The wheel of Karma

What is going on in Singur, West Bengal is so convoluted that my fragile mind has absolutely refused to make any sense of it.

Suddenly there are many parties involved, and over the past few weeks, Mamata Bannerjee has been breathing more fire than ever before. Ratan Tata says that he will move, while his workers are roughed up and his under-construction plant is under siege.

I racked my brains and the internet to think of the reasons why would the Tata's decide to set up the Nano factory in West Bengal in the first place. The one most important reason I could come up with was the absolute support guaranteed by the Communist party of the state. Of course, political risk is a very important factor for any company, and perhaps one could say that West Bengal is a 'shining' example of political stability, with the commies having in power for almost three decades. I don't want to go into how they have stayed in power for so long, but lets just say that Ratan Tata probably didn't have to think twice about political stability, and the communists' near dictatorial powers in the state ensure that the Tatas can get done whatever they desire.

Thats the good part, with everybody agreeing, except when the Communists started applying their near-dictatorial powers to gather land for the project. And thats where Mamata Bannerjee comes in. I hear that more than half of the affected farmers had accepted the package offered by the government for their land, which the state government claims in one of the best in the country, and had duly registered themselves in the employment list created by the Tatas. These people would be employed by the Tata's in the new factory. Yet there is a lingering 400 acres (of the total 1000 acres) that the state government gave to the Tata's, against the wishes of the farmers who did not want to part with them. Now Mamata Bannerjee has risen as their Joan of Arc.

I've written so much already without actually coming to explain the title of my post. For anybody who has been living in India or has been following India news in any part of the world for the past few years will have read about the blackmails and browbeating by the Communists during their support of the UPA Government. They stalled reform packages, stopped companies from setting up projects, constantly threatened to withdraw support, and thanks to their reign of terror, the pusillanimous government was reduced to an ineffective, passive entity that stopped short on important reforms and refused to take action on important issues of the economy and national security. Such is the Communists' love for the farmer and the common man.

The sweet irony is that Mamata Bannerjee is showing the same love for the farmer, and the Communists, for a very welcome change, are on the receiving end. Again, the hallmark of the Communists' gameplan has been to stall the progress of a 100 people to benefit 10. Thats what seems to be happening at Singur, and no end seems to be sight, with the now de facto leader, Mamata, refusing to talk. Of course, not that the Communists are innocent here. As their Somnath Chatterjee episode will reflect, I think the commies sometimes forget that they live in a free world, where the people rule. It is just not acceptable for any government to forcibly take over a citizen's land when they don't want to part with it, without due process.

Meanwhile, the repercussions are being felt all across the industry. Mukesh Ambani, meanwhile, has come in favor of the Singur Project, because it is a great step forward for industry. Already, a few states have stepped up the efforts to get the Tata's to relocate to their state. There is talk that the Tata's will activate plan B, that of producing the Nano from their plant in Uttarakhand.

What I am unable to understand is why the Tata's are refusing to part with the 400 acres, or are there any other alternatives to giving cash to the farmers who do not want to give up their land? Can they be provided alternate, equally cultivable land? The Tatas have a lot to lose too, no doubt, but what happens to the Commie push to bring industry into their state? I say let it suffer like they have made India suffer. I know its like shooting myself in the foot because it is still my nation and my people, but I sure would like to see the Commies be debilitated so their future transgresses can be checked.

1-0-2

Anybody who'se been following whats been transpiring in Indian sports will know what I am talking about when they look at my title.

So India's best performance in the Olympics has been a gold and two bronzes. Its funny how unattainable a gold seemed when we reached the silver after two straight olympics of Bronzes, and how a gold and two bronzes seems like pittance.

But thats a very good thing, because it shows that our appetite seems to have been whetted. Now that the individual gold is under the belt, people want more, and more importantly, people know it can be done.

I haven't been following cricket at all, India is currently playing Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka, and to tell you the truth, I really didn't even try to watch a match or even the highlights. Maybe its the MBA school effect, but more than that, i am sure is was our expectations in the Olympics.

I know I hated the games because of the entire hyprocricy involved in the entire thing, this supposed to be China's coming out party and all that bull, and as expected, nothing like that has happened. Whoever said that China would be forced to be more human rights friendly because of the games was probably paid by the Chinese to say so or was a naive little deer.

Anyways, with the Commonwealth Games coming up in New Delhi in 2010, our athletes will be kept on their toes, probably in the same, substandard training facilities our great nation has to offer them, and then it will on to London 2012. In between will the Asian Games in 2010, I think again in China.

Nothing would make me happier to see India high up in the medals tally in 2010 and 2012, but what I would rather see is a revolution in Indian sports that drives away all the netas from the sports associations and all players and athletes forming player associations that will turn an individual sportsperson into a stronger body with a stronger voice. Thats the only way to fight the system.

I salute our sportsmen who fight opinions and judgements to focus on their game and give it their best. This nation can take nothing away from you guys. You guys are heros, all of you who wear the India logo on your chest.

UPA's Kandahar Excuse

I have had many posts on this blog about the inability, or unwillingness, of the current UPA government to fight terror with conviction and effectiveness. Much of my material was without numbers and without instances, and I am happy to read Shekhar Gupta, the Chief Editor of The Indian Express, expressing the same views as mine, and perhaps a lot of other Indians.

It is not just the absolute absence of convictions, breakthroughs in terrorism and anti-Indian activities, but the extreme incompetence that the UPA seems to be going on about it. If I had to put my money on a theory, I would put it on the Congress's classical political strategy of minority appeasement. We've seen it in their economic policies, both at the center and the Congress ruled states, and we are seeing it in the political arena.

If a terrorist murders numerous Indian citizens but is not convicted because he/she belongs to a minority community and their conviction 'might' hurt the religious sentiments of the community, I think the government should be convicted first of traitorship. Why just minority appeasement, but the Government's record in handling the Naxals, the insurgency in the North-East, are all lacking in many ways.

This country will pay with its blood if these terrorists headquartered at 10 Janpath, New Delhi are allowed to be in power again. Terrorists will hit this country with a greater force than before and the Con'gress practice of associating inaction against terrorism with minority votes will only be strengthened, and many, many more lives will be snuffed.

Internal insecurity - Shekhar Gupta, The Indian Express

For nearly five years now the world media had been celebrating India’s rise. From the state of its stock market to its demographic advantage, from the strength and depth of its democracy to the vast reservoir of talent that flourished in its diversity, it was as if the world could see nothing wrong with India. There are now signs that some of that is changing.

And no, it is not just because of those thousand-rupee bundles displayed in the Lok Sabha. It is because of something much more serious, in fact a failure so serious it could, by itself, lose the UPA the next election. These four and half years are the worst in India’s history of fighting terrorism. Surely somebody in the UPA will bring out statistics to show that overall deaths were more in some other regime’s five years. But this is not just about numbers. It is a spectacular four and a half years of mayhem when not one terrorist has been caught, not one major case solved. Even by the modest standards that Shivraj Patil’s home ministry may have set for itself, this is a spectacularly disastrous record.

Last week, Somini Sengupta of The New York Times quoted a stunning fact from a report of the Washington-based National Counter-Terrorism Centre. It said, between January 2004 and March 2007, India had lost 3,674 lives to terrorism, second only to Iraq. And we can’t even claim that this is happening because some imperialist occupation army is running amok here. In fact that number, by now, must have crossed 5,000. If this notion spreads globally, it would do more to damage India’s image as an oasis of democratic stability, pacifism and economic growth than any twists in its politics, or even a half-decade reform holiday.

So far the UPA government has had one standard response: compare this with the record under the NDA: Kandahar hijack, Parliament attack, Akshardham. But there is a short use-by date on these arguments. You cannot take them into your next election campaign. Soon enough, the memory of those incidents would have faded, been replaced by new ones: Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kabul, Mumbai trains, Samjhauta Express and so on. And then the unchecked Naxalite attacks.

Most amazing is the sense of cool with which this government, particularly its home ministry, has responded to these losses. While they can pretend that Naxalite strikes are some sinister happenings in places that are out of sight, out of mind, somebody — most likely the voter — will soon remind them that, while those managing internal security may not care for the lives of policemen in faraway states, never in the history of insurgencies have we suffered casualties like these.

It is rare for security forces to suffer double-digit casualties in insurgencies. Even during the Kargil conflict it was a rare day’s fighting on which the army lost so many lives, against an entrenched foreign army. The two most striking things here have been the equanimity — frankly, cynical and sometimes sanctimonious indifference — with which this security establishment has treated it.

The talk of Naxalism in a week when two of our most important cities saw serial-bombings and a third had 23 unexploded bombs recovered, is not a digression. It underlines the unmoving, thick-skinned, incompetent and pusillanimous response to terror from this government. What is worse, it is even politically loaded. And while, ultimately, the UPA may be made to pay for it electorally, too many lives are being lost meanwhile, and too much damage is being done to India’s image. The government cannot ride out an entire five years claiming that their predecessors’ record was worse.

Over the past year or so we have all got focussed on what we saw as the communalisation of our foreign policy: don’t vote against Iran at the IAEA because our own Shias would get upset, don’t sign the nuclear deal with Bush as that will irritate all our own Muslims, conduct your relations with Israel by stealth for the same reason, even stop the two missile development projects with them, no matter how badly your armies may need them. Last week we saw the prime minister fight back on this, and successfully too. But can he do the same with internal security?

Then, the same “communalised” politics interfered in police investigations following the serial blasts in Mumbai trains and Hyderabad. Ask senior police officers there — even Congress chief ministers if they’d dare to speak the truth — and they will tell you how they pulled away in fright, under pressure from the Centre for targeting and upsetting Muslims (voters) in their investigations. This proceeded neatly alongside the utterly communalised discourse on the Afzal Guru hanging issue. Each time this government and its intellectual storm-troopers proffered the minority argument in support of this soft policy, it emboldened the terrorists. They figured they were dealing with a political leadership which had already committed a self-goal by equating counter-terror with Muslim alienation and which had, in the process, totally demoralised its intelligence agencies and police forces.

And if it is not guilty of communalising our internal security policy, how does it explain sitting on special anti-terror laws in all BJP-run states when exactly similar ones have been passed for the Congress states? Now you can say special laws are good or bad, but they must be equally so for all citizens in all states. If these laws are good, or necessary, then citizens in BJP-run states have as much need — and right — to get their protection as those in the Congress states. Unless the message is: you want protection, you better vote for us. You vote for others, you are on your own.

now the BJP and Congress want to play games

I usually try to follow the Indian Economy thread of BR to catch up on my economic news and maybe get some deeper insight into some of the economic events I hear around me. The last few days have seen a few posts talking about the Congress pressing ahead with reforms now that they have shaken off their boyfriend, the Left, and some expressing hope that the BJP will support them because they had always asked for reforms in the first place, and some expressing their concern that since there was such bitter blood created between the two in the aftermath of the confidence vote, the BJP will play hardball.

There is plenty of news about the government and opposition "may, might, could" do in the near future.

Being an aam aadmi, of course I don't know whats going on, but hopefully we will know the status of things in the near future. already, some key happenings have occured, but not too circulated in the generic Indian media. The first is that the government has finally ended the monopoly of the SBI in managing the Employee Provident Fund Organization. There are crores and crores of rupees of all big and small, high and low government employees being managed by SBI. Now the Government has invited three private companies to manage part of the pot too.

Another newsitem from the Hindu Business Line says that Disinvestment process may gain speed. This includes offloading stakes in NHPC and Damodar Valley Corporation. Among other things is the plan to open up the insurance sector to 49% from the current 26%.

While some report that the BJP may "test" the government on reforms, others say that BJP ready to support economic reforms.

You'd think that maybe the dust would settle down after the horse fair would get over, but theres always surprises around the corner in India. The government, my feeling tells me, will push reforms, but maybe back down from the major reforms as usual because of the approaching elections.

Here is what I am trying to an answer to - Why does it always have to be that the most important economic reforms are also 'apparently' anti-vote banks? Why are the votebanks of Indian democracy always disadvantaged? And will some of these groups ever figure out what their netas are actually upto?