tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58092937420821889202024-03-05T16:12:56.561+05:30TJS George - Point of ViewCollection of his weekly column Point-Of-View and Nera-Maatu.Tjs Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13266133065532365548noreply@blogger.comBlogger547125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-86148105276067057062019-04-08T14:12:00.001+05:302019-04-08T14:12:08.504+05:30NECESSARY EVILS, TOO, ARE EVIL<br />
Everyone knows that this election is a game-changer. It is becoming clear that it is a convention-breaker as well. Things that were no-no in electioneering are now accepted norms. Things to which T.N.Seshan said "out" are now "in". The founding fathers of America said that, even at its best, governments were a necessary evil. Ditto with post-Seshan elections. <br />
<br />
That a judicial ruling should contribute to this feeling is disturbing. Bangalore city civil court issued a blanket order banning 49 media outlets from publishing anything "defamatory" against BJP candidate Tejaswi Surya. This was the first instance of a prior restraint order against a class of persons. And it happened at election time. Legal circles were quick to argue that the order was unconstitutional. Beyond that, the idea that a candidate should ask for a gag order against media raised suspicions. Public curiosity led to reports that there were allegations of misconduct against Surya. The end result was that the gag order drew attention to a questionable aspect of Surya's persona as much as to the sidelining of the spirit of democracy by the court.<br />
<br />
While Surya wants to stop the world from talking about him, he wants full freedom to say what he pleases. In a public statement a week ago, he said "If you are not with Modi, you are anti-India". Should courts stop the media, and the public, from reacting to such an anti-India statement? Our election rules make it obligatory for candidates to disclose the number of criminal cases if any against them. In such an environment, are not allegations against a candidate a matter of public interest? It is clear that Surya was given a privilege he did not deserve. The "interim order" will come up for review only when the case is taken up for hearing again, which conveniently is on May 27, after the counting of votes will be over. Who is fooling whom?<br />
<br />
Surya is BJP's candidate in the Bangalore South constituency which had elected H.N.Ananth Kumar six times in a row. In the first election after Ananth Kumar's untimely death, his wife Tejaswini was a natural choice for the BJP, not merely because she was his widow but because, in her own right she was an activist NGO leader supported by the entire state leadership of the BJP. But the BJP's destiny makers in Delhi picked Surya for reasons only they knew. Local BJP leaders were unhappy and came round only after school master Amit Shah used his cane stick to discipline his boys. Given Surya's unpopularity among local BJP leaders, he would have lost. But the Congress came to his rescue by putting up its most unwinnable candidate Hari Prasad in Bangalore South. The stars are on BJP's side.<br />
<br />
That explains, also, why big leaders violate Election Commission rules and the EC takes only naam-ke-wastey actions. Kalyan Singh, the Governor of a state, publicly asks people to vote for BJP. The EC brings it to the notice of the President of India. Adityanath, a chief minister, refers to the Indian Army as "Modiji Ki Sena". Initially only UP's Chief Electoral Officer seeks a report from the District Electoral Officer. The EC sends a notice to Air India for issuing boarding passes with Modi pictures on them. Air India does not even reply and EC "conveys its displeasure" to Air India's chairman. EC "pulls up" the railways for using paper cups with Modi propaganda on them, but the railways take its own time to withdraw the cups.<br />
<br />
The game is clear. The BJP uses India's state machinery for party propaganda in ways that have never happened before and ignoring the fact that necessary evils, too, are evil. All that EC does is to go through the motions of action. Those who are asked to explain know that the EC is under the same compulsions as they are. This is an unfamiliar India becoming all too familiar.<br />
<br />
In the process, unheard-of things are happening. A TV channel starts broadcasting without getting the permits the law stipulates. NaMo TV is not in the list of channels permitted by the I & B Ministry. Its ownership is unknown. Yet it broadcasts on a government-sponsored channel and is backed by government advertisements. Belatedly the EC asked the I & B ministry for an explanation -- like all the other explanations it asked for in all the other irregularities. We could have found solace in the old saying: This too will pass. Except that we can't be sure, alas.TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-19676012765991527902019-03-25T13:29:00.003+05:302019-03-25T13:29:56.714+05:30CONGRESS'S MAIN ENEMY? CONGRESS<br />
The Congress and the BJP have one thing in common -- each is led by a Superman. But the BJP's superman has a bunch of subalterns with him. That is a force multiplier. The Congress superman is a solitary sentinel. That is poor war tactics.<br />
<br />
Narendra Modi uses his fire power as no one else does. Yet he has Amit Shah making aggressive speeches all over the country, Piyush Goel holding forth even in alien territory like Tamil Nadu, Nitin Gadkari and Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh raising voices that draw attention, Sushma Swaraj and Venkaiah Naidu bringing up the rear. A sizeable bunch to make a sizeable impact.<br />
<br />
Turn to the Congress and what we hear is a one-man orchestra. An entrepreneurs' meeting in Bangalore? It's Rahul Gandhi. A public meeting in Itanagar? It's Rahul Gandhi. A mass meeting in Gandhinagar? It's Rahul Gandhi. A popular do in a Chennai women's college? It's Rahul Gandhi. A campaign meeting in Sabalgarh in Madhya Pradesh? It's Rahul Gandhi. In Guwahati, Kanyakumari, Gulbarga, Kochi, wherever the Congress states its case, you see no Congress stalwart other than Rahul Gandhi. The Congress has no other stalwarts?<br />
<br />
But it has. There are young and articulate leaders like Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia and Milind Deora. There are old war horses like Digvijay Singh and Kamalnath and Oommen Chandy. But we don't see or hear the young and the bright. We hear about the old and the tested only in their unending battles for prominence. At a time when all guns should be blazing at a single target, the Congress is leaving everything to one individual. Is the dynasty thing at work again despite the havoc it has wrought?<br />
<br />
Naturally the Congress is too ineffective in too many places. Ask who is the chief of the party in an important state such as Maharashtra and you will hear some people mentioning Sanjay Nirupam, and some others mentioning Ashok Chavan. Nirupam in turn is constantly fighting with Milind Deora, probably because he sees a threat in Deora's popularity cum capability. Not surprisingly the Congress attracts none of the smaller but important group leaders such as Prakash Ambedkar or Raju Shetty.<br />
<br />
Delhi is another revealing case. Commonsense demands that the Congress must tie up with other parties that want to check the BJP. In Delhi's case it is the Aam Aadmi Party. Important Congressmen favour a working alliance, but yesterday's leader Sheila Dixit goes by day-before-yesterday's ideas. Result: The BJP gains.<br />
<br />
In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh the victory the Congress recently won should have energised the leadership. But what we see is a sense of nothing-is-happening. Would it have been different if the choice of CMs was based not on pressure politics by the old guard but on an assessment of the need of the hour? Rahul Gandhi does not seem to have the power to enforce his will and bring new blood into leadership ranks.<br />
<br />
The consequent infighting in the party is nowhere more dismal than in Kerala. To begin with, the Congress in Kerala has several heads -- Oommen Chandy, Mullapally, Ramesh Chennithala, A.K.Antony, V.M.Sudheeran. It is also the only state where the Congress is officially and openly divided into "A" group and "I" group. Fights between A and I are more deadly than Congress-Communist fights. Younger leaders are not allowed to come up. In fact, the younger ranks have such bright and modernistic leaders that if they are allowed to take over the party, both the party and the state are sure to see rapid progress. But such things do not happen in a Me-Myself-And-I culture. <br />
<br />
The macabre nature of that culture bared itself last week when veteran leader K.V.Thomas declared war against the party. The ticket he expected was taken away from him and given to Hybi Eden instead. Thomas was 72 and Eden exactly half that age, 36. Besides, Thomas had had a lot of jam; he was MLA for long, MP for long, a minister in Kerala, a minister in Delhi and the holder of several positions inside the party and outside. Still he wouldn't yield to a younger man. The party finally bought peace by offering him more jam without revealing any details.<br />
<br />
The BJP has internal fights as well. But the number of top leaders campaigning diligently makes up for it. There is energy and imagination in the BJP's campaign style. There is energy in Rahul Gandhi, but there is no imagination, and he is alone. The chief enemy of the Congress is the Congress.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-49309587724403661132019-03-18T13:23:00.001+05:302019-03-18T13:23:05.876+05:30WILL THIS BE THE LAST BATTLE?<br />
This is going to be the make or break election. It will either make the idea of India viable, or it will break it completely. The ruling dispensation knows that if they don't win this time, they won't win for a long time. And if they win, they'll make sure they don't lose again. Get ready for the bitterest, most cold-blooded election in the history of our democracy.<br />
<br />
Early symptoms of the power play were already on show. In a short span of 30 days the prime minister declared open 157 projects, from an airport in Sikkim to a highway in Kanyakumari. They were all publicised in ways seldom seen in our country before. And most of them were crowned by no-holds-barred election speeches. Even the inauguration of the National War Memorial in Delhi saw the PM attacking the Congress's dynastic leadership. The Election Commission helpfully waited until the ground was prepared by all these shows and speeches.<br />
<br />
India's electorate is famously under-literate. Yet the savvy with which the illiterate and semi-literate voters of UP defeated Indira Gandhi after the Emergency is part of legend. Part of a more shameful legend was the way literate Kerala became the only state to vote for her in that historical 1977 election. The question that came up then was: Who is better for democracy -- the literate or the illiterate?<br />
<br />
This time the question is more complicated because religion is involved. So is nationalism in its new avatar. The rise of Hindutva has given a new emotional dimension to religion. It helped the BJP create some waves although, like all waves, they dissipated quickly. Dissipation happens because Hindutva activists resort to extreme steps that violate Indian sensibilities. Lynchings and whippings and killings in the name of religion repel more than they attract. The IS is an example. Islam's concept of martyrdom was an attraction for over-enthusiastic youngsters to volunteer for suicide missions. But even in Muslim societies, IS lost the prestige it once had.<br />
<br />
There can be healthy arguments over nationalism, like Ravindranath Tagore initiated with his notion that humanism was right and nationalism wrong. But it is something else when an Indian, born and brought up as an Indian, is asked to prove his bonafides as a nationalist. Diversity is the essence of this nation of many languages and diets and dress habits and cultural backgrounds. Unity in diversity is the ideal for such a kaleidoscopic nation. And it proved workable. To discard that in favour of a monolithic culture will be to invite disaster.<br />
<br />
The highlight features of the last five years will have to be a guide to voting decisions this time around. Topping all lists of major policy decisions are demonetisation and GST. The passage of time has not helped paper over the disastrous impact of both, especially of demonetisation which wrecked the lives of thousands of ordinary people and small businesses. Many deaths were reported due to exhaustion waiting in queues and to newly experienced poverty that blocked access to food and medicines. The Government blocked all attempts to get relevant statistics about the deaths.<br />
<br />
Many autonomous institutions had zealously preserved their independence to ensure checks and balances in governance. One by one these were compromised, none more worrisomely than the Reserve Bank of India. High profile economic advisers like Arvind Subramanyam and Arvind Panagariya resigned as they discovered that the Finance Minister neither needed nor desired advisers. An RBI Governor abruptly resigned over issues relating to autonomy; the Government appointed a bureaucrat in his place.<br />
<br />
In short the BJP Government has been focusing on a partisan agenda to transform the basic democratic structure of the Indian polity. Its trump card has been the personality of the prime minister. There is no one in India today to rival his energy, his oratory and his nonstop campaigning style. He also has a capacity to attract sycophancy. Consider this India Today web desk item of May 2017: "The popular leader has completed three years, but the excitement on his being the prime minister has not died down".<br />
<br />
That excitement will be kept at high pitch during the voting weeks ahead. Is that the best for us? A kind of answer was given by a 19th century American columnist named Peter Dunne. He wrote: "A man who expects to train lobsters to fly in a year is called a lunatic. But a man who thinks that men can be turned into angels by an election is called a reformer and remains at large".<br />
<br />
Beware of reformers.<br />
<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-79090707090084091392019-03-11T13:40:00.004+05:302019-03-11T13:40:51.390+05:30 THE DANGERS OF ISRAELISATION<br />
Pakistan is ruled by its military and the military has an animosity against India that won't go away. The reason is permanently engraved in a photograph -- Gen. A.A.K. Niazi signing papers formalising his country's surrender to India in Dhaka in 1971. The wiping out of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh were twin humiliations that became etched in the Pakistan army's DNA. For this reason, we should not expect meaningful peace with Pakistan in the foreseeable future. Large sections of ordinary Pakistanis have campaigned from time to time for normal relations with India. So have Indians. But normalcy will not come as long as the craving for revenge drives Pakistan's military leadership.<br />
<br />
Currently a worldwide awakening against terrorism has weakened Pakistan. European nations raised the issue in the UN. The influential Paris-based Financial Action Task Force included Pakistan in its "grey list", a mark of disapproval. Even China advised Pakistan to distance itself from terrorist groups. This could be why Pakistan hinted that it would not oppose a UN listing Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. Action was necessary, the Foreign Minister said, to protect "our global reputation". <br />
<br />
Action was indeed taken -- banning various organisations identified with terrorism and taking 44 men under preventive custody, including Masood Azhar's son and brother both of whom were named in the Indian dossier given to Pakistan. Pakistan's bonafides in these actions are unsure; preventive custody could mean custody to prevent any harm coming to the men. Even so, Pakistan has been forced by international opinion to take measures and make statements it has not done before.<br />
<br />
It would be dangerous for India to interpret these developments as signs of peace breaking out in the region. The hatreds that drive organisations like Jaish e Mohammed are too deeprooted to go away in a hurry. Comparable hatreds have unfortunately developed in certain segments of the population in India also in recent years. If we do not accept this, we will have no right to claim moral superiority over Pakistan. Post Pulwama, India's positions have raised several questions. Two of them are especially disturbing.<br />
<br />
Question number one: Why did the BJP-- and the Congress-- politicise the military action? The Prime Minister and the president of the ruling party made statements that linked the air strike with the imminent elections. Beyond them, Salman Khurshid of the Congress Party made a fool of himself and his party by claiming credit for Wing Commander Abhinandan's bravery. He said the IAF hero "received his wings in 2004 and matured as a fighter pilot during UPA". How pathetic can a politician get!<br />
<br />
From the BJP's side, minister Piyush Goel turned himself into an embodiment of intolerance when a TV anchor politely asked him questions many Indians were asking about the IAF strike at Balakot. Goel was inexplicably agitated, wouldn't listen to the anchor, and went on with his near-abusive onslaught. When the anchor managed to say, "Minister, neither me nor anybody sitting here needs any lesson in patriotism from you", the audience clapped showing the isolation of Goel and his bigotry.<br />
<br />
Question number two should worry us more: How will Israelisation of Indian policy help? For years now Israel has been carrying on an intensive military campaign against Palestinians in their homeland. It is the world's most unequal war since Israel is equipped with the latest military devices while the Palestinians have only militant groups left to their own devices. Offences like stone-pelting by Palestinians are met by state-of-the-art missile attacks by Israel. In recent years India's ties with Israel have become closer than its ties with any other country. Is Israel's policy towards Palestinians to be a model for India's policy towards Kashmiris?<br />
<br />
Decades of Israeli overkill have failed to ease their Palestine problem. This adds irony to India's newfound admiration for Israel's style of functioning. It was left to Brussels-based researcher Shairee Malhotra to point out that "Israel's biggest fans in India appear to be the 'internet Hindus' who primarily love Israel for how it deals with Palestine and fights Muslims".<br />
<br />
The doyen of Middle East specialists, Robert Fisk, wrote: "Israel has been assiduously lining itself up alongside India's nationalist BJP Government in an unspoken -- and politically dangerous -- 'anti-Islamist' coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has become the largest weapon market for the Israeli arms trade... It is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India".<br />
<br />
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.<br />
<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-67122689455465771762019-03-04T13:49:00.003+05:302019-03-04T13:49:27.953+05:30NO TIME FOR POLITICS, JINGOISM<br />
It is good that 12 fighter jets bombarded a terrorist camp in Pakistan with the intention of delivering a blow that would be remembered. More significantly, India crossed the international border for the first time to hit Balakot, the terrorists' nerve centre. The message was heard in other countries as well; many of them asked the Pakistan Government to help eliminate terrorism. The pressure exerted by them also persuaded Pakistan to release the IAF hero who had shot down their F-16 before his own jet was shot down and he was captured.<br />
<br />
But this is no occasion for jingoism. Carefully calibrated military operations lose their import when cheap celebrations are mounted for populist approval. The damage done in this area by the shouters of our television channels is a disgrace. Citing the over-patriotic declamations of channel monologists, Pakistan was able to argue that India was a trigger-happy hatemonger. It gave them a brownie point or two when Wing Commander Abhinandan was captured, giving Imran Khan an opportunity to say: "Our action was only intended to convey that we have the capability to hit back".<br />
<br />
The outcome of that capability was not known to the Indian public for quite a while. As TV-fed superpatriots enjoyed fire-crackers, Agence France-Presse released a photo showing the wreckage of an IAF jet shot down by Pakistan. The Defence Command of Pakistan released photographs of Wing Commander Abhinandan "arrested alive after successful air combat within Pakistan territory". It was left to retired Indian army colonel turned columnist Ajay Shukla to tweet what happened: "Two MIG-21s were lured by two PAF F-16s into an air def ambush. The F-16s made shallow ingress into Indian air space, dropped bombs and waited for IAF MIGs that scrambled. Then F-16s turned back, MIGs followed, were shot down by air defence guns". A prestige win for Pakistan.<br />
<br />
So where do we go from here? The most important thing for any country in a situation like this is to present a united front. The unity has to come from within, clear and unambiguous. This has so far been proving difficult. Twenty-one opposition parties complaining together about the Government not taking them into confidence was not indicative of unity. The Cabinet's strong man Arun Jaitley's attack on the opposition did not help either. Nor did high-profile government functions like the launching of the Khelo India Mobile App and the dialogue between the Prime Minister and BJP Karyavahaks gathered from all over the country. Couldn't these things wait for a day or two?<br />
<br />
If we cannot get over narrow political self-interests, perhaps we do not deserve the honour and respect we demand as a nation. The depths to which politicians can sink even at a time like this were shown when Karnataka's BJP leader said that the IAF action against terrorists in Pakistan had resulted in a Modi wave that would help his party win 22 out of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Are our defence personnel facing the enemy and risking their lives to help BJP go to the Lok Sabha? A man who does not understand that the country is bigger than his party ought to be banished from public life for good. When such petty men flourish in our country, it becomes difficult for us to successfully confront an overrated adversary across the border.<br />
<br />
If India is to assert itself as an effective modern state, it will have to first stop politicians who hurt its cause. It then must firm up international links that it can depend on. In the current crisis, Saudi Arabia and even China provided sober advice to Pakistan. But to what extent can India depend on them? Saudi Arabia's main ambition is to destroy Iran. For that purpose it has even joined forces with its traditional enemy, Israel. Iran on the other hand is having exactly the same problem with Pakistan on the Baluchistan side as India is having with it on the Jammu-Kashmir side. Incensed by Pakistan terror groups attacking Iranian interests, Teheran's strong man, Gen. Soleimani, warned Pakistan quite bluntly only a couple of weeks ago.<br />
<br />
It is a complex scenario. But the handling of it can be simple if we decide to join forces with those whose interests coincide with ours. They are different from those who want to join hands with us to further their interests. So the challenge is double-headed. Can we distinguish between promoting our interests and helping others promote theirs? More importantly, do we have the guts to do what's best for us?<br />
<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-45632246981596551202019-02-25T13:39:00.003+05:302019-02-25T13:39:36.474+05:301984 AND COMPULSIVE CONTRARIANS<br />
It's now two months since the Union Government issued orders that turned India into a surveillance state. Ten investigative agencies were authorised to "intercept, monitor and decrypt" all computer material kept by all citizens. The authorities justified it by saying that the rules were framed by the Congress-led UPA Government. That is a flop explanation because one iniquity does not justify another.<br />
<br />
The scariest picture of a surveillance state was sketched in George Orwell's classic novel "1984" written in 1949. Looking 35 years ahead at that time was, for Orwell, like looking into a completely re-configured world because the war had just ended and Soviet Communism seemed poised to gobble a sizable chunk of the world. Orwell saw The Party, led by Big Brother and the Thought Police using media manipulation and advanced technology to control populations. Doublethink was common and Newspeak emerged as the lingua franca. Oceania, the country that emerged when the US devoured the British Commonwealth, Eurasia constituted by the Soviet absorption of continental Europe, and Eastasia that controlled all of the Far East were in perpetual war.<br />
<br />
What Orwell feared didn't quite work out that way except that the superpowers got into perpetual war. But a more comprehensive version of the Orwellian nightmare took shape, quite unexpectedly, in India. Advanced technology has been at work for a while. Media manipulation and Thought Vigilantes became facts of life after 2014. Doublethink became a mark of nationalism, Newspeak the way to success. And now Big Brother has officially declared that he is watching. A group of filmmakers in Mumbai said at a closed-door meeting that they feared being branded anti-national. Amol Palekar was stopped by on-stage officials of the National Gallery of Modern Art when he started to criticise some official policy decisions on art. An Ahmedabad college cancelled its scheduled speech by Jignesh Mevani, a former student, because of ABVP threats. The principal resigned in protest, realising no doubt that he had no role when The Thought Police thought all permitted thoughts.<br />
<br />
It must have surprised Orwell that Stalinism, the hatred of which was the provocation for his novel, did not become the horror he feared. Stalin was repudiated by his successors and then forgotten. Strangely, the Big Brother concepts took shape in the very country with which Orwell was umbilically connected. (He was born in Motihari, Bihar, where his father was a British civil servant).<br />
<br />
Did Orwell pick the year 1984 on a whim? British speculation centred around a Jack London novel in which a political movement comes to power in 1984 and a G.K.Chesterton story set in 1984. But the choice of the year proved portentous for the country he had probably forgotten by then, some calling it the year that changed India. Early that year Indira Gandhi ordered the ill-advised military assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar where Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had sought refuge to escape from arrest. In October Indira Gandhi was shot dead by her own Sikh guards. This was followed by anti-Sikh riots that killed an estimated 10,000 people. The year closed with one of the worst industrial disasters in history when poisonous gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, killing 4000 people outright and another 16000 later. Did Orwell have some kind of a premonition about India when he picked 1984? Was some evil eye at work unseen? <br />
<br />
The world Orwell conjured up might have been maniacal. But it was fictional. The India that emerges from the Home Ministry's surveillance order is all too real. It gives agencies like IB, RAW, CBI and even the Delhi Police Commissioner a blanket licence to access electronic information. A full week would pass for any restraint order to come if at all. This makes a mockery of the Supreme Court order that the right to privacy is integral to the fundamental right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. Why is the Government so jittery?<br />
<br />
In an ideal world where people identify themselves with their government, the security of the state and the security of its people would be one and the same. Since the world is not an ideal one, some security systems are necessary. But no democracy has introduced an omnibus spying system of the kind India has put in place. What Delhi has revealed in the process is a "them and us" separation between the people and the Government. Why have the people of India become such compulsive contrarians, to use the phrase coined by Arun Jaitley, our impulsive disciplinarian.<br />
<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-51295474967565624652019-02-18T13:42:00.001+05:302019-02-18T13:42:25.754+05:30BEFORE TERRORISTS, WE ARE ALONE<br />
Prime Minister Modi had, and will continue to have, the backing<br />
of all of India in his stand against the terrorists who "made a big<br />
mistake" in attacking jawans in Pulwame. The attack must have given<br />
the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and its protectors in Pakistan a cheap<br />
thrill of achievement as they managed to kill 40 CRPF men in one go.<br />
But it was a big mistake because it made India unite against the<br />
assassins. Enemies have been shown that they cannot take advantage of<br />
India's noisy democracy and create divisions in the name of religion.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, the latest JeM strike is an opportunity for us to<br />
examine our record, our resolve and our capabilities more closely than<br />
before. The unity of purpose that binds India together in crises is<br />
different from the ability to stop terrorists in their track. The<br />
record shows that JeM's ability to strike has in no way been curbed<br />
over the years. They attacked India's Parliament in 2001 and the IAF<br />
base in Pathankot in early 2016. Later that year four terrorists near<br />
Uri town were able to stage "the deadliest attack on security forces<br />
in Kashmir in two decades." In retaliation to the Uri attack, India<br />
said it made a surgical strike. The people know precious little<br />
about it, except that it has not weakened JeM in any way. Within a<br />
year and half they struck at Pulwame.<br />
<br />
A reality that has to be faced is that this is a war India has<br />
to fight alone because, at the international level, India really has<br />
no friends. This isolation is linked to a series of strategic<br />
blunders beginning from the time of independence. When Pakistan<br />
rushed tribal fighters from the Northwest Frontier to capture Srinagar<br />
in 1947, Sardar Patel was quick to rush troops there and save the<br />
situation. If the soldiers were given a few more days they could have<br />
thrown the tribals out of Kashmir and brought the whole state under<br />
Indian control. But Viceroy Mountbatten played the friendship card<br />
with Jawaharlal Nehru and managed to get a ceasefire ordered,<br />
permanently dividing the state between India and Pakistan. Nehru<br />
went on to make blunders by allowing the UN a role in the dispute and<br />
by pledging to hold a plebiscite in the state. Britain, a world power<br />
in those days, was unfriendly to India and manipulated the UN in<br />
Pakistan's favour.<br />
<br />
India's next round of blunders occurred under Prime Minister A.<br />
B. Vajpaye. The hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight in 1999 was<br />
handled with great incompetence. The pilot had cleverly pleaded fuel<br />
crisis and got permission from the hijackers to land in Amritsar.<br />
This was an opportunity for India to take control of the situation.<br />
But in Amritsar, as a member of Vajpaye's staff put it later, "airport<br />
officials ran around like so many headless chicken, totally clueless<br />
about what was to be done." A team of special commandos could not<br />
reach the airport because of traffic problems in the city.<br />
<br />
The flight finally landed in Kandahar in Afghanistan. The<br />
Government, still clueless, not only agreed to all the demands of the<br />
hijackers, but Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh personally went to<br />
Kandahar in a special plane along with terrorists released from Indian<br />
prisons (and bundles of currency notes, as some reports said).<br />
<br />
The main terrorist released by India to satisfy the hijackers<br />
was Masoon Azhar who had been in Indian prisons for five years.<br />
Accorded a hero"s reception in Pakistan, the man went on to found the<br />
JeM and become the world's most strongly motivated terrorist.<br />
<br />
What India needs to realise is the futility of depending on others<br />
to come to its aid. Pleading for UN intervention is useless because<br />
China has veto power there and China is as openly hostile to India as<br />
it is friendly to Pakistan.US will give verbal support to India but<br />
nothing more, especially now when it is planning to withdraw from<br />
Afghanistan with Pakistan's cooperation. Saudi Arabia under Mohammed<br />
bin Salman? Forget it.<br />
<br />
Look beyond and we see another approach. US special commandos<br />
found out a secret hide-out in Pakistan, staged a lightning operation<br />
there and killed Osama bin Laden before anyone knew what was<br />
happening. In 1976 when an Air France flight was hijacked by a<br />
Palestinian faction demanding the release of militants imprisoned by<br />
Israel, a completely unexpected 90-minute night operation by Israel in<br />
Uganda's Entebbe airport rescued 102 of the 106 hostages there.<br />
<br />
Examples exist. So does expertise. All that is needed is a<br />
shared, non-negotiable, politically unpolluted pride in one's nation.<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-68062667102167104942019-02-11T13:48:00.004+05:302019-02-11T13:48:48.237+05:30VADRA, A TIMELY WEAPON FOR BJP<br />
Unlike father Rajiv Gandhi and brother Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi has to wear two crosses -- the Gandhi dynastic cross and the Vadra controversies cross.The second hurts more. The haste with which the Government has opened the Vadra can of worms points to the viciousness of today's politics. But the worms cannot be wished away.<br />
<br />
We have a tradition of leaders allowing family and friends to influence policy. It began with Jawaharlal Nehru himself whose private secretary, M.O.Mathai, was the source of much evil. Prime Minister Morarji Desai, considered a paragon of virtue, allowed son Kanti to sit in the PMO and influence decisions. P.V.Narasimha Rao hit a new low lending his ears to the international fraudster Chandraswamy. A.B.Vajpayee was supposed to usher in a new era, but he had a "foster son-in-law" who enjoyed official protocol status even when the Prime Minister went on foreign visits. There are sons and relatives getting special status under the present BJP rulers as well.<br />
<br />
The problem therefore is not confined to one party or one leader. It looks like an implant in the DNA of the Indian politician. K.Chandrasekhar Rao and N.Chandrababu Naidu, sworn enemies, have both installed their sons as key cabinet ministers. Deve Gowda, with a son as chief minister, is grooming a grandson for prime ministership. Even "singles" like Mayawati and Mamata Bannerji have nephews throwing their weight around. For us politics is a blood thickener.<br />
<br />
In such a situation, it is perhaps unfair to single out Robert Vadra for special mention as an offender. Besides, the present Government's hypocrisy is too blatant to be missed. Accusations against Vadra were publicly aired during the BJP's election campaign back in 2014. Though the party came to power, they took no follow-up action against Vadra for five years. Suddenly, the day Priyanka took charge as Congress secretary, the Government got into action. What explains the coincidence? The people know even if the ruling party thinks that the people are dumb.<br />
<br />
And, pray, who is looking into the misdeeds of Vadra? The Enforcement Directorate, one of the many supposedly independent agencies that have lost their credibility in toto. This of course is not a new development; all parties in power have made a mockery of all agencies. But no one has done it with the rascality, the sinfulness and the in-your-face arrogance of the present regime. Things have reached a stage where an investigation by RAW, IB, CBI, ED etc spreads the impression that the citizen investigated is innocent and is merely being harassed for political purposes.<br />
<br />
This would be ironic in Vadra's case. Transgressions attributed to him stretch from family affairs (his father was "disowned" by him and a few years later was found dead in what was first described as a heart attack and later as a suicide) to his posturings as a political leader. He led a farcical motorcycle rally in Rae Bareli in 2004 and declared, even more farcically, "if people want, I can join politics". On the day Priyanka went to take charge at the Congress office, a poster appeared there featuring him with her. It was quickly removed by an embarrassed Congress.<br />
<br />
A smart ED will leave him alone so that he can continue embarrassing his wife and her party. Evidently this guy is an untamed horse. The first rule about wild horses is that one must approach them with caution. The texts say: "Ritual posturing and snorts often resolve a confrontation, but fighting does occur". By interfering, the agencies of a spiteful government can achieve nothing and lose much.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the Government's strategists think that a Vadra hullabaloo will divert public attention from issues that matter, such as rising joblessness, farmers' distress, destruction of small business through demonetisation, the rise of fringe elements with freedom to lynch and so on. This may be true up to a point. But the desperation with which such tactics are resorted to also suggests that the ruling dispensation will stop at nothing. The suspicions over voting machines, for example, may not be out of place. In the 2014 elections the present Prime Minister had acknowledged the importance of the Election Commission. "With full responsibility", he told a rally in UP then, "I am accusing India's Election Commission of discrimination". The rest of India has been making the accusation from the opposite side of the ring this time. Hullabaloo about Vadra's vagaries and Priyanka's looks is a way to outshout others. Clearly this is going to be an anything-is-possible election. Politics has never been this dirty in India.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-16132584565866486022019-02-04T13:15:00.002+05:302019-02-04T13:15:21.154+05:30WHY NORTHEAST CITIZENS REBEL<br />
Imagine all South Indian states uniting on a platform of ethnic difference from the north, as C.N.Annadurai briefly contemplated once upon a time. Something similar is happening in the northeast. Ethnically, culturally and historically, the northeastern states have been different from the rest of India. Northeasterners often talked about going to the "mainland" when they meant going to India. The mainlanders for their part often referred to northeasterners in terms and tones of racial superiority.<br />
<br />
Elections last February signalled what looked like a seachange in this scenario. The Congress was unseated and so was the Communist Party that had ruled Tripura under one leader for 20 years. A triumphant BJP formed a one-party government in Tripura while it formed alliances with other parties to take control of the remaining states. It was a clean sweep for the BJP which has had no presence in the northeast till then. In political terms, it was the equivalent of a coup d'etat.<br />
<br />
But suddenly last week, the gears slipped into reverse. An ideology-driven initiative by the BJP ignited resentment among its allies across the region. Protestors have taken to the street with mass demonstrations, burning of effigies, and hunger strikes. Six of the region's seven chief ministers have suspended their BJP links and formed a united front to fight the BJP-sponsored move to enforce the new legislation in the region and across the country.<br />
<br />
What is the BJP move that has provoked so much resentment? Outwardly it looks noble: Promoting a citizenship amendment bill that will give "persecuted minorities" in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan the right to become Indian citizens. The phrase "persecuted minorities" does not mean what it means linguistically. Shias and Ahmediyas, Islamic minorities routinely persecuted in Pakistan, qualify to be covered by the phrase, but that must be farthest from the minds of BJP strategists. Everyone knows that the BJP is referring only to the Hindu minorities in neighbouring countries. The proposed amendment means that Hindus in Bangladesh who migrate even illegally to the northeastern states and to West Bengal will get citizenship rights. Such migration/citizenship will alter the demographics of the northeastern states -- a consummation the BJP wants and the local people don't.<br />
<br />
The powerful student organisations of Assam and the Assam Gana Parishad were the first to rise in protest. One leader put it bluntly: "Assamese and other indigenous peoples feel betrayed by the Modi Government which seems hellbent on making Assam a dumping ground for foreigners thereby threatening our existence". The Gana Parishad has ended its two-year alliance with the BJP. Meghalaya's chief minister has warned that the northeast will seek support from across the country including the Congress. Thirteen local parties have said they would pull out of the BJP-led NDA if the amendment bill is taken up in the Rajya Sabha (it is already passed in the Lok Sabha).<br />
<br />
Actually, there are issues involved here that concern the whole country. The existing laws do not take religion or ethnicity into account in determining citizenship. The "right of birth" is the accepted norm. If this is enlarged to include the "right of blood", it will mean the acceptance of religion as a determining factor. That is precisely the BJP's aim as its lead strategist in the region, Hemant Biswas Sarma, made clear when he said: "We have to decide who our enemy is -- the 1.5 lakh people or the 55 lakh people". (That is, Bengali Hindu illegals or Bengali Muslim illegals in Assam). Note also that the 55 lakh are automatically considered enemy.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake, ethnic cleansing is the idea. China is paying heavily for its cleansing drive in Xinjiang, its vast autonomous province with 12 million Turkic-speaking Muslims. This region has more in common with Turkmenistan and the people of central Asia than with the Chinese which term, in the lexicon of Beijing, principally means the Han people. Beijing's policy of "integrating" Xinjiang has been relentless. Military repression, re-education camps, Sinicization of religion and officially sponsored re-location of thousands of Han Chinese families from the eastern heartland have not yet succeeded in changing the face and demography of Xinjiang. <br />
<br />
India does not even have China's luxury of a one-party dictatorship. Worse, it has a Constitution, a Parliament, a judiciary with its own mind and a media that defies discipline. But there may be a way out. China used the camouflage "socialism with Chinese characteristics" to grow into a capitalist success story. If BJP goes for "Hindutva with Indian characteristics", perhaps it may yet help India grow into a modern state.<br />
<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-91062584315346287252019-01-30T13:55:00.002+05:302019-01-30T13:55:15.357+05:30WHEN MIDGETS HIJACK DEMOCRACY<br />
Small men in big chairs are usually dangerous. It isn't just the Napoleon Complex: the tendency among short men to be overly assertive to make up for their lack of height. A politician who occupies a chair too big for him gets not only overly assertive but also contemptuous of others and their rights. The result is a dictator complex, the feeling that whatever they do is right.<br />
<br />
Consider the case of Kishorechand Wangkhem, a television journalist in Manipur. One fine night in November he was arrested for criticising Chief Minister N. Biren Singh and Prime Minister Modi. The charge was sedition. A magistrate found no sedition in the remarks the journalist made and released him on bail. Within two days he was jailed under NSA which is beyond judicial review.<br />
<br />
What exactly was the sedition Wangkhem committed? His style was typical Manipuri TV style, strong words strongly used, -- "street language" as the Chief Judicial Magistrate put it while allowing bail. The substance was something else. He objected to the CM weaving the Rani of Jhansi's struggle against the British into Manipur's freedom struggle. "When you praise the Rani of Jhansi as a freedom fighter covering Manipur your knowledge is nill and an insult to the freedom fighters of Manipur", he said.<br />
<br />
A historically accurate stance. But CM Biren Singh condemned it as "prejudicial to the security of the state". At worst it was prejudicial to the security of the Chief Minister. Which makes this is a classic case of the Louis XIV mentality of "I-am-the-state". Which should not surprise those who look into the story of N.Biren Singh. This guy was a footballer who used that skill to get into the Border Security Force. But he wanted a political role and power, so he quit and started a publication of his own, using journalism for political ends. Like many politicians, he too developed an "ideological" affinity to whoever was in power. That helped him become a minister in a Congress government in 2003. When the pendulam swang in favour of the BJP Biren Singh became a BJP man. Mission accomplished.<br />
<br />
Power gave him new insights. Addressing a conference of doctors, he outlined a vision no one else had done so far. "Be it doctors or politicians. We are here to serve the people. We are not here to take your abuses. If you think that common people can say anything to those in power, no you can't. If somebody in power has done something wrong, you can go to the court. But you don't have the right to abuse anyone publicly".<br />
<br />
Criticism is not abuse -- and criticism is one of the pillars of democracy. If criticism is taken as abuse and penalised, many of India's intellectuals, academics, editorial writers and columnists will be in jail under NSA. However a closer examination shows that Biren Singh, in his BJP avatar, has merely learned the techniques of currying favours with his bosses. At a fair in Porbunder in Gujarat in March last year, he said: "During the time of Lord Krishna, there was no separate Arunachal Pradesh or Assam or Manipur. The entire northeast was one entity. Arunachal, Manipur and Nagaland are bordering China. Lord Krishna made them part of India during his time".This is a determined man. History and geography must bend to his will.<br />
<br />
Is this a pattern among BJP leaders? At a meeting addressed by Maharashtra Minister Vinod Tawde recently, a student asked a question with his tape recorder on. The minister asked him to turn off the recorder and the student wanted to know why. The minister's response was to ask his security men to arrest the student and confiscate his recorder. The same arrogance of power made V.K.Singh, known variously as the Sanghi General and the foot-in-mouth mantri, to proclaim that "people making accusations over Rafale aircraft deal are illiterate".<br />
<br />
Perhaps small men imagine that they can frighten critics away. The media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, found India was the fifth deadliest place for a journalist.The All Manipur Working Journalists Union disowned journalist Wangkhem. For them discretion was the better part of valour. However, the Students' Union found the courage to support Wangkhem while the Indian Journalists' Union said that the freedom of expression included the right to offend. Or course it does. But what do you do when a politician says that the right to rule includes the right to arrest critics and to call them illiterate. Either politicians win and others lose or others lose and politicians win.<br />
<br />
<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-91840981590147774882019-01-21T13:37:00.001+05:302019-01-21T13:37:10.422+05:30MLAs FOR SALE, AGAIN AND AGAIN<br />
What a curse democracy has become. It truly is bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. With no stops. Look at the cabinet circus in Karnataka. Look at Devendra Phadnavis fighting ally-turned-enemy Shiv Sena. Look at Yogi Adityanath still struggling to figure out whether governance is animal or vegetable. Look, if you have the heart, at the tragic spectacle of Manohar Parrikar, stricken with advanced cancer, being forced to carry on as chief minister in Goa because the party wants to safeguard its interests. Pathetic.<br />
<br />
The MLA circus of the kind seen in Karnataka is by now a familiar feature of Indian politics. Parliament went to the extent of amending the Constitution in 1985 to pass the anti-defection law. The aim was to stop "the evil of political defection". The evil never stopped. The resort politics popularised by N.T.Rama Rao continues unabated. The old motto of Aya Ram Gaya Ram has given way to the new bazaar practice of Buy Ram Sell Ram.<br />
<br />
The Kumaraswamy government that carries on precariously in Karnataka was the result of swalpa adjust maadi between the Congress and Gowda-run Janata Dal United. The BJP's Yeddyurappa sat momentarily in the seat of power thanks to the connivance of the state's BJP Governor. But not all the treasures of Arabia could buy him a majority in the House and Yeddyurappa had to quit before he could form a government.<br />
<br />
But the Buy Ram Sell Ram culture continued as the latest "crisis" has proved. The BJP was out to buy 12 to 15 Congress MLAs and negotiations must have progressed far enough for several MLAs to be housed in luxury water holes in Delhi and Mumbai and other places. More than ten Congress MLAs had apparently conducted their bargains successfully. But Yeddyurappa & Co still could not reach the magic number that would have toppled the government.<br />
<br />
Then came the Congress shouting from the hilltops that no force could bring its government down. Translated into everyday language, it meant that the Congress-JDU had out-bid the BJP in the auction of MLAs. As the ruling combination, they could offer not only cash but also ministerships and boards chairmanships, both recognised routes to riches. Expect new ministers in the cabinet with plans of course to serve the people. Congress leader Siddaramaiah, sounding more innocent than a baby, accused Yeddyurappa of horse trading and "offering crores of rupees" to Congress MLAs. What a nasty thing to do to the pure-as-heaven Congress.<br />
<br />
The chances are that the crisis and its sudden ending (has it ended?) were more than a Congress-BJP affair. A Congress-Congress combat could as well have been part of it. The power struggle within the Karnataka Congress is no secret. Siddaramaiah who headed the Congress government until Kumaraswamy took over in May last year is not reconciled to his loss of office. He speaks and acts like the Congress party boss if not also as the effective chief minister. That means a barely hidden confrontation with party maverick and troubleshooter, D.K.Shivkumar. The long standing ambition of Shivkumar to become chief minister makes him an active player in the buy and sell market. Ambitions are not snuffed out by temporary ceasefires. So the drama in Karnataka will continue, crisis giving way to peace and peace breaking into crisis.<br />
<br />
That pattern has become part of life across the country. Those in power believe that they should remain there indefinitely while those in opposition believe it is their right to topple the government and take over. To achieve their aims, sworn enemies become close friends, like Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav have done in UP and Chandrasekhar Rao and Jagan Mohan Reddy in Hyderabad. Every tukda party is proclaiming that it will join hands with "like-minded partners". All are like-minded in their shared greed for power.<br />
<br />
What makes politicians different from ordinary human beings is the certainty with which they can extoll their own supposed virtues and ridicule others. At a long, televised press conference in Guwahati last week the BJP's Ram Madhav did just that. He proclaimed how mahagathbandhan parties were unstable, corrupt and devoid of vision while the BJP was stable, corruptionless and visionary. As simple as that. What a pity that there are citizens in India who vote for unstable, corrupt and visionless parties when the saints and angels of the BJP are ready to sacrifice themselves for the country.<br />
<br />
We already have the facts and figures of tomorrow: public presentation of lies as truths, intolerance, polarisation, religious violence. The future is already here.<br />
<br />
<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-57250961088877560292019-01-14T14:16:00.003+05:302019-01-14T14:16:54.588+05:30AYYAPPA POLITICS IS SACRILEGETwo factors are preventing the Sabarimala conundrum from moving towards a solution -- and the self-promoting politics of BJP-RSS forces are too unimportant to be one of them. It's true that Hindutva extremists' political obstructionism drew attention in the early days through violence. Although their campaign was in the name of tradition, they had no compunctions about breaking traditions; a leader climbed the holy steps to deliver a speech. Only when they realised the counter-productive nature of their agitation did they move to Trivandrum with the idea of "relay" fasting which, when we think about it, is a con game: One person lying in a bed for a couple of days without food and then going away to eat while another person takes to the bed, presumably after a hearty meal.<br />
<br />
The real reasons behind the crisis continuing in Sabarimala are, first, wrong readings of the issue of discrimination and, secondly, the tactlessness of the chief minister that defies commonsense. Liberal opinion has taken a one-track position based on women's right to equality. According to them, a prolonged campaign was necessary in Kerala to let Dalits enter temples and a similar campaign has become necessary to let women enter Sabarimala.<br />
<br />
This is a mixing of issues that have neither historical nor sociological similarities. Dalit oppression, which had reached sadistic levels in Kerala, was based on open, shameless, caste-based discrimination. It violated the basic tenets of any civilised society and had to be brought to an end. Sabarimala's no-woman stance is not a comparable case of discrimination. It is based on faith, tradition and, let it not be forgotten, a High Court ruling in 1991. The court remarked that the practice was there from "time immemorial" because women could not do the mandatory 41-day penance due to menstruation. The present court ruling has to be weighed against the previous one.<br />
<br />
More importantly, the no-woman tradition in Sabarimala runs parallel to no-man traditions in other temples. What is considered the largest annual gathering of women in the world takes over the main roads in Trivandrum to cook rice in earthern pots for the Goddess in Attukal temple at Pongala time. Men are barred from participation. In fact, the Attukal temple is known as the Sabarimala of women. Another revered pilgrim centre in Kerala, Chakkulathu Kavu, is also for women only. So is the famous Bhagati Maa temple in Kanyakumari. No one accuses these temples of discrimination against men and there is no campaign for men's equality. By the same token, no one should accuse Swamy Ayyappan's temple of discrimination against women. The space for faith in our lives is legitimate. Those who do not have the faith should not hinder those who have. That is what makes a society free.<br />
<br />
As has been said before, "It is natural for an old civilisation to have old practices. Justice is best when it recognises that there is no offence in the logic of the faithful being at variance with the logic of the rationalist".<br />
<br />
The second factor that keeps Sabarimala on the boil is Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's haste in helping women to enter Sabarimala. The steps he has taken in the wake of the Supreme Court order and the statements he has made in a stop-me-if-you-can tone reflect a Communist leader's attitude rather than chief minister's. As head of government, he could have gained much by keeping tempers low, ensuring an atmosphere of peace and giving time to various players to adjust to new concepts. But he rushed into action saying that he had no option but to carry out court orders.<br />
<br />
A week ago he showed that he did have options. A court order allowed a Christian faction to conduct services in a disputed church. An opposing faction physically prevented this, but the state Government did nothing to ensure that the court order was duly implemented. Evidently the Pinarayi Government picks and chooses cases in which it wants to use the courts and cases where it likes to ignore the judiciary.<br />
<br />
Never has Kerala politics been in such a mess. Pinarayi is considered the strong man of politics, but there is no sign of his strength benefiting the state. He cannot even control the faction-ridden police force despite repeated reshuffling of top officers. The Congress is in Trishanku Swarga, not knowing who is its leader and who is not. In the melee, the BJP has outshouted others and matched communist murder politics with its own. These manipulators are only committing sacrilege in the name of the Lord of Sabarimala.<br />
<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-60742268973177907352019-01-07T13:43:00.000+05:302019-01-07T13:43:00.601+05:30CLAIMS VS FACTS IN A NEW YEARNow that a week has passed, we can reckon how many New Year resolutions have already been broken and how many are left to go down the drain. There is nothing here to feel guilty about. What are New Year resolutions for if not for breaking? Anyway, a brand new New Year will come soon enough enabling us to make a whole new set of resolutions to be freshly broken. After all, the purpose of a new year is not to let us have a new year, as British thinker-writer G.K.Cresterton said. The New Year comes to tell us that "we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet and a new backbone, new ears and new eyes".<br />
<br />
If we absorb the spirit of that sound advice, in the first place, we won't make resolutions that bind us to exercise every morning for half an hour, to save ten rupees every day, to drink 12 glasses of water without fail, etcetera. We will be able to look at traffic jams, pickpockets and politicians with new eyes and new nose, drink unsafe water and breathe poisonous air with a new backbone. In other words, we will be able to cope with what we cannot control.<br />
<br />
And what about resolutions that should be made but are not? Justice S.R.Sen of Meghalaya High Court recently showed us how to proceed in this area. He said that there should have been a resolution by the makers of modern India to declare the country a Hindu nation. He urged a new resolution that would allow non-Muslims of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to come to India and claim citizenship here. Any takers?<br />
<br />
The Union Government, for its part, appears to have resolved to lease out islands in Andaman Nicobar to private firms to build holiday homes for foreign tourists. These are islands the ecology of which is famously fragile. They are also considered important in terms of defence. Until recently there were restrictions, for strategic reasons, on visitors to Andaman-Nicobar. All caution is now gone as the islands are being opened for "private firms". Which are these private firms and how private are the forces behind them?<br />
<br />
A resolution that should have been passed with some sense of urgency was one banning misinformation by the Government. Since nothing of the sort was done, the Finance Ministry and the PMO itself have been feeding us with false claims and false statistics.The repeated claims about the success of the Swatch Bharath campaign is an example. This mission, with Mahatma Gandhi's spectacle frame as its logo, grabbed headlines with a show of the Prime Minister sweeping a road. It describes itself as "the world's largest cleanliness drive" with "53,565 pledges taken, 26,565 activities done, 40,651 active participants".<br />
<br />
The campaign was launched in October 2014. At the end of four years, how clean is India? Of the 15 most polluted cities in the world, 14 are in India; the capital city of New Delhi hit the headlines in 2018 with the air going noxious. According to Lancet magazine, 1.2 million Indians died in 2017 due to air pollution problems. In the Environmental Performance Index, India ranked 141 out of 180 in 2016. In just two years, it slipped further down to become 177th out of 180. Lakes in Bangalore became a science curiosity by catching fire; accumulated filth had turned into poisonous white foam covering the surface of the water. In the Global Hunger Index India stands 103rd out of 119. The highest number of malnutrition deaths in 2017 took place in India. The highest number of stunted children is also in India. Even the aftermath of the Union Carbide disaster 34 years ago received no attention from the authorities. The remains of the catastrophe that killed 4000 people continue to poison groundwater in the area. <br />
<br />
This is how Swatch our Bharath is.<br />
<br />
The listing of failures can go on because attempts to deceive citizens have not worked. Ten million jobs were promised, for example, while only 1.4 million materialised, doubling of farm income promised, but only a 5 percent rise materialised. But there is no need to go on because the picture is clear in spite of the usual tricks of denial. India has gone backward, not forward despite the New Years that have come and gone. That reality will prevail even as new promises and new claims rain on us this election season. "Happy New Year" has lost its glamour. It's more relevant to wish "Happy Old Years".<br />
<br />
<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-65144968547153279012018-12-31T13:20:00.001+05:302018-12-31T13:20:25.524+05:30WHEN HAPPY NEW YEAR IS A PRAYER<br />
So what were the most indiscreet, absurd, ridiculous and damfoolish statements of 2018? Not that anything this year can overshadow the all-time record set by Mulayam Singh Yadav. Remember his justification of rapes on the ground that boys will be boys? He exposed his Stone Age mentality again when he said, "We should avoid the use of computers and English in India". <br />
<br />
The year that is passing did make an effort to keep up, ministers leading the pack. Anant Kumar Hegde said that Sanskrit would be the language of future supercomputers. Haryana minister Anil Vij added that Mahatma Gandhi's image on currency notes brought about devaluation. This was mild compared to a 2008 comment by party colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. His piece of wisdom was: "Women wearing lipstick and powder are the same as J & K terrorists".<br />
<br />
Religious rabidness being the fashion of the times, men in power took action that would otherwise have been irregular. The seasoned tactician Shivraj Singh Chauhan elevated five ordained sadhus to minister status and formally anointed them as Minister Babas. That his government fell in the election that followed is a different story. The fall also ended plans for sadhus and temple workers to collect metal for a 108-ft Statue of Wisdom a la the Statue of Unity in Gujarat.<br />
<br />
Here are some other sayings of the year. Gujarat's Chief Minister Rupani said Narad Muni was the original Google. Rajasthan's Education Minister Devnani said cows exhale oxygen. Former Uttarkhand Chief Minister Nishank said: "Science is a dwarf in front of astrology. We speak about nuclear science today. But Sage Kanad (Kashyapa) conducted nuclear test one lakh years ago". Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh want us to know that "the idea behind yogic farming is to empower the seeds with help from positive thinking. We should enhance the potency of seeds by rays of paramatma shakti". The one and only Biplab Deb of Tripura took up a different topic. He said, "In Mahabharata Sanjaya was blind but he narrated what was happening in the battlefield. This was due to internet technology. Satellites existed during that period". (Sanjaya was not blind, by the way. His king Dhritarashtra was. Sanjaya had divya drishti with which he could see events far away).<br />
<br />
The Mughal period of Indian history is something our patriots would like to wish away. But not all Mughal rulers were bad. According to Madanlal Saini, president of BJP in Rajasthan, "when Humayun was dying he called Babur and said, 'If you want to rule Hindustan, you must keep three things in mind -- respect cows, brahmins and women".<br />
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Bringing up the rear in 2018 was Kiren Rijiju, a minister who usually tries to strike a modernistic pose. According to him, "the population of Hindus in India is going down because they never convert people while minorities are flourishing". Rijiju is in the Home Ministry. Why doesn't he take steps to put a full stop to conversions? Why not also implement the Honourable MP Sakshi Maharaj's proposal that "every Hindu woman must produce at least four kids to protect Hinduism".<br />
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This year's Ignoble Prize for absurd, fatuous, ridiculous statements must of course go to the faceless terrorists who dominate the social media with their reckless threats and warnings. A Carnatic music singer was called a traitor because he was scheduled to sing compositions about "gods of religions other than Hinduism". Actor par excellence Naseeruddin Shah is being pilloried for criticising Hindutva extremism. This is a man who did not even care to know what was his religion until admission problems made him join Aligarh Muslim University. He became a fish out of water there, too. His "crime" this time is that he criticised certain aspects of politics in his country. Like Yashwant Sinha does. Like Arun Shourie does. Like Shatrughan Sinha does. Like Shashi Tharoor does. But criticism from them is okay because their names do not have a Naseeruddin in it. This is unacceptable. <br />
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Will India get out of intolerance is the question 2018 leaves behind. The answer will come loud and clear as 2019 gets into stride. Threats to citizens with different opinions will either become the rule of life or a thing of the past depending on how the votes go in a few months from now. We have only one India, an India of multiple faiths, multiple languages, multiple food and dress cultures -- Incredible India. Will the incredible retain its glory?<br />
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Happy New Year is not just a greeting this year but a prayer.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-56817950700806703752018-12-24T13:27:00.002+05:302018-12-24T13:27:38.072+05:30HOW AMBEDKAR MAKES US RICHER<br />
"The Hindus wanted Vedas, and they sent for Vyasa who was not a caste Hindu. The Hindus wanted an epic, and they sent for Valmiki, an untouchable. The Hindus wanted a constitution, and they have sent for me". That was B. R. Ambedkar at his biting best. He went on to underline an existential misfortune of India: "The greatest tragedy of the Hindi belt is that the people of that region discarded Valmiki and installed Tulsidas". That was his way of saying that the impact of Ramcharitmanas was negative compared to that of Ramayana. Valmiki told a human tale without propagating any selective morality. Tulsidas turned that tale into a religious text with sanitised spiritual tenets for devotees to follow. Shrewdly Ambedkar showed why the Hindi belt was culturally different, and less tolerant, than the rest of India.<br />
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Ambedkar has become a message, as only Mahatma Gandhi has. After their passing, a difference between the two messages slowly developed. Gandhism has been largely contained within its symbolic value, while Ambedkarism has developed into a cult inspiring a growing movement for social and political advancement. The number of Ambedkar statues across India bears witness to it.<br />
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And why not, when his observations on various issues continue to strike us as unusually perceptive? Yet another collection of these comments is presented in the Navayana publication rather bafflingly titled, Ambedkar: The Attendant Details. It is a collection of reminiscences that bristle with sagacity, humour and sheer wisdom. We get peeps into many aspects of his life -- his poverty, his addiction to books, his illiterate wife's rustic ways, his Dalit admirers.<br />
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"Even though I had become a barrister", he recalls, "the thought of practising law in Bombay made me nervous. No solicitor would accept me as his junior. Finally I took up a job in a commerce college for 150 rupees per month. I faced opposition from various quarters. I gave 50 rupees to my wife for domestic expenses".<br />
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His wife Ramabai was a product of timeless traditions. She would walk two miles with a basket of dung cakes on her head, ignoring taunts by local women that the wife of Mr Barrister was carrying dung on her head. Mr Barrister for his part described Ramabai's unique method of financial management. "She would take 30 pieces of paper, put one and a half rupees in each and keep it tied up in a piece of cloth. She kept five rupees aside for contingencies. Come what may, she would never spend more than the contents of one paper packet in one day".<br />
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Ambedkar got married when he was 17. But he was Ambedkar and he went on with his education. He used to tell his followers to avoid early marriage so that they could focus on education. Books were his lifelong passion. A follower counted 8000 books in his house in 1938. When Ambedkar died 18 years later, there were 35,000 books. He would have books on the bed, on sidetables near it, on the floor, on his chest as he dozed off.<br />
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There was a rush of religious suitors when Ambedkar declared his intention to leave Hinduism. The Nizam of Hyderabad offered Rs 5 crore if he and his followers embraced Islam. The authorities of the Golden Temple explained to him about the equality that prevailed in Sikhism. Christians tried a trick. The British bishop of Bombay took the highfalutin position that there was no point in conversion without conviction. At the same time other bishops, all Britons, wooed him with promises of Jesus Christ's blessings. Ambedkar had no difficulty in turning away from the bishops because he knew that the caste system was a reality in Christianity, too. One of the most learned men of his time, Ambedkar knew that Buddhism was the right refuge for him.<br />
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Included in the book are excerpts from a diary kept by Devi Dayal, who looked after Ambedkar's books and sundry household tasks. The title of the diary proclaims its uniqueness: Daily Routine of Dr. Ambedkar. It tells you all about what Babasaheb ate for breakfast (toast, eggs and tea), how he carried newspapers to the dining table, marking items with a red pencil to be cut and preserved, how he could recall from memory which cutting was in which file kept in which cupboard. The Dalit feminist writer Urmila Pawar sums things up in her foreword by saying, "The more we see him in the round, the richer we become", a point that can be made about no leader alive today.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-66463939720366115882018-12-17T13:22:00.002+05:302018-12-17T13:22:28.263+05:30HINDUISM TRIUMPHS OVER HINDUTVA<br />
This column has said more than once that the greatness of India lies in its majority community voting, not as Hindus, but as Indians. By far the most dramatic -- and comforting -- confirmation of this has been provided by the latest election results.<br />
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The drama is contained in basic population figures. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh constitute the heartland of Hindu India. In Rajasthan 89 percent of the population is Hindu, in Madhya Pradesh 90 percent and in Chhattisgarh 93 percent. By contrast only 80 percent of the people are Hindu in Uttar Pradesh, only 83 percent in Bihar. Which means that it is the states with the largest number of Hindus that have rejected the BJP. Remember that the BJP had raised its Hindutva pitch as electioneering progressed. The VHP added its bit by holding a massive rally in Delhi demanding Ram Mandir in Ayodhya rightaway. Simple, ordinary voters exercised their franchise to show their disapproval of this communal approach to politics. Their action strengthened India as well as Hinduism. Hindutva's politics of polarisation stood exposed.<br />
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The results shocked the party that had come to consider its triple strengths as invincible -- the brilliance of the Prime Minister's oratory, the win-anyhow philosophy of the party president, and the Machiavellian genius of the establishment's legal pundit cum finance minister. Each of them is unmatched in his field. But all of them shared a fatal weakness -- overconfidence that led them to believe they were always right.<br />
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They were often wrong. The Prime Minister was wrong in constantly denigrating Jawaharlal Nehru. The first prime minister of the country did make mistakes, but all the statue-building and oratory of the BJP cannot dent Nehru's historical importance as an architect of modern India. Party boss Amit Shah stooped lower still with his contempt for the snakes and mongooses, the dogs and the cats that teamed up against his party. Now that the snakes et al have been approved by the people, will the party chief concede that in the eyes of the citizens of this country, including the majority of Hindus, he is nothing more than an overrated manipulator?<br />
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Arun Jaitley is the brainiest of them all and therefore the damage he does goes deepest. He is the only BJP leader to whom Narendra Modi feels obligated. And for good reason. It was Jaitley who first proposed Modi for the chief ministership of Gujarat. It was Jaitley who defended Modi when Prime Minister Vajpayee himself was inclined to "punish" Modi for the Gujarat riots. It was Jaitley who proposed Modi for prime ministership over the objections of seniors like Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj. It's no surprise that Jaitley became the most powerful person in the Modi Government despite the fact that he could not win an election.<br />
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Every significant political move in the last four years carries the Jaitley stamp. It was he who thought up the Electoral Bonds, a devious way to channel funds anonymously to political parties. The Election Commission itself objected to it, but Jaitley didn't care. His drive to bring the Reserve Bank under the Government's control has been relentless. Urjit Patel's resignation was more shocking than Raghuram Rajan opting not to seek a second term because Patel had initially given the impression that he was pliant and obedient. Evidently even he found the Government's demands unacceptable. These demands boil down to accessing the Reserve Bank's assets for the Government's politically-motivated spending schemes. No other finance minister had taken liberties with the RBI's autonomy and assets. What Jaitley proved in the process was that he had no qualms about distorting even the foundational principles of the country's economic structure for political purposes.<br />
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Major policy initiatives of the last four years reflect the same authoritarian approach: Demonetisation that wrecked the lives of citizens in unprecedented ways, Goods & Services Tax that complicated the system instead of simplifying it, inaction on bad loans by banks that benefited party cronies. Arun Jaitley welcomed occasions to dwell on these issues, more than any other party leader. The frequency of his television interviews is an example. On all those occasions he justified every self-centred anti-people move with an air of grandeur that suggested that people who disagreed with him were mentally retarded.<br />
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Those people have now told the BJP that communal passions have no place in politics. Will the BJP pay heed, or will it turn vengeful? Power in Delhi is in its hands for another quarter. Power is a hydra-headed beast and a quarter year is a long time. Momentous days are upon us.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-54653509488306150512018-12-10T13:33:00.001+05:302018-12-10T13:33:29.394+05:30MANUFACTURING HUMANS TO ORDER<br />
Is editing babies in the womb the next big thing? A Chinese scientist who claimed the first embryo-engineered birth said the babies he produced would get neither HIV nor Alzheimer's. The implication is that you can have children made to order as per your taste and preferences -- children with blue eyes and blonde hair, or with pointed nose and African curls, children who are not anti-nationals. The age of designer babies is upon us. Or should we call them superbabies?<br />
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It was at a conference on gene-editing that Chinese researcher He Jiankui said he had helped make the world's first genetically edited babies. He had altered embryos for seven couples and one had produced twins. He said his aim was to generate a trait that would ensure HIV-resistant babies. Fellow gene-editing specialists at the conference were the first to condemn him for doing what they described as monstrous and unconscionable.<br />
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Among the critics were China's own scientists. More than 100 of them issued a statement calling the birth of the edited babies "madness". China's health authorities ordered a "serious investigation" into the matter, followed by a ban on gene-editing. But how authentic is this official reaction? While most countries have banned gene-line engineering, China has promoted research in the area. It is known to have built the world's largest DNA database. China's political leadership is open about its eagerness to be the world leader on every front.<br />
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Besides, the concept of superbabies is not new. It has had its day in countries as different as Hitler's Germany and Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. The Nazis had an active programme to encourage the birth of Aryan babies from "racially pure" couples. Hitler's ruthless bodyguard cum secret service called SS was in charge of the programme. They raised a special organisation for the purpose called Lebensborn, Fount of Life, in 1935. Pure Aryan women, even if unmarried, were encouraged to give birth anonymously. Orphans considered racially proper were adopted by the state while abortion was encouraged when babies were likely to be handicapped. Unfortunately, none of this helped Hitler in the end.<br />
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Singapore's approach was different. Lee Kuan Yew was alarmed when a trend of "qualified men" marrying "downward" surfaced in his island nation. It led him to warn that "levels of competence will decline, our economy will falter, and society will decline". It was a clear case of over-reaction, but the all-powerful Prime Minister proceeded with firm action. A platform called Social Development Unit was set up in 1988 and it arranged love cruises, tea dances and bowling clinics to encourage college-educated men and women to marry. An official of the Unit put it rather bluntly: "If you want to produce geniuses, you have to get a graduate man to marry a graduate girl". The Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore published a booklet titled "Living and Loving" urging young people to give dating a try. Did Singapore get a generation geniuses? No sign of it yet.<br />
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We should not hasten to criticise politicians who have these fancy ideas. For a long time now the scientific community has been working at gene editing and often with success. By 2015 the Harvard Medical School had developed a new technology for editing DNA. That year's May-June issue of the MIT Technology Review had a cover story with the title "we can now engineer the human race".<br />
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The customary attitude in this matter is that meddling with human genes is irresponsible, unsafe and morally wrong. Some say these experiments are premature. Some try to sound rational and say that gene manipulation is possible, but of no practical use. One scientist put it this way: " 'Can you do it' is one thing. The most important question is 'Would you do it?' Why would you want to do it? What is the purpose"?<br />
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Such questions were raised by Einstein, too, but the atom bomb was exploded, forcing the scientist to concede that politics was more difficult than physics. In the US a commercial biotechnology company was formed in 2011 with scientists' participation to let parents decide "when and how they have children and how healthy those children are actually going to be".<br />
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The die is cast. China knows it and will make every move to ensure its position up front. India also puts genetic engineering high up in the academic area, but only to get longer-lasting tomatoes and golden rice. It would be great if we could develop technology that produces humans with an aversion to using religion as a political tool.<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-86609442664282055782018-12-03T13:18:00.004+05:302018-12-03T13:18:55.271+05:30POLITICS PROMOTES BAD MANNERSWhen we say or do things that we should not say or do, it's bad manners. In this election season bad manners became the very norm of public life. How else can we explain an educated and experienced political leader saying that Narendra Modi, Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Ritambara are lower caste people and therefore know nothing about Hinduism, that Brahmins alone are learned? The comment was made by Congress leader C.P.Joshi, a PhD holder and professor of psychology who was cabinet minister under Manmohan Singh. It was an indication of the depths of rottenness to which politics has taken our country in just a few decades.<br />
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We had started off well. For two brief periods electoral democracy functioned in India with decorum and civility. The first was when Jawaharlal Nehru set the tone beginning with the first general election in 1951. Courtesy prevailed in politics. Backroom manipulators like S.K.Patil in Bombay and Atulya Ghosh in Calcutta plotted and conspired, but they had to stay within the code of public decency that was mandatory in Nehru's India.<br />
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The model of correctness in campaigning was V.K.Krishna Menon, a veteran of electoral politics in London where he had contested and won. The Cold War was at its height and powerful US-led anti-communist lobbies singled out Menon as their principal target. In the fiercest battle in which Menon faced Acharya Kripalani, editorials, speeches, leaflets and slogans vilified him in personal terms. But Menon stuck to his British-style campaigning, not even mentioning Kripalani by name, let alone attack him. His speeches were about policy, about war and the need for peace, about non-alignment, about India's role in the world. It was political politeness at its best. Menon kept winning until 1967 when S.K.Patil, now the unchallenged king of Bombay, introduced what was then a novelty -- the argument that Menon was not a Maharashtrian. Nehru was dead. India was changing.<br />
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The second golden age of electoral democracy was when T.N.Seshan reigned as Chief Election Commissioner (1990-96). All he did was to enforce the rules, but he did it with such authority and attention to detail that the electoral exercise in India became a marvellous spectacle that the world watched with awe. It was post-Emergency India and politics had become infested with time-servers, family retainers, profiteers and plain thugs. None of them had a chance against the enforcement juggernaut of the unflinching CEC. Seshan showed what one man could do ensure that democracy did not become a hydra-headed monster. In time Seshan retired. And the monster was set free.<br />
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Today candidates give money openly to constituents, an illegality Seshan had stopped. The Election Commission itself was recently caught favouring the ruling party more than once. These are indications that the sense of morality that ruled politics in an earlier era is gone. Small wonder that even language used by politicians has tuned vulgar.<br />
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Congress leader Kamalnath asking Muslim leaders to ensure that 90 percent of their people voted for his party was not vulgar; it was bluntly communal. His colleague Raj Babbar was vulgar when he referred to the fall of the rupee and said that the currency was "inching towards the age of Narendra Modi's respected mother". What was the point of that comparison? Bad manners for the sake of bad manners?<br />
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Giriraj Singh is known for boorishness. Choosing to be an extremist despite being a Union Minister, he makes notorious statements one after another. The worst was: If Rajiv Gandhi had married a Nigerian, would the Congress have accepted her as its leader? Even the BJP was ashamed and forced him to make some kind of apology. A man so uncultured keeps issuing warning to those who do not toe his Hindutva agenda, while poor Mani Shankar Aiyar looks doomed for describing the Prime Minister as "neech", an unwarranted term.<br />
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Donald Trump must have been impressed by Indian politicians, hence his reckless use of bad words against people he dislikes. A woman TV presenter was called "low IQ" who was "bleeding badly from a facelift". He called some opponents crazy, phoney and psycho -- language never used by a US president before.<br />
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This kind of politics is criticised even by professional criminals. Remember Daku Malkhan Singh, the Chambal Valley dacoit who struck terror in the region in the 1970s? He surrendered in 1962 and is leading a quiet life in his farm. He recently surveyed the political scene and said: "We were rebels, not dakus. Today's netas are crorepatis. They are hi-tech dakus".<br />
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Truer words were never spoken.<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-30591683502379535362018-11-26T13:41:00.002+05:302018-11-26T13:41:14.052+05:30NAXALS AND OTHER PESTILENCES<br />
What exactly is a Maoist? Or a Naxalite? Or an Activist? Or an Anti-national? Or an Urban Naxal? (Is there a Village Naxal?) Obviously there is something bad about them, though we don't know what. In the old days of binary values, if you were a communist you were bad; if you were anti-communist you were good. Now communism and Marx don't matter. Note that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was banned in 2004 while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was considered so harmless that it was left to stew in its own juice.<br />
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It wasn't so when the war against Hitler ended and Churchill's Britain and Roosevelt's America reluctantly teamed up with Stalin's Soviet Union to share the spoils of war. In no time Stalin and Communism were seen as enemies of democracy. A hate wave rose in America. The result was the Cold War that plagued the world for four tense decades from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s. Movies were made on the Cold War, books written. In the midst of the turmoil, America came under the spell of a mighty force called McCarthyism.<br />
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In a speech in early 1950, Joseph McCarthy, a Republican Senator, said that he had a list of 250 card-carrying communists working for the State Department. Pandemonium broke out, fear gripped the thinking class, and Senator McCarthy became the most powerful politician in America. <br />
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He turned out to be a cruel manipulator. Forming the so-called House Un-American Activities Committee, he led a witch hunt. Anyone could be called before his Committee and asked: "Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?" Many careers were destroyed. People like Charlie Chaplin ran away from America. The nightmare ended after an army lawyer took on McCarthy and gave him a verbal assault that was devastating. The Senate itself finally passed a resolution censuring him. A shocked McCarthy was plunged into depression and took refuge in alcoholism. He died unlamented in 1957.<br />
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McCarthyism's seven-year reign of terror was built on a simple premise: Attack those who did not toe what was projected as the line of patriotism. Does that sound familiar to us in India these days? Somebody provides a definition of nationalism and those who disagree are branded anti-national. A non-political institution like the Airports Authority of India feels obliged to cancel its invitation to classical singer T.M.Krishna in Delhi. Krishna finally performed before a large audience. But who tried to stop him? And why?<br />
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Girish Karnad, India's greatest living playwright, appears at a function wearing a placard hanging from his neck with the legend, "Me Too, Urban Naxal". What prompted this gentle, thinking citizen to show such a defiant gesture? Was he defying a shadow or the substance? That is the other side of Indian McCarthyism. The powers that spread fear, and provoke the fearless to react, are invisible and unheard. They are too clever, or cowardly, to set up an Un-Indian Activities Committee openly and put non-partisan citizens on trial.<br />
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Karnad was one of those who decided to call the bluff. A shadow named Vivek Agnihotri, a film maker, had asked patriots to make a list of those who were defending Urban Naxals critical of the current Government in Delhi. Some 50,000 people mocked him by enlisting themselves as Urban Naxals. One named Amrita Madhukalya said it in words that went out like pistol shots: "I think. I debate. I question. I dissent. I criticise. I empathise. I protest. I probe. I exist. Me Too Urban Naxal".<br />
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There is still no sign that the invisible members of the invisible Un-Indian Activities Committee will get the message. They ignore some, target some, punish some. Arundhati Roy keeps making statements like "in the India of today, to belong to a minority is a crime". At another level, Dabholkar and Pansare and Kalburgi were silenced though all they did was think, debate, question, empathise, probe.<br />
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In the course of the Dabholkar Pansare case, the revision bench of the Bombay High Court said: "We are witnessing a tragic phase in the country today. Citizens already feel that they cannot voice their concerns or opinions fearlessly. Are we going to see a day when everyone will need police protection to move around or to speak freely?"<br />
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In a 1952 judgment related to McCarthyism, US Supreme Court Justice Douglas Williams said: "Our weakness grows when we become intolerant of opposing ideas and depart from our standards of civil liberties". Voices of sanity abound. Of what avail?<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-66431012246242124252018-11-19T13:50:00.000+05:302018-11-19T13:50:04.550+05:30GRAVE NEW WORLD OF XI, TRUMPThe avatars of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping aim at making China the leader of the world. They have almost reached their targets. Under Trumpavatar, the policy of America First has led to US withdrawal from global engagements, be it NATO or Trans Pacific Partnership, leaving the field open to an assertive China. For its part, Xiavatar has been pushing the Asia Infrastructure Bank and the Belt and Road strategy across continents while concentrating at home on military modernisation and advanced cyber technology. China's advances on the frontiers of science have been astonishing -- or frightening depending on the angle of vision.<br />
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To put this in perspective, recall the fact that Mao Zedong proclaimed the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949, two years after India became independent. Mao's Cultural Revolution etc took China backward for nearly three decades. Its forward march began only in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping's reforms. That is, after India had gone through the prime ministerships of Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi, and the Emergency backlash had put Morarji Desai in the prime ministerial chair. Such a late start, and where is China today? Such an early start, and where is India now?<br />
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China has reached the point where it is challenging the US for world leadership. Its official military budget for 2017 was $ 190 billion (US, $ 590 billion, India, $ 50 billion). Its focus is on science and technology in military research. A Scientific Research Steering Committee was set up last year in addition to the Academy of Military Science, the National Defence University and the National University of Defence Technology. R & D resources put emphasis on nuclear fusion, hypersonic technology and multipurpose satellites. The US Defence Secretary's office began its annual report on China in August with the sentence: "China has the political will and fiscal strength to sustain a steady increase in defence spending, supporting the continued modernisation of the People's Liberation Army and the exploration of new technologies with defence applications".<br />
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China ignores conventional ethics in its determination to be the leader of the world. For years now hundreds of Chinese have been going to American universities for higher studies. Most of them return to China to let the motherland benefit from their freshly acquired expertise in various subjects. There have also been reports of Chinese specialists "stealing" industrial secrets from American companies. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, some 2500 military scientists, researchers and engineers were sent in the last decade to western universities to conduct research, sometimes in areas like navigation technology, quantum physics and cryptography.<br />
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It is known that China has been investing heavily in AI (Artificial Intelligence) with plans to become the world leader in that sector by 2025. It has openly said that AI is a "strategic technology". It also puts emphasis on indigenous manufacture. Already it is turning out armed drones and a string of ultramodern weapons. An aircraft carrier has been commissioned. China has become the world's third largest exporter of arms, after the US and Russia. Until now, America was developing its military prowess to meet Russian challenge. Now the benchmark is Chinese challenge.<br />
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China thinks long term. More importantly, China thinks culturally and historically. For the US and Russia, for example, military planning is related to political and strategic oneupmanship. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. For China it has to be sufficient unto eternity. Communism or no communism, the historical memory of China's imperial overlordship with neighbouring states maintaining tributary relationship with it is alive. Imperial China considered itself the centre of the world. Times may have changed, but the notion of a superior destiny gives China an inner power other nations lack.<br />
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This is the context in which the extraordinary powers Xi Jinping acquired through constitutional changes must be judged. The 19th party congress last year gave him powers that only Mao had before. Significantly it was the same party congress that proclaimed something no party congress had done before -- that it was right for China to return to the days when China was the world's leading power in trade. This, from the Chinese viewpoint, is precisely what Xi Jinping is doing with determination. His assertion that the whole of South China Sea is China's backwaters bears the stamp of his power and of his readiness to take on the world. The task will be easier with the help he is receiving from the mixed-up, confused Donald Trump. Say hello to the Grave New World.<br />
TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-39280538614305408572018-11-14T13:17:00.000+05:302018-11-14T13:17:23.300+05:30WHY LET RELIGION DESTROY INDIA?What's happening to our country? A huge and diverse land of 135 million people, 29 states and 22 scheduled languages, yet we are caught in a single obsession -- religion. All discussions, all decisions, all policies are shaped by religion. Sabarimala is on the edge of civil war. "Hindus are losing their patience", a Union Minister tells the Supreme Court after it postponed the Ayodhya case hearing. Uttar Pradesh changes Allahabad into Prayagraj. Soon Azamgarh will be Aryamgarh, Aligarh will be Harigarh, Muzaffarnagar will be Laxminagar, and Ahmedabad will be Karnavati. Will they become model cities as a result, all civic problems solved? <br />
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It's not that we don't have real issues bothering us. In fact we are immersed in issues that threaten us from multiple sides. The Reserve Bank is fighting the Finance Ministry. CBI, of all things, is sabotaging CBI. Breathing in the national capital has become more injurious to health than smoking. More and more youngsters are ending up jobless. Education has become a scandal. Not one Indian university is among the world's top 100. Indians are committing unbelievable crimes, like raping a 100-year old woman. Our food has largely become unfit for human consumption. No party talks about these subjects. Religion alone counts.<br />
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Food, the everyday food we eat, has become a threat. Chemical farming is so widespread that hardly any vegetable escapes residual dangers. Pesticides that are banned globally are used in India. Even endosulfan was supported by Ministers like Sharad Pawar despite the horrible deformations it caused in a generation of people. The "American way of farming" was introduced in Punjab in 1960s to usher in the Green Revolution. The result was the Cancer Train that left the farmers' town of Bathinda every night for Bikaner where treatment was more affordable. Overuse of pesticides turned the Green Revolution into a nightmare.<br />
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Did politicians do anything? Did people learn anything? Today farmers in several parts of Tamil Nadu use excessive pesticides on crops meant to go to neighbouring states, and less on portions meant for local consumption -- a version of parochial patriotism. Fish is preserved in chemicals used to keep human corpses from decaying too fast. According to UN reports, India ranks among the top countries whose agri-food products are rejected in the US and European Union. Indian exports are sent back because of the presence of microtoxins, microbial contamination, veterinary drug residue, heavy metals, unauthorised food additives, pesticides remnants and wrong product composition. <br />
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If our best is so often rejected by advanced countries, what would be the state of the food we keep for our own consumption? No wonder advanced countries export their worst to India. In 2008 as many as 35 large containers of hazardous American waste were found rotting in Tuticorin port for three years. Who allowed it to come there? Who kept it unattended for so long? How many made how much? <br />
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In 2003 Parliament went to the extent of banning Coca Cola and Pepsi from its canteens because of too much toxic pesticides. But there was no ban outside Parliament. That means, what was bad for MPs was okay for ordinary folks. MPs themselves lifted the ban after a while. The Coca Cola factory in Plachimada was closed because the waste fluids from it made neighbouring areas unfit for agriculture. But other factories in other cities continued. Before the power of lobbies, our policy makers bend their knees.<br />
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Colouring agents, among the most dangerous chemicals that go into food, are allowed free play. A look at Diwali halwas will show how colouring can even look unhealthy. Everybody knows that adulterants are used widely -- saw dust (in chilli powder), coal tar (in tea), dyes (in turmeric, green chillies, apples). Most colour enhancing dyes are highly carcinogenic. In responsibly governed countries these problems are contained. In Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, the authorities ensure that street food is not only clean but good enough to be a tourist attraction.<br />
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If others can do these things, why can't we? Because we are obsessed with religion and its politics. Nothing else matters. In Madhya Pradesh five sadhus were appointed ministers of state. Union Minister Giriraj Singh warned Muslims of "consequences" if they did not support Ram Mandir. As the distinguished novelist Mukundan said: There are no humans in India any longer, only Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Dalits. We have turned religion, meant to be a positive force, into a destructive idea. We spread hatred, attack others, lynch people in the name of God. No God will forgive us.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-19816678011733428382018-11-05T13:34:00.002+05:302018-11-05T13:34:44.871+05:30BURDEN OF BEING ALWAYS RIGHT<br />
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has the advantage of knowing that he is always right. Reserve Bank Governor Urjit Patel has taken his own time to learn that. Which is Patel's problem. He started out as Jaitley's handpicked man to replace Raghuram Rajan who simply had to go as Arvind Panagariya had to go and Arvind Subramaniam had to go. The international celebrity that he was, Rajan thought he knew banking and finance a tad better than the Finance Minister whose foundation, after all, was in law. But he forgot that the Minister was a politician, and politicians are wizards in all subjects from finance to rocket science.<br />
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Urjit Patel functioned obediently in the early days. When the country reeled under the impact of the half-baked, hastily implemented demonetisation two years ago, Patel became the target of attack by harassed citizens. The attacks grew harsher as ATMs failed as did RBI guidelines to restore some order. Patel bore the brunt of people's wrath. The Reserve Bank was called the Reverse Bank.<br />
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The first sign of the RBI Governor trying to regain his reputation was the bank's annual report a few months ago which showed that 99.3 percent of the banned currency had returned, thus putting an official stamp on the failure of demonetisation. Patel took another bold step when he asked banks to restructure their non-performing assets or initiate insolvency proceedings against borrowers, a move that could embarrass the Government which has distinguished borrowers among its friends. The RBI has also been taking a stand against banks that have been in the news for the wrong reasons though its hands seem to be tied in some cases (ICICI, for example).<br />
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The question now is not whether the RBI Governor has caused displeasure in the Finance Ministry, but how deep-going is the displeasure. Disagreements had fanned speculation about the Ministry imposing a section of the RBI Act that would make the Bank subservient to the Government. Adding fuel to the fire was a speech by RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya that went viral. He warned: "Governments that do not respect central bank independence will sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets and ignite economic fire". Even the General Secretary of the Reserve Bank Employees' Association indicated the way the wind was blowing inside the venerable institution when he said there must have been pressing reasons for Acharya to say what he said publicly.<br />
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The words of the Finance Minister, however, leave no scope for debate: The RBI is at fault and has been at fault for a long time. When the previous Congress-led Government allowed indiscriminate lending by banks, he said, the RBI failed to check it. "It was a regulator but it kept pushing the truth below the carpet", as Mr Jaitley put it.<br />
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Mr Jaitley has two powerful qualities that lend strength to his assertions: His conviction and his concern with only the facts he mentions; other facts do not exist or are a political conspiracy. A parliamentary committee reported in August that non-performing assets went up by Rs 6.2 lakh crore between March 2015 and March 2016, forcing the Government to provide public sector banks with Rs 5.1 lakh crore. Is that truth above or below the carpet?<br />
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What happened under the BJP Government happened under the Congress Government as well, showing the non-alignment of the powerful. Raghuram Rajan said in his 2017 book that large numbers of bad loans originated in 2006-2008 when too many of them "were made to well-connected promoters who have a history of defaulting on their loans". The lesson which will not surprise citizens, is that it doesn't matter who governs, plundering will go on.<br />
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Mr Jaitley doesn't like anyone to disagree with him. So he let it be known that he wanted the RBI under stronger government control. Clashes between the political order and the central bank are a familiar thing the world over. But always wisdom has prevailed, governments leaving the central banks effectively autonomous. This time also wisdom must prevail.<br />
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To achieve that end, it will be helpful if Mr Jaitley shows a wee bit more respect to people with different views, not unusual in a democracy. Assertions by an RBI Governor need not necessarily be seen as anti-democratic. A former BJP finance minister need not be dismissed as "a job applicant at 80". The leader of the main opposition party need not be called a "clown prince". Arun Jaitley is of course always right. But should it mean that all others are always wrong?<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-64560207606281144492018-10-29T13:42:00.002+05:302018-10-29T13:42:50.242+05:30THE STATE AS A CONSPIRACY?<br />
As chief ministers go, K.Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) is in a class of his own. He is known as an effective speaker and he is a good tactician. These were factors in the success of his mission to carve Telangana out of the original Andhra Pradesh. His decision to dissolve the assembly and go for an early test at the hustings was a smart move from his point of view. He is a man of ability and therefore, if he wins, he can do much good for the country. To do that, however, he must pay attention to at least three areas where a new approach will be essential.<br />
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The first is the I-Me-Myself style in which he handles his party, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti. He is the boss of course, but flaunting bossdom reduces one's stature. He doesn't really consult any one in the party. Advancing the election was an example of this. No one knew what he was planning. Without even waiting for an election notification, he announced 105 candidates, to their surprise.<br />
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Some may interpret this as a strategic masterstroke in that he struck before the opposition parties had time to realise what was happening. But the cost of such tactics is high. When all decisions are handed down from the Abode of Shiva as it were, discontent is inevitable across the board. Protests did rise this time from a few of his followers. Critics from other parties described him as "monarch, autocrat and despot".<br />
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The second area where KCR would benefit from a new approach is his habit of extending his religious beliefs into the public domain. As Chief Minister, he boycotted the state's administrative headquarters where the chief minister's office is situated for reasons of vaastu and improper designs in terms of setbacks and exit points. He built a new vaastu-compliant home-cum-secretariat structure sprawling over one-lakh square feet of living space on a 9-acre estate costing Rs 36 crore.<br />
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There is nothing wrong in having faith in vaastu or fixing programmes as per astrological rules. But the state's treasury cannot be used to foot the expenses when a chief minister desires to "fulfil his vow" and present gold ornaments to various gods. KCR travelled with his family in helicopters and chartered flights to make his offerings. In Tirumala alone the gold offered was worth Rs 5 crore. He said of course that all expenses were met from his personal funds and bank loans.<br />
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The third area where KCR should have second thoughts is the language he uses. He recently described Rahul Gandhi as the country's "biggest buffoon". He called Chandrababu Naidu a lizard, said that Naidu had a "thief's look" and was neechaa neechamaina (meanest of the meanest) chief minister in the country. He said his party would "drag Sonia Gandhi to bazaar". And so on and on.<br />
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Such remarks do get cheap applause from street crowds. But KCR should ponder over the fact that his abuse of Sonia Gandhi met with disapproval from his own rank and file. He is a man who holds a constitutional position. In our constitutional system, even enemies call one another "The honourable" inside the legislature. By observing basic rules of decency in public discourse, a leader will only enhance his stature. Likewise, abandonment of decency will only diminish him.<br />
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There is something almost visceral about KCR's hatred of Andhra Pradesh. He was once quoted as saying that he didn't want to be associated with anything that had an Andhra lineage. This is like one of a conjoined twins saying that he doesn't want to touch the other. Not all KCR's oratorical powers and temple offerings can nullify geography. In fact he should be grateful for what he has already got. Nizam's Hyderabad comprised a piece of Maharashtra (Marathwada), a piece of Karnataka (still known as Hyderabad Karnataka) and a piece of Teluguland called Telangana. Only Telangana succeeded in becoming a state on its own. A wise leader will rejoice in this and collaborate with the conjoined twin. <br />
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The Scottish independence movement has been a powerful one for decades. There is a separate Scottish Government headed by a First Minister. But when a referendum took place four years ago, 55 percent of the population voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. Geography prevailed. KCR will become a greater leader if he realises that he has only two options -- either to accept geographical reality and cooperate with his neighbours, or prove that Tolstoy was right when he said: The state is a conspiracy.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-49808510637153881152018-10-22T13:25:00.004+05:302018-10-22T13:25:42.109+05:30A CROWN PRINCE WARNS THE WORLD<br />
Saudi Arabia's attempts to play innocent in the murder of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi flopped from the start. Even Saudi supporter Donald Trump, initially expressed dismay and called for "severe punishment" if Khashoggi was killed. In turn Saudi Arabia's effective ruler Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) threatened to "respond to any action with a bigger one".<br />
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Threats will not erase the damage already suffered by MbS and his country. Revulsion across the world at Khashoggi's disappearance in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul led to protests by a number of independent agencies. A prestige MbS project, Vision 2030, suddenly saw many of its sponsors pulling out, among them World Bank, New York Times, Financial Times, The Economist, CNN, LA Times, Huffington Post, Viacom, JP Morgan, Ford. The Economist rubbed it in by underlining MbS's "brutish handling of even mild critics" and saying that his regime has started "to resemble an Arab nationalist dictatorship". <br />
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According to officials in Turkey, Khashoggi was done in by a 15-man Saudi squad, his body cut up and disposed of. The world believed the horror story because it fitted into the profile the Saudi power-wielder had acquired in just a couple of years. A liberal gesture here and there -- like allowing women to drive cars in the country -- did not hide the dictatorial streak in him. Quite a few fellow royals and business leaders have been imprisoned. Some have fled. Dozens of activists and writers have been arrested and tortured.<br />
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The war in Yemen, a one-man decision by him, is still going on, described by the UN as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". Equally clumsy was the blunder of trying to boycott Qatar simply because it wouldn't declare Iran as an enemy. The biggest show of arrogance was the "arrest" of Lebanon's prime minister on a visit to Jeddah in 2017. That was part of MbS's idea of keeping Lebanon under his control.<br />
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When a German minister referred to Saudi war in Yemen as "adventurism", MbS went into a rage, recalled the ambassador to Berlin and closed down German trade deals with Saudis. The loss of business forced Germany to go down on its knees. When Canada's foreign minister tweeted for the release of human rights activists in Saudi Arabia, the Canadian ambassador was expelled, Saudi flights to Canada were shut down and Saudi students in Canada were asked to return.<br />
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This kind of over-reaction raised the question whether MbS, even as he sits on a powerful throne, is suffering from an insecurity complex. Perhaps he is haunted by the fact that he is an out-of-turn promotee in the royal hierarchy. Perhaps he is also bothered by the thought that the notion of "royalty" itself belongs to the past, especially after the Arab Spring saw anti-government uprisings and armed rebellions across the Middle East in 2011.<br />
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The Saudi royal family was not royal to begin with. Founder Ibn Saud was a tribal sheikh who was driven out of his home base in the Riyadh area of the peninsula in 1890. It took him a decade of fighting to subdue the tribes around his lost territory and another decade to consolidate his position. He turned out to be a master of political intrigue. He struck deals with the British, a prominent presence in the area at the time, and entered into an agreement with the fundamentalist religious doctrine of Wahabism thereby gaining a powerful, if controversial, pillar of support and a leadership position in the propagation of Islam.<br />
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Ibn Saud was considered an affable man with an undisguised talent to enjoy life. He visited India in 1955 and won a lot of hearts by distributing bundles of currency notes to passersby. He had a famous meeting with US President Roosevelt on an American warship near the Mediterranean. The King went on board with not only bodyguards, cooks and slaves but also astrologers, a fortune teller and some sheep. He told a British official rather lightheartedly that he had "married no fewer than 135 virgins". He had 43 acknowledged sons and 55 daughters. People liked him.<br />
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People don't seem to like Mohammed bin Salman. His tendency to be a law unto himself marked him out as a leader other countries were cautious about. Khashoggi's disappearance merely brought out the world's reservations about him in sharper focus. Saudi authorities have been busy with inquiries which no doubt will absolve them of any responsibility in the murder. But the world is unlikely to be impressed. MbS has lost more than he has gained.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809293742082188920.post-35154224771286682942018-10-15T13:24:00.002+05:302018-10-15T13:24:37.390+05:30HAKSAR FILES. WHAT ABOUT OTHERS?<br />
History lies hidden in government files. Hidden because, while modern democracies declassify records after a reasonably brief period of time, India sits on them, sometimes for ever. Occasionally a gold mine of files falls into the hands of a creative mind and we see a glittering universe of information opening up in front of us. That is what has happened in Intertwined Lives: P.N.Haksar and Indira Gandhi. It must be author Jairam Ramesh's connections in Delhi as a member of that rare species, the thinking politician, that led him to the gold mine of unpublished manuscripts, official memos, letters, notes and other archival material related to P.N.Haksar. Let providence be praised.<br />
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Don't be put off by the dull and uninviting cover of this big book because, inside, every page bristles with valuable historical information. It's like Haksar has collaborated with Ramesh to publish this vital book. Although his name appears as the author of the book, Ramesh has chosen for the most part to stay in the background, like the director of a play, invisible. At best he can be called the editor of the material in his hands. <br />
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Why has the other collaborator remained relatively unknown all these years despite being, as these pages reveal, one of the shapers of India in the class of Jawaharlal Nehru? (An obituary writer called him the "last of the Nehruvians"). Because he was a civil servant? Because, as he once said, "I lack the strong ego to follow the footsteps of my very dear friend B.K.Nehru" and write an autobiography?<br />
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Haksar's contributions outweigh those of his very dear friends. Indira Gandhi picked him, an old family friend, soon after she became prime minister in 1967 and he stayed with her till 1973. Those were tumultuous years with Haksar's imprint on them. His memo on the Congress Party enabled Indira to assume supremacy over her rivals with the famous Congress split of 1969. It was Haksar, once a Communist and always a socialist, who masterminded such policy decisions as the abolition of privy purses, the nationalisation of banks, of coal, of oil refineries and of general insurance. He also played a central role in the development of relations with Iran, Bangladesh and China.<br />
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It is clear that Indira Gandhi's best years were the years when she trusted Haksar and implemented his ideas. Debates will continue on the socialism of the public sector policy she followed, but no one can deny that those years moulded India and gave it a mindset that survives to this day.<br />
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The main reason, perhaps, was that he was not always acting as a Marxist or socialist. He was a universalist, speaking English, Hindi, Urdu and Persian and a bit of Bengali, French and German as well. He was a scholar and connoisseur of art. He was ready to put human values above ideologies. When Pather Panchali was initially banned from screening abroad because it showed up Indian poverty, Haksar complained to Nehru and liberated Satyajit Ray. Ritwik Ghatak was chosen for Padma Shri in 1970 but the Home Ministry wanted to cancel it after the irrepressible Ghatak made some nasty remarks about Mahatma Gandhi. Haksar wrote in the file: "Human history is full of examples of artists of genius living in destitution and penury because they cannot compromise their art with the vulgarity of public taste... Shri Ghatak alternates between moments of sanity and long periods of insanity... Can anyone say that Shri Ghatak's words have diminished in any way the stature of the person against who he used such atrocious language?... If a man says something which he knoweth not, God forgive him, but man, his creature, cannot".<br />
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Haksar also played a formative role in science and research by putting men like Satish Dhawan, Homi Sethna and M.S.Swaminathan in leadership positions.He himself became, after he left Indira, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and the first Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Splendid institution-building by a splendid visionary who laid some of India's foundation stones.<br />
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He died a disillusioned man. That phase began when he showed the courage to advise Indira against her profligate son Sanjay. Indira turned out to be all mother while Haksar was all commonsense, all patriot. Indira paid for her mistake. History applauded Haksar. The thought lingers: If these files have thrown so much light on so many big issues, what about the files by/on other prime ministerial alter egos -- M.O.Mathai, Kanti Desai, R.K.Dhawan, Quoattrochi, Chandraswamy, Brajesh Mishra? Gold mines waiting for the attention of thinking politicians.<br />
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TJS Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02986978631397445066noreply@blogger.com