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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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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Left Adventurism: time to call the bluff!

The Left has really become a pain in the neck. The time has come to call its bluff. It is blackmailing the UPA government almost from day one. It imagines it has the key to unlock the world. Or, to the world’s wisdom!
Such is its self-imagined arrogance that it doesn’t think it owes a duty to the country and the people when it comes to its own acts of obstruction to a democratically constituted government.
With all its limitations, the UPA has been doing its job according to its light.

One can find fault on many of its details but one can’t find fault with its basic approach. It is a liberal democracy with a liberalisation economic agenda and the Indo-US nuclear deal was not just a one-day wonder. It has been there for a long time. India is a nuclear power in a way, we have exploded our nuclear devices, and it is almost like a nuclear weapons capability country.
The fine details needn’t concern us.

It is the right thing to go for the nulcear deal. Given the concerns over our energy needs nuclear power is one option. We are not alone. There is a nuclear ‘reanissance’. So, we have to adhere to the trends in the world.

Now, the Left’s objection is that by signing the deal India would tie itself with the USA strategically. Now, what is the strategical tie-up? Yes, it is co-operation in nuclear power and technology exchange and also to further develop our capabilities in the latest technologies. Will it amount to military tie-up? Without mincing words, yes, we would get some advantages, why even enormous advantages.

The China factor is not mentioned by everyone concerned. Yes, China is our neighbour and it will be there with all its pinpricks. China is not a completely friendly. It has its own perceptions. Let them have them. But it is a fact that China need to be restrained in its current penchant for nibbling at our territory. We are not strategic experts. But we have enough common sense to see that China should also know that we are stronger in our resolve to stand up to its current, rather in a manner that is not mature and not statesman-like in its behaviour with us, a big neighbour.
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Congress party must become more democratic.

If you live in Delhi, perhaps, you might become immune to any new winds of change. May be you would be a government servant or a politician, even a minister or an MP, from outside Delhi from one of the states. Or, otherwise, you might be one of those small-time businessmen.

Yes, the big ones are from outside Delhi, either in Mumbai or from Bangalore. For those from Bangalore, Delhi is really a very distant place. The IT success stories are still very remotely reaching Delhi; the big money from the IT capital has no use in Delhi. Thanks from the IT industry being totally free from government control, much of the online and Internet based businesses operate from outside the reaches of the bureaucracy.

Thus, I found in Delhi that it is the Mumbai based businessmen, the big and small, are all very much in Delhi, and either directly or through their well-oiled middlemen, the so-called lobbyists is all everywhere. In a way, how one NGO calls these men and women are part of the “legalised corruption” ring in getting things done.

Yes, New Delhi government is a big disappointment, if you imagine that it is an open government, your ideal of an open governance and where the rightful people can get the government listen to you.

In Delhi, no one in the scheme of things, the high Constitutional functionaries, the PM or the party President Sonia Gandhi want to receive you.
There are rings and rings around them. The most discouraging thought is that the Prime Minister in Dr.Manmohan Singh has come to symbolise all that is holding up the functioning of the government as an ideal democratic government.

Since he is not elected or is he a politician or a political figure, he had almost reduced the government to one more layer of the functioning bureaucracy. The Prime Minister of India is doing his job as a 9-5 job! This is the most terrible thing that had befallen the Indian governance mechanism.
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The great humbug of democratic power devolution!
The rural poor continue to be neglected!

Luckily, the West Bengal’s long-time claims of fame for its ideological purity stands exposed. The Left managed to brainwash a whole generation or two about its real intentions.

It has never been a patriotic front. The CPI was better. The CPI (M) became the real villain from day one. By a process of long-term suppression and oppression by the socio-economic forces we see today rural Bengal a pathetic picture of decay and demoralisation. For miles and miles you won’t see any sign of modernity. Except for the National Highways that run through the state you don’t find even a decent tea shop to stop and sit. The very many outfits you see dotted on the wayside are all so dirty and unhygienic that you have either to shut your eyes or prefer to drive on with a hungry stomach.

All these years, again by a process of sheer intellectual dishonesty or otherwise, the state’s many intellectuals who are all spread out in far off lands, in the USA or UK, from such mighty names like Amartya Sen to Suhgata Bose (a nephew of the great Nethaji Bose) have chosen to pursue their own career under some cushy surroundings, rather than take up arms on behalf of their poor Bengali brethren!
In a recent book I came to see how even Amartya Sen (I quote here just to show that if even Sen could dodge such sensitive issues, as he had done) then what chance is there for others to come out in the open. Mr.Uadayan Namboodiri, a journalist, has exposed the humbug (Bengal’s Night without End, India First Foundation,2006)that is both West Bengal government as well as the humbug that is the Bengali bhadralok hypocrisy.`

On page 420 of this book Mr.Namboodiri actually meets Sen and confronts him with some uncomfortable questions. Says he: “Amartya Sen is an embodiment of this denial system. No previous icon of the Bengali people Netahji, Tagore or Satyajit Ray moved millions by their work but Sen is read by few and understood by fewer”. When he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998, he became known and the Marxists who suddenly found a kindred soul in Sen and the Left found an organic relationship between their ideology and his theories. The author met Sen at a Seminar in New Delhi at Teen Murthy Bhavan and the subject was riot victims in Gujarat.” Nobel Prize or no Nobel Prixe, Sen was one of the most prominent cheerleaders of the Kolkatta Marxists. He was their greatest trump card and he fell in line whenever they were in desperate need of a favourable article on their rogue panchayats or phoney development model. He reminded me of Maxim Gorky, that intellectual whore who had even visited a gulag at Stalin’s invitation and returned to praise the excellent conditions under which dissenters were housed”(page 421).
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Not long ago on a visit to Delhi, I chanced upon Jaswant Singh, the former foreign minister under Vajpayee at the India International Centre, on the Lodi Road. It was nice to see a very urbane and erudite man, I thought. I had read his books, the latest being his deeply moving autobiography and I said so to him.

I don’t know whether I had praised him sky-high or offended him when I said: “You first chapter is a minor classic, worth prescribing as a text for students. While the rest seemed to have just assembled into a book form”. Anyway, a gentleman he is he was courteousness personified and he acknowledged my opinion so graciously and I would always be thankful for such a personality.

Yes, I  had first heard of him from my long time friend, the late Romesh Thapar, the founder of Seminar monthly and though Jaswant Singh belongs to the BJP I always thought he was different and an asset to the party whose many basic premises are still causing concern for all enlightened  people.

So, I now read in the newspapers that at a recent national executive of the party its president, Rajnath Singh gave a new meaning (or new meaninglessness?) to the interpretation of secularism in our Constitution. Thank god, the BJP president doesn’t speak English, I bemoaned!

If he did, then it must have given rise to a first class ugliness to the otherwise Queen’s tongue. So, I ignored what the BJP president said when he gave a new interpretation. Mercifully, it was in Hindi, I presumed it was a bit Sanskritised Hindi! The more the better for ignoring it.

But can I do the same when our respected friend, Jaswant Singh, put a gloss to what the BJP president did when he (Jaswant Singh) said that “sanathana dharma” is secularism!
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India must have its own well-defined foreign policy!
India must have its own well-defined self-perception!

China will always be our troublesome neighbour and big brother
Mr.Pranab Mukerjee, our foreign minister made a recent visit to China. What did he do there and what did he achieve?

Not much. There are criticisms in the press that he went almost uninvited and in a way snubbed by his hosts, the Chinese Premier absented himself for four days when Mukerjee was there and in fact, the foreign minister had to put up with some more new demands from his Chinese hosts about claims to Indian territory, this time territory in Sikkim! Yes, there are Chinese incursions in recent times, they are increasing all along the long border and also the Chinese don’t seem to care to be polite with its neighbour or don’t seem to display any long-term thinking in dealing with India.

Unfortunately, our government can’t do anything; almost we have kept quiet and don’t seem to take any initiative except to some polite diplomatic claims that are, said to be misleading.

Only one senior Indian leader, George Fernandes, has been quite outspoken, calling China India’s number one enemy!

Unfortunately, even China seems to think that the Indian government under Dr.Singh is the weakest, so it doesn’t care a damn.

There are now new books on the rise of Asian countries. Even some fancy talk like “de-Westernisation” is taking place! One Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani, once president of the Un Security Council, has lots of new things to say. This he said in a new book and also in a discussion on the BBC. Much of what he says is admirable and must kindle the pride of Asians like us.
But on a closer reading there are certain aspects which might not appeal to India. One significant point that won’t go down well with Indians is the argument that we, Asians needn’t accept the Western conception of democracy and freedom. Also, he quotes, more than once the Chinese leader Deng and also others to say that it is “myth of Western Superiority”. This is a bit to go off track.

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