A rare moment of triumph for India’s democracy!
A rare assertion of Indian patriotism!
A vote for India’s unity of spirit and resolve!

A demonstration of the collective consciousness of the people
Cutting across regions and religions and over-coming the many divisions and small-mindedness of small-time politicians and the conspirators!

Who gains and who loses?
What gains and what losses?

The USA, the world’ most powerful democracy, is moving closer to the world’s largest democracy, India. The world is sure to sit up and take note of India’s many strengths and its potential for a more stable world.

The July 22 trust vote saw the standing of the Prime Minister soar high. He became, as many tend to say, a man of his own and a man in his own right. The trust vote certainly gave Dr.Singh an aura of some new stature which he was lacking before the vote. The PM was, as he himself admitted, a bonded labour at least in the hands of the Left allies and after the vote he had not only become stronger, he also became a far more a man of his own at least he can be expected to express more clearly what his own thinking is on many of the crucial political and economic issues are for the party and the government in the days ahead.

So, there are very clear gains for Dr.Singh and for the Congress party and also in a sense for the many players who in the months before the next general elections might expect to firm up their own political goals and targets..

The real winner and the real gainer in this new situation are ,one can see. Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh. They have become not only a bi freer, the cases against Mulayam Singh would go now and also they would get their electoral alliance in  UP  with the Congress firmed up. What remains to be seen is the hard bargaining the Samajwadi Party might make against the Congress hopes for a better deal.

This is unlikely to come ,given the UP political arithmetic is firmly staked against the Congress getting an upper hand  in the foreseeable future.

So, who would control the maximum number of MPs from the politically crucial state? More likely, it is Mayawati and then followed by Samajwadi party. The BJP already weak and  the Congress weakened further by the new alliance.
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Unprincipled opportunists, all?
Opportunistic Communists to prop up Mayawati as the next Prime Ministerial candidate!

Yes, it looks like an open season for the unprincipled politicians of India. Even the veterans, the former Prime Minister and the CPI veterans are forgetting that history won’t forgive and forget!

They are expected to show the right path, the right means, and their own articulations of what is their stand on the Indo-nuclear deal. They haven’t cared for doing their duties. All they care for is jobs for their sons and if possible for themselves as ministers or at best as power-brokers.

So, the Indian people would get the opportunity how the prospects of power change men and their colours.

Where is L.K.Advani, the BJP’s own candidate for the next Prime Ministership? He is intriguely silent. So too the other talking heroes and heroines of the BJP!
One thought that Mr.Jaswant Singh, the sauve face of BJP would articulate the Indo-US nuclear deal, the original author of the Indo-US dialogue. He is also surprisingly speechless!

What sorts of political parties and their leaders!
What Prakash Karat has and Deve Gowda doesn’t!
What Sibhu Soren wants and Ajit Singh doesn’t?

Sometimes even coalition governments need the no-confidence motions!
Only on such occasions, we or the people do find out the sorts of political parties we have and the types of leaders and their mentalities in the working of our political system. Why blame democracy or the Constitution?
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Subject the ICAR to social adutdit!
By farmers bodies!
Even high ceremonial speeches must shed cliches
and get to the more earthy and ground level realities!

There was this ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the ICAR auditorium in the name of C.Subramaniam. And another to commemorate Annasheb P.Shinde, the two who presided over the Krisih Bhavan and did much good work that saw the Green Revolution to change Indian’s agriculture. All this is well-said, many times before.
The point we want to highlight here is the sort of speeches we have come to hear on such occasions. More so, when it comes to agriculture, we see still a sort of tendency and even plain ignorance and even sheer callousness towards the reality and even speaking the truth.

We live no more in times where people would take our public speeches and more so, our public postures especially when it comes from high Constitutional office holders any more seriously.

This is very critical a time when people are taken for rides by ruthless operators whose another name is politicians!

We see the high Constitutional office holders are no more inspiring the people and we see the holders of such high offices also don’t live up to the expectations of the people.
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Amjad Ali Khan says
Every state capital in India should have a cultural complex
Like London’s South bank Centre or Carnegie Hall, New York

One can’t say it any better! One can’t excel also the Western countries when it comes to culture and what it means culture promotion. Amjad Ali Khan is a great Indian musician, a great sword player with an illustrious leneage. Perhaps, he is only next to the great Ravi Sankar and the other great Kahan, son of the legendary Alaudin Khan of the Maihar gharna.

Only those who have listened in a sustained manner to the strings of the Sitar and Sarod could appreciate the greatness of these two streams, of course the vocal music of the Hindustani is another unbeatable genre.

India is home to these great traditions, both the Hindustan and Carnatic music streams have evolved in their own two distinct manner.

I would divide the history and evolution of the Indian music as that what we had before independence and what we have after independence. Even here, it is very useful to take note of the recent developments, just after we have been witnessing the globalisation spin-offs in the culture field, in the music in particular.

There is so much music traffic from the West and so too in a way from the East, from India to the West. Now, we hear too many times the music celebrations in Celeaveland, USA, than from Indian cities! So too the music masters, from rock to what have you, the classical musicians and instrumentalists are travelling from the West to perform in India.

Bangalore for instance is witnessing a new trend in presenting these many streams in an increasing manner.
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Mr.Arjun Singh, the HRD minister, in his position for the second time. A two-term HRD minister must be seen as a man with a vision and a mission.

The minister doesn’t display both these assets.

All we can hope to remember about the minister is his penchant for playing his card as a pro-Marxist minister. That is why we heard for some time his obsession with the “detoxification” of the BJP-written Hindutva distortations in the school textbooks. Unfortunately for Mr.Arjun Singh, he is now presented with a new distortion of history as demonstrated by the Kerala government’s newly distorted history text books. The  Kerala social science textbook is a great shame for Kerala’s otherwise highly skilled writers! The textbook in Malayalam itself came for severe criticism by educators. Ksert’s English version, it is said, to have altered Nehru’s own will in butler English! The English version, as presented by Kerala education minister, M.A.Baby is full of “howlers, worse than the original, Pidgin English, malapropisms and would have shamed Sheridan, the great writer whose masterpieces are quoted for these original jokes. Even A.K.Gopalan, the spiritual ancestor of these new-fangled rich Communists! His own autobiography is badly written in English. Etc, etc.

Now, Arjun Singh finds himself totally clueless when it comes to the emerging trends in higher education.

Gross commercialisation of higher education. Most private sector engineering, medical and other para-technical and medical training schools are plain cash cows! No standards, no infrastructure and the persons engaged in this trade are highly unqualified.

Now, Mr.Arjun Singh had come to Bangalore and had participated at a “private university”s function. Her he had spoken about the indispensability of such institutions.

Very soon, foreign private universities are going to set shops here. So too private sector in the country too investing in new university-like institutions. Already the so-called deemed to be universities are mushrooming. The deemed status is not for upgrading faculty or infrastructure for world class institutions. For the simple common-sense reason of milking dry the helpless parents and students for a ride! Yes, it is as simple as that!

The HRD minister has some powers to regulate the universities. But from seeing what he has done in the last four and a half years, he has only given to the pressure from the bureaucracy. The HRD bureaucrats neatly carved out a domain for themselves in the name of another university for education research. If the NCERT also turns itself into a university, no one should be surprised. The UGC has no clear role in the current environment. It has not enough funds, so the UGC doesn’t do any of its mandated jobs. Neither enough funds for all the universities nor any power to control and regulate the university standards.
In some of the reputed universities, we have visited, Visva Bharat in the North and Gandhigram rural university in the South, you cant have any more a badly run and badly motivated universities in the country!
One is headed as the chancellor by the Prime Minister. The other is headed by the Vice-President!
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Jyoti Basu’s stance is unpardonable!
Jyoti Basu must put India’s supreme interests above party line!

Even to be seen as Mr.Somnath Chatterjee is seen with a stoic silence after his return and consultation with Jyoti Basu, even for a day or two, seems to us, as unjustifiable. Thank god, the Speaker had seen wisdom not to succumb to the irrational and unreasonable politics of sheer blinding opportunism of the CPI (M) secretary’s confusion to ask the Speaker to resign from his office. Now, the Speaker has decided to stay on and defy the whip against the holder of the highest Constitutional office is a silver lining in the murky politics of the CPI(M).To cohabit with the BJP can be the ultimate irony  for a party that thrives on empty rhetoric and no substance in any of its thesis formulations.

What is national interest? If one is a nationalist only one can speak of a national interest. The CPI (M) obviously seems to cultivate still, in this day and time of history, an extra-territorial loyalty, it is a betrayal of the national interest only!

Jyoti Basu, 95, is a grand old man of India. An elder statesman of unique stature. He is looked upon by the country, without any party or regional divide as a supreme leader, a wise and sagacious person with lots of wisdom.

He has now taken a stand on the Indo-nuclear deal when his own party, the CPI (M), had differed from the stand taken by the UPA and that is why the CPI (M) had pulled out of the UPA. That is fine. But for having that line, now Basu is consulted by the UPA negotiator, Pranab Mukerjee for his moral support. Also, it is no more a secret that even the West Bengal Chief Minister, the much-harassed Buddadeb Bhattacharjee is sympathetic towards the stand of the UPA.
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Much of Nandy’s language is  fine but  the insights are not wisdom enough!

Prof.Ashis Nandy is a high profile academic. He is variously described as psycho-analyst and political psychologist. I don’t really know much to make any distinction between the two disciplines. With this confession, let me say what he has done to clarify  what he says about the rise of the Indian middle class and how it has  contributed to the rise of an authoritarian  politics in Gujarat.

His article, Blame of the Middle Class in the newspaper in January led to a case filed and he was about to be arrested. Then, storm broke out ,178 intellectuals protested and the matter went to the Supreme Court. The Court in a famous line just dismissed the arrest petition, saying “If a journalist cant write an article who else? And when the police cant even arrest an ordinary  municipal councilor why  aim for a soft target’ ,lines to that effect. That only  served to  highlight Modi’s politics in a bad light.
Now, in an interview in the Thehelka(5 July 2008)Nandy had given an interview. That is what concerns us here.

First, Andy says he discovered Mahatama Gandhi during the Emergency. I am not sure why it took him so long to discover Gandhi only during the Emergency. That means he advocates Gandhian methods of protest? He doesn’t say that. Then, in what way he understands Gandhi, specially when he points to Modi’s illiberal politics?

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What is the status of the Social Sciences   in India?
Why we have forgotten to teach the Political Science?
Is it not the king of the social sciences?

Gandhi, Nehru and Indira Gandhi legacy we talk about!
But we don’t analyse and articulate their legacies or their political ideologies!
Some peculiar Indian legacy!

In Bangalore, the other day, there was this celebration at the Institute of Economic and Social Change on the occasion of the V.K.R.V.Rao centenary. A galaxy of speakers, all venerable names in social sciences research, spoke. None, I noticed, mentioned the lacuena in our social sciences teaching and research agenda. Namely, the need for teaching and research in the king of political sciences. Political Science! Why? Is it fear or any other thing? Isn’t cowardice not to mention this science and also trace the reasons for the fall in standards in social sciences research for the simple reason, our rulers don’t realise that we have first lost sight of the need to elevate our political culture to what it should be?

We do much economic research but none dares to touch political sciences!
Our economists had had a ride almost! They had changed sides in the political spectrum, from leftwing to rightwing to all middle grounds!

See the Prime Minister, the economist’s own political credibilities! The political belief systems and our ideologies expose us to sheer opportunism. That is not good for the long-term health of the polity.

We need a completely revamped agenda for the social sciences!
Social sciences are taken to be economics and followed by sociology, anthropology and other areas like history and even geography.
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