And you thought only Shane Warne and Murali could spin !
Well, if you are an avid current news follower like me who happens to spend a good amount of time traversing through the HTML pages of the right wing "Daily Pioneer", to the Left Wing New York Times & Indian Express, you could possibly relate to my first sentence.
Yes we live in a world where Spin Doctors galore. This phrase 'The Spin Doctor' has now become a global phenomenon much like anything else. And no, you do not need a college degree to have this doctorate. This doctor is pretty much a person, who by his ability to apply spin, can convince you that what he believes is the actual fact.
Subtlety is her forte. She packages her news,views and ideas in a certain manner so as to buttress her claims or her ideology.
There are spin doctors on both the sides, i.e Left and Right. Its from who's prism you see the world that makes all the difference between you agreeing or disagreeing on a certain subject.
Bush's "war on terror" has been the most argued subject in my recent memory. Right from the New York Times to the "Navakal" of Pune,India, would have debated this war for almost 3 years now. Each newspaper providing its own little spin to this war which has come to stay with us and possibly affecting all of us.
Right from Arundati Roy's rabid leftist views on this subject to Bill O'Reilly's equally strong and intense views, a common reader is witness to the best spin doctors in the game each day.
And the higher up you are on the celebrity chart the better spinner you are.
So Arundati Roy to buttress her 'liberal' views will tell you how 1,00,000 innocent people have died in this war and add more examples where American troops have been involved in killing what she calls and wants us to believe as 'innocent' victims. Off course for the likes of Arundati Roy, even Saddam Hussein is innocent. And so is Osama. Thus Arundati Roy will always be very selective in her examples. She will never tell you that Osama's cohorts have killed more than 60,000 Kashmiris. She will not tell you that Saddam Hussein butchered 100,000 or more Kurds. She will not tell you that in China there have been more human rights excesses than the excesses of all the nations put together. She will instead give only positive examples of China.
But if Left wing is full of spinners the right wingers are not behind. Though they are late in the game, the right wing is soon catching up on this art. They are doing pretty good in US. With FOX news leading this bunch that is ably aided by the blogsphere where right wing conservatives have made a mark.
In India sadly the balance is highly tilted in the Left's favour. May be 10 years down the line the situation will change. Who knows?
For now except for the "Daily Pioneer' of Delhi, most Indian newspapers give a lopsided picture of a story which can be seen only through the left's prism or from the Gandhi family's prism.
For all practical purposes the Indian democracy is a farce.
If its not, please give me one example of a democratic country where one and only one family has been voted again and again for more than 40 years. If committing the same mistakes again and again is an art, well, Indians have mastered that.
When the same family rules again and again, you call it Monarchy.
The Indian spin doctors have a huge advantage over their US counter parts. They have no opposition.They are never questioned. Nobody can tear their theory apart.
Times of India in recent times has become the Gandhi Family mouthpiece. The way it is packaging Rahul Gandhi, it can put the best of ad-makers to shame.
So if Times Of India runs a subtle advertisement for Rahul Gandhi, showing how dynamic he is or that how he celebrated his birthday privately, only few people do not miss the fact that the Congress run newspaper has its spin doctors working overtime. This image building excercise undertaken by the nation's 'best' newspaper tells a story unto itself.
How does it really matter to country fighting poverty and looking for social equalities how this Gandhi family member celebrated his Birthday? But "Times Of India', the nation's premier daily comes up with such irrelevant features on front page, and far worse, gets away with show casing a dumbo as a potential PM. Infact ever since Rahul Gandhi has exploded on the Indian political scene, no other newspaper has made us hear the bang more than Times Of India. I think TOI wants us to believe that Rahul G is the best thing to have happened to India after the green revolution or economic liberalisation.
But if TOI today symbolises scycophancy, Indian Express is not far behind. There's been so much of pro-establishment spin in the newspaper these days that someone actually made a web site called
spindianexpress.
It is tough to believe that this Goenka owned newspaper was at some point of time forefront in anti-establisment views. There was a time when Indian express really had its money where its mouth was and it backed its tag line 'Journalism of Courage' by bold actions and views, whether it was Bofors or Emergency.
Today it has become Sonia and Manmohan's B-Team. You just have to visit its Editor-in-Chief, Shekhar Gupta's columns once in while to realise how shallow it has become.
'The Hindu' happens to be the worst of the lot. It is now promoting marxism pretty blatantly. And at times it does not even bother to apply spin but brazenly demonstrates its subjective journalism.
In a country where all these newpapers tell you that how Modi is the biggest villain of the century and how Sonia Gandhi is next only to Mother Teresa, there are very few who bother to read the other end of the spin doctors array.
The 'Daily Pioneer'. Its the right wing's answer to Indian Express. Its BJP's answer to Congress' TOI and Hindustan Times. But again Daily Pioneer has a neglible readership. So by and large Congress is way ahead in this game of Spins.
The art of spin is not what you tell, but its what you DO NOT tell to the gullible reader. So to make you believe that Narendra Modi is the biggest villain, the Times Of India wants us to believe that more than '2000 muslims were killed in riots in Gujarat spanning number of days'. A 'truth' it was able to stick by repeated assertion (of lies). What it does not tell you though is that not 2000, but 700 muslims and 300 hindus died in riots and that the riots were not spanning days, but only 3 days to be precise.
Also Times Of India will not compare these figures with the far worse violence nation ever suffered. The 1984 Sikh riots, where even by official figures, more than 3000 sikhs were butchered by Congress workers (some of them are MPs now) and the riots went in for months.
The Indian Express will tell you that Modi government is full of corrupt officials but will never tell you that the Gujarat government under Modi, clocked 15% GDP growth this year against the national average of 7%.
Not telling something definitely is a part of spin. Or tell only so much so as to enforce your view point. You take the reader to a point where he's convinced and than leave him right there. If the reader is really interested in the story he will dig further. But 9 out of 10 will not dig further and the newspaper and the view point will win.
So if Arundati Roy does not tell you about the excesses done by the Taliban in Afghanistan (or even if she does, not with the same intensity as Bush's war on terror), be rest assured that its her spin doctorism at work.
The large number of people who take the views represented in TOI as the gospel truth are in danger of never having known the other side of the story. Similarly all the BJP supporters who have never read anything beyond 'The Daily Pioneer' will never know the follies committed by BJP.
Objective journalism has been a victim of this Spindoctorism. If at all it existed, that is.
We live in a web of lies and only we can apply some common sense to really understand this spin. For most though, news is irrelevant and hence truth is only incidental to the event.
Monday, July 25, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths
"There are still 8 chapters remaining.I think i will night out today."
"I haven't even tried out any 'problems' as yet. App-Mech really sucks."
"Can i leave those last 2 chapters in option. This year they might not come.What say?""What did they ask in your Viva? Is the external strict ?"
"Forget it. Lets have a fag. Is Ganpat's tea stall still open?"
Flashback to the world of irrelevance. Flashback to the hostel life.
A virtual universe of 24 X 7 chaos, where events waited for mid-nights to occur - nay explode.
If you have ever seen a hostel life, then it's hard to believe, you have not been a part of these seemingly mindnumbing conversations.
For the unitiated,these coversations may sound silly or hollow, but they meant a world for a hostelite. For example , what if the Viva external was really strict? Would that person skip the orals altogether? Or what's the point of having a fag & a cup of tea ? Would it have solved the problem of last 2 chapters? But i bet you listened to these questions as a religious routine every semester.
Those conversations were worth every unsuccessful smoke ring coming out of your lips.
Every tea stall owner fancied his chances of making big, thanks to the relentless customer line all through the night at his stall for a tiny cup of tea - the lifeline of every hostelite. As a rule who has to be awake all night, before the exam.
But it was fun. Fun that everyone from the topper to the repeater would some how find himself in those fruitless conversations before every exam.
Then off course those visits to the temple , asking God for somehow clearing this exam and promising him of being sincere the next time. "Just this. Just this exam, please. !!!". The cry of the "inner voice" bigger and louder than Sonia Gandhi's.
By the time we were in the final year, the "beer" was the defacto thirst quencher relegating water to distant second place. Even during the exam period some of us were audacious enough for going to have drinks in the evening just a day before the paper.Yours faithfully,included.
"Phir bhi theek nikle yaar"... those priceless words from one of characters of the movie "Hyderabad Blues" says it all.Yea,we just managed to squeeze through those years & yea some of us even came out with flying colors.
(One might blame it on the paper checker or the examiner. Oh Whatever !)
And dig this;There used to be a study room in the college premise where all the sincere amongst us would come over to study. Believe it or not,i too visited them often. Not because i was sincere or something.Those four years i had divorced sincerity.
It was just that the canteen (cafetaria for the US walas) was very close to that room and hence i could frequently go for my regular dose of wada pav & tea.
Barring those 15 days of exams & some part of the so called 'preparation' leave (where nothing really got us prepared), the rest of the life in college was bliss. It was divine. Oh yea, also there was a brief "submission" period preceding every semester exam and it had its own share of ordeal.But atleast during the submission period, the window glasses, the bulb and the bucket came in handy. Also the journals of the sincere ones could be used.
Do i miss that? You bet i do. But like all phases of life, that carefree phase of life had to come to an end. A phase where you never knew who would be lying on your bed when you entered your room.
Or a phase where someone would wear your well ironed shirt for playing a game of cricket; a shirt that you had carefully kept in your trunk for some special occassion.Your sleepers would be found under some distant bed in a hostel room just because one of your friends did not want to wear his shoes in the morning before leaving your room.
If your room mate made an impromptu decision of cleaning the room, there were two possible reasons. Either his female friends are paying a visit or someone's parents are expected. Else the room will be a dumping yard, for all those who cared to live in it.
But yea, the definition of cleanliness was limited to all the clothes being dumped temporarily in the shelf. It was all about 'pushing under the carpet' literally.
The girls were a constant and only reliable source of revenue during those economically tough times; needless to say they were given special treatment. And yea they were particularly helpful during the days of submitting journals, as their journals were always up to date.
During hostel days,clock or watch was an entity people did not bother much of; almost as much as that journal itself. It meant very little. So if you happened to visit your food mess at let's say 00:00 am after watching some non-descript hindi movie in an equally shady theatre, you were more worried about someone being in the mess at that time, rather than whether any food was left. Because food was always left. We practically lived on 'left overs'.
There was neither a routine nor a road map. You could have your lunch between the time range of 10:30 hrs to 16:30 hrs and dinner between time range of 17:30 hrs to 2:00 hrs. No questions asked.It was an accepted norm. It was a natural way of existence.The only issue that bothered us about the mess was the bill. Because every one felt that he did not eat enough in the mess to justify that payment. The auditor of the mess owed greater explaination than the defaulters.
Self analysis was a futile excercise. You are just what you are. You are taken as you are. Even if you try to put a facade and impress some crowd, you fall flat on your face and get exposed pretty much within a short span. Practically no one's interested in what you are as long as you join him in having a fag and share a bottle of beer.
You are not known by how well you performed in your last exam (and mind you lot of them perform well), rather how many times you have had drinks this season. Or were you able to befriend a girl from your class. Then even if you have had three ATKTs (back logs) in your cart you were still a hero. Career be damned. You can always recover.Those days you were judged by very different parameters. The rules of the game were different.
Of all the phases that i have encountered in my life and I am likely to encounter in future, this phase, which constitutes and represents four continous years of nonsense (as in things not making sense at all), stand out as the most enjoyable.
I would like to re-live those moments and days, when i was making no positive contribution to the society or my family for that matter. Atleast now when i am earning, i am sort of directly helping my family and my employer and may be indirectly helping my country's economy. Whatever !
I have enough money today to have beer everyday but I still miss those days when i needed to take loan from my friends to join my other drinking friends and have a blast. I miss calling my father for sparing some extra money, 'only for this month'.
I miss those songs that we sang, bereft of any inhibitions, the whole night, intoxicated more by the camaraderie than by the beer itself.When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths and when Jagjit Singh was the demi-God of every broken heart.
When smoking was not about making hole in your lungs or pocket, but a neccessary evil to have your rightful place under the Hostel sun. When a game of Flash could extend well into the early morning hours.
Those four years when vices were your friends and decency was delt with contempt. Those four years when you did not need to plan to meet your friends and could hijack one's privacy without giving a call, because privacy was a concept , alien to us.
Those years when our parents merely lived on hope rather than any concrete evidence that their son will somehow get on the career road. Those years when abusive language was not so much of a pariah, but the defacto lingo.
A phase when bordering insanity was not an exception, it was almost a virtue.
Those years when nothing worthwhile or fruitfull was achieved, yet life gave so many reasons to live for.
"I haven't even tried out any 'problems' as yet. App-Mech really sucks."
"Can i leave those last 2 chapters in option. This year they might not come.What say?""What did they ask in your Viva? Is the external strict ?"
"Forget it. Lets have a fag. Is Ganpat's tea stall still open?"
Flashback to the world of irrelevance. Flashback to the hostel life.
A virtual universe of 24 X 7 chaos, where events waited for mid-nights to occur - nay explode.
If you have ever seen a hostel life, then it's hard to believe, you have not been a part of these seemingly mindnumbing conversations.
For the unitiated,these coversations may sound silly or hollow, but they meant a world for a hostelite. For example , what if the Viva external was really strict? Would that person skip the orals altogether? Or what's the point of having a fag & a cup of tea ? Would it have solved the problem of last 2 chapters? But i bet you listened to these questions as a religious routine every semester.
Those conversations were worth every unsuccessful smoke ring coming out of your lips.
Every tea stall owner fancied his chances of making big, thanks to the relentless customer line all through the night at his stall for a tiny cup of tea - the lifeline of every hostelite. As a rule who has to be awake all night, before the exam.
But it was fun. Fun that everyone from the topper to the repeater would some how find himself in those fruitless conversations before every exam.
Then off course those visits to the temple , asking God for somehow clearing this exam and promising him of being sincere the next time. "Just this. Just this exam, please. !!!". The cry of the "inner voice" bigger and louder than Sonia Gandhi's.
By the time we were in the final year, the "beer" was the defacto thirst quencher relegating water to distant second place. Even during the exam period some of us were audacious enough for going to have drinks in the evening just a day before the paper.Yours faithfully,included.
"Phir bhi theek nikle yaar"... those priceless words from one of characters of the movie "Hyderabad Blues" says it all.Yea,we just managed to squeeze through those years & yea some of us even came out with flying colors.
(One might blame it on the paper checker or the examiner. Oh Whatever !)
And dig this;There used to be a study room in the college premise where all the sincere amongst us would come over to study. Believe it or not,i too visited them often. Not because i was sincere or something.Those four years i had divorced sincerity.
It was just that the canteen (cafetaria for the US walas) was very close to that room and hence i could frequently go for my regular dose of wada pav & tea.
Barring those 15 days of exams & some part of the so called 'preparation' leave (where nothing really got us prepared), the rest of the life in college was bliss. It was divine. Oh yea, also there was a brief "submission" period preceding every semester exam and it had its own share of ordeal.But atleast during the submission period, the window glasses, the bulb and the bucket came in handy. Also the journals of the sincere ones could be used.
Do i miss that? You bet i do. But like all phases of life, that carefree phase of life had to come to an end. A phase where you never knew who would be lying on your bed when you entered your room.
Or a phase where someone would wear your well ironed shirt for playing a game of cricket; a shirt that you had carefully kept in your trunk for some special occassion.Your sleepers would be found under some distant bed in a hostel room just because one of your friends did not want to wear his shoes in the morning before leaving your room.
If your room mate made an impromptu decision of cleaning the room, there were two possible reasons. Either his female friends are paying a visit or someone's parents are expected. Else the room will be a dumping yard, for all those who cared to live in it.
But yea, the definition of cleanliness was limited to all the clothes being dumped temporarily in the shelf. It was all about 'pushing under the carpet' literally.
The girls were a constant and only reliable source of revenue during those economically tough times; needless to say they were given special treatment. And yea they were particularly helpful during the days of submitting journals, as their journals were always up to date.
During hostel days,clock or watch was an entity people did not bother much of; almost as much as that journal itself. It meant very little. So if you happened to visit your food mess at let's say 00:00 am after watching some non-descript hindi movie in an equally shady theatre, you were more worried about someone being in the mess at that time, rather than whether any food was left. Because food was always left. We practically lived on 'left overs'.
There was neither a routine nor a road map. You could have your lunch between the time range of 10:30 hrs to 16:30 hrs and dinner between time range of 17:30 hrs to 2:00 hrs. No questions asked.It was an accepted norm. It was a natural way of existence.The only issue that bothered us about the mess was the bill. Because every one felt that he did not eat enough in the mess to justify that payment. The auditor of the mess owed greater explaination than the defaulters.
Self analysis was a futile excercise. You are just what you are. You are taken as you are. Even if you try to put a facade and impress some crowd, you fall flat on your face and get exposed pretty much within a short span. Practically no one's interested in what you are as long as you join him in having a fag and share a bottle of beer.
You are not known by how well you performed in your last exam (and mind you lot of them perform well), rather how many times you have had drinks this season. Or were you able to befriend a girl from your class. Then even if you have had three ATKTs (back logs) in your cart you were still a hero. Career be damned. You can always recover.Those days you were judged by very different parameters. The rules of the game were different.
Of all the phases that i have encountered in my life and I am likely to encounter in future, this phase, which constitutes and represents four continous years of nonsense (as in things not making sense at all), stand out as the most enjoyable.
I would like to re-live those moments and days, when i was making no positive contribution to the society or my family for that matter. Atleast now when i am earning, i am sort of directly helping my family and my employer and may be indirectly helping my country's economy. Whatever !
I have enough money today to have beer everyday but I still miss those days when i needed to take loan from my friends to join my other drinking friends and have a blast. I miss calling my father for sparing some extra money, 'only for this month'.
I miss those songs that we sang, bereft of any inhibitions, the whole night, intoxicated more by the camaraderie than by the beer itself.When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths and when Jagjit Singh was the demi-God of every broken heart.
When smoking was not about making hole in your lungs or pocket, but a neccessary evil to have your rightful place under the Hostel sun. When a game of Flash could extend well into the early morning hours.
Those four years when vices were your friends and decency was delt with contempt. Those four years when you did not need to plan to meet your friends and could hijack one's privacy without giving a call, because privacy was a concept , alien to us.
Those years when our parents merely lived on hope rather than any concrete evidence that their son will somehow get on the career road. Those years when abusive language was not so much of a pariah, but the defacto lingo.
A phase when bordering insanity was not an exception, it was almost a virtue.
Those years when nothing worthwhile or fruitfull was achieved, yet life gave so many reasons to live for.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Mein hu traitor number 1
India has a history of worshipping the false gods , and thus it ain't surprising to me that people like Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan are accepted as 'heroes' in our country.
In any other country, they might not only have faced extreme humiliation but also extraordinary punishment. (after what has been found about them)
But in India,Salman Khan will be let off the hook and soon everything will be forgotten. Why that? He might even be lured by Laloos,Mulayams,Amar Singhs,Sharad Pawars to campaign for their party and who knows he may be offered an election ticket as well.
Don't be surprised if you hear a statement coming from him in next few days - "I am a muslim & hence the police is targtetting me".
Phots courtesy: rediff.com
If this sounds like a deja vu, google to what Mohd. Azaruddin said when he was grilled by CBI.
But Salman ain't the problem really. Neither are Salems & Dawoods. They are merely taking advantage of the soft laws available in India. With POTA & TADA gone, its celebration time for all the anti-nationals. There's basically no fear of law.
There's a snail-paced judicial process, than there are those frustrating laws and clauses one can fall back upon and off course the short-lived public memory which forgives & forgets the hardest of criminals.
If you happen to be a muslim or belong to any other minority community, you can always claim like Nadeem and Azharuddin that you have doubts about the prosecution and judicial process and question the fairness of your trial.
So basically you can get away with treason,murder,rape... anything as long as you can prove the police as guilty of targeting the "innocent" minority community.
I think you do not even have to prove. Just one small statement is enough for all the "secular" parties in the country to come to your rescue.
The leftists who have mastered the art of romanticising terrorism with their prompt justification of any anti-national activities, the media which keeps mum when it is expected to speak out, the blissfully ignorant middle class of the country, have according to me, to share the blame for the ills facing the country today.
When a terrorist is caught after months of painful investigation by the police & taken to courts, the praful bidwais & kuldeep nayars jump in to provide the moral support to him. He is provided with the neccessary resources to let go.
When 57 Hindus get killed in one shot and roasted alive, do not bother, the media will trivialise the whole situation by calling it an accident.
Atleast till few years back, people would take pride in carrying their patriotism on their sleeves. It was a matter of pride to love your motherland.
Now, thanks to the leftist media, patriotism is equated to communalism and nationalism is equated to fascism. Truly, patriotism is out of fashion now. You are guilty if you happen to love your nation.
Who knows, a day will come when being anti-indian will become fashionable. Or has that the day already come?
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Counter Naqvi,Frame by Frame
This article appeared in Indian Express (where else) on July 08 2005
http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=74019
The celebrated columnist, Sayeed Naqvi, has time & again made efforts to sanitise the ugly doings of the terrorists. Previously he linked the Godhra train killings to UP elections (as if to say that VHP was responsible for that ) and now he insists that BJP has something to do with the Ayodhya issue.
(Apparently BJP is desperate for issues, and so is killing innocents) .
These fifth columnists, i feel, are as dangerous as terrorists themselves,if not more. They provide the terrorists the neccessary moral support and at times even the required sanctity for their actions.
Read on.. what this smart ass has to say about Ayodhya....
Ayodhya, frame by frame
The terrorists got into the Tata Sumo at Akbarpur, which is near Kichaucha village, where lots of Muslims live. Since lots of Muslims live in Kichaucha they must be “fundamentalists”. At Faizabad, they abandoned the Sumo and hired a jeep driven by Rehan Alam who drove them past a temple — indeed they guided him to the temple — where they “prayed”. Muslim fundamentalists praying at a temple? Let us not forget they were pretending to be pilgrims. But where was the audience for the benefit of whom this drama was being enacted? The audience was Rehan Alam, the driver. But the driver was only to drive them up to a point, after which he was to be forced out of the jeep. After getting rid of the driver, the “terrorists” would enter the Ramjanmabhoomi campus.
If this indeed was the predetermined script, the driver would live to tell the story — as indeed he did — including the detour he was forced to make to visit the temple where the terrorists “prayed”, making them out to be Hindus.
Does not quite add up. Conspiracy theorists smack their lips like they have seen jam. To enter the compound the “terrorists” bang the jeep against railings protecting the sensitive area where the Babri masjid, the “disputed structure”, once stood, the spot now adorned by Ram Lala idols.
Mr. Naqvi, it is driver Rehan's statement that the (rightly called) terrorists (and so no need of quotes) went to the temple. If you are basing your theory on his statement, which by the way is changing every minute, you are not even close.
And it is entirely possible that these terrorist did go to the temple, which could be the place they would regroup themselves before one final assault.What better place can you have in Ayodhya, than a temple to make a last minute prep?
When the jeep is detonated to create a passage in the railing, one of the terrorists is blown to bits. Next day the dead man’s family recognise the watch-strap and chappals as belonging to Ramesh Pandey. What was Pandey doing with terrorists”? Pandey was some sort of freelance panda, a guide for pilgrims. Seeing a jeep full of “pilgrims” moving towards the holy place, he presumably trailed it, soliciting custom. One Mohammad Sharief, a part-time undertaker,buried the five terrorists. The day after the burial there was an official “leak” that all four were circumcised. They were separated from Pandey who was cremated.
Meanwhile, Rehan Alam has been detained in the Ramjanmabhoomi area. He is being taken to places on the route the “terrorists” travelled. His passport indicates he once worked in Dammam, an oil-rich region of Saudi Arabia. I suppose Saudi intelligence will furnish details on his contacts in Dammam.
In a country where people can be bought for peanuts, why does it surprise you Mr. Naqvi that a hindu called Ramesh Pandey accompanied them? And what does it prove anyways?
So the breakthrough on the identity of the terrorists officials claim to be in possession of, is that they were circumcised. For this detail, too, they have presumably fallen back on data furnished by Sharief, the undertaker.
Its ok if you go by driver Rehan's statement, but the police should not heed to the undertaker Sharief's statement. And nowhere does it come out that police "just" believed Shareif's statement. It just comes out that Sharief "also" told the same.
The media’s imagination fills in details officials cannot furnish. No official has yet given an indication of the identities of the “terrorists”. But every channel, including DD, has conducted ponderous discussions on Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish. Graphic routes were drawn from Nepal.
Please remember oh Sherlock Holmes that UP is governed by 'Mullah' Mulayam and his police. Mulayam will be the last person to let officials declare the attackers as muslims, even if he had the slightest doubts.
The winners in all of this confusion, have been the people of India who have kept their calm. TV screens were filled with baton charges, tear gas, the pushing of barricades — but only for a day. That the events at Ayodhya coincided with the last day of the RSS conclave in Surat is about as significant as Shankarsinh Vaghela’s allegation that it was a set-up job.
Yea smart ass ! Every job is a setup job done by Hindu fanatics. You also doctored a theory not too long ago when you "coincided" the Godhra train killings with one of VHP's conclave. Yea right ... Muslims are all so innocent.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who should be busy managing floods in the state, chipped in with his clarion call: the terrorist attack was as important as 9/11. That the embattled BJP president L.K. Advani referred to Modi’s speech in his protest meeting at Jantar Mantar may be a pointer to his quest for allies in the intra-BJP battles ahead.
Mr. Modi has managed Gujarat situation well. Thank you very much. That does not mean he cannot have access to news items and incidents happening around. And he is within his rights to acknowledge the brave police men, if that's what you meant by 'clarion call'.
And than he continues with his never ending blabber on his pet obsession ..... the Sangh Parivar
blah blah blah....
The BJP’s attitude towards the Ayodhya incident brings into sharp focus the party’s desperate search for an issue. Clearly,reverting to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement is not seen by the party as a political booster. The party has therefore confined itself to attacking the Centre and Mulayam Singh Yadav for security lapses. Advani alone has picked up the refrain,“Mandir wahin banega” (Ram temple will be built on the exact spot) but with a caveat. His ideological U-turn in Pakistan earned him the wrath of the RSS-VHP. Since the Ayodhya incident has brought the issue into focus (very temporarily, in my view),he has extended a hand to the conclave in Surat by pitching in for the temple.
Since a full blown temple movement appears now to be out of the question, he has left room for his new secular avatar. He says he will reach out to the Muslim ulema to let him build the temple “on the spot”. He probably imagines the Muslim ulema will entertain his plea because of the new garb he acquired in Pakistan. The flaw in this approach is that there are no Muslim ulema the 150 million Indian Muslims listen to, except in bits and pieces, here and there. The good news may be that the Muslim community may, through repeated trial and error, have moved ahead of communal politics.
Oh my Gawd.... snooooze....
http://iecolumnists.expressindia.com/full_column.php?content_id=74019
The celebrated columnist, Sayeed Naqvi, has time & again made efforts to sanitise the ugly doings of the terrorists. Previously he linked the Godhra train killings to UP elections (as if to say that VHP was responsible for that ) and now he insists that BJP has something to do with the Ayodhya issue.
(Apparently BJP is desperate for issues, and so is killing innocents) .
These fifth columnists, i feel, are as dangerous as terrorists themselves,if not more. They provide the terrorists the neccessary moral support and at times even the required sanctity for their actions.
Read on.. what this smart ass has to say about Ayodhya....
Ayodhya, frame by frame
The terrorists got into the Tata Sumo at Akbarpur, which is near Kichaucha village, where lots of Muslims live. Since lots of Muslims live in Kichaucha they must be “fundamentalists”. At Faizabad, they abandoned the Sumo and hired a jeep driven by Rehan Alam who drove them past a temple — indeed they guided him to the temple — where they “prayed”. Muslim fundamentalists praying at a temple? Let us not forget they were pretending to be pilgrims. But where was the audience for the benefit of whom this drama was being enacted? The audience was Rehan Alam, the driver. But the driver was only to drive them up to a point, after which he was to be forced out of the jeep. After getting rid of the driver, the “terrorists” would enter the Ramjanmabhoomi campus.
If this indeed was the predetermined script, the driver would live to tell the story — as indeed he did — including the detour he was forced to make to visit the temple where the terrorists “prayed”, making them out to be Hindus.
Does not quite add up. Conspiracy theorists smack their lips like they have seen jam. To enter the compound the “terrorists” bang the jeep against railings protecting the sensitive area where the Babri masjid, the “disputed structure”, once stood, the spot now adorned by Ram Lala idols.
Mr. Naqvi, it is driver Rehan's statement that the (rightly called) terrorists (and so no need of quotes) went to the temple. If you are basing your theory on his statement, which by the way is changing every minute, you are not even close.
And it is entirely possible that these terrorist did go to the temple, which could be the place they would regroup themselves before one final assault.What better place can you have in Ayodhya, than a temple to make a last minute prep?
When the jeep is detonated to create a passage in the railing, one of the terrorists is blown to bits. Next day the dead man’s family recognise the watch-strap and chappals as belonging to Ramesh Pandey. What was Pandey doing with terrorists”? Pandey was some sort of freelance panda, a guide for pilgrims. Seeing a jeep full of “pilgrims” moving towards the holy place, he presumably trailed it, soliciting custom. One Mohammad Sharief, a part-time undertaker,buried the five terrorists. The day after the burial there was an official “leak” that all four were circumcised. They were separated from Pandey who was cremated.
Meanwhile, Rehan Alam has been detained in the Ramjanmabhoomi area. He is being taken to places on the route the “terrorists” travelled. His passport indicates he once worked in Dammam, an oil-rich region of Saudi Arabia. I suppose Saudi intelligence will furnish details on his contacts in Dammam.
In a country where people can be bought for peanuts, why does it surprise you Mr. Naqvi that a hindu called Ramesh Pandey accompanied them? And what does it prove anyways?
So the breakthrough on the identity of the terrorists officials claim to be in possession of, is that they were circumcised. For this detail, too, they have presumably fallen back on data furnished by Sharief, the undertaker.
Its ok if you go by driver Rehan's statement, but the police should not heed to the undertaker Sharief's statement. And nowhere does it come out that police "just" believed Shareif's statement. It just comes out that Sharief "also" told the same.
The media’s imagination fills in details officials cannot furnish. No official has yet given an indication of the identities of the “terrorists”. But every channel, including DD, has conducted ponderous discussions on Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish. Graphic routes were drawn from Nepal.
Please remember oh Sherlock Holmes that UP is governed by 'Mullah' Mulayam and his police. Mulayam will be the last person to let officials declare the attackers as muslims, even if he had the slightest doubts.
The winners in all of this confusion, have been the people of India who have kept their calm. TV screens were filled with baton charges, tear gas, the pushing of barricades — but only for a day. That the events at Ayodhya coincided with the last day of the RSS conclave in Surat is about as significant as Shankarsinh Vaghela’s allegation that it was a set-up job.
Yea smart ass ! Every job is a setup job done by Hindu fanatics. You also doctored a theory not too long ago when you "coincided" the Godhra train killings with one of VHP's conclave. Yea right ... Muslims are all so innocent.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who should be busy managing floods in the state, chipped in with his clarion call: the terrorist attack was as important as 9/11. That the embattled BJP president L.K. Advani referred to Modi’s speech in his protest meeting at Jantar Mantar may be a pointer to his quest for allies in the intra-BJP battles ahead.
Mr. Modi has managed Gujarat situation well. Thank you very much. That does not mean he cannot have access to news items and incidents happening around. And he is within his rights to acknowledge the brave police men, if that's what you meant by 'clarion call'.
And than he continues with his never ending blabber on his pet obsession ..... the Sangh Parivar
blah blah blah....
The BJP’s attitude towards the Ayodhya incident brings into sharp focus the party’s desperate search for an issue. Clearly,reverting to the Ram Janmabhoomi movement is not seen by the party as a political booster. The party has therefore confined itself to attacking the Centre and Mulayam Singh Yadav for security lapses. Advani alone has picked up the refrain,“Mandir wahin banega” (Ram temple will be built on the exact spot) but with a caveat. His ideological U-turn in Pakistan earned him the wrath of the RSS-VHP. Since the Ayodhya incident has brought the issue into focus (very temporarily, in my view),he has extended a hand to the conclave in Surat by pitching in for the temple.
Since a full blown temple movement appears now to be out of the question, he has left room for his new secular avatar. He says he will reach out to the Muslim ulema to let him build the temple “on the spot”. He probably imagines the Muslim ulema will entertain his plea because of the new garb he acquired in Pakistan. The flaw in this approach is that there are no Muslim ulema the 150 million Indian Muslims listen to, except in bits and pieces, here and there. The good news may be that the Muslim community may, through repeated trial and error, have moved ahead of communal politics.
Oh my Gawd.... snooooze....
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
And the award goes to..
And the award goes to the blatantly partisan jury. Saif Ali Khan (??) got the national award for his role in the movie - dig this - Hum Tum !!.
Now i know the younger nawab has come a long way from his earlier non-descript roles in Bollywood. But National Award ? You must be kidding me.
It seems a little far-fetched for someone like Saif Ali Khan to get a prestigious award like this. Agreed that he has done well in cameo roles earlier, but seldom has he shown promise in carrying the entire movie alone.
In one of my earlier posts i had mentioned how the entire media was up in arms when Raveena Tandon was awarded in 2001 in the Best Actress category.
The jury was charged for being partisan,un-professional and even political.
Now with Sharmila Tagore on the Censor Board and her son getting an award for a performance that most would describe just about average, the hypocrites in the media are conviniently dozing off in their arm chairs.
What a farce these awards are becoming each passing year ?
And it is not helping that the media who is expected to expose these things in the system is shamelessly pro-establishment.
Monday, July 11, 2005
We need more KPS Gills
7/7/05.London Bombed.More than 50 people killed.
China must be smiling today. As the west engages itself in a frustrating battle against these hit-and-run cowards (read jihadis), China has all the reasons to smile.For the simple fact that China knows how to fight these terrorists & still remain out of focus.
While the worlds big & great democracies are looking for a solution to fight this monster (called terrorism), the Chinese goverment knows exactly how to deal with this menace. The Chinese solution is simple. Crush the terror before it raises its head. And the best part is the Chinese authorities are never bothered of the word 'accountability' - of their actions.
They have no worries of reasoning with the'human rights' experts or the 'liberal press' about any of their actions.They take action & thats it.
Lets take a hypothetical case. Lets say on a busy day of Shanghai, 6 bombs blasted on the metro rails.What would have been the turn of events ?
I will put my money on this.
The Govt controlled media would have reported that some miscreants tried to create terror in Shanghai.Casualties would have been misreported & and some statement would have been official released for the sake of formality.Period.
Beyond that pure speculation would have taken over, specially from the western observers.
But thats just a part of the story. What China would have done behind the scene is the real story. It would have created havoc in the Muslim majority region, unleashing its army on the hapless muslims & killed atleast 10 times more people.
And the best part is that this action of the chinese authorities would never have got reported. Not even in the Muslim world.
So no worry of backlash from Islamic forces. No worry of any debates from the liberal press & media. No worry for votes & banks.
Just simple tit-for-tat & its all over.
Sometimes this makes me wonder, can terrorism be fought in a democratic society? Can terrorism be fought when we have people like Kuldeep Nayar & Praful Bidwai in India & lets say their lesser cousins Michael Moore & Bill Maher in USA.
(Though i feel Michael Moore & Bill Maher are much more patriotic & nationalists than the Indian Idiots that i mentioned).
Democracy has its own limitations. And mind you their are many. I for one feel that 'Democracy is a phenomenon where the majority idiots decide the fate of the minority, even if minority is correct'.And nothing exemplifies this more than in India.
When a single family of little or no talent can rule a foolish population for over four decades,you know its democracy at work & you know that it is in India.
Osama is a hero in not only Pakistan & Arab world (where it is expected) but also in some muslim majority regions of the country (specially in some districts of Bihar,UP,Assam etc).Dawood Ibrahim is a hero in his native village in Maharashtra & surrounding areas.
On the other hand Narendra Modi is the biggest villain.
(By the Way, Gujarat under Modi has left the rest of the country far behind in economics.Apparently the Gujarat government is targetting
15% GDP this year. Something unheard of since Nehru coined 'Hindu rate of growth')
This is the problem with democracy. When majority decides that Osama is hero, he is hero & when majority decides Modi is villain,well,he's a villain. However foolish the majority is, the other half (or less) has to accept this.
But than what is the next best thing after democracy? Even if i gave the Chinese example, i would hate to have a Communist regime.
In democracy you atleast live with hope that things will someday change for the better. With Communism, you just loose everything, including hope.
So how does the democratic world, which thinks in terms of justice for all, freedom for all, liberty for all deal with terrorism within its framework?
Given that democracy allows the terrorist,if at all he's caught, equal rights to defend himself in court of law, how does the democracy really deal with this?
Are these Islamic terrorist who in effect are fighting the democracies of the world not taking the advantage of the same thing that democracy offers, ie, freedom ?
When democracy was conceptualised (in roman era) , there were only external threats. The internal threats were limited to clashes between groups, social uprisings etc. But no one could have imagined this kind of a threat which in real sense is external, but is played in one's own land, might come someday knocking at democracy's doors.
9/11 or for that matter 7/7 were both externally carried out operations, except that they were carried within the boundaries of country under attack.
Its a war of a different kind. And frankly none of the big nations (including USA,Russia,India etc) have an answer.All that USA could do in response to 9/11, under frustration,is send its army to Iraq, and create a bigger problem for itself.
(Now its clueless over the exit road).
How do you take the bull by the horns when the bull can appear from anywhere & any number of times? For the democracies fighting this battle (of terrorism) there's no single enemy or one target or one villian.There are several enemies. Within & outside.The enemies could be any one.
It could be the columnists of the free press, who often justify & sanitize the actions of the terrorists. It could be the politicians who do not want to hurt their votebanks.It could be the general public who do no want to fight the terror or even raise their voices.
There are lot of enemies the democracy has to fight. Not one.
I do not know a single Ismalic nation today which is democratic. In some sense Islam & Democracy are self contradictory.And in some ways Osama & his cohorts are fighting the very concept of Democracy & free world. A fight that he shares with his marxist friends.
One of the biggest challenges before the 'civilised' world in these coming years would be to manufacture a way to fight terrorism within the framework of democracy.
As of today the democracies can only come up with knee-jerk reactions to these attacks. There are no road maps, no sustained policies.Only bark, no bite. Fighting terrorism seems to be a herculan task for most countries sans China.
Afterall KPS Gill did root out terror from Punjab, showing his middle finger to all democratic norms.
China must be smiling today. As the west engages itself in a frustrating battle against these hit-and-run cowards (read jihadis), China has all the reasons to smile.For the simple fact that China knows how to fight these terrorists & still remain out of focus.
While the worlds big & great democracies are looking for a solution to fight this monster (called terrorism), the Chinese goverment knows exactly how to deal with this menace. The Chinese solution is simple. Crush the terror before it raises its head. And the best part is the Chinese authorities are never bothered of the word 'accountability' - of their actions.
They have no worries of reasoning with the'human rights' experts or the 'liberal press' about any of their actions.They take action & thats it.
Lets take a hypothetical case. Lets say on a busy day of Shanghai, 6 bombs blasted on the metro rails.What would have been the turn of events ?
I will put my money on this.
The Govt controlled media would have reported that some miscreants tried to create terror in Shanghai.Casualties would have been misreported & and some statement would have been official released for the sake of formality.Period.
Beyond that pure speculation would have taken over, specially from the western observers.
But thats just a part of the story. What China would have done behind the scene is the real story. It would have created havoc in the Muslim majority region, unleashing its army on the hapless muslims & killed atleast 10 times more people.
And the best part is that this action of the chinese authorities would never have got reported. Not even in the Muslim world.
So no worry of backlash from Islamic forces. No worry of any debates from the liberal press & media. No worry for votes & banks.
Just simple tit-for-tat & its all over.
Sometimes this makes me wonder, can terrorism be fought in a democratic society? Can terrorism be fought when we have people like Kuldeep Nayar & Praful Bidwai in India & lets say their lesser cousins Michael Moore & Bill Maher in USA.
(Though i feel Michael Moore & Bill Maher are much more patriotic & nationalists than the Indian Idiots that i mentioned).
Democracy has its own limitations. And mind you their are many. I for one feel that 'Democracy is a phenomenon where the majority idiots decide the fate of the minority, even if minority is correct'.And nothing exemplifies this more than in India.
When a single family of little or no talent can rule a foolish population for over four decades,you know its democracy at work & you know that it is in India.
Osama is a hero in not only Pakistan & Arab world (where it is expected) but also in some muslim majority regions of the country (specially in some districts of Bihar,UP,Assam etc).Dawood Ibrahim is a hero in his native village in Maharashtra & surrounding areas.
On the other hand Narendra Modi is the biggest villain.
(By the Way, Gujarat under Modi has left the rest of the country far behind in economics.Apparently the Gujarat government is targetting
15% GDP this year. Something unheard of since Nehru coined 'Hindu rate of growth')
This is the problem with democracy. When majority decides that Osama is hero, he is hero & when majority decides Modi is villain,well,he's a villain. However foolish the majority is, the other half (or less) has to accept this.
But than what is the next best thing after democracy? Even if i gave the Chinese example, i would hate to have a Communist regime.
In democracy you atleast live with hope that things will someday change for the better. With Communism, you just loose everything, including hope.
So how does the democratic world, which thinks in terms of justice for all, freedom for all, liberty for all deal with terrorism within its framework?
Given that democracy allows the terrorist,if at all he's caught, equal rights to defend himself in court of law, how does the democracy really deal with this?
Are these Islamic terrorist who in effect are fighting the democracies of the world not taking the advantage of the same thing that democracy offers, ie, freedom ?
When democracy was conceptualised (in roman era) , there were only external threats. The internal threats were limited to clashes between groups, social uprisings etc. But no one could have imagined this kind of a threat which in real sense is external, but is played in one's own land, might come someday knocking at democracy's doors.
9/11 or for that matter 7/7 were both externally carried out operations, except that they were carried within the boundaries of country under attack.
Its a war of a different kind. And frankly none of the big nations (including USA,Russia,India etc) have an answer.All that USA could do in response to 9/11, under frustration,is send its army to Iraq, and create a bigger problem for itself.
(Now its clueless over the exit road).
How do you take the bull by the horns when the bull can appear from anywhere & any number of times? For the democracies fighting this battle (of terrorism) there's no single enemy or one target or one villian.There are several enemies. Within & outside.The enemies could be any one.
It could be the columnists of the free press, who often justify & sanitize the actions of the terrorists. It could be the politicians who do not want to hurt their votebanks.It could be the general public who do no want to fight the terror or even raise their voices.
There are lot of enemies the democracy has to fight. Not one.
I do not know a single Ismalic nation today which is democratic. In some sense Islam & Democracy are self contradictory.And in some ways Osama & his cohorts are fighting the very concept of Democracy & free world. A fight that he shares with his marxist friends.
One of the biggest challenges before the 'civilised' world in these coming years would be to manufacture a way to fight terrorism within the framework of democracy.
As of today the democracies can only come up with knee-jerk reactions to these attacks. There are no road maps, no sustained policies.Only bark, no bite. Fighting terrorism seems to be a herculan task for most countries sans China.
Afterall KPS Gill did root out terror from Punjab, showing his middle finger to all democratic norms.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Simply True!
Coming from a Left wing newspaper like Indian Express surprisingly; this piece of artice is a simple but effective articulation of what a devasting effect Indira Gandhi's rule had on Indian economy.
The article rightly titled 'Turning the Clock Back' has damned the old school of economic thought & makes a strong case of amending the medivial laws.
Three cheers to Ila Patnaik for being so upfront.
I particularly like her demand to privatise all PSU banks. Its a different issue all together that the Communists who are currently remote controlling poor Manmohan Singh's government, would actually be seeking to reverse this instead. They would want private banks to be nationalised. Beware Mr. Kamat; ICICI Bank may soon loose its sheen.
Ila Patnaik,
Indian Express-July 7th 2005.
Turn the clock back
To the time before immense economic power was usurped by the state
The agenda for economic reforms in India today consists of turning the clock back to 1969. Economic policy of the 1969-1976 period consisted of enormous powers being usurped by the state. From 1969, Indira Gandhi turned left seeking political support, and India witnessed an unprecedented increase in control raj. Economic enterprise and private initiative were sharply restricted. Most of the policies of the period are still with us.
Small scale industry reservation: in 1969, the policy of explicitly reserving certain items for production by small companies was created. Indian industry lost out enormously because of being unable to harness economies of scale. Consumers were the biggest losers. India missed the bus of the enormous rise in exports, which was harnessed by East Asia, in these labour-intensive items. While the list of reserved items has become shorter, what is really needed is a complete repeal of the Act which gives the government such intrusive powers
Industrial Disputes Act (IDA): factories with over 1000 workers used to require government permission for layoffs. The size threshold was amended in 1976 to 300. In 1982, when Indira Gandhi was back in power, this was further reduced to 100. This is now one of the most damaging elements of Indian law about companies.
Bibek Debroy, Director of Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, has drawn attention to Chapter V-B which was introduced into the IDA in 1976. The provisions Chapter V-B/Sections 25-K, 25-L, 25-M, 25-N and 25-0 apply to industrial establishments that require prior permission of the appropriate government before layoffs, retrenchment and closure. Most problems connected with the Industrial Disputes Act arise, according to Debroy, from Chapter V-B, since the government becomes a third party to the dispute even if the employee is satisfied with the severance package. These sections of the Act need to be considered along with Section 2-A, which makes any dispute between an employer and an individual workman an industrial dispute regardless of the fact that no other workman nor any trade union is a party to the dispute.
However, the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) clearly states that the IDA will not be reformed. Thus, it is likely that progress on this front can only come about after the UPA government goes.
FERA: draconian currency controls and restrictions on foreign investment came about when the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) was passed in 1973. While FERA has been supposedly replaced by a “more liberal” FEMA, the mentality of controls is very much there in FEMA as well. No modern market economy in the world has a law like FEMA. An army of 7,286 babus at RBI continue to operate hundreds of rules that meddle with India’s engagement with the world.
Urban land ceilings: on February 17, 1976 the Urban Land Ceiling Act was passed. It covered 73 towns and cities and imposed a ceiling of 500 to 2000 square metres on urban land holdings. It constitutes a major distortion of the urban land market. Incidentally, this was a state subject, but the Constitution allows Parliament to pass a bill if more than two states agree, and this path was chosen during the emergency.
MRTP: the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Bill was proposed in 1967. It became an act and came into force from June 1, 1970. The MRTP Act, which gave huge powers to the government, sought to check the expansion of large industrial houses with assets over Rs 1 crore in businesses where their share in the market exceeded 33 per cent. The MRTP was mercifully scrapped; it was replaced by the Competition Act in 2002.
Bank nationalisation: Indira Gandhi nationalised all big banks. There is now a considerable consensus amongst economists that the government has no business to be in commercial banking. However, the legacy of this action is still with us.
In these columns, Shekhar Gupta proposed a hypothesis (‘Emergency’s Reality Czech’, IE, June 25): when we think of the emergency our dark memories are mostly about the denial of political freedom. We tend not to notice what we lost of our economic freedom. While there was an uproar among politicians- judiciary-media, whose freedoms were denied, no such uproar took place on the loss of economic freedom.
We keenly notice that there was an effort to grab power and make India into a communist-style state in the political sphere, and we resent that. But we tend not to notice that there was an equally damaging effort to grab power, to make India into a communist-style state in the economic sphere. We tend to not notice the loss of political freedom that comes from a government that has a big say in the economy.
In the political sphere, every element of the emergency has been reversed. Comparable progress has not taken place in bringing back economic freedom. Apart from the repeal of the MRTP Act, all the other draconian acts are still in force. The Constitution was amended by Indira Gandhi’s rubberstamp Parliament to call India a “socialist” republic, and that word still stands.
The most striking illustration of the lack of opposition to the principle of state usurping economic power is the acceptance of bank nationalisation. Imagine if tommorow morning you woke up to headlines that India’s major private sector banks had been nationalised using a midnight ordinance. This is what happened on July 19, 1969. At one stroke, the ordinance gave the government control over a big chunk of the savings of the Indian people.
What has changed since the days when banks were private is that instead of industry, today the government is the main borrower from these banks. More than half of the deposits in PSU banks go to the government to fund its deficits. Earlier, the private owners of banks used to steal from them. Now, there is a new owner of the banks — the government — which steals from them. If the clock is to be turned back, PSU banks must be privatised.
If India is to become a fast growing economy, utilising the powerful forces that freedom of enterprise unleashes, the clock must be first turned back to the pre-Indira Gandhi policies, before immense economic power was usurped by the state.
The article rightly titled 'Turning the Clock Back' has damned the old school of economic thought & makes a strong case of amending the medivial laws.
Three cheers to Ila Patnaik for being so upfront.
I particularly like her demand to privatise all PSU banks. Its a different issue all together that the Communists who are currently remote controlling poor Manmohan Singh's government, would actually be seeking to reverse this instead. They would want private banks to be nationalised. Beware Mr. Kamat; ICICI Bank may soon loose its sheen.
Ila Patnaik,
Indian Express-July 7th 2005.
Turn the clock back
To the time before immense economic power was usurped by the state
The agenda for economic reforms in India today consists of turning the clock back to 1969. Economic policy of the 1969-1976 period consisted of enormous powers being usurped by the state. From 1969, Indira Gandhi turned left seeking political support, and India witnessed an unprecedented increase in control raj. Economic enterprise and private initiative were sharply restricted. Most of the policies of the period are still with us.
Small scale industry reservation: in 1969, the policy of explicitly reserving certain items for production by small companies was created. Indian industry lost out enormously because of being unable to harness economies of scale. Consumers were the biggest losers. India missed the bus of the enormous rise in exports, which was harnessed by East Asia, in these labour-intensive items. While the list of reserved items has become shorter, what is really needed is a complete repeal of the Act which gives the government such intrusive powers
Industrial Disputes Act (IDA): factories with over 1000 workers used to require government permission for layoffs. The size threshold was amended in 1976 to 300. In 1982, when Indira Gandhi was back in power, this was further reduced to 100. This is now one of the most damaging elements of Indian law about companies.
Bibek Debroy, Director of Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, has drawn attention to Chapter V-B which was introduced into the IDA in 1976. The provisions Chapter V-B/Sections 25-K, 25-L, 25-M, 25-N and 25-0 apply to industrial establishments that require prior permission of the appropriate government before layoffs, retrenchment and closure. Most problems connected with the Industrial Disputes Act arise, according to Debroy, from Chapter V-B, since the government becomes a third party to the dispute even if the employee is satisfied with the severance package. These sections of the Act need to be considered along with Section 2-A, which makes any dispute between an employer and an individual workman an industrial dispute regardless of the fact that no other workman nor any trade union is a party to the dispute.
However, the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) clearly states that the IDA will not be reformed. Thus, it is likely that progress on this front can only come about after the UPA government goes.
FERA: draconian currency controls and restrictions on foreign investment came about when the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) was passed in 1973. While FERA has been supposedly replaced by a “more liberal” FEMA, the mentality of controls is very much there in FEMA as well. No modern market economy in the world has a law like FEMA. An army of 7,286 babus at RBI continue to operate hundreds of rules that meddle with India’s engagement with the world.
Urban land ceilings: on February 17, 1976 the Urban Land Ceiling Act was passed. It covered 73 towns and cities and imposed a ceiling of 500 to 2000 square metres on urban land holdings. It constitutes a major distortion of the urban land market. Incidentally, this was a state subject, but the Constitution allows Parliament to pass a bill if more than two states agree, and this path was chosen during the emergency.
MRTP: the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Bill was proposed in 1967. It became an act and came into force from June 1, 1970. The MRTP Act, which gave huge powers to the government, sought to check the expansion of large industrial houses with assets over Rs 1 crore in businesses where their share in the market exceeded 33 per cent. The MRTP was mercifully scrapped; it was replaced by the Competition Act in 2002.
Bank nationalisation: Indira Gandhi nationalised all big banks. There is now a considerable consensus amongst economists that the government has no business to be in commercial banking. However, the legacy of this action is still with us.
In these columns, Shekhar Gupta proposed a hypothesis (‘Emergency’s Reality Czech’, IE, June 25): when we think of the emergency our dark memories are mostly about the denial of political freedom. We tend not to notice what we lost of our economic freedom. While there was an uproar among politicians- judiciary-media, whose freedoms were denied, no such uproar took place on the loss of economic freedom.
We keenly notice that there was an effort to grab power and make India into a communist-style state in the political sphere, and we resent that. But we tend not to notice that there was an equally damaging effort to grab power, to make India into a communist-style state in the economic sphere. We tend to not notice the loss of political freedom that comes from a government that has a big say in the economy.
In the political sphere, every element of the emergency has been reversed. Comparable progress has not taken place in bringing back economic freedom. Apart from the repeal of the MRTP Act, all the other draconian acts are still in force. The Constitution was amended by Indira Gandhi’s rubberstamp Parliament to call India a “socialist” republic, and that word still stands.
The most striking illustration of the lack of opposition to the principle of state usurping economic power is the acceptance of bank nationalisation. Imagine if tommorow morning you woke up to headlines that India’s major private sector banks had been nationalised using a midnight ordinance. This is what happened on July 19, 1969. At one stroke, the ordinance gave the government control over a big chunk of the savings of the Indian people.
What has changed since the days when banks were private is that instead of industry, today the government is the main borrower from these banks. More than half of the deposits in PSU banks go to the government to fund its deficits. Earlier, the private owners of banks used to steal from them. Now, there is a new owner of the banks — the government — which steals from them. If the clock is to be turned back, PSU banks must be privatised.
If India is to become a fast growing economy, utilising the powerful forces that freedom of enterprise unleashes, the clock must be first turned back to the pre-Indira Gandhi policies, before immense economic power was usurped by the state.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Of Camping,Canoeing & Grilling
You do not want your wife to drive the canoe from the back. This was the big lesson i learnt over the long weekend's 'Canoeing’ that we did over the Current river :)
Vaidehi's frantic calls of "help,help" & the unplanned toppling of our canoe over the fast current of the downstream water was one the highlights of our camping; this weekend.
(For the records, the river was averaging just 3 feet in depth)
Camping was something me & Deepak were planning since some time now. It was long over due. It was only a matter of time before we actually did that and 4th of July's long weekend, i would say, came at an opportune time.
Luckily Ranjeet & Deepak took the lead of planning the logistics for the long weekend as i cooled my self sitting on the fence & chipping in some unwanted & unsolicitated suggestions, that went unheeded.(Luckily again ;-))
The Ozark’s, some 3 hours from Deepak's home town St.Louis is MEANT to be a camping place. Everything about that region is all about camping. The surrounding mountains, the thick forest envelope,the NOT-SO-DEEP river;and off course the winding roads that lead to that place (and also at times lead to dizzy nausea), everything calls for one word-
CAMPING.
To be honest, all of us were new to this idea of camping.We were novices who were on a discovery trip to the whole new world of camping.
As the Bloomies, Ranjeet,Poonam,Vaidehi & myself embarked on this adventurous journey in our rented Dodge Caravan that friday,I am sure everyone carried a different idea about this camping trip. Most of our knowledge, if i may add, came from what we had seen in movies & television or other such medium. Whatever reading we did on the internet gave us scant idea of what was in store, as we kept guessing.
The sheer romanticism attached with grilling in open area & sleeping in a tent at night were the two most motivating factors for me, personally, to go full throttle on camping. I am not sure about others.
As we reached St.Louis at Richa's & Deepak's place it was already 20:30 hrs.And the Kapurs were all set to welcome us.
Their front door was decorated with a piece of paper and on that was written, "5-Star Hotel". :)
Well the welcome certainly was 5-Star.
Richa welcomed us with red flowers (we have kept them as souvenirs) & set the ball rolling for the evening.
There were still a couple of things remaining to get & we had Kapil to pick up from his hotel room.
By the time we picked up Kapil from his room & came back with raw chicken pieces from Schnuck's it was well past 23:00 hrs and also well past the nerves of our better halves.
Our better halves were actually expecting us to come back in, get this, ....
HALF-AN-HOUR !!!
Vaidehi & Richa (thankfully) resisted themselves from making a scene as we entered the door, 2 hours a little too late.
Every one settled down for a round of delicious meals prepared by our hosts for the evening.
A potential tinker box was thus avoided from being flared up.
(Burp !!)
Even while having dinner there was one thing on every one's mind. 'St.Louis "ka arch - dikhta hai kee dikhtee hai" ?'**
Ranjeet wouldn't budge & stuck with his - "dikhtee hai"- statement as we fought over the potential loopholes in Hindi language.
(Its a different matter altogether that I am the last person qualified to pass judgment on other's Hindi.I was once snubbed by one of my north Indian friend for saying -"Mujhe thandi baj rahi hai". He said "thandi bajti nahi,lagti hai").
Hindi language became the innocent victim of a no-holds-barred debate on its use as everyone joined the cacophony thrown open by one inappropriate statement about St.Louis's Arch.
Before we realised it was already 00:30 & it was now snore time.Every one's sleeping places were match-fixed in advance by Richa (thankfully again) and we had a blissful sleep that night.
Next morning was the D-Day as every one geared up for the much promised excitement. We had a delicious egg-bhurji (special thanks to Poonam) for breakfast & than we were all ready by 9:30 (whoa !!!).
After a brief stop for Gas & some ice cubes we headed straight for the Ozark's.
When 7 people travel in one Car, as a rule its the time for Antakshari. I guess it’s an unwritten law for all desis.So also it was for us. As Antakshari started to warm up, i was given strict instructions from the back (from Vaidehi) to ENJOY it.
I HAD to enjoy every moment, come what may.
Even some sad songs. Some songs that i just hate. Some songs that i just cannot sing.
Some songs that i do not consider worth listening, forget singing.The key word was "Enjoyment'.
'Thy spirit shall not sag.Come what may, thou shall enjoy', was the mantra of the day.
I really can't help it. But some songs i just do not like. I just can't sing them. Period.
Enjoying under the trembling terror, i found solace in the navigator's seat as i used the weapon of "showing directions" to Deepak,to avoid singing some insipid songs.
'Can i NOT enjoy this song, please?"; i just wanted to ask this question but failed to gather the required strength & guts.
Anyways,one wrong turn & one missed direction later we finally reached our destination. The Jason Place Campground. It took us 3 hrs, roughly. (It was not my fault, just for the records)
The road (MO-19) to the camp ground was breath-taking, i must add.
We unloaded all the stuff after reaching the place & the girls took up the challenge of putting up their tent on their own.As it turned out, it was not the most difficult task of the century as girls managed to put the tent up in almost the same time.
Bravo !!!
We settled down for some tit bits as beer cans, bread, sodas came out in open. The Grand Caravan was so stuffed that I almost felt as if it was THE Car meant for camping.
We started acquainting & educating ourselves with our camping & its surrounding area. There were other camp groups who had already settled in their designated camps.
There was a small swimming pool nearby, where, get this, swimming was NOT allowed.
The camping area was adequately reinforced with Restrooms & coin operated Shower rooms.
We had a brief stint in the 'swimming' pool before getting down to work on the grills. We had (more than) sufficient charcoal as Deepak & the team began preparing for the much awaited tandoori chicken on the grill.
I feel the pre-requisite for any camping ground is the ability to use primitive tools to get your work around. So instead of normal cooking gas, you have the grill.
And for the lack of light or electricity, well, you have to make up with bonfire.
Richa, did in between, come up with the fantastic idea of fixing a torch on the tree trunk & direct its light strategically.
And guess what, we actually executed that & got some success.
(That torch was later royally ignored & wax candles took over)
The Grill & Bonfire both were on fire as we began preparing for the supper. With experience we learnt the art of making the chicken more tasty as the second round of chicken tandoori came out much tastier & juicy.
Vaidehi,Deepak,Ranjeet,Poonam were the front runners in getting the chicken right.
I was criticised and rightly so, by most, for not being involved in most of the hard work. In my defense i can come up with only one justification.. 'Too many cooks.. spoil the broth...
And in this case it was not even the broth. It was Chicken after all. And we could not afford to get it wrong.So by not helping, I was in a way, helping the greater cause.
(chuckle,chuckle,wink....)
By the time the candles on the table burnt out totally, we had the real taste of camping.
A freshly grilled chicken & a bonfire to complement the mood.
We had a small round of dumb-charades before we realised that the sky was looking ravishing that day.
The clear open sky with more stars twinkling than ever seen by us, set the perfect mood for a good night's sleep.
Deepak,Ranjeet & Kapil quickly booked their places in the tent as I went to the restroom for one last journey before sleep.
When i came back, i had lost the prime seats.I had to pay the penalty for making it late to the arena.
Our tent was just about sufficient for 4 men. But we had a good,sound sleep.
Next day morning i woke up the earliest as I had (involuntarily) taken up the ownership of making tea for everyone.
But not before i managed to disturb my enemy’s sleep, who had hijacked the prime locations, of the tent.
I ensured by my constant fidgeting of the tent zip, that everyone's sleep was disturbed. I acquired some measure of success in doing that.
Making tea was not all that simple. The kettle that was brought for making the tea was not particularly smooth to operate.There was a tact involved in putting the milk in the small opening available. Apart from that, well you guessed it, there
was some water to be added. All in all, it was an art that required precision & patience. (chuckle,chuckle,chukle....:))) )
The tea in the end came out good. We had a small breakfast before we realised that we need to move on for our next destination.
Canoeing.
By 12:00 noon we wrapped up all the stuff on the camp ground & some how dumped everything in the Caravan.
Before that i had some rough time in the coin operated shower. The shower was meant to work for 2 mins for every 25 cents that we put in the slot provided. Now it so happened that Kapil who was taking shower in the adjacent room shouted from his lungs that his shower was working even after 2 mins. For no rhyme or reason i got emboldened & took the risk of applying soap on my face just seconds before my allotted 2 mins. :((
You guessed it. I was in trouble now. My shower stopped exactly at the 2 mins mark
& i was in a precarious position with soap all over my face. I could neither open my eyes nor see the slot for 25 cents.I wished i was deaf when Kapil had spoken those divine words. I struggled for full 5 mins before i could finally figure out the position of the slot.
Bathing was never so difficult.
As we reached the canoeing area at the head of the downstream flow, we were joined by a ruckus group of people who filled most seats of the bus that took us to the exact location.
The bus driver who was also the one who gave us the canoes had one hell of a physique. He was carrying those canoes as if they were empty boxes.
He lined them along the river front as each group picked their canoes & choppers.
Just as i was about to enter my boat, a girl from a group of bikini clad girls requested me to take their snap.I couldn't believe my luck. Without a blink i accepted to help them out. Ignoring Vaidehi's eyes, for whom the moment was not lost, I quickly took a snap & hoped they will ask a favour again. They did not.
I moved in with lightning speed in the direction of our canoe (as if nothing had occurred) and Me & Vaidehi found ourselves in a red canoe & started moving along the flowing water.
And rest as they say is, history. We bumped & toppled & struggled to get the
rhythm right as the rest of the teams moved forward.
We were blocked a number of times by a bigger group who became bottle necks from time to time specially at the narrow areas of the river stream.
In the end it almost became a mind game of how to squeeze our ways out from those huge groups & move forward.
As we reached the half way mark of the 5 miles long flow, we were already parched & thirsty. We had woefully, not carried sufficient stock of water & liquid inspite of repeated warnings from Kapil. I hoped i had heeded him this time instead of the time i was in the shower :)
The entire stream of the Current river was lined with think jungle on both sides. It was a fantastic site. The water looked green & at times you could see the pebbles in the shallow water if it was transparent.
Many a times i had to alight from the boat to make the direction right. The water was soothing cold.
Intermittently we found groups of people, some young, some with families along the river flow.
By the time we reached the end of the river, often having to struggle with turbulent currents & even shallow waters we had canoed for more than 4 hours. For novices like us it was a big achievement & a great relief.
After the half way mark, the feeling that, let the water carry us where it wants to, was dominating the mind as no body bothered to use the chopper. Chopper was only used when the canoe's direction seemed to be changing.
We collaborated with Deepak & Richa & (practically) joined them as a team. The two boats were coupled and the last hour or so Kapil, who sat at the centre of Deepak's boat, became the glue who held the boats together by his hands.
We successfully completed the exhausting journey and Ranjeet's & Poonam's team won this round. They had already reached the end of the river much before we could see them.
By the time every one came out of the canoe it was 17:00 hrs & almost end of our camping. It was time to move on.
We collected something to drink & smoothen our parched throats & started to move towards St.Louis.
Our Camping trip had officially ended.
A trip where we discovered the true virtues of camping & canoeing.
A trip where the sex of St.Louis's Arch was vehemently debated but remained undecided.
A trip where Marathi mixed with Hindi at one's own luxury & at one's own will. There was no rule. No law. No time tables set for having the chips at a specific time.
A trip where nobody objected to the use of marathi words in Hindi sentence & vice versa.
A trip where statements such as "Doh minute shanti 'palo'" & "Meri 'ushi' sarark gayee" were accepted Lingo.
A trip where we discovered that we do not need to plan so much for camping.
And finally,
a trip where "I WAS ENJOYING" every moment.
--- Raison.
** There was this debate we had where most of us agreed that Arch should be addressed as male & the correct statement is 'Arch dikhta hai'. But some of us insisted that Arch should be addressed as 'dikhtee hai'. The debate remained inconclusive & the 'carava' went on.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Modi's the Man
This snippet is straight from Rediff.com
I feel Narendra Modi is the best CM India has ever produced.Period.
from rediff.com 07/05/2005
The annual meetings of the National Development Council have become a familiar ritual.
Participants from the prime minister down to state chief ministers make set-piece speeches while officials work behind the scenes on consensus resolutions.
After two or three days of talkathons, they disperse happily, only to meet again for an equally fruitless exercise a year later.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh tried to break the mould this year, in vain.
To make the NDC deliberations more meaningful and to ensure a better understanding of problems confronting each state, he repeatedly asked the chief ministers not to read mechanically from their prepared speeches.
Since these had already been distributed along with various other agenda and background papers in a neat little folder at the start of the inaugural session on June 27 morning, these should be taken as read, the prime minister said.
Most chief ministers found it hard to speak extempore about the problems confronting their states and how the Centre could help solve them.
In fact, Dr Singh stopped a couple of chief ministers mid-sentence when they read out like parrots from the texts, but to no avail.
When Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh was droning on and on -- hardly taking his eyes off the prepared text -- the prime minister politely asked him, 'Dharam Singhji, we have read your speech already. Please do not read it. If you have anything to add or amplify…' Before he could finish, Dharam Singh responded, 'Sir, I will not take long,' and went back to reading from the paper.
Several chief ministers, including Mulayam Singh Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, were caught on camera stealing the proverbial forty winks when they were supposed to be debating ways and means to boost economic growth in their states.
The one who stole the show was Narendra Modi. He made a power-point presentation without for a moment looking at the prepared text.
The Gujarat chief minister pointedly told the prime minister that though the Planning Commission was scaling down the growth target from over 8 per cent to a little over 7 per cent, Gujarat had registered a growth rate of over 15 per cent last year and was on course to repeat the feat this year too.
It wasn't just Modi's figures and statistics that impressed the chief ministers and senior babus at the NDC meet. Modi packaged his contents in a well-reasoned speech interspersed with pointed references to rising social and economic indicators made possible by policy measures undertaken by his government.
And because he had mastered his case well, there was not a soul in the main hall in Vigyan Bhawan who did not sit up and listen attentively to what he had to say.
At the end of his contribution, most chief ministers, including those belonging to the Congress, made it a point to congratulate Modi.
At the end of the first day, there was consensus among the participants that Modi's was by far the best.
West Bengal's Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and his Marxist counterpart from Tripura, Manik Sarkar, came distant second and third in a straw poll among the participants
I feel Narendra Modi is the best CM India has ever produced.Period.
from rediff.com 07/05/2005
The annual meetings of the National Development Council have become a familiar ritual.
Participants from the prime minister down to state chief ministers make set-piece speeches while officials work behind the scenes on consensus resolutions.
After two or three days of talkathons, they disperse happily, only to meet again for an equally fruitless exercise a year later.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh tried to break the mould this year, in vain.
To make the NDC deliberations more meaningful and to ensure a better understanding of problems confronting each state, he repeatedly asked the chief ministers not to read mechanically from their prepared speeches.
Since these had already been distributed along with various other agenda and background papers in a neat little folder at the start of the inaugural session on June 27 morning, these should be taken as read, the prime minister said.
Most chief ministers found it hard to speak extempore about the problems confronting their states and how the Centre could help solve them.
In fact, Dr Singh stopped a couple of chief ministers mid-sentence when they read out like parrots from the texts, but to no avail.
When Karnataka Chief Minister Dharam Singh was droning on and on -- hardly taking his eyes off the prepared text -- the prime minister politely asked him, 'Dharam Singhji, we have read your speech already. Please do not read it. If you have anything to add or amplify…' Before he could finish, Dharam Singh responded, 'Sir, I will not take long,' and went back to reading from the paper.
Several chief ministers, including Mulayam Singh Yadav from Uttar Pradesh, were caught on camera stealing the proverbial forty winks when they were supposed to be debating ways and means to boost economic growth in their states.
The one who stole the show was Narendra Modi. He made a power-point presentation without for a moment looking at the prepared text.
The Gujarat chief minister pointedly told the prime minister that though the Planning Commission was scaling down the growth target from over 8 per cent to a little over 7 per cent, Gujarat had registered a growth rate of over 15 per cent last year and was on course to repeat the feat this year too.
It wasn't just Modi's figures and statistics that impressed the chief ministers and senior babus at the NDC meet. Modi packaged his contents in a well-reasoned speech interspersed with pointed references to rising social and economic indicators made possible by policy measures undertaken by his government.
And because he had mastered his case well, there was not a soul in the main hall in Vigyan Bhawan who did not sit up and listen attentively to what he had to say.
At the end of his contribution, most chief ministers, including those belonging to the Congress, made it a point to congratulate Modi.
At the end of the first day, there was consensus among the participants that Modi's was by far the best.
West Bengal's Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and his Marxist counterpart from Tripura, Manik Sarkar, came distant second and third in a straw poll among the participants
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)