CLIMATEGATE: The biggest "scientific" scandal ever

This news is so big that it should have been featured prominently on the front pages of every newspaper and splashed on every TV channel. Assuming of course it is their business to really inform the public and not to push agenda. So, just how big is the climategate? To use an analogy closer to home, suppose the secular brigade had known all along and had incontrovertible proof that the Gujarat riots were a spontaneous orgy of violence and that the Government had nothing to do with it and didn't make the facts public? Yes, it is that big.

Scientists working on the phenomenon known as anthropogenic global warming had known all along that there was no global warming. And they cooked up data and facts, suppressed evidence to the contrary, engineered fake experiments, destroyed data to keep the bogey of an impending global warming led catastrophe alive. It all changed when a few days ago a hacker broke into a climate laboratory and stole emails and data files. Those emails and data files revealed a sordid tale of how politics compromised scientific integrity.

For a quick intro to what really transpired, please peruse this or use the friendly google search.

Coming in days before the Copenhagen meet where world leaders will negotiate a binding treaty to control greenhouse gas emissions, this assumes enormous importance, especially since India is trying its best to avoid signing any such treaty. Yet Indian newspapers have blacked out this explosive news.

A binding climate treaty will be catastrophic for India, especially when we are stuck with the Nuclear Deal. It is now clear that the Nuclear Deal did not come with all the bells and whistles that were promised, it comes in with a laundry list of new compliance requirements instead. Even then, signing the deal with the US is politically important for the secular party. The secular party has willfully put us into this unenviable situation, we are stuck with a lemon and they know it.

The attitude of Indian media and opinion makers on the climategate is worrying because it raises uncomfortable questions about their loyalty to the country. Globalization of politics has ensured that they will throw a crumb to anyone who supports the big ticket global "liberal" agendas and there are signs people in the Indian Government and bureaucracy are working to get some of those crumbs.

The biggest tragedy of the global warming scandal is that no field of human knowledge or endeavor is sacrosanct anymore. It also shows any dogmatic ideology, be it religious or secular, is ultimately detrimental for scientific advances.

Mushroom Clouds

Bullets at the station

Grenades at the Taj

Burning burning

symbols of Raj

Panic at the cafe

mayhem on the streets

talking heads

and their relatives

Mushroom clouds

Mushroom clouds

Mushroom clouds in the sky

Ballots at the poll booth

people of hate

they get reelected

such is our fate

patience wears thin

the rising din

the sad look in her eyes

Mushroom clouds

Mushroom clouds

Mushroom clouds in the westward sky

The Overground - Part I

Since the 26/11 siege of Bombay by ten punks from Pakistan, Bollywood has churned out several movies on the subject. The biggest blockbuster predictably was Sandeep ka Sangharsh - with the martyr major as the protagonist, the movie was a chilling depiction of the attack from inception to execution, ending with a rousing finale, which, albeit somewhat fictionalized, depicted the commandos finally ending the siege in a crescendo of violent firefight.

In most theaters, audience members stood up and burst into spontaneous applause, some singing Vande Mataram, during the scene of the major's supreme sacrifice. The Government declared the movie tax free.

Just kidding.

There was no such movie coming out of Bollywood, as a matter of fact, there was not a single movie that presented a heroic picture. There were dozens of low budget "we bounced back", "we wallow in self-pity" type of movies. The biggest movies so far in fact glorified not the hero cops and commandos but the type of people who perpetrate these crimes. The biggest movies so far romanticized not a legitimate state's struggle against nefarious elements but the fictitious victimhood of those nefarious elements themselves.

These movies showed the attackers as matinee idols, replete with all the regalia that are coveted by youth - money, power, popularity in college campuses and oh yes - a pretty Hindu wife (Maya in New York, and Avantika in Kurbaan). Let's not even go into the specific plot points that tended to validate some of the loonier conspiracy theories, e.g. post 9/11 (yeah, Genocide Suzie, the original one of which 26/11 is just a fake made up copy) the Americans randomly detained and tortured America born and brought up Muslims for no apparent reasons.

This is no accident, this tells us volumes about what we have become. As a matter of fact, this puts a serious question mark in front of the notion of who "we" are.

As far as Vande Mataram goes, instead of encouraging us to sing the song, the good secular people of India have already decided to practically banish it. They made several TV shows on it too.

(.... to be continued)

Ifs and Bhatts

Sometimes you go to a fancy restaurant. The aroma from the other tables drives you crazy as you wait patiently. The food never seems to arrive. By the time it does - you have lost your appetite.

Considering all the faux indignation, cries for justice, goofy editorials, human interest stories we had to endure for almost a year, the biggest story ever to break is getting a noticeably lukewarm response.

Since the previous post on the topic, the David Coleman Headley case has gotten bigger. The man now seems to be a veritable harbinger of doom - wherever he went, disaster struck. Let us quickly recap what the Bhatts had to say then and how things have changed.

In his initial interview with CNN-IBN, Mahesh Bhatt claimed that his son Rahul Bhatt took the initiative to go to the Police "the moment he got a whiff from the media". He had run into Headley "a few years ago" and when the media started "flashing", he presumably went to his parents seeking advise who then directed him to supercop Rakesh Maria. The senior Bhatt said that he did not know Headley personally and that he does not keep track of "every acquaintance" of his son. He also claimed that there was no reason to suspect a "white skinned American" who was "very decent in behavior".

In another version of the story it was Mahesh Bhatt's ex-wife (Rahul's mom) who recognized Headley on TV and asked his son to go to the cops.

Then the father daughter duo Mahesh and Pooja Bhatt (pictured above) appeared on the CNN-IBN Fake the Nation show and launched a massive tirade against - well, everyone. According to Pooja Bhatt, everyone is a lying, conniving, conspiring member of a totally broken system that is out to get their precious little snowflake.

Since then, more details have emerged and it does not look pretty for the Bhatts or the Bollywood community at large. Instead of being a chance acquaintance he met at a gym "a few years ago" (or variously at another place through a friend), Headley hung out with Rahul Bhatt as recently as March 2008. They must have known each other for a period of at least several months. Rahul took Headley out to meet his Bollywood pals, including his cousin. An assorted variety of Bolly stars and starlets then socialized with Headley at various levels of intimacy.

The police claim Rahul and Headley's other friends from the film world knew he was Asian. "He spoke in an American accent, but looked Asian," an officer said. "We've come to know some of the film stars knew Headley was Muslim and was regularly travelling to Pakistan. If that didn't arouse suspicion, what could?"

Rahul told investigators he found Headley's behaviour odd at times. "It is only now that Rahul has realised that Headley spoke on the phone in some code language." The code words used in Rahul's presence included "Mickey Mouse", "Allah", "Jannat", "North", "Maal" and "baraf" (Hindi for ice). Another word the officers haven't deciphered yet may have referred to the three top cities in the country. [India Today]

These facts are distinctly at variance with what Mahesh Bhatt had been selling to the media. No one forced him to come to the TV station - why then would he gloss over certain details?

Even the claim that Rahul took the initiative to go to the cops seems to be a bit untenable:

"The Bhatts claim we are hounding Rahul and that he came to us voluntarily. This is far from reality. It was only after we reached Headley's rented Breach Candy house that he came to us. We would have come to know of his friendship with Headley. The Bhatts possibly saw the trouble that lay ahead." [link]

There is still no reason to believe Rahul Bhatt had any inkling of Headley's devious plans. However, Mahesh Bhatt's claim that he was a hero who is being run aground by the media is ludicrous.

While the middle is intriguing enough, we know how the story ends and that's a bummer:

Police sources claim a lawyer-turned-politician has been calling up senior officers every day and asking them to not pressure Rahul.

A lawyer turned politician asking the cops not to pressurize Rahul? Who could that be? Well, there are two who fit the description - P. Chidambaram and Abhishek Manu Singhvi. But we know they are better than this, don't we?

NEXT: We will discuss shocking lapses in UPA's handling of the security apparatus and minority pandering that led to Pakistanis having a virtually free run in the country.

Mourning Norman

Father and daughter on discovery of Coca Cola trip, Disneyland, USA

September 12, 2009: A 95 years old man from Texas, USA passed away. His name was Norman Borlaug.

On October 31, India observed the 25th anniversary of Indira Gandhi's death. It triggered major coverage in the media.

On Novermber 14, India celebrated Children's day - this time it was the 120th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. Little children were ritually paraded to the Prime Minister's residence. A prominent female journalist from a major news channel accompanied the children to cover the event "exclusively". She cutely posed with the children.

Norman Borlaug's death should have triggered massive mourning in India and indeed we should have known much more about this man. His name barely finds a mention in the textbooks, that too only recently. Ramachandra Guha does not mention his name in his India after Gandhi, although there were a few pages on Green Revolution.

It took India until 2006 to finally confer the Padma Vibhushan on him, he was awarded the title abroad.

So, who was this Norman Borlaug and why didn't we hear much about him before?

One of the defining characteristics of socialism is that information is disseminated on a strictly need to know basis. The leader of the nation is to be respected like a father figure. Many of us feel the Green Revolution as Indira Gandhi's gift to the nation.

To put it simply, Norman Borlaug's infinite genius caused so much increase in crop yield that Nehru's socialism simply could not kill us fast enough. We are alive today because of Norman Borlaug. But for him, the famines during the Nehru era would be far more persistent and far more wide even today. India could not produce enough food for the population levels at Nehru's time. Readers of this blog can certainly find out more about this amazing man, but we are tempted to offer this quote from the Wiki page:

The Indian and Pakistani bureaucracies and the region's cultural opposition to new agricultural techniques initially prevented Borlaug from fulfilling his desire to immediately plant the new wheat strains there. By the summer of 1965, the famine became so acute that the governments stepped in and allowed his projects to go forward.

Unfortunately, we have not learned anything. Norman Borlaug continues to be maligned posthumously and Nehru's hagiographers continue to pine for the Nehruvian golden era. In the second article, the author pretends that we are some sort of a "free market economy" as opposed to the "mixed economy" of Nehru's time. With these type of people calling the shots, is it any wonder that millions of people live in abject misery?

"We're eating what even pigs won't"

Tur dal? We haven't eaten it for several months," says Ganesh Jahangir Pawar, 50, a two-acre farmer in Wardha's Amgaon-Khadi village. The only time in the last one year that he bought tur was during Diwali. "Only a quarter kg."

But of late, he has not been able to buy food grain at all. He will need a thousand rupees a month, he says, to feed his family of six, including four children, to meet their minimum nutritional requirements.

Already heavily in debt, Pawar is broke and has no work to fall back upon. His family, he says, is eating much less. "Rice and dal are out of question," says his wife Alka. "So are sugar and milk." His helpful neighbour, Sudam Pawar, 35, lends him sorghum flour to keep the family afloat. Other villagers give them various vegetables. (DNA India)

Clean chits before charges

Passport image of David Coleman Headley (source: Tribune India)

India Government has shown extraordinary reluctance in investigating local links to the 26/11 attacks. In fact, even when the attack was going on with prime real estate in Bombay under siege, many in the media and Government said there were only foreign hands behind the attacks. While the motivated bunch were burning up, brutalizing, sexually torturing inmates at two hotels and a Jewish center, secular blowhards were naturally more worried about retaliation against minorities which never happened.

Various freelance and amateur commentators have pointed out many fallacies in the convenient theories of the Government. There was no particular interest in fact finding. That such an attack is inconceivable without detailed recon, never seemed to have occurred to them.

But then again we know the compulsions of a secular political system. General elections were due in a few months and if they stirred up too much dust in Bombay, it might have cost them Delhi.

The capture of David Coleman Headley aka Daood Gilani, an American of Pakistani ancestry has clearly put the Government into an uncomfortable situation. Given that this is the FBI, it is not easy to dismiss the charges or create a bogey of Hindu/Jewish conspiracy. Moreover, the man seems to be intimately connected to the big boys in that business and seems to have left a huge trail across two continents. In other words, this is a major catch.

The news would have lingered on secondary headlines and off hours TV spots for a few days before disappearing - had it not been for the media's need to create titillation around a certain mysterious "Rahul" the aforementioned man frequently referred to in his email transcripts. The mysterious Rahul eventually turned out to be filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt's son. Mahesh Bhatt as we all know is a die hard secular with an almost physical need to assert the point on a regular basis.

Since then Bhatt senior has been playing the indignant father on prime time TV. The media for its part has already issued a clean chit to junior.

Now, strictly to maintain a semblance of parity in both religious and social justice terms (Rahul is only a quarter Muslim) - it would really be prudent to throw him into the cooler for a few days. Under the same circumstances a man from a Muslim ghetto would probably be given a slightly rougher treatment.

All these things again raise serious questions such as the nature of Bollywood as an industry and its nefarious linkages to jihad-mafia networks. They seem to run into terror related issues very frequently. Even when Bhatt junior was socializing with Headley, he was supposed to appear in a film tentatively titled "Suicide Bomber". This is perhaps a coincidence, but surely he would have researched the role a little? Being a resident of Bombay and coming from a background where people wear their politics on their T-Shirts, he should have chosen his company a tad more carefully.

Just another state

Arunachal Students hand over a memo to Uttarakhand CM

Recently Rahul Gandhi said Arunachal Pradesh is "like any other Indian state". Well, it does appear that Arunachal Pradesh is just like any other Indian state in a way Kashmir isn't.

As a matter of fact, the two states present a startling contrast. One receives state patronage, massive funding (to be pocketed by vested interests and separatists, of course). The other remains neglected. A large section of the population of one state wants to get away and openly call for destruction of India - "Bharat Ragda" is their slogan. Ask your Kashmiri friend what that means and he will rub it in for you.

Perhaps more surprising is the coverage in the media. The newspapers and TV channels can not get enough of the Kashmir separatists state their point of view - usually a barrage of grievances. Human Rights Activists can not condemn the Indian state enough for holding the Kashmiris back without their consent.

Recently, a group of students from Arunachal Pradesh handed over a memo to the Uttarakhand CM, affirming their loyalty and pledging to shed the last drop of their blood for defending the nation against Chinese aggression. In a nation where patriotism is a bad word, it still manages to pull at a few heartstrings. This was not an isolated incident - over 100 students from the state courted arrests by demonstrating in front of the Chinese embassy in New Delhi. The recent Dalai Lama visit had the state enthralled, they went out on the street in massive numbers. It was as much out of reverence for the spiritual leader as it was in defiance against our belligerent neighbor.

Why then, does the state receive such step-motherly treatment in the media? If Kashmir separatism is such a hot topic, logically speaking the converse should get at least equal attention. We are not even asking the media to run PR stories to help the country in international forums, we know that would be too much.

This in a way is really the sign of the times. Bad behavior is encouraged at all times. Those who cause mayhem, explosions and gunfire at public places are the heroes while those who protect and defend are annoying distractions. It is as though the whole world is running on a film noir script, actually make that a Bollywood gangster flick. At least in the classic film noir, the anti-hero dies at the end.

* * *

Given that this is the faithful Indian media, expect them to turn a story thus far favorable to India completely on its face. There is a story in the Outlook magazine provocatively titled On the wrong side of Geography? with a tagline With India having given them nothing but neglect, the Arunachalis wonder if they'd have been better off with China. As described earlier, there really is no sign of Arunachalis "wondering" or "looking" across the border.

If they really do look across the border, China does not present the unambiguous picture of milk and honey the media would have you believe. Just a couple of recent examples: China recently executed 9 Uighurs. India has been struggling to hang just one. China is also trying a Tibetan filmmaker for subversion.

If lack of development in Arunachal Pradesh is a cause for concern, the media does not leave much wiggle room for that either. In the Outlook story linked above, the "flashpoint 5" says influx of migrants for projects will wreck havoc, presumably hassle the locals etc. In other words, India can't win.

Recently, N. Ram, Editor-in-chief of The Hindu was in China on a propaganda trip hosted by the Chinese Communist Government.

Ram quoted a commentator on Sen's work as saying, "Measuring real freedom in terms of indicators such as life expectancy, literacy and educational attainments, levels of nutrition, access to health care, employment, social respect and political participation are central to assessing how individuals and societies are faring."

We wonder if N. Ram will have the same point of view for Palestine or Kashmir. Funny thing is, India recently beat China on such a composite indicator. Don't expect the editorials to highlight that though.

Uighurs! Welcome!

Afghan students queue up at the Indian Embassy for visas

It is funny that Muslims the world over hold a far more favorable opinion about India than do the domestics. Is it Bollywood? Is it the grass on the other side effect? Maybe the wrinkles get smoothed in the view from a distance. Perhaps it is just a case of familiarity breeds contempt.

In any case, M's flock to India from all parts of the world. From Arab sex tourists to Afghan students to Pakistanis in need of medical treatment to wheeler dealers from the middle east to drug traffickers and email scam artists from Nigeria. Of course we have B'desh folks too. They are practically a state in the Indian nation.

The latest are the Uighurs:

Uighurs seek a passage to India

With Han Chinese flooding Xinjiang - a region struggling with ethnic strife - the demoralized natives seek refuge across the border to escape the

oppression...

[...]

"We want dignity, what is normalcy?" he asks as his friends lapse into Uighur, talking excitedly about reports of Tibetans living in India, free from the fear of persecution, free to speak against the oppression of their people "back home."

"We can do more from India. We thought of Pakistan, but they have returned Uighur refugees to China. India has welcomed Tibetans and we are similar," he reasons before turning back to the heap of coffeestained notes and maps with highlighted routes into India strewn over his keyboard and table. [link]

We say, let's throw the doors wide open, let's embrace one and all. Everyone will be accommodated and provided a suitable position in our caste system according to their aptitude and abilities. So, here is a Barbarian's guide to national integration, a quick and easy overview of some of the most popular castes and what they have to offer:

• Politician: Indisputably the Brahmins of modern India, this class presents formidable entry barriers.
  
  
• Human Rights Activist: This caste offers easy admissions but the field has become cluttered lately. Blame it on the laws of economics - any area that offers abnormal returns will attract investors.
  
  
• Goon: No experience required, perhaps the only easy entry point (aside from having been born from a pedigreed vagina) to the politician class but runs the risk of encounter killing. If you so prefer, you can also pick from several subcastes like NSUI, YC, SFI, ABVP etc.
  
  
• Minority: An increasingly popular caste, good Government benefits. Side effect: you may become perpetually constipated with all those grievances bottled up inside you. Plus occasional riots.
  
  
• Naxal: If you like wildlife, Naxal may be the way to go. You will be required to worship a reportedly horny Chinese dude who mistreated his parents.
  
  
• Jholawalla: Once upon a time everyone wanted to be lawyers. Then the preference shifted to engineers, doctors etc. The current rage seems to be "computers". We predict that in a few decades, every kid will have nightly wet dreams of donning that Khadi kurta over those dirty pair of jeans and slinging that trademark bag across his shoulders.

"Green war" update

In a previous post, we expressed our skepticism about the Government's willingness to carry out a war against the Naxals. However, we never imagined such an about face in such a short time:

After heavily publicizing the government's intention to launch an attack on Maoist headquarters in the jungles of Chhattisgarh for weeks, Union home minister P Chidambaram took a U-turn on Friday by saying that the proposed "Operation Green Hunt" was an invention of the media. All that the centre as was doing was to help the states by deploying paramilitary forces in the fight against left-wing extremism, the home minister said at the passing out parade of IPS probationers in Hyderabad. [link]

Coming from our smartypants Home Minister, this should hardly be a surprise. Earlier, he had made an even stranger statement:

"We never said lay down the arms...We said halt the violence and talk...If they halt violence, the Centre will persuade the state governments to talk to them on issues like land reforms, land acquisitions," he told reporters here. [link]

Lay down arms vs. halt the violence - what's the difference? This is virtually conceding a parallel Government to the Naxals.

There is simply no reason for the Naxals to come to talks with the Government unless they find their movement under serious threat of attrition. The ringleaders are all underground, having propped up "tribal" faces to create a convenient image for the hard left to run with. Meanwhile Kobad Gandhy and overt and covert support from mainstream people clearly proves the movement is anything but "tribal".

There are ways to create pressures on the Naxals by sanitizing zone by zone but it is beyond the capabilities of our current political and economic framework. The secular party honchos are too busy looting the spoils of a virtually guaranteed single party rule for the foreseeable future.

When the other shoe dropped ...

PRIEST'S VOICE: Michael Francis Rizzi, do you renounce Satan?

MICHAEL CORLEONE: I do renounce him.

Given a choice and with no trade offs involved, all of us will readily vote for a peaceful society - like in the Government newsreels that accompanied 70s Bollywood pictures. Yet such a society has remained elusive so far, and how so!

Naturally we turn to our intellectuals for an answer, an honest answer. What we get instead is names. We are told that society is made up of Satan and Saints, or if you prefer, Devas and Asuras. It takes just a casual review of the the political discourse of the last decade to find out how the public sorts itself out into the two categories. We are also told that the necessary conditions for peaceful society comes from the heart. Apparently renouncing violence and giving up conspicuous consumption will lead us down the path to socialist Nirvana in no time at all.

Some intellectuals do not answer at all, instead they hit us back with a barrage of what they call "uncomfortable" questions and inundate us with anecdotes they find "disturbing".

Jarnail Singh, the journalist who achieved instant fame (or notoriety, depending on which side of the aisle you are) by throwing a shoe at Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has just published a book called: I Accuse: The anti-Sikh violence of 1984.

The journalist made some shocking revelations in an interview with Rediff. For instance, we find this rather shocking statement from the journalist's Rediff interview transcript:

I had always been following the issue and developments. When my publishers contacted me after the incident, I started conducting interviews with the victims and after researching the various committee reports, I have put together this book, which will clearly expose that what happened in 1984 was a state-sponsored massacre of the Sikhs, and not 'riots', when the issue got highlighted on April 7, I realized that there was nothing in media about this. I went back to the reports of that year, and again found that barring the Indian Express, there was no reporting of the incident. DD was interested only in Indira Gandhi's funeral when the capital was burning.

If you take the Gujarat riots, everyone now knows about all the individual incidents, like the Best Bakery massacre and so on. But when you think of the Delhi riots, it is just a vague, 'it happened somewhere in Delhi' is the idea one gets ...

This distinction between the Gujarat riots and the 1984 carnage may seem like splitting hairs, but then again this hair splitting has been going on in our political discourse for the last decade or so.

Much has also been made of various statements issued by politicians. Yet, we found the following quite disturbing:

On April 2, there was a PTI report quoted the home minister as saying: 'I am happy that my friend Tytler has been exonerated by the CBI.' What kind of home minister says that? If he gives such a statement, what kind of message is he sending down to the investigators in the CBI, which is an investigating agency under the home ministry? If your agency has failed to prove a case against a mass murderer how can you be happy? The clean chit is a sign of your negligence and you express happiness at that?

Mind you, this is our current, superstar Home Minister, uber intellectual Harvard graduate.

Jarnail Singh also expresses his sadness about the lack of concrete steps being taken to curb communal violence. This is a rarity, most writers and journalists are usually happy just to have made their point:

There is something wrong with the political system. The anti-communal law is still not in place. This in a place where the Pandits have been subjected to severe communal violence. Sikhs in Delhi, Muslims in Gujarat, Christians in Kandhamal. How long will this continue?

It took years and much prodding for our intellectuals to finally start adding a couple of obligatory statements about 1984 to their Gujarat riot stories (which is about all some of them write about).

Jarnail Singh's book may finally help our intellectuals find some answers to their questions so that in turn they can educate us better. Assuming of course they are sincere and really trying to solve the problem.

Madhu Koda scam eclipses Spectrum scam

Everything happens for a reason. Gullible people in India, conditioned by the chaotic reality of daily grind believe that events arrive randomly, like Indian trains.

Now the coverage of the Madhu Koda scam completely eclipses the Spectrum scam. A headline analysis of The Times of India shows the spectrum scam received just about a few hours headline space in the last few months, that too in the context of "BJP raising questions" etc. The Madhu Koda scam features prominently on the site.

So, the Spectrum scam, easily India's biggest scam and most definitely planned and executed at the highest level that stole money from poor Indians is getting a casual go by. Meanwhile a tribal leader is being made a scapegoat even as various social justice water carriers are overcome with indignation about injustice done to tribal people.

Inflation revisited

The inflation issue, after making headlines and TV shows for months prior to the general elections, seems to have fallen off the radar. People differ on the effect of inflation on elections - bloggers such as RealityCheck argue that group directed benefits trump inflation. This would make sense if the recipients of group directed benefits (quotas, minority/underprivileged schemes, NREGA etc.) outnumber the rest. This certainly seems to be the case.

The Wholesale Price Index, the figure that the Indian Government uses (and consequently the most quoted in the media) does not truly capture the stress on consumers. For some reason, the Government stopped publishing CPI numbers from last April. They still publish a monthly CPI figure for urban consumers. These figures were used to make the chart above (click the image for a larger version).

During the election season, the secular politicians went blue pointing out the grave injustice meted to them by the almighty in terms of energy and commodity prices. Well, that is no longer true, and consequently the WPI figures are running pretty tame.

The CPI numbers, which represent the true effect of prices on end consumers tell us another story. As we see from the chart above, the CPI is running very hot - almost 13 percent for all items and 15% for food. This is a direct consequence of NREGA and other inflationary policies.

The NREGA policy will hurt the economy grievously. If you take out 20% of labor force from the economy, you will get 20% less output. Short term gains for politicians, a true long term disaster in the making. Low end industries and labor intensive jobs get priced out causing a death spiral.

Right now it is hurting the poorest because food prices are going high. As an example, mid-day meal schemes in Hyderabad serve "plain rice and watery dal" because that's all they can afford. Of course, the public mid-day meal schemes suffer from other more serious problems.