VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue: 117

Date: 16.06.2012

Contents:

1. Mamata Banerjee Upsets The Presidential Poll Applecart But Where Is The BJP?

2. Manmohan Singh as Dhritarasthra

3. Petrol Price Hike, Need To Rationalise Fossil Fuel Prices

4. Manmohan Singh as Dhritarasthra

5. The West's ‘Agent Provocateur’ Methods

Mamata Banerjee Upsets The Presidential Poll Applecart But Where Is The BJP?

The Presidential race with its odd twists and turns over the last month or so has seen the absence of one major player and that is the main Opposition party, the BJP. But for the passing mention of a compromise deal with the Congress led UPA about Murli Manohar Joshi as Vice President in the event that Pranab Mukherjee is the Congress candidate for President and the further fleeting news that Jaswant Singh could be contesting for the Vice-President's post, we find that the BJP has been bereft of ideas on this issue. The comment that the BJP would announce its candidate once the Congress announces theirs only confirms that the BJP has no ideas on the subject. It also shows that the BJP is incapable of being a leader on any major issue and prefers to be a follower with its mind-set that of a perennial Opposition party. This is where the downfall of the BJP will come about given the fractious in-fighting that their top brass is prone to. In contrast look at the street-fighter that Mamata Banerjee is. With less than one-fifth of the MP's than the BJP at her command she has up-staged the Congress and their President Sonia Gandhi by being the one who announced to the nation that Pranab Mukherjee is indeed the Congress candidate for President, before the 15th June date that the Congress had set for announcing the names. Not only that Mamata Banerjee went further by rejecting Pranab Mukherjee's candidature and announcing her own 'impeccable list' including Abdul Kalam, Manmohan Singh and Somenath Chatterjee and by this putting the Congress into a quandary and turning the Presidential poll on its head by hobnobbing with the SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and appearing to suggest that they were allies in the list announced by her. Why did the BJP not have its own 'impeccable list' very much ahead of all this hustle and bustle? Is it because they were too busy sorting out their internal issues of who will be the PM next time, when they are yet to win the next election and thus loosing sight of the imminent President's election which is now poised for a nail-biting finish? With this we can surely say that Mamata Banerjee not only up-staged the Congress/UPA alliance but also BJP in the process.

Manmohan Singh as Dhritarasthra

Kiran Bedi has called our PM Manmohan Singh, like Dhritarasthra, the blind patriarch king of the Kauravas. In fact Dhritarasthra's sin is much less than Manmohan Singh since being blind he was dependent on inputs from members of his court on what was happening in his kingdom, while Manmohan Singh in spite of being able to see prefers to remain dumb and refuses to take any action and presides over Bharat which is increasingly sliding into a morass of gloom, degeneration of morality and ultimately doom.

Petrol Price Hike, Need To Rationalise Fossil Fuel Prices

The petrol price increase recently by about Rs. 7.50 per liter was more than unfair and the jiggling by reducing it by Rs. 1.50 with a promise that further reductions are in the offing is not helping either the aam admi or this government. What was required to be done was that a migration plan should have been put in place from a subsidized regime to a no-subsidy regime a long time back. Then there would have been lesser public outcry and people would have got used to the high prices by now and also put in place their own economizing routines. This plan should have included all the fossil fuels petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG. On all these we have been aware that the government has been subsidizing them. Why? That is anybody’s guess. The whole process is just like robbing Peter to pay Paul. On one side you subsidise commodities but on the other side to compensate that you raise taxes. This has clearly led to an imbalance in the pricing of these commodities since any of the increases have been knee-jerk and very much ad-hoc. The anomalies created are where diesel has been priced at almost 50% of petrol and also lower than furnace oil leading to its diversion for uses other than those intended like for agricultural pumpsets and long haul transport apart from car manufacturers spewing out a whole new range of diesel car models since consumers prefer these to save on operating costs. There is no argument that diesel and petrol prices should be priced at the same level with maybe diesel marginally lower. The migration plan for fossil fuels should include inputs on long term plan to explore our own reserves like exploration for oil and gas, development of shale reserves etc. since nowadays with international prices for oil ruling at close to US$100 a barrel new sources for oil like shale can be looked at, older higher cost oil wells could be re-opened etc. The reasons for this are manifold since we become more self-sufficient, save foreign exchange and as a strategic measure depend on our own resources. Nothing like this is done to take the aam admi into confidence by the government and random and irregular price increases are rammed down his throat. That is where the objection is and not in the hike per se. There could be a need for subsidy to the lowest strata of society since we still have close to 63% of our population below the poverty line and for these under the UIDAI or Aadhaar scheme directly transfer the cash subsidy to such targeted population groups. Will we now see any more rationality in the manipulation of the prices for petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG?

The Congress’ Sonia Gandhi Syndrome

Sycophancy is being taken to the extreme by having Sonia Gandhi to decide on the candidates to be put up by the Congress for the President & Vice President posts which are falling vacant shortly. Why the Congress should continue to leave things to her is something which is beyond the comprehension of every right minded citizen of India. It is almost as if we, having been under the British until 1947 are under Italy for the last decade or so. Sonia Gandhi remains a foreigner and though she may be welcome to stay in India as many such other people stay, she should not hold any public office which is the rule even in her native Italy and all countries in the West. In that event why should we be magnanimous and allow her to be the Congress President? Giving credit to her for not taking up the post of Prime Minister and handing it over to a pliable Manmohan Singh in the first innings of the UPA is nothing much of a great sacrifice as it is made out to be since she, very much, knows the limits of her ability and therefore did not want to carry this onerous burden. With Manmohan Singh accepting to be the fall guy she got the ideal position of ruling India without any accountability as we have seen playing out before us in the second innings of the UPA. Many journalists have commented in the same manner not only about Sonia Gandhi’s backseat driving the UPA government but also forming the NAC and such other bodies and stuffing it again with people who will dictate policy but without any corresponding responsibility. It is time therefore for the Congress to shake itself out of somnolence and see reality. They have to strike it out without Sonia Gandhi but maybe hitch its bandwagon to the younger scions of the Gandhi dynasty like Rahul & Priyanka to achieve any tangible political gains.

The West's ‘Agent Provocateur’ Methods

Syria is going the same way as Iraq and lately Libya in terms of orchestration of forces against the incumbent rulers by the West and its crony multilateral institutions like the UN. A similar exercise akin to Syria is continuing in Iran also. The same pattern of first supporting the dissenters in these nations posing in the garb of democracy and then having the multilateral agencies be it the IAEA or the EC or NATO or the UN jump on them for contravention of some international law/agreement or infarction of human rights followed by trade and financial sanctions and then having a pliant Ban E Moon, the UN Secretary General make noises about the suppression of the voices of democracy in the affected nations and then suddenly an air strike by one or the other NATO nations like in Libya or a full scale invasion like in Iraq. In the last named military measures there could be many civilian casualties who are decorated as martyrs in the cause of democracy by the aggressors to lighten their burden and that of the victim society of having lost a near and dear one. The civilian deaths euphemistically called ‘collateral damage’, which would have normally meant property damage in earlier times, could be many times higher than what the supposed authoritarian rule of the victim country would have caused in a decade or more but who cares. With military intrusions the borders of the victim country would be opened up to make it a hotbed of nuisance and anarchy as we have seen in Iraq where explosions and/or terror attacks almost every other day would be taking innocent lives which would all be blamed on the Al Qaeda or some such terrorism body leaving the aggressor country clothing itself in holy robes of compassion and piety while nobody would question them on why they actively worked to dismantle the protective system and the law and order structure of the society in the victim country. It is not only the number of lives lost in the victim country but also the lives which are completely shattered or turned upside down because of the aggressor country’s entry and the mayhem that is generated in its wake. These are all created by the West to support the military-industrial complex in their nations which without war and military strife cannot survive since peace and normalcy are anathema to them. Is this any kind of civilization that we are talking about? Or are we back in the Dark Ages where we follow dog eat dog methods under the veneer of assumed civilization. In the light of the second 'supposed' massacre in Syria by Assad's forces, there was news in the media that the UN observers have reached the place to investigate. Firstly, would the West in the event of any incidents like this or even marginally equivalent allow UN inspectors to come for inspection? Thus if Syria has allowed the UN inspectors is it not that Assad and his forces have nothing to be afraid of and irrespective of Western provocations, he continues to cooperate? Let's not have double standards in these matters and play the games by the same rules as applicable to the West.

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