VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:142

Date: 08.12.2012

Contents:

1. Dhoni’s Request For Turning Pitches

2. PhD Proposal On Gopinath Munde’s Social Work!

3. FDI In Multi-Brand Retail Harmful To India

4. Muslims Feeling Of Being A Targeted Community

5. Lacunaes In The Direct Cash Transfer Scheme Using Aadhaar

6. The FDI Debate On Multi-Brand Retail in Parliament

Dhoni’s Request For Turning Pitches

Dhoni seems to have lost his touch at captaincy which has been evident in the last few series as also in the current series against England even after the resounding victory that India achieved in Ahmedabad. One would believe that Dhoni is losing his strategic skills in reading the game or going the way the majority of Indian players have all gone, particularly captains, and that is forget about winning and start giving excuses for their below par performances and that of their team. These problems tend to aggravate when the team is not doing well like in the last two overseas tours to Australia and then to England at both places where India got a severe drubbing. Restricting oneself to comments made by Dhoni after the Ahmedabad Test of asking for turners from Day 1 which in itself raised a needless controversy highlighted more by the CAB and the ground curator at Eden Gardens. The point is after asking for rank turners, did we do any better in the Mumbai Test, which in fact we lost in almost equal resounding measure. And this with 3 spinners in the team. Thus asking for turners from Day 1 is not in line with the game of cricket in the classical sense, to which we will come to a little bit later, but then our spinners, as well as our other bowlers, have not been able always to turn on their performance to get quick wickets and bowl the opposition out when it is required urgently. This has been proved many a time in earlier series both at home and abroad. They seem to lack the consistent killer instinct which was also noticeable in the Ahmedabad Test during the second innings where paceman Yadav got the important breakthroughs before Ojha turned on the magic to bowl England out and thus get India to win. Therefore asking for rank turners blew up in Dhoni's face at Mumbai where we got beaten convincingly and again in the Kolkata Test which seems to be going the same way where we have been able to take just 2 wickets (Compton, Trott) in almost a full day's play. Trying to cover himself by saying that turners bring in more of an even game and the advantage of winning the toss becomes less important is neither here nor there since Dhoni, were you not asking for turners to benefit your spinners and then you say that it is advantageous to none! This demand is more aggravated since England have now in their ranks two of the best spinners that they have seen in a long time in Swann and Monty Panesar. It may not be untoward to say that their wicket taking ability is better than of the Indian spinners. Coming back to the classical view of cricket as a gentleman's game which fits the 5 day tests rather than other forms of the game, we need to have the wicket helping the pace bowlers on the first 2 days and gradually deteriorating from the 3rd day to help the spinners and India's home advantage would then continue to remain. The Tests as the Eden Gardens curator said for the viewing public should go on at least for 4 days if not 5 since that is what both the spectators at the stadium and the TV viewers are paying and looking for. And this is exactly why the game in India has become such a paying proposition and brought fabulous wealth to our cricketers including Dhoni. So Dhoni by asking for rank turners, is he not killing the golden goose? These are some of the matters that Dhoni shound ponder over and mull on how to improve the wicket taking ability of his bowlers and the stickability of his batsmen at the crease since more and more of them over the years are facing progressively less balls and therefore maybe making less runs. This is but in no way a case to oust Dhoni from the captaincy but to remind him to think better and not change the game too much for 'home advantage'. He is young and will learn.

PhD Proposal On Gopinath Munde’s Social Work!

There was news item recently that a PhD proposal on Gopinath Munde’s social work when refused by the university authorities in Marathwada University at Aurangabad were threatened for not allowing the topic and then they finally had to succumb to that pressure and allow it. We are again here falling prey to extraneous influences to impinge upon our educational institutions. Whether the topic is deserving does not seem to be the issue but the belief that the BJP leader deserves this signal honour seems to be the intention. To be fair to Shri Munde, he may not be even aware that such a proposal has been given in and that it has caused the furore that as reported in the newspapers. The related matter that bears examination is whether such topics can be taken during the lifetime of the named person or at least as long he is involved in the work mentioned in the dissertation proposal may need to be considered assuming Shri Munde is still i8nvolved in social work. Further what will be the value of PhD’s from Indian universities if these trends persist is another thing that we may have to mull upon.

FDI In Multi-Brand Retail Harmful To India

The FDI debate on multi-brand retail in the Lok Sabha brought out some issues which need to be contested. Kapil Sibal's statement that opening up the reforms has benefited the auto ancillaries and the pharma industry in India to become global in size and be counted among the best in the world is one such. However, a moderating thought on this is that these industries have benefited their owners more than the people of this country notwithstanding their contribution to generating employment and the revenues generated by way of excise duty and other taxes. In the same manner the great belief that Kapil Sibal has that Cos. like Walmart coming into the country will source a majority of products locally will be belied when he sees that the shelves of the eventual Walmart stores overflowing with products from China and elsewhere from around the world. Organised retailers buy products from the channels that they have set up and those that offer them the best rate. They have no compunctions to benefit the local suppliers and though in the rules that our government has faithfully framed that so much percentage should be sourced from our small & MSME businesses, Walmart and their kind will pay lip service to it until their FDI approvals are through. Once this is done they will take advantage of our lax monitoring and inspection systems and source from their regular international suppliers and in the unlikely event that they get caught or hauled up, it is easy to get out of the predicament since all you have to do is admit your mistake and pay a minimal fine. What Kapil Sibal does not realise is that without FDI in retail the shops of his constituency - Chandni Chowk, stock in the majority electrical and other novelty goods from overseas mostly China and therefore we celebrate Diwali with Chinese diyas, pray to Chinese-made gods etc. Hence, one would believe that there was no need for FDI and all one would have to do is liberalise imports further so that our own traders would benefit. We also need to remember that some of the big names in retail that are being talked about like Walmart have turnovers exceeding US$400 Billion and which happens to be higher than India's annual export trade. Thus one can imagine the negotiating clout that these Cos. have and into whose maws we are thrusting our poor farmers into. For them it is like jumping into the Walmart's fires after having been slowly simmered in the Indian government's cooking pot for so long. It is not only this but what disappoints is that we are encouraging people like Walmart who along with their local partners, Bharati of the Mittals have already broken laws of our country by pumping in some FDI in excess of US$100 million into the country when it is clearly not allowed. Thus for the UPA & the Congress party, it is common ground for one blackguard to invite another to loot this country. As said many a time in many forums, FDI in multi-brand retail will only benefit the rich and the upper middle-class in terms of improving availability of convenience goods, will lead to rampant closure of the small kirana stores that dot this country and provide livelihood to millions of families, will not improve recovery to farmers for their produce, make our educated youth robots with no independent thinking ability for manning the retail stores and hand over the huge Indian market to monopolistic foreign Cos. who will only end up in exploiting our country and our people.

Muslims Feeling Of Being A Targeted Community

The Muslims in India have never had it so good than in recent times. Capping a long list of Muslims in Indian public life and officialdom from Abdul Kalam as President, Hamid Ansari as Vice-President, Quereshi as Election Commissioner some time back, Salman Khurshid now as Foreign Minister among others, the UPA government has now appointed Ibrahim as IB Director which is a sensitive and critical post. What else do the Muslims want? The fuss being created about Muslims being targeted by the police and law enforcement authorities in terror cases is quite unnecessary. The police have to be left alone to do their job and given the police track record all over India except maybe in Kashmir one would not believe that they go out of their way to pick on Muslims. As a community the Muslims need to be co-operative with the law enforcement authorities and not take confrontational and antagonistic positions which only aggravates the situation creating suspicion and thus aggressive action from both sides. One needs to just look at crime statistics to see that in percentage or per capita terms the Muslims as a community tend to have more crime amongst themselves as also against other communities. This could be because of the generally low level of education within the community resulting in income not satisfactory to live a reasonably comfortable life and thus contributing to strife. The low level of education could also be the reason why the Muslims particularly youth tend to be deluded by the terror propaganda unleashed by outfits like Al Qaeda and others as also easily provoked as we had seen in the recent communal clashes in the North East where pictures on the Internet of natural disasters in other countries was quickly assumed as that of communal problems in Assam. With the explosion of information that is the norm today through the Internet and social media it is important that all of us including the Muslim community qualify the information, in the sense check its veracity, before acting on the input. There have also been some pockets in the Muslim community across the country and not necessarily only in Kashmir who tend to side with Pakistan down to even supporting them in the case of an India – Pakistan match be it in cricket or hockey or whatever and even wave Pakistani flags at public places during the match. This is rather strange since you do not support your own country which gives you sustenance and livelihood but support a nation across the border whose track record in human rights is a shambles, who actively supports terror groups as part of state policy blaming all this on India and whose economy does not allow a reasonable life to its citizens except for a few of the elite. In this context, what comes to mind is that those who support Pakistan can be given an option to move to that country though one wonders if Pakistan would accept these Muslims since it systematically off and on culls the Muslims who have come from India, whom they call Mohajirs, in its cities like Karachi and others. The plight of the Hindus in Pakistan is worse as evidenced lately by the refugee influx of Pakistani Hindus into India seeking residence here after atrocities committed against their women by the Pakistani Muslims. In all this the educated Muslim community in India who have established themselves in Indian society need to play an active role in encouraging education within the community, the enrolment of more and more youth into colleges and professional courses, fostering the sentiments of nationhood on a more general and expansive basis within the community which is the only way to get rid of the step-motherly status that the Indian Muslim has come to believe is his lot in India. The fault in this does not lie with the majority community but with the Muslims who have to come forward and truly believe that they are legitimate and fully empowered citizens of India. Thus in this scenario having a cricket series against Pakistan in India is quite out of context since given the intransigent response from that country we will encourage more of their terrorists to come to India under the guise of cricket fans. Also the cricket series does not benefit anyone except for BCCI and those involved in illegal betting so as a nation we do not need this series and there is no real need for India to prove itself against Pakistan in cricket

Lacunaes In The Direct Cash Transfer Scheme Using Aadhaar

The direct cash transfer scheme using Aadhaar announced by the UPA government as a radical measures in terms of transferring subsidies and benefits to the weaker sections of our society needs to be monitored carefully and implemented well if it has to meet its stated objectives. The major lacunae that this scheme will have is that it will suffer from the same problems that any of the existing administration measures which are used to manage current schemes like MNREGA etc. The first thing is that the list of those entitled can be managed to include and/or exclude those who are close to the local village administration or the unit closest to the beneficiary. In MNREGA in some of the instances in Rajasthan it was found that the people of the lower class of society like dalits were not included in the beneficiary list though they did most of the work and the list was packed with the names of higher caste people. The dalits though were paid for their work but not according to the scheme's norms. Similarly there can be clerical errors in inputting the names of the people and/or their bank account numbers (now 13 digit) along with the Aadhaar number (12 digit) which will lead to the beneficiary not getting the funds due to him/her. We all know the mechanism of redressal of such errors with government officials who will ask for their pound of flesh to correct the entries. Even if there is no bribe involved when educated people find it extremely difficult to interact with government and set right things related to their issues what chance does an illiterate villager or BPL category person have to get his name properly included in any beneficiary list and in the event of errors to get it corrected. As recounted in another trial benefit transfer scheme based on Aadhaar for kerosene it was found that not only were there delays in transfers of the subsidy for no legitimate and explainable reasons but the people found that buying kerosene at the open market price was impractical considering that they had to find the extra money and with no definite time schedule for getting the subsidy they preferred to switch to firewood. This was the reason why consumption of kerosene in that area fell by 80% while the government touted that this showed the extent of leakages in the system and how much kerosene was being diverted to the blackmarket. Imagine this for rice and wheat which the BPL familites are supposed to get at Rs. 2/- per Kg. while market prices for the similar item that is edible in the open market is close to Rs. 20/-. Thus we have to ask ourselves that whether the BPL person will have the extra Rs. 18/- per Kg. to buy for his consumption and then await the subsidy transfer from the government. Definitely, not! Thus we will end up having more people starve than what is happening though the government would have been happy that they have eliminated the defalcation by the people in the chain of transfer of these benefits. The problem is that the direct cash transfer scheme using Aadhaar is looking at just the 'last mile' step in the transfer of subsidy/benefit process without looking at the earlier steps and tighten the lacunae in these areas. This apart we all know the problem for BPL persons to open bank accounts after going through the KYC norms. Thus the direct cash transfer scheme using Aadhaar is being pushed out in haste and unless due application of mind and concerted thinking is not applied, it will end up throwing mud in the government's face and have millions of our poor people lives thrown into disarray and maybe sacrificed at the altar of technology. There is an alternate viewpoint in which if this scheme is introduced it may be another mechanism to improve the liquidity of the government. Consider that a BPL person buys a Kg. of rice at Rs. 20/- which he is entitled to get at Rs. 2/- and the government either does not transfer him the Rs. 18/- subsidy or delays it by some 6 months or more, then the government would be running on the poor man's money. With more than a 100 million beneficiaries, we are talking of large sums of money. Talk of inverting the subsidies pyramid. Also it could be a short-term measure to controlling the government's runaway budget deficit. Concluding, it is not that one is against the new schemes of the government using the latest technology but this is just to remind those involved with its implementation that they should go about this with caution since you are playing with the lives of people who are at or near starvation levels in our country.

The FDI Debate On Multi-Brand Retail in Parliament

The FDI in multi-brand retail issue has gone through many hurdles before it will finally come up for discussion this week in both houses of Parliament entailing a vote at the end of the debates. In this process a number of deals have been struck by the Congress with its UPA partners notably the DMK as well as the SP and the BSP who give outside support to the present government. The SP vote though is still hanging in the air to conclude maybe the final wrap-up of concessions that they expect to get. This wheeling and dealing to ensure that the UPA does not get embarrassed has nothing to do with the FDI issue on hand but for the concerned parties to assess how to get off disproportionate asset cases or the CBI off their back on corruption cases or even to such mundane things as to official postings of those close to one or the other party. This shows how much our politics these days is hinge-ing on deal making than retaining broader focus on affairs of policy and governance. The acceptance by the Congress on a discussion on FDI has come about only after they were confident of having bought over their supposed allies within and outside of the UPA. The debate on this issue in both houses of Parliament with a vote will not have any effect on the incumbency of the UPA government. By rights the TMC call for a no-trust vote should have been accepted across the board by all parties not necessarily just to voice their opinion on the FDI issue but as a vote of no-confidence on the performance of the UPA government ridden with scams, corruption, rampant price rise and complete non-performance on economic matters. When everyone wants early elections why the UPA was given a lease of life for another year and the agony of the people prolonged for the same period, is something that all parties opposing the Congress will realise to their regret.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:141

Date: 01.12.2012

Contents:

1. Let Market Forces Rule In India’s Corporate Sector

2. Authorities Should Act According To Law

3. BJP No Better Than The Congress

4. The Aam Admi Party

5. FDI in Parliament

Let Market Forces Rule In India’s Corporate Sector

Recently one of the senior office-bearers of ASSOCHAM told the media that if the government can bail out Air india then why should Kingfisher not be bailed out at least by the public sector banks from which it has borrowed massive amounts of money, since Kingfisher is operating in the same area as Air India and is faced with similar problems. In any case there should have been no question of bailing out Air India since given the enormity of the problems it has been facing in the recent past, it should have been allowed to die a natural death since it will remain a massive liability for the government and the Indian tax-payer. The logic, however, of bailing Kingfisher by analogy as above is infallible but then let us look at this in a slightly different perspective. If you are a big borrower and default then the banks are keen to find a way out like rescheduling etc. take the instance of Kingfisher Airlines here and that of Suzlon and other major corporates. But if you are a small borrower then the bank jumps on you for repayment. There is no question of rescheduling here and the banks go even to the extent of publishing the poor person’s photo in the papers saying he is a defaulter. We have seen these kind of ads for those who default on home loans in the daily papers. In the same way when some activists pushed for the publication of photos in newspapers of the major 400 defaulters by size with banks in India among whom are big and reputed corporates, the RBI stepped in saying that this is not as per the prevailing banking rules. Why should there be one rule for the common man and another for the well-heeled is the question? It is time therefore that the genteel and sophisticated mask of the rich and powerful is ripped off and they brought on par with the rest of the country. If any business like Kingfisher fails then let it go into bankruptcy since someone else will take their place or the other players in the same sector will benefit. Thus in each sector let market forces rule and not the hush hush whispers of crony capitalism.

Authorities Should Act According To Law

The arrests in Palghar of the girls who posted on Facebook the protest about the bandh on the day after the Shiv Sena chief had died is representative of the authorities tending to take the easy way out in any administrative action. It is also a case of the establishment leaning unnecessarily on defenceless individuals since it is afraid to deal with an organised entity in this case a militant political party.It is not only in this case but it is always found that any of the authorities in our country tend to take the safe side and harass single individuals who have less clout or voice to make themselves heard about the injustice being meted out to them. It is only now that media as also the Internet have given a mechanism for these voiceless people to be heard. What should be done is that the authorities should act according to law which will obviate the need as we are now seeing in the above case of corrective punitive action against the magistrate and police officers being launched which was completely unnecessary if they had acted to implement proper justice. In a democracy there is no need to muzzle free speech which also brings to the fore that our political parties and their members should take criticism against them more pro-actively and in a balanced manner rather than resort to violence at the drop of a hat.

BJP No Better Than The Congress

On the Gadkari issue the BJP is turning out to be no better than the Congress by ignoring the aspect of money laundering in the floating of Gadkari’s Purti group of Cos. where the latest evidence unearthed by the media is showing that Gadkari’s very near relatives are the ones who had put money into the shell Cos. which in turn invested in the Purti group. The BJP instead of coming clean from this matter in the manner of metal being rid of impurities by melting it in a furnace which it could have easily done by sacking Gadkari is playing with the Congress as to who’s the one that is better at corruption? Further by sacking Ram Jethmalani for speaking his mind on the Gadkari issue and that of the CBI Director, it is showing intolerance of criticism and trying to muzzle free speech within the party on matters where there is no real defence for the leaders of the party to take such hasty and intemperate action. Thus there is no real difference between the Congress and the BJP when it comes to either its leaders being found to be corrupt or not being allowed to speak against the party leadership. In the Congress we have the ubiquitous High Command while with the BJP it seems to be the Central Committee. Thus in this context new parties adding to the regional parties complement gives a greater choice to the Indian voter in the upcoming general elections.

FDI in Parliament

In some quarters of the media it is being debated on why government policy should be brought to Parliament in the context of the present controversy of FDI in multi-brand retail. These people may be right about this position to a certain extent but then it was the Congress on the floor of Parliament that had offered to discuss it prior to implementation. Thus the position that the Opposition is taking that you cannot offer to discuss it and then change your mind in just a couple of months and say that policy is within the domain of the executive. Why are the Congress going back on their assurance? The onus therefore is on the Congress to come clean and not play hesitant or dilly-dally in the face of executing government policy. This in no case will become a precedent for future policy either for the Congress or in the faint hope that the BJP still holds to come back to power.

The Aam Admi Party

Arvind Kejriwal has announced the name of his political party as the - Aam Admi party. This is another milestone in the journey of R K Laxman's ubiquitous common man (or aam admi) from being a silent observer in the cartoons to a likely active player in the political arena. This is a good thing since it is very important that the aam admi representative of the Indian middle class takes a more active role rather than get snowed under by various government measures mostly taxation and price rise since he is more often than not taken for granted. In a democratic process it is important apart from being passively participatory to be demanding of one's rights at appropriate times. As it is the aam admi vote has no value since it gets lost in the morass of the vote banks cultivated by our politicians of the poor and marginalised sections of society. There is an issue here of understanding what we mean by the vibrancy of our democracy which is held as a beacon by our politicians and professional psephologists when extolling it around the world. Is it only in the ability of the electorate to overturn governments every 5 years or do we have to judge vibrancy in some other way? Just like music played by a novice varies from that played by maestros like Ravi Shankar or Hari Prasad Chaurasia, so also we need to index the vibrancy of our democracy and that is in its ability to assimilate feedback, to act in time on issues which are important to the people and to set the nation on a path of growth and prosperity without being preferential about it to certain sections of society as we see happening now. Thus the choice of the name of Arvind Kejriwal' political party augurs well and we do hope it will usher in positive change in the life of this nation. Postscript: Arvind Kejriwal has used the name – Aam Admi for his fledgling political outfit which is what I had started using a long time ago for my Vox Populi authorship. For a larger cause, I guess, it is OK to sacrifice the name. The term – Mango Man , being bandied around now for the aam admi is more in the nature of a pejorative and should be ignored.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:140

Date: 24.11.2012

Contents:

1. ‘Snoop The Snoopers’

2. The Malaise of Corruption

3. The Mish-Mash That Is The Indian Economy

4. NOTW, Savile & BBC Bungles Reflect The Scars In British Society

5. The Savita Case In Ireland

6. Indian Agriculture Has Become A NCP Fiefdom

7. Israel Has To Show Restraint

8. Congress Suffering From Empty-Headed Leadership Syndrome

9. Dual Pricing of LPG Cylinders

‘Snoop The Snoopers’

The sexual indiscretions in the US that have hit recent headlines involving serving and other generals of the Army as well as Gen. (Retd.) Petraeus heading the CIA from which he has since resigned indicate that Congressional hearings and the like that officers of the government go through before they are confirmed in their job extend only to their past practices and not to current habits. Army generals have been lumped together above since Gen. (Retd.) Petraeus is of that category and was recently having joint command of the forces in Afghanistan and the other named generals in this category are his successor in Afghanistan and the one commanding the famed 81st Airborne Division. These are also very senior command positions privy to top secret information and the fact that these generals being compromised could indicate a grave security risk to the US government. The CIA being ‘top dog’ among snoop agencies in the world does not snoop on its own has been proved in the case of Petraeus since the FBI persistence in the investigation into antagonizing email between two of the ladies involved is what broke the story. But then maybe like in many of Robert Ludlum’s novels there is a need for the NSA or some similar covert agency to ‘snoop on the snoopers’.

The Malaise of Corruption

The venal side of most of our politicians and legislators is well known. The same applies to our bureaucracy since just this week we had the lady ex-Chief Secretary of UP indicted for corruption by the CBI. Along with this the person heading the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal was being investigated by the CBI for showing concessions and favours to a private group. All this on the back of a number of IAS officers being caught in corruption cases and having disproportionate assets and as far as the IT Dept. is concerned we have had Commissioners indicted for corruption leading up to even the Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). One therefore need not reiterate that corruption is a pervasive phenomena in Indian society. What hurts the common people is that our authorities refuse to even see this problem and particularly the Congress governments who in fact encourage this sort of thing and turn a blind eye to it. Like again last week we have had a news item highlighting bogus ration cards in Mumbai where the authorities have now ruled that if there is no drawal against a ration card for 3 months, it will get suspended. We all know of some 40 lakh bogus cards in Karnataka and that this problem is common enough around the country. It is just like the petrol mafia, this is yet another mafia which uses these bogus ration cards to siphon off foodgrain stocks to the open market for windfall gains. Again last week, we were told that 50% of cellular towers in Mumbai are illegal! If out of 3600 towers in Mumbai, if some are illegal then it is to some extent acceptable but with half of them being unlawful, it reflects the broader malaise that affects India these days. And this in a hi-tech sector where we have the organized corporate sector including multinationals involved. The common tendency in India is not to follow the law most of the time and if caught try to bribe your way out of it. It has become an embedded culture now to do things beyond the pale of the law knowing full well that you can get away with it by paying money. This essentially is the root cause of corruption and it is an attitude issue which needs to be corrected. For one or the other reason the average Indian is willing to pay to get his work done rather than be either hassled or wait in line. Thus for all those who scream from the pulpits about corruption and the need to get rid of it, in their own lives when things have to get done, one is reasonably sure that they pay up quietly and not have it known to the public at large. The same goes for black money which is a problem intertwined with corruption. The average Indian indulges in generating and using black money since otherwise society brands him as a duffer and an idiot. If you have an honest government officer, you will find that the pressure on him from his immediate family to becoming corrupt is the highest and if he resists this temptation there are chances that the people around him may treat him as an outcast. Thus the person has not much choice. Therefore if we have to limit, reduce or eliminate corruption, the change has to come from within and among all of us. Say – NO, to paying up unauthorized demands when you interact with any agency be it government or otherwise and that’s when a start would have been made in the war against corruption.

The Mish-Mash That Is The Indian Economy

The economic headlines during the last 10 days or so, have read something like this. Industrial growth falls further with YoY 2.4%. Manufacturing and capital goods are major laggards. Export growth shrinks. Trade deficit widens. Exports to China encouraged. Fiscal deficit widens. Inflation reduces to 7.45%. RBI refuses to touch interest rates. Rupee touches 2 month low. Sensex remains range bound. Moorat trading (at Diwali) does not give a fillip to the Sensex. 2G auction a damp squib. Thus even a novice at economics will tell you that the country is going downhill with the UPA at the helm of affairs. It is not that one is gleeful about this state of affairs but then one has to recognize the situation for what it is before one can go about correcting it. Thus only exports that has seen dull movement is something that can be justified considering that world markets are facing recession and in Europe many countries are toying with imposing austerity measures faced with recession. The point is that none of the above figures may be correct because of basic structural flaws as reported in the past, therefore one cannot but reiterate the conclusion that our policy planners in the economics arena are probably shooting in the dark. Thus whenever they see a ray of hope in any one indice or sector, they jump to embrace it as if there is no tomorrow. But they end up proved fallacious or disappointed making the age-old adage come true – That one swallow does not herald the onset of spring. Our FM had seen the 2G auction as something that would bail him out from his budget deficit crisis little realizing that the Telecom Ministry and the Congress High Command had other plans and deliberately sabotaged the auction so that they could come out spotlessly clean on the 2G scam. As reported the spectrum released was so nominal that none of the telecom Cos. even felt that it was worth sniffing at. Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s comment last month that the recessionary tendencies seem to have bottomed out, have again also been proved wrong. The Sardarji forever makes the same mistakes time and again and because of the unreliability of his forecasts he would best be deputed to the India Meteorological Department (IMD) where his talents are better suited, rather than at the Planning Commission. In fact the entire economics team of the UPA-2 government should be shown the door and immediately at that since they exhibit no fundamental understanding of how the Indian economy works. That is the only way that the country will turn around and start performing again.

NOTW, Savile & BBC Bungles Reflect The Scars In British Society

The News of the World (NOTW) scandal and the Murdoch involvement safely buried one would have thought that British society had put this kind of thing behind them. But then with the surfacing of the Savile scandal and the other McAlpine bungle in the BBC which has even caught the previous head Thompson to being embarrassed in his new job at the New York Times, it seems that hacking into the mobile phones of a 13 year old who killed herself to seeking salacious details from celebrity phones, is not necessarily the end of the story in terms of UK media interest. Media holds a mirror to a society in general and these stories show the extent of depravity that commonly prevails in Britain. The sexual indiscretions in the US that have hit recent headlines are similar to the above.

The Savita Case In Ireland

The case of Savita's death due to pregnancy delivery complications in Ireland has been hitting the headlines ever since the unfortunate incident took place. But then we need to look at the matter objectively. When people migrate they need to understand that by that very process they are accepting to live within the norms of the country to which they are going. This includes the laws of that country and the mores of that society. In this case, here is an educated couple who should have verified the laws of the country particularly when it is involved with a precious issue like childbirth. We all know that everything does not go in childbirth cases as planned, more so in these days where the expectant mother is expected to work and meet the demands of a job abroad. Thus if Catholicism in Ireland was an obstacle they could have flown out the mother back home or an adjoining country where the laws and customs are more friendly to them. Blaming the Irish government for their religious beliefs will not bring back Savita and that is what her family should realise and no amount of public outcry will change that fact. This does not mean that one should not record the protest since that is important for future such incidents where if the Irish government is open to change, precious lives could be saved. But that depends purely on Ireland and their willingness to amend their position on abortion. We should also look at such matters in the context that if anything was happening in India which would affect our religious sensibilities, would we be amenable to change? This is an important lesson to expatriate Indian families and those planning to migrate abroad to check out the laws of the land that they are going to so that the lives of theirs and those of their precious ones are protected and saved in the event of emergencies.

Indian Agriculture Has Become A NCP Fiefdom

What happened during the last Cabinet re-shuffle which many people may have missed is that Indian agriculture has become a NCP fiefdom with Sharad Pawar as Minister and Tariq Anwar as MoS. Henceforth the only growth that one will see in this sector beyond the nominal 2% that we have seen lately is in the size of the girth of the ministers and in their bank balances and assets both legitimate and benami. With a marginal drop of less than 1% in the inflation numbers the government is getting the aam admi ready for the next price shock since agricultural commodities have not shown any signs of any price plateauing or falling. Sugar has already hit Rs. 40/- a Kg. at the retail level with our godowns brimming with the white gold on the back of two successive bumper harvests while news reports indicates that the late monsoon this year has affected the crops of sugarcane by about 40% and also that of potato, onions and pulses. All this news had been coming out from Maharasthra, Sharad Pawar’s bastion obviously to manage the situation to his advantage. Like they say, whether the weather Gods are kind to agriculture or not, Sharad Pawar’s harvest is assured come rain or shine. FAO on the back of weather vagaries because of climate change which has affected food production in the granaries of the world like the US Mid-West, Russia and other regions has been predicting food prices to rise. At least with our bumper stocks of food particularly wheat and rice we can turn the tables on these trends and maintain our local food prices when international food prices are climbing. This, of course, will only be if the Pawars and Anwars of this world smile benignly on their countrymen. Why a man from Maharasthra should continue as Agriculture since the State has been leading the country in terms of farmer suicides in the country and as seen in the recent sugarcane price agitation in the State, Sharad Pawar wants his way in the matter rather than cede the credit to any of his other politician class like Raju Shetty etc.

Israel Has To Show Restraint

Israel is completely getting out of hand in its retaliation against the Hamas in its present conflict in the Gaza strip. The terminology by official Israeli spokespersons that they will 'reduce Gaza to its status in the Middle Ages' is completely against all norms of civilised national behavior. We all need to recognise that the position of Israel in its present geographical location is untenable and essentially because of this we have these random conflagrations, like the present one, with one or the other opposite number, be it the Hamas, Palestinians, Hezbollah, Syria or Iran. If a permanent solution is found to this basic problem by allowing Palestine self-rule with a Jewish minority and maybe an Israeli state with a Palestinian minority cohabiting next to each other within the present Israeli state then we would not have these rocket and airstrike exchanges which end up killing more innocent civilians and damaging public property. Even Israel has to be restrained by those who have an influence on them like maybe the US or some of the European nations not to use excessive and disproportionate force against essentially a weaker enemy. For a race that has seen oppression the tendency to go on the offensive to destroy (and eradicate) those opposing them, kind of shows that the scars of torture have not healed over seven decades. But that apart restraint has to be shown by any nation and Israel has to learn this. The other angle to these conflicts could be a representative one which the Western nations tend to exhibit often. Israel and most Western nations are highly militarised and continue to develop a variety of sophisticated weapons. Now these weapons have to be put to use otherwise the efficacy of these weapons cannot be assessed in battlefield conditions. Thus there is a need for escalation of tensions in any part of the world leading to short battles if not wars where these weapons can be put to test. That is the pattern you see ever since the Cold War gave over of conflicts worldwide. Notable among these are the fact that the Iraq war started on a wrong premise which took a succeeding US president in Barrack Obama to realise that it was completely unnecessary and as for Afghanistan it was a disproportionate reaction to 9/11 where Cruise missiles were being used in the early stages against the Afghans riding donkeys and carrying staves. Even in the case of Israel Barrack Obama has supported their right to defend themselves. No one wants to deny Israel this right but then 180 odd airstrikes in 48 hours with residential apartment blocks as targets and killing innocent women and children are not defensive tactics. It is time therefore that the US President leaned upon Israel to see reason and scale down its firepower while retaliating against the random rocket strikes from the Gaza strip.

Congress Suffering From Empty-Headed Leadership Syndrome

The Congress is suffering from empty-headed leadership syndrome. This normally comes on when the top leadership suffers from a disability of regular speech and the tendency to shut oneself up inside closed doors. We all know that Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh suffer from this disease and to a certain extent Rahul Gandhi also. Giving Rahul Gandhi to lead the charge for the Congress in the upcoming general elections is a clear symptom of this syndrome. In the Assembly segment in the past, he has made a mess of the elections in Bihar and then made a bigger mess in UP where in the last elections the SP came back to power with a resounding majority. In both States the Congress is on its last legs. Thus letting him lead the Congress party in the next general election will signal the death-knell of the party. R.I.P. The other thing that we all need to think about and introspect is about the Congress party, the oldest party in India, with uneducated people at the helm of affairs. Both Sonia Gandhi & Rahul Gandhi are not educated since if they were, then there would have been no hesitation to put their qualifications in the public domain. To govern a country though one must say that the dominant need is to be educated, at the least to the graduate level. Some of those leading the pack in the Congress party are even less educated and there seems to be an underlying motive in manipulating an electorate that is even less educated in the majority, thus keeping this country backward forever. If one is to comment on the fact that the present Gandhi family assumes their birthright to lead this country because of their ancestry. One must say that neither are their blood lines pure in terms of their link to the Nehru family. Sonia Gandhi obviously does not qualify to be even mentioned in this regard while Rahul Gandhi is diluted twice once through Feroze and then through Sonia Gandhi. Therefore why the Congress party should hang on to such wretched and irregular heirlooms of the Nehru family is something that is not understood. This talk of charisma and the ability to be a crowd-puller are all cock and bull stories. These myths around Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka have been perpetrated by the Congress party members themselves and cultivated by the present Gandhi family. In this Sonia is the major infarctor, down to copying Indira Gandhi’s style from her sarees and dressing style, the mannerisms of speech and gait while appearing at public meetings. The Congressmen unfortunately tend to believe in this more than in themselves. This leads them to follow the Gandhi family blindly and take any of their utterances as God’s own word. It is time therefore that this myth is busted. In fact the Congress has taken the first step in this regard by anointing Rahul Gandhi to lead them in the next elections which needs to be given a gentle push so that the process of decimation of the Congress party is complete. Like they say, maybe we have had too much of a good thing for too long, more than a century, and maybe it is time to change the Congress party now.

Dual Pricing of LPG Cylinders

We all know that dual pricing of any commodity particularly of an essential nature and in high demand, will lead to black-marketing. The government has seen this in kerosene over the years resulting in scarcity of the regulated price item and exorbitant prices for the unregulated one, leading to diversion of the regulated item. The low price has also encouraged the use of kerosene as an adulterant to petrol with the latter’s price spurting for various reasons linked with international oil price increases. Even lately when diesel prices were being considered for upward review and to bring them in line with petrol, the dual pricing strategy was discarded for precisely the above reasons of it turning diesel to another black-market commodity. But then why dual pricing of LPG has been resorted to now is not understood. Even though the 6 cylinders per year rule is up in the air with various inputs coming from across the political spectrum that the consensus is likely to be 9 cylinders per year, we are already seeing black marketing in the cylinders from the distributors. Like in Goa out-of-turn regular priced cylinders are available at Rs. 1000/- and unauthorized unregistered supply is available at Rs. 1200/- per cylinder. Time to speed up therefore the direct subsidy to the users through Aadhaar, not that it is the final solution, but then when nothing else is possible, we have to manage with half-baked solutions. Like they say half-baked measures call for half-baked solutions.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:139

Date: 17.11.2012

Contents:

1. BJP Playing The Part of a Blithering Idiot‏

2. The 2G Auction Debacle

3. Barrack Obama Back In The White House

4. The Good Side Of IAC Exposures

5. BJP Shooting Itself In The Foot

6. Girish Karnad Goes Viral

7. The PM As The Prevaricating Dummy

BJP Playing The Part of a Blithering Idiot‏

It is now the turn of the BJP to play the part of a blithering idiot. What with the 'reputed ideologue' Gurumurthy making multiple comments on social media in the last few days on Gadkari's financing Purti group of Cos. which are all contradictory. The other BJP leaders who came out in support and against Gadkari on the matter have not firmed up their positions and strangely lapsed into silence. These tendencies are not good for a party which thinks it will lead the next government at the Centre. The least the BJP should do is to exhibit its decision making skills and convince the people of this country that when the chips are down they can get down to a decision. Unfortunately on any matter in the last few months be it moving a no-confidence vote in Parliament or handling its own internal matters it is the BJP's dithering that has come to the fore. In contrast the Congress may make money hand over fist but it keeps the wheels of governance oiled if not with grease at least with money and everyone is happy except the poor who get ground into the dust. So will the BJP wake up and show it is effective at least in the upcoming session of Parliament by moving a no-confidence motion on the FDI in multi-brand retail for which it has to woo the other Opposition parties for the motion to succeed.

The 2G Auction Debacle

With the 2G auction fetching less than Rs. 10,000 crore, conspiracy theories will abound. The first is that the government talked to the telecom Cos. to make the 2G spectrum auction a no-go which indirectly bails them out of the CAG charge that the earlier spectrum if it had been auctioned would have fetched close to Rs. 176,000 crores. Now the Congress and the UPA can tell the people of the country, we told you all along that it was not that much! The second theory would be that the telecom Cos. have themselves formed a cartel so that they underbid and force the government to sell the spectrum cheaply. It is also understood that Vodafone has emerged as the major bidder across regions picking up spectrum in possibly a celebratory mode considering that the parent Co. has decided not even to make a provision of US$2 billion or so on the taxation demand by the Indian government on its earlier big acquisition in India. The UPA government is understandably worried about the burgeoning budget deficit this year which was to be offset by the revenues generated among other things from the present 2G spectrum auction, which is in jeopardy now. A large budget deficit will render liberalization of the economy difficult which will bring the sword down of a lowering of India’s credit rating by international agencies thus messing up the plans of the government. Why our financial planners including our homily quoting PM not follow the maxim – Cut Your Coat According To The Cloth You Have, is something that is beyond anyone’s understanding. What they have to do is seal the revenue leakages in the system be it in the MNREGA or the public distribution system etc., cut down the size of government and ring in austerity measures like never before which will stabilize the revenue funnel which is looking like a sieve now. Is anyone listening?

Barrack Obama Back In The White House

Barrack Obama’s victory in the Presidential elections giving him a well-deserved second term re-affirms the fact that the US is still a country that has at its heart decent human values and the willingness to give a human being another chance. After a rather dithering and indecisive first term where the signal achievements for Barrack Obama were killing Osama Bin Laden, the Health Care Bill and the decisions for pulling out of both Iraq & Afghanistan in that order of importance, the second term will give an opportunity to show what real plans he has from America rather than just reacting to circumstances like he had to do in the first term. The recession, the two quite unnecessary wars were all thrust upon him by the previous Republican incumbent of the White House, George W Bush, and he had no alternative but to put his shoulder to the wheel and try to resolve them. Irrespective of the unwanted legacy that he had to carry, Barrack Obama still has to learn to be more decisive and do less on the consultative mode he tends to more often than not lapse into when faced with difficult decisions. The recent US Presidential elections showed that the Democrat strongholds are more on the coasts, both the eastern and the western seaboards and the Republican strengths are in the middle America running right through the centre of America or what is called in weather forecaster terms – Tornado Alley. In geographical terms Mitt Romney’s votes covered more area than Barrack Obama’s and the incumbent President won because the seaboards are more populated than the hinterland and the fact that the electoral college system is weighted towards those who can capture the coasts. However, in the final result this was not really a close election since Barrack Obama won by close to a million ballots in the public vote and in the electoral college he beat Mitt Romney by more than half the votes that Romney could get. That surely is decisive and quite impressive one must say of how Barrack Obama got back into the White House for a second term. With the Senate firmly in Republican hands, it would not be insensible for the GOP to move for electoral reforms and change the electoral college system so that the white Caucasian, middle American and middle aged vote counts.

The Good Side Of IAC Exposures

The exposures by Arvind Kejriwal and his IAC do good to the extent that hitherto taboo matters like the financial dealings of the Gandhi family and their relatives along with other political families and also the dealings of the super-rich like the Ambanis etc. and finally the issue of black-money which in Indian society everyone indulges in but is chary to talk about it let alone fight it have come out in the open. The positive thing out of all this is that some action has been initiated by the government in the light of Kejriwal ‘s exposures. Even a face-saving probe was launched by the Congress government in Haryana on Robert Vadra’s land deals while Nitin Gadkari is caught in a bind with his financial improprieties in relation to his Purti group of Cos. The Ambanis and others like them have come out to clear and rebut the allegations made about having unauthorized bank accounts abroad. Even HSBC accused of serving as a money launderer has had to release a public announcement, necessarily bland, that it complies with the law of the land in all the countries it operates in. Even the government has had to announce that a probe is on on the black money Lagarde list of those Indians holding accounts abroad which may not go anywhere but at least a start has been made to be transparent to the extent that there is confirmation that a list exists and the authorities are working on it. Thus such matters earlier hidden under multiple veils of innuendo and secrecy are at least being addressed now with. The reasonable assumption is that if things get talked about some action on them is likely. And the credit for all this clearly goes to Arvind Kejriwal and his team. As for HSBC it is not only in India that it has been accused of money laundering but also in the UK and the US where the fines that are likely on the bank may run up to US$1.5 Billion. In India also there had been cases with them allowing NRI’s to operate accounts which go against US laws. Do we not need then to check if the reverse also is legal since HSBC may be assisting the NRI’s and/or local Indians from breaking Indian foreign exchange laws? We will also be hesitant to take action against HSBC for fear that taking on a big foreign bank may have major repercussions in our ability to get foreign investment (FDI) which is like the Holy Grail for the incumbent government now. The Vodafone retrospective taxation issue is fresh in the minds of our leaders which will prohibit them from considering any drastic punitive action on HSBC. In fact what should be done is to temporarily suspend the banking licence of HSBC in India until they can clarify the money laundering charges against them and prove to us that their India operations are above board. From here where do we go is something that is not known but then whistleblowers and people like Arvind Kejriwal are required since then we at least know how far gone are we on the road of infamy and perdition as a country and a society. It is only then that we can judge what kind of action is required to bring us back to the state of normality. There are a number of eminent journalists in the print media who seem to be jealous of Arvind Kejriwal and his team going to the extent of saying that he has re-found his calling of an Income Tax officer, but then these journalists need to ask themselves what they did all these years but share a cozy relationship with government and big business accepting freebies and the like, indirectly supporting the crony capitalism culture.

BJP Shooting Itself In The Foot

The BJP is again in a mess and that too just before the winter session of Parliament. Where they had enough ammunition to put the Congress & the UPA on the mat in this session starting from Coal gate to Robert Vadra's cozy real estate deals to Salman Khurshid's trust scam, they are looking now inward and fighting amongst each other. It is a completely divided house within the BJP on the Nitin Gadkari financial dealings in relation to the formation of his Purti group of Cos. where any lay accountant will tell you that he will find it extremely difficult to explain the source of his funds. Why the BJP brought in RSS 'ideologue' Gurumurthy to give a clean chit to Nitin Gadkari on his financial dealings vis a vis the Purti group, little realising that he was eroding his own credibility and professional reputation in the process. India is not full of suckling babes as most of the political parties seem to think and a major part of the India success story has come because of the ability and enterprise of its people inspite of having to carry the political class on its back. Not only that other RSS 'ideologues' are complicating the pitch further by bringing in the Gujarat angle against Gadkari. These 'ideologues' well past their prime and with no accountability for their utterances and actions are making a mess of the BJP's position. Thus it is not as if the BJP does not have its hands full with its own in-fighting but this matter is being compounded by such irresponsible RSS interference. It is high time therefore that the BJP shrugged off the heavy hand of the RSS on its shoulder otherwise as a party it will be always hobbled both in terms of formulation of policy and in taking quick action on major issues. Further the BJP itself seems to be suffering from the same dichotomy that affects the Congress party most of the time. In this regard the double standards are very obvious on the part of the BJP decision making since for B S Yeddyyurappa it acts and advises him to demit office and refuses to bring him back even after on some of the corruption cases against him the High Courts take a lenient stand and allow him bail while for Nitin Gadkari under similar circumstances of financial impropriety they prefer to brazen it out and in that process get caught up in a quagmire of their own making. All this is going to cost the BJP heavily in the upcoming general elections and if there had been a chance for them to come up with a better showing and even have an outside chance of forming the government this time around, all that has been squandered away now and looks like a lost dream.

Girish Karnad Goes Viral

Girish Karnad's rantings on first Naipaul, very well deserved, and on Rabindranath Tagore, a little less deserving, are to be taken as expressions of our democracy and categorised as individual opinions and need not necessarily feed a media frenzy. Like they say there is a fine line which divides genius and insanity which also is conditioned as age progresses with the debilitation of the mind called senility. Thus you have to take what anyone says today with a pinch of salt and also take it in your stride which is what needs to be done in the case of Karnad's utterances. As for his comments on Naipaul they are very much valid, who styles himself as a latter-day Nirad C Chaudhuri with the carte blanche to pronounce on all matters Indian, the more controversial the better. On Guru Dev, Karnad is less informed and should not have made those comments at least in the vituperative manner that it has come out in the press, after all the only Nobel Prize winner from India deserves a modicum of respect. Why no one speaks of Salman Rushdie in the same vein, is something that astounds one, considering that in recent times he is the biggest pretender to be a novelist with some links to India? Karnad, are you game for this one?

The PM As The Prevaricating Dummy

Our government keeps saying that there is no alternative to most things like the petroleum fuel and LPG price hikes or the need for nuclear power and lately FDI in multi-brand retail. This is because they take the advice of the professional experts in the field, which is important and desirable, but unfortunately this opinion is not moderated by policy or planning experts. Thus what are called interested parties like the professional experts tend to vociferously push their opinions to the exclusion of all others and therefore alternatives are not considered. It is only this but our PM falls for this hook, line and sinker. And then with the PM it is always ultimatum raj, either this or nothing. We have shown this side of him many a time and notably during the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal. He has shown no ability to build a consensus through structured debate and discussion throughout his incumbency in office otherwise our Parliament would not have been stalled session after session, though we have to ascribe some blame for this to the Opposition particularly the BJP. But then the buck for running this country should finally stop with the man in the driver’s seat and that is the PM. Take the case of petroleum and LPG price hikes, why was this not done all along and that too in stages? Even last week when the price of non-subsidised LPG was supposed to be raised by some Rs. 27 per cylinder by the oil Cos., the announced hike was deferred by the government, presumably because of its impact on the Himachal Pradesh elections where the Congress perceive they have a chance to displace the incumbent BJP regime. So also time after time this dithering government for one or the other tenuous or assumed reason over the last 8 years, that it has been in power, has postponed decisions on petroleum fuel price increases and then this man, our PM, has the temerity to tell us that we are on the edge of the precipice. Why has no one asked him who got us there? It is not only this but the distributor hikes in margin both for petroleum fuels and LPG of some below Rs. 1 for the first and below Rs. 12 for the second, the government, whether it be the State or the Centre, did not absorb it but passed it on to the consumer. When the state levied taxes on these products range from 21 – 29%, could the government not have absorbed them and not passed them on to the consumer? These changes affect the middle class the most in India which is viewed as a punching bag by the government, to be hit any which way and any which side, and they expect this class of citizens to keep quiet. Not any more as Arvind Kejriwal of the IAC has shown lately. The middle class will wake up and will ask searching questions as time goes by. Take also the case of FDI in multi-brand retail, we are looking at it as a magic wand to save our farmers from penury, provide our educated youth jobs and generating growth in our GDP, little realizing that we are throwing the chains of foreign domination again around our necks. Oonce we jump into it, it will not be long before we have to ask Walmart to give us our economic indices like CPI & WPI just like the US Dept. of Commerce does. If they can do it, what’s wrong with us doing the same, will be the refrain of our die-hard pro-US supporters even though Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist has said that introducing FDI in retail will do nothing to increase India’s GDP and we need to be wary of Walmart’s labor practices. But then who can argue with our government who has shut its ears for fear that it may stray from the path of supporting US capitalism.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:138

Date: 10.11.2012

Contents:

1. The Gadkari Affair

2. Intemperate & Irresponsible Statements By Our Politicians

3. The PM Should Speak On Inflation

4. On Corruption Matters

5. In Light Of ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy, Review Siting Of All Coast Based NPP’s

The Gadkari Affair

The Gadkari comment about the IQ of Swami Vivekananda and Dawood Ibrahim takes the cake. Anyone in public life should have that much sense not to take their names in the same breath or put them on the same page. The immaturity on the part of the BJP President in this matter is stunning. These kind of leaders think that they can get away with anything by adopting the excuse that they were misquoted or clarifying what they actually meant. In fact all this they should do before they open their mouth so that there is no chance of anyone even misinterpreting them. Even the RSS has criticized their blue eyed boy, Gadkari for the Swami Vivekananda comment. It is not that the RSS is any better since Mohan Bhagwat on Dussehra day openly declared that they do not look at the colour of the money that comes to them as long as it is used for a good social or public cause. Which raises a question that if Dawood Ibrahim agrees to contribute to the RSS cause, will Mohan Bhagwat accept his money? The BJP at its national executive meeting in Delhi y/day(6th) decided to brazen it out on the charge of Gadkari using irregular means for funding his Purti group, with which we claims he has no links now. This position is again going to cost the BJP very dearly in its ability to put the Congress on the mat for corruption in the upcoming winter session of Parliament. Not only that with the electorate before the upcoming general elections the BJP will be on a wet wicket to explain their stand on corruption. Moreover this indirectly corroborates Arvind Kejriwal’s charge that the Congress and BJP are but two sides of the same corruption coin. The manner in which the BJP has handled the Gadkari affair is a media disaster since with the TV channels, it has effectively pushed out the Congress corruption stories of Coal Gate, Robert Vadra propert deals and Salman Khurshid trust case to the background and brought to the fore the rift within the BJP and the fact that the BJP Hanuman’s tikki (pigtail) is still in the hands of the RSS. What should have been done is to dump Gadkari since after all he is just an individual and the party is bigger than him. This would also have demonstrated that the BJP as a party are willing to bite the bullet when it comes to hard decisions.

Intemperate & Irresponsible Statements By Our Politicians

Lately there have a been a spate of intemperate & irresponsible comments from many of our leaders belonging to almost every party ranging from saying that Swami Vivekananda and Dawood Ibrahim have the same IQ's, to saying that old wives are not as much fun as young wives to saying that 80% of the rapes are consensual to the belief that inflation is good for the farmers to accepting that Rs. 70 lakhs corruption is too small and Rs. 70 crores would be a better index to look at for initiating a probe. All this goes to show the mind-set of our leaders and their belief that the target segment that they need to address is more the immature, uneducated and those accept such statements as normal. Otherwise on matters of corruption like we have seen instead of looking at the basic fact that corruption is wrong, they tend to compare who is the bigger corrupt person and go back 10/20 years in picking at the other person to justify their present corrupt actions. We thus have mediocrity rampant amongst our leaders today and that too with no sense of morality and a basic adherence to values and principles. In fact they are leaders of the worst kind. These leaders as said earlier play up to the large mass of uneducated and under-educated India. If India has to change for the better we have to radically transform this. One option is to bring in proportional representation (PR) and the other is to give a weightage to votes such that those who have more education will have more value for their votes. PR brings in a truer representation of the voting pattern rather than the system that we have now of being first-past-the post. One of the criticisms of PR has been that it builds more coalitions than big majorities. And the reality in India is for the next decade or two is that you will have to live with coalitions. Therefore PR is an option since then you give our legislatures more of a representative feel of its constituency. The weighted vote needs also to be considered since our politicians tend to manipulate the large majority of uneducated and under-educated voters and convert them to vote banks. They get thus elected year after year by feeding these vote banks with populist schemes which again provide verdant opportunities for corruption. Thus the educated and considered vote based on careful thought and cultivated debate is lost in the scrabble of the large mass of illiterate votes. This weighted vote system will have an advantage since it will be aspirational encouraging the uneducated to better themselves through education. Not only that as we have seen the urban voting percentages falling in each election over the years because of the mostly educated voter being disenchanted that there is essentially no value for his or her vote, the weighted vote system may make it possible that more of the educated will come out to vote making our democracy more functional. These methods will in the longer term get our legislatures filled with a more educated and better quality of people than what we have today. In fact there has been a noticeable change in our successive Lok Sabhas that our MP’s are getting more and more educated and there are more graduate and professionally qualified people than in the past. This may be the only way to make our democracy meaningful which today is fast degenerating into a farce.

The PM Should Speak On Inflation

Around the first week of September 2012, after hiking the prices of diesel by Rs. 5 a litre, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the inflationary impact from the price hike would be just a bump lasting about 6-8 weeks. One would believe that this time span has passed and we need to raise the question - Has inflation been under control? The fact of the matter is that it has not and even RBI in its recent credit policy review has not ventured to reduce interest rates for fear of continued inflationary pressures. One will therefore conclude from this that the PM was probably lying or making a careless comment resting sure that there would be none to make him accountable for the comment. This is nothing new since the PM and his team have been doing exactly that, lying to us for the last 3 years and consistently at that. Inflation continues to be up and everything is going up from commodity to gold. The only thing that has been going down has been the value of the rupee and the BSE stock market index but for a blip of an increase whenever the FM has talked it up. Even consider the limit of 6 cylinders per connection in a year, which the government wanted to implement almost in the manner of a stricture saying that they have done their homework and this is the norm which individual families are using per available statistics and any usage of more than this number will have to be at the non-subsidised rate. Then when there was widespread opposition to this measure though the government stalled the roll-back, it is learnt that the number 6 may be revised to 9. This has been held back for the Himachal & Gujarat elections to finish otherwise the EC would object to this as a poll influencing measure. This pattern of unreliable data with the government has been the norm for all critical indices of economic performance over the last 3 years. Thus essentially one has to conclude that this government acting on such unreliable data is shooting in the dark and therefore has no clue in which direction the Indian economy is going. Everything that they do now is as if there is no tomorrow and they seem to not believing their luck on their new found energy at least on paper. The PM continues with his homilies and fable tales like every family has to manage with what they earn and if they stretch beyond their earnings, you know what will happen to them (speech of 4th Nov 2012 at the Congress rally in Delhi) and that now famous – money does not grow on trees (televised address to the nation after the announcement of FDI approvals in multi-brand retail). Whom is he talking to? A bunch of primary school students. Get serious, Mr PM.

On Corruption Matters

In the Congress rally at Delhi y/day,4th Nov 2012, their top brass attacked the Opposition by saying that they were neck-deep in corruption. This is surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It is the Congress which has earned itself the dubious reputation for running the most corrupt government in India's history and it is calling others corrupt. It may be only Gadkari in the BJP who is involved in financial impropriety but the honour roll of corruption within the Congress starts from Sonia Gandhi, her son and son-in-law, and extends right across the present and/or past Cabinets even down to the recent re-shuffle where the tainted have been rewarded. After all there is nothing wrong with that since in the robber's code it is the extent of proficiency in the trade which allows you to climb the ladder of power. But the sad part in all this is that the Congresspersons are inveterate liars. They lie with a straight face like Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Dwivedi & A K Anthony, they lie with crooked faces like with Suresh Kalmadi, Pranab Mukherji (before he was bounced into Rashtrapati Bhawan), P C Chacko & Sushil Shinde, they lie in anger bordering on apoplexy like Salman Khurshid, A K Sibal and Narainswamy. But the important thing is that they all lie and that too all the time and on important and critical national issues. There is also the other thing that has emerged is that with a wink and a smile one can get to the other side of the law in your business transactions where the colour is grey and not necessarily black. This is the nature and manner of Robert Vadra's business indiscretions which essentially no one in India's political circles or in the corporate sector want to be investigated since if a precedent is set on this then there is the chance that 99% of India's corporate czars and businesses will be implicated. So like they say this is a dog eat dog world and everything goes. So go ahead and do anything you want but do not contact me if you get caught since I will pretend that I do not know you at all.

In Light Of ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy, Review Siting Of All Coast Based NPP’s

While the Kudankulam stir continues apace with the latest attempt to unsuccessfully to gherao the Legislative assembly in Chennai after the blockade of the ports near the plant site, the authorities are showing their stubborn side by continuing with the insertion of the fuel rods in the reactor to get it going in about a month’s time. This intransigence in the face of actual incidents like Fukushima earlier and now ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy which has wreaked havoc on the eastern seaboard of the United States, definitely prove that siting nuclear power plants (NPP) near the sea is a grave risk and shows up the obtuseness of our authorities to risks faced by the common people living around these plants. It is not just Kudankulam but also Jaitapur and many of the other NPP’s that will dot India’s coastline as a master plan to make us energy ‘secure’ at the possible risk to millions of people living adjacent to these plants and the livelihood of many more millions in adjoining areas consequent upon the impact on marine life with the rise in temperature of the seawater by about 7 degree Centigrade. The two most developed nations in the world first Japan in the case of Fukushima and now the US with ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy have not been able to cope with and protect its facilities from the fury of nature. Should we not take a lesson from these and take abundant caution while planning for our critical facilities. With global warming actually playing a more clear-cut role in the last few years as we have seen in the very unpredictable changes in weather which has led to extremes of floods and drought in many areas around the world and very severe storms, we have to factor in the unpredictability of nature and set up critical installations with more than abundant caution. The example for this is the unusual course of ‘Frankenstorm’ Sandy which hit the shores of New Jersey and the city of New York which hereto was too far north for the hurricances since the most norther they got was North & South Carolina and maybe Pennsylvania. Thus New Jersey and New York was hit causing massive damage with oil tankers thrown on to the beach, massive flooding of the streets including the subways of the Big Apple, fires in electrical power facilities causing severe power outages which took close to 6 days to restore. The Oyster Creek NPP in New Jersey had to take precautions against possible flooding. We had also the very remarkable sight of New Yorkers queuing up for petrol and food since without petrol, power and water, not many could fend for themselves. CNN also had a climate scientist from Princeton University come in and say that no strategic and critical facilities should be sited near the sea coast given the unpredictability of weather consequent of global warming. Thus when the most advanced nation in this world was not able to protect its facilities and people from the fury of nature, how are we so sure that we have taken all precautions to make our coast based nuclear power plants safe. Is it all bluff that the government authorities have been feeding us, since they have gone up to even the Supreme Court and given these assurances. The highest court of the land though not approving to stop the loading of the fuel rods in the Kudankulam NPP has been asking the right questions like lately as to where will the nuclear waste be disposed? But adamancy apart the government and its agencies have to seriously consider shutting down the Kudankulam NPP and review the siting of other coast based NPP’s. Or is it that life is cheap in India and the loss of life of a couple of lakhs at one time is not going to be much and that they will hardly be missed? Essentially the premise that without nuclear power we will have no energy security is wrong and it is time that we re-visited this principle and looked at coal and non-conventional sources of energy like solar power where technology has led to a large drop in costs making per unit energy cost equivalent on a total distributed basis to that from coal. Our energy security should come from the strength and capacity of our resources and not like with nuclear energy on the mercy of other nations to give us nuclear fuel.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:137

Date: 03.11.2012

Contents:

1. Anna Hazare To Be Wary Of V K Singh

2. Communism: A Failed Ideology

3. Corporate Bail-Outs For Government

4. Cabinet Re-Jig & Salman Khurshid‏

5. BJP Needs To Reconcile To Gadkari’s Departure

6. Congress Effectively Putting A Lid On All Scams

Anna Hazare To Be Wary Of V K Singh

Anna Hazare tends to be used by charlatans like Baba Ramdev and opportunists like Arvind Kejriwal of the IAC to serve their own ends. In the same manner we have now V K Singh, the retired army Chief of Staff sharing the platform with Anna to further his own, most likely, political ambitions. For a man one can say who did not know his year of birth and then again after becoming aware of it could not or did not get it incorporated into his personal record for many years and then made a huge issue of it just prior to his retirement with consequent massive impact on the Army morale and division among the senior staff which the Army is continuing to face to this day, to be even entertained by Anna is an honour. Further this initiative of V K Singh seems to be a ploy considering that the media has been full lately of corruption charges against the Army when he was in charge in terms of purchasing parachutes and even milk powder etc. Other than that V K Singh during his stint as Army Chief did precious little to clean up corruption in the Army and during his service tenure he would definitely have known of the scandals in the CSD (Canteen Stores Dept.) where officers of the rank of Brigadier were involved in making money on jawan’s rations, purchase of liquor and the like and Lt. Generals involved in unauthorized land deals in North Bengal for pecuniary considerations. Thus using Anna Hazare’s manch to get instant eyeball recognition prior to his sojourn into politics most probably with the general elections around the corner, will be like taking insurance against corruption charges . In his efforts in this regard he is not chary of consorting with politicians of different hues since just last week he shared the platform with INLD leaders. Anna Hazare has given free launching facilities to the likely short-fuse missile of Arvind Kejriwal and should be careful in the future of not giving others to misuse his platform to serve their own ends like V K Singh who could end up as a spent Bofors gun shell.

Communism: A Failed Ideology

We have now Wen Jiaoboa, the Chinese Premier being accused of using his official position to further the financial fortunes of his extended family whose members are now understood to be worth billions of dollars according to a report published in the New York Times. The Chinese government has thus promptly stopped the online edition of the New York Times from being viewed in China. The news of the Chinese Premier being implicated in using his official position is the latest and most damaging news coming out from China in relation to corruption by high party officials. In the two recent cases, one was where Bo Xi Lai, a very senior Chinese Communist Party committee member was accused of having made money hand over fist and his wife involved in the killing a foreigner for which she was convicted and sentenced. While in the second case, the son of another senior Communist Party was involved in a high profile sports car accident in the middle of Beijing late in the night with some half clothed women in the vehicle. China has a very contradictory and strange method of dealing with corruption. Until a couple of years ago junior officials caught being corrupt had been known to be shot by the firing squad while the high profile cases as highlighted above follow the pattern that those not in the good books of the present powers-that-be are put on trial and publicly shamed while in the case of others the matters are quietly closed. Like the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, we have seen that with Communism vesting powers with a few, it has engendered despots like Lenin, Stalin who also were enamoured of riches and the good life, which is once again reinstated now by the Chinese example. Thus Communism as a philosophy of seeking equity for all people is essentially flawed since human nature is against this principle since every individual wants to be better in some way than the other person and since in a society there needs to be some people who have to be in charge and it is these people who progressively get drunk with power and tend to end up as bigots. For this reason Communism has failed around the world with the last zealots in India hanging on to a tattered legacy.

Corporate Bail-Outs For Government

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist has while talking about India recently, said that it is not a matter of seeking FDI that will help the Indian economy move on a faster growth path since if the investment climate was good and uncertainties about political decisions less, then Indian corporate groups which are sitting on a pile of cash would have themselves invested in different areas to stimulate growth. Thus getting FDI is not going to bring about any dramatic change in the country's economic climate. He has further said, in contrast to our own PM and other policy makers, that FDI in multi-brand retail will not lead to any growth in the Indian economy. He has also been critical about Walmart's labour policies. Taking off on the issue that Indian corporate groups are sitting on a pile of cash, while the government is always on the look-out to increase revenue, one method for the government to get its vote of confidence and its belief that all is well with the Indian economy, is to seek funding from these corporate groups. If the government gets the funding then it will be an affirmative for its policies and programs and in the event that the response is negative then it will know that the writing is on the wall as far as its continuance in power is concerned. In days of yore when the kings needed money mostly at the times of going to war then it would seek funding from financiers, which may not be such a bad idea in these modern times, at least to assure the government that it is on the right path in terms of its economic policies and not necessarily to just seek a bail-out.

Cabinet Re-Jig & Salman Khurshid‏

The Cabinet reshuffle by the PM is a meaningless exercise to show not only to the outside world but also to himself that he is capable of taking decisions. Even in this he has had the need to kow-tow to the dictates of Sonia Gandhi but also Rahul Gandhi. It has been just a mechanism to fill up the odd vacancies and juggle the pack to show who are the ones nearest to the High Command and other powers-that-be in the Congress party. If the UPA government falls in the upcoming winter session of Parliament the emptiness of the reshuffle would have been underscored. The glaring error in this Cabinet rejig has been the anointing of Salman Khurshid as the Foreign Minister. One is not pre-deciding here his culpability in the scam unearthed by the IAC in relation to the Dr Zakir Hussain Trust that he runs in association with his wife but his rather abrupt manner and intemperate language which emerged during the last stages of the Anna agitation against corruption continuing until the last press conference while addressing the trust scam issue, shows his lack of credentials for handling issues of diplomacy. What has come out is that when needled Salman Khurshid flies off the handle and our enemies like Pakistan and China are past masters at needling and will use this character flaw in Salman Khurshid to the hilt. S M Krishna for all his initial flaws and many gaffes did bring about a change in India's perception around the world and more so in the Gulf and Middle East which has been represented by the extradition of many terrorists back to India by a nation as conservative as Saudi Arabia. It is not that Krishna would have continued given his age but were there no other candidates suitable for the Foreign Minister's portfolio other than Salman Khurshid. Postscript: Surprsingly salman Khurshid was not frozen in his present portfolio or dropped but in fact elevated to the office of the Foreign Minister! This is how the Congress part works.

BJP Needs To Reconcile To Gadkari’s Departure

The BJP has made a strategic mistake by continuing to remain in denial over Nitin Gadkari’s funding of his Purti group. Given the nature of the manner of funding there can be no argument that the whole thing was illegal and the incumbent BJP President will find it very difficult to explain the source of his funding or his henchmen like driver, secretary etc. will be at a loss to clarify of how they came into crores of rupees for the investments made by the shell Cos. Thus it would have been opportune for the BJP to close the matter as quickly as possible and not stall unnecessarily. Sushma Swaraj’s claim that this is a conspiracy to malign the BJP is misplaced since Gadkari’s actions speak for themselves and given the open and shut nature of the transactions which are clearly illegal, there is no need of anyone to even conspire against him. And the BJP as a party comes nowhere near it and therefore the best thing would have been to distance themselves from these transactions saying that they are Gadkari’s private matter, a la the Congress and Robert Vadra . The position vis a vis the BJP’s stand on not only corruption but also black money is threatened since their own President seems to have dabbled on the dark side of the money. Thus it is best that Nitin Gadkari quits office and as quickly as possible. The RSS position on this whole matter though apparently proper considering that it is a BJP party matter and that they have nothing to say on it, does not hold much water since it is well known that Nitin Gadkari was thrust on the BJP as President by the RSS and therefore when he is caught in an embarrassing bind, it is the responsibility of the RSS to take some action. This is more so since the RSS has been batting for Nitin Gadkari’s second term as President of the BJP which has necessitated even the amendment of the party’s constitution. However, the more grievous comment came from Mohan Bhagwat while he was addressing the RSS function at Nagpur on Dussehra day, where he said that on matters of corruption, it is not important where the money is coming from but whether it is put to work for a good cause or not. Thus the RSS clearly does not look at the colour of money that they are getting which permissive position is disappointing. Like we know the BJP government in Goa, headed by RSS sympathisers, is not chary in accepting money from casino owners and earning its revenue from gambling, we will have BJP governments in States across the country justifying their earnings from crime, prostitution and the like by saying that they are using the money for charitable causes and for social service. This kind of plank is not going to be helpful with the people for the BJP with general elections imminent upon us.

Congress Effectively Putting A Lid On All Scams

Putting a lid on all scams has been the expertise of the Congress party which know-how the BJP must be seeking now given the charges against its President. Consider the 2G scam, after such a hue and cry including stalling Parliament, a JPC was constituted to go into the scam which effectively has tied itself into knots and the JPC is more or less defunct. The issue leading to this impasse has been over the calling of the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister as witnesses in front of the JPC, which its Congress Chairman P C Chacko is chary to do considering it may be embarrassing for his party. To justify his actions he is throwing the rule book at the BJP & CPI members, who are at the forefront of this demand, that the JPC does not allow calling ministers to depose as witnesses. To support his contention, he has also referred this matter to Meira Kumar, the Lok Sabha Speaker who has bounced the issue back to the JPC that the decision in this regard is well within its purview. So on a matter which the JPC is quite capable of deciding we have a stand-off akin to that in Parliament and there is no progress on the investigations into the 2G case. When the FM & PM were both involved in deciding on the 2G case as brought out by various documents in the media prior to the debate on the issue in Parliament, why the JPC should not call them is beyond anyone’s comprehension. If the JPC charter does not allow it, it may be time to amend the charter since it is important to get on with the probe and arrive at the bottom of the matter and establish culpability. When our Constitution is amended at the drop of a hat or numerous times since its formulation, why should the procedures of the JPC be sacred and beyond amendment, in this instance if it is not to protect the PM, FM and the Congress party and put a lid on the 2G scam. Thus like the CBI is looked at as the incumbent government’s political weapon so also the efficacy of a JPC will hereafter be in doubt. It is not just the 2G scam but also other scams like the CWG, the Adarsh scam at Mumbai on which a curtain has been drawn with a notice on it that on these a judicial process is on. With our judicial process not very brisk even in the case of the grievous of crimes of a criminal nature, when justice will be delivered for those accused in the above scams is anybody’s guess. Moreover all the accused in these scams have been enlarged on bail starting from A Raja, Kanimozhi and the corporate telecom honchos in the 2G case, to Suresh Kalmadi and his henchmen in the CWG case, to Ashok Chavan and the Mumbai bureaucrats in the Adarsh case. By the time these cases come up for trial the common public would have long forgotten the issues involved and whether satisfactory justice has been delivered will remain in doubt. Thus as Sushma Swaraj said we find the Congress is making money all around like on the earth (CWG, Adarsh), above earth (2G) and even below earth (coal allocations). On the coal allocations, a lid has now been firmly put on the scam and it has been brought effectively under the control of the government, by firstly bringing in the hike in diesel prices and then the FDI in various sectors including multi-brand retail and then we have had the scandals exposed of Robert Vadra’s land deals, the Salman Khurshid NGO case and then Arvind Kejriwal going a step further and exposing Nitin Gadkari’s complicity with the NCP and the resultant exposure about the funding sources of the Purti group, which has completely diverted media attention away from the coal scam. While earlier Arvind Kejriwal’s IAC & the Anna movement was called the BJP’s B team, one has to now maybe recast those opinions and consider that the IAC is possibly the Congress’ B team with it having supported to erase the coal allocation scam from the minds of the people at least for now.

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VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:136

Date: 27.10.2012

Contents:

1. Milk Adulteration

2. BJP On The Backfoot

3. Stem Rural Migration To Improve The Quality Of Life In Our Cities

4. India’s Growth Conundrum

Milk Adulteration

The newspapers recently carried information that a survey conducted by reputed international organizations supported by government agencies had found that 68% of milk in India is contaminated with pesticide residue and other unwanted matter. This is not linked with the adulteration that goes on in big cities like Mumbai where unscrupulous vendors tend to manipulate the quality of milk, but the contamination was found out at source and at milk processing units. With India once tipped to become the largest milk producer in the world and now having slipped to the 3rd position, there is a need to regulate the feeds to cattle and be rigorous in terms of the quality of the milk that comes to market. Self regulation in maintaining quality control should be implemented as well as final quality checks by independent assessors before it crosses the last link in the distribution chain, that of reaching the consumer. Apart from this given the volume of milk being produced in the country, the imbalances in its distribution and consumption should be corrected so that it is used to fight malnutrition amongst our people particularly children. We have had just a few months ago in Maharasthra the clamour for exporting milk powder, banned temporarily, when just outside Mumbai in the tribal areas children were dying of malnutrition. Could this milk powder not have been acquired by the State government and moved to tribal areas so that at least a few lives could have been saved and future fatalities avoided?

BJP On The Backfoot

The BJP President’s job seems to be always dogged with corruption. First, it was Bangaru Laxman and now it is Nitin Gadkari. With the RSS brass rumoured to pull the plug on him by next week, we would have had another Ravana fall on or around Dusserah. Why the RSS does not do its homework prior to backing someone is not understood since they went to the extent of backing Gadkari for his 2nd term as President though there were objections from the senior leaders within the BJP to this. This brings to the fore another serious problem that the BJP has as a party and that is they are not allowed to take all their decisions on their own but some decisions are thrust upon them by the RSS & the Sangh Parivar. This essentially is the problem that the BJP has in operating freely since apart from internal dissensions it has to bow its heads to its external masters. With the exposure of Gadkari’s shell Cos. which form the basis for investment in his Purti group, there is no way that he can explain his source of funds to start these Cos. This issue has also taken the wind out of the sails of the BJP which was attacking the Congress party and those connected with it on the plank of corruption. One is reminded of the adage – That those who stay in glass houses should not throw stones at others. It is not that the BJP can get away by saying – What about Robert Vadra or Salman Khurshid? Since the cases have to be seen in the context of how grievous they are and obviously the heads will roll starting with the most grievous. The cozy arrangement also between the BJP & the Congress which has now come into the open seems to have been continuing from Vajpayee’s time when the indiscretions made by his family and that of other BJP senior leaders was traded off against that done by the Gandhi family. One would believe that this was an unequal deal since the Gandhi family would have been messing around in much bigger deals than the other parties. But that apart why should two major parties of the country whom we trust to govern this country strike deals to protect each other’s leaders from corruption cases is something that is not understood. It is not just the BJP & the Congress involved in pulling a veil on each others corrupt doings but the alacrity with which Sharad Pawar and others of the NCP and even Bal Thackeray came to Gadkari’s defence, one would believe that they want this issue taken off the public domain since otherwise they would also be embroiled in one or the other matter since they very well know that their hands are also soiled in similar manner. Thus Arvind Kejriwal and his IAC for whatever the manner of his tactics can take the credit for bringing all these issues related to corruption into the limelight. It is time that corruption was tackled in a more forthright manner in this country since the situation has become that wherever you put your hand it comes out with scam stink.

Stem Rural Migration To Improve The Quality Of Life In Our Cities

Recently in one of the published surveys about quality of life around the world, it was reported that Melbourne was the best city in the world to live in. No Indian city figured on this list which was rather disappointing. But we as Indians cannot question this decision since we ourselves know the state of our cities and how much the quality of life has deteriorated, more so over the last 20 years or so. It is time therefore that we introspected on the conditions of our towns and cities and put in place basic infrastructure for our new towns and colonies which will deliver a better living experience than what is available in our existing habitats. One of the reasons for the deterioration of our cities is population pressure arising out of rural migration. Our industrial policy failed to spread livelihood options into the hinterland and with reverses in agriculture dependent on an irregular monsoon and consequent fluctuating means to earn a living, every able bodied individual from the villages started heading towards the nearest city, hoping that the streets there were paved with gold. Seeing this mirage disappear upon his arrival in the city, this individual ended up in the slums of the metropolis which are not only mushrooming in every single vacant plot of land and also growing at an alarming pace. To just understand how this unauthorized cancerous growth will damage the life of the city one has to only look at pictures of the slums in Mexico City and the cities of Brazil notably Rio de Janeiro. These agglomerations of deprived humanity not only tend to throw the planning process for basic infrastructure out of gear since with rapid growth they tend to hog power and water as also contribute to enormous sewage problems. Thus they spawn health problems not only to themselves but threaten the whole city by transmission of vector diseases. In addition one sees crime and law and order issues being generated here which sometimes threaten the social fabric of the metropolis. It is therefore overdue that we should try and reverse this trend of rural migration into our cities and have the rural folk remain in their own villages. For this the first requirement, is that they should feel by remaining in their native villages that they are not being deprived of anything and are not looked at as second-class citizens. The current thinking is that in the cities life is much easier and there are more avenues to earn a livelihood. Thus agriculture has to be restored to the status that the people involved in it believe that it can give them gainful employment and provide a reasonable livelihood. For this there is a need to improve supplies of seeds, fertilizer and those other inputs which are required for a good crop, make agriculture independent of the monsoon by a system of irrigation and then upon harvest ensure that the farmer is paid fairly for his produce and goods are moved quickly to market. Thereafter we can look at increasing agricultural productivity which will break the shackles of agriculture being tagged to growth of just 2-2.5% each year. To supplement employment opportunities in the rural areas industries should have been dispersed here. This has been one of the failures of our industrial policy that industries have been localized in or near urban centres. The much talked about industrial corridors between Mumbai – Delhi and other places in the country were all failures but for some limited success with the automobile manufacturing zones near Indore and maybe Sriperumbudur. Under the National Manufacturing Policy we have this concept of Manufacturing Zones which should not be like the doomed SEZ’s which was essential a politico-industrial plot to seize land. In addition the Railways are thinking of stimulating, again for lack of a better word, ‘industrial corridors’ along their trunk routes which will help the industrial units move their goods faster and better. These initiatives should be used to stem the tide of rural migration to the cities. It is then that we will not only have a better quality of life in the cities but also in the rural areas and maybe some of our existing cities or even new ones will one day figure in the World’s 20 best cities to live in.

India’s Growth Conundrum

The problem with this government is that it plays up to international opinion and ratings agencies. Thus where India’s growth forecasts for the current year have been variously estimated from a below 5% by the IMF to below 6% by other multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank, the ADB and others, we continue to maintain a stoic 6% with some overzealous optimists even not negating reaching 8% (to which band our PM has lately joined), which is actually a pipe-dream. Again when Standard & Poor waves the stick that within the next 2 years if India is unable to stimulate growth and initiate fiscal reforms it will have to consign India’s rating to junk status, it is then that our drowsy PM and his know-all Finance Minister start with reforms from FDI in retail, to airlines to insurance to pension funds, fully well knowing that all these will come to naught since they have not carried the people and their political allies with them. What hurts is that the ruling class do not seem to know what they are doing as clearly admitted by the PM that he has brought this country to its heels akin to the 1991 crisis and then he has the gumption to tell us that money does not grow on trees. We know that already, Mr PM, since we feel the pain every day when we go out shopping for the basic necessities of life like milk, grain, vegetables and fruit, but the point is – Do you know that since at least for the last 3 years you seem to have believed that money ‘does’ grow on trees. Nothing is going to improve since on the India growth issue the FM believes it is all a matter of world recession and the consequent contraction in trade clearly trying to abdicate his and this government's responsibilities. While the eminent Sardarji at the Planning Commission is trying to find holes in the IMF growth forecast for India s by calling it an arithmetical error and has again said that in 6-8 months India will return to the growth path. How many times he has said this for the last 3 years is anybody’s guess but nobody believes him considering that Sardarji’s are traditionally allowed to shoot their mouths and nobody actually listens. In this same line the same Sardarji has again put his foot into his mouth while discussing the draft Land Acquisition bill by saying that tribal lands which is already a contentious issue about the rights of tribals to forest lands and produce, should be allowed to be acquired so that industries can be set up there and employment can be generated. It may not be wrong to say that this sardarji is nothing but a mouthpiece of the West, mostly the US. Then there is the attempt to talk the stock markets and rupee value up by the FM and others which is another fruitless exercise since it is all a transient situation and when fundamentals kick in the markets will find their real levels. This is the scenario that is being played out now. The FM is playing up to the day traders lobby in the stock markets and speculators on the rupee value and nothing else. The real situation is that the IIP is still down with the capital goods sector the harbinger of steady future growth still in the doldrums. And therefore our financial planners instead of playing to the gallery should put their heads down and evolve concrete solutions to India’s economic woes and contain inflation which is killing the people of this country. Amen!

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