Ration Riots in West Bengal

Rizwanur Rehman, the man who was found dead on the railway tracks a while ago, has become the latest poster child of liberal activism in India. Unfortunately for the media and the intellectuals, this happened in Commie bastion West Bengal, which threw a huge spanner in the secular works. We can imagine the hand wringling in newspaper offices, "Hey Lord Ram, why didn't you make it happen in Gujarat? What have I done wrong? At least in MP please? I will make a goat sacrifice for Ma Kali." Unable to connect it to the usual theme, most op-eds are taking the businessman-politican-cop nexus track to vent their anger.

This is what has the commies scrambling for cover. After the initial bravura statements and declarations of stern action against cops (including the top cop of WB), the Commies don't want anything to do with a CBI investigation. This is where a Hindi speaking man from the rural heartland would scratch his "...."s and say, "Daal mein kuch kaala hai!"

CPM wants this issue to go away, buried deep so it can't be found again. Already embroiled by the Singur and Nandigram scandals, they do not want any more media attention. They are also extremely worried about people taking a cold hard look at the Sachar Commission report. As RealityCheck and many other bloggers have noted, Muslims tend to do very well in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala etc. at least as far as those statistics go. Their condition remains dismal in UP, Bihar, West Bengal etc.

The Commies in West Bengal do not want to open this pandora's box. CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu once famously said, there are no castes in West Bengal, only classes. He might as well have said the same thing about religion. The USP of CPM is deeply rooted in the class divide folklore. In that sense you could say WB politics lags the national politics by several decades.

This is where other political parties have unearthed a huge pot of gold. Already Mamata has started screaming about this.

Ironically, this issue has completely obscured another very grave issue that is unfolding in West Bengal. There is a full scale riot going on which speaks as much to the failure of the Public Distribution System as it does to the failed ideology of the West Bengal communists. Here we see a huge socialist experiment failing miserably in a communist state, and how so!

KOLKATA: Thirty years after land reforms and the start of Left rule in Bengal, the ration riots have exploded the myth of rural utopia. Rural Bengal is not a place where food is plenty and villagers never go to bed hungry. Rather, it is a place where rampant corruption and greed have eroded the pillars of the public distribution system. [link]

This is also interesting:

SURI/BEHRAMPORE: A ration dealer's son committed suicide in Birbhum, the third such incident in West Bengal in the wake of the ration riots that began last month, while incidents of attacks on ration dealers continued unabated in Birbhum and Murshidabad districts on Tuesday. [link]

Also, this:

The continuing violence prompted chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to appeal for peace. He asked people not to take the law into their hands and said the government had requested the Centre to increase rice, wheat and kerosene supplies. "Some people are deliberately trying to create trouble," he said. [link]

Another one:

Kolkata: A ration dealer's house and the office of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) were set ablaze in Burdwan district of West Bengal yesterday in the continuing protests against alleged corruption in the public distribution system (PDS) and food grain hoarding that have claimed four lives. A group of people set on fire the house of ration shopkeeper Golam Mohammad at Nawabhat in Burdwan district, about 250km northwest of Kolkata, and as the mob left the area it torched the CPM office in the vicinity. [link]

Equal Opportunity?

A few weeks back, a case of police brutality was reported in Bihar. It almost became a national issue. As usual, this was followed by TV specials, angry responses from human rights commissions, fiery articles and editorials etc.

Now a new case has come to light.

NAWADA: Incidents of people taking law into their hand continued in Bihar with another suspected thief being lynched at Badahori in Nawada district.

A group of people caught hold of Amrik Rajbanshi and beat him to death after he and four others were suspected to have committed theft at a house, police said.

A case was registered against unknown persons. The incident came close on the heels of lynching of two kidnappers by angry residents at Mahnagani in West Champaran district on Sunday.

Earlier, two persons were beaten to death in Patna on suspicion of being robbers on September 21 and ten suspected thieves lynched in Vaishali district two days later.

A mob gouged out the eyes of three young men who had snatched away a motorcycle in Nawada district on September nine.

The wave of mob violence in the state started when a youth, who had allegedly snatched a woman's gold chain, was severely beaten up by a crowd and later tied to a motorcycle and dragged on the road by police in Bhagalpur district on August 28.

The last para in the report refers to the police brutality case mentioned in the beginning of the post. Come to think of it, had the police not got involved in that one and the public saw their justice through till the end (the way they see it fit in those parts), the man wouldn't have been alive.

In any case, no further details or analyses are available, newspapers are busy with the looming mid-term polls.

Funny mediamen

Socialist Magazine The Outlook staffers open a Champagne bottle,

capitalist style, on the eve of the magazine's 12th anniversary

Vinod Mehta has some gall. When the OBC quota scandal first broke out, his magazine published issue after issue on the plight of - get this, Dalits! The magazine's 12th anniversary gave him an opportunity to beat his own drums, double time. It is a piece worth reading from beginning to the end. For Mehta, India can never shine but clearly it doesn't prevent the sunshine of the capitalist God flooding the musty interiors of the Outlook office in the form of Rs. 20 per week subscriptions. Does he love praise? Yes, of course, as long as it is objective. Objectivity apparently also includes subterfuge, such as pulling the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting readers about the perhaps minor yet highly important difference between Dalits and OBCs.

Mehta gets nostalgic towards the end of the article. Clearly he is an enormously talented man and highly respected in the circle he belongs to. We don't begrudge Mehta's socialism. He is free to wag his tail whichever way he wants to. But we do reserve the right to analyze what he writes and publishes.

Cha Cha Cha? Disco? Retro? A new form of dance?
Vinod Mehta gets it on.

CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai declares war on BJP.

Suspension of disbelief

Newsflash: Congress is ready for the elections, so let's have them.

Senior Left leaders are claiming that Congress is forcing an election on the nation. Er, excuse me?

Anyway, such have been the ways of the left. Once upon a time Shri Tejpalji complained about the anal retentiveness of the left (this was a time the fiery journalist still had his sting).

In retrospect, we would take a constipated Left anyday. You don't want the stink they cause everytime they let it out.

CNN-IBN Reporters pawing Chinese woman on camera

CNN-IBN has sent a team of reporters to China who are video-blogging their trip. The reporters are being overly friendly with the unsuspecting Chinese women whenever they can. In this video, watch a reporter pawing the Chinese woman under the pretext of friendship. Also, they keep praising her looks.

The Other Minorities

There are an estimated 5000 Jewish people in India. As minorities go, you can't stretch the concept much further, in a nation of 1 billion people.

Unfortunately, they have little political voice. This is expected in a democracy where issues are settled by identity based horse trading. What is completely unexpected is the deep silence of the otherwise sensitive folks who go ballistic on any real or imaginary minority related issues.

The Jewish in India would be expected to stay under the radar, but we are seeing an alarming increase in veiled attacks against this community.

Leaders of India's Jewish community expressed outrage Sunday over a new line of bedspreads called "The Nazi Collection" from a Mumbai-based home furnishing company that used swastikas in its promotional material. The furnishing dealer said the name stands for "New Arrival Zone for India" and was not meant to be anti-Semitic. But Jewish groups said they would file a lawsuit against the company. [...]

Furnishing dealer Kapil Kumar Todi said he chose the name because "that's what came to my mind," according to the paper. "It really does not matter to me who feels bad about it," he said. Some Indians regard Hitler as just another historical figure and have little knowledge about the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed during World War II. [link]

Perhaps Shri Kapil Kumar Todi would not be so nonchalant if the offended group in question had been some other "minority" group. He is acting all innocent, but the "New Arrival Zone for India" is a bit of a stretch.

Last year too there was a new restaurant which was called the Hitler's Cross. Very appetizing name. This being Bombay, one can not help but speculate that rather than being serendipitous, these are really deliberate attempts at appealing to a particular customer segment.

How did you celebrate Gandhi Jayanti?

People did all sorts of things on this national holiday. Perhaps the kids had the most fun. They got to skip school and do their little costume parties. Some folks made speeches, some participated in rallies. Some celebrated it as International Non-Violence Day. JD(S) reneged on its promise to BJP. An ailing elephant called Arundhati died.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi reminded everyone that Congress had the first claim on Gandhi.

"The Congress is proud that it is inextricably involved with the GNP - Gandhi, Nehru and Patel - of India. There is no doubt that Gandhiji belongs to the world. He belongs to India. But first and foremost he belongs to the Congress."

On Gandhi Jayanti, NSUI (Congress Youth Wing), did a little Gandhigiri of their own:

Eight members of National Students Union of India (NSUI) were arrested on Monday following a complaint against them in Udhna police station for attacking and painting the face of Dinesh Chauhan black. Chauhan, vice-principal of R N Naik School, Udhna, was attacked by the NSUI members at the school while he was supervising in a classroom during mid-term exam. [..] The NSUI members attacked Chauhan accusing him of making derogatory remarks on minority students. [link]

It may be noted that recently Rahul Gandhi was appointed as the General Secretary of NSUI. In the light of recent developments, the allegations of derogatory remarks need to be suitably discounted.

But we liked this one best:

If, for many, the day before Gandhi Jayanti meant hectic preparations for functions, there were these Congress leaders in Bhesan taluka of Junagadh, who were busy with their booze party. However, an unidentified informer turned out to be a party pooper, as three Congress leaders and another person enjoying their party at the marketing yard office in Bhesan were nabbed by police on Monday night. Kirti Kamdar, 55 from Visavadar, taluka panchayat president Dhiru Bhuva, 53, Vrajlal Chaiya, 52, and Ahmedabad-based businessman Shailesh Dave, 40, were arrested by the police. [link]

We have no issues with this. We hate prohibition.

The one that got away

Have you heard about a movie called Amu? More likely not. But surely you know about Parzania? When the latter movie was released, the nation was gripped by Parzania frenzy, the media, blogosphere, our intellectuals - they simply couldn't stop talking about the movie. It was the one must see movie, the one movie in a lifetime, wonderfully acted, directed, edited, music directed ... indeed Parzania went on to win national awards.

Amu remained in obscurity, ostracized by our intellectuals.. Fortunately for director Shonali Bose, she received recognition from the Sikh Art and Film Foudation.

Scores of activists protested against the CBI on Sunday for dropping a case against senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Jagdish Tytler in connection with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The activists under the banner of All India Sikh Conference (AISC) staged a protest here and were prevented by police as they were marching towards the Prime Minister's house.

"The Supreme Court should take suo motu cognisance of the case and ask the CBI to reopen the anti-Sikh riot cases and give justice to 5000 Sikh families," president of AISC Gurcharan Singh Babbar said. [link]

SMS Update

The blogger we mentioned in the previous post received some comments on her post and then responded to them. Here is her comment, reproduced in full:

Hi all, thank you for stopping by, taking the time to read the letter from FAOW, and leaving your thoughts. There are a couple of issues I'd like to quickly clarify so that we can, if necessary, take this discussion further.

First, Mayuresh, thank you for your insights. You haven't been rude at all, so don't let that be a worry. I haven't visited the link you directed me to as I can respond immediately to your points. You're right, the SMS itself cannot be classified as communal, perhaps jingoistic. I do think however, that sending that SMS to a Muslim Indian may be perceived of as communal.

Dijo points out, quite rightly I think, that the SMS could have been sent to everyone or several people in the reporter's phone book. It's possible that he didn't target one Muslim, but a group of people whose religion was irrelevant to him. In that case we can either say that he's thoughtless to have included a Muslim name or secular because he sees no difference between Muslims, Hindus, Christians etc. when making an India versus Pakistan joke. Fair enough.

Then too, for a reporter at a national daily to do so is at best unprofessional, at worst irresponsible. He clearly didn't know the activist at FAOW well enough for her reaction and decision to approach his Editor, rather than him directly, proves so.

We can certainly give the reporter the benefit of doubt unless one knows that he has sent or tends to send similar SMS's only to Muslims.

However: I've received so many similar messages, vitriolic and unarguably anti Muslim in the India-Pakistan context, that I have begun to feel that this is a subject which we must all deal with, with some care and sensitivity towards others. I felt, and tell me if you agree, that the behavior of the media and of the crowds at the match was perhaps the best I have ever seen at an India-Pakistan match. Spirit like this embodies what sport is truly about, while SMSs as sent by the TOI reporter do quite the opposite.Pointing out that Shoaib Malik makes pro Islamic comments is in my mind rather childish and illogical. He did it and therefore so can we? I'd rather it be he did it, but we certainly won't. [link]

Her comment validates our theory that it was likely a case of mass SMS forwarding or at the very least these nasty women didn't even care to investigate whether it was. She also didn't think the message is communal.

So let's see here:

1. the SMS itself cannot be classified as communal, perhaps jingoistic
2. the SMS could have been sent to everyone or several people in the reporter's phone book
3. sent to a group of people whose religion was irrelevant to him
4. we can either say that he's thoughtless [..] or secular
   
5. We can certainly give the reporter the benefit of doubt

But they didn't even think twice before killing a guy's career?

Also, see the potent absurdity in the blogger's explanation. If the reporter were secular, sending the message would be ok. Else, he would be considered thoughtless. I don't think the concept of "benefit of doubt" is clear to the blogger. Benefit of doubt applies when there are valid charges but ambiguous evidence. Here the crime was fictional and the charges possibly libelous. It will be cold comfort for Mr. Balkrishna after he loses his job and then receives the said benefit of doubt.

Just because there are other, vitriolic and unarguably anti-minority messages going around and other instances of other dudes heckling minorities, these women thought they would take a hapless dude and slap on charges him they themselves don't believe are true. Even encounter killings have a better logic built into them.

At this point we are not even angry, just sad. We appeal to FAOW to withdraw the letter and issue an apology to the reporter.

The enemy within

Technology spurs some curious cultural phenomena. Take for instance mass SMS messages. SMS is highly popular in Asian countries, so much so that in some South Korean and Taiwanese movies, there are sometimes whole SMS sequences. The screen is split into two, the protagonists are shown furiously SMSing each other while the native language transcript plays out at the bottom, subtitle style. Now, here is the kicker, you are already watching with subtitles on. Imagine the confusion. Anyway, we digress.

So here is how mass SMS works (for the benefit of those in the cellular-technology challenged Western countries). Some smart aleck comes up with a supposedly funny or interesting message and SMSes it to everyone on his contact list. Silly perhaps, but it does happen. Each recipient in turn forwards it to everyone on his contact list. Sometimes they snowball into a huge chain SMS.

So, one day, you are bored and sitting in your office. This happens to be the day India had won the T20. Your euphoria has already faded away, bringing you back to harsh realities. Yeah, the evening commute too. Suddenly, twang! An SMS!

"Pak ko sharafat sikha denge, Hind ki taakat dikha denge… Ae Pak, humse punga no lena varna, JOHANNESBERG main kya, LAHORE main TIRANGA lehra denge, jai hind."

Out of sheer habit you proceed to click the buttons in a familiar sequence. Forward -> Select Contact -> All -> Send. You don't even stop to think. You have done it a zillion times.

The next day the sky literally falls over your head. You are summoned to your manager's office upon arrival and tersely informed that you are no longer employed with the organization.

That was a somewhat fictionalized account of what could have almost happened to Times of India reporter Mr. Balkrishna. Still confused? Read this in full.

Although at this point we are merely speculating about the circumstances, but there is overwhelming evidence supporting our hypothesis. We took the phrase and searched on the web. It looks like the particular SMS has been going around a lot. As a matter of fact it might have originated, albeit in a different context and somewhat different form in 2004.

Now, exactly what part of the message is communal? Let's rephrase it a little bit and see:

"Australia ko sharafat sikha denge, Hind ki taakat dikha denge… Ae Australia , humse punga no lena varna, JOHANNESBERG main kya, CANBERRA main TIRANGA lehra denge, jai hind."

Is Pakistan a friendly nation? Yeah, there are those track II people and all, but have you forgotten this? Surely things like that will bring out some passionate reaction from at least some people in a country of a billion. Even if Mr. Balkrishna were to single out a Muslim female and specifically send this message to her (which we totally doubt), how exactly does it make him communal? This is wrong at so many levels. We are told that minorities are as loyal to the country as anyone else. We are constantly being castigated for allegedly casting aspersions on the allegiance of minorities. So, how are we to expect that a minority might take umbrage at an anti-Pakistani remark?

These qustions will never be asked and proper investigations will never happen. Any person who admits to being Hindu is communal by default. For Hindus, Jai Hind is communal. Pakistan, humse panga na lena is communal. Basically we are expected to live as second class citizens and give up freedom of speech and religion.

A group of nasty females have descended upon the poor Mr. Balkrishna like vultures. They are baying for his blood. They want to send him to the purgatory before his time has come. Fortunately for Mr. Balkrishna, his boss turned out to be a rather stoic chap. He rejected the rabid group's first appeal. But make no mistake about it, they are not going to stop there. Mr. Balkrishna should seek alternate career options.

The blogger who is up in arms over the incident, did not react to this or this. But she went ballistic in condemning the outright communal Mr. Balkrishna for threatening and abusing the sovereignty of another country. Apparently this sort of way over the top reaction and possible lies and propaganda is supposed to foster a goofy feeling of peace and communal harmony.

Mr. Balkrishna has already committed a cardinal sin. He just happens to be a Hindu forced to live in a secular nation.

Essay Competition

Let's take a trip back down the memory lane.

Imagine this is 2003. India has just defeated the formidable Australia in the World Cup finals. The Indian Team has come back home amid wild jubilations. Posters such as the one above are seen on billboards all across Bombay.

Imagine also that you are a socially responsible journalist who really believes in secularism and social justice.

Please write a short essay reacting to the poster. No prizes. Your essay will be published on this obscure blog. Competition open for two weeks from today.

Does this make sense?

The Centre on Monday compared its legislation granting 27% quota to OBCs in admission to educational institutions to Caesar's wife and stressed before the Supreme Court that it was, like her, above suspicion.

"It was not brought in to subserve votebank politics, but to help those who genuinely needed help to shrug off backwardness caused by centuries of oppression," solicitor-general G E Vahanvati argued before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan. Vahanvati attempted to answer the flurry of questions that were put to him on Tuesday by the bench, which also comprised Justices Arijit Pasayat, C K Thakker, R V Raveendran and Dalveer Bhandari. [link]

As far as I remember Caeser divorced his wife on the grounds that she must be above suspicion. By the same logic, they should just dump this scheme.

In any case, we Hindus have a different way of dealing with such things. We will require an Agni Pariksha.

Blowing their own trumpet

These buggers are shameless beyond belief. A political party steals the limelight from a young cricketer. People friendly media conducts polls and pats each others backs.


As farmers in his backyards commit suicide by the droves and over 75% of the stuff from PDS system systematically disappear, Hon'ble Minister of Agriculture, Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution Systems, Sharad Pawar appears on cricket posters celebrating India's Twenty20 win.

A report card

Economist Dr. Ila Patnaik, who writes a weekly column for Indian Express, wrote a report card for the UPA Government.

She is a right of center economist and a fan of Milton Friedman. This means that she is not going to get one of those Bharat* awards anytime soon. But she writes well. Check out her column on investment in states (Tamil Nadu has dropped to 9th place in per capita investment) and the dubious ways the UPA Government is controlling inflation. Her scathing column on our financial policy shows the true colors of our Harvard Educated FM. She has also spoken out against the sorry state of affairs in our Public Distribution system.

Here is report card, reproduced in full. Things have changed somewhat since this was written.

Two Years of the UPA
Ila Patnaik
The good, the bad and the ugly


The good


Nuclear deal

For decades, India had a principled stance that it would not give up nuclear weapons. In return, the world strangled India's ability to import Uranium and thus make nuclear energy. Suddenly, that is history. The US and India have entered into a historic deal, whereby Indian nuclear weapons will be accepted by the world, and the world will be willing to sell fuel and reactors to India. This is great news for low cost electricity generation in India. It also removes a long-standing irritant that was holding back deeper friendship between India and the US, two natural allies on the global stage.

Railways

What happens when you mix the worst piece of Indian infrastructure (railways) with the politician from whom people expect the least (Lalu Prasad Yadav)? Magical results! The performance of the railways has been simply astounding. A far reaching reforms process has begun, by permitting the entry of the private sector into container transportation. Someday, the railways will be like roads:

the government will own the rails but multiple private companies will compete in offering trains. And we will remember Lalu Prasad Yadav for having started it all.

Fiscal revolution

For decades, we used to bemoan the Indian crisis on the fiscal deficit. Then came the rescue in the form of the FRBM Act, initiated by Yashwant Sinha, supported by Jaswant Singh, and seen through by P. Chidambaram. Far-reaching tax reforms were initiated, including the VAT and and an attack on the "exemption raj" highlighted by Kelkar. The deficit is now down to just 3.7%. A lower deficit means the government is grabbing less resources, and more money is available for investment.

Airports & civil aviation

Aviation has been revolutionised, first by the entry of new airlines. In a moribund sector that was trapped in the business interests of Indian Airlines, Air India, Jet Airways and Sahara, suddenly, we have competition! Prices have crashed and the middle class is flying. Tourism has prospered like never before. The second revolution has been unleashed, even though results are not on the table yet - that of privatisation of the airport. Now we can dream that the Delhi and Bombay airports will look as wonderful as the Delhi Metro. Praful Patel did what a Congress minister would never have been able to do.

Capital account convertibility

After years of a deadlock, the PM and the FM are ready to move on to the next big milestone of an India that is growing up: opening up the capital account. The RBI is still dragging its feet, having setup a committee for "fuller" convertibility as opposed to "full" convertibility. But it will be hard for the RBI to hoodwink this PM and this FM, and within 10 years, the Indian Rupee could be one of the great hard currencies of the world.

The bad

Wrong taxes

A great part of the "fiscal revolution" described above was rationality in taxation. We have slashed customs, shifted to VAT, lowered rates, and removed exemptions. But in the UPA years, a series of wrong taxes have crept back. The education cess, the securities transaction tax and the cash withdrawal tax -- all these are flat wrong. One expects better when an economist is the prime minister! The reformers have to now settle in for a ten-year fight to get rid of these.

Mindless expenditure on Education

The government is pouring huge money into its "flagship program" - the Sarkari Shiksha Ahiyan (SSA). But there is no evidence that SSA works. Independent tests show that our children continue to learn little at government schools - e.g. ONE HORRIBLE FACT: ONLY HALF THE STUDENTS IN CLASSES II TO V CAN SUBTRACT TWO DIGIT NUMBERS. What is needed is fundamental educational reform - not a more bloated government that spends more and more on dysfunctional institutional mechanisms.

Crippled Oil policy

The world price of petrol goes up. India imports petrol. The Indian price of petrol should go up. Obvious? Not if you are Mani Shankar Aiyer or Murli Deora. Both these ministers have derailed the effort at getting the government out of price controls in the oil sector. We are doing this exactly wrong: subsidising consumers to use more scarce oil. Men and nations will only do the right thing after exhausting every reasonable alternative.

6th pay commission

As Yashwant Sinha is reported to have said, the 5th Pay Commision "nuked Indian public finance". Now, in a shallow attempt at manipulating the next general elections, Manmohan Singh has embarked on the 6th Pay Commission. He did not need to do this. Now, the devil is in the details. If he finds good economists to drive the 6th pay commission, it can even do some good. More likely, he won't get fiscal hawks, and the 6th Pay Commission will nuke Indian public finance again. We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

NREGA : Unbounded expenditures?

This is one way of generating employement that even Communist China did not think of. Let people dig holes and the government pay them. We have also discovered a new way of redistribution. The better off you are, the bigger the transfer to you. So a worker in a poor state will get Rs 60 and a worker in a rich state Rs 120. And, as to how much will be spent after all State governments have finished competing with each other to make the centre pay whatever minimum wage they fix, even the finance ministry has no decent estimates.

Stalled PFRDA Bill

India is on the cusp of a demographic transition. Waves of young people are coming into the labour force. This is the perfect time to catch them into a modern pension system, where each person can build up a personal hoard of pension wealth to shelter himself in old age. The New Pension System was a fundamental reform, initiated through extensive public discussion from 1998 to 2002. The UPA has been hijacked by the trade unions - who represent 2% of India - and has completely stalled the pension reform. We are losing valuable years. Years from now, starving old people will remember the UPA for this.

Stalled disinvestment

Arun Shourie did yeoman service exposing the massive scale of theft from PSUs by the political class - whether it is cronies of ministers consuming free rooms at ITDC hotels or it is cronies of bureaucrats selling expensive chicken to ITDC hotels. His jihad on privatisation stirred up this hornets nest of various crooks feeding on PSUs. But his accomplishments - such as the sale of VSNL or TCS - were major victories of the NDA. The UPA has killed off privatisation / disinvestment at the central level. West Bengal continues to powerfully move forward with privatisation. Remember Great Eastern. But the UPA behaves asif what is good enough for West Bengal is not good enough for India. Think BHEL.

Divide and Conquer: Higher education

There must be something wrong with higher education - the NDA had Murli Manohar Joshi and the Congress has Arjun Singh. Top universities in the world are begging to be permitted to setup campuses in India. Instead of a mere 3,000 seats at IIT, we could have 30,000 seats at university campuses in India run by Harvard and Stanford. Foreign producers have transformed our TVs and our cellphones, but clearly higher education is not important enough to benefit from the same reforms, and we are stuck in a Stalinist model of education. All we get is a tiny increase to accomodate quotas.

Rebuilding the planning commission

Modern market economies do not have planning commissions. The NDA was making progress on driving down the importance of the planning commission. A few more years of that, and it would have been possible to close down the planning commission. Now the UPA has done damage by putting a key player in cabinet into the planning commission, and resurrecting the role of the planning commision.


The ugly


SEZs: The mother of all exemptions

Cost: Rs 1,000,000,000,000.
Biggest benefit: Tax exemptions to real estate developers. Exports will get some tax breaks too, but nothing compared to what the developers will get. Land acquisition will displace ordinary people on a scale that will make the Narmada dam look like small change. With tax havens inside India, Caymen Islands will pale into insignificance. The country does not benefit. The real estate buyer does not benefit. The government does not benefit. A huge benefit goes to the real estate developers. Why this giant gift to real estate developers. One can only wonder how much election funding will flow out of this trillion rupee handout.

UPA versus FRBM

Indian fiscal was in a nightmarish state by the late 1980s. Manmohan Singh began India's fiscal recovery in the early 1990s. After him, every finance minister has fought on this question - P. Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh. Getting the central fiscal deficit down to 3.7% of GDP has been a great achievement, and is already generating results through a higher investment rate. And the FRBM promises us the nirvana of a fiscal deficit of no worse than 3% by 2008-09, and that too only for the purpose of capital expenditure. Alas, this glorious achievement is under extreme attack from the UPA. The SEZ Act - the mother of all exemptions - will contaminate growth of tax revenues. The NREG and the 6th pay commission will contaminate expenditures. The UPA is in a mood to roll out more and more foolish welfare programs. By 2009-10, the entire 15-year effort of fighting India's fiscal crisis could have been undone. The UPA could be remembered for having destroyed a marvellous 15-year piece of work. It won't be long when Moody's and S&P catch on and the FDI-FII numbers start dwindling.

Photo of the day

From the photograher, Dean Shaddock:

This was captured as I collected my things from airport security (Detroit Metro Concourse A). I think of it as something like a Rorschach test. Is an elderly Catholic nun being frisked by a Muslim security agent the celebration of blind justice? Or is it simply an admission of absurdity? [link via MichelleMalkin.com]

Partition again?

We are revising the probability of another partition upwards to about 30% in a decade.

That is all.

The power struggle between judiciary and legislature

If Arundhati Roy were a painter, she would have loved the brush on the left. She really did use some broad strokes to paint a fantasy filled picture of a "corrupt" judiciary, using the atypical example of the Justice Sabharwal (retired Hon'ble CJI) case, in a recent article.

This case is not getting the due attention because Lord Ram is on everyone's mind these days.

If there is one issue that attracts an unanimous vote of confidence from all parties, it is the idea that the judiciary wields too much power.

Ideally our politicians would like to be able to decide the outcomes of every court case. Starting from the quota case to the 123-agreement to the Ram Setu destruction conspiracy - they want to be the ultimate arbiters.

A problem with our bleeding heart liberals is that they appear to have no sense of scale. The alleged Sabharwal case is tiny compared to even the most garden variety scams pulled by politicians. Laloo still roams free, not only that he is still doing immense damage. Shibu Soren was let go. The land grab scams going on at a massive scale in Andhra, Kerala, Bengal etc. are too numerous to list.

As noted earlier, scions of politicians get preferential land allotments at Agricultural rates and scarcely anyone even raises an eyebrow. Arundhati Roy herself built a dream bungalow on illegally acquired land.

The judges do have enormous power but they are like knights whereas the politicians are like queens on a chessboard. Politicians control everything from law enforcement to the bureaucracy. They also have enormous powers over the fate of a lot of people. Judges are severely handicapped. It would be only under the rarest of circumstances that a judge can align the stars so that the outcome of a case can have a material impact. Also, politicians never retire.

It is difficult for a communist to understand a constitutional democracy. In their world (non-existent), there are the happy people and the people's leader. Goods and services appear out of nowhere, perhaps by divine intervention. In reality they come through massive aids given by capitalist countries, e.g. North Korea, Cuba, 70s India etc.

So, Arundhati Roy gets it wrong once again. It is our politicians who are the real Gods.

Straw polls and crystal balls

Just about two weeks ago, CNN-IBN hosted a TV show analyzing the results of an opinion poll conducted by the venerated CSDS. A number of politicians and subject matter experts including Yogendra Yadav, CSDS supremo, were on the show.

The very first thing that struck us were the outfits of the spokesmen of India's two biggest political parties. BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad wore a dark brick red Kurta over white pajamas. A garish dress no doubt for such a formal occasion. But look at what Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi is wearing! A black leather short-sleeved shirt, with yellow-gold patterns running along the buttons, around the collars and across the front pocket. The last time we saw someone in an outfit like that was Bappi Lahiri.

Anyway.

Apparently this was the biggest opinion poll of its kind, a total of 18,000 respondents were surveyed all across the country. In the words of Yogendra Yadav (note: all transcripts ours):

Yogendra Yadav: This being a very crucial occasion and mid-term elections increasingly almost certain , we wanted to make sure that we wanted to do a poll which is almost a mock mid-term poll ..... here it is then we spread it out this is truly representative..... rural urban the same proportion as in country. 73% rural, 11 - 12% Muslim, 18% Dalits, 45% Women - this is microcosm of India.

The opinion poll revealed a vote difference of almost 10% between UPA and NDA. This translated into an immense difference in terms of seats (267 UPA, 133 NDA). Host Rajdeep Sardesai asked Prasad to react to this.

Ravi Shankar Prasad: Rajdeep, we have also learned a little experience of watching your surveys. In 2004 these projections gave us a big lead and there was no hostility against the NDA Govt. And what the results came about? I very acutely recollect one comment from Yogendra that a party in power initially gets a big boost in these surveys but when the concrete election campaign starts ...

Rajdeep then asked Yogendra Yadav to comment on this.

Yogendra Yadav: Absolutely and it's a fair point and this particularly operates in those states where UPA is in power at the center and also at the state level so there may be built an element of bias, so we have tried to correct it, we have carefully tried to eliminate but we can not give guarantee that this will not happen..

Fast forward several minutes and now we come to the point where they are discussing the predictions for Gujarat assembly polls.

Rajdeep Sardesai: One man, and this is another significant finding of our poll, seems to be bucking the trend of anti-incumbency. Remember he faces dissidence within his party almost since the time he came to power... severely criticized by many political analysts for his roll during Gujarat 2002, now as Gujarat prepares to go to the polls look at what our figures are saying.... Narendra Modi is holding firm, he is likely to get we believe 54% votes as against Congress' 43% if elections in Gujarat assembly are held tomorrow. Yogendra, any riders here?

Yogendra Yadav: One rider is one given already by Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad very important one, that in any pre-election poll, the ruling party, there is a bias in favor of the ruling party which we need to be careful about and second we must not underestimate [] what is happning to BJP at the national level .... its inability to form an alternative in presence of problems in the Congress, is happening to Congress in Gujarat.

This got us entirely confused. What is it Mr. Yogendra Yadav, was a correction really done to prevent a known bias or was it not?

What a difference a mere two weeks makes. Perhaps these results do not appear so valid in the backdrop of the Ram Setu controversy. During the same time period, C-Voter conducted another opinion poll and arrived at different results. For comparison, also check out qualitative predictions of an independent blogger.

That "Mayawati-like" lady

Chak De is the breakout Bollywood movie everyone is talking about. A review/analysis is overdue and will be up soon.

Meanwhile, we found this cringe inducing review of the movie on Tehelka:

Assisted by a Mayawati-like lady, Shah Rukh takes the talented, scrappy bunch of girls and moulds them into a killer team. The usual happens — tough training schedules, few players rebel, camps form, Coach resigns, then a killer moment of realisation and team spirit emerges. The crucial hockey sequences are shot beautifully and edited crisply. [link][web archive link]

This, from a bunch of folks who drop words like casteist, sexist, racist, capitalist at people who have a different political opinion. This shows the new lows our self-styled intellectual class people are capable of stooping to.

By the way, that Mayawati-like lady (called Krishna in the movie) is a supremely talented actress. In the movie she plays her difficult role as assistant coach with great aplomb. You can read more about Vibha Chibber here.

Remember this man?

He will be back soon. It appears that some rift has developed in the Gujjar leadership. Also, his main sponsors are busy with political crisis at the center. Our theory is that his sponsors didn't want him to erupt into an uncontrolled orgy of violence. Think of a Nuclear power plant (wonder where they got the idea). So they are using moderators, meaning a fractious leadership.

Another curious piece of news:

Bitterness between two warring factions of the Roman Catholic Church in Delhi seems to have disrupted the Christian spirit of brotherhood and harmony.

"On that day, people from the Latin parish started provoking us. They said we had no right to be there and that they were the only legitimate worshippers in that church. A heated argument followed and some of us were pushed and hit. It seemed to be a pre-planned job as the police had been stationed there from 6 am," said Sunil John, an SM follower. [link]

This sort of an unprecedented thing happens if you economically pit brother against brother without increasing the pie.

Speculations again but this may have something to do with the various affirmative action measures for religious minorities. At the very minimum, the Government should prevent religious bodies from determining eligibility. In the Thampu style schemes, certain religious leaders would have a final say in the eligibility matters. This is unacceptable. By the way, Thampu seems to be in a lot of trouble, apparently he was occupying his position at St. Stephens illegally.