Queen eclipsed by the Other Queen

As rare as that recent celestial event and perhaps as evanescent.

Two dangerous ideas

There are two dangerous ideas floating around and we can't seem to decide which is worse.

The first relates to the massive diplomatic fiasco committed by the UPA Government. One can tell it is a big blunder from the fact that intellectuals of various hues took more than a week to cook up theories in the Government's defense. The major idea right now is that it is a display of Gandhigiri by Manmohan Singh, albeit at an international level. Unfortunately the other cheek being offered is one that belongs to a lower region of the body and Pakistanis are already seen gleefully preparing to put a Lahori chappal imprint on it. Worse, they might just give the cheek a miss and aim straight for the you know what.

This theory clearly does not stand up to scrutiny, just like the absurd idea put forward by Indrani Bagchi of The Times of India about the Nuclear betrayal. That theory now stands completely demolished, with India having put its foot down emphatically against any environmental agreement.

In any case, to think that Manmohan Singh can actually go ahead and attempt antics like this on his own is absurd. We believe this whole thing happened because certain levers were pulled at Washington.

The second idea is that of global nuclear deterrence. A set of people seem to totally like this idea and coincidentally these were the same set of people who were the leading Nuke cheerleaders. The idea is as follows:

1. Nuclear countries make a pact to have a joint deterrence mechanism
2. They all sign CTBT, NPT etc. etc. and force others to do it
3. They pledge to defend countries who sign above by jointly committing to do a Nuclear retaliation against any country which uses Nukes first against the member nations
4. Because of this carrot and Nuke stick approach, everyone signs up, everybody lives happily ever after
5. (Fine print) Once you sign up, you are not allowed to retaliate on your own, unless all the members authorize you to do so

Okay, if this idea sounds too much like the United Nations to you, you are not alone. That was quite a successful organization, wasn't it?

The big problem with global Nuclear deterrence is simply that to launch a Nuke attack takes a certain type of mindset. A single country like India can retaliate against another country, but try achieving that consensus within a dozen or so countries, especially when the member nations will consist of reputable peace loving nations of Europe. Typically you can launch a counter attack within hours. If you wait, the scene gets complicated. The leaders start getting phone calls from powerful nations with deals, sweeteners and threats. Peaceniks are out on the street, demanding that the victim nation forgive the aggressor to spare innocent bystanders. We can already read the headlines on New York Times: President of France invokes Gandhi, pleads Indians to forgive etc. Try putting that scenario to the global Nuke defense setting.

Using backward induction, once India signs up for this stupid concept, it is a virtual guarantee to the loonies that there is NOT going to be a Nuclear retaliation.

Cranes are falling

It seems like the Delhi metro is falling apart at seams. Now even the rails have developed cracks, this can lead to a really serious accident.

Sidharth Mishra of The Daily Pioneer elaborates on the mafia controlled construction projects in New Delhi. All this is common knowledge, people at the very highest level are on the take.

However, we did not find any of this surprising at all. This is the 'shyte' Indians have been taking for more than sixty years. The surprising part is that the name of Delhi CM Sheila Dixit never even came up on the media - the whole reporting and editorializing is focused on E Shreedharan (Managing Director of Delhi Metro). Contrast this with the Gujarat hooch tragedy, they immediately reached for the CM's jugular.

Why blame the NYT?

NEW DELHI: Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was captured in a chilling photograph and now he has confessed his role in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, but he remains a 'gunman', rather than a 'terrorist', for the New York Times and other leading American newspapers. And with a reason.

After his surprising and dramatic confession before a special court in Mumbai on Monday, Kasab is hogging headlines in the American media that is revisiting the semantic-ethical issue of which attacker qualifies as terrorist.

For the New York Times and the Washington Post, Kasab is strictly a gunman.

"Mumbai Gunman Enters Plea Of Guilty", the Post headline read a day later, and the 428 words of the report from New Delhi do not include "terrorist" -- not even to qualify the "attack". [link]

This is a strange article from TOI, the paper which does its very best to perpetuate secular myths. Our home grown intellectuals are yet to call Kasab by the 'T' word. The Arundhati Roy types have openly blamed India for 26/11. Apparently Indian security forces rape Kashmiri women which leads to illiterate runaway teens in Pakistani villages to join up certain organizations and who then invade India so they can sexually humiliate guests in Indian hotels before killing them.

The American press is merely following the diktat of the current administration. If the administration is loathe to call a spade a spade, the media, having thrown its total weight behind The One can't really do otherwise. The Times of India and other secular newspapers couldn't get enough of the new savior of the new world. Developing this late allergy over semantics is hardly going to help.

We recommend the TOI stop losing sleep over this and go back to their regular programming of Hindu bashing.

MCOCA charges dropped against Abu Salem

New Delhi: A Delhi court today reserved its order on a plea by the city police seeking to drop charges under stringent MCOCA against underworld don Abu Salem on the ground that it was against the conditions for his extradition agreed to between India and Portugal. "The pending application of the Delhi police is heard. Fix the application for order on July 22," Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Pinki said after the counsel for the police and CBI wrapped up arguments.

Salem, a gangster extradited from Portugal in 2005, was booked under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) for allegedly making extortion calls to city-based businessman Ashok Gupta in 2002, demanding Rs 5 crore as protection money. The police, on the directions of the Centre, had earlier moved an application for dropping of MCOCA charges against Salem saying it would be in violation of extradition terms. [link]

In most situations, the police seek to book a criminal under the most stringent laws possible. Only in a secular country will you see cops begging the courts to not apply existing strong provisions.

As you can see, we have a pretty funny situation here. The Government (secular) claims that Portugal demanded waiving the death penalty before allowing the extradition of Abu Salem. How do we know they bargained hard enough? Were they trying prevent an Afzal like situation?

There is no reason MCOCA(*) should not be applied in the case. The charges are not severe enough to warrant a death penalty. In any case the waiver could be applied using a Governor's pardon and handled politically. Applying the law would have helped the police to find other conspirators.

(*) MCOCA: A stringent law against organized crime that is invoked only against Hindus.

It takes a whole new level of talent ...

Now, Pak details 'Indian hand' in Balochistan

NEW DELHI: As the Manmohan Singh government faces flak for allowing the mention of Pakistan's "concerns" about Balochistan in the joint statement the prime minister signed in Egypt, Islamabad seems determined to compound his difficulties.

On Wednesday, Pakistani media carried reports quoting official sources suggesting that Singh agreed to the mention of Balochistan when his Pakistani counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani confronted him in Sharm el-Sheikh with a dossier detailing India's covert subversion in the restive province of Balochistan.

The report in the Dawn claimed the dossier also had details of India's role in fomenting trouble in other areas of Pakistan as well. It said it was India that was responsible for the attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team and the Manawan police academy, apart from maintaining a terror training camp in Kandahar from where trained Baloch insurgents were sent into Pakistan. "Operatives of RAW who remained in touch with the perpetrators of the attacks have been identified and proof of their interaction have been attached. Besides, description of Indian arms and explosives used in the attack on the Sri Lankan team has been made part of the dossier," the paper said. [link]

... to take a favorable situation and turn it completely around. In other words to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It is kind of hard to decide what is worse - this being by design or a result of drafting error.

Meanwhile planted media reports about Manmohan Singh's waning popularity n Congress continue. As we said before, this could be just setting the stage for the grand debut. Prepare to genuflect and learn to salute in proper form.

Shiva idol desecrated in Mangalore

More details here.

Please note that there will not be any secular outrage over this incident.

Sagarika Ghose can be booked under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act

RealityCheck's deconstruction of the latest blog post by Sagarika Ghose is a must read for anyone who wants to understand how media contextualizes events.

Ghose has started calling her blog the "FTN blog", supposedly a postscript of the show "Face the nation" which she hosts on the CNN-IBN channel. This betrays a latent desire to have the last word, a typical trait of scions of a fascist regime who imagine themselves to be living in a democratic country.

Her latest blog post starts out with an astonishing comment on our latest foreign policy disasters ("meaningless words of diplomatic gobbledygook") - more on this later, then discusses the hate speech by Rita Bahuguna Joshi only to conclude:

In fact, Congress state president Rita Bahuguna Joshi did not say anything anti-Dalit. In fact she said if the compensation awarded to a raped Dalit woman is only 25,000 then should Mayawati be given 1 crore of she is raped.

Unfortunately, this is not how it works.

There are different legal philosophies behind acts such as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled extent and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 [pdf]. There are several ways of levelling the playing field. Some countries enact a generic law to prosecute all hate crimes. This is a reasonable way to do it, since who is to say hate crimes do not happen in reverse? Some recent cases (gang rape of a Hindu girl by Muslim thugs in Surat, gang rape of a Hindu student in a college in Tamil Nadu, gang rape of an MBA student by eleven Yadav boys near Delhi) could come under reverse hate crime. However, the Indian law has not yet taken this into account.

A careful reading of the SC/ST prevention of atrocities act suggests that the intent was to provide a strong disincentive for crimes specifically committed against Dalits and Tribals. The law thus wants to prevent the systemic exploitation of Dalits and Tribals, when crimes against them are committed with the full knowledge of vulnerability of the victim.

In reality though, like every other areas of Governance, this Act has morphed into an instrument of political vendetta. For instance, the editor of a newspaper in Andhra Pradesh was booked under the act for burning the effigy of a Dalit politician. The newspaper was reportedly critical of the Y Samuel R Reddy led Congress Government in AP.

Likewise, it appears that any crime committed by a non-Dalit person against a Dalit person is automatically tried under this act. In other words, the specific provisions of law which requires a demonstration of intent or facility to commit such a crime from a position of strength is no longer required in practice.

There is enough legal precedence for this. Thus Joshi will automatically be tried under the act. She must not get a pass when ordinary citizens have to face the total wrath of justice. It simply will not be fair.

Additionally,

8. In a prosecution for an offence under this Chapter, if it is proved that - as to offences.

(a) the accused rendered any financial assistance to a person accused of, or reasonably suspected of committing, an offence under this Chapter, the Special Court shall presume, unless the contrary is proved, that such person had abetted the offence;

This clause clearly makes Sagarika Ghose and her channel a possible suspect under the act.

- Rita Joshi made a hate speech (crime under the penal code)

- the hate speech was directed at a Dalit person

- Rita Joshi thus can be tried under the SC/ST atrocities act

- Sagarika Ghose tried to spread propaganda (indirect financial assistance)

- which makes her an accessory to the crime.

Simple.

Meanwhile, the Buta Singh-led Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Commission is making some meaningless and out of context remarks.

Asked on Friday if Mayawati's invoking the act was correct going by the constitutional provision, Buta Singh and a vocal commission member Satya Bein said, "It was a gross misuse."

Another member quipped about Mayawati abusing the provisions of the SC Act saying, "Does she need protection under the act after becoming CM?" Buta dropped a bombshell saying he has a copy of a circular issued by the state government directing that the SC Act will not be slapped except in case of murder and rape. [link]

Inasmuch as the commission has been turned into a political tool of the secular party, they have no locus standi in the matter. They simply can not arbitrarily narrow down the scope either. The commission can make recommendations to the Government. It is not up to them to hand down judgments or dictate legal terms for offences committed under the Penal Code.

Hail [.......]

Scary.

Shocking! Shopian murders "caste" related?

Absolutely stunning piece of news from The Times of India:

Bodies of Neelofer (22) and her sister-in-law Asiya (17) were recovered from a stream on May 30 after they disappeared from their orchards in Shopian town the previous evening, sparking off massive protest by locals who suspected the hand of security personnel in the case.

[...]

It said Neelofer Jan belonged to a higher caste of Peer, whereas Shakeel came from Khaar family, which is included in the OBC category. The report said ever since the two eloped in 2007, Neelofer's brother Syed Zeerak Shah, a constable in traffic department, was not happy with the marriage and had even threatened the Ahanger family of dire consequences. 'The conduct of Zeerak Shah has been highly suspicious and objectionable after the death of Neelofar and Asiya Jan,' the commission said. [link]

This is simply astonishing. The Times of India has so far amplified the valley sentiments about the murder, without even bothering to offer alternative explanations. It is clear that the case is falling apart. As we mentioned before, this insanity is making women of Kashmir uniquely vulnerable to all sorts of abuses.

Singh to be dinged soon?

There is simply no reason the mouthpiece will brandish such an unfavorable piece of news so prominently. The Congress party has two pillars of faith - the family and secularism. The danger of the family brand going stale must haunt them constantly.

Well the Prince is on the bench. He does not even have a ministry portfolio. The Youth Congress thing does not work very well during off season. The media has a hard time keeping him on the headlines, often having to invent context.

This Times of India headline makes us believe that Singh may be given a dishonorable discharge after all.

The only other alternative could be that the situation is truly damaging and as always they are preemptively shielding the family from the fallout (like they did in the aftermath of 26/11). Perhaps something is brewing.

What's sauce for the gander

A couple of years ago, the Y Samuel R Reddy Government in Andhra Pradesh booked the staffers and editor of a daily under the SC/ST atrocities act. Their sin? They spoke out against a Dalit leader of the secular party and led a peaceful demonstration. Funny.

Rita Bahuguna Joshi should have known better. Perhaps the stunning success of the secular party in making international friends (they even managed to plant anti-Mayawati stories in Newsweek) made her complacent. So she went ahead and made her little speech. Now she finds herself slapped with a charge under the SC/ST atrocities act. Not so funny.

What should be the yardstick of what constitutes hate speech? Perhaps the effect of said speech on the intended audience. Varun Gandhi's so called hate speech didn't cause so much as a flutter. Not until weeks later a professionally edited CD of parts of the speech showed up mysteriously on our national channels.

HATE SPEECH!

In contrast, Rita Bahuguna's cringe inducing statements (NDTV video with the vital part beeped out) triggered instant revulsion and anger. Her goose got cooked, almost literally, as furious supporters of Mayawati set a portion of her house on fire.

Bahuguna can not claim that she did not know what effect her speech was going to have. Her actual speech can be found here. Obvously the secular media has edited out the key part of her hate speech. Note that it is Bahuguna's remarks vs. Varun's hate speech. RealityCheck has more here.

They literally threw the rulebook at Varun Gandhi. The dude will be making rounds of courts for the foreseeable future, not to mention every journalist, reporter, writer, secular etc. finding new evidence of Varun Gandhi's meanness everyday which might even include references to his body weight.

Well, we just hope Joshi has fire insurance on her house.

Sweet surrender

Of course, we are all familiar with this photograph that symbolizes a key chapter in the history of the subcontinent.

Well, history does repeat itself in funny ways. Most analysts are calling it a shameful capitulation:

NEW DELHI: India has walked more than the extra mile for Pakistan. At the end of crucial discussions between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani PM Yousaf Raza Gilani, the two sides came out with a joint statement, which Pakistan can justifiably describe as being "satisfactory". Even as India denied having made concessions or shifting of goalposts to Pakistan's benefit, the latter was gloating over the outcome. [...]

The PM was at pains to control the damage. He told journalists, "The composite dialogue process cannot resume unless and until terrorist acts, like the one which shook Mumbai, are properly accounted for and perpetrators of these heinous crimes are brought to book." Indian officials said the statement means Pakistan cannot ask for a resumption of composite dialogue by showing "action" against terrorism.

But that's not how the statement is being read. Pakistan for instance read it very differently. Gilani said, "All core issues that were pending under composite dialogue should be discussed... That should not be bracketed with this Mumbai incident." [link]

Where are the Nuclear cheerleaders?

When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade. After the dust settles, we suspect that is what the Indian public will have to contend with and move on.

When the Nuclear deal issue came up, especially just around the time of the trust vote, all media outlets were running specials on the Nuclear deal issue. Every intellectual worth his salt had weighed in. A small sampling:

Win-Win Nuclear Deal (TOI Editorial)

Sagarika Ghose (Howdy Pardner)

Sagarika Ghose (Red letter day)

Nuclear Deal: Benefits for India

Hindustan Times specials

Rediff special

Outlook India special

Plus non-stop TV shows, discussions, Devil's advocate interviews etc. If you have the appetite, there is always google. At the time they were quick on the draw. Each one of them discovered a new facet or "merit" in the deal, like a Mommy discovers new goodness in her baby every single day.

Right now though, except for the disastrous TOI article and an ambiguous sounding column from Pratap Bhanu Mehta, intellectuals are showing amazing restraint and reluctance in discussing the deal, as blogger RealityCheck points out. Is it a case of success has many fathers, failure is an orphan?

Of course, we are starting to hear the usual elitist argument - that the deal is too complex for the understanding of the aam aadmi.

Actually, it will be hard to find an aam aadmi that does not understand the deal. It would take less than a minute for auto drivers, rickshaw pullers, day laborers to get to the gist of it. This deal is as old as civilization itself, it is called switcheroo or if you prefer, bait and switch.

We have been dealt this hand repeatedly for more than 60 years. The nuclear deal is no different, except that it is turning out to be the mother of them all:

NEW DELHI: India's endorsement of the climate declaration at the Major Economies Forum in Italy has split its top climate negotiators. In a strong dissent, one of the negotiators called Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's signing on to the statement a "body blow to everything that we (the Indian officials) have fought for".

In his letter to the government, the negotiator, a senior government official, said "India's poor will pay the price for this political declaration".

He added, "Irrespective of the positive spin we might give, the honest truth is that the document boxes India in an extremely weak corner. I feel broken and let down. I hope I am wrong and I am afraid to be proven right." The communication lays it bare that the statement had taken the negotiators by surprise and can potentially set off the stage for huge uproar. [link]

If you recall, this wasn't part of the deal, neither was signing NPT, allowing intrusive inspections or coupling it with other defense purchases.

The Shopian tragedy

The Shopian tragedy has been on the news for a few weeks now. As if the original tragedy (dead bodies of two young women recovered from a mountain spring under mysterious circumstances) was not enough, various protests have lead to more deaths.

The secular media even at a national level played along with this, without any semblance of journalistic ethics. Needless to say the separatists there tried their very best to stoke sentiments.

Praveen Swami reports:

For the most part, Justice Jan found, the media misrepresented forensic evidence. Media accounts insisted that both women appeared to have been badly beaten and gang raped. However, the Jan Commission states, pathologists found no evidence to support the proposition of gang rape. Moreover, only one victim's body was found to bear visible external injuries. Claims that one victim was pregnant at the time of her death, Justice Jan states, were also wrong.

Perhaps in order to buttress claims that the two women had been raped before they were killed, some journalists asserted that their clothes were torn. However, witnesses interviewed by the Jan Commission said that the women’s Feran and shalwar were intact.

Most disturbing, though, is Justice Jan's finding that the media incited hatred by broadcasting communal propaganda.

Based on the accounts of individuals claiming to be eyewitnesses, newspapers said that one victim's forehead had been smeared with sindoor — an allegation that suggested that the rapists were Hindus, and the rape itself macabre religion-driven hate crime.

For some reason, discovery of dead bodies of women in Kashmir automatically leads to the conclusion of rape and murder by security forces of the "deep state", or more specifically by Hindu members of police force. It is well documented that separatists of various hues beat security forces hands down when it comes to rape and other atrocities on women, including forced marriages. The zeal of Kashmiris to jump at every incitement of separatists is making women in Kashmir uniquely vulnerable.

India's "Shanghai"

Rain rain go away, little Abdul wants to play

More here.

The Times of India's pathetic cover up of the Nuclear Deal fiasco

(Click on image for a larger version)

When even trusted cheerleaders start expressing doubts, you know the deal has gone horribly wrong. In damage control mode, The Times of India published a story titled: "India may not be hit by G-8 raising bar on nuke tech transfer".

This is obviously rather juvenile. Even if one were to argue that the title does not automatically translate into "India may be hit", it shows a distinct lack of assertiveness. Of course they realized this within a few hours and fixed the title to say: "G-8 terms no bar, India can reprocess nuke fuel".

Too late, the original title, although quickly pulled, already made it into news aggregation sites.

Let's compare them once again:

(A) India may not be hit by G-8 raising bar on nuke tech transfer

(B) G-8 terms no bar, India can reprocess nuke fuel

These aren't nearly the same in meaning. Heck, they ain't even close. Even ignoring the issue of certainty vs. mere speculation, one talks about "nuke tech transfer" while the other talks about "reprocessing fuel". Reprocessing fuel, was NOT the only issue here.

Although the title has been massaged, the piece by Indrani Bagchi puts up feeble arguments or rather sidesteps the pertinent arguments:

At this point, India is only looking to be able to reprocess foreign-origin fuel, which in principle has been granted by France and Russia in their civil nuclear agreements which are yet to be made public.

Well, maybe so, but at the time when the deal was sold, it came with all sorts of promises, a cure all for electric problems for Kalawati, India's energy needs for 20 years, nuclear high tech stuff etc. sans any restrictions on our strategic program and intrusive inspections of our facilities. Now we are only looking to reprocess fuel. Sure.

There are two bottomlines that have to be remembered. First, India has a huge ace -- that climate change negotiations cannot go anywhere unless India has a viable alternative to hydrocarbon use, and that is nuclear. This is an argument that will trump many others in the current race for a climate change deal.

Well, Ms. Bagchi, are you telling us?

Let's try again:

Are you telling us?

Nuclear love's labor lost

In India, we have a lot of intellectuals. Intellectuals figured that the nuclear deal was a smart thing to do, so we went ahead and did it.

We didn't like it. We said so repeatedly:

How to read the nuclear bill

The mis-argumentative indian

How big a deal is nuclear power

Not convinced about nuclear power

Trust?

Siddharth Varadarajan reports (via Chindu) in great detail how the G8 discussions essentially killed any good part of the nuclear deal and possibly pushed us into a compliance regime.

Meanwhile, the US has also started arm twisting us in other areas. It has prevented Israel from bidding on the multi-billion dollar airforce order. India is also being forced to soften its stand on the carbon emissions issue.

As you can see, the secular lovin' media is maintaining a radio silence on these issues. Before you know it, the unsuspecting public will be left holding a lemon of a bill and a large invoice for carbon tax.

(... to be continued)

End prohibition in Gujarat?

The same set of people who didn't want terrorism to be politicized are now politicizing India's biggest hooch tragedy - 136 and counting. They are laying it thick and heavy on the Narendra Modi led Gujarat Government. For instance check out this TOI article (opinion piece disguised as news) and this one by the danseuse. However, we will not play politics on this great human tragedy and instead investigate and attempt to find a policy response.

We will briefly mention that the prohibition in Gujarat finds its root in the legacy of Gandhian morality. There are four states currently under prohibition - Gujarat, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland.

A google search on the history of spurious liquor related tragedies throws up some major recent incidents (numbers indicate death toll, often twice as many people fall seriously ill and even lose eyesight):

March 4, 1989: Gujarat, 100

May 1998: UP, 60

August 22, 1998: Tamil Nadu, 45

February, 1999: Tamil Nadu, 15

October, 2000: Kerala, 29 [reference to 1981 (34) and 1982 (78)]

February 2001: Orissa, Dozens

December 2001: Tamil Nadu, 53

September 2004: West Bengal, 18

June 2005: Karnataka, 25

January 2005: Maharashtra, 81

May 2008: Karnataka, 123

December 2008: Rajasthan, 22

These are just a sampling of what one can find from a google news search on "hooch tragedy". Smaller incidents are simply too numerous to count. One is simply astounded at the scale and severity of this problem. Why didn't we hear about it before? Well, simply put, the BJP party performs a great social utility in India. Often people become aware of serious problems when they happen under BJP rule. For instance, we found out about farmer suicides under Naidu regime, we also found out about poverty, child malnutrition etc. under the BJP rule at center.

But we digress. This problem is all over and shows no definitive pattern. Some random observations:

• A lot of people are actually convicted and awarded life sentences
• In other words, jail sentences are no deterrence for the illicit liquor sellers
• One could conclude that this trade is highly profitable
• Lack of prohibition is simply not doing anything to the Hooch related problems
• One could say states under prohibition see bigger and infrequent incidents
• States without prohibition sees frequent but smaller tragedies
• People continue drinking even after hearing about hooch problems - especially in prohibition states since substitute places are fewer

One can conclude that ending prohibition will reduce the scale of each tragedy since people will switch to either a different supplier of hooch or simply to higher priced licensed liquor temporarily. However, it is easy to see that simply ending prohibition will not eliminate the problem - the price differential between the illicit stuff and the lowest priced licensed stuff is still too high.

It is clear that we are pursuing two contradictory social goals here. General alcoholism which does not have such tragic short term outcome and death and illness due to spurious liquor are simply two different sets of problems.

The key to reducing hooch tragedy is to end the price differential between licensed and non-licensed stuff. Simply ending prohibition will not fix it. However, this is easier said than done since the alcohol industry is inexorably tied to sugar and apparel industry and is Governed by a myriad set of trade laws, barriers and regulations. For a glimpse of how complex the problem is, check out this article.

In conclusion, we recommend ending prohibition in Gujarat, it is a first step towards data collection and further policy making. We must also remove the insane alcohol related duties and restrictive trade laws, never buy into the insanity of alternative fuel and sign anything the current American administration asks us to sign.

India's agricultural subsidies help feed neighboring countries

So, our socialist Government massively subsidizes agriculture - in the form of fuel, fertilizer, seeds, equipment etc. Naturally this will create a distortionary price distribution in the region, which inevitably leads to smuggling.

Google search India fertilizer smuggling

Google search India cattle smuggling

Socialism can win elections, it can get intellectuals prizes - but it can not defeat laws of economics.

I saw poor people

I felt sad

I wrote about poor people

now gimme a prize

gimme gimme

gimme

gimme gimme

gimme