the total votes polled. If these parties are not interested in political activity, then why are they floated?

Political/Electoral Reforms-

Mushrooming of political parties has degenerated the basic foundation of a strong democracy.

What we need to do.

- To start if recognized party is to get registered should have at least eleven hundred (1100) members and as of now.

- The membership no should increase to 11000 in 1 year and more than 1 lakh in 3 years.

-Any party who garners less than 10%  of votes be disbanded

The views of Veteran Politician-Som Nath Chatterjee

‘POLITICS LOOKS LIKE FREESTYLE BOXING’

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, is known for his frank views. The 84-years-old leader, who was elected to Lok Sabha 10 times, feels he is lucky to be out of active politics since he would not have been able to survive in the current atmosphere.

Politics appears to have become a freestyle boxing match, a shoddy game and the kind of language being used in public meetings and TV debates, one gets a feeling that some leaders are trying to win a competition in abusive politics. In my view, media is giving too much prominence to the abusive language being spoken by some leaders.

My point is that with the polls barely five months away, serious issues affecting the people of the country are missing from the public discourse and the role of media could have played in farcing the political parties to spell out their stands on price rise, unemployment, communal harmony and other related issues is not being done. Have the large sections of media not anointed a particular gentle man as the PM even before elections? Why is the media nowdays hesitant to discuss his past, particularly the role in communal riots, so let us be fair.

First of all, parties will have to decide whether they are ready to put an end to the politics of competitive abusiveness. Next, they have to ponder over the fact that why the youth of the country shun politics and look for other alternative avenues to express their views. In the last days of my life I will be happy if politics is not looked down upon with disdain. 

China on the Run-History in the making China unveils boldest reforms in 3 decades

China on the Run-History in the  making    China unveils boldest reforms in 3 decades

China unwrapped its boldest set of economic and social reforms in nearly three decades on Friday, relaxing its one-child policy and further freeing up markets in order to put the world’s second-largest economy on a more stable footing.

The sweeping changes helped dispel doubts about the leadership’s zest for the reforms needed to give the economy fresh momentum as three decades of breakneck expansion shows signs of faltering. Pricing of fuels, electricity and other key resources now a source of major distortions-would be mainly decided by markets, while Beijing also pledged to speed up the opening up of its capital account and further financial liberalization.

“The reforms are unprecedented.” Said Xu Hongcai, senior economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a well-connected Beijing think tank. “Reforms in 1990s were limited to some areas, now reforms are all-round.” President Xijinping and Premier Li Kequang, appointed in March, announced breakthroughs in social policy, pledging to unify rural and urban social security systems and to abolish controversial labour camps, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing the document. The plans, more comprehensive and specific than initially thought, also dispelled concerns that Xi would need more time to take full charge of China’s vast party and government bureaucracy.

If Mr. Xi is able to manoeuvre his country on a new growth trajectory, even a sustained 8-9% growth rate, he would ensure China would become the world’s wealthiest “NATION” into decades. This would be both a challenge and an opportunity for India. China’s economy is now a major pillar of the world economy. If Beijing stumbles, New Delhi will suffer as well. Yet there is also no reason to believe a powerful China will be hostile to India. The worst case scenario is most likely if India remains in its present economic doldrums.

China is on a path of progress. Economic performance or activity is a dynamic process. This requires a change every 20-30 years, looking for more aggressive & progressive policies. China is a unitary functioning of the Govt, though a collective leadership guides the desting of the Nation (China). We have world class economist (Manmohan/Chidambram/Montek Ahluwalia (Dy Chairman of Planning Commission) Raghuraj Raman (Gov RBI). But our polity has nosedived to a new low. Politics has become disruptive, destructive and divisive day by day. The objective is just to garner votes and seek power. Nobody talks about changing India for better. Only slogan mongering.

Wake up India

Fact File-Point to Ponder -The fact’s in the fire

                                                                                                                                02 November 2013

Our netas seem to display a lack of knowledge of our own history. It is time they did their homework diligently

If some of our political leaders were to be contestants on a history segment of a Kaun Banega Crorepati-type quiz, chances are they would go home empty-handed. Politicians are known to subtely twist historical facts to suit themselves. But, in today’s world, with its easy access to information, such sins of omission or commission are all too easily caught out. And with 24 hour television, the common refrain of being misquoted is also one of diminishing returns. While some of these gaffes are controversial and insensitive, like Congress leader Beni Prasad Verma saying that “I am happy with this inflation’, many are comical and some are just plain fudget facts. Comments that twist historical facts expose the poor grasp our leaders have over our own past.

On Tuesday, at the inauguration of the renovated Sardar Vallabhbhai patel memorial Museum in Ahmedabad, Gujarat chief minister and prime ministerial aspirant narendra Modi reportedly said that Jawaharlal Nehru did not attend Patel’s funeral. Which is not the case. Other instances where Modi has got his facts wrong are in saying that Chandragupta Maurya belonged to the Gupta dynasty, that Chine spends 20% of its GDP on education (Beijing devotes hardly 4%) and that Gujarat empowered women (the sex ratio has fallen in the past decade). Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi also seemingly got it wrong when he referred to the ‘large 70-foot ashes with dead bodies’ in Uttar Pradesh in the heat of the state election campaign earlier. It is not just our netas who are prone to gaffes.   Topping the global list would be former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s remark that ‘You can see Russia from land here in Alaska’. Former US president George W Bush’s ‘Bushisms’ like “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully” have found a lasting place in public memory.

It is an affront to the intelligence of our people that leaders don’t bother to do their homework. They need to be careful about their words, and most certainly about their facts. Those who don’t know our history, can hardly be trusted to chart out our future. Perhaps, all parties need to conduct crash courses in historical information so that when our worthies get up and speak in public, they are on firm ground. 

The lies of Modi

It ‘s not shining for everyone                                                               01 Oct 2013

What India needs in 2014 is not a choice between alternative leaders but alternative policies that can create a better country

The rising pitch of the NaMo RaGa cacophony is further disrupting our fragile social harmony perilously ignoring today’s ground realities. Six years ago, India was promised surplus electricity following the Indo-US nuclear deal. By bulldozing this deal, UPA I jettisoned the outside support of the Left parties, thus liberating UPA 2 to generate the ‘spoils of office’ and not generate a single additional unit of nuclear power. This set in motion a nuclear chain reaction of corruption that is accelerating towards ‘escape velocity’.

The BJP, equally unconcerned about ground realities is euphorically marketing its prime ministerial candidate. In addition to the Rs. 80 crore public relations budget of its candidate, the BJP will reportedly add Rs. 150 crore and Rs. 20 crore on digital media to his personal campaign. KPMG-the global consultancy working on the Vibrant Gujarat project-reportedly declined to share their audit results but the merchandising industry (estimated Rs. 500 crore) around the PM aspirant is growing a la Obama 2008 campaign that fetched around $38 million from the sale of merchandise. Where is all this money coming from? Given such a huge expenditure, the PM aspirant’s call for confiscating illegal foreign bank accounts of Indians sounds hollow.

Reality check the 2011-13 Global Hunger Index Report released last week’s shows that a quarter of world’s hungry (210 million out of 842 million) are in India alone; 43.5% of the world’s underweight children (under-5years) are Indians.

The NaMo raga campaigns, thus, appear surreal to the ‘real’India. May be out of despair, sections of India Inc are cheering the BJP aspirant as one who will carry forward the agenda of neo-liberal economic reforms aggressively thus permitting profit maximization. Recollect that it was the BJP-led NDA government under AB Vajpayee that heralded the illusion of ‘Shining India’ and the ‘feel good factor’. Thus, they consolidated the creation of two Indias with a growing histus between them.

The first: a global wealth and investment report showed India recorded the second highest increase of high net worth individuals (HNI)-with investable assets of over $1 million-in the world. The HNI population grew by 22.2% in 2012 while their wealth grew by 23.4%.These 1,53,000 HNIs together hold assets worth $589 billion-0.001275% of our population holding assets between a third- and -a –half of our GDP.

The second: the All Rural Development Report shows that the proportion of self-employed people in agriculture, ie cultivators, is shrinking even as large numbers shift to non-farm jobs on insecure terms. In the last decade, public investment in agriculture has remained stagnant and the consequent crisis is reflected in growing farmer suicides.

Rural India’s health fared badly with over 28% not accessing treatment as they could not afford to. This proportion goes up to 37% for SCs and 32% for STs.

Despite high rural enrolment, the proportion of students in the age group attending school fell from 78% at the primary level to just 29% at the higher secondary level in 2009-10. Learning levels were also poor with less than half the students in Class 5 being able to read books of Class 1 and 2. Less than half the students in Class 8 could recognize numbers and do addition and subtraction.

This is the reality of the two Indians. It is this trajectory of enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor that India Inc wants to carry forward aggressively and is hoping that their ‘messiah’ would deliver.

What India needs in 2014, thus, is not the choice between alternative leaders but what it needs is alternative policies that can marshal our resources for creating a better India.

Neta nahin, neeti chahiye.  

HT 22 Oct 2013

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^vkt dk vkuUn* Maharashtra dated 25 Oct 2013

Modi’s lies and politicization of Sardar Patel

Can anybody decry or deny the facts that Sardar Patel was

·         A great Nationalist and secular leader.

·         He was a staunch and dedicated congressman.

·         He was a great admirer loyalist and committed to Mahatma Gandhi’s theories & thinking.

·         Nehru & Sardar Patel were complimentary to each other in every facet of life. Democratic Institutions and secularism.

·         However Mahatma Gandhi preferred Nehru to lead and show the way. Sardar Patel gave his full to Nehru and the Nation in his short lived 3 years after Independence.

·         Sardar Patel was a strong, no nonsense leader when it came tolerance & patience specially so related to hard core Hinduttva.

·         If Sardar Patel had become PM then the fate of organizations like JanSangh/Hindu Mahasabha/VHP/RSS etc would have vanished from the Indian scene.

·         Why has NaMo suddenly woken up to hail the greatness of Sardar Patel. To project a national image for himself.

·         Raise a bogey of Nehru V/s Patel thus trying to bring a disrepute to the era of great leaders Nehru/ Indira/Rajiv and now RaGa.

·         Why other front leaders of BJP & related organization are not coming in open support of “Great Liar NaMo

Cut the apron strings

Cut the apron strings                                                    17 October 2013

The BJP cannot play its role in the political arena if it has to function according to the dictates of the RSS

It is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable combination, the RSS and the BJP. And the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statements justifying the RSS getting involved in political maters can only make things worse. Mr. Bhagwat has now said that letting foreign companies into retail is akin to unleashing armed forces on unarmed people. Mr Bhagwat, perhaps in his zeal to put the RSS firmly onto the political centrestage, seems to have forgotten that long ago and far way, his predecessors have Sardar Patel an undertaking that they would stay out of politics in return for the leader lifting a ban on the organization. During the Vajpayee years, the RSS did not even raise a squeak when he went to Pakistan. Contrast that with its later fury against LK Advani when he made his Jinnah remarks. Narendra Modi’s challenge will be not just to beat back the Congress but the RSS as well. With India’s youthful demographic, he cannot be seen to endorse the antediluvian views emanating from Nagpur. The RSS, to its discredit has not evolved its ideology; it still believes that issues like the mandir and keeping out foreign investment excite people. But the more worrying thing is that the RSS is demonstrating that it is in the driver’s seat.

Indian democracy has certainly evolved to a stage where people would be chary of electing a person who is controlled by an extra-constitutional force and that too a regressive one. In recent times, the RSS has not shied away from intervening forcefully in the BJP’s affairs. It minced no words when Mr Advani went into a sulk over the choice of Mr Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.

Ultimately, the BJP has to cut loose from the RSS’ apron strings. It cannot play its role as a party of governance or opposition as the case may be if it has to function according to the dictates of people who have neither been elected not have any idea about the aspirations of a new India.

Editorial HT dated 16 Oct 2013

Comments:

Do you want to be ruled by RSS? Responsible for assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on 30 Jan 1948. We are to move towards an inclusive growth taking everybody along.

JAI HO

A Crisis of confidence

A Crisis of confidence                                                                            25 Sep 2013

Can India’s backward polity ever provide a pro-growth economic environment?

Less than a decade ago, enthusiastic investment bankers and financial research analysts were tom-toming the India growth story. India, they said, has so much potential, it could be one of the world’s biggest economies in the next couple of decades. For this, they used spreadsheet models, in which they plugged in a growth rate of 8-10% and projected it for the next 30 years. They learnt this in MBA school.

Of course, anything growing at a compound annual rate of 10% will become pretty massive in 30 years (17.4 times, to be precise). Hence, the sharp minds made an earth-shattering prediction: that anything growing very fast will become very big over time. Clients of financial institutions, seduced with such a rosy picture about the land of miracles, bought into the idea.

Boring economies of Europe, growing at 1-2%, just didn’t carry the spiciness of India.

In all this, a few uncomfortable questions were never asked. For instance, is the government committed to providing a pro-business, pro-growth economic environment? Is the Indian polity ready to accept this new capitalist system? Are we socialist or are we market driven? Can we actually grow so fast every year, considering each power plant or new road or mining approval takes years?

Are we efficient manufacturers for the world? Are our taxation and regulations in line with fast growth requirements? Do we have an educated or skilled workforce to grow average incomes 17 times in the next 30 years? Is our infrastructure in place?

We are, whether the government like to say it or not, in the middle of an economic crisis. In the next two years, we will see many companies go bust, large layoffs, massive inflation and high unemployment. There is no getting away from it. The government could take some steps to soothe the situation, but instead it is interested in tokenism-closing petrol pumps, immaterial austerity drives and controls on consumption.

Forget growing 17 times in 30 years, we will find it difficult to sustain even modest growth.

Extract of an article TOI 7 Sept 2013 Chetan Bhagat

Comments:

Undoubtedly we are in the middle of economic crisis; in the next two year we will see many companies go burst, large layoffs, massive inflation and high unemployment. Though some “Macro Economic” policies and directions could be contributory factors. The main cause is “Exploding population” not being addressed correctly. A large no. of youth who are short of quality education, enhanced lack of opportunities, gives rise to increasing indiscipline, are all causes of anxiety. A chaotic unsocial and indisciplined environment exists, where do we get investments and development.

HELP INDIA!