Where were your scientists?  When you held the Science Congress?
What is the contribution of scientists to agriculture, rural development?
Scientists don’t show interest in country’s problems!

Scientists don’t contribute to agriculture, biotechnology, seeds and environment and climate change etc?
Science Congress President
Spoke in the face of the Prime Minister!
“Don’t take away precious fertile lands under your SEZz policy?”
“How do we produce enough food for self-sufficiency?”

The 95th Science Congress was held in Visakhapatnam and the attendance was poor. Out of 41 science labs under the CSIR, the heads of only two came! This when their boss, the science minister and the Prime Minister were present!
No scientists from the atomic energy and space establishment gave the Congress a sort of boycott! Its also were a bare minimum.

Most heavyweight scientists, including the PM’s science adviser C.N.R.Rao and his colleagues didn’t turn up!

Only M.S.Swaminathan with his contingent of his NGO was present and hogged the show.

The theme was as hyped as ever. What else but the same old sustainable development. This was held without the environment ministry scientists turning up at the Congress attended by the PM and his science minister!
There are eight scientific secretaries. But only one, namely, T.Ramasami came.
Pushpa N.Bhargava, the founder -director of the Hyderabad based Centre for Cellular Biology said “Without scientists in numbers whether you can describe this as  science Congress! “Dr.Madhavan Nair, the ISRO chairman was present in the first two days because he is supposed to take over as the next year’s president.

The entire body of the ICAR, or the agri universities scientists seem to have not seen, as there was no news about any serious deliberations about the agriculture crisis in the country.

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Forestry and medicinal crops depts
Can generate agriculture prosperity!

If Nabard mandate is redrawn and SHGs and microfinance are put under a Cabinet Minister! State level agri finance corporations a must!
New subsidies to new generation farm enterprises can usher in economic prosperity in the villages!

New insurance cover for the agro-micro enterprises could trigger off a new   dispersed entrepreneurial revolution!
Fine journalist language can wait. Hyped schemes can wait. Election-time populism can wait.

What can’t wait is the continued misery of the farmers. Their mounting debts. Their hopelessness where can hope and a new path can be charted.
Our current crop of leaders in Delhi is an unrepresentative lot. More so the ministers holding important portfolios. Most of them are holding the brief for the regional allies like the DMK. See the very composition of the DMK ministers, for instance. They are there not for attending to their portfolios. But to keep the crucial, money-earning and funds generating ministries within the DMK fold and thereby help the parent party and its leader to bargain and in fact gain in more ways than one!

That is why every crucial dept is not delivering.
See the very critical portfolio, agriculture, food and consumer items. This is held by the supposedly very powerful and also very ambitious Sharad Pawar. There is the widespread perception and a great deal of skepticism whether this particular gentleman is giving his full attention to the charges under him. He is seen more the minister for Indian cricket. At best, all he seems to have done and this what sticks in the public mind is that he turned the agri ministry for the first time a food  importing ministry! There are people to praise him even for this service! And of course he is seen as a patron of the sugar industry lobby and he gets funds to save this industry, heavily subsidised is this industry in the state of Maharashtra where Sharad Pawar is more admired, respected and even feared than even the incumbent Chief Minister Mr.Vilasrao Deshmukh.
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Next general elections stir up New Delhi atmosphere!

The Congress has neither leader nor a credible manifesto!

The next general elections looms large on New Delhi skyline. Even if the Congress is driven into total  silence, after the stunning defeat in Gujarat and followed by Himachal, the Opposition parties are becoming more active and more vocal too. It is the dissenting stance of the CPI(M) over nuclear deal and also its talk of a third front without the Congress that is causing worries in the Congress.
The latest development on the  failure of the IAEA talks   seems to have come at a time when the party and the Prime Minister in particular are not sure of the future of politics in the country. The Congress party is faced with the dilemma of what to do with Dr.Singh who is now widely  seen as a liability at the election time. Singh might have given a credible performance  during the last four years. But then it is like a peace time Prime Minister. Can he make a war time PM? And that is when the BJP, the one and only credible alternative has put up the formidable Advani as the Prime Ministerial candidate? Advani for his part is doing everything, almost everyday, to make the life of Dr.Singh miserable. The PM is no match for Advani’s political stamina. Now, he wants the PM to confer the Bharat Ratna title on Vajpayee. Who can say no to such a request. At least, the PM must be diplomatic enough to say that was a nice request. Even this much of courtesy the PM is not able to show. And what sort of public image and public empathy the PM would command?

There is every reason to suspect the PM is already aware of  the usefulness of his services to the party is over. So, who knows he might be contemplating his own private plans for a contingency. That is why we see lately the Pm is not even coherent, he is talking out of tune in all forums. His speeches are becoming lackluster and he is just content to do his official duties in a routine and businesslike manner. There is no public face to the activities of the Indian Prime Minister. This is not the way the PM’s visage is seen by the Indian public so far. As Advani said often, the Pm is not a political person first and this shows.
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Massive farm debt write-off and farm diversification schemes can only revive agriculture and rural employment

The Prime Minister’s immediate  future prospects look uncertain. His pet project of the nuclear deal is unlikely to see the light of the day before the next elections, if at all. His other pet scheme, rural employment guarantee programme also lost its momentum.

The allies are on war path. At any rate in public, the CPI(M)openly strikes a betrayer’s role! It has the gumption to talk of a third front without the Congress! This, at a time when the Nandigram issue is still burning. And the West Bengal Communists are openly toeing the Congress line of embracing Capitalism as the only way ahead!

One thought the CPI(M) would become closer to the Congress, or at any rate ,closer to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi  ,and the PM and the FM. The first as the leader of the party and as a warm ally of men like Yechury and the Karat couple and more in particular to the senior patriarch, Jyoti Basu. After all, Basu is the last of the great Left intellectuals who also has some similarities in the Nehruvian mould of old style Soviet era Leftism. But now, in election eve times, to speak of a break when the many other regional allies like DMK,BSP are proving to be suspects and they might jump guns if their own narrow agendas don’t serve their immediate purposes. Of sharing in the spoils of office and funds.

But then, there is this grim prospect of the Congress losing out in the next elections.

The party has no credible programme, no credible manifesto and no credible alternatives in the absence of the present schemes not sustaining the enthusiasm of the people.

Elections are becoming quite unpredictable. The series of defeats for the Congress party could unnerve any leader. But unfortunately for the Congress, the PM and the FM, in particular, are not the right types of leaders to inspire the cadre or  the general public. Both are, let us be honest enough to admit, at least at this moment of reckoning,  lightweights, they have no big stakes in the outcome of the elections. They could secure assignments elsewhere in the sorts of assignments they seem to be impressing the unsuspected people.

Yes, one doesn’t know in what priorities of development the PM believes? Nor one knows in what economic reforms priorities, the FM believes. Both speak of the rate of growth being the most important priority. A 9 per cent or even a lesser percentage of growth is all they care for and nothering else seem to be priorities.

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Finance Minister’s taxes are too many and too harassing!
Taxes under him have become too many and too cumbersome!

Not good enough to make the tax regime simple and transparent. Make the tax regime less harassing!

P.Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, is now very much in the news and the TV screen because of the budget. The pre-budget and the post-budget season is the one for the FM to celebrate his newsworthiness. In the case of the present FM, he is a master of the art of public speaking and also the public posturing, given the non-speaking and non-audible PM who otherwise was held up as the architect of economic reforms.

Neither the PM nor the FM or any other individual can claim that crown that exclusively coveted by the unsung and unremembered poor Narasima Rao. Rao’s misfortune is that he left out  the Congress dynasty when he ruled the country and they, the dynasty and the coterie around it, had taken offence and they saw to it that Rao is not remembered and no mention is made of in the ritualistic recitation of the economic reforms eulogy!

As for the PM, he is now  nowhere in the scheme of things, when the next election is looming large  on the national scene.
The FM has to present a budget and any budget invites expectations about new taxes or duty cuts etc.

Now for the FM, the time is not suitable for his tune of the rate of economic growth as being the sole theme. Rate of growth in a skewed manner is all he knows and the election-eve mood in the country is not in a mind to give the benefit of doubt to the UPA government under Dr.Singh’s stewardship.

There are other issues that agitate the public mind.
Now as for the FM his budget might not evoke any enthusiasm  from the public for the FM has created a national paranoia about the several new taxes that are  proving to be great harassment to the average tax payer.

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How after Kolkatta and Trivandrum, now comes Bangalore!
There was this second Bengalooru International film festival in Bangalore. V.N.Subba Roth moving spirit behind it said it was a tremendous success though the Kannada film industry didn’t make much use of it.

An estimated 75,000 people vitiated the festival.
Girish Kaseravalli, the one star among the new generation of parallel film making community said many things that were all relevant to the parallel cinema.
This is the subject in which I was interested for a long time since my days at Santiniketan where the great Satyajit Ray grew up and gave up his art classes and entered into advertising and then through a long process he emerged as a great film maker.

I was one of the few lucky students who went to see the first screening of the Pather Panchachali in the nearby village theatre of Bolpur and when the film was screened there was no crowd. No crowd for many days and we were the only ones simply because Satyaji Ray was a Santiniketan name and as such we went out of sympathy for our own man!

Then after a few days in Kolkatta, after the film got noticed by discerning critics, there were so many Ray friends even then at Santiniketan, Chidananda DasGupta the long time friend and associate of Ray was one, then film hit the great banners in the international film festivals.

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Mayawati the latest to demand the award for her mentor!

PM distances himself! Give the award to all three political heavyweights!
Vajpayee, Jyoti Basu, Kanshi Ram, oney!

There is a superficial, cheap controversy. This, over the Bharata Ratna award.
L.K.Advani, the leader of the Opposition, is perfectly within his rights, or, for that matter, any citizen can write to the Prime Minister suggesting any name for the highest award.

Now the CPI (M) demands it for Jyoti Basu. Mayawati joins demanding it for her mentor. It is of course for the government to decide.

So, what is objectionable here? Mr.P.R.Das Munshi, the trouble shooter for the Congress has taken exception to this letter. He is certainly wrong. Besides he had cheapened the award’s high honour. And immediately, the CPI (M) had objected. This, again, is a very cheap way for the comrades to prove their supposed superiority in ideological purity!

Both the red and the saffron brigades are not doing themselves any honour. In fact, they are descending to low levels of the debate.
First, let us remember the highest civilian award is given for great public service that brings honour and prestige to the country, right?

This honour needing belong only to old age pensions-like awards!
Yes, both Vajpayeeji and Jyoti babu are eminently suited for the high honours and both might be given the awards simultaneously. There is no Constitutional bar to restrict the award only once at a time.

And why the worthies who came out with their wisdom didn’t think of the highest civilian honour for others who might have done much more and much more lasting honours for the country’s services?

Why not men and women like Vargese Kurien who did the Amul brand such a ride for India and lifted the millions out of poverty and have them a lasting mantra. This model is imitated in other countries. This is like the Grameen bank that was honoured by a Peace Nobel.

Mr.Biman Bose, the CPI (M)’s secretary says he doesn’t know the parameters to select the names for awards.

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Doordharshan under him very boring!

Private channels do much public service
They have citizen journalists, expose corruption, injustices etc
Tehelka is the high-watermark of private service capabilities that serve the larger public interest.

What public service broadcasting DD  does?
DD is supposed to be a public service broadcasting organisation. What public service it renders, now?

Public good and public wellbeing calls for a vision. A well-thought out cultural policy and a strategy, an independent service, very much like the BBC.
Our DD is not at all what it ought to be. The subject is complex and much debated.

The minimum the government can do is to introduce some quality, some independent working norms and let the teams perform with a clear mandate. Make news worth viewing. Make our classical cultures, at least music and dances, broadcast and use the very many established music seasons get an opportunity to reach the people in all geographies.

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi is one of the talented ministers in Delhi, among the crowd of very poor talent in the Cabinet!

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His Excellency Gopalkrishna Gandhi,
Governor,
Raj Bhavan,
Kolkatta

Dear Your Excellency Gandhi,

Sub: Visva Bharati and others

Hope you remember me.

Today I read in the Kolkatta daily, Telegraph, about the incidents at Santiniketan. Immediately I spoke to my friends there and got some idea of the happenings.

Since I had earlier visited the place along with my family a year ago and wrote about its present conditions and you were good enough to respond then.
Now, there are two things I thought I should write and share with you my thoughts.

Of course, the shooting at Santiniketan. One can rationalise that things are deteriorating in the university campuses and this cant be an exception. But my friends tell me that the new VC, Dr.Roy doesn’t stay there for long and they cited some statistics. However, the issue there might be complicated and may require some effort to improve things.

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Dr.Karan Singh M.P.,
Teen Murti Bhavan,
New Delhi

Dear Dr.Karan Singh,

Hope you remember me.

Here is another letter for you to read. In fact, I have attached a copy of the letter I wrote to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi on the state of the Congress and the government.

Now, as for the current peregrinations on the Indo-US nuclear deal, I feel that India is pursuing a deal that is morally unjustified and strategically dangerous for the country and the world.

And the PM went to China and come back with what assurance? Nothing. To ask China to help India to secure the US nuclear deal looks to me ridiculous. China won’t help India to become a nuclear weapon state, right?

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