Greed is Good...

Greed is Good....
If you think that Gordon Gekko had said that way back in the 1987 movie, Wall Street, well, yes. But the same philosophy has been followed at home by our dear Behenji Mayawati.

The garland made of Rs. 1000 notes has left people speculating how much it was actually worth. A few crores? A few lakhs?

Where did the money come from? Where did it go?
A very "learned" JNU professor on Vikram Chandra's show "The Big Fight" disputed that the garland was made of notes.

Another guest on the show complained that it was the English media which was all out to malign her.
Her shenanigans have inspired a round of raw, pithy satire and poetic creativity on Twitter and Facebook, which was indeed enjoyable.


Whatever....
But was the Rs. 200 crore spent on the rally of the masses worth it?
That money could have been used for, say, setting up a school, a polytechnic, a college, clinic, etc for her so called constituency, the Dalits.
Mayawati has other members in the "Greed is Good" club. Why else would India have the dubious distinction of topping deposits in Swiss bank accounts. I came across two sources on the Net which referred to Swiss Banking Association reports of 2006 and 2008 which talk of deposits from India exceeding US$ 1.5 trillion, now that's an obscenely, astounding Rs. 65,25,000 crore.

This kind of money could not have gone out to Switzerland without political patronage.

Bottomline, all politicians here are greedy, but Mayawati has taken that greed to a new level. She is shouting out that "Greed is Good...."

Indian Political League - The Grand Finale

Before the elections started, I made a case for electing Dr. Manmohan Singh back as the Prime Minister in my blog post titled The Great Indian Tamasha Begins.... And, yes, I am relieved today.

For the first time since 1989, we are seeing a clarity in the voters' minds, which is reflected in clear mandate. Confusion or soul-searching (if I may say so!) of the last 20-odd years has now given way to a very clear signal that India wants political stability.

In a sense, this is a pathbreaking election for our nation.

A few days back, in one of the debates on NDTV 24x7, when strategists were debating on the possibility of a fractured verdict, the BJP's key strategist, Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni had made an interesting remark that there only two political formations that can provide India a stable government - the NDA and the UPA. He went on to sthat BJP is prepared to support the Congress to bring about political stability. Jyotiraditya Scindia of the Congress, who was also there, acknowledged the stability aspect, but parried all questions to him on the Congress and the BJP working together. This points to clear observations - while we are gradually moving towards bipolar politics with bits and pieces of bipartisanship thrown in here and there, the politics of "untouchability" is very much there. And we can blame the Congress for that.

As mentioned in my blog The Great Indian Tamasha Begins...., BJP today is a very different animal when compared with the BJP in the Vajpayee era. The BJP will now go through a major churn, an "existential crisis" soon. Mr. L.K. Advani has already offered to resign. Mr. Narendra Modi might come to centrestage, sooner than later. But who ever leads the BJP into the next election would have to learn the art of weaving a "rainbow alliance" to remain a formidable pole opposing the UPA pole.

It is indeed heartening to see the decimation of the Left and the Behenji. There is a saying in Hindi "Jo perh hava mein jhukta nahi, voh toot jaata hai" - the tree that isn't flexible enough to bend in the wind breaks down. Winds of change have been blowing in India but the Left refused to bend. And the result is there for us to see.

Behenji till a few days back was called India's Obama simply because she comes from the underprivileged section of our society. But pragmatism calls for cultivating a positive image and weaving a web of inclusion. She has failed on both counts and be shunned and ignored to an extent that she will become a spent force in Indian politics.

Hopefully, this election would close down all the "parking lots" a terminology coined by Mr. Venkiah Naidu for the Third and the Fourth Fronts. Good riddance, I would say.

And on the Congress, it is indeed reassuring that Dr. Singh will be at the helm. He will be forming the government from a position of strength and needs to capitalise on that. Today, he doesn't have the baggage of the Left weighing on him. It's the time for him to blaze ahead with reforms - in the economic, security and defence, foreign policy, electoral, administrative spheres. I am certain Dr. Singh will consolidate his image globally as a respectable statesman. (In a sense he already is - President Obama's comments point to that.)

However, power of the extra-constitutional remote controls that have traditionally vested with the First Family needs to be kept in check. I trust Dr. Manmohan Singh to do that - he did just that before moving decisively forward with the nuclear deal. Also, the First Family needs to come clean on a number of allegations that have been made by Dr. Subramanian Swamy and Mr. S. Gurumurthy, which are explosive and serious, if true.

The Indian politician is a promiscuous species - they are ever ready to get into bed with anyone and everyone, irrespective of ideology or past-differences. I hope this election, with a decisive mandate, marks the beginning of their extinction. Hopefully in the future we'll not hear of suitcases being ferried across Lutyens' Delhi.

As the Great Indian Tamasha comes to its grand finale, we can heave a sigh of relief - we can hope to have stability for the next 5 years!

An Agenda for Continuity

Today, the grand old man, Mr. L.K. Advani had a few valuable suggestions on the way our political system could be organised. His pearls of wisdom included compulsory voting, elections only once in 5 years and that too in February when the weather is salubrious, with a view on improving turnouts. Even though I do not support Mr. Advani in his desperate urge to become the Prime Minister, I agree with him totally on these ideas.

A few days back, Dr. Manmohan Singh also gave some invaluable suggestions - like limiting the role of regional parties and independents in the electoral process.

I agree with both of them completely. These are the only words of sanity coming in the cacophony of the ongoing electoral process.

I would be a little radical on this.

We are increasingly going to play an important role in the world theatre. The Doomsday Scenario is playing out. Whether we like it or not, India is reluctantly going to be drawn into a conflict with both Islamic fundamentalists across the western borders and in Afghanistan. We cannot rule out a high intensity conflict with the Chinese.

The scenario will play out in the next 20-odd years. In this evolving war theatre, the nation is going to be stretched for able political minds to strategize for the future - to not only ensure our survival but success as a nation.

To ensure effective and sane governance, we would need a legislation that defines on who gets to occupy key berths in the Union Cabinet. For instance, the defence ministry should go to a distinguished ex-serviceman, external affairs to an ex-diplomat, finance ministry to an economist, etc. We have in the past picked up people who have no damn clue what they are supposed to do in these mission-critical ministries.

Visualise a scenario where the Behenji or the likes of Deve Gowda become the Prime Minister. These people have no world view and have a myopic a vision of where as a nation would stand. Their parochial politics would make them Prime Ministers of Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka, as the case may be.

Such a legislation would ensure continuity of rational policy, which would give India the much required decoupling from political instability and parochialism.

Is it possible?

Yes, it is indeed.

The institutions like the Reserve Bank of India gives us a glimmer of hope that independent minded institutions can thrive for the good of the nation.

But the big question is whether the Congress and the BJP would get together to make it happen.

The Great Indian Tamasha begins....

In a couple of weeks the Great Indian Tamasha will begin.... It's not a circus I am talking about. It's the dance of democracy - the general elections is what I am talking about.

A few days back we were at the center of the world stage at the G-20 summit in London. The whole world is today looking at us, alongwith China, in the hope that we, perhaps the only growing economies, would pull back the world from the brink of financial Armageddon. As a resurgent nation, we went about telling the world that we would (yes, it's true) contribute to IMF, rather than borrow from it. Who could have imagined this in 1991, when Dr. Manmohan Singh pledged India's gold reserves for valuable foreign exchange?

Tomorrow, the elections will be on us. The question we are faced with is whether the resurgent momentum would be sustained after the elections or not?

Who would be voted in, is the big question today. With limited choices, I am looking at selecting the party to vote for by elimination.

Among the choices we have are the behenji, the comrades, the so called "knicker-walas" and the topiwala Congressmen.

We certainly cannot afford to have behenji at the helm of affairs - the whole law and order system would then be turned in an organised system of collecting loot for her birthday.

The comrades would close all of India's frontiers, except one - the Northern one. The Chinese would in all probability annex India as they did with Tibet, with the comrades playing ball. We cannot let them be a part of the of the government.

The choice boils down to essentially two options - the BJP or the Congress.

While I agree with some of the issues that the BJP has long advocated, e.g., stronger foreign and security policy, modernisation of defence forces, evolving strategic partnerships with both Israel and the United States, abrogation of Article 370 and adoption of a Uniform Civil Code, I feel, today, after Mr. Vajpayee ceded control of the party to Mr. Advani, they have not only lost allies but more importantly, also lost focus.

BJP may not be a dynastic organisation but it doesn't have a credible leadership today. Mr. Advani seems like an old man in a hurry who appears to be too eager to become the Prime Minister at least once, before he is forced to retire from politics. He is projecting himself as a muscular candidate with lots of promises on security and likes of it all, but we musn't forget he could not prevent the release of militants in exchange for the release of militants at Kandahar, one of India's saddest moments in history after the 1962 debacle.

He is trying to project himself as India's Obama, reaching out to Indian netizens. But the important question that I ask is whether he has the means to bring the vision to reality. He certainly does not have a A-team to realise this vision.

Two, BJP's idealistic principles of the early 2000s seem have to given way to rag-tag policies, without a concrete vision that a budding superpower should have. I don't see any vision for the next 50-years emanating out of the BJP.

Today, their view is lopsided - take the nuclear deal for instance - an issue based support to the UPA would have finished off the Left and could have reduced support for the so called 3rd front, paving the way for a two-party system, which would have brought a lot of stability to the political system. BJP's stand on the nuclear deal left a lot to be desired, baffled many BJP insiders (Mr. Brijesh Mishra being one such BJP member, who actually said that the deal was good for India and the BJP would have signed the deal had they been in power) and personally left me disappointed and saddened.

Let us admit it, gone are the days of Mr. Vajpayee. His immense goodwill has been squandered by Mr. Advani and his team, by their constant in-fighting and intra-party bickering. If things stay the way they are, the BJP may fade away into political oblivion, unless of course, Mr. Narendra Modi is able to shift to the Centre.

I must further admit that I am no fan of the Congress either. Like many others, I somehow detest the thought of a pasta-eating foreigner leading India's oldest political party. With all the sycophancy, dynastic leadership style and rampant corruption within the Congress, there is a lot to be desired. No one can forget how the man-slaughter of Sikhs in 1984, had de-facto sanction of the Congress. And to top it all, when the perpetrators of the crime get an acquittal, the party's commitment to justice is questioned.

However, with Dr. Manmohan Singh at helm, the Congress has indeed shown some signs of a commitment to moving forward, consistently and decisively. The nuclear deal and reactions to 26/11 do show that Dr. Singh's A-team, comprising of Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, does mean business.

A netizen once had argued with me saying that the Congress is lacking leaders. There is nobody to replace Mr. Chidambaram as Finance Minister, at a time when the world is facing the worst economic crisis in our living memories. He went on to say that our Prime Minister, who is fighting with his health, is playing multiple roles. He went to question how Sonia could lead the party.

My counter argument is that despite not having a full time Finance Minister, we have fared well on the economic front. And Dr. Manmohan Singh's A-team did hold the fort very well while he was away. Let's not forget, as opposed to the BJP, the Congress, today does have quite a few youth leaders who can step in if required.

It is obvious, that today, we as a nation are at cross-roads. The choices we make today will define how the India of tomorrow shapes the future of the world. The Congress, with Dr. Manmohan Singh seems to be our best bet.

At this point, I am reminded of Rahul Gandhi's powerful speech in the Parliament during the debate on the confidence vote on the nuclear issue on July 22, 2008, where he said that a powerful country thinks of how it can impact the world, whereas the not-so-powerful country of how the world would impact it.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's has in the last one year just done that - thinking of how India can impact the world, in imparting financial stability and achieving a secure neighbourhood. He sure does deserve another chance to make a difference to the world.

And we as players in the Great Indian Tamasha, i.e. as voters in the upcoming general elections, can help Dr. Manmohan Singh in that quest.

The Great Indian Tamasha begins....

In a couple of weeks the Great Indian Tamasha will begin.... It's not a circus I am talking about. It's the dance of democracy - the general elections is what I am talking about.

A few days back we were at the center of the world stage at the G-20 summit in London. The whole world is today looking at us, alongwith China, in the hope that we, perhaps the only growing economies, would pull back the world from the brink of financial Armageddon. As a resurgent nation, we went about telling the world that we would (yes, it's true) contribute to IMF, rather than borrow from it. Who could have imagined this in 1991, when Dr. Manmohan Singh pledged India's gold reserves for valuable foreign exchange?

Tomorrow, the elections will be on us. The question we are faced with is whether the resurgent momentum would be sustained after the elections or not?

Who would be voted in, is the big question today. With limited choices, I am looking at selecting the party to vote for by elimination.

Among the choices we have are the behenji, the comrades, the so called "knicker-walas" and the topiwala Congressmen.

We certainly cannot afford to have behenji at the helm of affairs - the whole law and order system would then be turned in an organised system of collecting loot for her birthday.

The comrades would close all of India's frontiers, except one - the Northern one. The Chinese would in all probability annex India as they did with Tibet, with the comrades playing ball. We cannot let them be a part of the of the government.

The choice boils down to essentially two options - the BJP or the Congress.

While I agree with some of the issues that the BJP has long advocated, e.g., stronger foreign and security policy, modernisation of defence forces, evolving strategic partnerships with both Israel and the United States, abrogation of Article 370 and adoption of a Uniform Civil Code, I feel, today, after Mr. Vajpayee ceded control of the party to Mr. Advani, they have not only lost allies but more importantly, also lost focus.

BJP may not be a dynastic organisation but it doesn't have a credible leadership today. Mr. Advani seems like an old man in a hurry who appears to be too eager to become the Prime Minister at least once, before he is forced to retire from politics. He is projecting himself as a muscular candidate with lots of promises on security and likes of it all, but we musn't forget he could not prevent the release of militants in exchange for the release of militants at Kandahar, one of India's saddest moments in history after the 1962 debacle.

He is trying to project himself as India's Obama, reaching out to Indian netizens. But the important question that I ask is whether he has the means to bring the vision to reality. He certainly does not have a A-team to realise this vision.

Two, BJP's idealistic principles of the early 2000s seem have to given way to rag-tag policies, without a concrete vision that a budding superpower should have. I don't see any vision for the next 50-years emanating out of the BJP.

Today, their view is lopsided - take the nuclear deal for instance - an issue based support to the UPA would have finished off the Left and could have reduced support for the so called 3rd front, paving the way for a two-party system, which would have brought a lot of stability to the political system. BJP's stand on the nuclear deal left a lot to be desired, baffled many BJP insiders (Mr. Brijesh Mishra being one such BJP member, who actually said that the deal was good for India and the BJP would have signed the deal had they been in power) and personally left me disappointed and saddened.

Let us admit it, gone are the days of Mr. Vajpayee. His immense goodwill has been squandered by Mr. Advani and his team, by their constant in-fighting and intra-party bickering. If things stay the way they are, the BJP may fade away into political oblivion, unless of course, Mr. Narendra Modi is able to shift to the Centre.

I must further admit that I am no fan of the Congress either. Like many others, I somehow detest the thought of a pasta-eating foreigner leading India's oldest political party. With all the sycophancy, dynastic leadership style and rampant corruption within the Congress, there is a lot to be desired. No one can forget how the man-slaughter of Sikhs in 1984, had de-facto sanction of the Congress. And to top it all, when the perpetrators of the crime get an acquittal, the party's commitment to justice is questioned.

However, with Dr. Manmohan Singh at helm, the Congress has indeed shown some signs of a commitment to moving forward, consistently and decisively. The nuclear deal and reactions to 26/11 do show that Dr. Singh's A-team, comprising of Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, does mean business.

A netizen once had argued with me saying that the Congress is lacking leaders. There is nobody to replace Mr. Chidambaram as Finance Minister, at a time when the world is facing the worst economic crisis in our living memories. He went on to say that our Prime Minister, who is fighting with his health, is playing multiple roles. He went to question how Sonia could lead the party.

My counter argument is that despite not having a full time Finance Minister, we have fared well on the economic front. And Dr. Manmohan Singh's A-team did hold the fort very well while he was away. Let's not forget, as opposed to the BJP, the Congress, today does have quite a few youth leaders who can step in if required.

It is obvious, that today, we as a nation are at cross-roads. The choices we make today will define how the India of tomorrow shapes the future of the world. The Congress, with Dr. Manmohan Singh seems to be our best bet.

At this point, I am reminded of Rahul Gandhi's powerful speech in the Parliament during the debate on the confidence vote on the nuclear issue on July 22, 2008, where he said that a powerful country thinks of how it can impact the world, whereas the not-so-powerful country of how the world would impact it.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's has in the last one year just done that - thinking of how India can impact the world, in imparting financial stability and achieving a secure neighbourhood. He sure does deserve another chance to make a difference to the world.

And we as players in the Great Indian Tamasha, i.e. as voters in the upcoming general elections, can help Dr. Manmohan Singh in that quest.

The Great Indian Tamasha begins....

In a couple of weeks the Great Indian Tamasha will begin.... It's not a circus I am talking about. It's the dance of democracy - the general elections is what I am talking about.

A few days back we were at the center of the world stage at the G-20 summit in London. The whole world is today looking at us, alongwith China, in the hope that we, perhaps the only growing economies, would pull back the world from the brink of financial Armageddon. As a resurgent nation, we went about telling the world that we would (yes, it's true) contribute to IMF, rather than borrow from it. Who could have imagined this in 1991, when Dr. Manmohan Singh pledged India's gold reserves for valuable foreign exchange?

Tomorrow, the elections will be on us. The question we are faced with is whether the resurgent momentum would be sustained after the elections or not?

Who would be voted in, is the big question today. With limited choices, I am looking at selecting the party to vote for by elimination.

Among the choices we have are the behenji, the comrades, the so called "knicker-walas" and the topiwala Congressmen.

We certainly cannot afford to have behenji at the helm of affairs - the whole law and order system would then be turned in an organised system of collecting loot for her birthday.

The comrades would close all of India's frontiers, except one - the Northern one. The Chinese would in all probability annex India as they did with Tibet, with the comrades playing ball. We cannot let them be a part of the of the government.

The choice boils down to essentially two options - the BJP or the Congress.

While I agree with some of the issues that the BJP has long advocated, e.g., stronger foreign and security policy, modernisation of defence forces, evolving strategic partnerships with both Israel and the United States, abrogation of Article 370 and adoption of a Uniform Civil Code, I feel, today, after Mr. Vajpayee ceded control of the party to Mr. Advani, they have not only lost allies but more importantly, also lost focus.

BJP may not be a dynastic organisation but it doesn't have a credible leadership today. Mr. Advani seems like an old man in a hurry who appears to be too eager to become the Prime Minister at least once, before he is forced to retire from politics. He is projecting himself as a muscular candidate with lots of promises on security and likes of it all, but we musn't forget he could not prevent the release of militants in exchange for the release of militants at Kandahar, one of India's saddest moments in history after the 1962 debacle.

He is trying to project himself as India's Obama, reaching out to Indian netizens. But the important question that I ask is whether he has the means to bring the vision to reality. He certainly does not have a A-team to realise this vision.

Two, BJP's idealistic principles of the early 2000s seem have to given way to rag-tag policies, without a concrete vision that a budding superpower should have. I don't see any vision for the next 50-years emanating out of the BJP.

Today, their view is lopsided - take the nuclear deal for instance - an issue based support to the UPA would have finished off the Left and could have reduced support for the so called 3rd front, paving the way for a two-party system, which would have brought a lot of stability to the political system. BJP's stand on the nuclear deal left a lot to be desired, baffled many BJP insiders (Mr. Brijesh Mishra being one such BJP member, who actually said that the deal was good for India and the BJP would have signed the deal had they been in power) and personally left me disappointed and saddened.

Let us admit it, gone are the days of Mr. Vajpayee. His immense goodwill has been squandered by Mr. Advani and his team, by their constant in-fighting and intra-party bickering. If things stay the way they are, the BJP may fade away into political oblivion, unless of course, Mr. Narendra Modi is able to shift to the Centre.

I must further admit that I am no fan of the Congress either. Like many others, I somehow detest the thought of a pasta-eating foreigner leading India's oldest political party. With all the sycophancy, dynastic leadership style and rampant corruption within the Congress, there is a lot to be desired. No one can forget how the man-slaughter of Sikhs in 1984, had de-facto sanction of the Congress. And to top it all, when the perpetrators of the crime get an acquittal, the party's commitment to justice is questioned.

However, with Dr. Manmohan Singh at helm, the Congress has indeed shown some signs of a commitment to moving forward, consistently and decisively. The nuclear deal and reactions to 26/11 do show that Dr. Singh's A-team, comprising of Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, does mean business.

A netizen once had argued with me saying that the Congress is lacking leaders. There is nobody to replace Mr. Chidambaram as Finance Minister, at a time when the world is facing the worst economic crisis in our living memories. He went on to say that our Prime Minister, who is fighting with his health, is playing multiple roles. He went to question how Sonia could lead the party.

My counter argument is that despite not having a full time Finance Minister, we have fared well on the economic front. And Dr. Manmohan Singh's A-team did hold the fort very well while he was away. Let's not forget, as opposed to the BJP, the Congress, today does have quite a few youth leaders who can step in if required.

It is obvious, that today, we as a nation are at cross-roads. The choices we make today will define how the India of tomorrow shapes the future of the world. The Congress, with Dr. Manmohan Singh seems to be our best bet.

At this point, I am reminded of Rahul Gandhi's powerful speech in the Parliament during the debate on the confidence vote on the nuclear issue on July 22, 2008, where he said that a powerful country thinks of how it can impact the world, whereas the not-so-powerful country of how the world would impact it.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's has in the last one year just done that - thinking of how India can impact the world, in imparting financial stability and achieving a secure neighbourhood. He sure does deserve another chance to make a difference to the world.

And we as players in the Great Indian Tamasha, i.e. as voters in the upcoming general elections, can help Dr. Manmohan Singh in that quest.