VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue: 114

Date: 26.05.2012

Contents:

1. Complete Mismanagement Of The Indian Economy

2. Petrol Price Hike Breaks The Back Of The Aam Admi

3. Aerostats Create Privacy Issues In Afghanistan

4. Keeping Alive Terror Benefits Departmental Budgets & The Terror-Industrial Complex

5. The Cartoon Controversy

6. The Presidential Race

7. Wheat & Milk Powder Piles Up As Nation Remains Starving & Malnutritioned

8. Indian Economy In a Mess

Complete Mismanagement Of The Indian Economy

On the back of the Finance Minister saying in Parliament at the end of the passing of the Budget, that austerity measures need be brought in, we have the Prime Minister during the function for celebrating the 3rd anniversary of this UPA-2 government echoing the same sentiment by saying we need to tighten our belts. Now as far as celebrating the 3rd anniversary of UPA–2 we need to ask Manmohan Singh whether a celebration is at all deserved or should they have not been mourning that their ordeal has not yet ended. But the point remains by parroting these statements that we need to tighten our belts and implement austerity measures we need to factually see what is achieved in terms of its impact on the economy. Why everyone is upset on the economic affairs situation is that the same scenario has been prevailing for inflation which first started pinching us some 3 years back. The same people the FM & the PM among other economic heavyweights in this government assured us that in another 6 months if not a year, inflation will come down. But nothing like that happened and inflation continues to remain stubbornly going its own way – up and up. Thus these palliative statements like austerity etc. are being made just for form’s sake and come another 6 months the same people will repeat the same statements. This clearly shows that there is no intent with this government to take any concrete steps to set right our economy. They are hopelessly incompetent and shameless in not admitting that on the economic front they do not have a clue of what is going on. Take the case of the White Paper presented in Parliament the other day on Black Money. Going by the content in the White Paper it highlights the ‘Black Day’ on which it was presented for all those who have been keenly wanting to pursue Black Money be it stashed abroad or at work within the country. The White Paper says nothing and given its quality of content, it is equivalent to toilet paper The same goes for the petrol price hike, the highest one-time rise in living memory. While the oil Cos. have been asking for a hike for past under-recoveries and the Petroleum Minister has been asking for a hike to compensate for the falling value of the Rupee, no one really knows why a hike was done now when international oil prices have lately softened. This is the kind of obfuscation which is characteristic of this UPA-2 government where nothing is backed with basic data. All decisions are taken based on convenience and political expediency and not for the benefit of the citizens of this country. With the country going through a bad patch on the economic front at the 3rd anniversary of this UPA-2 government, the emphasis was on political survival by trying to pull the Samajwadi Party closer into the UPA alliance and ensuring that the incumbent gaddis are not rocked, the aam admi be damned. The petrol hike was also implemented after the Parliament session was over and the anniversary celebrated.

Petrol Price Hike Breaks The Back Of The Aam Admi

Just the petrol hike leaving diesel and LPG is completely illogical given the argument that oil prices and under-recoveries demand a hike. The fact that petrol being a deregulated item and thus eligible for a price hike is again a contrived argument. The timing of the hike is also important considering that just the day before the UPA-2 government celebrated their 3rd anniversary of taking over the reins for ruling the country. The next day bang they hike the petrol prices by not a rupee or two but by Rs. 7.50 a litre. If this is not being irresponsible one should ask what is? Look at the behaviour of our Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy in this context. On Tuesday (22nd May) he makes a statement that oil price hikes are desirable and runs off to Turkmenistan and on the next day Wednesday (23rd) the ‘oil Cos.’ hike the huge petrol price. And on this the Congress party also claims that it was not consulted. Is this not like a child’s prank of doing mischief and then running away from the scene of action? Jaipal Reddy deserves what he got of almost being held by the ear and asked by the government to return post-haste to India. We need to remember that the petrol hike hits the aam admi in the gut first and foremost since most of the rich have switched to diesel cars and it is the man who rides the 2-wheelers and the lower end cars who is suffering or whose backs are being broken by the petrol price hike. During the last presentation of the Budget there was talk of a one time cess on hi-end diesel cars so that those buying SUV’s and the like could not benefit from the lower price of diesel. The car industry bigwigs made presentations and nothing came of the one-time cess and it was shelved. The differential excise duty that could have been imposed on diesel passenger vehicles of a certain capacity and above was also not implemented. Thus we know whom this government is favouring, the rich at the cost of the poor people. Thus let us be clear that any petrol price hike is against those who for their day to day living have to run about in their 2 – wheelers and the lower end cars and in no event affects the rich who go about in diesel powered SUV’s and the influential like politicians who ride cars in which the government fills the fuel be it diesel or petrol.

Aerostats Create Privacy Issues In Afghanistan

It is understood that Aerostats – 30 meter size hot air balloons are being deployed in the Afghan skies by the US & NATO commanders to be used for monitoring areas from the air and for collection of intelligence in Afghanistan. This is a follow-up of the drones which have randomly been killing innocent people along with the ‘supposed’ terrorists and militants belonging to the Taliban/Al Qaeda. Are there no privacy issues here? Would the US & NATO deploy such kind of devices in their home countries? NATO may claim that they have extensive CCTV coverage in their cities along with rigorous security in their airports and rail stations including body scanners. But this is not valid since in the majority of NATO countries there is a strong justice system and a vigorous public opinion which is available for moderating the excesses on intrusions of privacy. While in a country like Afghanistan this is being implemented without any consent of the local people and moreover by a foreign power which has no locus standii to intrude into the lives of the Afghan people. NATO may claim that in a country that they are at war with, these measures are legitimate. This is clearly disputed since the war against terror is illegal and has been declared so. Moreover NATO is working against a section of the Afghan people in collusion with a pliable government that of Hamid Karzai and hence it can in no case be justified as a war zone. Similarly, the intrusions of privacy can in no case be justified. This has also been the case with the drones that are being used and the data on civilians killed by these drones is being presented in a manner so as to show that it has been decreasing over the years to the current year, but they ‘officially’ still remain in the hundreds. How much of a hullabaloo is made in the West when even if tens of people are killed in terror attacks and even for that you have candle-light vigils and anniversaries in memoriam but for the poor civilian Afghans who get killed there is no such requiem. A clear case of double standards by NATO. It is therefore required that the deployment of aerostats be stopped and drones be discontinued from use in Afghanistan. If you have to fight, fight square and with some sense of equity so that the better man wins. Using aerostats and drones by NATO in that sense is a cowardly act.

Keeping Alive Terror Benefits Departmental Budgets & The Terror-Industrial Complex

The Western media orchestrates the support to the propaganda blitz against regimes which are inimical to the West like in the case of Syria now. The recent bomb blast which injured some 100 in Damascus is quoted by the Western media as ‘attributed to the Al Qaeda but with no confirmation yet.’ The Al Qaeda is the common bogey for the West to use and create a sense of fear among people which has been the pattern that we have seen ever since Iraq. This the West does not only do in the countries where they interfere but also within their own countries. After 9/11 the security checks at airports has gone up in rigour and now body scanners are commonly used in the US and are being introduced in the UK also now. Randomly over the last decade almost on a six-monthly basis one or the other plot attributed to the Al Qaeda has been ‘unearthed and the supposed perpetrators have been caught’ in the West which has essentially keep the ‘war on terror’ simmering in the minds of the citizens of Western nations. Even just prior to the recent 60 nation NATO conference in Chicago the US Homeland Security and FBI intercepted 3 terrorists who ‘surprise of surprises’ were local US citizens belonging to some ‘Black Bloc’ movement out of Florida and not the Al Qaeda. Similarly the bomber apprehended before getting into a plane in the Middle East on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death anniversary with a bomb similar to the underwear bomber caught sometime back, turned out to be a CIA double agent who had penetrated the Al Qaeda network! These cases seem to be aligned to ‘manage public opinion’ in the West to persuade the war on terror to continue, which is otherwise flagging in other parts of the world. Just like the military – industrial complex was said to be behind the military interventions in all countries after the Vietnam war ending with the latest intervention in Libya by NATO so also it seems that this entity has morphed into a terror – industrial complex which has a vested interest in ensuring that terror remains uppermost in the minds of the people of the Western world. This will then feed then budgets for departments like Homeland Security and the industry which makes body scanners and the like. The easier way out of all this is for the West not to encourage mayhem in troubled countries and allow the local people and the ruling regime to deal with it. The last century or more has shown that the West whenever in their assumed knowledge has intervened in trouble-spots around the world more often than not they have been proved wrong and it has been at a massive humanitarian cost in the affected trouble-torn countries and at great financial and sometimes human cost to the West.

The Cartoon Controversy

The cartoon issue that has rocked Parliament and then the nation is essentially a matter that we need to decide whether textbooks should carry cartoons. It is felt that NCERT stretched discretion very fine when it included the particular Ambedkar cartoon in the political science textbook of Cl. X. The matter is not at all relating to Ambedkar and therefore the subsequent hullabaloo should have been handled as such. Cartoons have their place in certain media and textbooks is surely not the place to draw that smile or smirk. Textbooks particularly at the Cl.X and higher class levels and beyond should be serious and therefore they are called textbooks. When we tend to dilute the position of anything be it textbooks, history or whatever, we tend to be drawn into these rather unnecessary and infructious debates which grow into controversies. Our approach particularly in education should be like Caesar’s wife who is above any kind of suspicion or misdemeanour. This will retain then the purity of intent and get the message across to the students to remain focused on study and not frivolity. Thus if there had been no cartoon in the textbook in question, would all this have blown up in this manner? That essentially is the question that we have to answer rather than get caught up in the impropriety of it.

The Presidential Race

The Presidential elections true to our political scenario is turning out to be a messy affair. A cartoon which appeared in one of the national papers when the race was hotting up is truly representative of what the elections are turning out to be. In a competitive exam one of the questions was – How is the President of India elected? A candidate wrote – By the leaders of the political parties! By rights the President should be nominated by consensus and Abdul Kalam’s assuming the post was probably the best manner in which India obtained an exceptional President. This lobbying of candidates is rather demeaning not only for the candidates but also to the post of President. We should have avoided it or avoid it. The President should be a person of stature, character and have a personality which does credit to the country. In some quarters it is being said that we should have a Christian or tribal President. These are not criteria at all. People should remember that India essentially has no bias in persons of different religious persuasion or background from holding high office. We are a country which has had a Muslim as a President in Abdul Kalam and others earlier, a Sikh as Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi as a Christian holding the ‘highest office of the land’ in controlling the PM! So let us keep the values high while choosing our next President.

Wheat & Milk Powder Piles Up As Nation Remains Starving & Malnutritioned

Record harvests of grain and the people of India are short of food or are at near starvation levels. The AFP photo of a labourer covering up rotting wheat at Khamano, a village some 40 KM. from Ludhiana carried today (20th, Sun) in the Navhind Times, Goa (and surely in some national newspapers) says it all. If you look closely at that the photo it kind of depicts a corpse stretched out on the rotting wheat with its skull on the right middleground. This must be the dead body of the aam admi, dead and left to rot with the wheat. Just like the grains, 15,000 tonnes of milk powder is stocked up in Maharasthra with no takers while our children suffer from malnutrition. Why cannot corporates be involved in these programs to reach such surplus food and nutrition items to far flung areas like in Orissa where pockets are at near starvation levels? The same way in tribal areas of Thane district in Maharasthra there were similar reports of starvation and chronic malnutrition, why cannot the milk powder that they need be sent from the piled up stocks. Can the Maharasthra CM not do a service to the tribals in his own backyard? Sharad Pawar as usual is trying to export it ostensibly to benefit the dairy farmers but actually traders who will buy the milk powder at rock bottom prices because there are no buyers at this point and then conveniently export it at remunerative prices.

Indian Economy In a Mess

March 2012 IIP down by 3.5%. The IIP has also shown that manufacturing of capital goods has fallen substantially which would mean that new investment is slowing down. Inflation at 7.4% in April 2012 is also restricting the ability for the RBI to cut interest rates and thus stimulate industrial recovery. Food inflation is soaring again on the back of a 61% price rise for vegetables. The Rupee has depreciated heavily, as a result of these factors and a soaring trade deficit, hitting close to Rs. 55 to the US Dollar and to almost the same levels as during the 1991 fiscal crisis requiring the RBI to intervene heavily so that it does not fall further. The stock markets are also in a tizzy and the Sensex has fallen below the 16,000 mark in a matter of days on the news of the Euro crisis and the inability of Greece to form a coalition government and pursue austerity measures. The FM on the back of these events stands up in Parliament and blames the world for India’s economic woes. When will we see someone in this government stand up and take responsibility by saying that inspite of the world in an economic mess look at our economic success story. Those days, like they say, will probably never come.

*****************************