The government only last week, that is, just a week before the presentation of the budget “quietly secured a Cabinet approval with the United  States that aims, among other things, at promoting the privatisation of agricultural extension services and facilitating  collaborations between American agribusiness and the Indian farm sector”.

On the face of it, this is nothing so earth shaking!

The MOU on US Agriculture Co-operation and Food Security was approved(by whom?) likely to be signed soon(by whom again?)

The MoU is also intended to give a push to private investment in agriculture for growth of agribusinesses and farm-market linkages with stress on creating an enabling environment for private investment and reciprocal trade. It includes bilateral policy dialogue and agri business-to-business collaboration between India and the U.S.
The nutrition security component calls for bilateral cooperation and best practices, including access to adequate quantities and quality of “diverse diet and diversified and fortified foods” and an integrated programme that targets the most vulnerable. The food security aspect focuses on sharing technological expertise and promotion of private sector extension in agriculture. Collaboration in S and T and education would focus on technology to farmers and agribusinesses.

The weather forecasting for crop management and market information part of the pact highlights improvement of crop production management in response to vagaries of weather and potential impact of climate change variability.

According to geneticist Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign, while India could gain from improved weather forecast technology in the proposed MoU, the bilateral collaboration on S&T, food and nutrition security will give access to the U.S. to India’s great genetic diversity of crop plants for commercialisation in its interest. “The opening of food security policy dialogue is also a matter of concern as it will impose on India the U.S. model of agribusinesses and vertical integration of food chain, impacting diversity and consolidating monopolies,” she said.

The costs of implementing the MoU would be borne by “parties that incur them.” Joint Working Groups would be set up to implement each component. Intellectual property issues would be settled as per the S&T agreement with the U.S., which was also approved in the last Cabinet meeting. Curiously, both agreements have been kept under wraps.

An India-U.S. Agriculture Knowledge Initiative is already in place that allows for U.S.-based private multi-national trading and seed giants like Cargill and Monsanto to be appointed on the board, enabling them to bear influence on the country’s farm research.

The present MoU was initiated under the India-U.S. Agriculture Dialogue during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last November.

Of course, the media in India is not Indian farmers-friendly. It is government friendly. Only when it comes to the US or other countries co-operation, there is this leftist itch for taking some prejudiced stand.
Even now, we need to look at critical issues.

First, the Indian agriculture extension services are as good as dead. No one is serious about it. So, if Indian farmers can benefit from American companies, then, let them come with their services. It is now a market economy and so the market demand would decide the worth of such services.

There is nothing wrong to access the latest “best practices” in modernising  the Indian agri sector. Also, there is no harm, in fact much good only will come with weather forecasting, marketing information etc.

But unfortunately, the PMO, under the present incumbent is devoid of any news or any activity. This is what seems to the distant citizens as well as to others at large.  When Sonia Gandhi nominated Dr.Manmohan Singh, in her place as she decided to do a “sacrifice” the country lauded her and her nominee.

Now, after one full term and into a new term, the office of the Prime Minister, the persona seems to have lost its aura or what little was left of the persona occupying such a high office. Dr.Singh doesn’t receive any visitors of substance, from among the citizens or great talents, such as intellectuals or artistes or any out of the way acts or activities that attracts public notice.

When Pandit Nehru was in the office, how many talents, the galaxy of intellectuals, the economists, the scientists and even an odd artist or writer like Andreau Malraux or even the young Dom Moraes called on Nehru, such meets made great news! Not any more, alas. Even when Mrs.Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister we had such glimpses of the workings of the PMO. Not any more now!

Dr.Singh doesn’t reply to mail from ordinary citizens, nor he receives such humble souls nor is he interested to meet the press.  There is a highly paid press secretary to assist the PM. But there are no press briefings nor any high profile press conferences. Then, how do the people know what the Prime Ministers’ ideas are on several important issues, both in the domestic area or in the international arena. Is this a democracy at all, one sometimes has to wonder.

There is a new book in the market, one by John Kampfner, Democracy, Freedom for Sale and the book has been widely reviewed in the Western press. The Guardian editor, Peter Preston, has reviewed it in the following terms. The book’s thesis is that, the author has travelled widely in Singapore, where he was born as a Brit, then travelled to Russia, China, of course, India and then he also covers the United Arab Emirate, of course USA and UK where he lives in London.

His thesis is that everywhere it looks that democracies, new and old, have excluded the poor and the vulnerable from the economic development and social participation. So, says Preston in his review that it looks democracies is run by some people for some people! That is, the more prosperous, the more successful, the professional middle classes and the successful corporate classes, as in India, seem to have become successful political classes as well!

This aptly suits India, doesnt it?

Indian democracy, as the latest 2009 Lok Sabha elections showed, why fully demonstrated the thesis of the book, that in the Lok Sabha we have a large number of such successful people, the dynastic heirs, the contractors turned corporate class and of course the MPs with a criminal record. And yet, we hear as the PM and Sonia Gandhi exerted us on the Election Commission celebrations that only those with a clean record must enter the Lok Sabha or context elections. The PM also echoed the same sentiment when he said that only clean people must enter the Legislatures.  Then, see the irony!

It is Sonia Gandhi who finalized the list of contests. It is Dr.Singh who concurred with the list.
So, what these people are talking? They imagine that they are not fooling the people?

Of course in other countries there are not many freedoms either. In Singapore it is almost a one party state, a police state where a large number of Opposition leaders often spend time in jail or the journalists are put there. As in China and Russia too where the press is jailed for writing anything against the state and there are on last country some 17 journalists were murdered in Russia. Also very much resembling India, we have in Russia the class of oligarchs, who very much resemble the new MPs who control vast quantities of funds and other resources!

As for corruption, we in India are not better than others, or rather we are as good as other corrupt countries are. So, we have a society and polity, considering the way, the Prime Minister is unaccountable, the author of the book writes on Indian in a pointed manner that in 2008 Indian Parliament met only for 46 days!

So, cant we ask the same uncomfortable questions as asked in these countries? To quote Preston again, it is better to savour the words of such a veteran journalist:”Government for some of the people for some of the people (the ones who matter).Election by clique, twist and fiddle, Lip service to public service. And fear rippling onwards, as rationale or excuse.”

He again hits us in the face. He asks: “Where will this cowardly new world go when the threat is real? Is there a strong man who will burst through the facade and construct a rescue pact? It is the next stage the books take us and one more reason, says the reviewer, to read the book.

We say to draw lessons for Indian democracy’s next stage or next stage of likely danger! The PM is credited with the tag of an honest man. No doubt about it.  But then as he says inside the book in more substantial passage, when we mention the name of the PM in India, he says that the very affluent and articulate middle classes say over dinner conversation they fall silent, there is some “intrigue, disdain and apathy”!

Why this disdain, this intrigue and apathy?

We know it. Simply because we Indians are hypocrites, we only look after ourselves, not think of the country as a whole. That is the danger lurking ahead of us.

The world thought that after 1989,the world  would turn on to a new civilisation. The “end of history” and the dawn of a liberal democracy, the world believed with confidence.

Now, we see the new dangers. Democracies, says a new book, from Singapore to India to China to Russia and even USA and Britain we see the democracies taking some sinister turns.

The poor and the  weak and the underprivileged, in the case of India, the situation is almost typical of this phenomena, the rural and the poor, as against the urban and the privileged, the new generation cooperates are very like in  a way, the Russian oligarchs, and so the democracy ,again as in India ,is excluding the vast mass of people, while democracy, as again in India, is becoming less genuine and more twisted. We have a vast range of people, starting with the Prime Minister, not elected to the Lok Sabha nor elected   but becomes the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister often talks of inclusive growth. What is inclusive? The economy or the polity or the society?

None at all as we can do a survey.

Why, many top bodies have persons who seem undeserving to hold such high constitutional offices. Often manipulated or arbitrarily chosen, again, by a non-representative, undemocratic process or processes. The Rajya Sabha is again an instance. And so on.

It is time we start worrying. Worrying about the degeneration or derailing of the democratic processes. Dynastic politics is only one instance of derailment!

So, this is one area where many can help the agri sector.

Then comes the biotechnology applications. There is now a prejudice against agri biotechnology products, specially, the Bt Brinjal.

So, readers will see in this issue all the latest news concerning the topic.

But we need to tell the readers that as a media company which had brought out the India’s first survey on biotechnology research and industry way back in the year 1985 or there about, we have a duty to tell the readers what our position is.

Biotechnology is a latest science and it has spawned a revolutionary industry, from medicines to new products in food, environment protection to other areas.

Can we live without anti-biotics? Without the very many life saving drugs?

So too the genetically-modified organisms of many types.

GM food is one new thing. Now GM cotton has taken over the traditional cotton seeds variety.
We have published in this issue a special feature on the MNC, the much maligned Monsanto. We request our readers to go through that essay carefully and give us your views on what you consider the positive and the negative side of the story. After all the company had been there for a century and it has really done something pioneering and its efforts require some objective recognition.

All this doesn’t mean that we have to accept all its views or its products.

Civil society awareness and vigilance is very critical for a healthy society and for a healthy food regime and therefore we welcome the current widely debated concerns and maybe we require some more time before we can decide the food articles from the GM regime.

But we can’t go the whole way as some of the more jealous and sometimes very negative mindset displayed by some of our high profile, sometimes arm-chair agitators and even obstructers of any progress on the agriculture front.

Agriculture through pure and only organic way or through natural farming is not viable or pragmatic either.
But this doesn’t mean the natural, green route to farming and to many other social and economic needs like, say, renewable energy or solar and wind energy options needn’t be pursued. In fact, we have to devise many policies and institutional mechanisms and even well-thought out subsidies need to be brought out.

The pity is that in our current urban-centric and even, shall we say, the bureaucratic centric governance to which Dr.Singh has become an adherent, more out of fears for his own tenure at the PMO, that from any inner convictions, wee in India seem to be surrendered to an artificial polity and society.

For instance, the Pm talks of nuclear energy as an option. But is he honest to ask himself if not say to his countrymen, that nuclear energy is fraught with multiple issues, from civil to military applications, from safety to the long gestation period etc.

So, to talk of nuclear energy as a priory is both dishonest and certainly not serving the unfortunate countrymen, the unfortunate in the rural and weaker sections. An energy option that has a 20-40 yea horizon and other energies, renewable to even coal, still the dominant sources, that has  a time scale of say immediate to very short term advantages is clearly a moral issue and a moral commitment.

Who care for such moralities when expediency and survival is our current priorities!

These are all big news and big developments in the current messy sugar business scenario. These UP mills are all very big ones, unlike in the South where the mills are very modest, small and also the UP mills often part of big corporate entities, Birla’s and the Bajaj’s and others and as such there is much that is new in the emerging sugar scenario in the country.

For one thing, the till hitherto  sugar industry scenario used to be the Maharashtra-politicians controlled sugar lobby had say in sugar policy making and Sharad Pawar as the all important sugar barons-s super baron had his way.

Now, poor Pawar is the butt of all sorts of political controversies.

The food prices inflation is at all time high and he is being blamed for a general economic crisis in which the Prime Minister both as an expert as the head of the Cabinet must take responsibility for what is plainly a very complex and complicated economic calculation.

Now Pawar says the food prices would ease next fiscal. This expectation is based on the next crop output, the rabi crop and also the other factors like the global economic situation and other issues like asset prices and capital inflows as predicted by the RBI.

But these are in our view minor matters.

The point here is that after a long time the food prices rose to a record high and in particular, the vegetables and the eggs came in for special attention. It is the prices  of these two humble common man’s consumer items, not so common for the urban consumers who want their vegetables fresh and their eggs farm fresh and as such the very humble small and  marginal farmers who seem to have the last laugh!

Let these poor and humbel farmers have high incomes, we thought!

After all, when the urban media reports about the double and treble net profits for the corporate sector when it comes to the humbel people making good incomes that somehow doesn’t make for headline news, do they?

So, there needs to be some fresh debates about what constitutes high incomes and good growth. The widely dispersed growth strategy is what we all desire, though people in New Delhi don’t have the time or the vision to realise and appreciate the great many changes that are taking place in the country today.

Do these policy makers in Delhi realise there is a steady outflow of farmers from their traditional occupations?

There is also a great spurt in the farmers’ suicide rates under the UPA regines, first and second!

There have been something like a staggering 2 lakh farmers suicides.

There have been a steady decline in the share of the GDP.

The impact is already visible in the current food crisis.

There is a shortage in every essential commodities, from rice to pulses to sugar and now vegetables and eggs.

An unlettered man, he or she needn’t be an economist, would say that in order to reduce or control prices under some reasonable terms you need first and foremost raise production of these agri commodities, right?
But then why this simple rural wisdom doesnt make its way to the PMO?

So, it is simple logic of the free market economy.

Given incentives, control your hypocrisy and start supporting the farmers, the pro-farmers policies!
It is as simple as that!

Now the agri share in the GDP is something like 16 per cent you have to give all the more additional incentives to produce more and to get reasonable returns.

There of course needs a great deal of policy mix with new institutions, new co-operative models, as for milk and so for new crops like vegetable cultivation and distribution too.

In Karnataka there is the horticulture marketing networks, one supposes there is one such in Delhi too.
Anyway, Verghese Kurien comes to mind and he is the role model for a range of others and other products.
By the way why the government has forgotten to give a Bharat Ratna to Dr.Kurien? Is he not worth remembering and worth recalling at a time like this?

We are a funny nation with a funny set of rulers, all bureaucratic and all with very narrow interests and loyalties!

Now, the sugar lobby and its woes.

The imported sugar is lying at the ports and this needs to be processed and distributed and prices brought down. It is time we pay well for the cane farmers.

There must be more the free play of the market forces. Unless the cane prices are raised to more economical levels, there won’t be any more production of the cane crop. There are already new technologies and new business models to add value to the agri procure and the farmers are now more open to switch to new and untraditional crops like high value vegetables, capsicum and others.

So, there is going to be a new agricultural revolution, when the President called for a second green revolution that sounded a bit out of date and out of tune.

The Madame President must know the latest trends at the ground level.  Agriculture is no more profitable.

In order to make it profitable, there are now very many new business models. If the Rashtrpathy Bhavan patronises our magazine, we post them a copy dutifully every month and though we don’t any acknowledgement, as we would only do out duty without expecting any reward or award!

Jyoti Basu is a man from another age, as seen now in the context of current West Bengal politics and the sort of hotch-potch politics that rules in the name of coalition of convenience. Coalition for self and fortune seekers and convenience for the Congress party that is also highly centralised these days and that requires some dictatorial dispensation with no larger inner party deliberations.

I have also become a sort of sentimental over the passing away of such a great personality.
For I have known him or rather I have heard of him so much from my own Bengali  student friends when I went to Santiniketan  for education in the year 1959.I think it was in that year where Jyoti Basu also became the first time MP from Bolpur, the very town where Santiniketan is located! My friends used to speak so high of the Jyoti babu, as he was very soon came to be respectfully addressed by one and all.

To understand the times and the back ground for the Bengal Communists and their movement, it necessary to know what it was like to belong to the Bengali middle class. The Bengali middle class is a vast class of all sorts of talents, from landowning zamindars or broker zamindars as they were mostly in my time and also the professionals from academicians to barristers, to writers and artists and all sorts of experts. There was a time and even now one can see some of the rare specialist fields like archeology, anthropology to arts and crafts and even basic sciences, you will only Bengalis dominating the fields.

There is no wonder the Nobel Prizes in sciences and the arts, poetry and economics and even specializations like history you see the Bengali middle class professionals everywhere.

So, Jyoti Basu, a Bhadralok, as we call this white collar class with much pretensions to music and poetry and literature and other arts, is a highly refined class as well and also highly political and revolutionaries always came from this class!

So, Jyoti Basu, a Vaidya by caste, when he went to England and qualified himself as barrister, he returned also as a Communist.

So, Jyoti babu brought with him a great legacy from the Thirties England and also his was in august company of some of the best brains of India, who also turned up as Communists.
The story of the Indian Communist party need not detain us here.

Now, when all the tributes are paid and they are in place, there are some agonising questions that won’t go away easily as with the passing away of Jyoti babu. What would be his enduring legacy?

Did he leave his people, the people of Bengal a better people? Their living standards on par with other states? Did Bengal thrive as an advanced education state? In economic development? In social sector, Human Development Index, terms?

All answers are painfully no, no and no!

I have travelled in rural Bengal, as my trips to Santiniketan are through Birbhum district and one of the painful sights is the deterioration of the rural Bengal. So much degradation, so much poverty, so many falls in the rural infrastructure and for miles and miles you can’t stop even for a cup of tea in any rural tea stalls. Such is the dirt and unhygienic conditions in the rural habitats.

Not a single industry to sight. All the old style rice mills and that is all for industry.
The recent violence in Singur and other places by Maoists is no surprise.

The Tata project fiasco is no small news.

So, between Jyoti babu and Mamata deed, it is anybody’s guess what would be the fate of the Bengali people in the near and distant future. The Leftists are the more cruel human beings, it seems.

Their dry dialectics is sickening for anyone and when even the liberals and other academics like Amartya Sen and others join their ranks Amartya Sen, supposed to be a great philosopher as well as an economist, makes it a special point to say that he is on the “Left”, an Adam Smith disciple and a US-based liberal one supposes. So, it is not easy to judge the legacy of Jyoti babu.

Like his colleague, the late E.M.S.Namboodiripad, he with his so-called agrarian policy, land reforms had killed agriculture once and for all.

There are always people in the ranks of academics and journalism to cook up statistics to paint a different picture. It is pointed out that Bengal is a number one rice producer.

This is hiding the fact that poor nutritional levels of the old and the young in Bengal is shocking.
Education, more so the primary education, a favourite topic for Sen, is simply so bad. As for higher education, now you can see the Bengali educated young and women are all everywhere. They are in sizeable number in the Bangalore IT industry sector.

Why now, the Bengali labour, manual labour is everywhere, in Coimbatore, Tirupur and even in the distant Quilon,

At least, in Kerala the comrades have taken to the comforts of a capitalist lifestyle!

Recently in Cochin, I asked my taxi driver as to how was life for the Communists. Pat came his reply. He said:”Sir, when C.A.Achutha Menon, when he laid down office, he travelled to Trichur by state transport bus!”.”Now, Mr.Pinayari Vijayan, the state secretary of the party has built a massive bungalow and whose gate is manned by a remote control system!”.

The Kerala CPI (M) owns assets worth thousands of crores, runs business ventures and TV channels. Poor cousins, the Bengal counterparts.

They cut sorry figures, now with Mamata deedi breathing fire at their tenure!

I was also once eye-witness to Ajay Mukerjee coming to see the late K.Kamaraj when he was the Congress President in Delhi. I was at the AICC then.

Kamaraj, I was there, didn’t treat Ajay Mukerjee fairly. So, he went back and took Jyoti Basu as a member of the ministerial team and thus was born the first coalition government in Bengal. The Leftists didn’t leave it till now.

Anyway, Jyoti babu is no more but his legacy; it is one of a Stalinist, doctrinaire, rigid, even wooden, ruthless bureaucratic regime only.

There was no effort to understand the fall of Communism. I just now read a column by Pranab Bhardan that Jyoti babu called him, Amartya Sen, both are eminent economists to his hotel suite to understand the fall of Communism. Says Bardhan, ironically, “after listening to the two of the whole evening, Jyoti babu went to address a public meeting that evening. His speech ,as reported the next days, says Bardhan, didnt show any change in his mindset. It was as doctrinaire and rigid as ever, as he was always, says the eminent economist.

There seems to be some disarray in the Central government functioning. Already Sharad Pawar, the agri minister has been adding fuel to the rising food prices. After sugar prices, the food minister has indicated that milk prices would go up!

Is this the way the country’s agriculture minister who  has earned a dubious distinction of being an agriculture minister as well as the food minister. In neither of them he has any credible record  to date. There is a clear indication that food production, if not declining, is stagnant and also faced with multiple issues.

Drought and erratic rains is only one side of the truth. The other side is the complete confusion in farm credit and the structure of the farm credit reforms.

Farming is one economic activity that is very unlike other industrial activities. There are no big industrialists and all farmers are middle level or poor farmers.

Thus, farm loans need some severe restructuring. Apart from banks, it is the co-operatives, co-operative credit structure that are critical.

Also most of the farming activities like marketing also requires co-operative marketing institutions.
Since Pawar was originally a Maratha leader and he was also seen as the king of the co-operative sugar industry, everyone, including the unsuspected Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi combine thought; Pawar is the right man for the right job.

Alas! How times have changed! Today, everyone is blaming the agri minister who in turn now has started to sing a different tune.

Pawar says, unjustifiably, that prices rises are not easy to understand and easy to control and that he alone is not responsible for the price rise and it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister as the boss of the Cabinet and the Cabinet must take collective responsibility for the price rise and also for the price control.
This has landed the Prime Minister whose reputation as an economic czar is at stake.

Now, all this comes at a time when the Prime Minister himself seems to be in some sort of a bind.
What is it?

First, he started to lose his magic touch. He seemed to give the impression to the outside world at any rate that he is the boss and he enjoyed complete confidence of the party president.
Now, there are certain ruptures in the internal structure of the Central government.
What the Prime Minister could not do now is to have his way in many areas. First, he could not protect M.K.Narayanan. He is now shifted as the Governor of West Bengal. A government can always spin any story to suit its convenience. Narayanan won’t be of much use for the Congress in West Bengal as the Trinamul Congress only would dictate the terms there. The Leftists are helpless now, as with the exit of Jyoti Basu, the Leftists now feel like orphans. No cause, no legitimacy and now resources, both ideological or coalitional support. The Congress in these circumstances is no better placed.
So, Narayanan lost out to the over-ambitious PC who wants to emerge as the final arbiter of things.
Now, as for the security, first, the foreign security issues.

In India, we Indians make a great deal of fuss over external security.

There doesn’t require so much awe and a distant sort of respect for anyone who comes as a national security expert or adviser.
What is the fuss about these men and women?

See, the USA, the biggest and the most powerful country had as secretary of state a 46 year old academic, a professor, Condoleez Rice under George Bush. So, what is so great about a Narayanan or a Shivasankar  Menon, a retired career diplomat as the new NSA. One must have some quality of competence, of course, any training or some experience is a help. But only in India, we are obsessed with these retired fellow, who after a lifetime of bowing and strapping to one and all, often not at all competent political heads, what energy they would be left with when you press them again into your routine desk work?

So, the New Delhi culture of promoting every one of the retired hands available there, unfortunately, Delhi is over-crowded job seekers, and you make so much fuss.

You haven’t solved on date or hope to solve in the near future, these security issues, these security threat perceptions.

So, let us drop this mentality, this search for retired hands only syndrome and search for a new set of criteria to find real talents for the job.

Now, what have we in New Delhi, honestly?

The PM is conducting himself more as a super foreign minister. He is more busy with his foreign trips and foreign visitors. Sheik Haseena, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, saw that the PM was everywhere while she was here.

Now, the PM, is rumored in New Delhi, is more suspect about Pranab Mukerjee and using PC as a counterweight. One doesn’t know. Who knows?

The point is that as far as foreign security issues are concerned there is some overcrowding in PMO and EAM.A  weak foreign minister is now overseen by a retired foreign secretary as another  super  foreign minister? It looks like that. There is no more any clearer picture than what was the position when Mr.Narayanan was NSA.

As for internal security, here too the ever-present threat is no more or no less any better than what was before what PC tried to do as a revamp.

There are more than one approach to internal security. There must be a more energetic  action at the socio-economic level to ease the tensions that lead to buildup in the Maoist and Naxaliste ranks.
Better ask Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee as to how to bring back the Maoists into mainstream politics. Unless we bring back the Maoists and Naxalites into the broad based mainstream politics the internal security threats won’t die down.

The issues are complex and we need many expert studies and opinions. The tribal areas where the big mining licenses are given to the MNCs need special focus.

Then there is the question of violent politics even from within the chauvinistic political formations.
The separatist politics is another area of security issue.

This also need some in-depth study.

As a large  and diverse society, with age-old and also new types of separatist and divisive  society, we need to engage and also start new academic courses in sociology and  social development how and why tensions build up, violence  erupts in democratic change.

So, the point is that internal security is not one of revamping intelligence gathering, though it is an important component. Internal security is also ideological and the middle class intelligentsia needs to be engaged with the understanding and coming to terms with the multiple sources of violence, tension and even resort to separatism and divisions.

May be more smaller states may be one solution. There could be other solutions too.
The basic approach should be clear.

It is not just strengthening the police and paramilitary forces and their deployment. This much must be made clear and one hope the UPA-II would have a fresh approach.

There seems to be some disarray in the Central government functioning. Already Sharad Pawar, the agri minister has been adding fuel to the rising food prices. After sugar prices, the food minister has indicated that milk prices would go up!

Is this the way the country’s agriculture minister who  has earned a dubious distinction of being an agriculture minister as well as the food minister. In neither of them he has any credible record  to date. There is a clear indication that food production, if not declining, is stagnant and also faced with multiple issues.

Drought and erratic rains is only one side of the truth. The other side is the complete confusion in farm credit and the structure of the farm credit reforms. Farming is one economic activity that is very unlike other industrial activities. There are no big industrialists and all farmers are middle level or poor farmers. Thus, farm loans need some severe restructuring. Apart from banks, it is the co-operatives, co-operative credit structure that are critical. Also most of the farming activities like marketing also requires co-operative marketing institutions.

Since Pawar was originally a Maratha leader and he was also seen as the king of the co-operative sugar industry, everyone, including the unsuspected Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi combine thought; Pawar is the right man for the right job.
Alas! How times have changed! Today, everyone is blaming the agri minister who in turn now has started to sing a different tune. Pawar says, unjustifiably, that prices rises are not easy to understand and easy to control and that he alone is not responsible for the price rise and it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister as the boss of the Cabinet and the Cabinet must take collective responsibility for the price rise and also for the price control.

This has landed the Prime Minister whose reputation as an economic czar is at stake. Now, all this comes at a time when the Prime Minister himself seems to be in some sort of a bind. What is it?

First, he started to lose his magic touch. He seemed to give the impression to the outside world at any rate that he is the boss and he enjoyed complete confidence of the party president. Now, there are certain ruptures in the internal structure of the Central government. What the Prime Minister could not do now is to have his way in many areas. First, he could not protect M.K.Narayanan. He is now shifted as the Governor of West Bengal. A government can always spin any story to suit its convenience. Narayanan won’t be of much use for the Congress in West Bengal as the Trinamul Congress only would dictate the terms there. The Leftists are helpless now, as with the exit of Jyoti Basu, the Leftists now feel like orphans. No cause, no legitimacy and now resources, both ideological or coalitional support. The Congress in these circumstances is no better placed.

So, Narayanan lost out to the over-ambitious PC who wants to emerge as the final arbiter of things. Now, as for the security, first, the foreign security issues. In India, we Indians make a great deal of fuss over external security. There doesn’t require so much awe and a distant sort of respect for anyone who comes as a national security expert or adviser. What is the fuss about these men and women?

See, the USA, the biggest and the most powerful country had as secretary of state a 46 year old academic, a professor, Condoleez Rice under George Bush. So, what is so great about a Narayanan or a Shivasankar  Menon, a retired career diplomat as the new NSA. One must have some quality of competence, of course, any training or some experience is a help. But only in India, we are obsessed with these retired fellow, who after a lifetime of bowing and strapping to one and all, often not at all competent political heads, what energy they would be left with when you press them again into your routine desk work?

So, the New Delhi culture of promoting every one of the retired hands available there, unfortunately, Delhi is over-crowded job seekers, and you make so much fuss. You haven’t solved on date or hope to solve in the near future, these security issues, these security threat perceptions. So, let us drop this mentality, this search for retired hands only syndrome and search for a new set of criteria to find real talents for the job. Now, what have we in New Delhi, honestly?

The PM is conducting himself more as a super foreign minister. He is more busy with his foreign trips and foreign visitors. Sheik Haseena, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, saw that the PM was everywhere while she was here. Now, the PM, is rumored in New Delhi, is more suspect about Pranab Mukerjee and using PC as a counterweight. One doesn’t know. Who knows?

The point is that as far as foreign security issues are concerned there is some overcrowding in PMO and EAM.A  weak foreign minister is now overseen by a retired foreign secretary as another  super  foreign minister? It looks like that. There is no more any clearer picture than what was the position when Mr.Narayanan was NSA. As for internal security, here too the ever-present threat is no more or no less any better than what was before what PC tried to do as a revamp.

There are more than one approach to internal security. There must be a more energetic  action at the socio-economic level to ease the tensions that lead to buildup in the Maoist and Naxaliste ranks. Better ask Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee as to how to bring back the Maoists into mainstream politics. Unless we bring back the Maoists and Naxalites into the broad based mainstream politics the internal security threats won’t die down. The issues are complex and we need many expert studies and opinions. The tribal areas where the big mining licenses are given to the MNCs need special focus.

Then there is the question of violent politics even from within the chauvinistic political formations. The separatist politics is another area of security issue. This also need some in-depth study.

As a large  and diverse society, with age-old and also new types of separatist and divisive  society, we need to engage and also start new academic courses in sociology and  social development how and why tensions build up, violence  erupts in democratic change.  So, the point is that internal security is not one of revamping intelligence gathering, though it is an important component. Internal security is also ideological and the middle class intelligentsia needs to be engaged with the understanding and coming to terms with the multiple sources of violence, tension and even resort to separatism and divisions.
May be more smaller states may be one solution. There could be other solutions too.

The basic approach should be clear. It is not just strengthening the police and paramilitary forces and their deployment. This much must be made clear and one hope the UPA-II would have a fresh approach.

The latest 2009 Lok Sabha elections and also the Maharashtra Assembly elections saw certain new trends in Indian politics. Not for the good but for the worse!

These elections saw, in the case of the Lok Sabha elections the rise of the number of MPs with dubious records. More MPs with criminal records, more moneyed candidates, mostly contractors, as from AP, for instance, and also from other states and also significantly, the younger MPs as dynastic heirs.
These are all much written about and what is new is really nothing new!

What is surprising rather is the fact that the Election Commission meet only brought home may be the harsh reality, may be, the very occasion must have made the President, the Prime Minister and the party president rather uncomfortable to realise how the entire country would view them.

There is some agonising thought, may be deeper inside the minds of everybody, that the very system of our governance, call it democracy or election or whatever has thrown about people, not by  some  accident, but some failure on the part of leaders, decision-makers who were guided by certain fall in values, selfishness or some new insensitivity to moral qualms?

It looks like that.

How can the leaders, those in public offices, can stomach the thought that they have offered themselves to these high offices, knowing fully well that they are not qualified in the true sense of the Constitutional provisions and norms?

The Constitutional rules are in black and white. While the conventions and practices, say like the one who needs to be elected to the Rajya Sabha need such and such criteria and if these criteria is thrown to the winds who is to be blamed? The EC officials? Or, the party president who opts for the individual or individuals? Or, the very individual who offers himself or herself? The time has come to ask such questions pointedly!

We see the devaluation of high offices, right?

Then, we go on talking rather pointlessly the same old songs? The same old clichés? right?
If the Prime Minister says the best and the brightest must come to politics, is he talking genuinely?

When, Sonia Gandhi says criminals should not contest elections, the obvious first reaction would be, for everyone I imagine, what the party president did in the first place?

Hasn’t she knows most of these dubious characters are dubious and the very first opportunity should have been used by her to stop them at the gates?

Why the party president didn’t do that in the first place?

The very selections of persons for some of the most highly demanding jobs are all entrusted to those whose credentials are suspect from day one, so to say?

So, the country saw the celebration of the very Republic Day was packed with full of ironies.
There are a record number of farmer’s suicides, record number of malnourished children, tragic deaths of infant deaths is all too harrowing, too sad to demand much hard hearts to narrate and explain.

So the solemn occasions like the Republic Day often need to be passed unspoken, in silence in one’s privacy. To celebrate the occasions like these in India, under the rather cynical dispensation, when many more demanding thoughts have to be left out of our already heavy hearts! There have been many newspaper columns and editorials that have touched upon these topics. Hence, we thought we are not alone imagining such harsh thoughts for our leaders to find it hard to entertain our own ones!

There is the episode of Ashok Chavan, the Maharashtra CM over his paid news scandal.

Now, the EC has asked for Chavan’s reply on paid news, what would be the next step?
We can be sure that the EC action would be buried in the dustbin of the very same office?

Yes, there are many such EC inactions, with the minor crimes like bribes for voters to even such cynical moves, taken at the highest levels, in such cases like a Union Minister who lost in the Lok Sabha elections at the first instance and then suddenly the results were reversed at the behest of the state and even the Central government and the incumbent minister is luring over the affairs of the country! What is this? Is this to fool the very intelligence of the countrymen?

Then, there is the sheer failure of governance lately, from the government bungling of ads with an ex-Pak General to the awarding of the Padma awards. One leading newspaper ran an editorial and notes why award some hundreds of Padmas when you can’t even select one Bharat Ratna?

Yes, you give a Padma to an NRI in the US just to please the US government, to please Hilary Clinton? It looks like that. Thank god, you gave the one to Professor Tan Chung, a close friend of the Vadamalai Media, of all other distinctions? To please China or cultivate China?

It looks the government does things without any ideas or idealism or vision. It goes by some bureaucratic balancing act. This is where the artificial governance comes out.

There is no natural governance. There is no natural government. It is an artificial construct, this government, the high constitutional authorities are all dumped, artificially, the very process of selection, decision-making is dictated not by a genuine democratic process, it is imposed from outside by several fortune seekers, so to say.

We have to talk about democratic values, say what the Prime Minister’s idea of democracy, democratic values, and democratic norms. That will be an education for the country, an education for his own government and for his own party. So too Sonia Gandhi must say whether she believes in democratic ways in at least some aspects of the party’s functioning?

We haven’t thought of awarding the Bharat Ratna, even to such personalities like the late Jyoti Basu or happily with us, our much-admired Atal Behari Vajpayee. Why?
Why no one in the government thought of such awards.

We ourselves have written more than once to these high personages to award the Bharat Ratna to such achievers like Dr.Verghese Kurien, of Amul, for many years. We wrote to Vajpayee himself when he was the Prime Minister and also to Kalam and now to the current incumbent of the Rashtrapathy Bhavan!
The government inspires the confidence of the people by its highest standards of behaviour.
Not just by its routine jobs, celebrating one event or other or saying the right words for the right occasions.

Now, at least, the government must act; take decisions and sometime some hard decisions. All decisions won’t be soft or easy. Some decisions must be taken so that there is real change in the system.
Sorry to say but the fact remains Dr.Manmohan Singh won’t act for the rest of his term, it seems.
M.K.Narayanan we kept for so long. All we have now changed is the places where the very same individuals would be bidding their time to serve the same old masters, the same old chores!
The Governors for example!

So too the senior officers, in the foreign embassies and also internally with some tenures whose justification seem to have expired long ago. Unless you move out a whole tribe of the seniors, with extended tenures in these jobs, where it eh chance for new talents, new winds to blow in? How can the government invite new talents?

You have to send high profile, really talented and qualified faces as, say, ambassadors to USA and China and even to some other countries. These new talents only will bring back new inputs and new ideas.
As of now, there are no such moves whatever.

So too in the party apparatus.

The PCCS must be renewed and activated.

What is the point of keeping the very same persons as PCC presidents, Cabinet Ministers and the CWC members?
Is there no talent in the country to assign such responsibilities?

If the PM thinks he can induct a wide variety of new talents.

If Sonia Gandhi thinks she can instantly induct, say a hundred new talented faces into the PCCs.
So, the new Republic of India become really a new endeavour to look far and wide  and  help to make India a vibrant force in all areas of national life.

Even such post like a Culture Minister, a vital portfolio, remains vacant! Why? Please send your comments. www.isvarmurti.com.

A series of breath-taking technological revolutions and new tools
Our life becomes more easy and more productive.

Wealth creation is becoming more equally based and widespread.
Computers came, now it seems, a very long time ago. There was a time when the world looks very different. It was time when a blue covered small paperback volume, IBM Way, used to be sold on the public platforms!

Then came a book, hardcover, I bought immediately as soon I saw the title: Made in Japan!

Then came a slim volume, Silicon Valley Fever!
Now, after 2000, suddenly the world took a speedy break through!

“We had two spells of new age thinking “says Mark Casson, professor of economics at the University of Reading.”Both were fostered by the idea that normal rules of economics, making profit or managing risk didn’t apply now.
In every new economic crisis, he feels, new industry appears and new ways of thinking takes place for people.

People also thing that they are again in a new age!

Currenlty, there is such a feeling. The US economic recession has jolted everybody. Big and small people feel they have a new chance to reorder their lives!

So, what is new now?
It looks there will be new booms in certain areas.

Say in mobile technology. More people will buy and use the new technology.
So too there will be boom in the Internet use.

Web technology takes the centre stage, says every one.

The eb has become deeply embedded in our day to lives and our whole imagination, our whole outlook on life and business and activities are all now conditioned and moved by the deployment of web technology.

Biggest corporate names now were all unheard of in the year 2000!
Google was incorporated Larry Page and Sergey Brin from a Stanford University dorm in September 1998.In 2000 they had revenues of 19 million dollars. Last year it had 21.8 billion dollars!

This is revolution! Revolution in wealth creation of an entirely new kind!
MySpace was set up in 2003.Facebook became available to wide public in September 2006. You Tube went live in February 2005.Google bought it for 1.65 billion 18 months later!

The explosion of global communications is a massive mega-trend, say observers about the coming revolutions.

Everyone on the planet can talk to each other for the first time in history we cant possibly know how this will impact on our lives in the future. Because it hasn’t happened before in history. It is a whole new universe; it is a whole new experience for man!

Apple comes and makes world a much more beautiful place!
Apple has given the world another whole new experience. Technological tools as aesthetic experiences.

What a design, what a beauty, what a new type of experience.
Apple made the world entirely a more exciting place to live and work. October 2001 came the Apple iPod. iPhone in 2007.Apple had profits of 600 million dollars and revenues of 6 billion.

In the entire recession time, only Apple shares soared!
This is another new revolution. A revolutionary experience.

So too the US recession and the new scandals, high wages for the few and the misery for the millions. A historic joblessness and what are more even countries like India felt the global impact. Migrants returned home, though in a small stream, there is much potential for new tensions, racial hatred rose, Obama restricted the entry of non Americans into new jobs. There is a new “surge “in Afghan war.

One doesn’t know fully now, what the future holds for the world.
But one thing seems certain.

There wont be another war after the two world wars.
There wont be a nuclear war.

Obama is a new avatar on the world stage.
Let us all realise the great world, we are living through!