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.