The bitter tears of Taslima Nasreen

"Chamber of death", "harassment", "mental torture", "extreme stress", "worse than religious fundamentalists" [link] - these aren't some of the keywords and phrases you would normally expect from a writer-in-exile when she describes a secular country in which she sought shelter after being driven out from her own.

But then again, very little is normal about India's peculiar situation. We have been following the ideologies our intellectuals have been shoving down our throats for some sixty years now. We were told in no uncertain terms that much of India's malaise derives from religious fundamentalists (of a particular religion). The rest of the problems could be pinned on our not accepting socialism.

As a result, for sixty years, we did not see much progress, either in our outlook or our economic situation. Until quite recently, top professionals of the country could only aspire for a motorcycle. Cars were meant only for the mysteriously rich - or politicians and their flunkies, sometimes civil servants. That too only one model, an ugly metallic hump rolling over the natural bumps that passed for roads.

This was apparently alright. Don't believe us? Look at the editorials and newspaper articles from the 70s and the 80s. This was too funny, in those days newspaper men used to be rich in relative terms. Many would spend their vacations abroad. The "intellectuals" would get academic assignments in foreign universities. But for some reason, their articles always said it was much better not to succumb to the decadent western ways. Russia was much better (although their kids went to schools in UK or US, never Russia, language barrier perhaps?).

Also, by electing a secular Government year after year, we were guaranteeing ourselves an elevated stature in terms of human rights, liberal mindset, intellectual outlook, religious tolerance - all of the above.

After narrowly escaping the sensitive people in her own country, Taslima Nasreen spent some days in Europe. She didn't quite feel at home there. So she moved to Calcutta, allegedly among the most enlightened places in India, that too ruled by the most liberals. She was happy, Calcutta was culturally familiar, she made friends. Poor Taslima Nasreen. Perhaps she got taken by the India Shining campaign too. She completely missed the rot beneath the superficial gloss.

Well, the tumor that lurks beneath finally got her. Seriously ill and mentally exhausted, Taslima had to leave for Europe. Her heart broken and her dreams shattered.

Long tailed losses

Long tailed losses tend to make a monkey out of everyone, every once in a blue moon. These are remarkable times. The next decade is going to be tough.

Commentator reason pointed out that ICICI was not obligated to report their derivative exposure to the US sub prime crisis and it was only in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha that their losses came to light. India's accounting laws may be a bit archaic and perhaps do not require periodic marking to market for complex derivative instruments. By itself this may not be of concern for two reasons. First, most emerging economies have gotten their acts together after the spate of crisis in the 90s. They are quite conservatively leveraged, the central banks ensure lots of buffer. Second, even with all sorts of safeguards, banks can and will commit financial seppuku from time to time.

It looks like in the next decade we are going to see a global socialist surge. If the US gets a hard landing and a democratic president, expect some tough laws. China has been playing nice so far, post Olympics it will start acting its usual aggressive self. The west will start cozying up to it, while they clean up their financial mess. Perhaps Arab street will own much of Wall street, which means bigger influence on Washington. Meanwhile bit players like Hugo Chavez will start flexing their muscle, just like our domestic commies. People will see which horse is strong and flock in large numbers to the relevant camp.

Free Tibet

Bring down the wall

Violence

A 10-year old boy was brutally assaulted and burnt alive by a crowd at a village near outer Delhi. A casual survey of news headlines shows that violent incidents such as this are par for the course, almost for the entire nation. Occasionally a particularly gruesome incident captures people's imagination.

Yet the media is on a concerted effort to prove that Gujarat and Bihar lead the way in violence. There have been a lot of coverage for certain incidents in Gujarat, especially sexual assault related crimes. Never mind that the Kerala politician sex scandals never see much attention. Even horrific crimes such as the gang rape of about a dozen Girijan women by cops in Tamil Nadu never made it to the breaking news category.

Right now of course, the attention is focused on Goa, where a teenage British girl was treated like a half eaten salami sandwich by a couple of bartenders. The picture of Goa that emerges is pretty sordid, a haven for hippies, junkies and trailer trash crowd from the West and a local crowd quite eager to exploit whatever these tourists are worth. Contrast this with the picture CNN-IBN editor Sagarika Ghose painted on her blog following BJP's defeat in the last assembly elections in Goa.

The point is, the aam aadmi (in this context anyone who can not afford private security forces or taxpayer funded security cover) is a sitting duck in most of India, not just the Naxal infested areas. Women have no safety in throbbing business centers in India's metros. The outcome of road accidents is determined by whether you were travelling in the car with a higher number of passengers. Then of course, we have those never ending stories of cyber crime (a recent report pegs it at a whopping $40B), stalking, extortion, loot, murder, kidnappings, not to mention activities of freedom fighters. If you survive all this, you may yet become collateral damage from political violence, as people with certain politicial affiliations are finding out in Kerala.

India's police infrastructure is not just inadequate, it is a joke. This will likely remain so, unless our politcians figure out a way to provide enhanced police coverage to targeted groups. An attempt has been made by enacting special laws (such as atrocities act, laws that supposedly protect women etc.), but they are clearly not working.

Don't hold your breath though, things are not likely to change anytime soon. You better make sure the doors are bolted tight while you watch our FM dole out tens of thousands of crores on prime time TV.

Two babies

NEW DELHI: Two nurses were arrested on Thursday in connection with the death of a five-day-old baby girl kept in an incubator of a government-run hospital. [...] The incident took place early morning on Wednesday following a short circuit and the baby was charred to death. [...]. Admitted to the hospital since March eight, the baby had been kept in the incubator as she had contracted jaundice and was under-weight. [link]

AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government has formed a three-member inquiry committee to probe into an incident in which a three-day-old baby was charred to death in an incubator following a short circuit at the Shardaben hospital. [...] After the inspection of equipment by the experts, they will be reutilised, an AMC official said. The baby died at the city hospital during early hours on Wednesday when the incubator caught fire due to a short-circuit. [link]

Now, that would have to be one heck of a coincidence and an extremely tragic one too. Of course the respective Goverment agencies are running their own investigations. There is no indication that this coincidence was noticed, at least till the last time we checked the news.

If you happen to know someone connected to the medical profession or from the health department, please bring this to their attention.

The state of TalibaNadu vs. freedom of art

RealityCheck reports:

Its that time of the year again. Wine sipping, art-for-arts sake loving journalist types, have to just lie low and stay quiet for a while. It seems we cant paint mughal emperors in India - unless the painting glorifies them. No goons wont attack you, the government will shut down the entire exhibition. [link]

The paintings in question depict the historically accurate demolition of Hindu temples (a process nowadays known as secularism) during the time of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.

This incident did not attract much coverage. Compare and contrast with the Baroda MS University fiasco (thousands of reports, articles, editorials, blogs, TV shows that continue till today).

A bad melodrama

So tired
Tired of all this drama
You go your way
I go my way
I need to be free

No more pain No more drama in my life
(Popular song by American Hip Hop artist Mary J. Blige)

This drama-baazi has been going on for far too long now. One instant they are willing to sacrifice the Government for the Nuclear deal, the very next they have to save the Government. The Left has served as Congress' useful idiot for a long time, this is a well known fact. But right now there are important things to take care of, such as governance, social justice etc.

Can you believe these idiots? This type of thing is hard to pull off without the full complicity of the mainstream media and India's self styled intellectual crowd. Just imagine the uproar and indignation it would cause if it happened between BJP and one of its allies.

Prepare for double digit inflation next year

Even before secular mediamen had an opportunity to wipe off the froth of excitement from the corner of their mouths after the Railway Budget, our Harvard educated FM announced a stunner of a budget. The Rs. 60,000 crore (about $15B) farmer loan waiver package still remains the talk of the town and likely to remain so, perhaps for years.

RealityCheck and Offstumped addressed some of the immediate problems with this budget, as indeed countless other blogs and editorials.

Yet, no one is talking about what this whopper of a loan waiver can do to our economy. In terms of size, this is about half of the income tax receipt. Naturally the provisions to fund this has been kept off budget. The details will be worked out by June.

The biggest problem of this waiver is perhaps the crude setback this will cause to farmers' insurance programs. To put it most charitably, we do not have adequate farmer insurance infrastructure. Some banks do provide coverage for crop damage due to flood, drought, mice etc. by charging an extra premium. By announcing this ad hoc relief, this waiver will throw insurance schemes totally out of gear. Not only that, it will wipe out historical credit data, thus making it impossible to rationalize premiums.

If the waiver itself is big, the problems are exacerbated by the current world macro-economic context. Some other factors unique to India make it even worse.

With the US financial market in free fall, Ben Bernanke is all set to announce rate cuts on March 18, perhaps by as much as 50 basis points. India's interest rates are already overdue for a cut. At a first glance, it seems to be the right thing to do, but it actually worsens the situation. The interest rate differential attracts FDI and private transfers. These transfers are huge.

We have the pay commission coming in. Coupled with the tax bonanza, our consumers will be flush with extra cash to spend.

Then we have the NREG scheme, which amounts to about Rs. 16,000 crore. So far the scheme has been an almost total failure, adding just froth.

The FM has refused to divulge any details of how the waiver itself will be handled. There is talk of bonds, which will invariably add upward pressure on the real interest rates. The waiver will have a multiplier effect on the liquidity situation. Ordinarily, these loans would be written off as NPAs and show up on the income statements as losses. Now, the banks will get straight capital, which has the potential to add X times one over the cash reserve ratio to the market.

The inflationary pressures on Rupee are already showing up, it ended up weaker against the dollar. Inflation is clocking at 4.89 precent, already up from lows of below 3. This is just the WPI which has a decidely downward bias.

The FM is essentially betting on one of two things. Either he believes that the downward pressure on growth will be so large that extra momentum is necessary even at the cost of inflation. This is essentially a bet on the middle class professional or aspiring to be professional crowd. This could also be an indicator that the export job losses due to a stronger Rupee are significant and not mere propaganda by our industry lobby. If this is the case, the FM perhaps wants to induce inflation, bring the Rupee up to 45 to the dollar, aggressively import food grains and hope for a rebound. Alternately the FM is betting on the fact that inflation is a lagging indicator. By the time the waiver is worked in and all the factors set in, it will be late in the year.

In the latter case we will likely see the general elections happen later this year.

Privatize the Indian Railways

Come to think of it, Laloo is the only minister in the UPA cabinet who gets any amount of coverage in the context of the work he is supposed to be doing. Of course, right now the budget is the biggest news and our FM has a field day. Setting aside these two, no one else is visible. The home minister dude sulks in the background, his only function being providing transport to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. The Agriculture Minister, supposedly the most important cabinet position responsible for the livelihood of at least 60% of the population, is busy playing cricket. Dr. Ramadoss keeps making the headlines for the wrong reasons. Arjunji may soon get the boot, Rahulji is not happy with him.

Bihar CM and ex-Railway minister from the NDA days, Nitish Kumar, keeps claiming that he deserves some credit for the railway turnaround story. Indeed, reformist measures have a nasty habit of showing up in the numbers much later. For instance, the current bullish trend of high GDP growth rate certainly set in during the NDA tenure, although it has made our current FM a superstar of sorts.

Back to the railways story. From this KPMG report, it does not look like Laloo achieved any dramatic improvement above the trendline. Significant improvements in the wagon turnaround etc. had already taken place. The operating ratios etc. have indeed improved, thanks mostly to accounting tricks. As you can see, freight revenue is increasing at a high rate and contributes more than two thirds of total revenue. Freight rates have been reduced, the extra revenue realization comes from wagon overloading, which according to Nitish Kumar, was made possible by some of the infrastructure upgrade tasks undertaken during his tenure.

Even after all these supposed improvements, our rail freight rates remain among the highest in the world. Some of the value added services are entirely missing. Laloo talked about private-public partnership in his budget speech. One only hopes that he puts the concept into practice, although he may not really have much time left before his tenure runs out.

Have more kids

Bihar is up for grabs in elections next year. Being a backward state and having been Lalooed for 15 years, if you were to believe economists like Robert Barro, the poor state will require several decades just to play catch up. In such a situation, pressures of anti-incumbency against CM Nitish Kumar is immense. It does not help that he is part of the wrong coalition. Right about now the poor soul is screaming at anyone who would listen (not many in the media) that he needs to be credited for the legendary railway turnaround story. More on that later.

Secular media is doing its bit, with CNN-IBN taking the lead in special reports on Bihar.

We reported earlier on the biased coverage on mob violence in Bihar. Meanwhile please take a look at this news item: 7-year old brutally beaten by a mob in West Bengal. Anyway.

CNN-IBN just published a story about a family welfare scheme going horribly wrong in Bihar.

Patna: The Government may be spending lakhs of rupees on population control, but some schemes are turning out to be counter-productive. CNN-IBN found that in rural Bihar, villagers are having more babies just to get money promised under welfare schemes.

In Katihar, it's a common sight to see a long queue of women outside a Government hospital. They are usually there to take grants promised under welfare schemes like the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) and the Janani Bal Suraksha Yojana (JBSY).

As usual CNN-IBN totally ignores the fine print. This scheme has nothing to do with Bihar Government per se. The UPA Government launched the National Rural Health Mission, of which the Bihar scheme is just an implementation. As a matter of fact, the original scheme provided coverage for up to two children. This cap was recently removed after a central Government directive. (Quick quiz: Why do you think the cap was removed? Did the Government have any particular demographic in mind?). Needless to say, for many poor and marginal families, the Rs. 1400/- odd per child up front creates a strong enough short-term incentive. The same thing must be going on in UP, MP etc.

Arguably, the Gujarat Chiranjeevi scheme removes this moral hazard by introducing a public private- partnership model.

TalibaNadu

One would expect the rationalists who never miss out on an opportunity to lash out at religious fanatics (only a particular religion), would keep a healthy attitude towards gender related issues.

Some time back we were shocked at a report which claimed that students living in a girls' hostel in Tamil Nadu were asked to keep a menstrual register! Then came the news of political parties hounding actress Khushboo for her remarks on chastity of women. More recently actress Shriya was chastised for wearing a risque dress at a DMK party function.

Of course, a state where the most revered living political leader publicly practices polygamy, such things pale in comparison.

Now for a rather funny report [video] on some colleges from TN:

The outskirts of Chennai are home to scores of engineering colleges where discipline it appears is an obsession - sometimes even bordering on the ridiculous. Some rules even bar students from talking to the opposite sex. What we found was not only shocking, but disturbing: Metal barricades had been put up in buses to ensure that girls sat away from boys. While girls sat in the front rows, boys sat behind them. We also found exclusive dining areas for members of the two sexes. Interestingly the 'Non-Veg' section was synonymous with the 'Gents only' areas. [...] In yet another college it seemed things were getting from bad to worse - here we even found staircases clearly labelled 'Gents only', and 'Ladies only'. When we asked college authorities for an explanation, the Director said the rules were "only for for convenience".

Think this is not so serious? Well, think again.

[...] but for one teenager in an engineering college, who had to forgo a year for shaking hands with a girl, these are more than just an eccentric rule. He recalls the 'crime': "I just shook hands with a girl. It was her birthday and I wished her. A bus driver saw it and complained to the director. They harassed me by asking many questions. I got suspended for one and a half months. My attendance obviously suffered, and they dropped me for a year. They were harassing my parents. I have seen my mom cry only twice before. This was third time."

These people are going too far to prevent "contamination". But for these college going boys and girls, they are being deprived of a very necessary part of the process of growing up, at a formative age, when interacting with the other sex helps build healthy attitude towards sex and gender related issues.

CNN-IBN can beat Nazi propaganda machine hands down

CNN-IBN reports every case of mob violence from BJP or NDA ally ruled states diligently. The current lead story is about lawlessness in Bihar. Even all the linked stories and pictures relate to Bihar and occasionally UP.

Meanwhile, mob violence in Congress or UPA ally ruled states are completely ignored. Even when they are reported, they are never bundled together into an investigative report. Missing from the report are cases from Andhra Pradesh (pregnant woman mercilessly thrashed, several sexual assault cases in Hyderabad on poor women, MIM goodas thrashing doctors and crippling hospitals and otherwise causing trouble), Assam (tribal girl stripped naked and chased through a market in broad daylight, tribal vs. Assamese rioting), Kerala (thief lynching), West Bengal (thief lynching in Jalpaigudi) ... and these are just reports off the top of the head.

Forget about these states, how about our capital, New Delhi? One CNN-IBN journo herself wrote on her blog how difficult it has become for women to go about their lives in Delhi. Women are harassed and molested everywhere while the police looks on. Sometimes they join in the fun. The journalist mentioned earlier has stopped going out for dinner, she survives on instant noodles. It is worth recalling that two of Laloo Prasad Yadav's sons, Tarun and Tejpal, received a thrashing in New Delhi for eve teasing last New Year's eve.

Curiously, whenever BJP ruled states (recently Mayawati too) try to enforce the rule of the law, the usual gang of Human Rights Activists descend on the scene like vultures. They won't allow tough laws, they will cry foul whenever suspicious elements are detained. Police firing? Forget about it, they went out of fashion after the language riots during Nehru era (when they were considered a fundamental instrument of law enforcement) and the rise of Bandh-Dharna-Activism politics of the leftist kind.

Recovery of a "large quantity" of explosives

So, as we reported earlier, CNN-IBN seems to have taken it upon itself to prove that terrorist threat to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is as real as that to senior BJP leaders. The lead story on CNN-IBN site at the time of writing is about a possible terror attack on Mrs. Gandhi in Kashmir.

Headlined "Terror averted ahead of Sonia's visit to J&K", the lead story reports:

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) recovered 4 kg of RDX and large amounts of ammunition from a hideout at Chinnot village near Bhadarwah in Jammu and Kashmir late on Thursday night, hours before Congress President Sonia Gandhi was scheduled to visit the area on Friday. The UPA Chairperson will be addressing a rally about 1 km away from the spot from where the explosives were recovered. She is also scheduled to meet people in the snow-affected areas of the state along with Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. [...] The recovery of such a large quantity of explosives has thrown the security apparatus into a tizzy. Many security experts view it as serious lapse as Sonia's security arrangements are so stringent that her tour programme is not made public. [link]

Okay, first a little note on "snow-affected". This is Kashmir, snow just happens. Most people like it. Sonia Gandhi was accompanied by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, whose only responsibility these days seems to be providing air-transport to the Congress leader who is not entitled to receive any state transportation.

Now about the 1 km distance. Only a nuclear weapon can cause any amount of damage at such a distance. While we are at it, let's see if 4 kg is really a "large amount" in this context. Once again, google offers its invaluable service:

Friday February 22, 2008: Six militants killed in India's northeastern state of Assam: 10 kg of RDX

Guwahati, Feb. 12: Ram abduction suspect held with weapon: 5 kg of RDX

NEW DELHI, Feb. 7: India sounds terror alert in Goa: 50 kilograms of RDX

Feb 6: Taliban paid me to recruit Indians: "huge consignment of RDX"

Feb 04, 2008: Bangalore sleuths want narco test on terror suspects: 50 kg of RDX

Given the situation in Kashmir (thanks Chachaji), if you seriously conduct a raid, you are likely to find ammo and IEDs in every alternate house. By now they probably use the stuff in their fireplaces, especially given this year's heavy snow - "Beti, could you please put another kilo of RDX into the fireplace? My bones are freezing."

Also compare and contrast this with the TOI coverage on the same news item: Explosives found near Sonia's rally venue in J&K.

Advice for women

BANGALORE: Urging women to dress "modestly" for the "safety and security of the people," Cyriac Joseph, Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka, on Friday said: "Nowadays, women wear such kind of dresses even in temples and churches that when we go to places of worship, instead of meditating on God, we end up meditating on the person before us."

Mr. Cyriac Joseph said that the "provocative dresses that women wear in buses" put the "men travelling in the buses" in awkward situations and hence "women must dress modestly."

Coming back to why attacks on women happen, he linked it to their clothes. He advised the media to play a "constructive role" by highlighting this reason. [link]

For some reason this was reported sans the analysis and predictions of impending apocalypse which usually accompanies similar items when different people are involved.

Random news items

BANGALORE: A software engineer and three others were arrested by JP Nagar police on Monday on charges of killing a woman from the city in October 2005. Jandyala Ravi (36) and his associates, Nainar Vishwanath (40), Sheik Siraj Basha (33) and Siddaiah (34) allegedly murdered Shilpa, daughter of a retired ITI engineer Munegowda. [..] The police said Ravi had given a supari (contract killing) of Rs 3.3 lakh to Siraj Basha, state secretary of backward class cell in Andhra Pradesh. The police added: "Of the six accused, we’ve nabbed four. A search is on to trace the other accused." [link]

LUCKNOW, FEBRUARY 19 : The Muzaffarnagar Additional District Judge has ordered the police to lodge an FIR against a senior BSP leader and two others for sexually exploiting a 17-year-old girl. The undergraduate student had lodged a complaint with the court stating that Prem Chand Gautam, a member of the SC/ST Commission, and his close relative Ram Kumar had been sexually exploiting her for the last one year. She has also accused them of taking her nude photographs and preparing a CD of her. [link]

KANPUR: A 16-year-old girl hanged herself to death to avoid being stalked by a youth in Tigahi village under the Rura police station on Saturday. Daughter of Rajendra Tewari, the girl was a class XI student of Bhiknapur Inter College. Reports said that Hamid, a local youth and son of listed criminal Yaseen, had been stalking her for long. On Saturday, he barged into her house when she was all alone. [link]

JALANDHAR: After district president of Youth Congress Sukhmeet Singh Deputy was arrested for kidnapping in a Rs 1 crore ransom case, president of urban unit of block Youth Congress has been arrested now in a case of making a porn MMS of a girl. Two of his associates are absconding. Jagjit Singh, Youth Congress leader, who owns Jeet Art Studio on Ladowali Road, has been arrested as the porn MMS was made in his studio. It is learnt that some Congress leaders had been trying to pressurize police not to register a case against Jagjit. [link]

Any idea how many of these stories would make it to one of those special shows on CNN-IBN or NDTV depending on the parties involved?

Photo of the week

Notice anything?

The Rage Boy is back!

More here.

Stoking fears

So, the New Delhi Government is contemplating a massive development project near the Jama Masjid area. The plan involves spending around Rs. 1200 crores to build a swanky mall that will house 600 showrooms and a three tier parking lot with a capacity of 9000 vehicles.

"I am happy to know about the plan. I support it fully and would want the work to begin fast," the Shahi Imam of the mosque, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, says. [link]

This plan should be embraced by all the Sachar-wallahs as it will stimulate economy in the old Delhi area. Don't bet on it though. Secular media is stoking fears that the develoment will put the Masjid at risk. Unnamed experts believe that the plan will certainly damage the Masjid, the "vibrations from the digging itself will be enough to pull down the mosque". Of course, even good intentions about minorities only create bad vibrations.

After a few alarmist articles and blog posts, CNN-IBN is now triumphantly back with an impact report.

Impact: UNESCO to Jama Masjid's rescue

New Delhi: Last week, CNN-IBN reported [Read Report] how the Municipal Corporation of Delhi is planning 60-foot deep four-storey basement parking area dangerously close to Jama Masjid, the construction of which will damage the foundations of the historic mosque. Concerned about the safety of the historical site, the threat has got UNESCO sounding the alarm bells. The body has shot off a letter to the Delhi government.

"We will be inquiring from the Delhi government on what it plans to do for the area," says UNESCO's India head, Minja Yang. Even though Jama Masjid is not a World Heritage site - and therefore does not fall under UNESCO's jurisdiction - the body's intervention only shows how seriously threatening MCD's plans are. [link]

Notice the spin on the last line above. The UNESCO is merely planning to ask questions, even though the matter doesn't fall under their jurisdiction. This is twisted to imply that the UNESCO believes that the MCD plan is seriously threatening.

Compare and contrast this with the secular media response to the Ram Setu destruction plan.

You may also want to read:

SandeepWeb: Does only violence work?
RealityCheck: A secular religio tourist plan for AP

St. Anger

Farmers and Numbers: Part IV

Let's start with some good news. First: a luxury train option is soon to be available for all those socialist journos who wish to travel to Vidarbha for stories. They are calling it the Vidarbha Queen but Suicide Express would be a more apt name. Second: the BCCI, under the able leadership of Shri Sharad Pawar, Hon'ble Minister for Agriculture, made a cool billion dollar plus from the auction of IPL leagues and selling the exclusive broadcast rights of the matches to a media group led by Sony. You could say the farmers can now watch lots of local cricketing action during their pesticide sipping sessions while pondering over deep philosophical questions such as whether Harbhajan Singh made a simian or a maternal reference.

To recap our farmer suicide related coverage so far, the salient takeaway points are:

• Media interest in farmer suicide peaked during the NDA regime, although farmer suicides were happening at an alarming rate for at least a decade prior to that.
• During the intense media frenzy surrounding farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh (Chandra Babu's time), the media was totally ignoring neighboring Karnataka, which would later beat the Nadu stats about 2:1.
• There was another mini peak in media interest during the early part of 2007 when the PM relief package was announced. The package didn't work as well as expected. An exasperated Vilas Rao Deshmukh (Maharashtra CM), called the farmers - lazy.
• It looks like Vidarbha is well on its way to break all previous records. Also, Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy, the current CM of Andhra Pradesh is all set to give Chandra Babu Naidu an innings defeat (more suicides in one term than two terms of Naidu combined).
• Farmer suicides haven't made it to a lead story on the secular media since the Gujarat elections. Presumably there are other important news to cover.

Anyway.

The story of the Indian farmer is indeed a tragic one. It takes gargantuan policy mistakes to create a situation like this. More on this later but as a hint, almost every Nehruvian policy that is hailed as a success (such as land reforms) has contributed to this. Of course you have to add protectionism to that. So, the land laborers are elated to get a piece of land the size of a table cloth. In any case they have no alternate sources of livelihood (license-quota-permit Raj). Add some subsidies, over population, corruption, crony socialism - voila! You get the current logjam that India is in today.

Previous:

Farmers and Numbers: Part I
Farmers and Numbers: Part II
Farmers and Numbers: Part III

No kidding!

While LK Advani had to opt out his nation-wide yatra because of the fear of a suicide attack, he is not the only one under terror threat. CNN-IBN has exclusive details of Intelligence Bureau reports which suggest that terrorists are making strategic plans to target many other VIPs, including the Gandhi family. The Gandhi family has been put on the hit list by the combined might of Al Badr, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad. [CNN-IBN Lead Story]

So, there is some sort of report of a possible terrorist attack on BJP leadership. This was widely publicized. Sensing that this may actually create a sympathy wave for BJP, CNN-IBN has responded with all the vigor of a news channel whose editor-in-chief got a Padma* award very recently. Apparently the dynasty is also under attack.

Note the clever coverage which leaves ample room for later denial. Only CNN-IBN has this exclusive scoop. Also note the list of terrorist groups who have the Gandhi family under their radar. Seems like a random pick, almost like a senior editor instructing a junior copy writer, just pick two three names yaar, bheja mat kha.

Award-shaward

So this year the Padma* awards went to some of those who wagged their tails most vigorously. This was expected and this has been the norm, as we discussed earlier. Yet the media took the opportunity to take pot shots at Advani. A Tehelka article was particularly vicious in tone. It went so far as suggesting that by proposing the Bharat Ratna for Vajpayeeji, Mr. Advani was setting a bad precedence. This is an astonishing spin. If anyone set the trend of giving awards to sycophants, it was Congress, which had a firm lock on Indian politics for decades.

Come to think of it, Barkha Dutt's Padma Shri was justified because of her Kargill war coverage. You have to give her the gender advantage too. Rajeep Sardesai on the other hand is merely one among many leading media chiefs. He is yet to differentiate himself as a journalist. Arguably he has shown great managerial skills and entrepreneurial acumen in bringing CNN-IBN to the forefront of the Indian media scene.

So, the top national award was not conferred on anyone this year. Sonia Gandhi could not be given the Bharat Ratna simply because it would provide fodder for BJP, although many Congress politicians lobbied for it. Vajpayeeji had practically no chance of getting the award for obvious reasons. The only way he could get it was through a personal grand gesture of the PM. Unfortunately it is not easy being a Congress politician, one has to straddle political advantages with a show of obeisance for the dynasty.

Perhaps they thought that no award was better than a controversial one. Unfortunately at least in this case that logic will not work. Mayawati is already eating away into a Congress vote bank. By not giving the award to Kanshi Ram or Babu Jagjivan Ram, Congress handed it on a platter to Mayawati. Now it is up to her to exploit it.

Obscene?

It was bizarre to watch Kanimozhi pan PMK's "hypocrisy", after all PMK (Dr. Ramadoss' party) and DMK are joined at the hip. CNN-IBN characterized the PMK politicians reacting to actress Shriya's dress (above) as "protests by Hindu groups". Kanimozhi wasn't asked hardball questions. PMK has a history of intolerance, they dragged actress Khushboo to court earlier for her comments on premarital sex. This is how CNN-IBN edits a video when they report an unfavorable incident about UPA allies, of course on the rare occasions they report them at all.

Is Karunanidhi's health so poor that he can't even get up for a photo-op with a lady? This happened in the same function where Shriya wore the offensive dress. Watch how awkward the award ceremony was.

Turkish grass

The current lead story on The Outlook website is the transcript of a speech Ms. Arundhati Roy recently delivered in Turkey. The subject of the speech is genocide and the occasion death anniversary of the slain Armenian journalist named Hrant Dink.

After a brief prologue on the said Journalist and the Armenian massacres, Arundhati proceeded to introduce the concept of genocide, wikipedia style. There is nothing wrong in setting out a framework, except that if you twist the data to fit the framework, it starts getting a little weird.

Arundhati Roy deeply feels for American Indians. Her version of the story is as simple as those jerky moving images that passed for motion pictures prior to the invention of talkies.

• White people invaded America
• They slaughtered all Indians
• They occupied the land
  

She should really fast forward to at least the 1940s and 50s and watch some John Ford classics.

The fact is much more complex than that. Even if you completely ignore the American invasion part, the Indians were hardly a homogeneous and peaceful tribe. Perhaps there were hundreds of different tribes, scattered all around. Their men lazed around (while not hunting) and smoked pot while the women did plenty of housework and child rearing. The chiefs kept a lot of women to themselves. They would start working on the girls of the clan as soon as they attained puberty. There was disease, often not much to eat, no TV, no AC. Most importantly, they fought bitter battles among themselves. Some of the tribes were particularly fearsome. After massacres, they would brandish skulls of enemies on their spears (almost like Gujarat!). If there are one set of people who love genocide, it is the tribes and primitive people all over the globe. Right now we have several going on in Africa, perhaps elsewhere too.

Yet, Arundhati perhaps advocates leaving them as they were.

These facts should be sobering for the Arundhati Roy and the band of renegade intellectuals that make rounds of the lecture circuit and constantly express deep resentment at the state of the world. If they assume themselves as intellectuals with some higher ability to define and create a new world, what difference do they have with the white people of their own fables?

Arundhati expresses disgust at genocide denial while stating this:

As genocides go, the Gujarat genocide cannot compare with the people killed in the Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia, where the numbers run into millions, nor is it by any means the first that has occurred in India. (In 1984, for instance, 3,000 Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi with similar impunity, by killers overseen by the Congress Party.) But the Gujarat genocide is part of a larger, more elaborate and systematic vision. It tells us that the wheat is ripening and the grasshoppers have landed in mainland India.

Was the Sikh riots really the first genocide to happen in India? Really Ma'am? Who is in denial here?

Come to think of it, it is pretty amazing that we still have a town called Aurangabad and a city called Ahmedabad. Recently there was a demand for the Bharat Ratna for the last Moghul emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Meanwhile soon after the Brits left, we fell over each other in our haste to rechristen every English name of cities, monuments and streets. We renamed Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkata and more recently Banagalore to Bengaluru. But we do have Aurangabad, certain people will continue to have their first claim on resources and Arundhati will continue to chastise us.

Arundhati takes huge poetic liberties with facts and data in her lecture but we can't question her. She has run up the hill in her romanticized fantacy land where tribals gather around fire at night and have roasted roots of dead plants (no killing, see?). From the top of her hill she shouts profanities at us.

The question remains that if all of us are evil and this is all a mirage, how do we trust her intentions? Is she really what she claims to be or merely an agitpropagandist hell bent on destroying a certain set of people?

Come to think of it, there are a lot of people on the secular brigade whose behavior raises such suspicions.

Wrong Medicine

One imagines that Dr. Ramadoss, Hon'ble Minister for Health, has too much time on his hands these days. After his successful campaign for the ouster of Dr. Venugopal from AIIMS, he has embarked upon a high profile mission of putting scary pictorial warnings on Cigarette and Bidi packets. Ironically most of the resistance is coming from within Congress itself. Watch this Devil's Advocate show to find out where that is going.

Incidentally the alleged link between some AIIMS doctors and the recently unearthed kidney transplant racket didn't get much media coverage. While Dr. Venugopal was the director, secular media was covering every piece of medical malpractice case at AIIMS.

To summarize the AIIMS coverage timeline in the secular media:

Prior to the reservation fiasco: What is AIIMS?
During the reservation fiasco: AIIMS is a hotbed of casteism and urgently requires social justice
During the height of Venu-Rama duel: An AIIMS doctor again left a scalpel inside a patient's bowel
After Dr. Venugopal's ouster: AIIMS? What?

But fear no more, the good Doc is going to fix everything. Once he moves his ass from the CNN-IBN studios and actually goes to work that is.

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss' obsession with the affairs of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the Capital is proving to be a bane for the six new hospitals proposed to be set up on the lines of the institute. The slackness of the Ministry in executing such a high profile project reflects in the poor utilisation of funds. In the current financial year, the Ministry has utilised only Rs 46 lakh against the actual allocation of Rs 150 crore under the plan head.

Even last year only Rs 6.27 crore was spent against the allocation of Rs 75 crore. The Ministry's Super Speciality Hospital (SSH) Cell, that handles all the projects, had utilised only Rs 2.52 crore against the allocation of Rs 256 crore in 2005-06. Given the pace of physical progress, one wonders if the Ministry would be able to meet the deadline of 2010 to complete all new super-speciality hospitals. Even the detailed project reports (DPRs) have not yet been prepared.

The Centre had planned to spend Rs 2,541 crore during the 10th Plan ending March 2006-07 on the projects conceived and announced by the NDA Government in February 2004. Less than Rs 10 crore has been utilised so far. "There is conspicuous delay in the project. The deadline would not be met. The new deadline would be decided only after the DPRs are approved by the Ministry's expert group and is referred to the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC). The total cost would also go up from earlier estimation of Rs 4,l58 crore," a Ministry official said. [link]

Happy Republic Day

It is never too early to introduce kids to the idea of nationalism.

Hopefully, it's not too late.

The lurid case of fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander

It is yet to be seen whether the MEA throws its weight behind would be celebrity fashion designer Anand Jon Alexander, who is facing 50 plus serious charges of sexual assault on dozens of females, many of them under aged, in the US.

It is futile to argue whether our Government agencies go way beyond their brief on these types of cases. The temptation to look like Robin Hood for minorities must be almost irresistible for the secular party. As we saw with the Dr. Haneef case, the overarching logic for Government intervention appears to be directly proportional to the potential political benefit and nothing else. There was a time when no one could be sure if Dr. Haneef was indeed unambiguously innocent. Yet during that time our PM lost his sleep and the MEA went on overdrive, exerting pressure on the Aussies. Luckily for the MEA and the politicians who went out on a limb on that case, Dr. Haneef was subsequently absolved of all charges.

Meanwhile the fashion designer's sister Sanjana Jon is in India, trying to work up a grassroot level support for her brother. She is also meeting with politicians and Government officials. She has already met with Rahul Gandhi, who has promised to look into the matter. Overseas Indians Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi is itching to jump into the frey. The media response is meanwhile muted, which is understandable given the recent attention and public outrage at violence against women in India. Therefore, no TV shows or SMS polls so far.

The charges against Anand Jon are very serious in nature. The fact that there are so many - several dozen cases involving dozens of females from 14 to 23 in more than half a dozen US cities - lends a certain amount of probabilistic credibility to the charges. The most damning fact is that this isn't the fashion designer's first brush with the law in sexual assault related cases. He was charged with similar crimes in the past on which he took a plea bargain in exchange for a lesser charge of misdemeanor. He also completed a three year probation, which included an order not to associate with under age women. It is clear he didn't pay much attention to the order, even during the probation period he actively sought out young females, often through networking sites such as myspace.

Given these circumstances, the MEA should tread with extreme caution on this case.

You just can't make this stuff up!

Bharat Ratna for the masses

According to Sagarika Ghose, the "furore" over Bharat Ratna began when a CNN-IBN reporter proposed Sachin Tendulkar's name for the award. Of course, the secular journos can never write a simple article without putting a bizarre spin on it. Google search reveals that the "furore" over Bharat Ratna is pretty much an annual ritual. Every year there is intense lobbying for the award. The award is withheld on those years a politically viable candidate (meaning politically convenient for Congress) is not found.

What really started the "furore" this year was a letter from Mr. Advani to the PM, recommending Vajpayeeji for the award. It is not clear if the letter was released to the press from BJP or leaked by the PMO.

Sagarika Ghose's article is full of misinformation and pedantic assertions that we have come to expect from her. For instance, the plain vanilla knighthood is not the highest British civilian honor, hence the reasoning that since Bob Geldof got knighted, Sachin Tendulkar should get Bharat Ratna - does not work. Sachin already got the Padma Shri. She laments that in India we can never expect to have a 42-year old cabinet minister. This is very surprising, Dr. Ramadoss' name immediately comes to mind. She places the number of awardees till date at 41, although it looks like the actual number is 40. Of course she could be counting Netaji, that's another story.

These bloopers aside, she manages to display her extreme contempt for BJP in a few lines. Apparently Advani wrote a thundering letter to the PM. Since we don't have the text of the letter, we have no way to judge if the letter was thundering or humble in tone. Also, the letter had 11 points justifying the award for the ex-PM, not just for being the longest serving parliamentarian.

Sagarika Ghose pretends that she is making an impartial case for rewarding merit and aspirational factors and thus has a better moral case than the lobbyists. Unfortunately it is pretty obvious that she is not really making a strong case for Sachin Tendulkar in that rambling piece as much as trying to preempt Vajpayee. This sentence is a dead giveaway:

A day after the reporter's story, came Advani's thundering letter to the prime minister: A Bharat Ratna for Vajpayee please.

Actually the sequence of the events would have been somewhat different.

• CNN-IBN, being privy to inside sources, learns that the dynasty is considering the Bharat Ratna
• The New Delhi Political grapevine wisens up pretty fast, such things can't stay hidden
• Several groups start their lobbying process
• CNN-IBN hastily starts a campaign for Sachin
• Co-incidentally Advani's letter is sent the day after
• Sagarika Ghose writes a cringe inducing article, spewing venom on political lobbying

The fact that Mr. Advani chose to write a personal letter to the PM with 11 thoughtful points shows that this was a genuine and personal appeal to the goodness of Mr. Manmohan Singh. This is the dignified way to do such things. He didn't first announce it in a press conference amid cheering supporters.

There is a very strong case for Vajpayeeji for the award. Before his tenure, we just didn't have a viable opposition that could provide good governance and make our country take strong leaps towards modernity. He put together a coalition that actually provided solid governance and stability, in addition to launching several reforms, economic as well as social. We would argue that Vajpayeeji was instrumental in completing our democracy. Prior to him we really had no alternative (as some socialists still claim we don't have), opposition Governments quickly degenerated into circus like performances.

Perhaps the best contribution of Mr. Vajpayee to the Indian people is the injection of a sliver of objectivity into our mind numbing politics of horse trading. When the BJP Government came about, commies started churning out numbers, stats and data they had never deemed was necessary for decades prior to that. For the first time people were actually looking at poverty statistics and various human development indices seriously. Before that poor people were supposed to sing Raghupati Raghava and feel happy under the designated monarch.

Mr. Vajpayee truly deserves the award for this paradigm shift in our democracy. Actually, conferring the Bharat Ratna on him would really be rewarding the masses for their willingness to venture away from decades of personality cult and dogma.

Confusing one's religion?

BANGALORE: It was an unlucky fourth time for this self-styled pastor who ended up in police net after his new wife discovered his 'much-married' status. Vijay Joseph (40) was arrested on Thursday after his fourth wife Pamela, whom he married last September, discovered he had three other wives.Vijay used to visit houses to offer prayers claiming he was a pastor and after getting friendly with them, offer himself as a prospective groom to their girls. [link]

Greenpeace, PETA, Blue Cross and other assorted loonies

Call them ultra-liberal organizations, enviro-nazis, environmental terrorists - what you will, the fact remains that these are extremely powerful organizations. These are not your neighborhood lost-puppy lovers club.

Perhaps you can recognize the Blue Cross logo from recent news reports. Yes, this is the organization that spearheaded the ban on the ancient Tamil sport of Jallikattu. Fortunately this ban was subsequently lifted.

PETA is also no stranger to us, mostly because of pictures of Bollywood stars in weird costumes that occasionally adorn the magazines. Right about now PETA is engaged in a protracted high profile campaign against Japanese whaling ships. Things are getting really twisted over there. Apparently a PETA vessel attempted to obstruct a Japanese whaling ship which resulted in the Japanese crew capturing a PETA activist and holding him on board. He is being offered whale meat for food. All this drama is accompanied by the usual visuals, young women drenched with fake blood (and wearing not much else) making protests at prominent Japanese landmarks.

Greenpeace is relatively unknown, but it is making its presence felt in India. Greenpeace has a huge ship which they use to travel around the world and terrorize oil companies. They often storm oil rigs and wage protests. The most famous case involving Greenpeace was the Brent Spar fiasco. Long story short, it eventually turned out that Greenpeace had way over-estimated the residual oil on the rig and their suggested method of disposal would have caused much more environmental damage.

Such is the fearsome reputation of these organizations that business schools offer special courses to counter their effect on business operations. Case studies of the Brent Spar case is often part of the curriculum.

These organizations are largely self-sustaining, i.e. they are run by volunteers. They receive donations from supporters. They are extremely well organized outfits and run with the efficiency of the best of MNCs. Their moves are hardly ever random, they are guided by the best in strategy and economics. Their tactics border on blackmail and people are often left wondering about their true motives. Nudity seems to be a favorite form of expression.

So far, the activities of these organizations were limited to North America and the Eurozone, occasionally Japan. This is for two reasons, these countries offer the most vulnerable shakedown targets. Also, these countries have a much higher tolerance for free speech or activities in the guise of free speech. You are not likely to see Greenpeace in the Middle East or China. Similarly you are not likely to see PETA demanding mandatory stunning of animals prior to slaughter - for obvious reasons.

India is emerging as a soft target for these terrorists. So far the economic potential was not strong enough to get the attention of Greenpeace & Co. Now they have arrived and they are here to make trouble. Already they have Amarnath pilgrimage etc. on their radar. Of all forms of animal cruelty, they targeted Jallikattu! One wonders why!

Musharraf bans bloggers

Give Bharat Ratna to Afzal Guru

Union Information and Broadcast Minister Dasmunsi often appears to broadcast from the wrong end.

Government on Thursday sought to make light of BJP leader L K Advani's letter seeking Bharat Ratna for former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee saying such issues are not raised in public. In a sarcastic vein, Information and Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi said it would have been better had Advani honoured him within the party. "It is not in the tradition to communicate through letter on such matters," he said when asked by reporters to comment on Advani's letter. [link]

He also uniquely lacks an understanding of how information works in the modern world. Someone ought to tell him that such assertions can be easily fact-checked. So, let's see if such issues are indeed not raised in public:

Congress CMs vote for Dhirubhai's Bharat Ratna
RLD wants Bharat Ratna for Charan Singh
Call to confer Bharat Ratna on Ghantasala
Sunil Dutt seeks Bharat Ratna for Sivaji
Jayalalithaa for awarding Bharat Ratna to Balamurali
Bharat Ratna for Jyoti Basu, but not Vajpayee?

And of course:

Sonia deserves Bharat Ratna: APCC meet

A quick look at the list of awardees shows just how arbitrary the selection criteria must be. The only consistent rule seems to be that Congress Prime Ministers who are also members of the dynasty will get the award. Dr. Ambedkar got the award posthumously, several decades after his death. It is not as though he missed out because there were no slots. The award wasn't conferred on several years. No one received the award in the past seven years. On many years more than one person received the award.

Meanwhile several newspapers are running opinion polls on who should get the award. Sachin Tendulkar is the number one favorite of Congress mouthpiece CNN-IBN.

Congress suddenly realizes that the award wasn't conferred in the last seven years. Let's drop the pretense, shall we? Everyone knows the award will be a huge political statement.

We propose the Bharat Ratna for Afzal Guru. No other candidate can be as popular as Afzal as far as seculars go. Afzal fired up secular passion like none other. Articles and editorials flooded newspapers, special shows hosted on TV, even books written and published. Just for getting his sorry ass captured for terrorism charges, Afzal must have added several hundreds of crores to the national GDP. We say, just give it to him. It also fits the UPA Government's social sector policies well.

Of course this is assuming when the flunkies ultimately propose Madam's name, she will feel shy, just like she did after the 2004 elections.

Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta a possible perv?

We always knew there was something funny about Outlook editor Vinod Mehta, maybe something in his eyes. Something creepy. Shekhar Gupta, Indian Express editor-in-chief, narrates an incident:

Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta happened to be sitting to her [Benazir Bhutto's] left and as the conversation got more animated, he, as his friends and TV audiences well know, leaned forward to make his point, often touching her by now ample arm in a wonderfully warm gesture of informality. Benazir stopped me for a five-minute tattle as we were all leaving. She talked about this and that, and then said: "I did not know your Delhi journalists get so familiar with leaders. Tell me how would Sonia Gandhi handle that?" [link]

Well, in buses and commuter trains it often starts out as a warm and innocent gesture of cordiality. Of course this one incident doesn't prove anything. Perhaps we should ask female staffers of Outlook magazine.

Democracy killed history

Finished reading Ramachandra Guha's India after Gandhi a few weeks ago. This is a long overdue post, meanwhile there has been excellent coverage on the blogosphere. Confused's take on the book is highly recommended - a very comprehensive and fair coverage of the book.

For a most succinct take on the book, here is an excerpt:

And it's bad. Really, really bad.

Basically, this is a work of hagiography (of Nehru, specifically, who deserves better by dint of having been an actual human being, and a quite shrewd one at that) that reflects an intensely partisan outlook: Guha is a partisan of the India's bien-pensant upper-middle left. You'd be far better served by reading anything by Ayesha Jalal or the Marxist intellectual Aijaz Ahmad. Amazingly, given that Guha is a serious scholar and (supposed) left intellectual who has considerable spent time outside India, he offers a Attenborough-esque portrait of a dastardly Jinnah and he demonizes Pakistan. [link]

Prof. Amardeep Singh reviewed the book chapter by chapter. Indeed, our intellectual circle, basically the Tehelka types, welcomed this book with open arms even before it had been published.

History tends to throw men into violent feats of partisanship. This was not always so. It used to be really simple in the old days. Country A invaded Country B, killed their leader, looted their gold and abducted their women (perhaps did some conversion too, but that isn't really as important). This was based on a cardinal principle of nationhood - a nation as an entity of a group of people and lead by one man. Under this principle, all actions were due to the leader and only to the leader. History texts were mostly written as actions of nations in the first person. As far as we can tell, no detailed account of debates in the cabinet of Mohammad bin Tughlaq exists. All his disastrous actions are solely attributed to him.

The advent of the modern democratic republics has obviously thrown this system completely out of gear. How do you think history would remember US President George Bush's tenure?

This modern system brought about two changes, one is integral to it and the other perhaps incidental. The first one is the creation of political parties and democratic institutions. This ensures that there are always agents to defend and often modify past actions of leaders. The second one is the increasing global economic prosperity and the high stakes game of modern economics. This one is increasingly leading to violation of the very basis of a democratic republic - which is one set of inviolable rules (constitution) that everyone agrees to and swears to uphold at the time of formation of the nation.

How would Nehru be evaluated today? Clearly a Congress supporter will see Nehru's tenure through rose tinted glasses just like a detractor will constantly attempt to bring attention to irrelevant details of the leader's personal life. Guha goes one step beyond all this - Nehru for him is Maryada Purushottam, the perfect man who could do no wrong.

All that is considered good in modern India is attributed to Nehru. All that was considered good at the time (such as big nationalized factories) and are coming under scrutiny are described with a sense of nostalgia - as an example, Guha quotes a journalist waxing eloquent about the beautiful town of Bokaro and feeling emotional at the sight of the Bokaro steel plant reflected on a lake. Likewise, the opposition is squarely blamed for anything bad that happened. If Nehru didn't succeed in doing something he should have done, it was again the opposition that thwarted his good intentions. Sometimes it would be detractors within Congress itself, but rarely.

Despite an overwhelming majority, Congress had trouble in the Parliament. This is hard to pin on "opposition" alone. Nehru did have the opportunity to push through many reforms, if he were serious about them. The ultimate blame must lie on Nehru for his lack of vision and mistaken ideas of economics and international relations, not to mention a rather simplistic notion of nationalism which resulted in the often violent events of the linguistic movement. In no place it is clear if Nehru had a strategic road map for a solution. The only deliberate thing he does is talks with Vinobha Bhave! Why invite Chou Eun Lai? This was inviting trouble, already had bad experience with Chinese reaction to Indian protest and desecration of the Mao picture which was a diplomatic fiasco.

The idea that India was a special challenge to bring together a diverse nation may also be an act of Nehru-aggrandizement. Many other nations in history have undergone similar troubles and they had no less complicated situations. But many of them handled their international relations and economy better and came out much better off eventually. India on the other hand was all bark and no bite, literally, with less than 50% of people with food on their table on a regular basis. Praising Nehru as the sole force that brought India together is grossly unfair to the people of India as it is to our other leaders and visionaries, who must be credited with identifying and embracing good ideas.

Guha is also very unkind to some of Nehru's detractors. At one place he describes Vajpayee as a terrier. At another, he talks about "Congressmen" in jail while Ambedkar served Brits etc. He manages to implicate Vajpayee and Jan Sangh for the Chinese issue while never making it clear what Nehru wanted or if he had any plans at all for settling the disputes. The Bombay Plan for him was apparently a good thing while it must be seen in light of later events. Clearly this is what led to the crony socialism in today's India - a trend that started much before independence, more on that later.

Guha's book is a difficult read, he strings together hundreds of quotations on each page, meticulously providing the references. In that sense it seems like more of an edited history rather than a written one. It is instructive to note that Guha's source material comes from editorials of newspapers like The Hindu and articles of such eminent personalities as Teesta Sheetalvad.

To be fair, Guha has done a reasonably good job of compilation and as one prominent blogger commented, one does feel moved by this book. Guha's book will be very useful as a ready reference and we will quote from it extensively in the near future.

Previous:

Ramachandra Guha's violent assault on history
Historical Blindness

Just another orphan news item

KATNI: A church priest was arrested for allegedly raping a woman on January 1 in the Majhgava forest area near Katni, police said. The priest of the local Gayatri Nagar church was arrested and produced in the court on Friday after which he was sent to jail, Katni Suprinendent of Police (SP) Renu Shukla told reporters.

The incident occurred when the woman's husband, a truck driver, went to Indore for some work. Taking advantage of the situation, the priest Kaushik Nayak took the woman on his motor-cycle with a promise to get her a job of a nurse.

However, after reaching Majghava forest area he allegedly raped her and fled from the spot, the SP said. The woman later narrated the incident to her husband who reported the matter to the police following which the priest was arrested. [link]

Have a Safe New Year 2008

Hope our readers have survived their respective New Year parties, bashes etc. unscathed. As you must have heard by now, the new year didn't start very well for a lot of people.

Terror kept relentlessly stalking us - a CRPF camp was attacked in UP on New Year's eve, leaving 8 jawans dead. The big international incident of New Year's eve happened in Kenya which erupted into an orgy of ethno-religious violence. Some 300 dead, innumerable properties destroyed. The Indian disapora has taken to flight, some are stranded.

Of course the unsavory incidents that happened across the country got the most attention. A couple of women were molested right outside a big Hotel in Bombay by a crowd as large as 70 - 80 people. This was an action replay of last year's incident at Gateway of India.

Apparently seven people were apprehended, no further info on the case available. Last year too, some men were arrested. It is not known if the authorities were able to pursue the case:

Three persons, including two minors, were arrested on Thursday in connection with the alleged molestation of a woman by male revellers at New Year-eve function at the Gateway of India. The only adult among the three arrested has been identified as Rizwan Shaikh. "The police came to our house early on Thursday morning and took them away by giving us incorrect information regarding where they were being taken," Rehana Khan, mother of one of the accused, alleged. [link]

A Similar incident happened in Kochi, where a teenage female tourist was groped by a group of men right next to her father while the father was actually being interviewed by a reporter on his great experience in India!

Local revellers molested a Swedish tourist's daughter at Fort Kochi on Monday night. The father of the girl said that he would now have to think twice before bring his children to India. "I was talking to someone and this man was grabbing my daughter from behind me. The girls are friendly and that is something which can be mistaken in India. I will have to think twice before bringing my children to India again," said the father.Though no complaint was lodged by the Swedish family, the local police has registered a suo moto report and arrested the alleged offender - a 17-year-old boy named Shafique. [link]

Various other reports of similar assaults on women came from Pune, Patna, New Delhi etc. Perhaps this was the most interesting of them all:

Two sons of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad got into trouble for allegedly indulging in eve-teasing on New Year's eve and were beaten up by unidentified youths in south Delhi. In the scuffle, a personal security officer accompanying Yadav's sons - Tarun and Tejpal - lost his service pistol, for which a complaint has been filed in the local police station. [...] On their return, they allegedly passed some remarks at girls who were partying at a farm house near Mehrauli. However, this time they ran short on luck when a group of youngsters decided to thrash them. The PSOs, sensing the gravity of the situation, did not reveal the identity of the two, the sources said. [link]

Tarun and Tejpal, why does that sound familiar? Hmm. Needless to say, people are desperately searching for a pattern in these cases. Various theories are being put forward.

Meanwhile, life must go on while they figure out the root cause of these incidents. We recommend carrying any weapon or deterrant that you can carry legally in your district.

Be Happy and stay safe.