VOX POPULI by Aam Admi

Issue: 111

Date: 05.05.2012

Contents:

1.Sachin & Others Nomination To The Rajya Sabha

2. Going Soft On The Maoists

3. Pratibha Patil: A Discordant President

4. The Govt.'s Revenue Panic Mindset

5. The West’s Neo-Con Strategy Is Not Working

Sachin & Others Nomination To The Rajya Sabha

The Sachin Tendulkar and the Rekha nomination to the Rajya Sabha is another major joke played on the nation by the Congress and the incumbent UPA-2 government. As it is it is well known that with RTE or not, every single party in this country to protect its vote banks would like to see that education does not spread to every single citizen. The reason for this is that there is a vested interest in keeping the electorate illiterate and lesser informed since only then vote banks can be created and cultivated. When you educate people, they start asking questions and this is what our politicians and political parties do not like. Thus nominating Sachin & Rekha to the Rajya Sabha is part of this strategy to stuff the Parliament with relatively pliable people who will not be able to think for themselves. There have also been many comments in the media whether Sachin will be able to do justice to his role upon being nominated to the Rajya Sabha. That also is something that Sachin is used to since look at the pithy condition his IPL team, the Mumbai Indians are in the competition. Their disastrous performance has been because of waiting for Sachin to become fit and hence not being able to arrive at a winning combination from their bench strength. The suspense about Sachin’s fitness has been killing the new captain Harbhajan Singh (Bhajji) who wakes up on match day every time, praying that Sachin should firstly, be fit and secondly, decide to play. This inability to give an assured place to some of the other contenders, mostly youngsters, for Sachin’s slot in the batting line-up is not doing anything good for their game, mental peace and temperament. In fact, Rahul Dravid has done much better than Sachin in the current edition of the IPL and that too only after retirement. Maybe for once Sachin should follow Dravid’s example! Sachin’s availability issue is what has been dogging the India Test and ODI teams and see where it has got the country in terms of performance and international rankings in cricket during the last year or so. Thus it is time for Sachin to listen to his creaking bones and body (sometimes it is the elbow, sometimes it is the toe) and gracefully retire from competitive cricket and take on the role of Player Emeritus and concentrate on his other interests. Will he listen? That is likely to be rare since who has listened when told to retire at the peak of their careers? Did Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev or Saurav Ganguly go on their own, not so, until they were literally booted if not shamed out.

Going Soft On The Maoists

Exchanging Maoist prisoners for kidnapped officials and politicians has to stop. This is an easy way out for the government on the plea of public outcry and being sympathetic to the kidnapped person’s family. The more difficult is to work towards rescuing the kidnapped and in that process conveying to the Maoists or the kidnappers in other instances that the government will not take these things lying down. At the same time utmost caution has to be exercised that the kidnapped are not injured or killed in the rescue attempt. In the case of the District Collector, Alex Paul Menon in Sukma of Chattisgarh, newspapers reported that they had located Menon to within 500 meters radius in the forest. Even then there were no attempts to launch a rescue though one is not clear as to what kind of terrain was involved. The attempts being made were more of a conciliatory nature of reaching the medicines to Menon and stopping the anti-Maoist drive in Bastar as demanded by the Maoists. As said earlier these do not talk of a strong State and we in this process are encouraging more such instances until all Maoists and/or terrorists are freed from our jails and thus not go through the punishment process. Another aspect that is being highlighted in this case is that people like Menon at the level of an IAS should be aware of what risks to take and walking into a situation like he did which put him in the position of an easy kidnap victim should have been avoided. If IAS officers are not situation conscious then how can we expect this from other people down the line. And after falling into the hands of the Maoists, saying that he is an asthma patient and cannot stay long without his medicine or that his wife is pregnant or his aged father is concerned about him are all media bytes which convey no meaning and should not attract any sympathy. The Maoists have already control of a large swathe running through the middle of India running north-eastwards all the way up to Nepal called the ‘Red Corridor’ which footprint will keep increasing and the audacity of these anti-national people will grow by leaps and bounds unless they are not effectively tackled both by political and/or appropriate force. There are issues of development in this ‘Red Corridor’ no doubt but even then we should not let the Maoists take the law into their own hands and dictate terms to us.

Pratibha Patil: A Discordant President

Pratibha Patil’s making a big splash on not going in for the palatial construction for her post-retirement home in Pune is typical of our politicians and the powers-that-be reaction once they are caught red-handed. The first thing that they try to do is to deny any association with the particular issue. This is assuming that the matter would die down by itself. If it does not like we saw recently in Maharasthra in land deals with people like Vilasrao Deshmukh, the ex-CM Chavan, Kripashankar Singh, Chagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane and others who all insisted that everything including allotment of land at throwaway prices was according to government’s rules and regulations. The fact that all this was done because of the positions of privilege that they enjoyed is not lost on anybody. If the matters prolong and public outcry sustains they resort to what Pratibha Patil has done return the land or whatever and back out of the situation covering themselves with the glow of compassion that they are sacrificing their interests in the cause of the greater good. This curse of using influence of high office to get undue favours has also touched some of the most upright officials of this land. Shri T K A Nair, the erstwhile Secretary to the PM, who was regarded as an extremely capable and honest person throughout his career is now touched with the taint of having been involved in the out of turn allotment of some housing plots in a BEML cooperative in Bengaluru to his extended family members who were not even employees of BEML to be eligible for allotment. Thus it is the environment around us where people find everybody doing it so they then have to ask themselves, why not me? And thus they also take the plunge. In this context let us look at Pratibha Patil returning the land of some 2.6 sq. lakh meters and the construction in progress of a house with a plinth of 4,500 sq. meters. Firstly, does our President not know that there is a tremendous shortage of land in all our urban centres like Pune which has sent prices of land and houses through the roof. So from a position of privilege why should she have sought land of 2.6 sq. lakh meters for her ‘retirement home’? What is she going to do with so much land? Though when the first outcry surfaced she did say that upon her death the land would revert to the military to whom the land originally belongs. But even seeking 2.6 sq. lakh meters, such a vast tract of land is mindboggingly stupid since as now reported she says she was not aware that our jawans and others related to the military have scarce accommodation. If a President does not know this there is clearly something wrong with our system or it is an issue with Pratibha Patil that she will only see what she wants to see. Secondly, the size of the house with a plinth of 4,500 sq. meters, why is this required? This is huge by any standards and where a country has 63% of its people below the poverty line (which position of the line is also debated for the convenience of our policy planners), should the President not make do with more frugal accommodation. Or after spending so many years in politics and working at the grassroots, as she has claimed, has she forgotten about our poor by spending the last 5 years in Rasthrapati Bhawan? These are all stunning stupidities which these people in positions of power try to see whether they can get away with. Now what will happen to the partially constructed house on the Pune land for the President. All that money spent on that up till now will go down the drain. So should not have better sense prevailed and Pratibha Patil stopped it in the first instance so that money could be saved. There is no denying that we should give our retiring Heads of State and/or Government accommodation but if they opt for it, they should realize that it will be frugal in their sense but comfortable and plush in the context of what an aam admi can get. Thus Pratibha Patil should be given at any place of her choice and locality of her choice, a 3 bedroom flat of not more than 1800 sq. feet on the ground floor considering her age. If she does not want it then she can stay in her own accommodation and on the pension that she will get from the government. Nothing more should be given and these people should have a sense of shame to ask for anything more. On Pratibha Patil again about her foreign tours costing Rs. 205 crores to the exchequer, she has said that these are decided by the government and are for the sake of India’s foreign policy. This is all right but the number of family members accompanying her is decided by her. Thus while she is entitled to one male family member in the event of her husband unable to travel for any reason and another female family member to keep her company, should she not have offered to pay for the rest of the family members at her expense. This is what an enlightened and conscious President would have done. With this let Pratibha Patil rest in peace. She has insulted the high office of the President by her latest action and is a slight on her considering the simple living and high thinking philosophies of our first Presidents like Rajendra Prasad and Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and following in the footsteps of the previous President Abdul Kalam who also set high standards of austere and simple living (but for his hairstyle!).

The Govt.'s Revenue Panic Mindset

The new 2G auction rates set up by TRAI are exceedingly high expecting to fetch the government about Rs. 7 Lakh crore, nearly seven times more than that the Rs. 1.04 Lakh crore than it had received through the auction of the 3G spectrum in 2010. This means mobile calls will become more expensive. The very concept of communication being essential on the back of which the mobile revolution has taken off in India is likely to be negated. This government anticipating a financial crisis with a burgeoning and unmanageable deficit is desperately flailing to raise revenue in any which way without considering its impact on the common man. Therefore every official is trying to compete with the other on showing how much more that they can squeeze out of each policy initiative. This attitude needs to be curtailed and a calm, contained plan evolved on a long term basis on each and every policy initiative to manage the Indian economy. The auctioning virus has also affected the Supreme Court who sent out an advice that natural resources should also be auctioned in the wake of the coal scam. This then raised comment whether water would also be auctioned and sold to the highest bidder! Thus we have to get out of this revenue panic mindset that our policy planners are getting into since then over a period of time there will be no more common citizens in India because most of them would have met an unfortunate end. India would then be left with lopsided thinking policy planners and the rich and affluent.

The West’s Neo-Con Strategy Is Not Working

The British bit the dust in Afghanistan in the early 20th century, the Russians met their nemesis again in the same country in the middle of the 20th century at the hands of the tribal warlords resulting in the withdrawal of the Russians and the ushering in off the Taliban shortly thereafter and finally now it is the turn of the Americans to pack their bags and return earlier than 2014 as it is being said, and leaving Afghanistan in more or less the same position as it was when they came to uproot the Taliban and eliminate Osama Bin Laden. Afghanistan is a difficult war zone what with the terrain but one must give credit to their tribal fighters who would rather die than be called cowards and surrender. The premise as above about the American predicament is borne to be correct from the latest 18 hour raid by the Taliban in the heart of Kabul which led to some 48 people dead. But by attacking the Parliament and the embassies of some NATO countries in the heart of the ‘safe’ zone in Kabul the Taliban have more than proved their point about their resurgence. Additionally many of the Afghans who can afford to leave the country have been moving out over the last year migrating to the West and others countries as also sending their available capital abroad in anticipation of the Taliban’s return once the US troop presence is withdrawn. What this signifies is that people have little confidence in the government of Hamid Karzai, the incumbent President who during the above recent Taliban raid was ‘imprisoned’ in his palace by his own. But post-2014 his captors could be the Taliban! Recently an Australian minister had made a comment that Karzai is a weak and ineffective leader. This has been in fact the tradition of the West which was followed first in the Middle East & Gulf region by the US by supporting Chalabi in Iraq who milked dry the US dollar until he fell out with the US. Surprise of surprises he could not even win an election in his native country and is now relatively unknown. But then Chalabi has no worries since his dollar pile will suffice him and another three of his succeeding generations. This has been the US practice of supporting particular expatriates who make appropriate noises about freedom and democracy which opens up the treasury of the US Dollar to them. Karzai is no different from this breed and presides over a government which plays favorites and oversees a surge in poppy cultivation leading to enhanced production of opium and downstream cocaine. In this Karzai is no different than the Taliban who also encourage poppy production for the ready cash it fetches them. Thus the second objective of the US and NATO to come into Afghanistan which was to eliminate poppy production has been completely negated. Karzai’s only credentials for remaining in office is to ensure the continued flow of foreign aid which would be put in jeopardy in the event of a new Afghan leader emerging on the scene. The problem other than this in Afghanistan is the use of drones by the US to kill the Taliban and terrorists which has caused a massive number of innocent civilian casualties. This has resulted in the loss of public support for the US and NATO forces and also led to reprisals against them. These reprisals have lately been in secure installations and of senior US and NATO personnel by people dressed as Afghan soldiers or the Afghan soldiers themselves. Similar incidents have been reported from among the Afghan police. This shows the extent that the Afghan military and police forces have been infiltrated and compromised. The major incident in this regard lately was when a Afghan suicide bomber in army fatigues blew himself up in close proximity of an airline fuel tanker at an airfield minutes before Defence Secretary Panetta was landing at the Bagram air base outside Kabul. In the same vein open any paper and you will see bomb blasts in the swathe of countries ranging from Pakistan to Iraq and from cities like Lahore to Aden to the Gaza strip to Baghdad and now further in Damascus and Homs. The sporadic blasts in northern Africa have quietened down with the Arab Spring giving way to the long drawn out Arab Winter with the militia taking charge in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In places like Egypt where elections were held the fundamentalist Islamic parties got the majority of the vote and over time these other countries are expected to follow suit. Thus the US & West has presided over or will be presiding over the progressive Talibanisation of the Islamic countries in this region. Thus the West has replaced one brand of authoritarian rule by another. Thus the policy to infuse democracy in the region has been negated and the position has been to return to Square One. The blasts which go off with unfailing regularity in this region are done by people who are inimical to the presence of soldiers of the US & other Western nations and are linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda or home grown outfits fighting hostile incumbent governments with the implicit help of the West. This is good strategy for the US & West to keep these hostile people busy with killing people of their own kind, in their own land thus containing the terror in the originating countries little realizing that this has come at a tremendous cost to the civilian population in these countries. The Western world is thus relatively safe from terror attacks. In addition what the Western scientists and intelligentsia would extol as the cradle of civilization extending over Iraq, Iran and now Syria is now being destroyed systematically in all the mayhem and violence that the West has caused or engendered for the last 20 years in this region. Thus is the West contributing to the preservation of the history and culture of mankind? There is also a certain duplicity in the manner of how the Western media, both TV and print, and incumbent governments deal with protests. When any insignificant person in any of the strife-torn countries as named above raises his voice for freedom and democracy, his or her story is splashed across the Western media and you have appropriately correct noises being made by the foreign policy departments of the Western nations. But when protests occur in the West like against the Bush/Blair duos misadventure into Afghanistan & Iraq, or against climate change or against trade policies, these protests are not recognized as the voices seeking to dissent or for the cause of freedom or to express themselves in an active and lively democracy. These protests are severely put down by water cannon, or with policemen caning the protestors or even using rubber bullets against them. Thus if Assad or the late Gadhafi tried to stifle protest and dissent in the same manner, why were they painted black and branded as despots? Is this not double standards? The same situation of equity in looking at issues is not done in the case of Israel’s unauthorized nuclear program and possessing nuclear weapons in the explosive Gulf & Middle East region but Iran’s nuclear program is condemned, castigated and sanctions imposed on the hapless country for doing exactly the same thing as Israel. And Iran happens to be an older country and having contributed to this world’s civilization much more than Israel can ever can. Thus by the same yardstick Israel’s nuclear program needs to be condemned and sanctions imposed upon them unless they open up their nuclear facilities to the IAEA. The West particularly the US also has to advise Israel to curb their military adventurism in the region and stop making public statements about their planned pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other countries of the region for other small provocations. This kind of military action will jeopardize the chance for peace to come to this region.. Thus the Western world and the US have clearly lost their way in the quagmire of Islam over the last two or three decades and it is time that they left the Islamic countries around the world on their own either to self-destruct or develop into liberal regimes recognizing human rights and only then welcome them into the league of nations as honorable members.

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