Criminal Waste !

Bihar will go to elections again.This election will cost the government exchequer somewhere around 1,546 crore.And after the elections are declared "like minded" parties will come together to form a"secular" government.

Does this sound like a deja vu? If your answer is yes, you are not to be blamed.
One great legacy of Congress-oriented rule is criminal waste of public money.Whether it was license-permit-quota-rajor, giving sweeping powers to government babus or going for elections on flimsy grounds, Congress somehow has mastered the art of sinful wastage of money.
Recently the (alleged) P.M of India announced a bounty of 1,74,000 crores towards what he calls "social sector"spending.

Social sector.Socialism.It seems to be a guaranteed mantra for electoral votes.But just how much harm it can do to a nation's economy? Poor feel great that the PM of the nation has allocated money for them.Whether that money is used effectively or not, no one's bothered.Whether that money actually reached the target audience,who cares?

Common sense & experience tells us that just allocating money does not serve any purpose except for those whose pockets are warmed.If removing poverty was as simple as throwing notes from helicopters to the poor people India would not have been in this state.
Removing poverty is a process.Its an evolution. You need investments. Proper circulation & distribution of wealth.

Just to take a simple example. The former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government conceived the Golden Quadrangle project.The project that would connect the four metros of the nation via expressways.What this would have done was, give employment to the people of the region from where the roads would have passed.At the same time the region's economy would have grown with faster transportation & easy access.

This is just a simple example of how investments would have benefited the lives of poor. May be we would have seen some corruption (which we see anyways) in allocating of projects to private contractors. May be they would have become rich overnight. But that's a very small price to pay for overall benefit to the society. Corruption you cannot eradicate anyways.Even a country as progressed as USA has corruption in-built in the system.

Point being, poverty needs to be eliminated. But not by slogans & paper policies. But by actual action & investments.

Sadly the current establishment led by a weak PM under the nagging pressure of the communists is hell bent on taking India on the same ill-fated road we travelled for so many years during the Gandhi-Nehru family rule.
I guess in some ways, common Indians are to be blamed for this. Indians who voted out the previous government.One can understand the illiterates getting swayed by the white-skinned italian. But i have seen & known educated people come out in support of the Gandhi dynasty & blaming BJP/NDA for every ills.

People fail to realise that before BJP came to power we were in a mess. We had 3 elections in as many years.The social condition was unstable.Terrorism was at its peak (Bombay Blast,Kashmir,North-East). Political condition was unstable. There was no direction to nations economic policies as no one was sure how long the incumbent PM will last.No one knew when Deve Gowda will fall asleep or when Jyoti Basu will try & become PM to compensate for his "historic blunder".

In short there was chaos all round. BJP/NDA brought some sanity. Some continuity.Gave some direction.This resulted in consistently high GDP growth as investors confidence increased.Something we had not seen even after reforms.

Stable government is one of the key factors to investors confidence in the country. BJP & Atalji gave us exactly that.Inspite of pressures from the media they continued to perform well.
Today the media is solidly behind Manmohan Singh's government. But during Vajpayee's rule media was like a black-hawk constantly attacking the PM.Still BJP/NDA continued to bring the house in order under extremely trying conditions.

Its nobody's case that NDA did not commit mistakes. But it was sincere. It was honest. It was thoroughly nationalist.Sadly, this cannot be said about the current team.

With thugs & criminals as Cabinate rank Ministers, with people like Mani Shankar Iyer who are more interested in Iran & Pakistan's economy building than ours, with the leftists who think sucking up to China should be India's ultimate aim, we are in some sense taking a step or two back.

Alas (!), the "aam admi" who voted this government to power is sadly out of synch with reality.

Liverpool Wins !!

One of the downsides of being in USA is that you are not sufficiently exposed to the outside world.Americans are a world onto themselves. They don't care of whats happening around. Rather they don't need to care.Hence a simple football (american) match between two domestic teams becomes a "Super Bowl". A baseball match between Red Sox & Yankees is nothing short of a "world" series match.
I am not a very big soccer fan.I can atmost be termed a casual follower. But when in India i did follow some importanttournaments such as European Cup,World Cup & Champions League.Specially the play-offs.
This year Liverpool won the Champions League, beating Milan on penalty-shoot outs. This match stands out amongst the greatestfinals ever played. Liverpool were trailing 3-0 at half time & came back with bang; banging 3 goals in span of 6 minutesin half-II.
What must have gone through the minds of Milan supporters, god knows. But having heard of English Fans, one can imagine(and yea only imagine, since i missed that match) how they might have celebrated this sweet victory.
Over the years some of the great matches have stuck with me.
For instance in my school days i watched the quarters between Brazil-France (1986 WC) & maaaan.. what a match that was.Zicco, the brazilian star, at that time missed twice on penalaties. And France went on to win that match. Reports later said atleast5 people committed suicide that day.
One more match that i can never forget is the Becker-Curren's match.Becker went on to win his first Wimbledon titleThe young german caught my imagination the day i saw him fall all over the court. What a match that was !
Another match that is difficult to shred off from my brain is the Indo-Pak cricket match in B'lore - 1996 world cup.Unbelievable tension. Unprecedented crowd. All was too much to take. Ajay Jadeja for me was the man of the day.That match can still bring jitters in my abs.
Some of great matches that won't be forgotten easily by me:
1. Argentina-Germany 1986 World Cup Finals (Maradona was unstoppable)
2. England-Argentina 2002 World CUp (Beckham's penalty)
3. England-S.Africa 1992 - Cricket WC (Duckworth-Lewis)
4. India-Australia - 1997 Sharjah (Tendulkar,Tendulkar,Tendulkar)
5. India-Pak 2003 Cric World Cup (Tendulkar vs Rawalpindi Exp)
6. India-England 1983 Lords - Semis WC (Sandeep Patil)
7. Evander Holyfield - Mike Tyson -not sure which (y)ear
8. India-Pak 1985 Sharjah (Javed Miandad)
9. Ben Johnson - Carl Lewis 1988 Olympics (Steriods)

Yesterday Liverpool Beat AC Milan in Champion's League.

This is the news report from BBC.

Liverpool win 3-2 on penalties AC Milan 3-3 Liverpool (aet) Champions League final
Liverpool beat AC Milan 3-2 in a penalty shoot-out to win the Champions League after sensationally coming from three goals down at half-time.
Paolo Maldini gave Milan a first-minute lead and Hernan Crespo's double gave Milan a seemingly unassailable lead.
Steven Gerrard gave Liverpool hope and Vladimir Smicer and Xabi Alonso levelled in a seven-minute spell.
Jerzy Dudek then saved from Andrea Pirlo and Andriy Shevchenko in the shoot-out to clinch a stunning victory.
It capped an amazing turnaround, with Liverpool looking out of contention after they were completely outclassed in the first-half.
Liverpool's advance to the final was a major shock as they invaded the established order of Europe's footballing elite - over-turning the odds against Juventus and Chelsea to reach Istanbul.
And in a show of character that broke Italian hearts they claimed the trophy for the fifth time - a feat that ensures the trophy will now stay at Anfield permanently.
Milan captain Paolo Maldini tears off his losers' medal Liverpool's fans were determined to savour the occasion, with well in excess of their official 20,000 ticket allocation inside the Ataturk Stadium at kick-off.
Manager Rafael Benitez made a bold team selection when he excluded Dietmar Hamann and Igor Biscan - so successful in the European campaign - on the sidelines in favour of Harry Kewell.
It was a decision that back-fired in the worst possible fashion in a catastrophic first 45 minutes for Liverpool.
I'm still in shock - I can't believe what happened!
From BobHave your say on 606
Milan were ahead inside the first minute, when Pirlo's free-kick was met by the unmarked Maldini, who swept a finish high past Dudek.
Liverpool's lack of a holding midfield player allowed Milan to cut a swathe past Gerrard and Alonso.
And Kewell's ill-fated selection looked even more of a failed gamble when he limped off with a groin injury after only 22 minutes, to be replaced by Smicer.
Milan ended the first half exerting almost embarrassing domination, with two strikes in the last six minutes of the opening period.
Shevchenko broke away down the right flank in a sweeping attack, and crossed for Crespo to turn home from close range.
Lifting the trophy has to be the best feeling ever
Steven GerrardMore Liverpool reaction
And four minutes later, Milan added a third when Brazilian Kaka, the most influential player in the first 45 minutes, unlocked Liverpool's defence with a brilliant pass that released Crespo for a clever chip over the onrushing Dudek.
Benitez made a change at half-time - introducing Hamman for Steve Finnan, who had a thigh injury.
Dudek produced a fine diving save from Shevchenko's free-kick to stop Liverpool going four down before Benitez's side launched an astonishing comeback.
Gerrard threw Liverpool a lifeline with a header from John Arne Riise's cross after 53 minutes, and when Dida fumbled in Smicer's tame 25-yard shot a minute later, they were alive again.
And Liverpool's recovery was complete on the hour when Gennaro Gattuso pulled down Gerrard in the area as he was poised to equalise.
Dida saved Alonso's spot-kick, but the Spanish midfield man followed up to score the rebound with Milan's defenders looking on in stunned disbelief.
The massed ranks of Liverpool supporters, who sat in desolation during the interval, were now in ecstasy and contemplating a victory that seemed impossible just 15 minutes earlier.
Dudek saves Shevchenko's penalty to clinch the cup for Liverpool The final then reverted to a cat-and-mouse affair, but Djimi Traore rescued a poor personal display when he cleared off the line from Shevchenko after Dudek fumbled Crespo's cross.
Milan dominated possession in extra-time, and they were denied by a miracle double save by Dudek from Shevchenko with three minutes remaining.
He blocked Shevchenko's header then somehow diverted his shot over the top from only a yard out.
Serginho and Pirlo missed Milan's first two penalties, while Hamann and Djibril Cisse were on target for Liverpool.
Substitute Jon Dahl Tomasson put Milan in contention before Riise missed for Liverpool.
Kaka scored for Milan, and after Smicer scored for Liverpool, Shevchenko's kick was saved by Dudek to spark wild scenes of celebration.

BeanShell Scripting Language

I was greatly impressed by the BeanShell Scripting Language I used for the first time in one of my projects 2 years ago.It was also the only time i used it. I found it quite fascinating that you can write a small mini program in more or less Java like syntax & not bother of compiling & running it in the IDE or on your local JVM. What the BeanShell script did was to give the application an option to run the particular chunk of code at run time on users machine. More or less like JavaScript accept that the BeanShell was actually executed on the application server's JVM. (JavaScript is totally Browser & client machine dependent & is not as powerful as BeanShell)
In our project which was workflow based application we embedded the BeanShell script within a XML tag which was a part of the Workflow XML. Once the server side program parsed the XML & came across the particular BeanShell code, it executed that code like any other normal Java method or class.
Its nice to know that a group of Java enthusiasts have now given the BeanShell the official stamp it deserved.It has been there for some time waiting to be noticed.

BeanShell: The 3rd Official Language of the Java Platform?
Today Patrick Niemeyer with the support of Doug Lea, Apache and Google submitted JSR-274: The BeanShell Scripting Language. In my opinion, this is good news for the Java community.
There are many languages that have been designed to run on the Java virtual machine, most of which you probably have never heard of. Up until a year ago, the Java industry as a whole had a rather myopic view of its platform. The Java Platform had one official language, the Java Programming Language. But in 2004 that changed forever.
In March of 2004 (only 14 months ago), a proposal for an additional official language for the Java Platform, JSR-241: The Groovy Programming Language, was submitted and approved as a JSR ( I blogged about Groovy then and more recently when I recounted some of Groovy’s history).
The approval of Groovy as a JSR marked a rather significant shift in how the industry views the Java Platform. The Java Platform is no longer synomonus with the Java Programming language. This is a concept that I wrote about on the This Is Java blog. The programming language used with Java is the most interchangeable aspect of the platform. You need the JVM and the standard packages in order to create a common platform for development, but the language should be able to change according to the needs and preferences of developers.
The proposal to make BeanShell another official language of the Java Platform is, in my opinion, a great sign that Groovy succeeded in changing the mainstream view of Java from that of a language to a development platform. Just as Microsoft .NET supports multiple languages (i.e. C#, Visual Basic .NET, C++ .NET, IronPython ) so too should the Java Platform.
What is really interesting about this announcement is that BeanShell has been around for a while, so they are starting with a fairly stable code base. In addition, BeanShell is really small so that it can be included in future versions of the J2SE. That’s right, in the future when you download J2SE 6.0 (or whatever) it may come with support for both the Java Programming Language and the BeanShell Scripting Language.
So, what about Groovy? Groovy is on track to become an official language of the Java Platform in its own right. Without the benefit of a deep analysis of BeanShell, I suspect that Groovy is somewhat more sophisticated as a language. But Groovy is also more complex and is certainly larger. I expect that developers will learn BeanShell more easily than Groovy, but that Groovy will be chosen for larger more sophisticated development efforts than BeanShell.
That said, its very possible that BeanShell will grow into a complete dynamic language on par with the ambitions of Groovy and the qualities of Python and Ruby. In either case, it’s really a win-win situation for the Java community. With three languages to choose from, all of which will generate code that runs on the same JVM and can interact with classes written in the other languages, Java developers will have a truly versatile platform.
Microsoft has always seen the advantages of supporting multiple languages and have found that it actually attracts a larger audience to their platform. I believe the same is true for the Java platform. Having multiple officially sanctioned languages ensures that the Java Platform as a whole attracts a larger audience. At one time Sun said that it wanted to grow the Java community from its current 3 million developers to 10 million. This is exactly the strategy needed to help accomplish that.

Just what history is taught to us

According to me one of the most damning repurcussions of Nehru's legacy has been the (mis) representation of Indian History.
The current HR minister Arjun Singh continues to intoxicate our students with tons & tons of lies bundled in the (NCERT) history books. These students grow up to believe what was taught in foundation years of education & continue to blend with the conventional (official) wisdom.
I won't be surprised if current generation considers Joseph Stalin & Mao as their heroes & disregard Shivaji Maharaj & Rana Pratap as mere pushovers.
Every country's government tries to inculcate strong nationalism & pride in the country's culture & heritage via history books. It is a very strong medium through which the countries future can be secured via students. Unfortunately the current government as its predecessors in past knows only to debunk Indian Nationalism & promote Leftist fiction as history.


So what, this is secular history
Udayan Namboodiri
Pioneer, May 25, 2005


NCERT's "secular" history text for Class VII students is called Modern India. It has dozens of photographs spread over its 273 pages. But there is only one famous personality who has deserved a full- page display. You may be entitled to think that only Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, or Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of modern India, or Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, modern India's greatest hero, deserves this respect.
Surprise, surprise, it is none of the three. A giant picture of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin frowns tyrannically at the 14 year-old beholder while Russians in greatcoats are shown running towards the (partially obscured by Lenin's head) "Winter Palace". As if this was not enough, the text for Class IX students has devoted 11 pages to glorifying the so-called "Russian Revolution". Here too, one finds a full-page photograph of the Tsar's palace burning, another of a room with chairs overturned, followed by reproductions of "revolutionary" posters, then people reading the same posters, a big map of the USSR, a scene from the film Battleship Potemkin and, of course, good old Lenin (this time more benign faced) saluting.
Now, what is NCERT up to? What is the relevance of Lenin in a book for Indian children, and that too, in a book on "modern Indian history"? Of course, the authors, Indira and Arjun Dev, have strategically placed a discussion on "India and the modern world" in the opening chapter, ostensibly to give a global context and the larger backdrop shaping developments in India. But, what profound pedagogy justifies the inclusion of a character from Russian history, which the Russians themselves have discarded? If this "revolution" - actually the Russians of today call it just a coup - just had to be included, why the unifocal approach and complete shying away from the real personality of Lenin -which school kids in his own country are now learning about? To the "eminent" historians of India, the tribe was gifted a second innings in power in Indian history academia by HRD Minister Arjun Singh, this is the stuff of "scientific" history. And what is that? Romila Thapar, the most famous face of Marxist historiography, was reported by the CPI(M)'s mouthpiece, People's Democracy, in its December 9, 2001 issue as saying: "History has become a precise and analytical discipline and cannot be reduced to anybody's opinion".
Now, that is something to turn EH Carr, the tallest of the Leftist school, in his grave. In his seminal work, What is History, Carr had (perhaps unwittingly) described what best describes the Thapar genre: "History is a subject that cannot be considered as a foolproof discipline because the writing of History is affected by the ideology and the political background (of the historian) as well as the purpose he is working for". After making distortion and falsification a fine art, pinko history is set to enter the realm of "science" thanks to NCERT. To give their disingenuous strategy of turning schoolgoers into little commies, "secularism" has come in handy. The next step in this plan seems to be overhauling the curriculum altogether and introducing newer and newer windows of attack on aspects of India's heritage which, in the convoluted wisdom of Singh's communist backers, constitutes "Hindutva". According to the new National Curriculum Framework for School Education which will most certainly be passed by the Central Advisory Board on Education (The Pioneer) has accessed a copy ) at its forthcoming June 7 meeting, the main focus of study of Indian history in the secondary stage will be "contemporary India".
Says the document: "Contemporary India should be discussed from the perspectives of the adivasi, dalit and other marginalised populations." In keeping with this new line of attack, NCERT has already roped in "experts" from the discredited fields of historiography like subaltern study and the Ekalavya school - both of which specialise in nothing other than Hindu baiting.
Contrast this with the Curriculum Framework developed in the NDA period. It placed a thrust on "helping learners understand and appreciate India's cultural heritage and learn about India's contribution to world civilisation" (page 66 of NCFSE-2000 document). Why this was considered "saffronisation" we will never know. But now, to ensure that a new generation of Indians come up with absolutely no idea about its heritage, NCERT is about to dumb down History altogether so that the sceptre of "saffronisation" never re-emerges.]

From New York Times

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN puts it very neatly. One tend's to agree with his analysis but cannot ignore his bush-bashing often concealed under the garb of objective journalism. But whoever said journalists are objective. Lot of the right wing conservatives in USA accuse NY Times of being left-leaning. As a third party i must confess i have found very little evidence of that; unless you call bush-bashing as left-wing journalism.NY times is as american as any. It means business & is completely at ease with capitalism.
And talking of capitalism, Friedman in this article makes a very interesting reference to a book called "Three Billion New Capitalists". And guess what who these 3 billion capitalists are ? You guessed it. Its, as Jairam Ramesh says, Chindia.
Friedman also routinely contributes in the Indian Express. Must confess; i haven't read many of those.

C.E.O.'s, M.I.A.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 25, 2005

From : NY Times.

After six weeks of being a foreign correspondent traveling around America, the biggest question I have come home with is not "What's the matter with Kansas?" but rather, "What's the matter with big business?"

America faces a huge set of challenges if it is going to retain its competitive edge. As a nation, we have a mounting education deficit, energy deficit, budget deficit, health care deficit and ambition deficit. The administration is in denial on this, and Congress is off on Mars. And yet, when I look around for the group that has both the power and interest in seeing America remain globally focused and competitive - America's business leaders - they seem to be missing in action. I am not worried about the rise of the cultural conservatives. I am worried about the disappearance of an internationalist, pro-American business elite.
Is there any company in America that should be more involved in lobbying for some form of national health coverage than General Motors, which is being strangled by its health care costs? Is there any group of companies that should have been picketing the White House more than our high-tech firms, after the Bush team cut the National Science Foundation budget by $100 million in 2005 and in 2006 has proposed shrinking the Department of Energy science programs and basic and applied research in the Department of Defense - key sources of innovation?
Is there any constituency that should be clamoring for a sane energy policy more than U.S. industry? Is there any group that should be mobilizing voters to lobby Congress to pass the Caribbean Free Trade Agreement and complete the Doha round more than U.S. multinationals? Should anyone be more concerned about the fiscally reckless deficits we are leaving our children than Wall Street?
Yet, with a few admirable exceptions, American business has not gotten out front on these issues. In part, this is because boardrooms tend to be culturally Republican - both uncomfortable and a little afraid to challenge this administration. In part, this is because of the post-Enron keep-your-head-down effect. And in part, this is because in today's flatter world, many key U.S. companies now make most of their profits abroad and can increasingly recruit the best talent in the world today without ever hiring another American.
So with business with its head in the clouds, labor with its head in the sand, the administration focused on terrorism and Congress catering to people who think "intelligent design" is something done by God and not by Intel, it's not surprising that "we don't have a strategy for making America competitive in the 21st century - a century of three billion new capitalists," as Clyde Prestowitz put it. He is the author of a smart new book about the rise of China and India, called, appropriately, "Three Billion New Capitalists."
If we don't get our act together, this will affect not just our economy, but also our power. America has just completed the most sweeping transformation of its national security establishment since 1947. "Unfortunately, the entire restructuring has been oriented toward combating one threat - terrorism," said David Rothkopf, a Carnegie Endowment scholar who has just published a timely and important new book, "Running the World," about the U.S. National Security Council.
"This is dramatically different from what was done in the wake of World War II, when, in addition to creating the N.S.C., Department of Defense, Air Force and C.I.A., we also created the U.N., I.M.F., World Bank, conducted the Marshall Plan, rebuilt Japan and recognized that domestic growth was the most important wellspring of our national security."
That domestic strength made us both feared and attractive. Remember: America won the cold war not just with containment, but, even more important, with attraction - attraction for the society we were building.
"Undercutting that attraction with fiscal irresponsibility, inattentiveness to the engines of competitiveness on which future jobs will depend, cavalier treatment of the values that make the American way of life more appealing, closing our borders to the world - and thus both losing our edge and our understanding of that world - or focusing exclusively on enemies or the failings of the international community," added Mr. Rothkopf, "is both self-defeating and runs counter to every lesson of how we won the cold war."
But who will tell the people? If not the situation room, it better be the boardroom - otherwise the costs to our country will exceed anything that can measured on a balance sheet.

Bull's Eye

Kanchan Gupta's analysis never misses the target.The title of the article on rediff.com says it all (an allusion to the classic Dr.Jekyll & Mr.Hyde).
In this article Kanchan tears down the actions of Dr.Singh's government with surgical precision.The so called architect of reforms, Dr. Singh (some funnily call him the alleged PM of India), has done lot of talking. But there's nothing to show on ground, apart from making thugs like Lalu & Taslimuddin ministers, witch-hunting previous govts., people (eg : Arun Shourie,George Fernandes), making noises on reforms & scuttling democratic norms (Jharkhand,Goa & now Bihar).

The (alleged) PM recently announced fund allocation to the tune of 1,74,000 crores towards social sector spending.Whatever that means. Knowing Indian bureacrats, i can safely assume that most of that money will go in the babus pockets & Congress workers for next elections. As one analyst said "it is Sonia's investment for next elections".

The 'Biharization' of India is a near possibility under the current establishment.

In this article Kanchan Gupta exposes the current government's moves & its real character.

Sadly the "aam admi" remains blissfully ignorant of this as the mainstream media of the country is hands in glove with the government.

Courtesy Rediff.com

Dr Singh and Mr Hyde
May 25, 2005

By Kanchan Gupta

It is truly amazing, this staggering decision of the United Progressive Alliance government to dissolve the Bihar assembly on the specious plea, to quote Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, of preventing 'horse-trading of the worst type.'
A pious pontificator who is meticulous in pointing out the sins of others while pretending he is the sole repository of rectitude in public life, Dr Singh has also informed the nation that it is 'the Constitutional duty of the government to see that such nefarious practices do not spoil the good name of the country.'
Dr Singh's fulsome concern for 'the good name of the country' will move only those who are either complicit partners in this latest assault by the UPA on democratic processes and constitutional practices or naïve about the ease with which the Congress can jettison all pretences of fair play the moment it discovers that it is not on the winning side.
If the prime minister had been genuinely concerned about 'nefarious practices' blotting the 'good name of the country,' then he would not be presiding over a government some of whose key ministers have earned for themselves the reputation of thugs and thieves. This is not about practising 'coalition dharma' and cohabiting with undesirable partners. It is about stoutly defending individuals who are a blot on India's image -- both at home and abroad.
Those who value honour and honesty above power and pelf stay away from tainted politicians like Lalu Prasad Yadav. Not so the prime minister -- he is perfectly comfortable with protecting, some would say mollycoddling -- the man who is singularly responsible for pushing Bihar into its present lalten era of poverty, violence and all-pervasive corruption. It is a national shame and a blotch on our collective conscience that Yadav, who has been charged under Section 420 of the IPC, shares the high table of governance with Dr Singh.
That is not all. The prime minister has acted on the basis of a report filed by the governor of Bihar, Buta Singh, who has spent the better part of his life paying obeisance to the Nehru-Gandhi household, a politician who excels in the art of 'horse-trading.' Public memory is notoriously short, but not short enough for people to forget that it was Buta Singh who was accused of bribing Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs to manufacture support for P V Narasimha Rao's Congress government.
Perhaps the prime minister would like to refresh his memory by recalling that the trial court had found Buta Singh guilty of the bribery charges levelled against him, that he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment, and, that he was fined Rs 2 lakh. The sentence was set aside on appeal, but that is another story whose details reflect the true state of our official crime busting and prosecuting agencies.
The outpouring of moral outrage that we are witnessing is, therefore, nothing more than cockamamie sentiments that have no place in the world of cynical politics whose best practitioners are leading lights of the Congress. The dissolution of the Bihar assembly had little to do with preserving values and protecting probity in public life. It was all about preventing the coming to power of a dispensation in which none of the allies of the Congress would have a share.
And more. Till such time Ram Vilas Paswan, who was hailed as the kingmaker after last February's Bihar assembly election resulted in a fractured verdict, but has ended up as the biggest loser, was successful in spiking all possible non-UPA political permutations and combinations that could have formed a government in Bihar, it suited the Congress and its favourite ally, Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, fine.
'I am still fighting:' Paswan
With the state assembly in suspended animation, and a pliant governor occupying the Raj Bhavan in Patna, Yadav was able to re-establish his control over Bihar. His wife Rabri Devi may have lost the chief minister's office, but that was at best a temporary setback. Within three months, Yadav was back in business, doing what he does best --working the system to his advantage.
The prime minister would perhaps like the nation to believe that it was to 'protect the good name of the country' that the governor was instructed to transfer two honest and upright officers who had stood up against lumpens on Yadav's payroll. The district magistrates of Siwan and Gopalganj had made it difficult for RJD goon squads to rig elections and run a parallel 'administration' based on extortion, kidnapping and murder. Both have been unceremoniously shunted out.
Those who preach probity to others obviously do not rate men of integrity very high. For them, officers who wear their loyalty to Yadav on their sleeve are the preferred choice to be appointed as advisers to the gvernor. So much for the prime minister's concern for 'the good name of the country.'
What if the cookie had crumbled the other way? Would the prime minister have acted with such alacrity to protect the 'good name of the country' if legislators elected on the symbol of Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party had switched their loyalty to Yadav? Or, would he have had his home minister instruct the governor to swear in Rabri Devi as chief minister? The answer is too obvious to merit elaboration.
Apologists who are given to arguing that more often than not the prime minister is pilloried unfairly because he has no other option but to yield to the pressure of allies are doing a great disservice to him as well as the "good name of the country."
It now transpires that the midnight Cabinet meeting that was ostensibly called to assess the security threat posed by explosions in two cinemas but was in reality an exercise in paving the path for dissolving the Bihar assembly was the result of intense pressure from Mr Yadav and his die hard champions in the CPI(M).
This is entirely possible. The CPI(M) is utterly unscrupulous when it comes to political morality. Nothing else explains why the Marxists should so wholeheartedly support a venal politician like Yadav who has been charged under all possible sections of the IPC that deal with cheating and pilfering public funds. The CPI(M) is capable of threatening to bring down the UPA Government unless the RJD strongman's turf is protected from intruders bent upon saving Bihar from marauders masquerading as messiahs of the downtrodden.
'We saved UPA govt'
If what Yadav aspires for is to rule Bihar by proxy irrespective of whether or not the people want him and his party in power, the Marxists seek to rule India by proxy irrespective of their strength in Parliament. Yadav has had his way by arm-twisting the prime minister; the Marxists have demonstrated that they call the shots when it comes to the UPA government taking crucial political decisions.
The sum total of what happened on Sunday night is abject capitulation by the prime minister. Rather than stand up to disgraceful blackmailing by Yadav and his Marxist friends, and prove that he is indeed a man of honour, he chose to toe the line of least resistance. He may have thus demonstrated that his survival instincts are no less stronger than those of whom he accuses of 'nefarious practices,' but he has also lost the moral high ground to berate others for political amorality.
Let's face it. This is not about protecting 'the good name of the country.' It is about protecting the UPA government by sacrificing all notions of probity and rectitude. If in the process Bihar and India have lost, so be it.

Kanchan Gupta

Of Blacks & Dalits

Like racism in the US, we have caste-system back home in India.I have found some of Chandhrabhan Prasad's (a dalit himself) commentary very interesting on this issue. He usually implies that more than reservations dalits need economic power. He makes a very pragmatic case by comparing dalits with the blacks of US. According to his study Blacks are doing great in US, sans any sort of reservation.
I often feel that reservation is self-defeating. Especially for the person who uses it. The blacks who have earned their way up are not only confident of their achievements as they have done it without any doles; they actually have the ability to articulate the required parameters for success & thus can help others on their road map.
A person who comes through without merit & through reservation will always carry a feeling of whether he actually earned it ultimately (whatever he has achieved).
And reservations in some sense takes away that satisfaction of achievment from that person.
I know personally a few of my friends from my college who infact could have got admissions in better institutes owing to their cast,but still stuck with merit list & came to up triumphs.
I had great respect for these people. And as it turned out later, they are doing exceptionally well in their lives & carrier, unlike some who took the reservation path. I wish to salute all those of my friends who made it big & showed their middle finger to the existing system of reservations.



Dalits@Blacks-in-US.com

Chandhrabhan Prasad - Pioneer,May-24-2005.

In August last year, the Blacks and other minority journalists held a conference named 'Unity 2004'. Around 8,100 journalists got themselves registered for the conference which was attended by both the presidential candidates, George Bush, and John Kerry. The two were subjected to a Q&A session. The conference discussed in detail the future of the Blacks and other ethnic minorities in America.
India churns out 43,828 publications, including 4,890 daily newspapers. Can we comprehend a situation where Dalit journalists organise a conference, which is attended by the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition who subject themselves to a string of questions from Dalit participants?
Recently, I was invited to speak on Dalits and Media in a prestigious institution in Delhi. I spoke about the American experience and described how coloured journalists have made their mark in the US. I also spoke on how the Blacks are visible in all walks of life in the US.
After the conference, a well-informed scholar, while appreciating my viewpoint, put up a caveat. "Have you ever considered the Black population in American prisons?" He was equipped with all the stats.
Of the total male inmates in US prisons, about 50 per cent are Blacks, though they comprise only 13 per cent of the population.
Most Indians feel that the Blacks are leading a pathetic life in the US. They say this either because they are ignorant or have an agenda of their own.
What they mean is that race relations in the US are not as good as caste-relations in India. Finally, they contrast the position of Indian Dalits in society with that of American Blacks.
In India, a Dalit has gone on to become the head of the Republic. Another one became the speaker of the Lok Sabha. There are over 120 Dalit MPs and hundreds of Dalit MLAs in India, many of home have gone on to become ministers, Chief Ministers and Governors.
The moral of the story: It is not the Dalits who should emulate the American model; it is the Blacks who should emulate the Indian model.
However, these people forget that the annual spending power of the Blacks stands at $572 billion, bigger than India's GDP which is $459 billion.
The Blacks give more in charity annually than the combined assets of India's three biggest industrial houses. Top 10 Blacks together can buy the TATAs or the Birlas.
TV anchor Oprah Winfrey can alone buy all of India's news channels. The Blacks are everywhere in Hollywood.
There are Black bankers, suppliers, dealers, contractors and entrepreneurs who are respected in the US for their skills. With around a million Black-owned companies, the American market is changing.
The famous magazine Black Enterprise in its February 2005 edition has come out with a cover story 75 Most Powerful Blacks in Corporate America.
There are 18 CEOs and 13 women in the list and all of them have been profiled.
The top five Black CEOs are: American Express chairman and CEO Kenneth I Chenault ($25.9 billion), Wachovia CEO Reginald E Davis ($24.5 billion), Merrill Lynch & co-chairman and CEO E Stanley O'Neal ($27.7 billion), Time Warner chairman and CEO Richard D Parsons ($43.9 billion), and Fannie Mae chairman and CEO Franklin D. Raines ($53.8). They are running five corporations with a combined annual revenue of $175.8 billion.
That means that these Black CEOs are running businesses whose annual turnover is more than the valuations of 153 Bajaj Scooters companies or eight Reliance Industries Ltd, or six Indian Oil Corporation. To simplify it further, eighteen Black CEOs are handling wealth worth India's half of GDP.
In the edition, the magazine featured over two dozen Black models who have modelled for giant corporations. People are familiar with the clout of the Blacks in sports and music, but they are unaware of their growing clout in Wall Street and America's corporate world. In the last three decades, the community has moved up a long way and occupies a significant space of its own.
So, the two presidential candidates made history when they arrived for the "Unity 2004" conference last August. It symbolised the fact that the Blacks have arrived and no one can ignore them any more.
By 2050, the American Blacks will be a big political force and the Blacks in the US know it.

Favourites

You can tell a person from his favourites.For example if you meet someone who says his favourite movie is Star Wars, you instantly make a mental image of that person.You sort of attribute certain characters to him/her depending on his/her fav.

Over the period of time they have changed. But I have been consistent more or less.
Though i cannot guarantee this will stick.


So here's my list

Beer:
Kingfisher

Whiskey:
Chivas Regal

Cigarette:
Gold Flake

Dish:
Zhunka Bhakar with Thecha (Marathi Dish)
Wangi Masala (Maratha Style)

Car:
Maruti Gypsy
Honda CRV

Attire:
Jeans & Kurta

Color:
Blue

Season:
Summer

Book:
Defending India - Jaswant Singh
India: A Million Mutinies Now - V.S. Naipaul

Sports:
Sachin Tendulkar
Ajay Jadeja
Boris Becker
Pete Sampras
Pele
Evander Holyfield
Wasim Akram


Actors:
Sanjeev Kumar
Al Pacino
Jaya Bachchan
Amitabh Bachchan (pre-1990)
Benicio Del Toro

Movies:
Godfather I & II
Sholay
Deewar
Angoor
Shawashank's Redemption
QSQT
Shatranj Kay Khiladi
Masoom
Pulp Fiction
Life is Beautiful
Monsoon Wedding
Kalyug
JFK

Music:
RD Burman
Jatin-Lalit
Marasim

Current Affairs:
Rediff.com
India Today
CNN.com

Television:
Sienfeld
Friends
O'ReillyFactor
Jay Leno

Places:
Nagpur
Bombay
Ooty
Kashmir
Pittsburg
Chicago

Ads:
Operation Flood
Amul
Rashtriya Saksharta Mission
Fevicol
British Airways
AOL
Capital One
ITC

Leaders:
Chanakya
Sardar Patel
Narendra Modi
Ronald Reagan
Margaret Thacher
Kemal Atatürk

Business:
Jamshedji Tata
Laxmanrao Kirloskar
Dhirubhai Ambani
Henry Ford
Walt Disney

Organisation:
Infosys
Tatas

Science
Albert Einstein
The Wright Brother

Technology:
Bill Gates
Larry Page and Sergey Brin



Great Ones from Past:
Adi Shankaracharya
Swami Vivekanand
Shivaji Maharaj
Chanakya

People I admire:
Pu La Deshpande
Sir M. Visvesvaraya
Gulzar
L.K Advani
Verghese Kurien
Aroon Puri
Harsha Bhogle
Prannoy Roy
Sabeer Bhatia
Rajeev Srinivasan
V.S Naipaul
Shekhar Kapoor
Bill O'Rielly
Quantine Tarantino
Swapan Das Gupta
Arun Jaitley
Kanchan Gupta
George Fernandes
Sam Pitroda
Jairam Ramesh
Manohar Parrikar
Asha Bhonsale
Bharat Dabholkar
Sudhir Phadke
Sushma Swaraj
Lata Mangeshkar
Tavleen Singh
Satyajit Ray
Govind Nihalani
Shyam Benegal
Amrish Puri
Hema Malini
Piyush Pandey
Ekta Kapoor
Ram Gopal Verma


I owe them a salute:
The India Army Jawans
RSS workers
The Dabbawalas of Mumbai
Shri Mahila Gram Udyog

Mr.Malik-You said it

I usually avoid reading Indian Express; for simple reason that it is now more or less a Congress Mouth Piece. I would rather read Spindian Express (:)) )
This column that appeared in Indian Express makes a very upfront attack on present day UPA government.More importantly it tears down vertically the claim of Indian media of how the UPA is working so well for the nation

http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=70663
Indian Express : 20th May 2005
Ashok Malik

Revenge of the State

One year on, the UPA has a single danger: unaffordable statism


There are two broad ways in which to observe the first anniversary of the United Progressive Alliance government. The first is to focus on personalities and proper nouns. Depending on your politics, either praise Manmohan Singh as “gentle”, “decent”, “quiet”, a “good doctor” — or have a dig, as a civil servant friend did recently, at the “Common Minimum Prime Minister”.
Next sigh at Sonia’s Gandhi’s “Amazing Grace”, to recall a fawning newspaper headline almost exactly a year ago, and add a gushing tribute to her remarkable command of Hindi. Alternatively, deride her as “super prime minister”, India’s first governess general.



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If there is unanimity, it is perhaps only in the case of the leading opposition party. The BJP, friends and foes both acknowledge, has scored self-goal after self-goal. Its president seems bereft of his instincts; these days, his stock response to every problem is: “It reminds me of the Emergency.”

The satisfaction of smart phrases and quick assessments notwithstanding, there must be another method by which to judge the past year. Have the opening 12 months of the UPA government thrown up any big idea? In terms of labels or ideologies, the answer has to be “no”. Even so, there is an underlying philosophy to UPA raj — the return of the state.

The state brings with it statism, big government, a sense of progress defined not by individual initiative but noblesse oblige, a top-down approach, a nanny state, a nasty overdose of socialist nostalgia.

Statism is not new to India. Even Chanakya referred to dandaniti (literally: the punishment principle) while describing the coercive capacity of the state in his Arthasashtra. In post-Independence India, statism became less an article of belief, more a Congress patronage-dispensing contrivance, complete with public sector units that ran hotels, parcelled out telephone connections and, of course, employed many more than they needed to. The government became the ultimate arbiter of goods and services, of the social contract.

All this is, really, well-known. Why is it relevant to UPA rule? Simply because there is a disconcerting feeling that some mindsets have not moved on. India has changed enormously in the 1990s; are senior Congressmen alive to that change?

If yes, then why this creeping 1980s-style response to governance? Why the underlying suggestion that “government knows best — give us your money, and let us spend it for you”? If you go by the Law Ministry’s argument before the Supreme Court (September 2004), this government even believes a bureaucrat should select the Indian cricket team!

Perhaps this sounds alarmist. Perhaps it is too influenced by the killing of privatisation. It is not merely a case of accusing Arun Shourie of being a crook — so ridiculous that, privately, even Congress MPs shy away from discussing it — if only for selling loss-making hotels. At work is a world view that condones profligacy.

Pushed by the National Advisory Council, the Congress-led government is opening the doors to huge social sector spending. Two days ago, a Rs 174,000 crore, four-year plan was unveiled for rural infrastructure. An education cess has been imposed. Big plans for rural disbursements through a chosen network of NGOs have been proposed.

This sounds very nice. What does it translate to on the ground? It probably means the Congress is going to use much of the money to fund its next election campaign. Leakage, diversion, systemic cost — take your pick of useful euphemisms.

Look to the standard Indian village for empirical evidence. There are numerous schemes at work, for farmers, for schoolchildren, for women. Government grants routinely go out to these bodies, run usually by politically-networked locals. These are the grassroots of political patronage.

Where will this money come from? Simply, from guilt-tripping the tax-payer or squeezing his limb. It begins with a homily about how economic reform has benefited some Indians and now they must pay their dues to their countrymen, by giving more by way of a tax or a cess to the government.

If you point out any contradiction or make noises about “delivery systems”, you are socially ostracised. The government, of course, couldn’t be bothered with cutting its own expenses.

Next come coercive tax regimes. A Supreme Court ruling is nullified by an ordinance, and ITC is asked to pay Rs 800 crore in excise dues. It is told to pay Rs 350 crore immediately. After that, a “settlement” is reached, and the rest of the money is forgotten. Does this sound regular, transparent? Does it smell of a regime that wants to smash and grab, and then “come to an arrangement”? If the Centaur Hotel merits a CBI inquiry, what does this call for? The FBI?

Attuned to the welfare state and a variety of socialisms, a certain type of European mind is instinctually distrustful of private initiative. To rework an old proverb, it would rather redistribute fish than teach people to fish. The Nehru-Gandhi Congress has historically believed in such thought. Under Sonia, regrettably, it has not upgraded its motherboard.

In the end, this government may just spend its way into trouble. Huge public outlays, irrespective of whether the money is well-spent or wasted, are dependent on a surplus generated by high growth. This is not rocket science. The Chinese have done it for a decade and more, spending Guangdong’s profits in the east in subsidising Manchuria in the north.

In the case of the Congress-led government, the engines of growth have been clogged, reform has been put on the slow track, and yet ambitious plans are drawn up for social sector spending.

Shadow boxing in the ruling coalition hides the real issue. The carping of the left parties (CPI and CPM one day, RSP and Forward Bloc the next) is illusion politics— Attack of the Clones as Phantom Menace. The real fear is in the Revenge of the State.

Well said Mr. Jaitley

When Arun Jaitley speaks, you have to take notice. In this column in rediff.com Arun Jaitley tells us something that has not been collectively & intentionally told to us (Indians) by the Congress run English Media Inc. of the country.
As long as BJP has people like Arun J., middle class Hindus have hope. Today when people like Lalu,Somnath Chatterjee & Sonia Gandhi are running the show it is 'suffocation multiplied' for all nationalist Indians.
Arun J's column has come as breath of fresh air for atleast a few readers.

'A year of vendetta'

May 19, 2005
Courtesy Rediff.com


The United Progressive Alliance never had an electoral mandate.

They were separate political groups who contested the last election separately. While contesting the election separately they got different numbers of seats. The Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party contested against the UPA, but are now supporting the UPA.

The sum effect of this was that with just a few seats more than the National Democratic Alliance the UPA was able to form a majority.

Now, the yardstick of the UPA government's performance is not what the UPA claims or what we in the Opposition claims, but how their supporters look at it.

The Samajwadi Party is probably too embarrassed to call the UPA even an ally. They are more like its opponents.

The Bahujan Samaj Party has publicly denounced the UPA performance.

The Leftists are so embarrassed that they don't want to celebrate one year in power.

CPI-M's bitter anniversary gift to UPA

Let me now analyse the work the UPA government has done in the last year.

This was the year of tainted ministers. The people of India are always concerned about the criminalisation of politics. This time we are witnessing criminalisation of the Council of Ministers. The prime minister is unable to exercise his prerogative in the matter of forming his ministry.

He has just distributed the quota of ministerial posts to the Congress' allies. Whatever ministers have been nominated by supporting parties he has had to accept them.

What happens when you bring in tainted ministers? The legitimacy of governance declines. Government machinery is subverted to support the tainted. Income tax appellate tribunal benches are reconstituted to help the railway minister.

Lalu's hue and cry

The CBI has been subverted to help Mohammad Shahabuddin, Mohammad Taslimuddin, Shibu Soren, Lalu Prasad. Governmental agencies and energy are used to help the tainted wash off the taint.

Dr Manmohan Singh is saying let there be a national consensus over the issue of tainted ministers. The proposal is hypocritical because the party that says there should be a national consensus never thought of it when they demanded L K Advani's resignation from the Council of Ministers.

They had rejected the idea of a national consensus when they asked for the resignations of Uma Bharti, Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Advani.

Now that they are at the receiving end, they think in terms of a national consensus.

A broad policy on the tainted issue already exists. The prime minister should exercise his prerogative and make his judgment. If the case involves moral turpitude he can't have criminals sitting by his side. If a case involves political agitation he can overlook it. This has always been the practice.

This also has been a year of vendetta.

Anybody with any kind of affiliation with the Bharatiya Janata Party, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or National Democratic Alliance should be out. If the Phukan Commission delivers a report exonerating George Fernandes, consign it to the dustbin.

Phukan report is incomplete: UPA

It is a strange case and those who speak about the prime minister's decency must answer. If the government is to prosecute or persecute a man of honesty and the credentials of Arun Shourie and help the Shahabuddins and Taslimuddins, you have no right to be called decent.

It is also the year in which the office of the prime minister and the primacy of that institution has been destroyed. Important political decisions are only notified by the Prime Minister's Office, decisions that are taken elsewhere.

It is the year in which extra-constitutional centres of power have been created. And those extra-constitutional centres of power are being legitimised.

PM gives 6 on 10 for UPA's performance


Power without responsibility is repugnant in an accountable democracy. A centre of power who is not accountable to Parliament is not in the best traditions of democracy. Who is accountable for the political decisions taken in Jharkhand and Goa? Who is accountable to Parliament? The prime minister was unaware when the Leader of the Opposition spoke to him about the situation in Jharkhand. This is the level of contradictions in the two centres of power.

No intention of becoming PM: Sonia

Look at what happens in the case of Goa and Jharkhand. The prime minister pleads ignorance when asked why the governors behaved like this. But we know the reasons why they behaved like this. There were indications that the prime minister wanted to invite the Opposition leaders for talks to end the Parliamentary boycott. Suddenly to sabotage the whole process you have Ambika Soni telling the Opposition leaders to 'first apologise'. The prime minister had to step back.

This is the year that has seen the systematic assault on democratic and Constitutional institutions. This government has created a situation where it wants Parliament without the Opposition. In fact, Sonia Gandhi is on record at a Congress Parliamentary Party meeting that the work of Parliament has gone on smoothly because there is no Opposition.

This is precisely what Indira Gandhi said during the Emergency when she jailed MPs and conducted a huge amount of legislative business because there was no Opposition present within Parliament.

When the Supreme Court delivered its verdict against the Congress in the Jharkhand case we saw the makebelieve confrontation being created between the legislature and the judiciary.

Who do we blame for the UPA flop show?

When the Election Commission doesn't allow Lalu Prasad as usual to rig the election in Bihar you see the assault on the Election Commission. There was assaults from outside; now, there is an assault from inside.

This has been the year of arrogance of power.

How did you handle the Opposition in Parliament? How did you handle the Goa crisis? When the assembly is in suspended animation the Congress wants a election. It wants to destabilise a stable Opposition-run government.

You allow the railway minister to concoct the incident at a Baroda hospital. Then, say that incident will be used to impose Articles 355 and 356 in Gujarat.

Lalu cannot be sacked, says Centre

When Pranab Mukherjee is assaulted on Sunday by Congress party workers did the prime minister consider it necessary to indulge in melodrama and call a midnight meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security?

The windows of Lalu's car were not broken but he wanted to dramatise the impact and pressurise the Opposition, because he wanted to subvert the system and misuse Article 356 in Gujarat.

This is the year where the manner in which some ministers speak is despicable.

An example is Railway Minister Lalu Prasad. In his case, public discourse has been reduced to vulgarity. The prime minister is helpless in checking it because he needs Lalu's MPs to remain in power.

RJD doesn t need Congress in Bihar: Lalu

The less said, the better on the economy, which I thought is the prime minister's main strength. Somebody once told me that the economic development of the country is inversely proportionate to the economists who lead it.

The capacity and courage to implement economic reforms lies in one's capacity to take political decisions. I think Prime Minister Singh can be termed a former economic reformer. The last few months have left evidence of that. Every major economic decision has been diluted under pressure from the Left.

The government doesn't have the courage to take bold economic decisions.

This is a lucky government which inherited 8.5% growth rate. The regime of high-taxation is back with P Chidambaram's two Budgets. More areas are being taxed. The taxable components of one's income has gone up in the last two years.

The manufacturing sector which today holds the essence of growth needs labour flexibility, infrastructure creation. It needs utility at a reasonable cost. Today you find that infrastructure creation has been slowed down. The national highway and rural road links programme has slowed down.

The capacity to take hard decisions is lacking in this government. The action, which is allowed to be taken in the case of the Centaur hotel sale, is a deterrent that this government has held out against future reformist ministers. If you reform and take these bold steps we will slam legal sanctions against you. The inquiry in the Centaur hotel sale is an anti-reform step.

The growth of the economy today is not on account of a single decision taken in the last one year.

India 4th largest economy

They inherited 8.5% growth, there was momentum for growth. Nobody can point out a single decision in the last year which can exhilarate growth. I believe the growth seen in the economy today is entrepreneur driven and not policy driven. Let this government claim no credit for that.

They claim successes in diplomacy. Let me clarify that foreign policy is the issue where there has been a national consensus. The country broadly supports what our prime ministers do.

BJP's decline could be irreversible

Let anti-BJPism not be the continued essence of the UPA's survival. Today the UPA survives not on the strength of its programmes or performance but only on anti-BJPism. It can be an initial impetus for the government's survival but anti-BJPism cannot be an everlasting solution to the UPA's problems.

When ministers claim that the BJP will remain in Opposition for a decade or more I think of the Emergency. Some people then thought that irrespective of their behaviour, their power was immortal. Politics is a game of revolving doors.

Power is not immortal. It first deserts the arrogant.

Advani's Impressive Speech at CII

Courtesy - Rediff.com

I am pleased to be with all of you this morning. CII's Annual Sessions provide an excellent platform for political and business leaders to exchange views on the economy, the wider policy and governance environment, and the overall direction of the nation's development.

I find from the title of the subject given to me, 'Towards Double-Digit Inclusive Growth', that there is a very significant word in it -- 'Inclusive'.

This word has many meanings, and I'll come to that later in my address. But the point I wish to make here is that, the mindset of the ruling political establishment in India became inclusive towards businessmen, private enterprise, and the professional class only after the advent of the economic reforms in the 1990s.

Previously, this category was excluded because, under a perverted understanding of socialism, it was argued that 'the private sector is an exploiting class' and 'profit is a dirty word'.

Those in the ruling party and government had a mindset that believed in things like -- 'We in government know everything'; 'Don't give us your views on policy matters, just give us your money for the party fund'; 'It's not good for politicians to be seen publicly in the company of businessmen, never mind if you meet them privately.'

Without sounding immodest, I can claim that the Vajpayee Government gave a big boost to such interaction with the business community, including at the level of policy formulation. This is because my party never supported the license-permit-quota raj.

A critique of the phrase -- 'Hindu rate of growth'

Excessive state control over the economy, corruption, and bureaucratic red tape were the direct and inevitable outcomes of the old mindset. It is because of this that the legendary entrepreneurial spirit of India remained chained for the first nearly forty years after India cast off the chains of political slavery. It is also principally because of this that the growth of our infrastructure, agriculture, industry, trade, and services suffered and India came to be seen as a country of low achievement.

In the pejorative and deeply offensive description that somehow gained wide currency, some experts even declared that India cannot do better than the so-called 'Hindu rate' of 3 to 4 per cent GDP annual growth rate.

Here I am provoked to ask three questions:

Which party is responsible for India's low growth rate for nearly three decades after Independence? I leave out the first decade since it was a period of independent India's infancy and also because some remarkably far-sighted developmental initiatives were taken in the first ten years.

Which party is responsible for the economic growth not being inclusive? After all, if a vast section of our population and large geographical areas of our country remained excluded from the fruits of development, those who ruled the country for the longest period of time must surely bear responsibility for this slow and exclusive growth.

My first two questions may be directed at my friends in the Congress party, but my third question is directed at them as well as at all of you in the business and intellectual class. Why have you allowed the earlier low rate of growth to be called the 'Hindu rate of growth'?

By the same logic, it should be possible to call the 6 to 7 per cent GDP growth rate that India has now begun to achieve also as the 'New Hindu Rate of Growth'.

Is it anybody's contention that some non-Hindu entity was responsible achieving this higher rate of growth after the 1990s? After all, it is under the government led by the BJP, which is usually described as the 'Hindu nationalist party' that we Indians recently demonstrated that we can even achieve an 8 per cent GDP growth rate.

I am raising these questions because, consciously or sub-consciously, the word 'Hindu' is sought to be associated with low achievement. I am proud to be a Hindu and I am proud to be an Indian. And as Mahatma Gandhi said, my pride in India stems principally from my pride in Hinduism, which teaches me to respect all faiths.

Therefore, I feel amazed and hurt when I see that it has become fashionable these days for some people in the elite classes to distance themselves even from the word 'Hindu' and to surround that word with various negative connotations.

Antyodaya and Integral Human Development

Even the use of the word 'inclusive' is an unfortunate victim of the current political and intellectual discourse. In itself, it is not only harmless but also contains a positive social and ethical meaning. Indeed, I believe that whatever the rate of GDP growth, economic progress has to be always inclusive, it must always care for the last man first.

This is the meaning of Antyodaya, which has been a guiding principle for my party's economic thinking.

It is equally important to note that 'inclusive growth' does not only mean fulfillment of the economic needs of all sections of society. In an ideal sense, it should also mean inclusive of all the other facets of human development -- social, cultural and spiritual.

In other words, rapid economic growth should not lead to lop-sided development of mankind, as is indeed happening today. Rather, it should contribute to the integral development of man, as is envisaged by all our seers.

Therefore, I have no objection to the use of the term 'inclusive growth'. However, what I do object to is that the current ruling dispensation and its supporters, the Communist parties, have been using the term 'inclusive growth' to somehow convey the message that the previous government, and the leading constituent of that government -- namely, my party, the Bharatiya Janata Party -- were votaries of an exclusive ideology.

It is being said that the BJP was exclusive towards the poor and exclusive towards certain social segments.

Communists have no right to talk of 'inclusive growth'

It is indeed ironic that those whose dogmatic policies are a prescription for increasing poverty, perpetuating backwardness, and promoting corruption and bureaucratism should be talking about 'inclusive growth'. Contrary to the propaganda of our Communists here, the Soviet Union neither achieved high growth nor banished want.

Let us make no mistake: India could break the chains of under-achievement and begin attaining higher rates of economic growth in the 1990s only after it discarded the influence of that Soviet model. And as I have often said from several public platforms, the credit for initiating this transformation goes to the then Finance Minister and present Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh.

It is difficult not to mention Communist-ruled China in the context of any debate on double-digit growth. Again, let us make no mistake: if China has achieved impressive economic growth over a sustained period, it is only because they implemented policy reforms, each of which the Communists in India have opposed and are continuing to oppose.

I never cease to be amazed by the hypocrisy of the Indian Communists. For them, it is okay if China carries out economic reforms, but India must not. It is okay if China becomes a nuclear weapon nation, but India must not.

It is okay if a Chinese leader says, 'It does not matter of which colour the cat is, so long as it catches the mice', but for the Communists, India must follow the dictum: 'It does not matter if the cat cannot catch the mice, but it must be of red colour.'

It is okay if Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, West Bengal's Chief Minister can advocate economic reforms in Kolkata, but his party must oppose the same reforms in New Delhi -- irrespective of whether it is the NDA or the UPA in power at the Centre.

It is because of this kind of dogmatism that the Communists have been fanatically opposed to every piece of economic reform -- in P V Narasimha Rao's time, in Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee's time, and now in Dr Manmohan Singh's time.

And everything they opposed has since been proved as a correct and beneficial decision. They opposed the introduction of computers in banks and government offices, which has led to greater efficiency. They opposed the entry of private airlines, which has now led to a boom in civil aviation. They opposed the entry of the private sector in telecom, which has led to a telecom revolution in India.

Communist influence will be a liability for the government

Therefore, the first thing that India must do to achieve 'Double-Digit Inclusive Growth' is to marginalise the ideological and political influence of the Communists, for their policies will neither deliver inclusive growth nor double-digit growth.

As the Leader of the Opposition, I am not expected to give such advice as is intended to enhance the government's longevity. Nevertheless, in the national interest, I wish to caution Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh: 'Your dependence on Communist support will prove to be a liability for anything good you may wish to do.'

My second suggestion to the Prime Minister, which too I am making in the national interest, is: 'Please do not fall prey to the politics of vindictiveness, negativism and confrontation, for this too will impair any good that you may wish to do.'

If 8 per cent growth was 'Mungeri Lal's Haseen Sapne', then would double-digit growth be 'Mungeri Lal's Hallucinations'?

Specifically, the government seems to have decided, as a matter of political strategy, to de-emphasise, denigrate, and discredit every achievement of the Vajpayee government.

In a sense, this derisive attitude towards the NDA government started even when those in power today were in the opposition. All of us know a very responsible person sought to rubbish the Vajpayee government's attempts to achieve 8 per cent GDP growth rate as 'Mungeri Lal's Haseen Sapne'.

By that logic, our present discussion on how India can achieve double-digit growth must qualify to be called not just 'Mungeri Lal's Haseen Sapne', but 'Mungeri Lal's Hallucinations'!

Friends, we did not follow this approach of denigration of previous governments. Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee acknowledged in Parliament that the agenda of economic reforms that his government followed was a continuation of what the Congress government had inaugurated. On different occasions, he paid tribute to Pandit Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

I have myself expressed praise for Dr Manmohan Singh as a person in several public meetings.

Politics of vendetta will boomerang on the government

But I am sad to see that the ruling party has not reciprocated this approach. The NDA is being constantly run down. Such illiberalism in our political culture does not augur well for either for our democracy or for our economy. What I am particularly concerned about is that this political illiberalism is now leading the government to a policy of vindictiveness.

Take the case of the politically motivated CBI inquiry in certain defense purchase deals, which has put a spanner in our defense establishment's plans for rapid modernisation. I need not explain to this audience how this would also affect the plans, vigorously advocated by CII, of the Indian industry to play a bigger role in the production of defense equipment and systems.

Another stark example is the proposed probe into the divestment of Centaur hotels in Mumbai. The only motive behind this move, mooted most vocally by the Communist parties, is to malign Shri Arun Shourie. And the only reason why they are doing so is because few intellectuals in India have unmasked the long history of Communist betrayals with such scholarship and firepower as Shri Shourie has.

Shri Shourie has said that he is ready to face any probe, and I have little doubt that he'll come out clean. But I have a word of caution for those in the government: 'Don't proceed on this path of vendetta. It will bite you. The barking Communists may not bite, but the action they and some others are pressuring you to take will certainly bite you.'

Indeed, this entire episode makes me wonder: What kind of government is this which shamelessly defends the worst kind of criminals and yet wants an inquiry against a person like Arun Shourie whose uprightness is not disputed even by his critics?

One year of the UPA government:

Anti-BJPism is not in the interest of healthy democracy or faster development. Friends, the UPA government is about to complete one year in office. There is a celebratory mood in official circles. The Prime Minister has given himself 6/10.

Predictably, the ruling party has given the Super Prime Minister 10/10.

Equally predictably, the Congress president has charged that all the 'ills plaguing India' are 'a legacy of the NDA rule'.

But there is something surreal about this government. Not a day passes without the Communists announcing that they are 'dissatisfied' with the performance of the government to which they provide life support. Indeed, they have given the UPA Government 0/10.

The only glue that holds this strange coalition together is anti-BJPism.

There was a time when anti-Congressism was the principal driver of Indian politics. Today, it is replaced by anti-BJPism.

If the former was wrong, the latter is equally wrong.

A vast and diverse country like India can never be governed well if the ruling party or coalition is driven by a purely negative agenda. Such a negative agenda can never help the country to realise its full potential.

To achieve double-digit inclusive growth, India needs a positive agenda built around the principles of consensus and cooperation.

After all, in a multi-party democracy where it is common for governments to change from time to time, a nation can achieve great goals and ambitious targets only through broad national consensus. When we were in government, we sincerely and consistently tried to enlarge the area of consensus on economic and other issues.

Even today, the BJP is willing to support the government on any reform that is vital for India's economic progress. However, the government must demonstrate that it respects the role of the Opposition, and creates a conducive atmosphere for the Opposition to partner the government in important national decisions.

Five thoughts for double-digit inclusive growth

Friends, I did not want my address today on a business platform to have political overtones. But I had to place the theme of my address -- 'How to Achieve Double Digit Inclusive Growth' -- in its proper national context. Now I turn, briefly, to presenting five specific thoughts.

One, both the central and state governments must continue to focus on rapid expansion and modernisation of our infrastructure. We must especially consolidate our gains in information technology and other areas of the knowledge economy.

The work on ambitious infrastructure projects such as the National Highway Development Project, the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, the Indian Railways' Rashtriya Rail Vikas Yojana, modernisation of our airports and construction of greenfield airports, the Sagar Mala project for the modernisation of our ports infrastructure, the many initiatives on urban renewal, implementation of power sector reforms as per the Electricity Bill 2003, strengthening of our Science & Technology infrastructure -- all this must receive strong, focused and sustained attention.

I am sorry to say that the implementation of many of these projects has slowed down, especially the power sector reforms. If the alarming situation in Mumbai and Maharashtra is any pointer, then we must realise that we cannot live in the past and continue with old attitudes about the role of the private sector in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution.

Two, not just physical infrastructure but also our social infrastructure needs similar strong, focused and sustained attention. In particular, the needs of our SC, ST and OBC brethren must become our collective priority. Faster economic growth without social justice is an affront to our Constitutional ideals.

Here, learning from past experience, we must admit that the capability of government agencies to implement social sectors programmes and deliver results does not inspire confidence. Therefore, I am all for the widening and deepening the scope for public-private partnerships in education, health-care, drinking water supply, sanitation, housing for the poor and middle-classes, slum rehabilitation, etc.

Three, a big area of much-needed reforms is agriculture. Your incoming President has made a name for himself on agricultural issues and I hope that in his Presidency, CII will promote reforms in agriculture, marketing, technology transfer, food processing, etc. I am aware that agriculture is a state subject and states have to take the lead. I am pleased that Madhya Pradesh, a BJP-ruled state has been leading the reforms in agriculture marketing.

Four, another important issue is to promote good governance reforms, both at the Centre and in states. I've long held that Swaraj in India was not followed by Su-Raj. I understand that CII has recently done some brainstorming workshops on this subject of state-related reforms. This is important, and you must push as hard for reforms in states as you did for economic reforms at the Centre in the last twelve years. We need to make state governments -- the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary -- realise the importance of faster reforms.

In this context, you will be pleased to know that earlier this month we organised a three-day training workshop near Mumbai for all the ministers of the BJP-ruled states -- Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Nagaland (our party is a coalition partner in the last two states). It was the first of its kind for any political party in the country.

While on the point of good governance, I must emphasise that this should not be confined only to Raisina Hill; it is also needed in Nariman Point. Corporate India must also follow the relevant norms and rules of good corporate governance -- both in letter and in spirit.

Five, the imperative of achieving high growth with employment and equity has to be a common commitment for both governments and the business community. India's overwhelmingly young population needs adequate opportunities for rewarding employment and for realising their increasingly ambitious dreams.

The informal sector and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector have the highest potential to generate employment. Therefore, there is an urgent need to remove the difficulties being faced by these sectors.

In this context, I welcome the recent initiative of the CII to launch a nationwide campaign for skill development and productivity enhancement in these sectors.

Esteemed captains of industry, let me summarise what I have said so far in three affirmations.

Can India achieve double-digit growth? Yes, we most certainly can. Indeed, we must if we want to make India a Developed Nation by 2020.

Should this growth be inclusive? Yes, it has to be; otherwise imbalances in development will create more problems.

What is needed for India to achieve double-digit inclusive growth? A culture of cooperation between the government and the opposition, a culture of partnership between the government, business community and people's organisations, and above all, commitment to good governance.

Good Article by Sandhya Jain

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=jain%2Fjain64%2Etxt&writer=jain

A very hard-hitting article by Sandhya Jain in Pioneer,lists the things that are happening in India away from mainstream media focus. While one CM provides land for American Christian's junket, his counterpart in neighbouring state is using funds of Tirumala Temple to help Christian missionaries.

The article should have been titled - While Hindus Sleep

No God but (my) God
-Pioneer - 18th May 2005

Though it is nearly two decades since the agitation for the Ram Janmabhoomi questioned the meaning of secularism, there has since been little serious discussion of the concept. Growing Hindu unease over heightened pro-missionary activism by Congress-led regimes in various States, however, demands that the community's views be articulated to facilitate mature public discourse on the subject.



Secularism originated in the Christian West as a truce offered by a denominational State to sister denominations, whereby they could coexist in peace for the larger good of the nation.



With time, the State ceased to be denominational (though Britain formally remains so), and the offer of coexistence was extended to other faiths that entered Christian lands as immigrants. The rise of immigrant groups in Western countries gave rise to the doctrine of multi-culturalism, whereby non-Christian, non-European peoples were permitted to live a separate existence within the host culture. The rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism, however, is tearing this tolerance apart and voices are being raised in favour of the coercive assimilation that was once the hallmark of the American way.



Hindus, therefore, are not the only people in the world to question the attitude of forbearance towards the abuse of native kindness. Hindus are aware that while Islam openly professes the unity of mosque and State, Christianity detests the separation of church and State and has, from the time the cleavage was forced upon it, continued to use the state to secure its ends. The Western reality, therefore, is that the State is Christian at some level and the church in turn serves as a political arm of the State. Hence the active interest in evangelical activities by Western regimes.



India's secular State extends undue patronage to the Church; as a result Hindu patience is beginning to wear thin. The situation has deteriorated with the rise of the Sonia Gandhi-led Congress in some states. So we have a situation in which BJP-ruled Rajasthan has to change the name of a colony named after the Goddess Sati, but Maharashtra sanctions a Christian township!



Press reports suggest that former Australia cricket captain, Steve Waugh, wishes to set up a 100-400 acre "Christian township" in Mumbai. A rabid evangelist, Waugh recently donated millions for the conversion of tsunami victims. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has already appointed State Industry Secretary as nodal agency for the proposal, no doubt scoring points with his party chief.



In Karnataka, Congress Chief Minister Dharam Singh shamelessly facilitated Benny Hinn's evangelical blitzkrieg, which mercifully fell flat, causing embarrassment even to the official church. Dharam Singh's predecessor, SM Krishna, patronized HT Sangliana, Director General of Police (Prisons), who openly supports missionaries. A 1969-batch IAS officer from Meghalaya, Sangliana became famous in November 2001 when he ordered the arrest of Hindu activists protesting against mass conversions in Doddabalapur (Bangalore Rural).



Sangliana and some senior police officers openly lecture on the Bible at Bible College of India, Bangalore, at weekends. While this is by no means a contraband activity, one does wonder if the State administration's tolerance of this display of religious freedom would extend to a Hindu officer indulging in weekly Ram kathas. Even if not openly victimised, such an officer would be sidelined and derided as a bit of a 'crank.' Sangliana however, suffers no such disability; he openly sided with missionaries when the Ma Bhagavati temple in Devanahalli (Bangalore Rural) and Sri Durgamba Temple in Banaswadi (Bangalore) were demolished and churches erected in their place in 2002. In both cases, the Chief Minister and important Congress leaders supported the evangelicals. It is hardly surprising to learn, therefore, that as many as 84 Churches have sprung up in this area in just the last two years.



But the Chief Minister who takes the cake is Y Samuel Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR) of Andhra Pradesh. A practicing Seventh Day Adventist, Reddy reportedly had 350 farmhands converted by the Adventists on his own farm, and is now building a church for them. Reddy is openly pro-missionary. Recently, when it was found that a church is being constructed on lands belonging to the famous Bhadrachalam Rama Temple, given to a Christian organisation for setting up a school, the chief minister prevented restoration of the land to the temple. So now the church is coming up and conversion activity is in full swing at an exceedingly sacred Hindu site.



Mandir lands are also being freely distributed in Naxal-infested areas; a sub-inspector who opposed this was done to death, allegedly by Maoist Naxalites. YSR has handed over the distribution of mid-day meals to government school students to Christian bodies and NGOs, who make the children recite "yesu nama" before giving them the food. This is not only tantamount to forced conversion but also involves the psychological abuse of minors.



The worst offence, however, is the gifting of the contract for procurement of materials for prasadam at Tirupati Balaji to a Kochi Syrian Christian, GB Mathew and his firm, the JRG Wealth Management Limited, three weeks ago. Hindu activists suspect that Christians are being smuggled into crucial areas of decision-making at Tirupathi. For instance, some time ago YSR laid the foundation stones for the construction of Vasantha Mandapam in Tirumala, and construction of a new building for Sri Venkateshwara Oriental College in Tirupati. It is feared that the contracts for these Rs 109-crore projects may be awarded exclusively to Christian firms, thereby making mandir funds available for proselytisation activities.



One week ago, YSR engineered a deal between the Sri Venkateshwara Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital (SVIMS, which is owned and run by the TTD) and Dr Cherian's Frontier Lifeline and Dr KM Cherian Heart Foundation for a telemedicine facility. Dr Cherian is the founder of Madras Medical Mission, a true missionary hospital based in Chennai, and YSR inaugurated the telemedicine facility through video-conference.



Personally, I have little doubt that Dr Cherian is a thorough professional. But given the scale and audacity of missionary activity in the southern states, Hindus feel alarmed that a premier institution owned by one of the most sacred Mandirs of the Hindus (the funds for which come from ordinary Hindu bhaktas) should be made to tie-up with a missionary organization by the State Government. It is well known in Andhra Pradesh that there are more than a dozen Hindu institutions that can match and even surpass the facilities offered by Dr Cherian and his team. In the unlikely event that YSR is not aware of them, they include hospitals of the stature of Apollo Hospitals; Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Hospitals; Sri Sai Baba's hospital at Puttaparthi; Mata Amritanandamayi's Hospital at Kochi; Narayana Hridayalaya of Bangalore; Escorts Hospital, and many other super-speciality hospitals in Hyderabad.



YSR has been equally generous to the State's other monotheistic community. It is well-known that the Andhra Government owes nearly Rs 100 crores to Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam as compensation for Mandir lands acquired for the construction of bus stands and bus depots. Though it has failed to remit even one rupee of this amount, the Government recently demanded property tax dues from TTD and on receipt of rupees six crores, instantly diverted the sum to create an Idgah Maidan on railway lands next to the Sri Venkateshwara University lands owned by TTD. This, then, is secularism in one country.

India should come out of UN?

Rajeev never lets you down. Always backed with solid & well documented articles,Rajeev gives the best in business a run for their money.
I guess the so called celebrity journalists of India like Rajdeep Sardesai,Vinod Mehta,Shekhar Gupta etc. are light years behind Rajeev when it comes to knowledge & articulation of the same.When it comes to commentary Rajeev is way out of the league. He is INVINCIBLE.

Goodbye, Mr Chips: On leaving the United Nations



May 17, 2005


What made the League of Nations fail? Because it ceased to provide value to its members. It was based on the utopian idea that nations would prefer to cooperate and work with each other rather than to compete ruthlessly. Jaw-jaw, as arch-imperialist Winston Churchill once said pithily, being better than war-war. On the face of it, this is rational, but I suspect game theory alters the perceptions of individual States.

Many people are familiar with the paradigm of the Prisoner's Dilemma, wherein the best outcome is for the two participants to cooperate with each other, but since neither has any idea if the other party will betray them, the temptation is to betray the other party. The result is that both parties end up losing big. In a way, the League of Nations, and its more recent incarnation, the United Nations, were both based on the idea that level-ish playing field would increase the incentives for cooperation.

This turned out to be a fiction in the case of the League of Nations; alas, I believe it is turning to be a fiction in the case of the United Nations as well. I hate to say this, especially considering that I am acquainted with Shashi Tharoor, Under Secretary General for the organisation. However, I believe that the UN has shown itself to be wanting.

For years I have watched, with some bemusement, the spectacle of conservative American politicians thundering that the UN was useless. They meant it was not a willing vehicle for pushing their agendas, but on the other hand, the UN has had a hand in preventing many wars and generally propagating the principle of multilateralism, or so I used to think.

Now I am not so sure. Maybe the thundering Americans are right. The UN has been powerless to stop various conflicts: the long-running wars in southern Africa, the holocausts in Cambodia and Rwanda, the genocides in Tibet and in the Sudan, the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and Pakistan/Bangladesh, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What exactly is the UN's raison d'etre? Shouldn't it be out there doing something?

Somebody once suggested that the UN should have its own armed forces, perhaps Gurkhas demobbed by the British in Hong Kong. The UN has hired peacekeepers from sundry nations. India has provided far more than its fair share, and has put its soldiers in the line of fire in many tense spots. Incidentally, let us note that the UN has compensated them differentially: white soldiers make more money than Indians for the same peacekeeping duties; and sometimes white contingents refused to serve under Indian commanders, for example under General Satish Nambiar in Yugoslavia.

What's in it for India?

This is an example of a subtle, and perhaps not so subtle, systemic discrimination. A more egregious instance, and something that really rocked my faith in the UN, was Secretary General Kofi Annan's statement in late April about India's candidacy for the Security Council. Here are reports from the Financial Timesand the Times of India

'It is a fact and a reality that it is not going to be possible to remove the veto from the five. It is utopian to think that we can do it. Many member states would want to do that but it is not possible,' said Annan.

'I believe enlargement without veto is a major step forward,' Annan said on Thursday. 'Let us not get so focused on the veto. What is important is to have effective representation to make the council more democratic and ensure voices of all the regions are heard,'Annan said.

Annan is suggesting a clear apartheid. India, Japan, Germany and Brazil (the G-4 aspirants) will forever be second-class permanent members without a veto in the UN Security Council, while the existing Security Council permanent members, the US, the UK, France, Russia and China (the P-5) would be first-class, veto-holding members.

The G-4 in fact pay more money to the UN than the P-5 and also offer more personnel for peacekeeping and bureaucratic duties. Strictly speaking, the US is supposed to pay more than Japan (20% of the UN budget) and Germany (10%), but last I remember, the US owed a large amount that it showed no intention of paying. Incidentally, veto-wielding China pays just 1% of the budget!

Indians have been dying for the benefit of others (I call this Gunga-Din-ism, after Kipling) for some time now. In the wake of the 60th anniversary of Victory-Europe Day in World War II, there have been reports about the sacrifices of Indians in what were basically two imperial wars. Indians received more Victoria Crosses (the ultimate valour award for people dying for Britain, like the Param Vir Chakra) than Britons themselves. And given that it would have taken an Indian ten times more effort to be considered worthy of this as compared to a Briton, this is truly stupendous.

About a million and a half Indians participated in these long-running wars, and 300,000 died. Marne, Burma, Libya, Iraq… the roll call of Indian campaigns is long. And just as Australians realised after Gallipoli, Indian soldiers have been just so much cannon fodder for the British, and now for the UN. Enough already!

This row about some nations being more equal than others is replicated in the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There too the same usual suspects, the P-5, are the 'haves'; everyone else is a 'have-not'. The neutral observer wonders why on earth has-been powers such as the UK and France deserve to have the veto or nuclear weapons. Naturally, the NPT is unraveling, with nations like North Korea publicly withdrawing from it.

Not that North Korea is a role model: the US is, for unilateralism. Whenever it sees a treaty or an organisation that it doesn't like, the US stays away and tries to sabotage it. For instance, the Law of the Sea, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court. It is undermining WTO with bilateral trade treaties. Similarly, when it doesn't want to honour a treaty obligation, the Americans simply ignore it: for instance, in the supply of nuclear fuel to the Tarapur reactor in India.

Following in America's footsteps, I think the G-4 should now unilaterally withdraw from the UN. Or at least threaten to do so. If the G-4 does not want to show a united front on it, India should on its own just walk out of the United Nations if it doesn't get what it wants, the Security Council seat with a full veto. American salespersons ask: 'What have you done for me lately?' Indeed, what exactly has the UN done for India lately?

It is true that India made a colossal blunder in turning down a Security Council seat when it was offered to it on a platter in the 1950s. The original P-5 were the US, the UK, France, the Soviet Union, and Taiwan. Given that Taiwan didn't control much of China, and 'Red China' was out of favour with everybody, there was a proposal to give an 'Asian' seat to India. Here is what transpired then, according to official records.

From the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Series II, Volume 29, Minutes of meeting with Soviet Leaders, Moscow, 22 June 1955, page 231, here are the minutes of the conversation between Jawaharlal Nehru and Soviet Premier Marshal Bulganin, as quoted in Claude Arpi's Born in Sin: The Panchsheel Agreement (Mittal Publications, Delhi, 2004, ISBN 81-7099-974-X):

'Bulganin: While we are discussing the general international situation and reducing tension, we propose suggesting at a later stage India's inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.

Nehru: Perhaps Bulganin knows that some people in the USA have suggested that India should replace China in the Security Council. This is to create trouble between us and China. We are, of course, wholly opposed to it. Further, we are opposed to pushing ourselves forward to occupy certain positions because that may itself create difficulties and India might itself become a subject of controversy. If India is to be admitted to the Security Council it raises the question of the revision of the Charter of the UN. We feel that this should not be done till the question of China's admission and possibly of others is first solved. I feel that we should first concentrate on getting China admitted.'

Those were the halcyon days of Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai. To paraphrase Jyoti Basu, in hindsight, this was a 'historic blunder'. India has wasted incredible amounts of energy trying to rectify this blunder and get itself into the Security Council. But it's quite apparent that if India ever gets a seat it will be a worthless seat. It reminds me of Woody Allen's observation that he'd never want to be a member of any club that would actually admit him.

Again, going back to the NPT as well as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it hasn't particularly hurt India that it has stayed outside these discriminatory treaties, despite much wagging of fingers by others. Similarly, certain neutral States have remained outside the UN: if I am not mistaken, Switzerland famously doesn't join anything, and is not a UN member. Just as Norway has refused to join the European Union.

India has been over-eager to join various motley crews, for instance the banana-republic kaffeeklatsch of the Non-Aligned Movement. Championing various causes for the 'Third World' may have given an ego-boost to certain Indians, but it won India no brownie points. For instance, a resolution condemning India for intervening in the genocide in the then-East Pakistan in 1971 won by a resounding 104 votes to 11. So much for NAM gratitude to India, a pious fiction believed only by South Block. Similarly ungrateful is the UN.

On top of all this is the enormous waste of the UN bureaucracy. By latching on to the generous mammaries of the UN welfare state, many consultants have become wealthy. Graham Hancock's damning 1989 expose, Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business, estimated that most of the $60 billion plus that comprised governmental, UN, and World Bank or IMF-type 'aid' was siphoned off. Mostly by elites in poor nations with their Swiss accounts, special interests (like agribusiness in donor countries, which dump their subsidised excess produce), but also, startlingly, the aid agencies' own personnel budgets, which waste as much as 80 per cent of the funds for lavish (first-class) travel, salaries, and perquisites. Similarly with the UN's extremely generous salaries and benefits.

Is there any good reason to keep on paying through the nose for a body that doesn't do India any good or give India any respect?

It's time for India to say, 'We're out of here!' if the UN continues to treat it shabbily. The return on investment to India of being in this failing body is not high; it is falling apart anyway under the weight of its own internal contradictions. Therefore, India should give the UN an ultimatum, and walk out if it is not satisfied.

Comments welcome at my blog http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com

Rajeev Srinivasan