Owner: India Retold URL:http://www.vinodksharma.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:40:29 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: I write mostly about the current political, societal and security related issues that affect India as it readies to reclaim its place as one of the great nations of the world. Site statistics:Click here
MAYAWATI'S MANNA: CONGRESS’S CONFUSION, TIKAIT’S TAUNT 2008-04-02 04:01:00 Recent political developments in UP have been perplexing, to say the least. Alarmed by Mayawati’s rise and rise, her opponents, instead of developing coherent strategies to clip her growing wings, have played right into her hands. They have, with bizarre logic, given her an advantage that even she would have found difficult to create with her own efforts.Let us take the Congress party first. Till early last year, it was an ally of the Samajwadi Party (SP) which was ruling the state. Then, a couple of months before the state elections, the party decided that the SP was leading a “goonda raj” and became its sworn enemy overnight. So much so that when the Congress lay in ruins after the elections despite the much hoped and hyped entry of Rahul Gandhi into state politics and electioneeri
SEHWAG THE SLAYER 2008-04-01 02:21:00 You’ve liked it before, so he’s back with some more, SHAFT’S BACK IN ACTION! So ran the tag line of the 1972 Hollywood flick Shaft’s Big Score, where Shaft was the very black, very cool, very tough sort of superhero, a then unlikely black winner in white America.Virender Sehwag has for long been the grudgingly acknowledged “black” winner in Test Cricket. Coming from the by lanes of semi-rural Najafgarh in Delhi, this simple lad had almost nothing except raw talent going for him. No sophistication of the well bred, no fluidity with English and, to cap it all, no batting technique that purists would recommend to anyone. So, despite his blistering knocks which literally re-wrote the rules of the game for opening batsmen and put fear into many a fast bowler, he was forever criticiz
1000 TIMES PRESIDENT'S SALARY FOR INDIA'S BABUS! 2008-03-29 00:56:00 This one is more unbelievable than Ripley’s ‘Believe it or not’. Can anyone actually be crazy enough to ask for a salary of, yes, Rs 10 crores ($2.5 million) per month for Indian bureaucrats, when the President of India’s salary has just been raised to Rs 100,000($ 2500)?The Sixth Pay Commission, whose report was submitted to the government on March 24, 2008, has recommended a fixed salary of Rs 80,000 per month for Secretary level babus, a quantum jump over what they are getting now. A matter of rejoicing many would say, although the salary component is nowhere near what top executives are getting in the private sector. Corporate salaries have shot through the roof during the last few years as India has registered a scorching growth rate thanks mainly to the industry. Not to be l
UNREST IN TIBET: INDIA A MEEK, TOOTHLES NOBODY 2008-03-26 01:54:00 Foreign policy sans military might Is like a mouth without teeth;Often it has to swallow, Not once can it bite.------------------------------------------------------------------------Tibet is on fire. Nearly 60 years back, the Chinese Army occupied that country, with India’s willing concurrence born out of total blindness to its disastrous strategic ramifications. That fatal blunder converted Tibet from India’s buffer against China to the latter’s buffer against India and placed Chinese troops literally on India’s head. Tibet is officially an autonomous region of China. But, the autonomy is only in the name. Ever since the Dalai Lama was forced to flee to India in 1959, China has systematically eroded all traces of autonomy and brought in large number of Chinese settlers who, accor
SUKHPREET, SCARLETT , MEDIA AND US 2008-03-24 02:42:00 From the land of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, a lady has spoken, like a real hero, like the the many forgotten Indians the whole nation should be proud of and draw inspiration from.Sukhpreet Kaur, the wife of Sarabjit Singh who is slated to be hanged to death in Pakistan, recently uttered these bravest of words: “Myself and my daughters would never like Sarabjit freed in exchange for any hardcore Pakistani terrorist lodged in Indian jails.” For the family, she said, “nothing is above the nation and we can’t go against the interests of our motherland.” For the nation, she is willing to let her mate die.Sukhpreet, whose husband has been in a Pakistani jail for 17 long years, is not an “educated” and informed Indian who has formally learnt the meaning of patriotism or heard the famous
DHONI BEGINNING TO DIVIDE AND DESTROY TEAM INDIA 2008-03-21 01:48:00 Mahendra Singh Dhoni had looked absolutely composed when India won the last One Day Match against Australia, even as his team mates were going crazy with the excitement of beating Australia in Australia. Every one had then praised him for showing extraordinary maturity and balance, a sign, they said, that India had found just the right man to lead the team.His recent remarks in an interview on Cricinfo have once again brought to surface the disturbing arrogance that has been visible to me and a few others for quite some now. Speaking on the selection of the team under his captainship, he says: “I was pretty clear about the players I wanted in the side”. “Sometimes, it is very important to send the message across, because sometimes people neglect the answer”, he rubbed it in, to cle
CONGRESS-SP, BJP-BSP: FULL CIRCLE IN UP? 2008-03-19 02:31:00 Only last year, the Congress and the Samajwadi Party were on the same side of the fence in UP. But, months before the elections, the Congress became the latter’s sworn enemy, vowing to defeat it and end Mulayam Singh Yadav’s “Gunda Raj” in the state.What brought about this sudden U-turn? I suspect that the induction of Rahul Gandhi into UP politics and his decision to actively campaign for the Congress as its star campaigner was the key factor. Disconnected “loyalists”, helped by similarly placed media moguls, probably had visions of the latest Nehru-Gandhi taking the state by storm, just like his illustrious ancestors had done. He would, they believed, single handedly attract enough additional votes to at least ensure that no one could form a government in the state without th
MAJORS, GENERALS AND "POLICY MAKERS" 2008-03-17 06:03:00 General Deepak Kapoor, the Chief of the Army Staff, has kicked up an all too familiar storm after his interview with Karan Thapar. Major Jaswant Singh, former Defence and Finance Minister, has criticized the COAS for his remarks, particularly on incursions by the Chinese into Arunachal Pradesh, and virtually asked the government to gag the Army Chief.Major Jaswant Singh, who left the Army many decades ago but still wears a safari suit with military type pockets and shoulder flaps, is senior to the Chief in service. That, he thinks, gives him the right to tick off the COAS in public, as if the guy does not know what he is saying. To my mind, all that the General can be faulted for was the diffidence and extreme caution that he showed during the interview with Thapar. The Major has probably
WHY IS INDIA GOING 'SCARLETT'? 2008-03-14 02:13:00 One murder and the whole country has gone 'Scarlett' with embarrassment. Goa has become a very unsafe place and Indian men have become dangerous murderers and rapists. For the last couple of weeks, no news has gripped Indian media like the rape and murder of a 15 year old British girl, Scarlett Keeling, on a Goa beach. Front page headline and editorials in major newspapers - not tabloids – and prime time non-stop coverage in all TV news channels, repeatedly flashing photographs of Scarlett and visuals of her mother Fiona, are all blaming the police and the deteriorating law and order situation in Goa for the murder of one tourist. Would all this noise have been made had Scarlett been a non-white? Of course not! This mass fixation with ‘fair and lovely’ is not limited to selle
LOAN WAIVERS, SUICIDES AND FIVE STAR MEALS. 2008-03-13 02:32:00 P Chidamabaram, a sane, educated and sensible politician, has done what the ‘illiterate’ Devi Lal had once done, to literally buy votes. In the Union Budget presented on February 29, 2008, he took the wind out of the opposition’s everything by announcing a jumbo waiver of all loans taken by small farmers from banks. The bill: a whopping Rs 60,000 crores! Much to the surprise of all, as soon as the announcement was made, ‘farmers’ from neighbouring Harayana landed up at the residence of not the Finance Minister who made the dramatic announcement but of Sonia Gandhi, to thank her! How ordinary, poor farmers came to know immediately that Sonia Gandhi was the one to thank and how they had the presence of mind and the motivation to rush to Delhi to do so is one of the great myster
CHINA AND INDIA: WINNING WARS vs DEFENDING THE COUNTRY 2008-03-11 02:12:00 Chinese President Hu Jintao has asked the Peoples Liberation Army of China (PLA) to enhance its capabilities to win hi-tech regional wars, respond to security threats and accomplish a diverse array of military tasks. He has also called upon the PLA to redouble its efforts to further build its strength to support and guarantee the progress of socialism with Chinese characteristics and make greater contribution to world peace. (The Times of India March 11, 2008) The President of China has visualized a truly global and dominating role for the military, as required by a rapidly growing economic giant readying to become a world leader in the 21st century. That is the kind of strategic vision needed from the political leadership of a country as it takes on the new challenges that its size an
ARE INDIANS MORE LAW ABIDING THAN AMERICANS? 2008-03-10 00:35:00 A recent study for the Pew Centre for the States in the US, released on February 28, 2007 has revealed that more than 1 in 100 adult Americans were in prison at the start of 2008. The US also has the distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2,319,258 people behind bars. As per figures released by the India’s National Crimes and Records Bureau (NCRB), India had just 3,58,368 inmates in jails across the country as on December 31, 2005. The US, with a population which is one fourth of India’s over 1.2 billion, has almost six and a half times as many citizens in jail! India beats hollow even 36 European countries which have a combined total of 1.8 million prisoners. Only one in approximately 3345 Indians is in prison. We should be thumping our
THE VORTEX OF COMPETITIVE PANDERING 2008-03-07 02:21:00 The Prime Minister questions whether “ a multi-party model where parties with varying national reach and many with a limited sub-national reach is capable of providing the unity of purpose that nation states often have to demonstrate". He is disturbed that "Narrow political considerations, based on regional or sectional loyalties and ideologies can distort the national vision and sense of collective purpose”. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha, after decades of seeing truly shameful scenes in Parliament, finally wakes up one day to the long delayed realization that parliamentarians are actually “working overtime to destroy democracy”. Thankfully a few political leaders are beginning to realize, or at least publicly admit, what the common man has known, said and lived with for long: T
AUSSIES WEEDED OUT; BE CAREFUL DHONI 2008-03-05 00:45:00 Team ‘Indiabulls’ has done it! It has shown the world who the real “obnoxious little weeds” are and how they are to be weeded out. The Indians have faced the worst type of MAO instigated behaviour for months and have emerged victorious. Harbhajan Singh has had the last laugh! In an earlier post, Team Indiabulls beyond 20K, I had written that Greg Chappell was the best coach that Australia ever had. He did perhaps more for the Australian team as the Indian coach than the great Buchanan did for them as their coach. Chappell’s systematic destruction of Team India had ensured not only its hasty exit from the World Cup but also eliminated any possibility of an India-Australia clash in the tournament, which the Australians may well have lost as subsequent clashes show! Team In
CONGRESS PARTY FOR DALIT PM NOW! 2008-03-02 02:24:00 Mayawati’s march to Delhi has the Congress really rattled. The way the party has got into a reactive panic mode is only going to strengthen Mayawati and make her reach that chair in Delhi even faster! First was the spectacle of Rahul Gandhi spending a brief night in the house of a dalit in UP, much as a prince would do to demonstrate his royal station to his subjects. Then itself, I had written that this condescending, reactive gesture has come too late in the day and that it would, in fact, strengthen Mayawati’s grip as the real leader of Dalits who have been exploited for long as cannon fodder by the Congress. Then came the news that this first royal visit would not be the last; it would be repeated in other parts of the country too! Contrast this with what a real prince, Princ
A VOTE TO SAVE JINNAH'S PAKISTAN: WILL IT? 2008-03-01 11:19:00 In 1977, India voted to dramatically and humiliatingly rout the invincible Indira Gandhi and her Congress party out of power. India had then emphatically signalled that the nation was not willing to accept the curbs and excesses that it had experienced during the Emergency. Indira Gandhi's personal defeat in her own constituency drove home the point that no matter how powerful and charismatic the leader, he/she had to respect the individual liberties that the founding fathers of the country had guranteed through the constitution. In 2008, in the first free and fair elections held in Pakistan since 1970, the nation has voted even more emphatically and dramatically to tell all those who have thoroughly messed up the very idea and ideology of Pakistan envisioned by its creator Jinnah, tha
GAURANGA BABA 2008-02-27 00:52:00 This is a personal post about my Guru, Gauranga Baba, as we used to call him, who left his body on December 01, 2004. Baba was a Vaishnavite of one the sects of Gaudiya Sampraday which began with Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu more than 500 years ago. To those not familiar with such technicalities, it would be sufficient to know that the famous ISKCON movement belongs to the same lineage. After a very close and often turbulent association with baba, I had walked away from him in May 2003, never to interact with him again till his transition. In fact I came to know about his passing away months later. After almost five years of an almost total disconnect, a few days back I stumbled upon a website started by a few sincere followers of baba to carry forward his legacy and keep his message a
ANIL AMBANI PAYS OR RETURNS Rs 5000 CRORES TO SHAREHOLDERS? 2008-02-25 01:13:00 An Article in the Hindustan Times of February 25, 2008 highlights that by announcing a 3:5 bonus to shareholders, less the promoters, of Reliance Power, Anil Ambani has given up Rs 5000 crores of his personal wealth to them! This paying of $1.2 billion ‘from his pocket’ is ostensibly to enable shareholders of Reliance Power to make up the losses that they suffered on the listing of this most sought after stock in what has been India’s biggest IPO so far. As a result of the bonus issue, the cost of each share will come down to Rs 269 for retail investors and Rs 281 for institutional investors, a 40 and 37 percent discount respectively from the IPO price that they had initially paid. Not willing to admit that he too allowed greed to overtake the business ethics expected from
POLITICIANS, CRICKETERS, CATTLE AND AUCTIONS 2008-02-23 00:37:00 The Indian Premier League (IPL), a Twenty20 cricket competition modeled on the lines of European club football, has already made the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) richer by close to $1.75 billion even before the first match has been played. It has also made many young players millionaires overnight by industrialists and film stars who own various teams. And this seems to be just the beginning. If the idea takes off, as it certainly will, some cricketers will make the kind of money soccer superstars make in Europe. When the smell of money is so overpowering and Indian politicians are missing out big time, can criticism from them be far behind? Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thakeray has already fired the first salvo at the one truly financially smart politician who is looking
LET THE PEACE PIPELINE GO TO CHINA 2008-02-22 07:44:00 Pakistan it seems is trying every subtle trick in the book to get India to take the Iranian gas which will flow in a pipeline to India through 704 kilometers of Pakistani territory in the states of Baluchistan and Sind. As per a news item in The Indian Express, China has said that it was interested in importing the additional gas originally meant for India if India did not join the project. Is not that rider strange? It is fine by China if India gets the gas through Pakistan but China will need it only if India did not want it! Why are both the Chinese and the Pakistanis being so considerate to India’s energy needs? I had, in an earlier post, brought out at length the grave security risks that India would expose itself to if it agreed to the proposed gas pipeline being touted a
ATTRACTING TALENT TO THE INDIAN ARMY: SOME RADICAL THOUGHTS 2008-02-20 00:19:00 During the last couple of months, there has been a lively debate in the media about the difficulties that the Indian Army is facing in attracting suitable material to serve as commissioned officers. This exercise has become almost a ritual, to be aired periodically, without any concrete, practical proposals emerging to address the problem in any durable, tangible manner. Articles are routinely written, many irrelevant and impractical suggestions are made and the matter is forgotten, to be dusted out at some point of time in the future. Often, when a practical, sensible and easily implementable proposal does emerge, it is shot down by politicians and bureaucrats seeking to protect their own turfs. One such proposal made more than two decades back visualized “lateral absorption”
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, NOT GAIN, FOR THE CORRUPT 2008-02-16 01:29:00 India, thanks to the unshackling of the long suppressed dynamism and competitiveness shown by India Inc, is now looking to achieve what China has done, thanks to the pride and vision displayed by its political leadership. The Chinese leadership is completely focused on taking the country forward to the top of the global heap. In the pursuit of this objective, it has recognized that corruption is the one retardant that can not only sour its dream but also stain national character in a manner that can cause unacceptable damage in the long term. In China, the nation be proud, corruption is frowned upon and deterred by capital punishment. In India, on the other hand, in the face of ever increasing scandals involving our politicians and bureaucrats, governments continue to endorse p
MAYAWATI: SPOILER OR SAVIOUR? 2008-02-12 01:35:00 Mayawati’s hug of death is finally beginning to choke the Congress party. Before reading on, please carefully go through what I had written way back in August last year. In the post entitled "Mayawati’s Hug of Death”, I had then itself warned about the dangers that the Congress party was being exposed to in accepting Mayawati’s warm and reassuring sisterly hug after she had won the UP elections. Despite the many unconcealed signs to the effect given out over the years by Mayawati and her mentor Kanshi Ram, the Congress kept getting sucked into her death trap. The article needs to be read in its entirety; there is little need to repeat what I have already stated there with some lucidity. It has taken a very long time for the Congress to realize that Mayawati is quietly remo
THE 'CLEANSING' BATTLE FOR DELHI BEGINS. 2008-04-08 02:04:00 The knives are out and the battle has now truly been joined in UP.The rumblings had started some months back, after the Congress was badly mauled in the state elections that followed the one in UP last year. The bravado of dumping Mulayam Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) on the imagined strength of Brand Rahul Gandhi had given way to sobering reality that the Congress was falling into a bottomless pit. The strategy of trying to alternatively clutch at and combat the two strong planks that had become powerful on the strength of the very vote banks that had been the property of the Congress party for decades was clearly a dismal flop. This time, the Congress has decided that Mayawati is the one to take on and defeat in its battle to get to the seat of power in Delhi after the ensuing general e
SEPARATED IN A FAIR? 2008-04-07 01:49:00 Can you identify these two gentlemen bearing an uncanny resemblance to each other? They are probably the twins who had got separated in a village fair many years ago, in true filmy fashion!One grew up to be the President of a country and had everything going for him, even if "Ma" was not with him, Deewar style. Then one day, when all seemed to be going well, he arrogantly got into a prickly Bush which made his life very difficult indeed. Even as he emerged badly bruised, bleeding and humbled, he fell into one more Bush which looked less harmful but whose thorns turned out to be more poisonous than the fangs of a King Cobra.The other had "Ma" with him and was content growing up as a humble farmer and small time leader. But, almost like his late separated twin had got into a Bush, he fell in
INDIA 'S 'POWER': WEAKNESS=VIRTUE, STRENGTH=IMMORALITY 2008-04-12 02:13:00 The uprising in Tibet is the latest in a long series of developments in India’s neighbourhood that has exposed India’s congenital inability and lack of desire to get itself to be counted as even a small player, forget a major one, in the region.The ongoing protests against Chinese oppression in Tibet have seen India bend twice over backwards like a little nation so that the Chinese are not annoyed at all. All the cacophony about “morality” that accompanies other developments to influence India’s response - national interest be damned - is conspicuous by its almost total absence. This time, it is neither morality nor national interest which is determining India’s official and even media response to what China has been doing in Tibet for 60 years. This time, it is an unashamed, u
CHINA AND INDIA: BULLY AND FOREVER BULLIED. 2008-04-15 04:51:00 Children take part in a week-long military training before they enter primary school at a kindergarten in China's Tianjin municipality. Source: The Times of India-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Just when the Indian Ministry of Defence (MOD) was resting content after misguiding and misleading the nation in its latest annual report by completely ignoring the challenge posed to India by China’s rapid military modernization(The Times of India March 22, 2008), the Dragon has breathed fire and bared its fangsIn a recent article in The Chinese Institute of International Strategic Studies, authored by Zhongguo Zhan Lue, believed to be the pseudonym of a senior and noted member of the Chinese Communist Party, China has issued an aggressive warn
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