Angela Merkel said that Europe is facing its toughest test since the Second World War. Needless to say, the days of capitalist living and socialist economies may be finally over across Europe, including in Germany and France, and perhaps its time the European nations begin strapping up for a new age where the Asians control a part of their economy and living frugally becomes the best way to survive. Yes, it warms my heart to see that the days of gratuitous consumption in the European and even North American economies may be withering away.

After occupying the rest of the world for the past few hundred years, a part of me is pleased to hear all this protectionist talk coming from the US and other Western nations. Despite the massive debt Greece is in and despite the fact that Germany and France, as leaders of Europe, worked hard to get Greece's debtors to write down their debt to the country by almost half, the Greeks are angry. And why are the Greeks angry? Because its Germany, that's why. Those Nazi occupiers are back and the Greeks aren't liking it! Talk about beggars not being choosers.

As Greeks suffer from harsh austerity measures, there is growing popular sentiment here that the country has ceded key parts of its sovereignty, and its pride, to its foreign lenders.

Beyond populist talk, which ranges from euro-skepticism to anti-German demagoguery, experts say the concessions that Greece has made in exchange for the foreign aid it needs to stave off default — including allowing European Union officials to monitor Greek state affairs closely — are unprecedented for a member nation, making Greece a bellwether for the future of European integration.

“If we weren’t under the E.U., which is the only reason this loss of sovereignty may be justified, I’d have to say that Greece is an occupied country,” said Nikos Alivizatos, a constitutional lawyer in Athens.

Now since this is the New York Times, I do not know if they have put their own spin on the story because I could totally trust the media to obfuscate the truth to make it more salacious and scandalous. After all, the word "Nazi" sends a shiver down every American's spine! Actually, I may be wrong here and despite Angela Merkel emerging as the one European leader who seems to have brought some order to this debt crisis, some Greeks view her as the new Nazi occupier!

The Greeks may not be the only ones that seem to be angry at the current situation in Europe and Germany taking the lead in bringing some relief to the debt crisis. Her words that Europe must continue to integrate economically or there could be grave consequences for the continent took many people back to the first half of last century when the then German nation was responsible for bringing the first modern wars to the continent.  As the Sydney Morning Herald quotes the headline in the British newspaper Daily Mail - "German Chancellor warns of war if currency fails!"

But its very interesting to see that after what the IMF and other western lenders have been doing to the third world across the globe, they are applying the same medicine to one of their own. I've bought up this point before on my blog, but now that the European crisis has finally seemed to achieve critical mass, its certain that simple pussyfooting or simple short term measures will no longer work, and Europe has to take some tough decisions about its economic future. All this seemed very vague till some time ago, but now as expected, Merkel and Sarkozy have gotten the European bankers to back down and write down their Greek debt exposure.

For hours, negotiators had been trying to persuade the banks to accede to a "voluntary" 50 percent loss in the face value of their Greek bond holdings. The banks, which had already agreed to a 21 percent write-down, had dug in their heels.

They knew how badly the European leaders needed a deal and how much financial experts feared a disorderly, involuntary default. That could set off a "credit event," throwing world financial markets into turmoil, much as the collapse of Lehman Brothers did in the fall of 2008.

But Merkel called the bankers' bluff, said officials present at the discussions. Accept the 50 percent write-down, she told the bankers, or bear the consequences of default. In effect, she was willing to risk a credit event and place the blame for any fallout squarely on them.

So now Greece seems to have a plan going ahead, Ireland already had a plan with nationalisation of its banks and lots of bailout money, and nationalisation of banks across Europe, and now the show moves to Italy, which, being a G-7 nation, becomes too big to fail. According to that Economic Crimes link, Italy owes USD 2.7 trillion in debt, or 120% of its GDP!! How in the world are they going to get all that money even over several decades? In my opinion, Angela Merkel is hailed as a hero for getting the bankers to write down half of Greek debt, but how in the world is anybody going to write the Italian debt down?

There are many issues here that I constantly rant about when it comes to western economies, maybe with the two most important being how the western economies are moving towards protectionism after talking against it for so many decades, and the scale down from their gratuitous consumption and unsustainable lifestyle. Both of these will obviously change in the coming decades, and are changing right now as well.

Coming back to the point about Asia taking a lead in propping up the world economy in the near future, China and its money are on every body's minds as Europe tries to get China to put in their money in the rescue of Europe as well. As much as I dislike China, I also support them in the fact that they, along with other emerging economies such as ours, Brazil, Mexico etc, are correcting the long drawn skew in the global economy in favour of the western economies.

China is expected to demand significant concessions, including financial guarantees and limits on what Beijing sees as discriminatory trade policies, in exchange for any investment in Europe’s emergency stability fund. 

That Europe would turn so openly to China to help stabilize the debt crisis shows how quickly the Chinese economic juggernaut has risen on the world stage. Indeed, if China comes to Europe’s aid, it will signal a new international order, with China beginning to rival the role long played by the United States as the world’s pivotal financial power.

And I feel the reason I can support China in this is because I know that despite all its flaws, the Indian economy too is at a stage where it can't be arm-twisted any more by the likes of IMF/WB and even China. If I were a Vietnamese, for example, then I would be very, very wary of how China is slowly controlling the global finances.

At the same time, I am also very fearful that with the emerging world looking forward to consuming the way the west does now will be disastrous for the Earth. Of course, my long term view is that the Earth will revolt and in the next few decades, the environment will have been exploited beyond redemption, and then que sera sera. I hope India, China, Brazil and all their third world comrades realize that we must protect the environment for our sake and not start blowing smoke through our nostrils if a first world country tells us to. Its possible to live a comfortable, modern lifestyle with consumption of goods and use of resources, but it is absolutely necessary that we manage what we have better to make it go long and give the Earth a chance to replenish itself. But I digress.

I feel that the notion that globalization was a mutually beneficial economic model is not true anymore, with risks being shared with the most vulnerable nations and economies and the profits continuing to land in the hands of the mightiest of companies, most of which have their origins in the west. Sure Europe is in a crisis but I believe that while I am happy that a rightful shift in the global economy is occurring, whatever is happening today will now be mixed with heavy doses of nationalism, protectionism and distrust from all quarters. Those with the loudest guns will have the strongest clout, and as the economy becomes a greater cause of social distress in societies and we continue to grow (the world population will cross 7 billion soon), we will definitely see some fundamental shift in the way the world runs, and it could be something completely different from our usual conjured scenarios of East-West, BRIC, Asia, WASP etc. The world to me is getting more divided even as it integrates economically, and the only constant that will remain is that most of the global population will continue to struggle to survive.

Diwali 2011

Yesterday was Diwali in India, a time filled with an excitement in the air that permeates all corners of an office, factory, school or college. The period around Diwali is the time when manufacturers and retailers go all out in selling as many goodies as they can to the public that happily opens its purse strings in this otherwise bleak economic environment.

This being Diwali, an important day for the country, also becomes an important day for the enemies of the country, be they within or without our national borders. Just yesterday, there were two blasts in Imphal which injured 6 people and fortunately nobody is dead. Nobody claimed responsibility for the blasts but there could be two reasons for the blast - one, its Diwali and it being an important festival, cowards will try their best to wound the public sentiment. The second reason could be that its because P Chidambaram is visiting Manipur, and he will be specifically visiting three Naga-dominated districts, so perhaps this blast has something to do with it.

In Assam, there was a blast on the train tracks in Central Assam's Dima Hasao district that affected train movement but again did not result in any loss of life. Perhaps I am not paying attention to the news well enough but this was after a while that I heard of a blast in Assam. Unfortunate and dangerous nonetheless, and again on Diwali night.

In what seemed to be a restive Jammu & Kashmir, there were attacks on our security forces for two straight days, with the latest one being a grenade attack on a police vehicle in Anantnag district. On the previous day, there were grenade attacks on CRPF and police personnel in Srinagar. In Kashmir, this comes at a time when the demand for the easing of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is getting louder, being led by the Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah. The premise is that these special acts are looked at by the locals as oppressive and tyrannical, and considering that the violence in the state has been in a steady decline (which is perhaps due to the fact that the Pakis don't have a lot of money to fund terror now), it is high time these laws be done away with in order to bring a greater sense of being a part of the Indian nation among the Kashmiris. A news report in Reuters, which I do not want to quote here for its obvious bias and regurgitation of hackneyed stereotypes on Kashmir such as Hindu-minority or Muslim-majority or Hindu/Muslim, Muslim/Hindu etc etc and the friendly reminder of how India and Pakistan have fought so many wars over it, says that the terror is subsiding and the government wants to use this opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri folk who hate the law.

I hate to say it but I think that a lot of Kashmiri politicians love to portray themselves as victims and if anybody says anything critical of how the state is functioning or if somebody calls some bluff of theirs, or even of a group of people from there, then that at once becomes an example of how Kashmir is being victimized by India. This is not just a Kashmir problem but an India problem that the law enforcement side is the one that is always supposed to act within the boundaries of what is right, just, lawful, legal etc, while the enemy has all the laws in the world to flout. At the same time, it is much easier to show your contempt towards the side that is forced to work within the law because you know that you can shout at them, throw stones at them and they won't be able to do anything about it. The terrorists, well, they're fighting for a higher cause such as a brainwashed mind and some promised money in their familys' pockets when they are gone. With the grenade attacks in the past few days, maybe Omar Abdullah might consider backing down.

In Kashmir too, it is very easy to shout at the Army and be heard because the Indian media usually works without having sense of what it is doing. The Army in Kashmir is the villain for many Indian journalists who shed tears about how human rights are being flouted by the men in uniform. The terrorists, sorry, alleged terrorists, well, can shoot into a crowd and still be doubted if they are real terrorists at all. Way to stand up for your country, Indian media.

I do not claim to know everything about the AFSPA or even form a good opinion on the Act, because as always, the truth is always muddy. Perhaps if the Government of India grew some more balls and allowed the Armed Forces a little more leeway in doing more damage to the terrorists in Kashmir and those sitting across the border, including their handlers, maybe the state would be a lot more peaceful. This is not just true there, but in a lot of places across the country where the spineless government of India continues to let rashes fester till they become more dangerous. Then its operation containment and appeasement at a national scale.

I'll end up ranting against the absolutely disgraceful and shameless Government of India again but I just want to say that I hope things will get better in this nation so that we can continue to celebrate our traditions and festivals and events without the fear of having some traitor or enemy try to kill us. However, to ensure that the possibility of that remains a bare minimum, sometimes the solution does not lie as deep as making the world a better and a more equal place, all it needs is more spine to get rid of crazy fanatics who have lost all their sense of reasoning and objective.

If these results are anything to go by....

With the shenanigans that the CONgress party and its allies have been perpetrating at all levels of governance, there was always a discussion on somewhere about what it does to the poll fortunes of this sycophantic political party. If anything, there is something which I will always admit the CONgress never lacked, and that is their arrogance and quick dismissal of anything remotely critical of them.

I am sure the fraud Gandhi family and their minions around them are planning to shift power at the center of what was the Government of India - now its the Government of the Banana Republic of India - to bring Raul Maino at the helm, but surely the results that came out in the past few days, not just from one state, but from Haryana, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Three of these seats were Assembly seats and the one in Hisar, Haryana was the Lok Sabha seat vacated upon the death of the former Haryana Chief Minister, Bhajan Lal. According to the Business Standard:

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s failure to win not even one of the four by-elections — one Lok Sabha and three Assembly seats — has set off alarm bells within the ruling alliance.

In Bihar, UPA ally Rashtriya Janata Dal lost the Daraunda constituency in Siwan district by a convincing 20,000 margin, enabling the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) to retain the Assembly seat. In Maharashtra, the blow was sharp and deep.

Although all parties in the ruling UPA have gone into a huddle following the current setback, they say it is just a set of by-elections. But in three out of four states, the party in power is the Congress.

Election season in India is clearly showing signs of coming in full force now, and much to the chagrin of CONgress and its allies, Anna Hazare and his team have been pretty active in campaigning against CONgress, including in Hisar, which happens to be Arvind Kejriwal's native place. The Hindustan Times asked on the 11th of this month whether Mr. Hazare and Mr. Kejriwal will be able to influence the outcome?

In fact, the writer, Vinod Sharma, is very critical of what Mr. Kejriwal and Mr. Hazare have been doing in Hisar, which he says, is based on misrepresented facts and false claims. Mr. Sharma, of course, is a known CONgress boy and hence can be expected to be vexed to see so much support for the people campaigning against the CONgress, and apparently, seem to be winning.

Apparently there is a spin in the media these days to show that Team Anna is losing its plot and are losing their support by becoming more political and on many occasions, unabashedly anti-CONgress. There was a shoe hurled at Arvind Kejriwal recently by a man named Jitendra Pathak in Lucknow. I haven't read all the accounts, but the article I just linked from IBN Live is enough to tell me that there was definitely something fishy in that shoe throwing.

The attempted attack came a day after the drubbing Congress party got in Hisar by-poll and a few days after the attack on Prashant Bhushan and Anna's supporters.

There is some ambiguity about the affiliation of the man, Jitendra Pathak, who attacked Kejriwal. He is known to be close to the BJP and has also appeared in many of Congress's rallies.

Pathak said, "I attacked Kejriwal because he said he had come to speak about corruption but then never addressed the issue."

So Jitendra threw the shoe because Team Anna only speaks about corruption but never addresses the issue. Everybody else believes its political but nobody seems to know what is affiliations are, his uncle believes he used to work for the BJP, and this comes after Prashant Bhushan supported a referendum in Kashmir and was slapped in his office for saying so!

IBN Live is not without putting in its parting shot in the article to create some sort of a propaganda among its readers, as it tries to create a spin that Hazare and the people around him are crumbling.

Team Anna caught the nation's imagination by creating strong emotions against the government. Now it seems the same emotion is turning against them even if it's at a small level.

I just love how news stories put their own opinions into their pieces and then pass it off as news. That's the trend now and with the way media is controlled today by the rich and powerful, its no wonder that the media is now so sensationalist and yellow. I am saying this to simply illustrate that this is why I will take what they write with a barrel of salt. Today, for example, the news sources are reporting that Mr. Prasad now says that he will give a "similar treatment" to Anna Hazare. This time the issue is that Mr. Hazare must clear the air on Prashant Bhushan's Kashmir remarks. I suppose he is also upset that Hazare is now more explicit in campaigning against the CONgress, as opposed to campaigning against something as universal as corruption. That smell of bulls**t in the air is just nauseating.

I feel there is a confusion in many minds about what the central theme of whats going in. Anna Hazare brought up corruption in the government and the people rallied with him. So the main issue is corruption and now no matter what Hazare and his team does, the hope would be that the people's awareness towards the absolutely unbelievable levels of greed and avarice in the current Government has risen that their demand for justice can sustain itself. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and more often than not, to kill the issue, one has to kill the messenger. By discrediting Hazare and digging up his past and implicating Arvind Kejriwal in old tax cases, just to give examples, are ways by which the government is using the vast machinery at its disposal to get back at the people who oppose it.

Of course, since elections are in the air, that has been gaining the maximum coverage in the media, but once in a while the issue of election reforms also comes in. There is still a big discussion on about the various aspects of election reforms such as the right to reject or the right to recall, and there are opinions from various stakeholders including the Chief Election Commissioner of the India saying that Right to Recall will lead to destabilisation of the country, the Right to Reject is a more easily adoptable idea. He makes a valid point though - "everywhere there is discontent, people will start recalling their representatives." Since this nation is a nation of discontent, I am imagine that will happen very frequently.

So I do not know whether Hazare's strong words against the CONgress will work and whether it was his campaign or cast politics which lost CONgress the Hisar seat. However, I do sincerely hope that with so many elections coming, people will actually be more aware and vote for change. I simply can't shake my belief that this country and society has a government and representatives that it deserves. Till our society, especially the democratically inactive part, stop blaming the ills on everybody else and be more active in demanding what is right, we won't get it.

How do we recycle?

I work in a very large Indian company that has operations in many parts of the world. I work for a company that is a part of this large group, and its operations are only a tiny part of the total operations of this enterprise. So when I look at the paper consumption of my relatively small company, that can run into many reams of paper in a day, I can only imagine how many hundreds of reams of paper will have been consumed in one day by the company's operatives in all parts of the world.

Now if this is one Indian conglomerate, there are dozens like this with revenues running into thousands of crores, so one can imagine how many reams of paper all these companies put together will be consuming in a day and when we realize that the world is full of such conglomerates with operations and activities in every corner of the world, I find I am unable to fathom the sheer amount of paper consumption of all these corporations. 

A few weeks ago, I asked the maintenance person what happens to all the waste paper that is generated on the floor. He didn't know where it ended up, and upon my question that did he know if all this paper went to recycling at all, he drew a blank. Another colleague of mine with who I raised this point mistook my intention, and assuming I was talking about the security of the discarded paper, as in, whether they were shredded to destroy their content.

These reactions ably demonstrate our own attitude towards trash. We throw something in the trash can, somebody comes and collects it, and that is the end of it. I think none of us has ever bothered to wonder what happens to the trash that is generated by us and by our surroundings. Most of us are too used to dumping all our waste together, so that our tea leaves mix with plastic, our banana peel mixes with our waste paper, and we turn in into a stinky cocktail of trash and put it out for somebody else to take care of it.

Indians are chronic litterers. For one, we can't seem to travel to any place without food. A calling sign of many Indian tourist families that travel without and outside the country is the need for food. Gujarati families are famous for carrying as many Gujarati packed food items as they can, and no matter where Indian tourists are - on a boat, on a train, on a sidewalk in Singapore, on the beach in Thailand, on a raft on the Ganges river - our favorite activity is eating. I say our favorite activity is eating because we do that consciously. Our second favorite activity of course, is littering, which most do almost as unconsciously as breathing. Every passing moment in Mumbai when I am on the local train or sitting at Marine Drive or riding in a taxi, the most common theme I see are people spitting and littering, and I sincerely believe that we all will be living on mountains of trash soon. The movie Wall-E may actually be a very true scenario many years down the line, because it is amply visible to me that the earth's capacity to take our crap, and scrap, is diminishing.

Of course, littering is only a small part of the overall increased consumption levels of the developed and the developing world. The first world had already adapted a lifestyle of gratuitous consumption and now the developing world is matching them trash per trash. Is it any wonder that our pristine seas are now slowly dying because of the decades of human and industrial trash that is being continuously dumped into them?

There is a formation called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is the world's largest landfill according to some, and sits smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! Very simply, the oceans are our dumping grounds, and have been forever. We know that there are ocean currents that flow in various directions across our oceans, and when a few currents meet each other at such angles that creates a sort of vortex in the middle, imagine a tiny tornado you see when the winds blow through building corners and lift light dust and trash into a tornado, they dump all the trash they are carrying with them into this vortex. Such a system is called a gyre involving large ocean currents.

So just like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there is the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch, and just like them, there are three other great garbage patches floating on our oceans.

While there is visible debris and trash floating on the oceans, the problem with the garbage patches is that they are mainly plastic, and that too in a form that is broken down to very tiny levels, or as the article says, polymer level.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels known of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. As a result, it is one of several oceanic regions where researchers have studied the effects and impact of plastic photodegradation in the neustonic layer of water. Unlike debris, which biodegrades, the photodegraded plastic disintegrates into ever smaller pieces while remaining a polymer. This process continues down to the molecular level.

As the plastic flotsam photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces, it concentrates in the upper water column. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms that reside near the ocean's surface. Thus, plastic waste enters the food chain through its concentration in the neuston. Some plastics decompose within a year of entering the water, leaching potentially toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A, PCBs, and derivatives of polystyrene.

Who is to disprove what I say is a fact that the suspended polymers will definitely have originated from the tobacco satchets that millions of Indian men dump around them without thinking anything about it. This is just to illustrate that eventually, we will be polluting the entire world and then have to deal with the consequences. Most of the world's trash ends up in the water bodies, notwithstanding the large masses of landfills that we continue to fill.

I wanted to write about a relatively simpler process of recycling of paper, but its hard for me to not think about what's happening to our planet through our littering. I simply do not trust the human race to change its behavior, especially the consumers, and perhaps the only way out now is to develop a game changer, maybe something that can reduce plastic to organic waste or simply burn it into water vapour! 

Here are some facts from an article in the Telegraph, a British newspaper:

There are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world's oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year.

Invisible to satellites, poorly understood by scientists and perhaps twice the size of France, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a solid mass, as is sometimes imagined, but a kind of marine soup whose main ingredient is floating plastic debris.

Fifty years ago nearly all that flotsam was biodegradable. These days it is 90 per cent plastic.

The world's navies and commercial shipping fleets make a significant contribution, he discovered, throwing some 639,000 plastic containers overboard every day, along with their other litter. But after a few more years of sampling ocean water in the gyre and near the mouths of Los Angeles streams, and comparing notes with scientists in Japan and Britain, Moore concluded that 80 per cent of marine plastic was initially discarded on land, and the United Nations Environmental Programme agrees.

The wind blows plastic rubbish out of littered streets and landfills, and lorries and trains on their way to landfills. It gets into rivers, streams and storm drains and then rides the tides and currents out to sea. Litter dropped by people at the beach is also a major source.

Plastic does not biodegrade; no microbe has yet evolved that can feed on it. But it does photodegrade. Prolonged exposure to sunlight causes polymer chains to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, a process accelerated by physical friction, such as being blown across a beach or rolled by waves. This accounts for most of the flecks and fragments in the enormous plastic soup at the becalmed heart of the Pacific, but Moore also found a fantastic profusion of uniformly shaped pellets about 2mm across.

Nearly all the plastic items in our lives begin as these little manufactured pellets of raw plastic resin, which are known in the industry as nurdles. More than 100 billion kilograms of them are shipped around the world every year, delivered to processing plants and then heated up, treated with other chemicals, stretched and moulded into our familiar products, containers and packaging.

During their loadings and unloadings, however, nurdles have a knack for spilling and escaping. They are light enough to become airborne in a good wind. They float wonderfully and can now be found in every ocean in the world, hence their new nickname: mermaids' tears.

Worldwide, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, plastic is killing a million seabirds a year, and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles. It kills by entanglement, most commonly in discarded synthetic fishing lines and nets. It kills by choking throats and gullets and clogging up digestive tracts, leading to fatal constipation. Bottle caps, pocket combs, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, cottonbud shafts, toothbrushes, toys, syringes and plastic shopping bags are routinely found in the stomachs of dead seabirds and turtles.

A study of fulmar carcases that washed up on North Sea coastlines found that 95 per cent had plastic in their stomachs – an average of 45 pieces per bird.  

Plastic is bound to a human life in such a way that if we were to discard even a quarter of all the plastic products that we use, I believe we would not be able to survive! That's modernity for you. Unfortunately, so it is for the rest of the species on this planet as well, as we kill them slowly. I've reached this conclusion many times that we won't be able to turn back to living a life that is simpler, nature-friendly and simply less materialistic. Unfortunately, recycling is not very profitable, its not very profitable to produce electricity using the sun or the wind, there is no alternative to plastic, and nothing has been found, organic or chemical, that can burn down plastic, so I do not know what's going to happen, but if there is ever a change for the better on this planet, it will be only after we've managed to kill half the planet! I'm being a pessimist I know, but I do not see anything around me to make me believe otherwise. I'm a sinner myself, and I know how difficult it is to find alternatives to so many of the plastics I use daily. Working towards changing the world on that front is a failed exercise that will never succeed. The only solution now is to find something that will make all this plastic vanish!

losing trust

I must admit that my head is spinning, because there is just too much information circling around me at all times. Perhaps the truth is that such a copious amount of information always did the rounds around me or anybody else for that matter, my own receptiveness for such a massive variety of information seems to have gone up, and my own frustration at not being able to write about them adding to the headache.

I have always tried to be a good political blogger, even though I write in a blog which attracts a minute number of readers most of who happen to venture here by chance. Over time I think I have improved in what I write, and always attempt to back up some of my points made with what is said in the real media, but I think i'm now facing a crisis of trust. Trust in the sources I take my information from, and trust in myself to formulate a cohesive opinion piece that I can back up with at least some data.

To explain the lack of trust in myself, I know that there is always too much information, and there are always too many opinions. Life was good when I didn't care about the other opinions and simply wrote what I wanted to write, or rather, rant. Now I feel I have an obligation to be fair in what I write, and for some reason, the realization that there will be plenty of facts and figures to prove my opinion to be wrong in at least somme way is beginning to bother me. But isn't that true for every opinion expressed, especially in politics and global affairs? I hate the CONgress for the unaccountable and opaque fiefdom that they have turned the administrative machinery of this country into, but then, there are regular opinion givers in the Indian media who sing paens of this fraud Gandhi led gang for all the good they have done, and will illustrate far reaching acts such as the Right to Information Act and the reservation of 33% of seats in Panchayat elections for women. And thus have my opinions ended up becoming stuck in the middle as I try to take into consideration the fact that I should write from all angles as I am aware that I may be wrong! 

For the lack of trust in the sources where I take my information from, again there was never a dearth of sources from where I could glean information and opinions of what was happening around me. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there has been a steady degradation of the way the media of this country functions that has only now become more visible to the common eye. The fact that the media has closely been entrenched with the political system of the country was never in question, and one can only imagine the level of parlays that the powerbrokers at the top of the political/social/economic foodchain must be participating in. However, the recent past has perhaps been the first time that the common man saw how strong these links are. 

Then at the same time what I am feeling about a lack of trust in anything that I write and from whichever source I read is being felt by everybody in this country who now sees the absolute shamelessness and brazenness with which the top governance structure in the country goes about its business of being irresponsible, unanswerable and downright reckless in their disregard for norms and regulations. 

The political class in this country always had their paws in the economic pie, with many of them owning businesses with legitimate or illegitimate operations or both, but I think the last four years have thoroughly established that on the lines of most of the developed capitalist economies elsewhere on the planet, the politician sitting on the proverbial chair of an Member of Parliament or a Member of Legislative Assembly is more interested in doing business than being an administrator and political leader.  

In such a situation, when I do not know what is true or what is not true, I have found it very difficult to trust my own judgement and opinion on a politicial situation, a political entity or a political accusation because I suppose the recent shenanigans of the country's political and business class have more than ably demonstrated that the truth is anything but, especially the 'truth' that we are fed through the controlled media.

However, as much as I rant against the political and business leadership, I know that they represent the society at large, and no matter how bad things get, I, being the idealist that I am, believe that this situation exists only because this society lets it exist. On that corollary, the situation exists because the society wants it to exist. Given the consumption levels of the Indian society, especially the Indian middle class that is working in white collar jobs or owning their little business enterprise or working in the service economy, there is no doubt that while the size of the have-nots is definitely swelling, so is the consumption levels of the haves, and this group is the one that seems to drive policy, despite the politician going all out to woo the marginalized classes for votes.

I think the situation that exists today, of India being this strange mixture of extreme poverty and extreme wealth, extreme under-development to extreme development, absolute lack of infrastructure to the best urban infrastructure, millions of homeless to homes that cost crores of rupees, is because now our society has increasingly adapted the policy of laissez faire - non-interference. Everybody to themselves, is the rallying cry of the masses now, and that definitely includes the options available to make money. Now that consumption and accumulation of wealth defines our existance, surely I have nothing to find fault with in the leadership we have because thats the leadership we deserve. If a few farmers have to give up their farms to make way for a manufacturing plant, then as a supposed democratic republic which is aware of the concepts of justice and fairness, India must ensure that those farmers are given the best value for their land, and more importantly, are fully supported by the state to enable them to continue to earn their living.

However, ensuring justice and fairness takes time, and nobody in this country has the time to wait for it, not the politician representing the people of that land, not the bureaucrat administering that piece of land, and certainly not the businessman backed by a sea of investors who can smell the profit and want to get on with it as soon as possible. So in this case, the unfortunate farmer will have to be sidelined as has been happening for so many years now, be it in mining, manufacturing or urbanization.

Even then, it never remains this simple because even among the haves, which all these people mentioned above are, nobody wants to be left out. Thus even as a politician and a businessman shake their hands and think of the profits ahead, there will a politician and a businessman sitting on the sidelines who will be miffed at not being the politician and businessman shaking their hands. So considering that our national policy is 'everybody to themselves', the miffed players begin their own efforts to scuttle the deal. Now if this happens in an administrative structure that has completely lost the will or the ability or both to govern, then no holds are barred and no amount of money is too small.

Now after all this I try to write about the good things such as social reform, economic security, housing for all, healthcare for all, safety of society, education for our children, a part of me gives up completely at the pointlessness and hopelessness of it all. What leaves me wondering is how this society continues to evade itself from descending into anarchy, because ideally, if things continue the way they are, we should fall into that very soon. Anarchy does not have to mean all out fighting with weapons and gangs roaming the streets, but simply that everybody will believe that nobody is to be trusted, and that any administrative set-up is a farce. As is the case, a government can can't govern, a police force that can't police, a judiciary that can't deliver and a society with its priorities in all the wrong places.

So after writing all this, what do I want? I'm not even sure.

CONgressing on and on....

It seems the strange games that the CONgress government is playing with the country is creating news in other parts of the world as well, with several high profile US based newspapers writing about the inexplicable incompetency and silence of the government and its Prime Minister on many issues. However, there is a general consensus building up towards the strong possibility that the stage is being set for the CONgress to install Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Minister, and he is expected to hold the boat steady, and then everything is expected to be just fine.

The game between P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee seems to be over, with the two of them coming out together and Pranab da saying the letter that created so much flutter was not his view but just an inter-ministerial background paper. Well done Sonia Gandhi, you're handled your minions well.

In a show of unity, Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram, both  principals in a blockbuster political drama  , appeared together to make a brief statement today on the infamous "2G note." Mr Mukherjee said that the document, attributed to his ministry, was in fact "an inter-ministerial background paper" and that it contains "certain interferences and interpretations" that he said do not reflect his view.

Mr Chidambaram then stepped forward to say, "I am happy with the statement read by my senior and distinguished colleague Mr Pranab Mukherjee. I accept the statement. As far as all of us in the government are concerned, the matter is closed."

The double-bill appearance was followed by Sonia Gandhi driving to the Prime Minister's house. They met for 30 minutes, reportedly to take stock of the truce that was declared in public by their ministers. It's unlikely to provide the government the respite that's needed.

By the way, this said note became public information after an RTI application! So one can add this as another great example of the positives of such an act.

The CBI has shown itself to be in complete control of the CONgress and its cronies, with the way it completely refused to entertain any sort of inquiry into the allegations against P Chidambaram. Subramaniam Swamy though says that its not over yet, and considering how this man is single-handedly shaming so many of the top political names in New Delhi, surely there is more to come.

On a side note, the grand daddy of scams who manages to make billions and yet not have a single finger pointed at him officially makes a statement at how the government will remain stable despite all the scams and allegations flying around.

But so much for him. Maybe his time will come too, who knows. But a lot of things have been going on, and a lot of action is expected in the next few days. Like mentioned before, the matter of ordering CBI inquiry against P Chidambaram is with the Supreme Court, and if they say its a go, then the Home Minister will have to resign.

It seems that the heat from all corners has now moved as high up as P Chidambaram, with this really revealing article by Ram Jethmalani in The Sunday Guardian on Chidambaram and the evil in the government itself. The good news is that for the first time, a member of the fraud Gandhi family has been named, and that is a very good thing.

 Dr Subramanian Swamy has clearly stated in his website, "I now have further information from my usually reliable sources in the Union Government that the tapping of Finance Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee and his close associate in the Ministry, enabled Mr. Robert Vadra the son-in-law of Ms. Sonia Gandhi and Mr. Karthik son of Mr. P. Chidambaram, to use the data thereby collected to manipulate and rig the Mumbai stock market. Earlier these data were directly provided by the then Finance Minister Mr. Chidambaram. I demand that the SEBI be asked by PM to initiate 'Insider Trading' investigation and prosecution of Mr. Vadra and Mr. Karthik."

 The dark clouds of the 2G scam and the repeated evidence being given by A. Raja and other accused of his tacit involvement and other acts of omission and commission are menacingly closing in on Chidambaram. He is losing his cool, and more importantly, losing his carefully clipped English accent to its more indigenous roots more often. And like his colleague Digvijay Singh, his mind seems to be disintegrating to a stage where he has started talking gibberish. Take this, for example: in reply to the BJP demand for his resignation for his involvement in the 2G scam, Chidambaram claims that the BJP is targeting him since he initiated a probe by the NIA into Hindu terror.

While the airwaves are rife with all things related to the 2G scam (where is Nira Radia by the way?), the next "set" of scams are from under the ground. The mining scams are coming in from all over the place, starting from Karnataka which was the CONgress' big fightback against the BJP government there, and a chance for the CONgress to showcase that they aren't the only ones steeped in corruption.

Since then, scams have been unearthed in Goa and Orissa, with some newspapers reporting that the scam in Orissa could be as big as 3 lakh crores! Illegal mining is not new in the country, because for most businesses in the mining industry, apparently doing business while subverting the laws is extremely profitable and easy, and with the amount of money involved, its very easy to keep all the politicians, policemen and judges, etc humoured and keep their eyes closed.

In Goa, the current Chief Minister, Digambar Kamat, has been the mining minister for over a decade, so if there is any hint at how lucrative the ministry is that the top politician of the ruling party keeps the portfolio, this is a big hint. India Today says that the loot there is almost as big as the loot in Bellary.

Unfortunately, its an open secret in all aspects of human business that politicians have their paws in everything, and the politicians are the new businessmen in this country. They control the lawmakers, they control the resources, and they wield considerable power in the media.

India will pay dearly for the actions of the fraud Gandhi family and all the minions it controls, and its allies. Indian populace may not be too concerned when it comes to the economy, but the direct effect of what this evil government is doing to the country will begin biting each and all of us before we can say "Rahul Gandhi".