A few months ago, The Queen of India resigned from office because her office of profit gameplan to catch opposition politicians backfired. This supreme sacrifice was hailed by all and sundry, and the revered Lady's saintliness was furthered strengthened in the minds of the Congress worker ants.
However, behind the scenes, as we all who can see, followed the entire ridiculousness, the Con'gress government was working overtime to bring about a bill in the Parliament that would exclude many of the existing positions that are counted as office of profit. This bill was supported by all the netas of the land, and rightly so, because the Parliament is a place where politicians go to make laws for themselves, by themselves, and of themselves.
So once this Office of Profit bill was passed by the lower House, it was sent to the President for approval, but horror of horrors, the President has sent the bill back! From my vague memory of civics lessons, if the Lower House sends it back to him, even without making any changes, the President will have to pass it into a law. Such is the power of the Constitution. And that is exactly what has happened. The government does not care about the President, or what he thinks of their laws. Heres a time tested theorem, an Indian politician will act only when his/her own ass is on the line. So you can understand that it is imperative for the netas to bring about this law so they can augment their steller resumes with jobs in various organizations where they will do jack shit.
'Un'profitable bomb explodes in govt face
In a dampner on efforts to exempt a number of posts from the purview of Office of Profit, President A P J Abdul Kalam today returned the Bill on the issue for reconsideration by both houses of Parliament.
The criteria should be fair and reasonable and can be applied across all states and union territories in a clear and transparent manner, he said in his communication while returning the Bill that was passed in the just-concluded budget session of Parliament.
The other point on which the President is said to have reservation was about the propriety of applying the law with retrospective effect. He wants this also to be considered afresh, the sources said.
In the bill that was passed, 56 posts, including that of National Advisory Council Chairpersonhip, a post earlier held by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, were exempted from the definition of office of profit.
Unfazed by the President's action in returning the Bill, the government on Wednesday said it will re-present the legislation that seeks to exempt several posts from being considered office of profit in Parliament in the coming monsoon session and the Cabinet will decide on Thursday whether it should be in the ‘present form or amended form’.
Dismissing suggestions that the action of the President was a ‘setback’ to the government, he said this was part of the democratic process, which has various checks and balances.
Besides, he said, if Parliament approved the measure in its present form, then the President would have to give his assent.
----------------------------------------------------------------
These shameless, shameless monkeys. When God was handing out integrity, these clowns were busy playing with each others balls. Most of the positions to be exempted are occupied by current cronies in Con'gress and the Chinese Puppet party. A large dollop of brazen democracy anyone?
UPA loses face over Bill to save skin
Not only does this bring back the shadow of disqualification over several key MPs from the Congress and the Left, it also deeply embarrasses the government and its allies.
The Bill exempted a slew of posts from the “office-of-profit” clause, listing 45 posts, most of them occupied by Congress and Left MPs. Sources said the President asked Parliament to re-examine “the legal propriety” of retrospectively relaxing the norms for posts that violated the old clause (in 1959 Bill).
The President is also said to have expressed the view that “there should be comprehensive criteria (in the Bill) which should be applicable through the country in all states in a clear and transparent manner.”
Thirdly, Kalam wanted lawmakers to specify the implications of the Bill in terms of the several office-of-profit petitions pending before “competent authorities”—in other words, the Election Commission.
There are petitions against 43 MPs, including Speaker Lok Sabha Somnath Chatterjee, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Ministers Meira Kumar, T Subbirami Reddy, and against 216 MLAs.
The Damage, The Control
Why The President Disposed
• How can you apply it with effect from 1959?
• Need to define transparent criteria
• Why not have a comprehensive Bill that applies to all states
Pass it again, says Left
• Congress: Already facing quota heat, this is more egg on its face
• UPA: Manmohan likely to meet Kalam today to clarify questions raised so that Bill doesn’t need to be re-voted
• Left: Advance monsoon session, pass the Bill and send it back to President, said Basudeb Acharia, Lok Sabha leader
• BJP: Said Arun Jaitley: EC should “step in and disqualify people who held offices of profit...Unconstitutionality was writ large on this legislation. Only some faces were being protected. The law itself was not in the interest of Parliament, nor any public interest was served by it.’’
What Next
• Special session of House to pass Bill again; NDA will strongly object
• Brand new Bill incorporating Kalam’s suggestions
• EC has to start looking at complaints
• Question mark over status of cases in court now that Bill is stuck
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Mumbai, mat ro!
Just like theres the financial capital of New York City, India has its financial capital in Mumbai. Mumbai has been a true epitomy of the chaos and diversity that India is today. Millions of immigrants from all parts of the country have made it their home, much to the chagrin of those hypocrites led by the Thackreys. Thousands of starry-eyed youth have traversed its path in search of a lucky break into filmdom, and thousands have been mauled by its underworld.
Thats the life it represents, but I am here to talk about Mumbai's infrastructure, which again represents in a way, what India is today. There are luxurious skyscrapers rising in the midst of squalor. Lack of planning has taken its toll on everything, the water supply, electricity, and the city's natural resources. Indian townplanners never really did their job right, and every city is like a deformed person, with tumours in every part of the body, malnourished, and beaten up.
I think i've said it before, India will continue to suffer as long as our public housing remains a joke. I think the main reason slums exist in cities today is because the state has failed to provide cheap, quality housing to the millions of immigrants who have made their way from rural India looking for a better life. Till now, they have only been used as gullible vote banks by unscrupulous netas who feed them nothing but empty promises.
The same can be said for urban transportation. When one mentions urban transportation to me, a picture comes into my mind of green, dirty, rickety Tata, Leyland buses with puke on the sides, spewing black flames. Till the last decade, the only significant achievement in all of India on the transportation front was that the Delhi bus fleet converted to CNG. The decision to finally get the New Delhi Metro rolling during the NDA government was a great decision, and today I hear Delhi citizens couldn't be prouder of their efficient, clean and ever-expanding Metro. Thank you Mr. Sreedharan.
Now coming to Mumbai. Mumbai has always tried to work with the limited resources that its netas have provided. BEST, the bus service, still does a decent job, and its suburban train network is a lifeline to the millions to come in every day from the suburbs. Mumbai had one thing going for it, the Mumbai Urban Transportation Project, and the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project, so thats two things, which was supposed to change the way Mumbai lived. Big words, and while work is still going on the big projects such as the Bandra-Worly Sealink and Nhava-Sheva bridge, Mumbai was still left wanting for better transportation. So when the state government stopped talking politics for a second and talked infrastructure for a change, it was a pleasant surprise. At long last, the Mumbai Metro was finally going to be a reality. The state government awarded the contract for the first line of the first phase to Anil Ambani's Reliance Energy Limited, and work is expected to start in 2 months, and completed by 2009.
Heres the breakdown:
Phase I (12 km underground)
Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar - 15.0 kms
Backbay(Colaba)-Prabhadevi-Mahim-Andheri-Charkop - 36km
Mahim-Bandra-Kurla-Mankhurd - 12.8kms
Phase II
Charkop - Dahisar - 7.5kms
Ghatkopar-Mulund - 12.4kms
Phase III (20.5 km underground)
BKC - Airport - Powai - Kanjur Marg - 19.5kms
Andheri (East) -Dahisar (East) - 18kms
Fountain (Hutatma Chowk) - Sewri - Ghatkopar - 21.8kms
Prabhadevi - Sewri - 3.5kms
---------------------------------------------------
Indian cities have been plagued by ineffective city governments, state bureaucracies, and the ever-uncaring politicians, so I do not know how much the National Urban Renewal Mission with accomplish, but heres to optimism.
Thats the life it represents, but I am here to talk about Mumbai's infrastructure, which again represents in a way, what India is today. There are luxurious skyscrapers rising in the midst of squalor. Lack of planning has taken its toll on everything, the water supply, electricity, and the city's natural resources. Indian townplanners never really did their job right, and every city is like a deformed person, with tumours in every part of the body, malnourished, and beaten up.
I think i've said it before, India will continue to suffer as long as our public housing remains a joke. I think the main reason slums exist in cities today is because the state has failed to provide cheap, quality housing to the millions of immigrants who have made their way from rural India looking for a better life. Till now, they have only been used as gullible vote banks by unscrupulous netas who feed them nothing but empty promises.
The same can be said for urban transportation. When one mentions urban transportation to me, a picture comes into my mind of green, dirty, rickety Tata, Leyland buses with puke on the sides, spewing black flames. Till the last decade, the only significant achievement in all of India on the transportation front was that the Delhi bus fleet converted to CNG. The decision to finally get the New Delhi Metro rolling during the NDA government was a great decision, and today I hear Delhi citizens couldn't be prouder of their efficient, clean and ever-expanding Metro. Thank you Mr. Sreedharan.
Now coming to Mumbai. Mumbai has always tried to work with the limited resources that its netas have provided. BEST, the bus service, still does a decent job, and its suburban train network is a lifeline to the millions to come in every day from the suburbs. Mumbai had one thing going for it, the Mumbai Urban Transportation Project, and the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project, so thats two things, which was supposed to change the way Mumbai lived. Big words, and while work is still going on the big projects such as the Bandra-Worly Sealink and Nhava-Sheva bridge, Mumbai was still left wanting for better transportation. So when the state government stopped talking politics for a second and talked infrastructure for a change, it was a pleasant surprise. At long last, the Mumbai Metro was finally going to be a reality. The state government awarded the contract for the first line of the first phase to Anil Ambani's Reliance Energy Limited, and work is expected to start in 2 months, and completed by 2009.
Heres the breakdown:
Phase I (12 km underground)
Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar - 15.0 kms
Backbay(Colaba)-Prabhadevi-Mahim-Andheri-Charkop - 36km
Mahim-Bandra-Kurla-Mankhurd - 12.8kms
Phase II
Charkop - Dahisar - 7.5kms
Ghatkopar-Mulund - 12.4kms
Phase III (20.5 km underground)
BKC - Airport - Powai - Kanjur Marg - 19.5kms
Andheri (East) -Dahisar (East) - 18kms
Fountain (Hutatma Chowk) - Sewri - Ghatkopar - 21.8kms
Prabhadevi - Sewri - 3.5kms
---------------------------------------------------
Indian cities have been plagued by ineffective city governments, state bureaucracies, and the ever-uncaring politicians, so I do not know how much the National Urban Renewal Mission with accomplish, but heres to optimism.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Welcome to today's BS
Every day I read the news, and everyday I get the feeling that India is probably the happiest place on Earth. From where do i get this feeling? Because we seem to have the largest number of jokers in the world. One only needs to look around and there will be jokers all around us. The incompetent Member of Parliament who has no idea of how to run a country, theres a joker for you. The thousands of Members of Legislative Assemblies who have absolutely no regard for integrity and morality are another niche group of jokers. All in all, I have come to realize this, India rarely produces ring masters, what we get most are clowns of the top degree.
I've written a lot about the whole quota issue, and frankly, I am getting more and more disenchanted by it every passing day. Apparently, the protesting people don't mean a thing to the government, because for them, this whole quota issue is a 'closed' chapter. So all the youth of this country who feel let down can go home and prepare to be pawns in this great game of vote bank appeasement. The Prime Minister came out with a statement that he has not been silent on the whole issue, and that the issue is final. I wonder why the Prime Minister needed to make a statement in the first place defending his position on the issue. I think its because of that same old charge that has been brought up again and again, its the Madame that runs the show, and Arjun Singh is definitely a more thoroughbred buttkisser than dear PM can ever dream to be.
I've written a lot about the whole quota issue, and frankly, I am getting more and more disenchanted by it every passing day. Apparently, the protesting people don't mean a thing to the government, because for them, this whole quota issue is a 'closed' chapter. So all the youth of this country who feel let down can go home and prepare to be pawns in this great game of vote bank appeasement. The Prime Minister came out with a statement that he has not been silent on the whole issue, and that the issue is final. I wonder why the Prime Minister needed to make a statement in the first place defending his position on the issue. I think its because of that same old charge that has been brought up again and again, its the Madame that runs the show, and Arjun Singh is definitely a more thoroughbred buttkisser than dear PM can ever dream to be.
I'm not silent, quota is final: PM
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finally broke his silence on the reservation issue and made clear that the decision to implement 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes in institutes of higher learning was final. Asked as to why he had remained conspicuously silent on the issue so far, Prime Minister said it was not correct to say he had been "silent or not visible" on the issue.
"I have earlier appealed twice. I once again appeal to call-off their agitation and we will find a viable and credible way to protect the interest of all," he said.
Outlining the future course of action, Singh assured that the Government would set up committees of vice-chancellors of Central universities and directors of Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institutes of Technology. This will be done to facilitate the increase in infrastructure in all these institutions in a manner that the interest of all groups of students is protected.
----------------------------------------------------
So there you go, how dare we say the PM was silent! He asked the protesting youth to calm down, twice! But I must commend the excellent job Mrs. Gandhi is doing behind the scenes. Not once during the whole charade has her name cropped up, as if she is not a part of this entire episode. Very well played Ma'am, but unlike what your yesman, Arjun Singh, might say, this issue is far from over.
I came across this nice article by a retired IAS officer, Mr. V Sundaram. Undoubtedly he is one of those anti-minorities who is opposed to this whole quota BS, and his sarcasm is biting. We all know of the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy of 1919, that heinous act that sparked this nation's quest for freedom. The way Reginald Dyer killed the innocent Indians in that public park in Amritsar, the same way Arjun Singh is plotting to kill the millions of youth in this entire country. From now on, we should not identify ourselves as Indians, but of the caste we belong to, because for the Government, that is a more important identification.
On Baisakhi day on 13 April, 1919 about 25,000 men, women and children, including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians had gathered for a peaceful protest meeting against a set of draconian laws known as the Rowlatt Acts which gave the British rulers sweeping powers such as press censorship, detention without trial, and arrest without warrant. A British officer called Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer, blocked the only exit from the enclosure and, without any warning, ordered his troops to fire into the crowd. This sparked off the freedom movement under the magnificent leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
The Jallianwala Bhag record of British Raj will be put to shame from June, 2007 when our Human Resource Destruction (HRD) Minister wants to install the Congress monarchy sponsored anarchy of Quota Raj. Brig-Gen Reginald Dyer killed only 379 people or a little more than that on 13 April, 1919 at Jallianwala Bhag. By launching Quota Raj from next year, Arjun Singh wants to deal a death blow to the flower of India's youth who want to compete and survive in a competitive world of intelligence and knowledge.
A political war in India is one in which everyone shoots from the lip. The UPA Government's political machine is a united minority against a divided majority. For petty politicians like Arjun Singh, politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
I am not therefore surprised that National Knowledge Commission Convenor Pratap Bhanu Mehta and another member, world famous Sociologist Andre Beteille have resigned from the panel over the on-going Quota Raj Reservation Controversy, declaring that quotas in elite institutions violate the cardinal principles of a knowledge-based society.
In his resignation letter Prof Andre Beteille has clearly indicated that the quota proposal is a cynical misrepresentation of recently-enacted provisions of the Constitution. In his view, any such policy would be unwise and has clearly stated that caste-based quotas are not mandatory under the Constitution. Pratap Bhanu Mehta has said that the government's measures are not based on an assessment of effectiveness and the whole proposal of Arjun Singh is incompatible with the freedom and diversity of national institutions of excellence. According to him, such a move would thoroughly politicise the educational process, injecting an 'insidious poison' that would harm the nation's long-term interests apart from the fact that such measures would never lead us to social justice.
Arun Shourie in his brilliantly written piece ?The State as Charade? V P Singh, Chandrasekar and the rest? quoted from the Mandal Commission Report based on which the fraudulent superstructure of Quota Raj is being raised by the Human Resource Destruction Ministry today. Mandal wrote: 'In the end it may be emphasised that this survey has 'NO PRETENSIONS TO BEING A PIECE OF ACADEMIC RESEARCH'.
On the basis of such an 'unscientific' and inaccurate report, the fate of 'yet-to-be-born' are being decided in an authoritative manner by a minority Government in 'SECULAR INDIA' today. In an incisive article in the print media recently, on this subject, Dr P V Indiresan, former Director, IIT (Chennai), wrote: 'Reservation in Tamilnadu can also be declared as a failure on two counts: Even after three-quarters of a century, the backward castes are unwilling to compete openly. There are third, even fourth generation beneficiaries of reservation who are unable to get over their dependence on the handicaps reservation provides for them. It appears reservation is a crutch, not a remedy.'
Arjun Singh wants to provide a crutch, not to the genuinely physically handicapped or the genuinely economically handicapped persons in India but to the politically-sponsored, politically promoted and politically sustained so called backward classes of India which is just a sordid creation of our political parties for being used as powerful instruments of caste-based vote-bank politics.
As a natural corollary of the Reservation Principle, teaching posts have been reserved on caste basis in India. That is a cardinal error. What our students need most are the best teachers available, not the least qualified ones.
I am imagining what will India be like after sixty years in 2066 when Arjun Singh's dream of total Human Resource Destruction based on Quota Raj would have been realised in full measure: At an Alumni meeting to be held on 1 January, 2066, I expect to participate not as one belonging to OBCs (Other Backward Castes) but as one belonging to MBFCs (Moderately Backward Forward Castes) along with my friends belonging to the NSTs ('Non-Scheduled Tribes') then expected to be in a political league with the OBCs.
Further, I cannot help visualising a non-secular, non-communal proposal in the Human Resources Destruction Ministry for coming out with a nationally declared National Anthem of Quota Raj. It is called Arjun Singh's Anthem 'Disunited Heart'. It runs as follows:
May we be secularly disunited in heart
May we be secularly disunited in speech
May we be secularly disunited in mind and mindlessness
May we be secularly disunited in our prayer
May we be secularly disunited in our goal
May we be secularly disunited in our resolve and irresolution
May we be secularly disunited in our misunderstanding
May we be secularly disunited in our offering
May we be secularly disunited in our feelings
May we be secularly disunited in our hearts
May we be secularly disunited in our thoughts
May there be perfect unity of heart, mind and soul and body if alive
Only in our solemn commitment to Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka
To the complete and total exclusion of Bharat Mata!
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
2 years in office! Phew!!
Did you know that the United Progressive Alliance Government recently completeled two years in office? I didn't either, till I read it in a couple of online newspapers. So this brings me to the point where I try to take stock of the situation two years after Her Highness Mrs. Gandhi and her foot-soldiers came to power, riding on that thing called the Common Minimum Program, or is it Programme? I could find out but I dont really care.
I've seen, or read about crappy central governments before, but I haven't really followed any this closely before. And the irony is that I am about 10,000 miles away from them! Did you ever find yourself inself a position where some individual, through circumstances or just bad fortune, had your balls in such a strong grip that you had to do whatever they wanted you to do? I am sure we all have faced situations such as those, and apparently national governments face those situations too.
I don't know why the Chinese puppets didn't actively join the government, and if i remember correctly, at the time the government was formed, they didn't want to join because.......wait, I dont know. But what I do know is that Sonia Gandhi didn't become the Prime Minister of India, and while the Con'gress minions cried and cried themselves to sleep, The Queen took the high road, or like they say, made the supreme sacrifice, just like she did a few months ago when her conspiracy backfired. Wow, look at the Gandhi's man, her mother-in-law was the Prime Minister, her husband was the Prime Minister, and how the Prince is in training to be the next Prime Minister. As for her, well, she could order Congress netas to do backflips and they would gladly do it all day long.
Economy, economy, thats the name of the game in today's world, and today's India. So India gets an economist Prime Minister, a good Finance Minister and a good Chairman of the Planning Commission. Crack team for the economy, but a cracked team everywhere else. On second thoughts, the government wants to destroy that too by bringing in quota in the private sector. We get a gutless Home Minister in Shivraj Patil, and look where the Naxal situation is headed because of their hidden agendas. Ajrun Singh is, of course, following madams orders to the O. Create a safe, communally divided situation in UP for the Prince to step into. Well thats what some people say, others say Arjun Singh wants to be Prime Minister, thats why he is doing this. Whichever it is, these monkeys are bent on hurting the foundations of this nation for their own greed.
Coming to the internal situation, last year alone, there were terrorist attacks in Delhi, Bangalore, Ayodhya, Varanasi, and to me this suggests our internal defenses are getting weaker every day. The naxals are a bigger problem than they ever were before. But what to the Home Minister? Apparently they are just misguided youth looking for a decent living. No, Mr. Shivraj "I am here because I am Mrs. Gandhi's Chamcha" Patil, they are mercenaries fighting for their own country.
The surprise story is Lalu. The railways have turned around, and people say it is for real, and maybe Lalu has a big hand in this, and one can only wonder, why? I think its because after he and his extended family was drubbed in the Bihar elections, he realized that you can only keep your people backward for this long, and after a while they will start asking why they don't have roads to walk on or food to feed their families with, or why that goon on the streets keeps harrassing them everyday. So maybe Lalu thought, oh man, I better do something to salvage my reputation, and apparently he is doing a good job at it!
With greater economic strength comes greater respect, and I believe India has been learning that the last couple of years. The nuclear energy deal with the US is considered by some to be the most significant achievement of the USA, I mean the UPA. But other things are looking down, and like I said, how India handles the naxals and if Mrs. Gandhi is able to get away with her preposterous education quota scheme. Has one realized that not one Con'gress minister has come forward with even an iota of reasonable justification on the issue?
So heres the funny thing, the Chinese puppets didn't really like the way the Government performed the last two years. Oh my goodness, I could never have guessed! Burn in hell, traitors, burn in hell, and I mean both the Chinese pups and the Con'gress. India is the last thing on their minds.
Left not happy with UPA show
In a not-so-flattering assessment of the government on a day when the UPA patted itself on the back, the Left charged the UPA with going against the spirit of the CMP and alleged that the US was directly exercising influence on domestic policy-making.
It said the Planning Commission has become the “hub for initiation and pushing for such policies.” The Left also took note of the crash in the stock market saying volatility of the market underlined the danger of going for full capital account convertibility about which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made an announcement.
“The two year record has shown the UPA government’s eagerness to push through policies which are in the interests of foreign finance capital and big business while it has been tardy in taking up those pro-people measures in the CMG which would benefit the working people,” the four Left parties said in a joint statement.
Earlier, at a press conference CPU MPs Based Atari and Rupchand Pal said the Left was skipping the function as “We are not able to swallow their agenda.” However, the comrades are attending the dinner to be hosted at the Prime Minister’s residence.
The CPM leaders said two years was not a small time and the UPA could have done many things particularly for the poorer sections and middle class. “This has not been done..... the government is bent upon going astray,” they said.
While appreciating the government’s efforts on just a handful of issues including abolition of POTA, right to information act, rural employment guarantee scheme and Kashmir talks, the Left’s catalogue of discontent is much longer.
Repeating its familiar anti-government rhetoric, the Left attacked the government on opening up FDI in single brand retail, fuel prices, plans to bring a legislation to amend the banking regulation act, privatising Mumbai and Delhi airports and the delay in legislation for agricultural workers.
----------------------------------------------------------
Ha ha, two semengobblers accusing each other of having agendas. I am sorry I even posted this crap, its everything we knew already.
meanwhile....
UPA in for more tightrope walks in third year
As his government enters its third year in office on Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be bracing himself for more tightrope walking with a rejuvenated Left clamouring for a brake on reform policies and the reservation issue stalking the coalition.
A redeeming feature, though, for the UPA coalition, headed by Sonia Gandhi, is that the main opposition BJP remained embroiled in internal problems, while the Congress managed to be on the winning team in three states—Assam, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry—in the recent Assembly elections.
But the Left parties more than made up for the opposition and has threatened to play a more aggressive role in Parliament and outside on any violation by the government of the Common Minimum Programme.
Singh has been lucky to build bridges with leaders like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who led the Left win in West Bengal and is also talking the language of ushering in industry and investment in the eastern state, which is lagging behind in development.
The Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement was the feather in the cap of the economist-turned-politician as US President George W Bush, in search of friends, visited India and went the extra mile for providing energy security. That the US Congress has not yet approved the agreement is another story.
The year saw the Central coalition bringing in the ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, which is being implemented in 200 most backward districts. Questions are, however, being raised on how much it would benefit the ruling party politically.
But that the government failed to tackle the agrarian crisis was evident from the fact that suicides of farmers continued in some states, including Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
The Right to Information Act has also been hailed by the ruling coalition as a major achievement, but the openness and transparency is yet to sink in the bureaucracy, much to the detriment of the common man.
The year saw resignation of External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh in the wake of the Volcker controversy and the Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs Jagdish Tytler in the wake of the Nanavati Commission report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Natwar Singh’s exit resulted in the Prime Minister himself taking on the responsibility of external affairs.
Despite suggestions that Rahul Gandhi is being groomed for the prime ministership sooner or later, this section believes that Manmohan Singh will continue to be in a "very unique position" as "no one can touch him". They however feel that the Prime Minister needs to be "more assertive" and show that he is not only the first among the equals in the Cabinet.
I've seen, or read about crappy central governments before, but I haven't really followed any this closely before. And the irony is that I am about 10,000 miles away from them! Did you ever find yourself inself a position where some individual, through circumstances or just bad fortune, had your balls in such a strong grip that you had to do whatever they wanted you to do? I am sure we all have faced situations such as those, and apparently national governments face those situations too.
I don't know why the Chinese puppets didn't actively join the government, and if i remember correctly, at the time the government was formed, they didn't want to join because.......wait, I dont know. But what I do know is that Sonia Gandhi didn't become the Prime Minister of India, and while the Con'gress minions cried and cried themselves to sleep, The Queen took the high road, or like they say, made the supreme sacrifice, just like she did a few months ago when her conspiracy backfired. Wow, look at the Gandhi's man, her mother-in-law was the Prime Minister, her husband was the Prime Minister, and how the Prince is in training to be the next Prime Minister. As for her, well, she could order Congress netas to do backflips and they would gladly do it all day long.
Economy, economy, thats the name of the game in today's world, and today's India. So India gets an economist Prime Minister, a good Finance Minister and a good Chairman of the Planning Commission. Crack team for the economy, but a cracked team everywhere else. On second thoughts, the government wants to destroy that too by bringing in quota in the private sector. We get a gutless Home Minister in Shivraj Patil, and look where the Naxal situation is headed because of their hidden agendas. Ajrun Singh is, of course, following madams orders to the O. Create a safe, communally divided situation in UP for the Prince to step into. Well thats what some people say, others say Arjun Singh wants to be Prime Minister, thats why he is doing this. Whichever it is, these monkeys are bent on hurting the foundations of this nation for their own greed.
Coming to the internal situation, last year alone, there were terrorist attacks in Delhi, Bangalore, Ayodhya, Varanasi, and to me this suggests our internal defenses are getting weaker every day. The naxals are a bigger problem than they ever were before. But what to the Home Minister? Apparently they are just misguided youth looking for a decent living. No, Mr. Shivraj "I am here because I am Mrs. Gandhi's Chamcha" Patil, they are mercenaries fighting for their own country.
The surprise story is Lalu. The railways have turned around, and people say it is for real, and maybe Lalu has a big hand in this, and one can only wonder, why? I think its because after he and his extended family was drubbed in the Bihar elections, he realized that you can only keep your people backward for this long, and after a while they will start asking why they don't have roads to walk on or food to feed their families with, or why that goon on the streets keeps harrassing them everyday. So maybe Lalu thought, oh man, I better do something to salvage my reputation, and apparently he is doing a good job at it!
With greater economic strength comes greater respect, and I believe India has been learning that the last couple of years. The nuclear energy deal with the US is considered by some to be the most significant achievement of the USA, I mean the UPA. But other things are looking down, and like I said, how India handles the naxals and if Mrs. Gandhi is able to get away with her preposterous education quota scheme. Has one realized that not one Con'gress minister has come forward with even an iota of reasonable justification on the issue?
So heres the funny thing, the Chinese puppets didn't really like the way the Government performed the last two years. Oh my goodness, I could never have guessed! Burn in hell, traitors, burn in hell, and I mean both the Chinese pups and the Con'gress. India is the last thing on their minds.
Left not happy with UPA show
In a not-so-flattering assessment of the government on a day when the UPA patted itself on the back, the Left charged the UPA with going against the spirit of the CMP and alleged that the US was directly exercising influence on domestic policy-making.
It said the Planning Commission has become the “hub for initiation and pushing for such policies.” The Left also took note of the crash in the stock market saying volatility of the market underlined the danger of going for full capital account convertibility about which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made an announcement.
“The two year record has shown the UPA government’s eagerness to push through policies which are in the interests of foreign finance capital and big business while it has been tardy in taking up those pro-people measures in the CMG which would benefit the working people,” the four Left parties said in a joint statement.
Earlier, at a press conference CPU MPs Based Atari and Rupchand Pal said the Left was skipping the function as “We are not able to swallow their agenda.” However, the comrades are attending the dinner to be hosted at the Prime Minister’s residence.
The CPM leaders said two years was not a small time and the UPA could have done many things particularly for the poorer sections and middle class. “This has not been done..... the government is bent upon going astray,” they said.
While appreciating the government’s efforts on just a handful of issues including abolition of POTA, right to information act, rural employment guarantee scheme and Kashmir talks, the Left’s catalogue of discontent is much longer.
Repeating its familiar anti-government rhetoric, the Left attacked the government on opening up FDI in single brand retail, fuel prices, plans to bring a legislation to amend the banking regulation act, privatising Mumbai and Delhi airports and the delay in legislation for agricultural workers.
----------------------------------------------------------
Ha ha, two semengobblers accusing each other of having agendas. I am sorry I even posted this crap, its everything we knew already.
meanwhile....
UPA in for more tightrope walks in third year
As his government enters its third year in office on Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may be bracing himself for more tightrope walking with a rejuvenated Left clamouring for a brake on reform policies and the reservation issue stalking the coalition.
A redeeming feature, though, for the UPA coalition, headed by Sonia Gandhi, is that the main opposition BJP remained embroiled in internal problems, while the Congress managed to be on the winning team in three states—Assam, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry—in the recent Assembly elections.
But the Left parties more than made up for the opposition and has threatened to play a more aggressive role in Parliament and outside on any violation by the government of the Common Minimum Programme.
Singh has been lucky to build bridges with leaders like Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, who led the Left win in West Bengal and is also talking the language of ushering in industry and investment in the eastern state, which is lagging behind in development.
The Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement was the feather in the cap of the economist-turned-politician as US President George W Bush, in search of friends, visited India and went the extra mile for providing energy security. That the US Congress has not yet approved the agreement is another story.
The year saw the Central coalition bringing in the ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, which is being implemented in 200 most backward districts. Questions are, however, being raised on how much it would benefit the ruling party politically.
But that the government failed to tackle the agrarian crisis was evident from the fact that suicides of farmers continued in some states, including Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
The Right to Information Act has also been hailed by the ruling coalition as a major achievement, but the openness and transparency is yet to sink in the bureaucracy, much to the detriment of the common man.
The year saw resignation of External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh in the wake of the Volcker controversy and the Minister of State for Overseas Indian Affairs Jagdish Tytler in the wake of the Nanavati Commission report on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Natwar Singh’s exit resulted in the Prime Minister himself taking on the responsibility of external affairs.
Despite suggestions that Rahul Gandhi is being groomed for the prime ministership sooner or later, this section believes that Manmohan Singh will continue to be in a "very unique position" as "no one can touch him". They however feel that the Prime Minister needs to be "more assertive" and show that he is not only the first among the equals in the Cabinet.
Friday, May 19, 2006
ISRO agrees: English media kisses US butt
I am not a big fan of the Indian English press, and I am not sure if i have a post on that topic here, but I am pretty certain I made a long post on it somewhere. The Indian English press has no identity, other than to try to look like they are from the west. I think i did make a post on that topic here, when I said that The Hindustan Times and The Times of India are but a shadow of what they used to be. Dumb, sensationalist tabloids, thats what they are reduced to.
I have heard of a lot of yuppie people who love their daily dose of Times of India, but for someone looking for real news and real opinion, Times of India doesn't cut the ice anymore. The same with The Hindustan Times. You want softcore Indian porn? Then you must visit the illustrious websites of these exalted publications, because you will get to see plenty of Indian girls in bikinis, in addition to half-naked women from all over the world. Come to think of it, thats why their websites are popular, because admit it, with all the social chains on us, we Indians love our online porn. Of course you will only get to the good stuff after you have combated the dozens of pop-ups that uh...pop up as soon as you log on to their site.
These are two publications that want to turn themselves into tabloids to cater to the yuppie crowd. For example, if you log onto The Economic Times, a sister publication of the ToI, you will have plenty of stories on how to get to the US. You will be uptodate as to how the visa scene is, and how you can get one, and you will have first hand knowledge of some insignificant act that some Indian did somewhere in the United States. Yes, when it comes to the US fixation, the Bennett & Coleman publication called the Times of India definitely puts the 't' in the buttkiss. In addition, the Times of India also does not agree with how big, bad India is taking away the jobs of the innocent American citizens who are being laid off in the thousands because we Indians are willing to work for cheap. Bad, bad Indians.
Then there are the publications that owe their allegience to other foreign forces, like the Hindu and its communist brotherhood. I dont know if people have noticed it, but I think the Hindu is very communist. Good, so the Government of India's 'Look East' policy is at least working on somebody. A lot of people love the newspaper and it still does a good job in bringing quality news without the kitch, but in my opinion, they are very Chinese friendly, which I think is not a good thing.
Theres bias in all media, and maybe our newspapers don't stand a chance when it comes to media bias from the likes of BBC and Fox News, CNN etc, but they are still biased enough to leave a bad taste in ones mouth, and potentially hurt the society.
Over the moon on US
The lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, is entirely an ISRO show. For 3-4 years it has sweated to conceive, script, plan, get the Rs 350-crore project off the ground. So, imagine the Organisation's chagrin when it had to share the credit for its baby with its US counterpart, NASA.
"Chandrayaan is a fully Indian mission. So how come the media are making so much of an MoU and calling it a joint venture and hailing the US and NASA for it?" asked one usually reticent ISRO official. "You in the media have gone truly overboard. All that the US has done is put two instruments on our spacecraft. It's like putting extra passengers."
And where were the same media when the European Space Agency quietly signed a similar MoU for three instruments a few months back, another official asked. "You surely have a US fixation."
I have heard of a lot of yuppie people who love their daily dose of Times of India, but for someone looking for real news and real opinion, Times of India doesn't cut the ice anymore. The same with The Hindustan Times. You want softcore Indian porn? Then you must visit the illustrious websites of these exalted publications, because you will get to see plenty of Indian girls in bikinis, in addition to half-naked women from all over the world. Come to think of it, thats why their websites are popular, because admit it, with all the social chains on us, we Indians love our online porn. Of course you will only get to the good stuff after you have combated the dozens of pop-ups that uh...pop up as soon as you log on to their site.
These are two publications that want to turn themselves into tabloids to cater to the yuppie crowd. For example, if you log onto The Economic Times, a sister publication of the ToI, you will have plenty of stories on how to get to the US. You will be uptodate as to how the visa scene is, and how you can get one, and you will have first hand knowledge of some insignificant act that some Indian did somewhere in the United States. Yes, when it comes to the US fixation, the Bennett & Coleman publication called the Times of India definitely puts the 't' in the buttkiss. In addition, the Times of India also does not agree with how big, bad India is taking away the jobs of the innocent American citizens who are being laid off in the thousands because we Indians are willing to work for cheap. Bad, bad Indians.
Then there are the publications that owe their allegience to other foreign forces, like the Hindu and its communist brotherhood. I dont know if people have noticed it, but I think the Hindu is very communist. Good, so the Government of India's 'Look East' policy is at least working on somebody. A lot of people love the newspaper and it still does a good job in bringing quality news without the kitch, but in my opinion, they are very Chinese friendly, which I think is not a good thing.
Theres bias in all media, and maybe our newspapers don't stand a chance when it comes to media bias from the likes of BBC and Fox News, CNN etc, but they are still biased enough to leave a bad taste in ones mouth, and potentially hurt the society.
Over the moon on US
The lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, is entirely an ISRO show. For 3-4 years it has sweated to conceive, script, plan, get the Rs 350-crore project off the ground. So, imagine the Organisation's chagrin when it had to share the credit for its baby with its US counterpart, NASA.
"Chandrayaan is a fully Indian mission. So how come the media are making so much of an MoU and calling it a joint venture and hailing the US and NASA for it?" asked one usually reticent ISRO official. "You in the media have gone truly overboard. All that the US has done is put two instruments on our spacecraft. It's like putting extra passengers."
And where were the same media when the European Space Agency quietly signed a similar MoU for three instruments a few months back, another official asked. "You surely have a US fixation."
Thursday, May 18, 2006
so many days, so many quota protests
yawn. It just doesn't end. The quota issue is still going on and on and only today there seemed to be some sort of headway into the deadlock. We still had the warring medical students in all parts of the country being water-cannoned and we still had the police pushing the protestors back and beating them up, which created for its own little subseries of police brutalities, and shifted some of the focus away from the real issue.
Speaking of real issues, what is really going on here? Arjun Singh has been defiant all along, saying he doesn't care for what the students think, this OBC quota thing is happening. And the students were like, no way. Maybe its just me, but I really haven't heard of many convincing reasons as to why the Government of India is keen on doing this. In fact, i've heard far worse things from these seniles, about how they will bring about a legislation to enforce quotas in the private sector. Seriously, we may call ourselves the world's biggest democracy and all that, but for some reason, the politicians we elect are a joke. Most of them have no idea what fiscal responsibility means, most have no idea how to run departments or ministries and all that technical stuff. What they are good at is manipulating the system, and participating in exemplary vote-bank politics.
I don't know what is on Arjun Singh's mind, and I don't know if what he wants to do will really achieve what he says it will, but I agree with him when he says its not his personal agenda. Of course it ain't his, he's from the Congress for crying out loud! They live by the Gandhi name, and they lick feet by the Gandhi name, they can't think on their own. So I am pretty certain Mrs. Gandhi has a part in the backstage. Anyways, while the Congress prepares to bring their next king as the leader of India, lets get back to the quotas. So anyways, it seems that given the scale of protests, from the students and most of the academics in the country, Arjun Singh was being slowly isolated by his own posse. They didn't want no trouble with the voters man, that ain't cool for survival. But heres the deal, I think Arjun Singh is being made the frontman because he is an old horse, and he can take the fall for the party. Its almost time for his retirement, so he would like to go out with a bang. But this is just my theory.
Like its said again and again, today I think its highly fallacious to assume that the lower castes are the poor ones, and especially in the urban areas. The fact that we still talk about reservations for all sorts of castes is in fact only reinforcing the notions that castes exist, and that one caste is better than the other. Like I said before, imagine an India where private employers will ask you for your caste before they ask you for your name. Caste reservations in every freakin walk of life will only single the victim out. The poor don't need to be put in groups. The poor don't need reservations, they need effective social policies that manage to reach out to them.
Like President Kalam said, its better to increase seats than divide the limited seats available. I mean it doesn't solve the actual problem, but its an option. Our higher education is in shambles. There is a huge disparity among the select few top institutions and the rest of the colleges and that results in many, many students competing for a few spots in the few universities. We have IIT's and we have IIM's, and what other institutions can be say are close to them in terms of research and quality of education. The Government started to rectify this disparity by converting regional engineering colleges to the level of NIT's, or National Institutes of Technology, to upgrade them to the near levels of IITs. So in a way increasing the seats of institutions is a better way of dealing with this mess. Our universities need professionalism and money, and they need to be upgraded so they can handle twice the number of students they take in right now. So heres what you can do Arjun Singh (and Mrs. Gandhi), spend money to upgrade a university, raise the number of seats, and put those seats for whichever caste you are trying to secure the votes of.
Hopefully MMS can use this to bring about some positive changes in this rotting system. For now he only brought his government some breathing space.
Arjun Singh is gently reined in
HRD Minister Arjun Singh, seen as running away with the quota ball, was roped in by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today in an informal committee of three senior ministers to defuse the growing tension and work out the details of what the Government had said will be a “mechanism to satisfy all sections of the society.”
Although no time limit has been set for the committee, sources said that the Government is seeing this as an “opportunity” to usher in some key reforms in the education sector, including upgrade of infrastructure. One of the proposals being discussed is the “gradual” introduction of quotas in step with increase in seats.
Politically, sources said, the panel also will “check” Arjun Singh from forcing the pace of a complex and sensitive issue as he has been doing ever since his sudden pre-election quota announcement.
The HRD Minister has cleverly positioned himself as the sole spokesman for the Government on the issue and given the compulsions of electoral politics, nobody can openly counter his rhetoric. Now that two other ministers have been taken on board, there is a feeling in the party that a more “holistic” view will be taken—and seen to be taken.
Evidence of this came in the evening when the Congress decided to call off a meeting of the Forum of OBC MPs. This provoked non-Cong members to allege that the Congress had “sabotaged” the meeting to avoid discussion on the controversial quotas. Today’s OBC meeting, if it had happened, would have caused an embarrassment for the government and the Congress, given the fact that its leaders are party MPs.
------------------------------------------------------
Which brings me to a new section, which is to call Arjun Singh's character in question. Lets get the basics right first, how is Arjun Singh where he is today? Simple, for being the butler at the Gandhi household. The same can be said for Mr. Shivraj Patil as well, that weakling of a home minister. according to this writer, Ajrun Singh has been a bastard since the 80's. His tirade against the Knowledge Commission, a meeting of some of the best minds, is pretty insulting considering the fact that they were brought together at the behest of the Prime Minister who aimed to revolutionize our ancient education system.
I totally agree with a lot of what the writer, Mr. Rajiv Desai is saying, including the fact that the insistence of netas in putting reservations as a top social reform is only because they don't have the mind or the will to actually try to solve the inequality that exists today. Read the article, some new thoughts on a reformists vs. the Luddites in the government.
Arjun Singh’s quota bluff
In the 1980s, when Sam Pitroda was pushing to take India’s telecom digital from its analog antiquity, Arjun Singh was the telecom minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government. As a person who was intimately involved with Rajiv’s thrust to modernisation, I know that Singh tried to put a spoke in Pitroda’s plans.
Well, Weepy [V P Singh], who eventually slimed his way to the prime minister’s office, was then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh while Arjun Singh was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Like Weepy, who set the nation aflame by championing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, Arjun Singh has touched off civil violence by championing quotas for other backward castes. I did not know either of them until Rajiv [Gandhi] told me who they were. He also made observations about the two Thakurs that are best left unquoted; suffice it to say Rajiv did not think that either of them took after Mahatma Gandhi.
Weepy is pretty much irrelevant today but his fellow feudal Arjun Singh is playing the slime game in the hope that Sonia Gandhi will dismiss Manmohan Singh and name him prime minister. Singh’s grandiose fantasy has as much chance of coming to fruition as a snowball has of surviving in Hell. But the feudal lord bashes on regardless.
There is violence spreading across major cities and towns in the country, and health services are paralysed. But Arjun Singh remains unfazed. He has done precious little to make his human resource development ministry useful; done nothing to stem the corruption and sloth within it. But on the OBC issue, he has come alive.
His intemperate attacks on Pitroda and the knowledge commission; his wily attempt to provoke a backward caste backlash against the protesters and his Machiavellian reference to the 104th amendment…all smack of low cunning masquerading as political savvy.
Consider the 104th Amendment. It was passed in December last year with huge majorities in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. That to Arjun Singh’s feudal mind is representative of the people’s will; but we all know that the 104th amendment like the 23rd, 45th, 62nd and 79th Amendments before it, represent a failure of political will. Our founding fathers included quotas in educational institutions under Article 334 with a view to “righting a historical wrong”. The provision was to remain in force for 20 years after which such quotas were to be abolished. However, politicians resorted to rank populism and extended the quota regime to hide their ineptitude and perpetuate their feudal hold over narrow constituencies.
In persisting with the quota regime, the political class admitted to its failure to address the issues of poverty and prejudice. , when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team have pushed economic growth to a level that the world holds in awe, feudal lords like Arjun Singh and Natwar Singh have banded together with Leftists and Luddites in a futile bid to depose the prime minister.
But poverty and prejudice are not new in India; what is new is the economic resurgence. Feudal politics is on notice. When Article 334 comes up for review in 2010, the feudal overlords will not have the clout to extend the quota regime.
Speaking of real issues, what is really going on here? Arjun Singh has been defiant all along, saying he doesn't care for what the students think, this OBC quota thing is happening. And the students were like, no way. Maybe its just me, but I really haven't heard of many convincing reasons as to why the Government of India is keen on doing this. In fact, i've heard far worse things from these seniles, about how they will bring about a legislation to enforce quotas in the private sector. Seriously, we may call ourselves the world's biggest democracy and all that, but for some reason, the politicians we elect are a joke. Most of them have no idea what fiscal responsibility means, most have no idea how to run departments or ministries and all that technical stuff. What they are good at is manipulating the system, and participating in exemplary vote-bank politics.
I don't know what is on Arjun Singh's mind, and I don't know if what he wants to do will really achieve what he says it will, but I agree with him when he says its not his personal agenda. Of course it ain't his, he's from the Congress for crying out loud! They live by the Gandhi name, and they lick feet by the Gandhi name, they can't think on their own. So I am pretty certain Mrs. Gandhi has a part in the backstage. Anyways, while the Congress prepares to bring their next king as the leader of India, lets get back to the quotas. So anyways, it seems that given the scale of protests, from the students and most of the academics in the country, Arjun Singh was being slowly isolated by his own posse. They didn't want no trouble with the voters man, that ain't cool for survival. But heres the deal, I think Arjun Singh is being made the frontman because he is an old horse, and he can take the fall for the party. Its almost time for his retirement, so he would like to go out with a bang. But this is just my theory.
Like its said again and again, today I think its highly fallacious to assume that the lower castes are the poor ones, and especially in the urban areas. The fact that we still talk about reservations for all sorts of castes is in fact only reinforcing the notions that castes exist, and that one caste is better than the other. Like I said before, imagine an India where private employers will ask you for your caste before they ask you for your name. Caste reservations in every freakin walk of life will only single the victim out. The poor don't need to be put in groups. The poor don't need reservations, they need effective social policies that manage to reach out to them.
Like President Kalam said, its better to increase seats than divide the limited seats available. I mean it doesn't solve the actual problem, but its an option. Our higher education is in shambles. There is a huge disparity among the select few top institutions and the rest of the colleges and that results in many, many students competing for a few spots in the few universities. We have IIT's and we have IIM's, and what other institutions can be say are close to them in terms of research and quality of education. The Government started to rectify this disparity by converting regional engineering colleges to the level of NIT's, or National Institutes of Technology, to upgrade them to the near levels of IITs. So in a way increasing the seats of institutions is a better way of dealing with this mess. Our universities need professionalism and money, and they need to be upgraded so they can handle twice the number of students they take in right now. So heres what you can do Arjun Singh (and Mrs. Gandhi), spend money to upgrade a university, raise the number of seats, and put those seats for whichever caste you are trying to secure the votes of.
Hopefully MMS can use this to bring about some positive changes in this rotting system. For now he only brought his government some breathing space.
Arjun Singh is gently reined in
HRD Minister Arjun Singh, seen as running away with the quota ball, was roped in by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today in an informal committee of three senior ministers to defuse the growing tension and work out the details of what the Government had said will be a “mechanism to satisfy all sections of the society.”
Although no time limit has been set for the committee, sources said that the Government is seeing this as an “opportunity” to usher in some key reforms in the education sector, including upgrade of infrastructure. One of the proposals being discussed is the “gradual” introduction of quotas in step with increase in seats.
Politically, sources said, the panel also will “check” Arjun Singh from forcing the pace of a complex and sensitive issue as he has been doing ever since his sudden pre-election quota announcement.
The HRD Minister has cleverly positioned himself as the sole spokesman for the Government on the issue and given the compulsions of electoral politics, nobody can openly counter his rhetoric. Now that two other ministers have been taken on board, there is a feeling in the party that a more “holistic” view will be taken—and seen to be taken.
Evidence of this came in the evening when the Congress decided to call off a meeting of the Forum of OBC MPs. This provoked non-Cong members to allege that the Congress had “sabotaged” the meeting to avoid discussion on the controversial quotas. Today’s OBC meeting, if it had happened, would have caused an embarrassment for the government and the Congress, given the fact that its leaders are party MPs.
------------------------------------------------------
Which brings me to a new section, which is to call Arjun Singh's character in question. Lets get the basics right first, how is Arjun Singh where he is today? Simple, for being the butler at the Gandhi household. The same can be said for Mr. Shivraj Patil as well, that weakling of a home minister. according to this writer, Ajrun Singh has been a bastard since the 80's. His tirade against the Knowledge Commission, a meeting of some of the best minds, is pretty insulting considering the fact that they were brought together at the behest of the Prime Minister who aimed to revolutionize our ancient education system.
I totally agree with a lot of what the writer, Mr. Rajiv Desai is saying, including the fact that the insistence of netas in putting reservations as a top social reform is only because they don't have the mind or the will to actually try to solve the inequality that exists today. Read the article, some new thoughts on a reformists vs. the Luddites in the government.
Arjun Singh’s quota bluff
In the 1980s, when Sam Pitroda was pushing to take India’s telecom digital from its analog antiquity, Arjun Singh was the telecom minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government. As a person who was intimately involved with Rajiv’s thrust to modernisation, I know that Singh tried to put a spoke in Pitroda’s plans.
Well, Weepy [V P Singh], who eventually slimed his way to the prime minister’s office, was then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh while Arjun Singh was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Like Weepy, who set the nation aflame by championing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, Arjun Singh has touched off civil violence by championing quotas for other backward castes. I did not know either of them until Rajiv [Gandhi] told me who they were. He also made observations about the two Thakurs that are best left unquoted; suffice it to say Rajiv did not think that either of them took after Mahatma Gandhi.
Weepy is pretty much irrelevant today but his fellow feudal Arjun Singh is playing the slime game in the hope that Sonia Gandhi will dismiss Manmohan Singh and name him prime minister. Singh’s grandiose fantasy has as much chance of coming to fruition as a snowball has of surviving in Hell. But the feudal lord bashes on regardless.
There is violence spreading across major cities and towns in the country, and health services are paralysed. But Arjun Singh remains unfazed. He has done precious little to make his human resource development ministry useful; done nothing to stem the corruption and sloth within it. But on the OBC issue, he has come alive.
His intemperate attacks on Pitroda and the knowledge commission; his wily attempt to provoke a backward caste backlash against the protesters and his Machiavellian reference to the 104th amendment…all smack of low cunning masquerading as political savvy.
Consider the 104th Amendment. It was passed in December last year with huge majorities in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. That to Arjun Singh’s feudal mind is representative of the people’s will; but we all know that the 104th amendment like the 23rd, 45th, 62nd and 79th Amendments before it, represent a failure of political will. Our founding fathers included quotas in educational institutions under Article 334 with a view to “righting a historical wrong”. The provision was to remain in force for 20 years after which such quotas were to be abolished. However, politicians resorted to rank populism and extended the quota regime to hide their ineptitude and perpetuate their feudal hold over narrow constituencies.
In persisting with the quota regime, the political class admitted to its failure to address the issues of poverty and prejudice. , when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his team have pushed economic growth to a level that the world holds in awe, feudal lords like Arjun Singh and Natwar Singh have banded together with Leftists and Luddites in a futile bid to depose the prime minister.
But poverty and prejudice are not new in India; what is new is the economic resurgence. Feudal politics is on notice. When Article 334 comes up for review in 2010, the feudal overlords will not have the clout to extend the quota regime.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The brave GoI showing guts of steel
Before anything else, my title is nothing but sarcasm. I have always been a critic of the pusillanimous Government of India, and time and time again I come across examples which strengthen my conviction that we are ruled by a group of senile, short-sighted and gutless politicians. This time, is the Agni III, India's newest, long range surface-to-surface missile.
Recently, the DRDO, or Defence Research & Development Organization, the premier organization spearheading India's surface weapons development, built their new headquarters in central Delhi. And to inaugurate it came the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister. In front of them, the DRDO brass pointed out to the rest of the country that our missle has been ready for test firing for the past two years, but the Government has not given permission to do so. And now that the rest of the country knows about it, the Defence Minister comes out and announces that India has placed a self-imposed ban on itself on missle testing. Ha ha ha. Unless there are much greater games being played here, the ridiculousness of this announcement amazes me.
Our armed forces are our pride, but they have always been subjected to a stepmotherly attitude by the respective Governments. Our weapons development history is checkered with cost overruns and extended deadlines no doubt, but as much as people like to point fingers at the defence organizations, the government is equally to blame for their extremely lethargic, and dangerous to national security, decision making. And that is exactly what the DRDO tried to say in front of the PM yesterday.
Pranab da says that India respects its commitments to non-proliferation and thus refuses to test any more missiles. Will someone explain to me the connection please? So its our missile, our technology, and we can test it for ourselves because that would mean missile technology proliferation? Hmm, it only goes on to prove that the Government of India does not bat for the people of India, no?
As you can guess, I am a jingo, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see our armed forces play around with the newest gadgets, fly the best planes, and the zenith of that pleasure would be knowing that they are all produced by us. Unfortunately, I can only dream of such things, because we are far from such a state. There is a vicious circle of bad decision making, short-sightedness, lack of funding and the clear sense of purpose that has plagued all our endeavors in defense research.
I am pretty certain that there is something deeper to this. I am not advocating any conspiracy theory, but there are a couple of points in my mind.
Firstly, it could just be a simple case of gutless Indian netas not being able to think ahead. There could be a case of making money from foreign buys, but this is a freakin 3000 km range missle. You dont buy it off the shelf, so I doubt there is any money to be made by the khadi-clads.
So there are two points that remain. One, our government is indeed thinking far ahead, and is saving this test for the right moment, you know, as our trump card, at a point when we can make the maximum killing and send the right points across. That would be ideal, of course, but there is the more plausible point that the Government of India is indeed under foreign pressure.
Maybe the US (God knows we can trust their clean souls!) would not like the idea of testing a missle that could be a stepping stone to our own ICBM, so there goes the nuclear deal, which the UPA government is all gung-ho about. Then peace with China is always a priority number one for our Chinese Puppets in India. An ICBM test will defnitely hurt the peaceloving philosophy of the Chinese. Remember, the Defence Minister is going to visit Beijing later this month, and there will be plenty of juicy things discussed by them. In addition, the PM is planning a visit to Pakistan. Hmm, lots of diplomacy coming up folks.
And this is the Government of India we are talking about. When Mufti Sayeed, the former J&K CM's daughter was kidnapped, the gutless government released numerous terrorists from its jails to set her free. And this was fodder for the terrorists, because they realized the government of the Republic of India didn't have to balls to face threats. Of course, the class IC-814 hijacking. The goverment was so slow to act that they ended up taking the plane to Afghanistan and we had to release more terrorists. Our crack commandos were ready to storm the plane in Amritsar, but the orders came too late, if at all. Oh what a shameful day. Last I heard the government was pretty embarrassed too, so now they have too have formulated a no-negotiations with terrorists policy. It remains to be seen how much gutless netas adhere to such a policy though.
Coming back to the missle, DRDO's left jab has definitely left the government looking for an escape route, because now questions are pouring in from one and all about their commitment and decision making. Fine, let China and Pakistan and everyone else stock up on weapons. Because as much as netas would like to believe, in war, our enemies will not hesitate to hurt us for even a nanosecond. What do they care, in their air-conditioned homes and cars running on our money, their numerous bodyguards getting paid by our money. Why do they need so much security anyways, who are they afraid of? when shit'll hit the fan folks, let me be the one to say, our netas will be the first to abandon ship.
India will not AGNI-III missile
Ruling out any political pressure against test firing of India's longest-range surface-to-surface Agni-III missile, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Monday that it was "self-imposed restraint" not to go ahead with it.
The Defence Minister's comments come after assertion by the country's top Defence Scientist M Natarajan on Sunday that DRDO had cleared all technical parameters for the test of the Missile, which will give New Delhi capability of hitting targets more than 4,000 kms away.
The Agni-III, India's most ambitious nuclear capable ballistic missile, has been ready for launch for close to two years.
Recently, the DRDO, or Defence Research & Development Organization, the premier organization spearheading India's surface weapons development, built their new headquarters in central Delhi. And to inaugurate it came the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister. In front of them, the DRDO brass pointed out to the rest of the country that our missle has been ready for test firing for the past two years, but the Government has not given permission to do so. And now that the rest of the country knows about it, the Defence Minister comes out and announces that India has placed a self-imposed ban on itself on missle testing. Ha ha ha. Unless there are much greater games being played here, the ridiculousness of this announcement amazes me.
Our armed forces are our pride, but they have always been subjected to a stepmotherly attitude by the respective Governments. Our weapons development history is checkered with cost overruns and extended deadlines no doubt, but as much as people like to point fingers at the defence organizations, the government is equally to blame for their extremely lethargic, and dangerous to national security, decision making. And that is exactly what the DRDO tried to say in front of the PM yesterday.
Pranab da says that India respects its commitments to non-proliferation and thus refuses to test any more missiles. Will someone explain to me the connection please? So its our missile, our technology, and we can test it for ourselves because that would mean missile technology proliferation? Hmm, it only goes on to prove that the Government of India does not bat for the people of India, no?
As you can guess, I am a jingo, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see our armed forces play around with the newest gadgets, fly the best planes, and the zenith of that pleasure would be knowing that they are all produced by us. Unfortunately, I can only dream of such things, because we are far from such a state. There is a vicious circle of bad decision making, short-sightedness, lack of funding and the clear sense of purpose that has plagued all our endeavors in defense research.
I am pretty certain that there is something deeper to this. I am not advocating any conspiracy theory, but there are a couple of points in my mind.
Firstly, it could just be a simple case of gutless Indian netas not being able to think ahead. There could be a case of making money from foreign buys, but this is a freakin 3000 km range missle. You dont buy it off the shelf, so I doubt there is any money to be made by the khadi-clads.
So there are two points that remain. One, our government is indeed thinking far ahead, and is saving this test for the right moment, you know, as our trump card, at a point when we can make the maximum killing and send the right points across. That would be ideal, of course, but there is the more plausible point that the Government of India is indeed under foreign pressure.
Maybe the US (God knows we can trust their clean souls!) would not like the idea of testing a missle that could be a stepping stone to our own ICBM, so there goes the nuclear deal, which the UPA government is all gung-ho about. Then peace with China is always a priority number one for our Chinese Puppets in India. An ICBM test will defnitely hurt the peaceloving philosophy of the Chinese. Remember, the Defence Minister is going to visit Beijing later this month, and there will be plenty of juicy things discussed by them. In addition, the PM is planning a visit to Pakistan. Hmm, lots of diplomacy coming up folks.
And this is the Government of India we are talking about. When Mufti Sayeed, the former J&K CM's daughter was kidnapped, the gutless government released numerous terrorists from its jails to set her free. And this was fodder for the terrorists, because they realized the government of the Republic of India didn't have to balls to face threats. Of course, the class IC-814 hijacking. The goverment was so slow to act that they ended up taking the plane to Afghanistan and we had to release more terrorists. Our crack commandos were ready to storm the plane in Amritsar, but the orders came too late, if at all. Oh what a shameful day. Last I heard the government was pretty embarrassed too, so now they have too have formulated a no-negotiations with terrorists policy. It remains to be seen how much gutless netas adhere to such a policy though.
Coming back to the missle, DRDO's left jab has definitely left the government looking for an escape route, because now questions are pouring in from one and all about their commitment and decision making. Fine, let China and Pakistan and everyone else stock up on weapons. Because as much as netas would like to believe, in war, our enemies will not hesitate to hurt us for even a nanosecond. What do they care, in their air-conditioned homes and cars running on our money, their numerous bodyguards getting paid by our money. Why do they need so much security anyways, who are they afraid of? when shit'll hit the fan folks, let me be the one to say, our netas will be the first to abandon ship.
India will not AGNI-III missile
Ruling out any political pressure against test firing of India's longest-range surface-to-surface Agni-III missile, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Monday that it was "self-imposed restraint" not to go ahead with it.
"As responsible members of the international community, we want to keep our international commitments on non-proliferation," the Defence Minister said when asked why India was not going ahead with testing of the Agni-III missile.
Self-restraint does not mean that Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) can't go ahead with cold bed tests for the sub-systems of the missile."The Defence Minister's comments come after assertion by the country's top Defence Scientist M Natarajan on Sunday that DRDO had cleared all technical parameters for the test of the Missile, which will give New Delhi capability of hitting targets more than 4,000 kms away.
Mukherjee told the Defence accountants that they should speedily get acquainted with the new life cycle support system being offered by the US and other Western Nations as part of weapons system sales.
He also told them that there should be no laxity and efforts be made to ensure that there was 100 per cent utilisation of Defence budgetary grants.
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AGNI - III raring to go, Government not keenThe Agni-III, India's most ambitious nuclear capable ballistic missile, has been ready for launch for close to two years.
Although India has not articulated big power aspirations, the Agni-III is intended to be a stepping-stone to the development of an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, the possession of which will put India at par with other nuclear weapon states.
But the Government is shying away from giving a go-ahead for test-firing this 3,000 km-range missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
"I have been concerned about the problems of cost and time overruns which have plagued our defence industry for decades now. For it is true that each project that undergoes cost and time overruns is also siphoning off vitally required resources away from other defence projects, and ultimately, from the nation's poor," Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, said.
Tired of being at the receiving end of criticism about its poor record in meeting deadlines, the DRDO thought it was time to point a finger back at the Government.
It chose the inauguration of its swanky headquarters in Lutyen's Delhi to convey the message that lethargy in government decision-making is delaying India's preparedness to ward off nuclear threats.
Experts feel that with a largely unproven armoury and delivery systems, potential nuclear rivals will not take Indian capability seriously, tearing the credibility of its deterrence to shreds.
They say that with the indecision on the test-firing of Agni-III, the fate of India's nuclear weapons programme seems uncertain.
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Notice the Prime Minister talks of defence cost overruns and other delays talking precious money away from developmental projects. You know, I have seen a lot of things, read a lot of things, and now I think I can say that is the biggest load of bull generated by I dont know who. Billions and billions of rupees have been spent on India's poor, yet this country does not seem to be rising out of the morass any quicker. It doesn't because netas have bled it to death. The plunderers of India do not wear the Queen's insignia now, they wear a khadi kurta. I think it was during Rajiv Gandhi's tenure that they came out with the figure that for every rupee spent on the poor, only 13 paise reaches the intended? Well thats the stat, and how can we claim that the poor can't be uplifted because India spends more on its R&D? The poor can't be uplifted because the nexus of netas, babus, judges, police etc. etc. siphon off every little penny from the intended funds. Lets take a look at that first, Mr. PM.
Monday, May 15, 2006
India's upcoming Tour of The West Indies
The last time India played the West Indies in 2001-2002, we played 5 tests, of which we drew two, lost two, and won one. And the losing streak against the West Indies at the West Indies has been a recurring nightmare for the blue caps.
I remember as a young kid back in the nineties, the India at West Indies series in 1996-97 was called the Calypso series, but such was our performance that it prompted an Indian writer to dub it the "Collapso series." On the same note, our series in South Africa was a similar failure, and while its actual name was the "Safari Series", for India it was actually the "Sufferi series."
The mighty West Indies are but a shadow of what they used to be. Heck, the only time India has won a test series in Windies was wayy back in 1971, when we won one, and drew four. That was when Sunny Gavaskar scored a total of 774 runs despite missing the first test. He finished the series with an average of 154.80. Well, since then, we havn't even come close to beating the WI. They say India has always been tigers at home, minnows abroad, and for my young, fragile mind, it was very close to being true. It seemed to me that we could never win away from our domestic borders.
India won the Cricket World Cup in 1982 right? And in heroic fashion too, so one would hope that after one year, they would still be considering a cricket powerhouse strong enough to take on anybody. But I believe the West Indies had revenge on their mind. Heck it was the first time that somebody other than them won the Cricket World Cup! So the West Indies was playing with the greats like Gordon Greenidge, an old but still fighting Clive Lloyd and Michael Holding led its bowling attack. For India, Kapil Dev had just taken over the reins from Gavaskar, but despite his heroics, India lost three of the six tests, drawing the other three, and it was even sadder in the one day internationals. We got blanked in the 5 match ODI's.
I could spend all day looking at cricket history on the Cricinfo site. Thats where I get all my data from, thats where I read most of the Cricket opinion pieces, and yes, I would prefer its live commentary over others. Check out the time line of the India-West Indies cricketing history.
Coming back to modern times, West Indies just completed their ODI whitewash of the lowly Zimbabwe, beating them 5-0 in the 7 game series. But its Zimbabwe, and I don't think they have hit the bottom of the barrel yet. So playing India will be a major shift in their level cricket, but they will still go to the field aware of the fact that India hasn't won there in more than thirty years! Plus the World Cup is coming up next year to be played in the West Indies, and it is important for their team to go in with guns blazing, to play the strong host, and with things looking up again for them, they will try to do just that. Brian Lara is the captain again, and Chanderpaul is back to performing better after the burden of captaincy is off his shoulders. Chris Gayle is an impressive player, and I think the Windies have always had solid seamers amongst them.
Not that India is doing that bad either. There was a time when Sachin would get injured and the whole team would take a sick leave with him, but we have come a long way since. Now we win without Sachin! India has always boasted of strong batting, and in recent times its only been augmented with class players. Dravid's a good captain, hes tough and hes a fighter. Yuvraj Singh is a quality vice captain. Kaif needs to get his groove back, and a good performance from him is long overdue. Of course, then comes the new posterboy of Indian Cricket, the man from Ranchi, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Remember when I had said how proud I was that UP had 4 players on the national squad, I am still proud, and It will a pleasure to see this small town India team (apart from the UP men and Dhoni from Ranchi, theres Sreesanth, only the second Keralite to play for India). So its a pretty youngblooded Indian team, with a fresh pace attack and inshallah, once we are done with the series, we will have altered the statistics book. Meanwhile, on the Kingston streets, India will whip us 'maan', say public.
Heres what Michael Holding has to say.
India have the firepower to get the job done
This will be a completely different kettle of fish for West Indies. While Zimbabwe linger at the bottom of both Test and ODI rankings, India have been proving their worth in both forms of the game.
Sure, West Indies have dominated the present series but Zimbabwe have not been outclassed to the degree you would have expected considering that they are without their best players. And that is good reason for West Indian fans to be a bit skeptical about the upcoming contest.
Fans in the Caribbean know a lot about captain Rahul Dravid and would have seen a bit of Virender Sehwag and at least heard of the recent exploits of Yuvraj Singh. But add to those the hard-hitting Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammed Kaif and the two young guns Suresh Raina and Ramesh Powar and you get the idea that the West Indian bowling attack could be thoroughly tested this time around.
Yuvraj Singh has developed tremendously over the last 12 months and is now the finished article, and Raina and Powar look to be two young batsmen going places but Dhoni is the destroyer. He is a powerful man who could make these comparatively small West Indies cricket grounds look like indoor arenas and perhaps it would not be a bad idea if they were because, if he is not dismissed cheaply, the West Indies Cricket Board could end up with an unusually high equipment bill for lost cricket balls.
It should not all be a one-way street where powerful hitting is concerned, though, as Dravid has acknowledged that the West Indies batting line-up is not one to be sniffed at. "Any team that has players of the quality of Brian Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Chris Gayle and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, is going to be a serious batting line-up" is how he put it on his arrival in Jamaica and that cannot be denied.
So, perhaps with such strong batting line-ups in both teams, it will be the team that bowls and fields better that will end up in front. West Indies should just be ahead in the fielding stakes with quick sure-handed players like Dwayne Bravo, Dwayne Smith, Runako Morton and even Chanderpaul from the older brigade in the outfield but the inexperienced bowlers will have their work cut out.
As for the Test series, different disciplines and possibly different personnel will be involved to a degree for both teams. India have not won a Test series in the Caribbean since 1971 and have only won three of the 38 they have contested with 19 drawn, which means they have lost 16.
And while the West Indies will be drawing on past experiences and history to prepare mentally for battle, India will be trying to put those statistics behind them and concentrate on the present.
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For some reason, North America seems pretty high up on ICC's list of target markets. I think its the glow of the dolleritos. Canada is understandable but the US? Fine, I guess as long as the Indian-Americans and people from other asian countries have money to spend, sure, why not? I am sorry, but I can't help but express my narrow thought process: damn sell-outs. BCCI does jack shit in India with all the money it earns, but it will bend over backwards to get some NRI's in the stands.
India-WI ODIs in US, Canada confirmed
Amid concerns about player burnout, the BCCI and the West Indies Cricket Board have decided to play an unscheduled one-day International series in the US and Canada later this year.
The series would be organised almost immediately after India complete a five-match ODI and a four-Test tour of the Caribbean in early July and would be outside the Future Tours Programme unveiled by the ICC earlier this week.
The matches would form a part of a bilateral agreement reached between the two Boards at the recent ICC meeting in Dubai, a West Indies Cricket Board statement said.
WICB, on its part, said the project would be funded by the BCCI which would be repaid later. “Because of current financial difficulties, India will fund this project on the understanding that it will be repaid out of the West Indies’ share of the profits of the series,” the statement said.
“This is the first of a number of joint projects which include the opening of the multi-complex stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the aggressive expansion of cricket in North America.
I remember as a young kid back in the nineties, the India at West Indies series in 1996-97 was called the Calypso series, but such was our performance that it prompted an Indian writer to dub it the "Collapso series." On the same note, our series in South Africa was a similar failure, and while its actual name was the "Safari Series", for India it was actually the "Sufferi series."
The mighty West Indies are but a shadow of what they used to be. Heck, the only time India has won a test series in Windies was wayy back in 1971, when we won one, and drew four. That was when Sunny Gavaskar scored a total of 774 runs despite missing the first test. He finished the series with an average of 154.80. Well, since then, we havn't even come close to beating the WI. They say India has always been tigers at home, minnows abroad, and for my young, fragile mind, it was very close to being true. It seemed to me that we could never win away from our domestic borders.
India won the Cricket World Cup in 1982 right? And in heroic fashion too, so one would hope that after one year, they would still be considering a cricket powerhouse strong enough to take on anybody. But I believe the West Indies had revenge on their mind. Heck it was the first time that somebody other than them won the Cricket World Cup! So the West Indies was playing with the greats like Gordon Greenidge, an old but still fighting Clive Lloyd and Michael Holding led its bowling attack. For India, Kapil Dev had just taken over the reins from Gavaskar, but despite his heroics, India lost three of the six tests, drawing the other three, and it was even sadder in the one day internationals. We got blanked in the 5 match ODI's.
I could spend all day looking at cricket history on the Cricinfo site. Thats where I get all my data from, thats where I read most of the Cricket opinion pieces, and yes, I would prefer its live commentary over others. Check out the time line of the India-West Indies cricketing history.
Coming back to modern times, West Indies just completed their ODI whitewash of the lowly Zimbabwe, beating them 5-0 in the 7 game series. But its Zimbabwe, and I don't think they have hit the bottom of the barrel yet. So playing India will be a major shift in their level cricket, but they will still go to the field aware of the fact that India hasn't won there in more than thirty years! Plus the World Cup is coming up next year to be played in the West Indies, and it is important for their team to go in with guns blazing, to play the strong host, and with things looking up again for them, they will try to do just that. Brian Lara is the captain again, and Chanderpaul is back to performing better after the burden of captaincy is off his shoulders. Chris Gayle is an impressive player, and I think the Windies have always had solid seamers amongst them.
Not that India is doing that bad either. There was a time when Sachin would get injured and the whole team would take a sick leave with him, but we have come a long way since. Now we win without Sachin! India has always boasted of strong batting, and in recent times its only been augmented with class players. Dravid's a good captain, hes tough and hes a fighter. Yuvraj Singh is a quality vice captain. Kaif needs to get his groove back, and a good performance from him is long overdue. Of course, then comes the new posterboy of Indian Cricket, the man from Ranchi, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Remember when I had said how proud I was that UP had 4 players on the national squad, I am still proud, and It will a pleasure to see this small town India team (apart from the UP men and Dhoni from Ranchi, theres Sreesanth, only the second Keralite to play for India). So its a pretty youngblooded Indian team, with a fresh pace attack and inshallah, once we are done with the series, we will have altered the statistics book. Meanwhile, on the Kingston streets, India will whip us 'maan', say public.
Heres what Michael Holding has to say.
India have the firepower to get the job done
This will be a completely different kettle of fish for West Indies. While Zimbabwe linger at the bottom of both Test and ODI rankings, India have been proving their worth in both forms of the game.
Sure, West Indies have dominated the present series but Zimbabwe have not been outclassed to the degree you would have expected considering that they are without their best players. And that is good reason for West Indian fans to be a bit skeptical about the upcoming contest.
Fans in the Caribbean know a lot about captain Rahul Dravid and would have seen a bit of Virender Sehwag and at least heard of the recent exploits of Yuvraj Singh. But add to those the hard-hitting Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mohammed Kaif and the two young guns Suresh Raina and Ramesh Powar and you get the idea that the West Indian bowling attack could be thoroughly tested this time around.
Yuvraj Singh has developed tremendously over the last 12 months and is now the finished article, and Raina and Powar look to be two young batsmen going places but Dhoni is the destroyer. He is a powerful man who could make these comparatively small West Indies cricket grounds look like indoor arenas and perhaps it would not be a bad idea if they were because, if he is not dismissed cheaply, the West Indies Cricket Board could end up with an unusually high equipment bill for lost cricket balls.
It should not all be a one-way street where powerful hitting is concerned, though, as Dravid has acknowledged that the West Indies batting line-up is not one to be sniffed at. "Any team that has players of the quality of Brian Lara, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Chris Gayle and Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, is going to be a serious batting line-up" is how he put it on his arrival in Jamaica and that cannot be denied.
So, perhaps with such strong batting line-ups in both teams, it will be the team that bowls and fields better that will end up in front. West Indies should just be ahead in the fielding stakes with quick sure-handed players like Dwayne Bravo, Dwayne Smith, Runako Morton and even Chanderpaul from the older brigade in the outfield but the inexperienced bowlers will have their work cut out.
As for the Test series, different disciplines and possibly different personnel will be involved to a degree for both teams. India have not won a Test series in the Caribbean since 1971 and have only won three of the 38 they have contested with 19 drawn, which means they have lost 16.
And while the West Indies will be drawing on past experiences and history to prepare mentally for battle, India will be trying to put those statistics behind them and concentrate on the present.
------------------------------------------------------------
For some reason, North America seems pretty high up on ICC's list of target markets. I think its the glow of the dolleritos. Canada is understandable but the US? Fine, I guess as long as the Indian-Americans and people from other asian countries have money to spend, sure, why not? I am sorry, but I can't help but express my narrow thought process: damn sell-outs. BCCI does jack shit in India with all the money it earns, but it will bend over backwards to get some NRI's in the stands.
India-WI ODIs in US, Canada confirmed
Amid concerns about player burnout, the BCCI and the West Indies Cricket Board have decided to play an unscheduled one-day International series in the US and Canada later this year.
The series would be organised almost immediately after India complete a five-match ODI and a four-Test tour of the Caribbean in early July and would be outside the Future Tours Programme unveiled by the ICC earlier this week.
The matches would form a part of a bilateral agreement reached between the two Boards at the recent ICC meeting in Dubai, a West Indies Cricket Board statement said.
WICB, on its part, said the project would be funded by the BCCI which would be repaid later. “Because of current financial difficulties, India will fund this project on the understanding that it will be repaid out of the West Indies’ share of the profits of the series,” the statement said.
“This is the first of a number of joint projects which include the opening of the multi-complex stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the aggressive expansion of cricket in North America.
Friday, May 12, 2006
The Assembly Elections results are in. Reds win.
Bad news folks, the Chinese Puppets in India have just won Kerala and West Bengal, and the national headquarters has said that they will be bigger obstacles in our economic expansion now.
Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa has lost the elections, and DMK will form the new government. Its a pity though, for despite all her shortcomings, I thought she was a go-getter politician who got things done, and was not afraid to take bold steps affecting the same votebanks that other politicians tremble to touch.
Coming back to the Commies, well, at least in WB, the opposition had no game. In fact, the opposition's never had any game there, and I've talked about it already in my previous post. Although they support the center, their victories in Kerala and WB left Congress gasping in their wake. PM Singh calls it a victory for the 'UPA'. Yeah right! The communists care about nothing else but their own agendas.
In Assam, Congress is close to coming to power again, and also in Pondicherry. Hmm, so from what i see, these elections were really about Congress, the Commies, and the rest. Tsk tsk, BJP, where did you go? The bad news is that the Congress is coming back to power, on their own or as partners, in most of these states, and I am pretty certain they will carry forward their agenda of unscrulpulous minority appeasement, continue to abet anti-national activities, and all in all, provide for worthless, regressive governments. I could for all purposes be totally deceived, but maybe AP is looking up once again after all the depressing press I heard when YS Reddy first came to power.
There are somethings that are I am able to decipher from the way politics is being played in India. I am beginning to realize that there are huge differences between the way parties behave on the national and at the state level. While Congress seems to be focused on the reforms agenda at the center, their state CM's have been anything but satisfactory. They are so worthless in the state of Assam that their actions have probably speeded up the process of near-dismemberment of Assam. Other states in the North-east aren't doing better either. Apparently, here, the norm for state governments is to abet insurgency, as opposed to fighting to crush it.
On second thoughts, this is one field where the Congress can see eye to eye at the state and the national level. We have one of the weakest home ministries that enjoying keeping its head stuck up its ass and not look a burning India that is under attack from all sides. Maybe that is a part of their hidden agenda, I don't know.
The worst part about this whole thing is that now Left thinks it has the mandate to take its regressive stance further, and I don't quite understand this dual game they seem to be playing. While everyone keeps hearing about Buddha and his all star reformist crew, that is exactly what they plan to oppose with a great vigor now at the center. Like I don't understand this, is there something which WB is supposed to achieve which they don't want the rest of the country to obtain?
Left paints Bengal 'n Kerala red, leaves Congress pale
The Left Front has swept two out of five state assembly elections, leaving the Congress party struggling in its biggest electoral test since coming to power at the Centre, two years ago.
Although the results are not expected to drastically change power equations at the centre, some analysts say a strong showing by the Leftists could see them exerting more influence in New Delhi over foreign and economic policies.
In Bengal, Left created history with a thumping majority, bagging 235 of the 293 seats in the Assembly elections.
The main Opposition Trinamool Congress had to contend with just 29 seats, less than half of its 2001 tally of 60 seats, according to results announced by the Election Commission.
Congress, on the other hand, finished with 21 seats, five less than what it had in the previous house.
Whereas in Assam, Congress was locked in a close contest to retain power while its ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), was set to win Tamil Nadu, which is well on its way to have its first coalition ministry in 50 years, with the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance gaining an absolute majority in the 234-member Assembly.
But the tiny Union territory of Pondicherry offered some consolation to Congress where it was set to retain power.
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Red bastions secured, Left seeks bigger role
While CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat asserted that the party looks forward to increased interventions by the Left at the Centre, a statement issued by the CPI (M) Central Committee said, The election results have strengthened the role of the Left in national politics.
The Left parties have locked horns with the government over several key issues like airport modernisation, labour reforms, pension reforms, raising the foreign direct investment cap for insurance and retailing, and increasing oil prices in step with rising global crude oil prices.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ruefully observed that the Assembly elections were a victory for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), even though his own party was trounced in Kerala and West Bengal.
There were differing interpretations in the Left parties on what the victory meant for the future of economic reform. The West Bengal result showed that Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's pro-reforms agenda had found endorsement, a group in the CPI (M) argued, indicating that on several issues, including pension reforms, the Left would now be more flexible at the Centre.
But Karat's statement struck an ominous note and many in the Congress said the future of reforms at the Centre was now uncertain. They added that the Congress government at the Centre had been radicalised by the West Bengal election and would be under Left pressure.
The Left wants the government to go ahead immediately on quotas in private sector jobs, while several ministers in the United Progressive Alliance, including Kapil Sibal, want the government to go slow on it.
The biggest clashes are likely to occur on an issue on which governments have been bipartisan all along - foreign policy.
On Iran, the US and even neighbouring Nepal, there are sharp differences between the Centre's approach and the LeftÂ’s. These are likely to come to the fore very soon.
Efforts were on till late in the evening to hammer out an alliance in Assam to enable the Congress to form a government in the state that had returned the party as the single-largest but not the majority party in the House.
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So from now on I will sit back and watch as the commie bastards try to correct all the "anti-people" policies that the previous governments had been pursuing, and roll up their sleeves as they set about undoing India's liberalization. DMK and Left governments in three important states does not augur well for Manmohan Singh and his team of economists.
Meanwhile, in Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa has lost the elections, and DMK will form the new government. Its a pity though, for despite all her shortcomings, I thought she was a go-getter politician who got things done, and was not afraid to take bold steps affecting the same votebanks that other politicians tremble to touch.
Coming back to the Commies, well, at least in WB, the opposition had no game. In fact, the opposition's never had any game there, and I've talked about it already in my previous post. Although they support the center, their victories in Kerala and WB left Congress gasping in their wake. PM Singh calls it a victory for the 'UPA'. Yeah right! The communists care about nothing else but their own agendas.
In Assam, Congress is close to coming to power again, and also in Pondicherry. Hmm, so from what i see, these elections were really about Congress, the Commies, and the rest. Tsk tsk, BJP, where did you go? The bad news is that the Congress is coming back to power, on their own or as partners, in most of these states, and I am pretty certain they will carry forward their agenda of unscrulpulous minority appeasement, continue to abet anti-national activities, and all in all, provide for worthless, regressive governments. I could for all purposes be totally deceived, but maybe AP is looking up once again after all the depressing press I heard when YS Reddy first came to power.
There are somethings that are I am able to decipher from the way politics is being played in India. I am beginning to realize that there are huge differences between the way parties behave on the national and at the state level. While Congress seems to be focused on the reforms agenda at the center, their state CM's have been anything but satisfactory. They are so worthless in the state of Assam that their actions have probably speeded up the process of near-dismemberment of Assam. Other states in the North-east aren't doing better either. Apparently, here, the norm for state governments is to abet insurgency, as opposed to fighting to crush it.
On second thoughts, this is one field where the Congress can see eye to eye at the state and the national level. We have one of the weakest home ministries that enjoying keeping its head stuck up its ass and not look a burning India that is under attack from all sides. Maybe that is a part of their hidden agenda, I don't know.
The worst part about this whole thing is that now Left thinks it has the mandate to take its regressive stance further, and I don't quite understand this dual game they seem to be playing. While everyone keeps hearing about Buddha and his all star reformist crew, that is exactly what they plan to oppose with a great vigor now at the center. Like I don't understand this, is there something which WB is supposed to achieve which they don't want the rest of the country to obtain?
Left paints Bengal 'n Kerala red, leaves Congress pale
The Left Front has swept two out of five state assembly elections, leaving the Congress party struggling in its biggest electoral test since coming to power at the Centre, two years ago.
Although the results are not expected to drastically change power equations at the centre, some analysts say a strong showing by the Leftists could see them exerting more influence in New Delhi over foreign and economic policies.
In Bengal, Left created history with a thumping majority, bagging 235 of the 293 seats in the Assembly elections.
The main Opposition Trinamool Congress had to contend with just 29 seats, less than half of its 2001 tally of 60 seats, according to results announced by the Election Commission.
Congress, on the other hand, finished with 21 seats, five less than what it had in the previous house.
Whereas in Assam, Congress was locked in a close contest to retain power while its ally, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), was set to win Tamil Nadu, which is well on its way to have its first coalition ministry in 50 years, with the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance gaining an absolute majority in the 234-member Assembly.
But the tiny Union territory of Pondicherry offered some consolation to Congress where it was set to retain power.
--------------------------------------------------------
Red bastions secured, Left seeks bigger role
While CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat asserted that the party looks forward to increased interventions by the Left at the Centre, a statement issued by the CPI (M) Central Committee said, The election results have strengthened the role of the Left in national politics.
The Left parties have locked horns with the government over several key issues like airport modernisation, labour reforms, pension reforms, raising the foreign direct investment cap for insurance and retailing, and increasing oil prices in step with rising global crude oil prices.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ruefully observed that the Assembly elections were a victory for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), even though his own party was trounced in Kerala and West Bengal.
There were differing interpretations in the Left parties on what the victory meant for the future of economic reform. The West Bengal result showed that Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's pro-reforms agenda had found endorsement, a group in the CPI (M) argued, indicating that on several issues, including pension reforms, the Left would now be more flexible at the Centre.
But Karat's statement struck an ominous note and many in the Congress said the future of reforms at the Centre was now uncertain. They added that the Congress government at the Centre had been radicalised by the West Bengal election and would be under Left pressure.
The Left wants the government to go ahead immediately on quotas in private sector jobs, while several ministers in the United Progressive Alliance, including Kapil Sibal, want the government to go slow on it.
The biggest clashes are likely to occur on an issue on which governments have been bipartisan all along - foreign policy.
On Iran, the US and even neighbouring Nepal, there are sharp differences between the Centre's approach and the LeftÂ’s. These are likely to come to the fore very soon.
Efforts were on till late in the evening to hammer out an alliance in Assam to enable the Congress to form a government in the state that had returned the party as the single-largest but not the majority party in the House.
----------------------------------------------------------
So from now on I will sit back and watch as the commie bastards try to correct all the "anti-people" policies that the previous governments had been pursuing, and roll up their sleeves as they set about undoing India's liberalization. DMK and Left governments in three important states does not augur well for Manmohan Singh and his team of economists.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
An economy that runs without power
For most, nay, all Indians who have a power connection from the local electricity board in their homes, summer is synomymous with one thing, power cuts. Power cuts come in various shapes and sizes and at various timings. They can come in the morning, when you are waiting to go to school and there is no power to iron your shirt, or it can come at night, so that half your time, you are swinging your handheld fan over yourself and your sleeping family, and the other half of the time, you sleep while your family does the fanning. Yes, for middle class families all across the country, that is what summers mean. Its the heat during the day and the mosquitos and humidity during the night.
This was our life in the 80's and in the 90's, and now that India seems to be on the growth trajectory and everyone's starting to take notice, unfortunately things still stand the same way for millions of us eletricity deficient citizens.
True, a lot of new "ultra-mega" power projects have been announced, a lot of new private companies say they are building a project here, a project there, thermal, hydel, nuclear, wind, you name it, and India says its building it, and yet, things dont seem to be getting any better.
Govt now plans 7 ultra mega power projects
Buoyed by the overwhelming response by the private developers for the Sasan and Mundra ultra mega power projects and forced by the shortage situations, the government is expanding plans for the 4000 MW plus ultra-mega power projects. From an initial five to seven on last count. Now, Andhra Pradesh will be home to the seventh ultra mega power project.
Like the other power projects, a shell company formed by the Power Finance Corporation will help get the projects off ground. However due to its late start, this project would be handed over to the successful bidder for developing only by mid-‘07.
These projects are being set up in Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), Akaltara (Chattisgarh), Mundra (Gujarat), Ratnagiri (Andhra Pradesh) and Tadri-Karwar (Karnataka). The seven projects will account for a capacity addition of 28,000MW and would mean an investment of Rs 1,05,000 crore. The government is hoping that competitive bidding will result in a tariff of Rs 1.60 to Rs 1.80.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
But thats not the point. India loses billions of rupees on free power, something which the myopic state politicians feel is essential to keep their vote banks humoured, while those who live in the cities and those who are leading the industrial come back have to either do without it or spend their own money to build captive power plants. More importantly, India loses crores worth of electricity on transmission and distribution, and all cities have incompetent electicity boards and power thieves who thrive in such a situation. So if only we could cut all the loose threads and improve on what we have, we can still improve the existing situation to a large extent.
Much like the rest of the investment-starved infrastructure sectors, the power sector is in need of some major moolah, and more importantly, some major reforms. And the good thing about India, you know, is that there's always hope. Despite all the wrongs, yet we find something we can look forward to, and there are stories which keep coming up that say that maybe things are probably going to get better. India is doing well in the wind generated power production, we are 5th highest producer of wind generated electricity in the world, and that could help solve at least some of the problems.
Wind power capacity up 45% in 2005-06
Installed wind power capacity grew by 45 per cent during 2005-06 over the previous year, the same level of growth that was recorded in 2004-05, show preliminary figures provided by wind turbine manufacturers.
It is estimated that the total installed wind power capacity in the country will be 5,200 MW at the end of March 2006, against 3,595 MW at the end of the previous financial year - an addition of 1,605 MW.
As in the past, Tamil Nadu has contributed to a bulk of this capacity addition accounting for nearly 870 MW during last financial year.
Industry sources point out that there were local problems in Karnataka, with villagers blocking roads and interrupting work. This seems to have been sorted out to a large extent now.
The distribution companies in Karnataka have also started signing power purchase agreements now with investors in wind power, which is a positive development, according to the sources.
As far as other States were concerned, the sources said wind power policy was due for a review in Maharashtra later this year and, hence, there was a rush for installations now.
Rajasthan, which is a small market for wind power, wheeling and transmission are the problem areas. There is potential for installing wind turbines in the desert region, where there is not much demand for power.
Those investing in wind power are being asked to pay Rs 17 lakh a MW for improving the grid and also construct sub-stations and connect them to the nearest high voltage evacuation point.
--------------------------------------------------------
Despite being the national capital, Delhi faces an acute power shortage every year. With all the news about the hydel projects in Uttaranchal and the new power plants coming up in the surrounding states, things still look bleak in Delhi, and this makes one wonder, if things are so bad in the national capital, what must it be like for the rest of the country? The answer is that yes, things are much worse in the rest of the country. I can say for certainty that for any electricity department in any state capital, the most important job is to ensure that the VIP areas and the homes of the politicians are provided for, while the rest of the city can go to hell. Such is the case in Delhi, which has been reeling under heavy power cuts since April, prompting the Supreme Court to set in. And these are the cities we talk of. Our rural areas have absolutely no electricity at all to talk of.
We talk about racing with China, heres a sobering thought for those Champions of bullshit sitting pretty in their air conditioned offices in Delhi, China adds around 28,000 MW of electricity a year, while we can barely add 4,500 MW. They have managed to expand their network so that 97% of their households have access to electricity, while in the great Democracy of India, its less than 50%. Coming to the transmission and distribution losses, its less than 10% in China, while its more than 30% in India. With these stats, I can't imagine how we can manage to grow at even 8%, because it all feels so hollow.
Power crisis: SC steps in; seeks explanation from Delhi, Centre
As the capital reels under severe power crisis, the Supreme Court today asked the Centre and Delhi Government to explain the steps being taken by them to enhance power generation and supply to meet the increased demand during the peak summer.
The Bench, which is monitoring the power crisis here since 1999, wondered if the situation in the capital continued to be power-starved, "how will we organise the Commonwealth Games in the year 2010 here?"
The Court observed when it started monitoring the power crisis, Delhi did not have adequate power because it was exporting power. Thereafter, it was said that non-availability of power was due to electricity-theft and distribution losses.
However, despite the distribution system having been handed over to private companies, the situation has not improved, the Bench observed. On behalf of the power distribution companies, senior counsel Aryam Sundaram submitted that his clients could not be blamed for the crisis as they were supplying what was being made available to them by Delhi Transco.
Amicus Curiae Ranjit Kumar said the capital was facing a shortfall of 500-600 megawatts of power and that was why most parts of the city faced power-cuts for hours everyday.
----------------------------------------------------------
And with all this incompetence and ridiculousness you would think the government is at least serious to bring about a change, no man, it aint! Most of the power plants that are being expanded and built are running behind schedule, and the Central Electricity Authority has been cutting their expansion targets again and again. So says Assocham.
No respite from power crisis: Assocham study
Acute shortage of electricity across the country is unlikely to be bridged soon, with as many as 47 power plants running much behind schedule to expand capacity, says an industry chamber ASSOCHAM.
As many as 10 power plants in the north, 16 in the west, eight in the south, 11 in the east and two in the north-east regions, scheduled for expanding capacity in the 10th plan period (2002-07), are behind their target date of completion, the Assocham study said.
"As a result of the slow work progress, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has reduced the capacity expansion plan from the targeted 41,110 MW to 32,778.5 MW. Only 14,301.4 MW of this has been commissioned so far," said ASSOCHAM President Anil K Agarwal.
"In the current fiscal only about 10,000 MW of capacity addition could be expected and the remaining will have to be shifted for commissioning in the 11th plan period."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Let me end this post with an opinion piece which provides for both the hopeful and the pessimistic. Reforms are going on, but they seem to have lost direction. While things are happening, they are backed by short-sighted policies and lack of concrete (read those that might hurt vote banks) actions.
A K Bhattacharya: The missing emphasis
Somewhere along the way, power sector reforms in India seem to have lost direction. This may sound a little odd at a time when power reforms in general have made a lot of difference to the efficiency of the distribution network, the regulatory system and to the economic health of power generators and distributors. The truth is that in spite of all these changes, the power sector is in a bit of a mess. And there are clear signs that this mess is going to get messier in the years to come.
Today, all the states in the country have signed memoranda of understanding with the Centre for bringing about power distribution reforms. As many as 24 states have set up state electricity regulatory commissions and 19 of them have already issued tariff orders. Barring a few state electricity boards, all of them are cash surplus, after their accumulated dues were securitised in 2002-03. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), the country’s largest power generator, has reported no payment overdues from the state electricity boards for the last three years.
Thirteen states have corporatised their power utilities or unbundled the various wings of generation, transmission and distribution. Orissa and Delhi have privatised power distribution, although whether they achieved the desired results is still being debated.
Four states have recorded 100 per cent consumer metering and nine states have achieved 90 per cent consumer metering. Transmission and distribution losses have come down below 15 per cent in 158 towns and below 20 per cent in 38 towns.
The good news, however, ends here.
The problem starts with the overall availability of power that has either declined or remained the same as five years ago. The number of pockets suffering from shortages has increased (north Indian states are an example these days) and seasonal supply shortfalls have worsened. The country’s total electricity shortage at the start of the Tenth Plan was 7.5 per cent. Last year, it was over 7.7 per cent.
The reason for this sorry state is that the government’s programme for power capacity addition has gone completely haywire. Take the Tenth Plan as an example. The Plan target was to add 41,110 Mw in five years ending March 2007. The Tenth Plan mid-term appraisal showed that a capacity addition of only 36,956 Mw was feasible, down by 10 per cent. The government has now further scaled down the target to 34,000 Mw.
But a look at the ground reality reveals that achieving even this target will be difficult. Till January this year, the total new capacity commissioned in the Tenth Plan was 13,800 Mw. The government now hopes that in the remaining 14 months, it would commission 20,250 Mw more capacity! This is a near impossibility.
It is not just the central or state sector power utilities that failed to meet the targets of adding capacity in the last few years; the private sector’s plans have also gone awry. Against the 172 Mw of capacity to be added in 2004-05, it ended up creating only 70 Mw. Similarly in 2005-06, it added only 660 Mw till January 2006 against the annual target of 1,382 Mw.
The power ministry is still busy focusing on giving approvals to mega power projects and ultra mega power projects with a capacity of 4,000 Mw each. The problem is not in planning the projects. The ministry should now direct its energies to resolving all the issues that are coming in the way of timely execution of power projects in the country.
This was our life in the 80's and in the 90's, and now that India seems to be on the growth trajectory and everyone's starting to take notice, unfortunately things still stand the same way for millions of us eletricity deficient citizens.
True, a lot of new "ultra-mega" power projects have been announced, a lot of new private companies say they are building a project here, a project there, thermal, hydel, nuclear, wind, you name it, and India says its building it, and yet, things dont seem to be getting any better.
Govt now plans 7 ultra mega power projects
Buoyed by the overwhelming response by the private developers for the Sasan and Mundra ultra mega power projects and forced by the shortage situations, the government is expanding plans for the 4000 MW plus ultra-mega power projects. From an initial five to seven on last count. Now, Andhra Pradesh will be home to the seventh ultra mega power project.
Like the other power projects, a shell company formed by the Power Finance Corporation will help get the projects off ground. However due to its late start, this project would be handed over to the successful bidder for developing only by mid-‘07.
These projects are being set up in Sasan (Madhya Pradesh), Akaltara (Chattisgarh), Mundra (Gujarat), Ratnagiri (Andhra Pradesh) and Tadri-Karwar (Karnataka). The seven projects will account for a capacity addition of 28,000MW and would mean an investment of Rs 1,05,000 crore. The government is hoping that competitive bidding will result in a tariff of Rs 1.60 to Rs 1.80.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
But thats not the point. India loses billions of rupees on free power, something which the myopic state politicians feel is essential to keep their vote banks humoured, while those who live in the cities and those who are leading the industrial come back have to either do without it or spend their own money to build captive power plants. More importantly, India loses crores worth of electricity on transmission and distribution, and all cities have incompetent electicity boards and power thieves who thrive in such a situation. So if only we could cut all the loose threads and improve on what we have, we can still improve the existing situation to a large extent.
Much like the rest of the investment-starved infrastructure sectors, the power sector is in need of some major moolah, and more importantly, some major reforms. And the good thing about India, you know, is that there's always hope. Despite all the wrongs, yet we find something we can look forward to, and there are stories which keep coming up that say that maybe things are probably going to get better. India is doing well in the wind generated power production, we are 5th highest producer of wind generated electricity in the world, and that could help solve at least some of the problems.
Wind power capacity up 45% in 2005-06
Installed wind power capacity grew by 45 per cent during 2005-06 over the previous year, the same level of growth that was recorded in 2004-05, show preliminary figures provided by wind turbine manufacturers.
It is estimated that the total installed wind power capacity in the country will be 5,200 MW at the end of March 2006, against 3,595 MW at the end of the previous financial year - an addition of 1,605 MW.
As in the past, Tamil Nadu has contributed to a bulk of this capacity addition accounting for nearly 870 MW during last financial year.
Industry sources point out that there were local problems in Karnataka, with villagers blocking roads and interrupting work. This seems to have been sorted out to a large extent now.
The distribution companies in Karnataka have also started signing power purchase agreements now with investors in wind power, which is a positive development, according to the sources.
As far as other States were concerned, the sources said wind power policy was due for a review in Maharashtra later this year and, hence, there was a rush for installations now.
Rajasthan, which is a small market for wind power, wheeling and transmission are the problem areas. There is potential for installing wind turbines in the desert region, where there is not much demand for power.
Those investing in wind power are being asked to pay Rs 17 lakh a MW for improving the grid and also construct sub-stations and connect them to the nearest high voltage evacuation point.
--------------------------------------------------------
Despite being the national capital, Delhi faces an acute power shortage every year. With all the news about the hydel projects in Uttaranchal and the new power plants coming up in the surrounding states, things still look bleak in Delhi, and this makes one wonder, if things are so bad in the national capital, what must it be like for the rest of the country? The answer is that yes, things are much worse in the rest of the country. I can say for certainty that for any electricity department in any state capital, the most important job is to ensure that the VIP areas and the homes of the politicians are provided for, while the rest of the city can go to hell. Such is the case in Delhi, which has been reeling under heavy power cuts since April, prompting the Supreme Court to set in. And these are the cities we talk of. Our rural areas have absolutely no electricity at all to talk of.
We talk about racing with China, heres a sobering thought for those Champions of bullshit sitting pretty in their air conditioned offices in Delhi, China adds around 28,000 MW of electricity a year, while we can barely add 4,500 MW. They have managed to expand their network so that 97% of their households have access to electricity, while in the great Democracy of India, its less than 50%. Coming to the transmission and distribution losses, its less than 10% in China, while its more than 30% in India. With these stats, I can't imagine how we can manage to grow at even 8%, because it all feels so hollow.
Power crisis: SC steps in; seeks explanation from Delhi, Centre
As the capital reels under severe power crisis, the Supreme Court today asked the Centre and Delhi Government to explain the steps being taken by them to enhance power generation and supply to meet the increased demand during the peak summer.
The Bench, which is monitoring the power crisis here since 1999, wondered if the situation in the capital continued to be power-starved, "how will we organise the Commonwealth Games in the year 2010 here?"
The Court observed when it started monitoring the power crisis, Delhi did not have adequate power because it was exporting power. Thereafter, it was said that non-availability of power was due to electricity-theft and distribution losses.
However, despite the distribution system having been handed over to private companies, the situation has not improved, the Bench observed. On behalf of the power distribution companies, senior counsel Aryam Sundaram submitted that his clients could not be blamed for the crisis as they were supplying what was being made available to them by Delhi Transco.
Amicus Curiae Ranjit Kumar said the capital was facing a shortfall of 500-600 megawatts of power and that was why most parts of the city faced power-cuts for hours everyday.
----------------------------------------------------------
And with all this incompetence and ridiculousness you would think the government is at least serious to bring about a change, no man, it aint! Most of the power plants that are being expanded and built are running behind schedule, and the Central Electricity Authority has been cutting their expansion targets again and again. So says Assocham.
No respite from power crisis: Assocham study
Acute shortage of electricity across the country is unlikely to be bridged soon, with as many as 47 power plants running much behind schedule to expand capacity, says an industry chamber ASSOCHAM.
As many as 10 power plants in the north, 16 in the west, eight in the south, 11 in the east and two in the north-east regions, scheduled for expanding capacity in the 10th plan period (2002-07), are behind their target date of completion, the Assocham study said.
"As a result of the slow work progress, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has reduced the capacity expansion plan from the targeted 41,110 MW to 32,778.5 MW. Only 14,301.4 MW of this has been commissioned so far," said ASSOCHAM President Anil K Agarwal.
"In the current fiscal only about 10,000 MW of capacity addition could be expected and the remaining will have to be shifted for commissioning in the 11th plan period."
---------------------------------------------------------------
Let me end this post with an opinion piece which provides for both the hopeful and the pessimistic. Reforms are going on, but they seem to have lost direction. While things are happening, they are backed by short-sighted policies and lack of concrete (read those that might hurt vote banks) actions.
A K Bhattacharya: The missing emphasis
Somewhere along the way, power sector reforms in India seem to have lost direction. This may sound a little odd at a time when power reforms in general have made a lot of difference to the efficiency of the distribution network, the regulatory system and to the economic health of power generators and distributors. The truth is that in spite of all these changes, the power sector is in a bit of a mess. And there are clear signs that this mess is going to get messier in the years to come.
Today, all the states in the country have signed memoranda of understanding with the Centre for bringing about power distribution reforms. As many as 24 states have set up state electricity regulatory commissions and 19 of them have already issued tariff orders. Barring a few state electricity boards, all of them are cash surplus, after their accumulated dues were securitised in 2002-03. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), the country’s largest power generator, has reported no payment overdues from the state electricity boards for the last three years.
Thirteen states have corporatised their power utilities or unbundled the various wings of generation, transmission and distribution. Orissa and Delhi have privatised power distribution, although whether they achieved the desired results is still being debated.
Four states have recorded 100 per cent consumer metering and nine states have achieved 90 per cent consumer metering. Transmission and distribution losses have come down below 15 per cent in 158 towns and below 20 per cent in 38 towns.
The good news, however, ends here.
The problem starts with the overall availability of power that has either declined or remained the same as five years ago. The number of pockets suffering from shortages has increased (north Indian states are an example these days) and seasonal supply shortfalls have worsened. The country’s total electricity shortage at the start of the Tenth Plan was 7.5 per cent. Last year, it was over 7.7 per cent.
The reason for this sorry state is that the government’s programme for power capacity addition has gone completely haywire. Take the Tenth Plan as an example. The Plan target was to add 41,110 Mw in five years ending March 2007. The Tenth Plan mid-term appraisal showed that a capacity addition of only 36,956 Mw was feasible, down by 10 per cent. The government has now further scaled down the target to 34,000 Mw.
But a look at the ground reality reveals that achieving even this target will be difficult. Till January this year, the total new capacity commissioned in the Tenth Plan was 13,800 Mw. The government now hopes that in the remaining 14 months, it would commission 20,250 Mw more capacity! This is a near impossibility.
It is not just the central or state sector power utilities that failed to meet the targets of adding capacity in the last few years; the private sector’s plans have also gone awry. Against the 172 Mw of capacity to be added in 2004-05, it ended up creating only 70 Mw. Similarly in 2005-06, it added only 660 Mw till January 2006 against the annual target of 1,382 Mw.
The power ministry is still busy focusing on giving approvals to mega power projects and ultra mega power projects with a capacity of 4,000 Mw each. The problem is not in planning the projects. The ministry should now direct its energies to resolving all the issues that are coming in the way of timely execution of power projects in the country.
Monday, May 08, 2006
India imports wheat!
Sometime during April end, the Government decided to lift the ban on wheat imports into the country, and Sharad Pawar, the union agricultural minister, said he might allow private and public mill owners to import wheat.
The reason I put the heading in exclamation because I am one of those people who grew up listening all about the green revolution and self reliance in agriculture. Wasn't that the whole point of the green revolution, to produce enough to feed the entire country? So when I read this article about India allowing food grain imports again, I was pretty surprised, because I hadnt heard of it being done before. The first thought that came to mind was that isn't this a really politically sensitive subject? I am sure the 50% of the national work force that is employed in agriculture will have something to say about it, right? So with these questions, I scourged news sources and am trying to find out what the deal is, and what other people's opinions are.
I would say that for somebody as naive as me, the basic issue would be the issue of self-reliance versus the global economy. Global economy is built on international trade, and food grain is a part of that trade. With the green revolution, the buzz word was self reliance, meaning we don't have to look at anybody else to feed us now. So I suppose if we have to move with the times and be a true economic power, we must open our agricultural sector to competition and global best practices too. But then there is a flipside as well. How does one explain the billions and billions worth of dollars of subsidies that the United States and Europe provide to their farmers? I can't, except that it puts the millions of farmers in the less developed nations at a disadvantage, and thats exactly what is happening now.
So apparently the decision to import wheat has been taken to augment India's buffer stocks and the public distribution supplies. Ha, public distribution, that one shining example of India's failure to run efficient public services. I think i've already mentioned before of the crores and crores worth of food grain that is stolen from the system and sold on the open market. Its right in front of us, but for some reason I don't see no activist talk about and I dont see no newspaper write about it.
Another thought that came into my mind when I was thinking about it is this, during the times of the industrial revolution in England, the demand for workers, for fuel, for raw materials was great, and there was a great pressure on English agriculture to cope with the rising demand. While the industrial revolution made the English realize that the world was to be won with foreign trade, I think agriculture was still a domestic industry, with the main concern being protecting the livlihoods of the pheasants. Then the English government made the conscienscious decision to let agriculture sink, and focus on food imports. There was a big cry then, but in the end, I think it worked out to their advantage. And I think the same thing happened in the US. While these nations had half of their populations in agriculture at one time now only have a few, heavily subsidized millions working the farmlands.
Anyways, I will post this editorial from The Indian Express first and see what they are saying.
Cereals in basket case
Self-reliance does not mean that India meet its foodgrain needs by domestic cultivation
In terms of its comparative advantage, it makes sense for the country to import capital and resource intensive crops like cereals. If India imports wheat from countries like the US, Canada, Latin America and Australia by exporting high-value, labour-intensive commodities like vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs, we will benefit due to gains from trade.
The world has changed from the cold war days when India needed to be self-reliant in the production of foodgrains and had to invest heavily in cereal production. Then, that strategy yielded beneficial results, but today this strategy has become a liability. It has become too expensive and inefficient for us to continue on the path of trying to promote cultivation of cereals through a plethora of subsidies on fertilisers, power, water and seeds, and then buying vast quantities of cereals at above-market prices to fill government granaries.
Over the next 30 years, as India grows, the need for land for industrial and urban uses will increase. There will therefore be increasing pressure on land. Also, as the road network, industrial parks and SEZs expand, marginal agricultural land will no longer be available for cultivation.
Today “food security” can be achieved without growing all the wheat and rice we need. On agricultural land, we need to turn to higher value crops by developing marketing, research, support and infrastructure for them. Import of agricultural products needs to be decanalised, allowing private traders to engage in trade and import of foodgrains.
The most difficult challenge will be for the government to remove the considerable subsidies being handed to farmers to produce cereals. Unless we do away with incentives for farmers to produce cereals, no serious move can be made to diversify cropping patterns. Today a new notion of food security and a new vision are required.
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Man has always opposed change. And in a nation as India, where millions of people have no job security, have that one job they have had for all their lives, any attempts to bring about a change in that situation will be met with resistance. This was the case with the Indian airports, where thousands of government employees went on strike because I believe they were aware that with their skillset (or lack of it), they wouldn't find such a meaty job cushion as this.
Govt plans new wheat import tender soon
India will issue a new wheat import tender shortly to replenish low government stocks and rein in spiralling prices, a top food ministry official said on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said India would import 3 million tonnes of wheat in addition to 500,000 tonnes already contracted with Australian exporter AWB Ltd.The first consignment of 50,085 tonnes of wheat from Australia arrived in Chennai on Tuesday aboard the bulk carrier Furness Australia.
Government agencies have been trying to replenish depleted reserve stocks since the first week of April by buying newly harvested wheat in the main northern growing regions.But the effort has been hit by farmers holding back their produce in anticipation of prices rising higher. The official said the government has procured 8.5 million tonnes of wheat since April 1 out of a targetted 16 million tonnes.
D.P. Singh, president of the All India Grain Exporters Association, said the wheat was likely to be imported by a combination of state-run and private traders."The price spiral will be contained once imports come on private account," he said, adding that private imports would cap prices.Government agencies would use their imports to build up reserves. The first wheat shipment was contracted entirely by the State Trading Corp.
The food ministry official dismissed the need for contingency food planning because of the weather office forecast this week that the monsoon would be just below normal. India's wheat output this year could fall below the government's forecast of 73 million tonnes because of unusually hot weather in February and rains in March, traders said.India's annual demand is 70-72 million tonnes, and the government needs to maintain a large stockpile to rein in prices.
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So while our agriculture is mired in a weird mix of subsidies, price controls, state monopolies, I can't understand why India can't have a robust domestic agriculture sector that allows for private trading, including exim, futures (I think they have them already though), while cutting down on the subsidies. Plus our land reforms have been a mess, I havnt heard of any in the last many years, and as the population keeps growing, the farmlands are being further divided into smaller and smaller plots.
And ominously, the first batch of imported wheat is stuck at Chennai port because it is unfit for consumption. Expect delays and political opportunityism.
Controversy hits wheat import
The country's first wheat import in years is currently stuck in a Chennai port - the reason - it is not fit for human consumption. It contains pesticide and poisonous weeds. What is worse is the price paid for this wheat is around Rs 8,000 per tonne.The price is much higher than the procurement price for wheat to Indian farmers.
Import criticizedSerious questions are now being raised on how this unsafe wheat made its way into the country and whether the Australian wheat board has been favoured over other bidders including US and Ukraine.New Delhi has launched a damage control exercise after US ambassador David Mulford met the cabinet secretary and complained that its wheat was rejected unfairly.
So far the government claims there is nothing wrong with the wheat. It claims the wheat was ordered to stablise prices, but critics say there was no reason to give concessions, because there was no hurry to import.Weed threatBesides the pesticide content, there are fears that the consignment will introduce new weeds into the country - what are called invasive alien species. The consignment reportedly has 14 noxious weeds, of the 31 banned in India.
The weeds can cause fungal diseases in wheat plants. In 1970's when India imported wheat from US under the PL 480 scheme, Parthinium or Congress Grass an exotic weed slipped into the country. While the weed is yet to be eradicated from the country it caused respiratory diseases among millions of people and damaged soil fertility.
The reason I put the heading in exclamation because I am one of those people who grew up listening all about the green revolution and self reliance in agriculture. Wasn't that the whole point of the green revolution, to produce enough to feed the entire country? So when I read this article about India allowing food grain imports again, I was pretty surprised, because I hadnt heard of it being done before. The first thought that came to mind was that isn't this a really politically sensitive subject? I am sure the 50% of the national work force that is employed in agriculture will have something to say about it, right? So with these questions, I scourged news sources and am trying to find out what the deal is, and what other people's opinions are.
I would say that for somebody as naive as me, the basic issue would be the issue of self-reliance versus the global economy. Global economy is built on international trade, and food grain is a part of that trade. With the green revolution, the buzz word was self reliance, meaning we don't have to look at anybody else to feed us now. So I suppose if we have to move with the times and be a true economic power, we must open our agricultural sector to competition and global best practices too. But then there is a flipside as well. How does one explain the billions and billions worth of dollars of subsidies that the United States and Europe provide to their farmers? I can't, except that it puts the millions of farmers in the less developed nations at a disadvantage, and thats exactly what is happening now.
So apparently the decision to import wheat has been taken to augment India's buffer stocks and the public distribution supplies. Ha, public distribution, that one shining example of India's failure to run efficient public services. I think i've already mentioned before of the crores and crores worth of food grain that is stolen from the system and sold on the open market. Its right in front of us, but for some reason I don't see no activist talk about and I dont see no newspaper write about it.
Another thought that came into my mind when I was thinking about it is this, during the times of the industrial revolution in England, the demand for workers, for fuel, for raw materials was great, and there was a great pressure on English agriculture to cope with the rising demand. While the industrial revolution made the English realize that the world was to be won with foreign trade, I think agriculture was still a domestic industry, with the main concern being protecting the livlihoods of the pheasants. Then the English government made the conscienscious decision to let agriculture sink, and focus on food imports. There was a big cry then, but in the end, I think it worked out to their advantage. And I think the same thing happened in the US. While these nations had half of their populations in agriculture at one time now only have a few, heavily subsidized millions working the farmlands.
Anyways, I will post this editorial from The Indian Express first and see what they are saying.
Cereals in basket case
Self-reliance does not mean that India meet its foodgrain needs by domestic cultivation
In terms of its comparative advantage, it makes sense for the country to import capital and resource intensive crops like cereals. If India imports wheat from countries like the US, Canada, Latin America and Australia by exporting high-value, labour-intensive commodities like vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs, we will benefit due to gains from trade.
The world has changed from the cold war days when India needed to be self-reliant in the production of foodgrains and had to invest heavily in cereal production. Then, that strategy yielded beneficial results, but today this strategy has become a liability. It has become too expensive and inefficient for us to continue on the path of trying to promote cultivation of cereals through a plethora of subsidies on fertilisers, power, water and seeds, and then buying vast quantities of cereals at above-market prices to fill government granaries.
Over the next 30 years, as India grows, the need for land for industrial and urban uses will increase. There will therefore be increasing pressure on land. Also, as the road network, industrial parks and SEZs expand, marginal agricultural land will no longer be available for cultivation.
Today “food security” can be achieved without growing all the wheat and rice we need. On agricultural land, we need to turn to higher value crops by developing marketing, research, support and infrastructure for them. Import of agricultural products needs to be decanalised, allowing private traders to engage in trade and import of foodgrains.
The most difficult challenge will be for the government to remove the considerable subsidies being handed to farmers to produce cereals. Unless we do away with incentives for farmers to produce cereals, no serious move can be made to diversify cropping patterns. Today a new notion of food security and a new vision are required.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Man has always opposed change. And in a nation as India, where millions of people have no job security, have that one job they have had for all their lives, any attempts to bring about a change in that situation will be met with resistance. This was the case with the Indian airports, where thousands of government employees went on strike because I believe they were aware that with their skillset (or lack of it), they wouldn't find such a meaty job cushion as this.
Govt plans new wheat import tender soon
India will issue a new wheat import tender shortly to replenish low government stocks and rein in spiralling prices, a top food ministry official said on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Farm Minister Sharad Pawar said India would import 3 million tonnes of wheat in addition to 500,000 tonnes already contracted with Australian exporter AWB Ltd.The first consignment of 50,085 tonnes of wheat from Australia arrived in Chennai on Tuesday aboard the bulk carrier Furness Australia.
Government agencies have been trying to replenish depleted reserve stocks since the first week of April by buying newly harvested wheat in the main northern growing regions.But the effort has been hit by farmers holding back their produce in anticipation of prices rising higher. The official said the government has procured 8.5 million tonnes of wheat since April 1 out of a targetted 16 million tonnes.
D.P. Singh, president of the All India Grain Exporters Association, said the wheat was likely to be imported by a combination of state-run and private traders."The price spiral will be contained once imports come on private account," he said, adding that private imports would cap prices.Government agencies would use their imports to build up reserves. The first wheat shipment was contracted entirely by the State Trading Corp.
The food ministry official dismissed the need for contingency food planning because of the weather office forecast this week that the monsoon would be just below normal. India's wheat output this year could fall below the government's forecast of 73 million tonnes because of unusually hot weather in February and rains in March, traders said.India's annual demand is 70-72 million tonnes, and the government needs to maintain a large stockpile to rein in prices.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
So while our agriculture is mired in a weird mix of subsidies, price controls, state monopolies, I can't understand why India can't have a robust domestic agriculture sector that allows for private trading, including exim, futures (I think they have them already though), while cutting down on the subsidies. Plus our land reforms have been a mess, I havnt heard of any in the last many years, and as the population keeps growing, the farmlands are being further divided into smaller and smaller plots.
And ominously, the first batch of imported wheat is stuck at Chennai port because it is unfit for consumption. Expect delays and political opportunityism.
Controversy hits wheat import
The country's first wheat import in years is currently stuck in a Chennai port - the reason - it is not fit for human consumption. It contains pesticide and poisonous weeds. What is worse is the price paid for this wheat is around Rs 8,000 per tonne.The price is much higher than the procurement price for wheat to Indian farmers.
Import criticizedSerious questions are now being raised on how this unsafe wheat made its way into the country and whether the Australian wheat board has been favoured over other bidders including US and Ukraine.New Delhi has launched a damage control exercise after US ambassador David Mulford met the cabinet secretary and complained that its wheat was rejected unfairly.
So far the government claims there is nothing wrong with the wheat. It claims the wheat was ordered to stablise prices, but critics say there was no reason to give concessions, because there was no hurry to import.Weed threatBesides the pesticide content, there are fears that the consignment will introduce new weeds into the country - what are called invasive alien species. The consignment reportedly has 14 noxious weeds, of the 31 banned in India.
The weeds can cause fungal diseases in wheat plants. In 1970's when India imported wheat from US under the PL 480 scheme, Parthinium or Congress Grass an exotic weed slipped into the country. While the weed is yet to be eradicated from the country it caused respiratory diseases among millions of people and damaged soil fertility.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Naushad (1919 - 2006)
Just when India lost a promising leader in Indian politics, we suffered another loss with the passing away of Naushad, the great music director who gave the Mumbai film industry some of the best music that is still unbeatable for its quality and class.
With the passing away of Naushad, the city of Lucknow has lost a great son. There is a district called Barabanki to the east of Lucknow, and it has an ancient dargah of Haji Waris Ali Shah called Dewa Sharif. I have had the good fortune of visiting the shrine, and they say Naushad was positively influenced by the Sufi music of the qawwals here. For those not in the know, a Qawwali is a form of devotional Sufi music which in its modern day form can be traced to Amir Khusro. He too, was born in Uttar Pradesh, which makes you think, here is the state that led in culture, led in music, gave the film industry its great luminaries in Naushad, Kamal Amrohi, Amitabh Bachchan, and today it is but a shadow of what it was.
I am a big fan of old Bollywood, and spend considerable time searching and collecting them with the limited resources that I have, and I can safely vouch for this, most of what Bollywood produces today can't even come close to what these great composers dished out. I mean, how can anyone compete with some of the music of Shri Naushad ji? Heard of Mughal-e-Azam? He gave the music to it, and there is a famous qawwali in that movie as well, "yeh ishq ishq hai."
Then there is Mother India, another classic. Then there is Pakeezah which he completed after Ghulam Mohammad's death, and Baiju Bawra, classics all the way yo!
Naushad passes away in Mumbai; from Barabanki, qawwal mourning
At the dargah of Haji Waris Alis Shah in Barabanki’s Dewa Sharief, the qawwals are mourning the death of a musical legend who started his journey here.
But for him, I would not have been: Lata
"The lord is my witness that whatever I have is not a gift of others...."
With the passing away of Naushad, the city of Lucknow has lost a great son. There is a district called Barabanki to the east of Lucknow, and it has an ancient dargah of Haji Waris Ali Shah called Dewa Sharif. I have had the good fortune of visiting the shrine, and they say Naushad was positively influenced by the Sufi music of the qawwals here. For those not in the know, a Qawwali is a form of devotional Sufi music which in its modern day form can be traced to Amir Khusro. He too, was born in Uttar Pradesh, which makes you think, here is the state that led in culture, led in music, gave the film industry its great luminaries in Naushad, Kamal Amrohi, Amitabh Bachchan, and today it is but a shadow of what it was.
I am a big fan of old Bollywood, and spend considerable time searching and collecting them with the limited resources that I have, and I can safely vouch for this, most of what Bollywood produces today can't even come close to what these great composers dished out. I mean, how can anyone compete with some of the music of Shri Naushad ji? Heard of Mughal-e-Azam? He gave the music to it, and there is a famous qawwali in that movie as well, "yeh ishq ishq hai."
Then there is Mother India, another classic. Then there is Pakeezah which he completed after Ghulam Mohammad's death, and Baiju Bawra, classics all the way yo!
Naushad passes away in Mumbai; from Barabanki, qawwal mourning
At the dargah of Haji Waris Alis Shah in Barabanki’s Dewa Sharief, the qawwals are mourning the death of a musical legend who started his journey here.
On Friday, they began their evening recital with, ‘‘Khuda gawah hai jo kuchch hai mere daaman mein kisi ki den nahin..., the favourite of Naushad, one of Indian film music’s greatest composers, who died at the age of 87 in Mumbai today.
Naushad moved from Lucknow to Mumbai in the late 1930s to try his luck in films. Initially, he had to struggle and even had to spent nights on the footpath.
But never did he forget his Lucknow past. At Allan Sahib & Sons in Lucknow, from where he received his first harmonium from the owner, they are reliving his memories. Recalls Azmatullah, whose grandfather had given the maestro his first peti: ‘‘Naushadsaab was always full of memories of Lucknow, of Lal khan ka haata and Royal Talkies (now Mehra cinema) where he began his career as an orchestra artiste playing the harmonium as a background score for the silent movies.’’
Unforgettable
Five of the music legend’s best remembered films
Mughal-e-Azam
Naushad experimented with bhajan and qawwali for the first time, using Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and Lata Mangeshkar. It is said that Naushad was the only composer whose name appeared above the film’s title on hoardings.
Mother India
Situational numbers were resonantly relevant to the plot of the film, such as the Lata Mangeshkar-sung Nagri nagri dware dware and Duniya mein hum aye hain.
Pakeezah
Composed the background music and is said to have completed the remaining compositions after Ghulam Mohammed’s sudden death.
Mere Mehboob
His detractors said Naushad was only audio-visually identified with Dilip Kumar, so he did this film with the newest superstar Rajendra Kumar and still delivered his best.
Baiju Bawra
A historical milestone as Naushad introduced Hindustani classical music to cinema lovers and broke the myth that classical music could not appeal to the masses.
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When I think about the great music and movies that were produced in our yesteryears, I can't help but consider some of the trash that is produced today. That is not to say we do not have good movies and good music coming out today, but what it seems to me is that apparently popular mainstream movie means it needs to have lots of nudity, jarring music, and a simple story line (read no story line). We have good actors and musicians in our time, but I would consider them an exception, not the norm. For example, I was at a friends place a few days ago and there was a Hindi movie on, pretty latest one, and I saw them act, it was a comedy scene, and I almost threw up. They had no concept of smoothness. They were loud, monotonous, and it just didnt work.
But for him, I would not have been: Lata
I reached the top because of Naushad Saheb. I have had a long musical journey with him. I started working with him in 1948. Guddu was the last film in which I sang for him.
In the beginning, I faced difficulty pronouncing Hindi words. He told me if I got them right, the sky would be the limit for me. You also got a lot of freedom working with him. I always called him Bade Bhaiya; he, too, considered me his younger sister.
With his death, an era has ended. It was typical of him to compose simple, beautiful tunes based on complicated ragas: even the common man could sing his songs.
His experimentation with classical music is unmatched. He had an eye for the smallest of details. He was particular about how every single word was to be handled in a song.
Although I like all his songs, my favourites are those from Mughal-e-Azam and Baiju Bawra. As a person, he was a noble human being. He would be the first to come to the aid of someone in difficulty. He was very respectful towards artistes and would never utter a word that could hurt anybody.
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You will be missed sir, but your music will live on forever."The lord is my witness that whatever I have is not a gift of others...."
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