<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 7 2007, 09:57 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 7 2007, 09:57 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Arjun has lost his balance: BJP</b>
PNS | New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday took exception to the statement of Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh that the BJP would not be invited to the official celebrations to mark the 150 years of 1857 Independence Movement, as the party did not participate in the country's freedom struggle movement.
"Such a statement is atrocious and shocking," Vijay Kumar Malhotra, BJP's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, said. "How could he question our contribution to the country's freedom struggle movement," he said.
Malhotra said that such a statement from Singh gave on the impression either he had lost his mental balance or was making such statement deliberately. <b>"There could only be two possibilities in such a situation. Either he has lost his mental balance or is making such statements deliberately</b>," Malhotra said.Â
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I thought Arjun Singh and his ancestors (former Rajas and Zamindars) were toadying to the British during the freedom struggle. How is he qualified to decide who was involved in the freedom struggle?
<span style='color:red'>Migration from UP and Bihar is the root cause of the Ills of Delhi : Dixit</span>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Yet another career politician who thinks an Indian state is a personal property of certain chosen ones created an outcry when she openly blamed people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for settling down in the capital city and causing road congestions and contributing to other ills of New Delhi.
Sheila Dikshit, the Congress leader and Delhi Chief Minister, while laying a foundation stone of a new flyover in south Delhi on Wednesday, said <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>she wished there was a way to stop migration from other states particularly Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.</span>
<b>Ironically, Dikshit herself is originally from UP</b> though now she considers herself as a native Delhi'ite and is ashamed of admitting that she is from UP, people who have known her for a long time, said.
Dikshit's remarks immediately drew widespread criticism from Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leaders in Bihar.
"Her statement is irresponsible and unwarranted. If she is so concerned about Delhi population, she should first pack her own stuff and proceed to Uttar Pradesh before lecturing other people on migration," BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain said.
RJD leader Ram Kripal Yadav also shot back at the Delhi Chief Minister saying Dikshit owed an apology to the people of Bihar and UP. "She can do (apologize) on her own or we will force her to do so," and angry Yadav said.
These people who promote illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, especially in Delhi, are questioning the fundamental right of Indian citizens to settle anywhere in India, as enshrined in the Indian Constitution!
I am original Delhiwali. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Delhi is city of immigrants from everywhere. Original Delhites were butchered by Tuglaq, Kutab and other barbaric Muslim invaders.
Sheila Dikshit should give marching order to 10 Janpath first.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>PM remembers Marx, forgets Mangal</b>
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
Recounting the significance of the 1857 uprising, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid glowing tribute to Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli. But he forgot Mangal Pandey, the hero of the rebellion that rocked India 150 years ago.
"Both Karl Marx and Benjamin Disraeli, watching the events from London - and from two very different ideological perspectives - conceded that the uprising was nothing short of a national revolt," Singh said in his address at a special function organised in Central Hall of Parliament to mark the 150th anniversary of the event.
Singh did recall that "150 years ago, in the late afternoon of May 10, 1857, sepoys in Meerut mutinied and attacked the symbols of British imperial power - the Telegraph office, the jail, the record room and, the bungalows in which the sahibs lived."
But while remembering how Marx and Disraeli had seen it from distant London, he did not mention any of the martyrs like Mangal Pandey and Rani Jhansi whose valour and sacrifice are legendary.
While the omission of these 1857 heroes rankled many in Central Hall, the manner in which <b>Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal protested about the celebrations left almost every one stunned.</b>
Backed by three MPs -- Rattan Singh Ajnala, Virendra Singh Bajwa (both Akali Dal) and Tarlochan Singh (Independent), <b>Atwal argued that projection of 1857 as the First War of Independence was a 'misnomer'. According to him, the 1845 Anglo-Sikh War should be treated as the First War of Independence</b>.
Atwal's protest came midway through the function, when Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat rose to address the gathering. Earlier, when Speaker Somnath Chatterjee started his address, three other members created a flutter by staging a protest which caught the gathering unawares.
Tarlochan Singh and Veerendra Singh said the protest was against attempts to rewrite history.
None of the two mainstream national parties-the BJP and the Congress-seemed to cherish Atwal's protest.
BJP spokesman Prakash Jawadekar said it was 'unfortunate' that an attempt was being made to stir a controversy despite the historic fact that the 1857 uprising was the First War of Independence.
Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said, "There is no question of agreeing with his view. It was an expression of a personal opinion." <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Under fire from supporting Left parties and a vocal section within his own Congress party for his zealous pro-reform agenda, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have taken a leaf out of the discourse on socialism.
Addressing the captains of India Inc on Thursday, he urged industry to develop "corporate social responsibility" to make the country's growth process inclusive and help in creating a "culture of caring, sharing and belonging".
"The time has come for us to ask ourselves what we can give (India), back," Singh said while addressing the annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
"We must forever end the debate whether our country's march of progress has benefited India and not Bharat (the traditional name for India now used to describe the have-nots who have not benefited from economic reforms)," the Prime Minister said.
His remarks assumed special significance in the backdrop of the recent public criticism of his Government's economic policies by Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar and the Left leaders last week.
In a television interview a few days back, Aiyar had publicly said that some of the Government's policies seemed to be influenced by elite institutions like the CII.
He had also suggested a mid-term course correction to address the problems of aam admi and claimed that a number of senior party leaders and UPA Ministers shared his thinking.
The Left parties and UPA ally NCP had subsequently endorsed Aiyar's views.
<b>The Prime Minister asked India Inc to look closely at affirmative action, desist from non-competitive practices and fight the "cancer" of corruption that was "eating into the vitals" of the nation's body politic.</b>
"I invite Corporate India to be a partner in making ours a more humane and just society. We need a new partnership for inclusive growth based on a 10-point social charter," he told the captains of industry.
The 10 points spelt out by Singh, in his talk on 'Inclusive Growth - Challenges for Corporate India' include welfare of the workers and their families, corporate social responsibility and pro-active affirmative action
He wanted the industry to resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives and discourage conspicuous consumption.
He also favoured higher investment in environment-friendly technologies since India's growth must be enhanced and its ecology and environment protected for future generations.
"The objective of such a social charter would also be to encourage a culture of saving and investment - a culture of caring, sharing and belonging," the Prime Minister said.
The Prime Minister's comments came as the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation, in a report released on Thursday, said India would need to put greater investments into its "physical and human resources" if it were to sustain its 'impressive' economic growth rate.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram hammered the same point in his address to CII.
"High growth means more inclusiveness. If high growth is not inclusive, then low growth is even more not-inclusive," he said, adding that it was imperative for manufacturing and services sectors to expand output at a faster pace to sustain the current economic growth.
<b>Manmohan's social charter for corporates</b>
India Inc should ask what it can give
Desist from non-competitive practices
Resist excessive remuneration to promoters and senior executives
Ensure welfare of workers, their families
Have corporate social responsibility and pro-active affirmative action
Fight 'cancer' of corruption that is "eating into the vitals" of nation
Discourage conspicuous consumption
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His failed policies and lack of spine is a problem, not big checks.
Congress always believe in 2% growth, keep India poor so that its easy to suppress, now people have tasted good side of life and Private sector is doing really good, that is causing heart burn.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Back to the past </b>
The Pioneer Edit DeskÂ
PM's homily is anti-prosperity
Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilisation. It's a good idea, he replied. A similar cryptic response would do justice to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's homily at the annual general meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry on Thursday. This is not to cavil at Mr Singh for his maudlin lament or for suggesting that free market economics has only widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots. But it is tempting to point out that it is rather late in the day to discover that the prescription he wrote out as Finance Minister in PV Narasimha Rao's Government is not quite what he intended. Having helped dismantle the state-controlled economy that ensured most of India wallowed in poverty while some lived in luxury, <b>he now appears to be regretting the fact that more Indians are affluent today than ever before. </b>Â <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Of course, there is a dark side to India's success story and it would be stupid to deny that at least a quarter of our people live in appalling poverty. But it is equally stupid to suggest that the underclass can be helped only by impoverishing those who have been able to break free of the poverty chain. That suggestion is implicit in what the Prime Minister has recommended by way of a social charter. <b>It is absurd to recommend a ceiling for salaries paid to professionals by the private sector or insist that those who earn should not spend their money. In brief, he wants the private sector to emulate the public sector, remove all performance-related incentives and punish productivity.</b> More importantly, <b>he has slyly let it be known that the incompetent Government he heads is not averse to the idea of restricting the profits made by the private sector</b>. If you read between the lines of his speech, what you will discover is that Mr Singh has repackaged the ills of the licence-permit-quota raj as virtues worth emulating.
The Prime Minister's plaintive call for an inclusive society and the need for private sector to fulfil its social responsibility should not detract attention from the core message of his speech - the UPA Government will now increasingly take recourse to measures that hobbled India's economy till it was freed from the clutches of venal politicians and bogus economists. It makes little sense for Mr Singh to berate sections of media, especially 24x7 television channels, which dedicate space and time to publicise the excesses of a few who have money to burn. <b>Those very sections of media also happen to pretend ideological proximity with the Congress and its allies in the UPA regime </b>and are feted for their unquestioning support of every absurdity that is peddled as policy by a Government that has little to show by way of achievement after three years in power. <b>Mr Singh is welcome to speak in a language that harks back to the days when a handful of crony capitalists and their patrons in the Congress and the bureaucracy lived in comfort while the masses toiled for a pittance. </b>That <b>was Socialist India, a country where poverty was celebrated as a Gandhian virtue, the poor misled by hollow slogans like 'Garibi Hatao', and prosperity restricted to a chosen few.</b> In today's Free Market India, everybody has the opportunity to prosper, which vastly diminishes Government's power, as also that of those who ruled the roast till reforms knocked them off their pedestal, to control India's destiny. That loss of power has begun to hurt. It shows in Mr Singh's speech.
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Now why I call him Moron Singh?
This guy remembers Hegel and Marx on 1857 celebration day and had amnesia about Jhansi ki Rani, Tantya, and others. He is showing his real color, he is first Communist. He is protecting Queen and his pension from WB. All his decisions are based on his own interest. He is protecting every single criminal on earth, using every single Govt machinery to serve his own interest. He is ignoring scams, crime and shamelessly pats himself.
His will remembered as first rated crock India ever had.
"You cannot have those who move forward and those who remain backward"
# The aam aadmi must be an equal participant in the growth structure
# Manmohan was touching the conscience of the rich
NEW DELHI: Union Minister for Tourism and Culture Ambika Soni has said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his speech to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on May 24, was ``touching the conscience of the rich'' and telling ``those who have benefited from the first three years [to] now please look at the others also."
Seeking to explain and amplify on the speech in an interview, she said ``the Prime Minister has to do this" because otherwise "there will be confrontation ... We've seen it not only in India but around the world that you cannot have those who move forward and those who remain backward aamne samne [face to face]. There will be confrontation. No, that's not possible. And the Prime Minister has to do this."
In the interview to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN (broadcast on Sunday night and scheduled to be re-broadcast at 4-30 p.m. on Monday), Ms. Soni said the time had come for the Prime Minister to tell the beneficiaries of government policies over the last three years to do something for the aam aadmi. She said that as long as ``the man in the rural areas, the tribal, the vulnerable sections [and] the exploited lot" shed tears "we are still not in Mahatma Gandhi's terms truly independent."
She said: "It's time that either the Prime Minister or the UPA chairperson were to tell those who have benefited from the first three years that now please look at the others also... we came on the promise of giving a better deal to the aam aadmi. Now the aam aadmi must be an equal participant in this growth structure. It is not enough to say our growth rate is 9 per cent or we're doing so well or our industry has bought big business enterprises around the world. Fine, that's great as a nation, but somewhere down the line all of us must feel that it's coming to my doorstep also ... And he has the moral right, the stature and the leadership position to do that... Bharat means all of us. Bharat means the aam aadmi, the man in the rural area, the tribal, the vulnerable sections, the exploited lot. We are still not in Mahatma Gandhi's terms truly independent because there are still lots of tears being shed ... Sections of India, which have to be included. It has to be an all-inclusive growth. We can only move forward if all the 1.2 billion people know they are walking in step."
<b>
Where was BHARAT for the last 60 years?</b>
Propriety
Asked about the propriety of the Prime Minister telling entrepreneurs how they should act, the Minister asserted that if the Prime Minister's advice was not heeded "there will be confrontation." Ms. Soni said he was "touching the conscience of the rich."
Pressure?
Asked how much of what the Prime Minister said was under pressure from the Congress' Left allies, how much under the influence of Sonia Gandhi and how much on the basis of a realisation after the election results from Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh that unless there was a change of rhetoric the Congress may lose the next elections, Ms. Soni said: "No, I don't think this is election-oriented ... the Government doesn't decide its policies, its steps and its time schedules only looking at election results. And certainly not under the pressure of the Left Front. This is a programme the UPA has adopted ... "
Criticism
Ms. Soni criticised Minister for Panchayati Raj, Sports and the Northeast Affairs Mani Shankar Aiyar for raising his own concerns outside the Cabinet. She said that even though it turned out that his views were similar to those expressed by the Prime Minister in his CII speech, it was for the Prime Minister to express such views. She said: "That's the Prime Minister's prerogative ... I believe there's a certain propriety which one does follow when one is a member of the Cabinet."
She said: "When you are part of the Cabinet, as Mani [Shankar Aiyar] is and I am, we have a number of opportunities of voicing our concerns, raising issues which bother us, with the Cabinet. That's how it should be. I feel when you speak outside it shows that you are not in sync with what's happening. Which is not true because the Cabinet often discusses issues which Mani raised publicly."
Seeing the name of Ambika Soni, I just remembered this article. Admins please delete if this article has already been posted by someone earlier on IF:
Are we heading towards a Christian India ?
By François Gautier
I am a westerner and a born Christian. I was mainly brought up in catholic schools, my uncle, Father Guy Gautier, a gem of a man, was the parish head of the beautiful Saint Jean de Montmartre church in Paris ; my father, Jacques Gautier, a famous artist in France, and a truly good person if there ever was one, was a fervent catholic all his life, went to church nearly every day and lived by his Christian values. There are certain concepts in Christianity I am proud of : charity for others, the equality of system in many western countries, Christâs message of love and compassionâ¦.
Yet, I am a little uneasy when I see how much Christianity is taking over India under the reign of Sonia Gandhi : according to a 2001 census, there are about 2.34 million Christians in India ; not even 2,5% of the nation, a negligible amount. Yet there are today five Christian chief ministers in Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
One should add that the majority of politicians in Sonia Gandhiâs closed circle are either Christians or Muslims. She seems to have no confidence in Hindus.Ambika Soni, a Christian, is General Secretary of the Congress and a very powerful person, with close access to Sonia Gandhi. Oscar Fernandes is Union Programme Implementation Minister. Margaret Alwa is the eminence grise of Maharasthra. Karnataka is virtually controlled by AK Anthony, whose secretaries are all from the Southern Christian association. Valson Thampu, a Hindu hater, is Chairman NCERT curriculum Review Committee, John Dayal, another known Hindu baiter, has been named by Sonia Gandhi in the National Integration Council ; and Kancha Ilaya, who hates Hindus, is being allowed by the Indian Government to lobby with the UN and US Congress so that caste discrimination in India is taken-up by these bodies.
I have nothing personnally against Sonia Gandhi, in fact she probably is a good person to win the alliegance of so many and certainly a loving mother . I share with her a love for India, like her I have lived in this country for over 30 years and like her I have married an Indian. But nevertheless, since she is at the top, Christian conversions in India seem to have gone in overdrive. More than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries are involved in conversion activities across different states. In Tripura, there were no Christians at independence, there are 120.000 today, a 90% increase since 1991. The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1710 Christians in 1961, but 1,2 million today, as well as 780 churches! In Andhra Pradesh, churches are coming-up every day in far flung villages and there was even an attempt to set-up one near Tirupati. Many of the North-East separatist movements, such as the Mizo or the Bodos, are not only Christian dominated, but also sometimes function with the covert backing of the missionaries. In Kerala, particularly in the poor coastal districts, you find âmiracle boxesâ put in local churches: the gullible villager writes out a paper mentionning his wish: a fising boat, a loan for a pukka house, fees for the sonâs schooling⦠And lo, a few weeks later, the miracle happens ! And of course the whole family converts, making others in the village follow suit. During the Tsunami, entire dalit villages in Tamil Nadu were converted to Christianity with the lure of money.
It is true that there have been a few backlashes against missionnaries and nuns, particularly the gruesome muder of Staines and his two sons. But Belgium historian Konenraad Elst laments that « When over a thousand Hindus are killed and a quarter million Hindus ethnically cleansed in Kashmir, the world media doesn't even notice, but watch the worldwide hue and cry when a few local riots take place and a few missionaries are killed by unidentified tribal miscreants. Christian Naga terrorists have been killing non-Christians for decades on end, and this has never been an issue with the world media, except to bewail the "oppression" of the Nagas by "Hindu India" ». More than 20,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam and Manipur in the past two decades. As recently as last week, four paramilitary Assam Rifles soldiers were killed in an ambush yesterday by the outlawed United National Liberation Front (UNLF).
The other day I was at the Madras Medical center, the foremost heart hospital in Madras. Right when you enter the lobby, you find a chapel, inviting everybody to pray, there are pictures and quotations of Christ everywhere and a priest visits all the patients, without being invited at all. Educational institutes and orphanages run by Christian organisations have become big business in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states. In Pondichery, where I am often, schools run by Adventists force their pupils, mostly Hindus, to say Christian prayers every day and attend mass. They are constantly fed anti Hindu slogans and biases under different forms, whether it is in history books, or discourses by priests during religious classes. Even in the elite schools or colleges, such as Saint Stephen in Delhi, Saint Xavier in Calcutta or Loyola college in Madras, where no direct proletization is attempted, Hindu pupils are subtly encouraged towards skepticism of their own religion, and admiration of whatever is Western. One should also say that itâs a one way traffic : remember the furor when MM Joshi wanted the Saraswati hymn to be sung at a Chief Ministersâ meet on education ? And imagine the uproar in secular India if portions of the Bhagavad Gita, this Bible for all humanity, were read at the beginning of the day in public schools ?
Sonia Gandhi said during the last National Integration Council meeting : « We are committed to ideological battle against communal forces which seek to destroy our diversity and polarise us. Certain parties promote polarisation and confrontation. And there are certain regimes in India which promote communalism ». But is not actually the Congress under Mrs Gandhi, which is promoting communalism, by insidiously installing Christians and Muslims (and Marxists) everywhere, propping up Christian states, allowing a free hand too missionnaries and pressing for reservations for Christian Dalits and Muslims, as recently done in AP, in a nation of 850 million Hindus ?
In my country, France, a Christian majority nation , it would be unthinkable to have Hindus â or even Indian born French for that matter â in so many positions of power. Impossible also to find a non-elected, non French, non-Christian person being the absolute ruler of the country behind the scene as Sonia Gandhi is in India. Indians like to say that the greatness of India is that it accepts a foreigner and a Christian like Sonia Gandhi. But isânt it rather a weakness, and an aberration ? Canât we find a worthy leader amongst one billion Indians ? This is an India where you see today Swami Avimukteshwarananda Saraswati of Dwarka Peeth, made to disembark from an Indian Airlines flight for carrying his holy dand, a thin bamboo stick which is a symbol of their spiritual designation, inside the aircraft cabin.
Are we heading then towards a Christian India under Sonia Gandhiâs helm? It would be a tremendous loss not only to India, but also to the world. For in India, you find the only living spirituality left on this planet.
Practitioners of cynical politics who are driven by the lust for power are destroying all that is good and true and valuable in India. Hindus are mocked at and persecuted while Government is busy devising ways and means of dividing the nation along caste and communal lines
India prides itself as the greatest democracy in the world. But actually, there are very few places where democracy has been so hijacked and perverted. Nothing demonstrates this better than the manoeuvring going on at the moment to find India's next President.
President APJ Abdul Kalam must be the most popular President in the history of India. Yet he will not be re-elected, because he was the people's President and not a stooge of political parties.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi will never forgive him, as he was the one who stopped her from becoming Prime Minister when he told her in the privacy of his chambers that it was unconstitutional to hold two passports - Indian and Italian - as she did for many years (she is not the only foreigner who did so after obtaining Indian citizenship).
Quite a few Muslims regard him suspiciously because, although he is a true Muslim, he respects other religions and is known to keep the Bhagvad Gita and Sri Aurobindo's Savitri in his study. Thus Mayawati, partly elected by Muslims votes, will keep away from him. And the BJP is wary of Kalam because he did not always do its bidding.
How else is democracy perverted in India?
Well, here you have a party, the Congress, which has been going from bad to worse in the last 15 years, came a miserable last in the recent Uttar Pradesh Assembly election, and sprung to power at the Centre by a freak accident because the TDP lost in Andhra Pradesh and the Marxists did well in West Bengal.
Yet, the Congress is all powerful at the moment and is dividing India more and more along caste and religion lines, thanks to a cynical reservation policy - witness the recent strife in Rajasthan.
You have a foreigner who, whatever her qualities -honesty, hard work, family values - is just an elected MP, like hundreds of others, and yet rules as the supreme leader of this country, one whose word can make or unmake anybody. Do you think it would be possible for an Indian to become a de facto President or Prime Minister in the US, France or Germany? Absolutely not!
Even India's Prime Minister, a decent but weak man, is not elected: He was defeated the last time he contested an election and is now a Rajya Sabha MP from Assam, where he has no roots at all.
Democracy in India has also been hijacked by cynical mathematics: How to get elected with the votes of the Muslims; who remain the most backward community in India, in spite of having brought to power umpteen Congress Governments since Independence; and how to manipulate the Dalits, who have had a fair share of benefits and have had one of them as President and many of whom are politicians in power.
Ms Mayawati has become a master of cynical mathematics: Muslims + Dalits + Brahmin votes = Absolute majority. Yet, will she do more for the Muslims and the poor of Uttar Pradesh than she did in her three previous stints as Chief Minister?
It seems doubtful, the way she has started, wasting hundreds of crores by scrapping all previous projects, including the Special Economic Zones and transferring hundreds of officials.
In the name of freedom of expression, Indian intellectuals defend people like MF Husain, who denigrates Durga, India's most holy goddess. Would he dare depict Mohammed's wife in this manner? Certainly not!
When the Prophet is caricatured by a Danish newspaper - harmless lampooning compared to Husain's derogatory portrayal of Durga - the entire Muslim world erupts in flames. Had Husain defiled Islam's icons, he would have been dead today.
Did India's 'free' Press ever care to show on TV or publish in magazines and newspapers Husain's derogatory paintings? Yet, they are freely available and have been reproduced in a coffee table book sponsored by Tata Steel with a foreword by Russi Modi.
India's judiciary is stretched to the limits by clever lawyers getting their rich clients off the hook, thanks to judges who go by the book without adapting their judgements to the Indian context, or by bribing witnesses as has been allegedly done in the BMW case. But poor people go to jail and it takes seven years to get a case cleared.
India's socialist system, which is still enforced, pretends to tax the rich to subsidise the poor. But in reality, the rich have smart chartered accountants who twist the law, while the less fortunate have to pay taxes on small savings and salaries. And, of course, most of this money never reaches the destitute.
Finally, here you have a country of 850 million Hindus, a billion worldwide, one of the most tolerant, law-abiding communities in the world. Yet, Hindus in India are made fun of and their beliefs riled at. They are persecuted, as the four lakh Kashmiri Pandits have been, without raising finger in defence - their men hanged, women raped, children disembowelled. They have become refugees in their own country and the media is mostly silent.
Yes democracy is needed, and a free and democratic India definitely has (in the long run) an advantage on an undemocratic China. But the way things are going now, India seems on the verge of losing all that is good and true and valuable within the nation, thanks to cynical and self-serving politicians.
Cry O my Beloved India. Look at what Thy children are doing to Thee.
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<span style='color:red'>Indian Prime Minister: Doctorate but Illiterate</span>
Global Citizen
Mahatma Gandhi, to show his compassion to the millions of the poor Indians, lived a simple life. His simplicity was interpreted by many to be akin to living in poverty.
Any Indian political leader, by default, becomes a follower of The Great Mahatma. Dr. Manmohan Singh, current Indian Prime Minister is not an exception. Incidentally, Dr. Singh earned his doctorate degree from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962 and his honors degree earlier in 1957 from the University of Cambridge.
Following Mahatma's footsteps, in a recent conference he declared himself to be an illiterate. He also assured that a country with as high illiteracy as in India (40% officially, unofficially much higher) can't afford the luxury to have a fully literate Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
In the Corrupt Indian Industries (CII) conference held on 23rd May in New Delhi, delivering the key-note address on 'Role of Crony Capitalism to Promote Exclusive Growth', the Prime Minister stated following:
'India has achieved phenomenal exclusive growth, and by all means we would continue our journey to achieve even better, faster exclusive growth. No major economy of the world, forget our poverty (nearly 70% lives below two-dollars-a-day) and illiteracy rates, could match billionaires' contributions to the society as we have done. Today India proudly tops Asian Billionaires List; we plan to do that in the whole world by 2020. Our government can be poor, our people can be poor, however billionaires' wealth, at three times our government's annual budget, and growing at a much faster rate than government revenue or the economy, would make us proud globally as Indians. No other major economy is even close to one.'
The Prime Minister also acknowledged in the same speech his government's compassion for the poor and the illiterates. He further stated:
'Our government is equally responding to the need of the masses. Government after government in India has promised 'garibi hatao' ('Abolish Poverty'), we have spent sloganeering on National Literacy Mission; but achieved none. This government, to deliver to the 'aam admi' (common man), have decided to engage illiterates in my very own (Prime Minister's Office - PMO) office. We could not achieve 90% or above literacy in last sixty years; however we would ensure we achieve 90% or better illiteracy rates in next twenty years. The grudges of the illiterate would be less when most of us are illiterate, the poor would not feel the pain of the 'wasteful blatant consumerism' as done by a small section of the society when barring the billionaires and millionaires and politicians and bureaucrats; all would be made poor. The government has got multiple strategies to collect whatever small wealth the poor has, and ensure that it gets delivered with asset-multiplier effect to the billionaires. Having more and more SEZs on farmland, applying land-acquisition act of 1894 to take away farmers' lands, by using 1931 census data to have reservations for the rich backward castes over merit and thereby kill our educational institutes; we would keep no stone unturned. That's the least I could do by following Mahatma's footstep and show compassion for the majority of the poor and illiterates of our country'.
The Prime Minister concluded by saying: 'Our honorable Supreme Court recently observed that 'Nowhere else in the world is there competition to assert backwardness and then to claim we are more backward than you.' Our government has taken the observation of the Highest Court of the land seriously, and has decided to make the whole country backward, illiterate and poor; barring the delegates present in this auspicious room'.
Addressing the same CII event, Finance Minister (Harvard-educated) Mr. P. Chidambaram stressed on the need of fiscal prudence. He explained how his team has reduced social sector spending with states cooperation by 4% in as many years, now that's closed to 18% compared to 22-23% of government's expenses in earlier days. 'We have stopped funding roads, schools, and healthcare unless farmers give their lands for exclusive growth. And this time we aren't sloganeering, as India's biggest media pointed out its practice in grass root levels on 17th May 'schools and a health centre in lieu of land for the SEZ'', stated the FM.
Finance Minister further explained how his ministry, by cutting aid and promoting misadministration, is achieving its multiple goals of privatization, poverty, population control and illiteracy. The minister cited various media reports highlighting massive absenteeism of teachers in state-aided primary schools; or reports of rape & molestation on women patients along with negligence-related deaths in state-hospitals.
When asked about the Left-parties opinion on these measures, whose backing this government needs badly to stay in power, Finance Minister irritably quipped 'Don't you know that 'Left' is 'Right' in India?'
When media asked questions on sustaining the high dependence on agriculture (2/3rd of the 1.1 billion people rely on agriculture in India) in light of growing population and stagnating agricultural yields, Montek Singh Ahulawalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, and a Rhodes Scholar, who had earlier failed in his IMF mission to have India impacted by the Asian currency crisis in the last decade and therefore doubly-dedicated to deliver in present assignment, vehemently denied of any draconian measures to achieve population control, referring to the 'one child policy' of China and its fallouts. He claimed: 'India is a free liberal society; and we never interfere in our citizens lives. However with careful scrutiny, you will see that farmers in India have been committing suicides at an astronomical rate, which would compensate for the rise in population, and thereby would allow them to sustain on agriculture with even less land as we take away the fertile, commercial lands. We never even take away the right of people to commit suicide. That's the democratic liberal values we have in India; we rather facilitate farmers to commit suicides. China abuses human rights to control population - how inhumane!'
He further added: 'Another reason for the land acquisition is also derived from this high rate of farmer suicides. With fewer farmers now, India doesn't need that much land for agriculture. Industry and billionaires have been demanding for more land for real estate; and we are reallocating the resources to have further exclusive growth with farmers and your money'.
An extinct species of academicians, who were feeling suffocated in that conference atmosphere as they mistakenly attended the CII conference, expecting some insightful thoughts from the learned trio, could be overheard debating the various speeches after the conference.
A scholar of IIT Kharagpur stated: 'Now I understand why I didn't receive any feedback from the PMO when I wrote to them in their web-site suggesting better policy-making for the land acquisition problem, which in present form affects all stakeholders adversely in any project in India. They do have a site, but they can't read or write. How sad! That also explains why they asked all to limit the content within 500-characters whereas for the White House, they give you 5000-characters. Anyway it was a waste.'
Another scholar from IIT Bombay quipped: 'No, they do read or write selectively, like sniffer dogs; they have been trained to identify words or group of words like 'B-O-M-B'. I know a researcher, who was frustrated with absence of academic voice and absolute lack of meaningful research in policy-making in India. He wrote to the PMO few times, expectedly he received no response. However as farmers continued being murdered by state-administrations or committed suicides; he did shoot of an angry one-liner 'Indian farmers would explode like bomb in a revolt' to the PMO. And he was immediately heard'.
1st Scholar eagerly asked: 'Great! So he was finally heard and his suggestions got incorporated in the policy. So we can expect something good now'.
The 2nd scholar sighed: 'No, manâ¦he is in Tihar Jail now. They could only read the word 'bomb', vacated the PMO as soon as they received his feedback, tracked him down, didn't listen to his arguments, and now he is in Tihar. However in India, as a researcher it does not matter whether you are in jail or in society. Does Indian society ever take research to be an important part for policy-making? Never. What Corrupt Indian Industries come out as research is research, what we find in the name of research is all rubbish. You saw it hereâ¦didn't you?'
Opposition parties, while commenting on the Prime Minister's concern for the poor and illiterate, felt all to be hogwash. Confidential sources also reported that Oxford, Harvard and that lot is also debating with divided opinions both in for and against this type of policy-making in India by their alumnus. Few want the degrees awarded to Indian policy-makers who apply land acquisition act of 1894 or census report of 1931 in 2007 to be withdrawn to protect their academic stature; however other school of administration wants such prudence as shown by present lot of India's policy-makers to be further awarded with an Honorary D.Phil or similar degrees.
The same confidential sources stated that 2nd school of thoughts is likely to come out as winner, and they take pride in Dr. Manmohan Singh and that lot. The John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard is launching a three-month program on how long term historical data can be used as recent data can be misleading. Citing India's success story, the same group, in a white paper, proposed handing over America to the aborigines.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Jun 9 2007, 08:30 PM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Jun 9 2007, 08:30 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<span style='color:red'>Indian Prime Minister: Doctorate but Illiterate</span>
Global Citizen
A scholar of IIT Kharagpur stated: 'Now I understand why I didn't receive any feedback from the PMO when I wrote to them in their web-site suggesting better policy-making for the land acquisition problem, which in present form affects all stakeholders adversely in any project in India. They do have a site, but they can't read or write. How sad! ...
Another scholar from IIT Bombay quipped: 'No, they do read or write selectively, like sniffer dogs; they have been trained to identify words or group of words like 'B-O-M-B'. I know a researcher, who was frustrated with absence of academic voice and absolute lack of meaningful research in policy-making in India. He wrote to the PMO few times, expectedly he received no response. However as farmers continued being murdered by state-administrations or committed suicides; he did shoot of an angry one-liner 'Indian farmers would explode like bomb in a revolt' to the PMO. And he was immediately heard'.
1st Scholar eagerly asked: 'Great! So he was finally heard and his suggestions got incorporated in the policy. So we can expect something good now'.
The 2nd scholar sighed: 'No, manâ¦he is in Tihar Jail now. They could only read the word 'bomb', vacated the PMO as soon as they received his feedback, tracked him down, didn't listen to his arguments, and now he is in Tihar...
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ha..ha..ha. This is hilarious!
I would of course love Manmohan singh to do a Gandhi, by retiring from politics altogether and spend the remainder of his days turning a spinning wheel around and around and around and around and around and around......
Although the headline says UPA, the reason is quite obvious Q wins first round in Bofors extradition, with a little UPA help
Argentine courtâs refusal to extradite Quattrocchi is no surprise â official records obtained by The Sunday Express show how UPAâs top law officers gave him clean chit long before he was detained. Some of these records, his lawyer admits, he used to strengthen his case
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Preparing for battle </b>
By Syed Amin Jafri
<b>Two years ahead of the 2009 Assembly elections, the Congress in Andhra Pradesh is preparing its cadres and leaders for the battle of the ballot.</b> The first of the three-day, region-wise training programmes for Congress workers was inaugurated by Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy on Sunday. <b>Half-a-dozen workers from each of the 294 Assembly constituencies in the State are being trained in leadership qualities. These workers are in turn expected to train the party cadres at the village level to disseminate information on government programmes to the common voters.</b>
<b>The Congress plans to organise intensive training programmes for party men and women at all levels over the next two years to make them âbattleworthy.â The AP Congress Committee has drawn up a 12-point programme to enlist the support of the people and all the stake-holders through these programmes. </b>"Our aim is to go closer to the people," APCC president K. Keshava Rao says. The Congress hopes to counter the Oppositionâs propaganda offensive against the government through this âarmyâ of trained workers.
<b>The objective is to fight anti-incumbency against the government and secure the mandate for another term for the party in 2009. Dr Rajasekhar Reddy foresees âexternal and internalâ problems to the ruling party â from the Opposition parties on the one hand and from bickering and groupism within the party on the other. The party needs to take both these âthreatsâ seriously and tackle them effectively or else the prospects of the Congress in the 2009 elections will be affected adversely.</b> No wonder, the Chief Minister sought to address both these issues at the training camp for the first batch. He took pot-shots at the Opposition parties, more particularly the Telugu Desam and the Communist Party of India-Marxist â for resorting to agitations for their political survival.
<b>He also exhorted the party workers and leaders to shun differences and stay united. The training programmes for party cadres cover basic aspects of politics, such as inculcation of leadership qualities, imbibing of party values, developing communication skills and poll management at the booth level.</b> But what the party needs to do is to âsensitiseâ the party cadres on the issues and problems that the Congress government has inherited from the previous regime and also the problems that have cropped up during its own rule. The agrarian crisis, separate Telangana issue, Scheduled Castes categorisation row and Maoist menace are among the issues inherited from the earlier regime.
<b>The controversy over irrigation projects and intra-State sharing of river waters, Muslim reservations muddle and the lands issue are of its own making.</b> All these issues have persisted over the last three years since the Congress regained power in the State. And, these problems are likely to keep cropping up again and again in the run-up to the 2009 Assembly elections. <b>The ruling party and the government seem to be caught in a chaotic situation on all these issues. These knotty problems are getting more complicated and the government does not have any quick-fix solutions.</b> The Opposition is likely to exploit these issues to embarrass and weaken the ruling party. More than anything else, the Congress should focus on these issues in its training programmes so that its workers can effectively counter the Opposition onslaught.
<b>The agrarian crisis has been addressed to a large extent and the incidence of farmersâ suicides has come down after reaching a peak during 2004-05, thanks to a number of initiatives taken by the Congress government, including a manifold increase in farm credit besides payment of ex-gratia to the families of farmers who ended their lives. The problems of handloom weavers, too, have been sorted out and the incidence of suicides among weavers due to economic distress has also come to nil.</b>
<b>In the countryside, Maoist movement is on a low-key now, after the State government adopted a tough policy and re-imposed the ban on Maoists in the wake of failure of peace talks in 2004.</b> Maoist-police confrontation has considerably eased in recent months and the killings on both sides have come down. <b>However, the row over categorisation of Scheduled Castes into ABCD groups continues to haunt the Congress government. Dalits used to be a reliable vote-bank for Congress before the advent of TD in 1982. But, during his tenure as Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu caused a virtual divide among SCs by implementing ABCD categorisation in 1997 to remove âdisparitiesâ between two main sub-castes. The Malas community is spread mainly in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema and the Madigas community is predominantly based in Telangana.</b>
Presently, the 57 elected representatives from the SCs include 39 MLAs, nine MLCs, six Lok Sabha members and three Rajya Sabha members. Most of them belong to the Congress, followed by the TD, Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the CPI-M. The Supreme Court had struck down the AP Act on SC categorisation in 2004 on a petition filed by Mala Mahanadu. Now, the Mala Mahanadu threatens to take the matter to the apex court again if the Usha Mehra panel appointed by the Central government recommends SC categorisation to âappeaseâ the Madiga Reservations Porata Samithi. The Congress, thus, has no way of coming out unscathed from this mess as rival groups threaten to punish it in the next Assembly polls. <b>The Congress government finds itself in a messy situation on the issue of separate Telangana and the implementation of jobs-for-locals GO 610 and Girglani Commission report on Six-Point Formula/Presidential Order on Local Cadres.</b> The UPA sub-committee formed under the chairmanship of external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee to work out consensus on Telangana statehood has virtually gone into hibernation after TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao and senior leader A. Narendra quit the Manmohan Singh cabinet and came out of UPA last year.
In the meantime, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which was virtually decimated in the State after the 2004 polls, has taken up the cause of separate Telangana. <b>Many Congress MPs and MLAs from Telangana region have also been keeping the Telangana issue alive. Now, their counterparts from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema have begun to advocate bifurcation of the State.</b>
For the protagonists and opponents of Telangana, GO 610 comes in handy to settle their regional scores. Girglani Commission, appointed by previous TD regime, submitted its report to the Congress government. In the last two years, the present regime has been caught up in fresh controversies by issuing GOs for implementation of GO 610 and Girglani report and later withdrawing these GOs in the wake of strong protests from opposition parties, including TD and Left parties which are not otherwise favourably disposed towards the demand for separate statehood for Telangana. Now, fresh rows have erupted over the implementation of major irrigation projects like Pulichintala, Polavaram and Dummugudem and the expansion of capacity of Pothireddypadu head regulator. <b>TRS, TD, BJP and Left parties are opposing these projects on the ground that these are meant for diverting Godavari waters to the Krishna delta and for diverting Krishna water to Rayalaseema at the expense of the needs of Telangana region.</b>
<b>Tardy progress on the construction of all major irrigation projects in Telangana is also causing heartburn in the region. Moreover, the TRS, TD and the Left parties are demanding that the government spell out the share of Krishna and Godavari waters for Telangana vis-Ã -vis other regions.</b> <b>Muslim reservation is another ticklish problem which the Congress regime does not know how to tackle. The land issue is also generating a lot of heat these days.</b> Unless the government and ruling party come out with clear-cut stand on all these issues and create awareness among the people, these problems may aggravate further and cast their negative spell over the partyâs poll prospects in 2009.
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AP was the key for the NDA loss of power in 2004 elections.
âThere is nothing in this book, which can be harmful to the interests of the nation. I think the world outside knows much more than what RAW knows,â said IB former joint director M K Dhar.
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