thoughts while traveling

I'm sitting on the coast of Gujarat, surrounded by two of the largest oil refineries in India. Working with fellow environment lovers is always a pleasure because I get to discuss so many things that I love to talk about, and rant about, and hear other people rant about and agree with them. Sitting with my colleagues, we discussed the great growth that Gujarat has witnessed, and of course, any talk about Gujarat today is incomplete without Narendra Modi.

Before I move onto other things, I think a lot of my conversations on politics with a lot of people involve some very similar undercurrents, or so I feel. Nobody is denying that under Modi, the state of Gujarat has emerged as a poster child of a successful (which itself is relative) third world capitalist state. Yes everybody mentioned Godhra and says that that will forever haunt his legacy and always stand in his way at the national stage. So I am beginning to realize that a lot of people perhaps feel guilty in acknowledging the fact that a leader that functions and behaves like Narendra Modi could be the very task master that this country needs at the helm. So if everybody can see Gujarat run so successfully under Modi, what is stopping other Chief Ministers to adapt some of Modi's concepts? I suppose adapting good governance practices is just not a national habit, so I will leave it at that. 

Coming back to talking environment, I once again, as much as I try not to, rant against the global trade imbalances and the economic bullying that the third world has had to face from the developed west, and now increasingly China. In the end, I realized, that no matter how much the world seems unfair and how much we seem to be at a disadvantage or no matter how much we have lost or not done well, it has always been in our hands. I personally feel it is more so in the past one decade. Till 2008, the world grew at an amazing pace. The banks were doing well, industries were doing well, and the belief was that the world was becoming more affluent. India of course was part of the growth story and everybody was gung ho about the great way the RBI ran the economy, how the UPeeA government was run by such learned and experienced economists and technocrats and how the government was determined to take the Indian growth story to the real Bharat. 

Unfortunately, now the consensus is forming that India grew because the world was growing, and we are beginning to finally open our eyes to the fact that our policies are way way behind and very outdated. The politicians in power at the center have used up the India growth story to completely squander the advantage in trying to establish Rahul Gandhi as the next Prime Minister. For a poor country, we are a very generous democracy. We tax a tiny minority to subsidize a vast majority, and we try to make up for our lack of balls in expanding direct taxes by increasing our indirect taxes. Why don't the media and economists and sensible people raise this issue? Why don't they show how unfair indirect taxes are? A poor man pays the same amount of tax as the richest person on the same commodity that he or she buys from the market. 

Have we hit the bottom of the barrel yet? I asked my friends. Both were of the consensus that we haven't. Its good in many ways, in my opinion. I told them that I am really keen that the ambitious, and supposedly over 300 million strong, middle class of India get out of that hubris that the money train is running full speed and that they too are very, very affected by the bad economic and social policies of an ever-conniving government. 

Perhaps slow growth is the new normal. Infrastructure bottlenecks, red tape, an unresponsive political system, caste and regional divisions, these have been around since we gained independence, and show no signs of abating. In fact, they have only grown worse because now they are mixed with expectations, ambitions, and unnecessary hubris. A foreign business leader or a western politician praises us and we smile from ear to ear with our chest sticking out like a robin. I am really hoping some of this hubris is crushed and we are really forced to re look at the way things are done in this country. 

Looking at the big picture, this world is becoming an increasingly difficult place to survive and succeed. In my opinion, the inability of most of the world to govern itself, manage its resources and tame its consumption is leading to a planet which will simply just stop responding. In a way we will bring ourselves to a state where there might simply be nothing left to exploit. I do like to think on something like, how long can say, the global steel industry consume thousands of tonnes of iron ore and produce thousands of tonne of steel into producing cars and bridges and cities and what not. If we are consuming our forests at a rate faster than we can regrow them, surely a time will come when it will catch up, right? Oil for example. Just how much is there? Just how much can we continue refining and consuming? 

I don't know, and I really don't want to think either. We live in very interesting times. It will be very interesting to see where the world is heading now. Modern civilization has demonstrated that we cannot see eye to eye on absolutely any issue, and as we realize that the world is increasingly becoming an unresponsive place, both literally and figuratively, both in body and spirit. For somebody like me, a weeping philosopher,  it's going to get even tougher being a modern citizen of the world, and of India, I can tell you that!

venting

There’s been too much going on in my professional line lately, hence, perhaps, my lack of desire to write anything. In addition, I am rather tired these days of ranting about the government and the economy because there is just too much bad news all around.

Amidst the doom and gloom, there’s a thought in my head that it’s a good thing that India is getting this wake up call, because it seemed to me that in the past one decade, things have been getting out of hand very very quickly. The rules and regulations of this country have simply been unable to keep up with the unbridled ambition of the common public who have tasted blood with money.

At the same time, one could argue, and certainly I see it this way as well sometimes, that the fact that the CONgress managed to bring this apparently roaring tiger, or racing elephant, or whatever phrase that the international media kept for India, to its knees within a span of 4-5 years speaks volumes of the hollowness of its claims that we are a structured and well managed economy. This was the bogey raised in 2008 when India managed to buck the initial onslaught of global economic uncertainty by falling back on things like a strongly managed monetary economy and strong domestic consumption.

Today, it is for all to see that our economy is functioning as a banana republic. The only way to do business in India now is to camp at the doorsteps of ministers for months as they loot the country behind closed doors. Sonia Gandhi as always will keep quiet and Manmohan Singh will sing of his clean character.

I am beginning to realize that is very easy to take Indian democratic voters for a ride. The urban educated usually do not vote, and the urban and rural poor who do vote, well, they remain urban and rural poor. It’s a big vicious circle I say.

Shitty people have been made in charge of this country and one of them, Sonia Gandhi, is now getting her minions ready for the polls in 2014. Most unfortunately, democratic populations around the world have very short memories and should the economies show any signs of improvement, the UPeeA Governmint, will use all the media resources it has to take all the credit and go to town about its successes. The BJP, well, will probably still be trying to figure out what its stance should be in the entire scheme of things. 

Coming back to the good that that this whole Indian economic mismanagement seems to be bringing out is that its making the rest of the world and our economic engines sit up and realize that hey, maybe we aren’t that resilient as we thought. Like I said, our policies are decades behind times. This country is calling for more structure, a better life, and more democratic responsibility. Yes, as much as I believe in personal freedom, I am calling for more government oversight now.

Indian society seems to be a gone case for me. It chases money, its two-faced and hypocritical, and refuses to stand up to injustice. Perhaps we are a feudal nation still, because we loved to be ruled by the unjust and inept. I am simply very very depressed at how this society is simply unable to unite over anything right. The society is messed up, the economy is messed up, and I really don’t know where we will be in the next few years. The media is playing its part well of not standing up for real issues and playing in the hands of political parties. I’m just a really really unhappy and angry Indian right now.

big rant

The new blogger dashboard is seriously bugging me now. I just can't save anything on Internet Explorer anymore. Most who read this will ask why I am using the Internet Explorer in the first place. That's a good question, and I want to spend no further time on it than to explain that my hands are technologically tied in a lot of ways.

Moving on, no matter how I look at the world, it always comes back to how quickly this country is descending into economic chaos. It feels like an absolute massacre out there, with the media howling at how bad the stock markets are, the prices are, inflation is, INR is at an all time low, the blue chip stocks are doing wonderfully bad, there is absolute lack of policy and direction, and thanks to the pork-barreled policies of the worst government this country have ever voted in, its fiscal deficit is inching upwards.

All in all, thank you Sonia Gandhi. Thank you Rahul Gandhi. Thank you Sharad Pawar, thank you all shameless creatures. Mr. Pawar, this must be particularly exciting time for you, considering your political astuteness has kept your name away from any of the scams that have surfaced in the past few years, and yet there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you, and your cronie Praful Patel, have already made your billions. A job well done.

As for the fraud Gandhi family, well, as R. Jagannathan said a few days ago in Firstpost.com, the preparation to put Raul Maino as the Prime Minister of the Republic of India had begun in 2009 already. May 21 was the third anniversary of the dark day in Indian shamocracy when the people fell for the charm and name of the Gandhi family and as the country reaped the benefits of the economic decisions taken during Vajpayee ji's government, and UPA I not being able to unleash its socialist and self-serving agenda thanks to the Left.

To understand this, we need to go back to 2009, when the Congress party was celebrating its huge victory. The party increased its Lok Sabha seat-count to 206 – the highest tally by a national party since 1991 – barely 65-70 seats short of an absolute majority on its own. That’s where voodoo politics began in right earnest.

The 2009 results confirmed two things to the Congress party: that heavy social spending is the way to install Rahul Gandhi in power in 2014; and that the country may soon be ready to give one party complete control of government. What started as a brief dalliance with aam aadmi politics in 2004 (which the Congress unexpectedly won) gathered more steam after 2009.

What remained unchanged after UPA-1 was the belief that the Sonia-Manmohan division of power – where the former influences all major political-economic decisions and the latter keeps a semblance of administration going without doing much – was good enough to ensure a Rahul Gandhi victory in 2014.

In short, far from seeing 2009 as a mandate to govern, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul saw 2009 as an incentive to start planning for 2014. Stated differently, the political efforts for winning 2014 began as early as 2009. This was how UPA-2 squandered its mandate.

This was also why Rahul Gandhi kept playing compulsive populist at regular intervals – turning up suddenly among Orissa’s tribals to claim he was their soldier in Delhi in August 2010, announcing a Muslim quota before the UP elections. Lessons from the Bihar elections, where the party was trounced by Nitish Kumar and the BJP  in 2010, were ignored as aberrations.

All this is a few days old. Since then, quite a few political happenings have occurred, and the media is making a very big deal of Narendra Modi attending the BJP national summit in Mumbai. This was after the Nitin Gadkari loyalist, and apparent Modi opposer, Sanjay Joshi was removed from his party posts. So it seems that the BJP is finally trying to work something out in preparation for 2014. As discussed already, the CONgress already has its dirty plan in place, the effects of which we already started seeing a while ago, so its high time the BJP national leaders actually got together and realized that this is a great opportunity they are squandering, because the CONgress has brought this nation down to its knees, and the BJP must realize the responsibility on their shoulders as the only other national party.

It is their limbo that has allowed the third front to come up again and JJ and Mamata are making so many noises. I used to think JJ is a good administrator, maybe she is, but I hate to see her turn into yet another Tamil politician who wins votes through open bribery of voters, using public money.

Coming back to the BJP, the national headlines are now revolving around the entry of Narendra Modi on the national stage. A friend of mine said that if Modi comes, no Muslim will vote for the BJP, and I told him that the Muslims already didn't vote for the BJP, but what they will appreciate is that whatever the tag Modi carries since Godhra, there is no doubt in anybody's mind that Gujarat under him has become India's most prosperous state and this country could really, really use an administrator of his caliber who can actually get things done.

Modi also has lined up support from BS Yeddyurappa, who again was sulking against the BJP national leadership till recently. Thats good. In a way its good that the BJP, and the NDA, have good state level leaders. Most of the BJP led states are perceived to be doing better than the CONgress led states in administration and economy, with Gujarat being the poster boy of economic progress.

There are rumblings that the BJP national leadership, led by Advani, Arun Jaitly, Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari is really out of touch with a lot of things, and really do not seem to be trying to put the NDA house in order. I agree with that statement. What's scary is that these four leaders do not seem to be generating any national followership at all. The thing about Modi is that it may alienate a lot of Indians, but at the same time, it will get a lot of Indians to vote for who their safety and economic well being is important and who see Modi as the only administrator who can get this country in this downward spiral to come back up again.

And where are all these people? Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Murali Manohar Joshi? Other than running into Yashwant Sinha a few weeks ago at the Palladium mall in Mumbai, I really haven't seen him anywhere. What about Arun Shourie? Surely Mr. Shourie's sensibilities find resonance with so many straight thinking forward looking urban Indians?

The economy well, it needs a major major push up after the way it has been handled the past few years. Politics and economics can't be separated, as some commentators said Sonia Gandhi believed, and I really hope she and her family face justice, and so do her coterie and other spineless Congress leaders who stand around without taking a stand.

So another weekend is here and as I figure out how to spend it nicely, I do hope things improve for me, my stocks, and my salary, for everyone else in this increasingly God forsaken country.

hajjjj

The ease with which I am slipping into a state of not writing is alarming me now. Only last week, I had written a great rant on Rahul Gandhi's visit to Maharashtra and as I was about to publish it, Blogger's new and amazing interface ensured that it didn't auto save it and I lost it all. Needless to say, I was thoroughly pissed off.

Even now, as I write this, Blogger tells me that it won’t be able to save what I am typing and that I should note down an error code and mention it to them to help them rectify the errors. So here I am writing this on a Word document offline, to be copied and pasted into my blog later.

Mmmph, so much for technology. Sometimes I wonder why can’t writing be as simple as taking a paper and a pencil and sitting down and spending a few minutes or hours just writing anymore. Why are there so many different types of blogs, kindles, technology interfaces and what not, and all to make writing and reading a better experience! Its all humbug. The best reading experience is taking a musty old book and sitting comfortably and just reading – with no television in front of you, of course.

Its been over a week since then, and my propensity to understand and read into national politics seems to be declining. As usual, there are many things going on, including Mamata Ban Her ji! And her soirees with the Government of the Banana Republic of India, and her great meetings with Hillary Clinton, who did well to massage the ego and sooth the insecurities of this crazy woman.

A big news today was the Supreme Court telling the government to do away with Hajj subsidies in ten years. The first opinion by R. Jagannathan from Firstpost.com is that it’s a good step, but a small trickling step.

Ending of Hajj subsidies is a case in point presented by all seculars, (no, not the frauds sitting in CONgress, NCP, RJD, BSP, or wherever) that if India is a truly secular country, then no religion should be provided preference over any other. Of course, thinking like a neta does, then the correct answer for this would be to start providing subsidies to other religions! Hindu’s to Kailash Mansarovar and Christians to Jerusalem.

Mr. Jagannathan only repeats the obvious. No government or politician wants to be seen as anti-minority. In India, minority means Muslims and Muslims only. So as always, the Supreme Court has to do to the dirty work and the Government can take umbrage in the fact that they are not doing it on their own accord but only because the Court has asked them to.

Mr. Jagannathan makes a very valid point, about quoting from religious scriptures to uphold law, which, by the way, is not based on the scriptures, but on the laws of modern India.

Another bad idea is the habit of quoting from scripture to uphold Indian law. A decision on the Haj subsidy should be based on the Indian constitution, not interpretations of the Koran or the Hadith.

So when a court quotes the Koran to justify its decision to end the subsidy, it is creating a bad precedent. The Koran is said to proclaim the following: “And Haj (pilgrimage to Makkah) to the House (Ka’bah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses (for one’s conveyance, provision and residence).”

One is glad to hear that the Koran is against the Indian government’s Haj subsidy, but what if the Koran had held otherwise? Would we then always have the subsidy?

The courts have to abandon the idea of quoting from holy books and religious tradition while upholding Indian law. Sometimes these laws may support what the constitution says; at other times they may not.

By quoting from scripture, the courts are laying minefields in the path of upholding the constitution – which is their only job.

In fact, it is the Koran which Jihadis use to justify killing non-Muslims, or even Muslims of other sects! But then religious bigotry is a curse of modern society. We use whatever we have to from whatever scripture to do or justify whatever we want. So let me leave it at that.

According to the Indian Express, the Court makes a point that instead of spending so much money on Hajj, use the money saved on uplifting the Muslim community. While this is a noble thought, I think the few hundreds of crores saved and earmarked for the community will only end up in the pockets of a lot of politicians and well-wishers of the Muslim community.

Its not just true for any one community but stands true for the entire nation that we, as a country, are more than capable of taking care of ourselves. The bogey that Indian investments in defense, for example, or subsidies, take away a lot of money from other places, has been shown to be not as debilitating as is made out to be. A higher percentage of the GDP is spent on funding the social sector, and a very high percentage of this money is stolen and siphoned off from the top to the bottom of the pipeline. This has been happening since the country gained independence and that is the reason that despite budgets of hundreds of thousands of crore, we are still the same backward mass as we were before, now only more hypocritical and materialistic.

While it is important that the Courts be completely religion-neutral, at the same time I feel that being afraid to state the obvious is also not right. Whenever a decision that has to be taken that is right, but many rabid members of a community with vested interests might not agree with, a lot of time and effort is spent in appeasing them with nice words, and extolling the virtue of the decision and the necessity of the decision.

Till now, the Haj was open to all Muslims once every five years. Before the SC ruling, the Government had said in April that they would change that to once in a lifetime. Also, the priority will be given to people over 70 years and those that have been rejected before.

In fact, CON man Salman Khurshid, I mean Congress minister Mr. Khurshid said at once that the Government was working in the same direction for many years now! Oh happy thought that the government and the Supreme Court think so much alike in the affairs of the nation! I think it has been pointed out by many people and at many occasions that India is the only country in the world that provides subsidies to its citizens for Haj travel!

According to various news reports, a lot of people have welcomed the Supreme Court directive. Tabloid of India quotes some gentlemen from Chennai who happen to be Muslim that it will remove suspicions of favoritism, and that the subsidies were given in a very opaque manner. So in a way it will kill one avenue of corruption (among the millions of others, but that’s another story). A minor blip in the Supreme Court order is that it has asked the Government to cut down its goodwill delegations it sends to Saudi every year. This alone reeks of favors and sifarish. In fact, the Supreme Court does call it the VIP quota, which is what it had become.

* Goodwill Haj delegation – The primary purpose of sending the goodwill delegation, according to the government is “to convey goodwill on the auspicious occasion of Haj to the government of Saudi Arabia as well as to the Indian pilgrims”.

The delegation interacts with the Haj pilgrims from India, understands their issues and takes up the same with the Saudi Arabian authorities.

India first sent a goodwill delegation in 1967 with three members. Till 1987, the number of its members remained under 10. Thereafter, the size of the delegation started steadily increasing and in 1997 it had 31 members.

In 2005, there were 36 members in the delegation, in 2010 there were 30 and in 2011 its strength marginally shrunk to 27.

The court noted that the government’s affidavit did not disclose any criteria or guidelines on the basis of which people were selected for being included in the goodwill delegation.

“On the basis of the material brought to our notice, we have no doubt that the way people are nominated as members of the goodwill delegation is in complete violation of Article 14 of the constitution.”

The problem is that religion and politics are so deeply entwined with each other that it is just impossible to for the former to not creep into state policies, and in a democracy like India, religion (s) of the minority becomes an even more important factor considering the belief that it votes en bloc. So routinely you will hear news of flare-ups between communities which quickly take on a political turn with local party ‘leaders’ taking over and directing the emotions of the masses. That’s a pitiable state for our society to be in. 

Rantings.

Yesterday, I read Shekhar Gupta's opinion piece in the Financial Express on the BJP, and how it is totally at a loss to take advantage of the sinking ship that the UPeeA government is. A lot of it is a rehash of the usual accusations and bottom lines that the BJP is always associated with - its hard line Hindutva stance that always alienates the Muslims and also the political parties that swear by their sickularism, such as the CONgress, and potential regional players, such as SP and RJD.

Shekhar Gupta touched on the phenomenon that is Narendra Modi. The one man army is an enigma for most, and he is hated and loved in equal measure across the country. I do not think there is any politically aware person in this country who does not have an opinion on Narendra Modi. Again, Mr. Gupta repeated what so many commentators or pundits or analysts before him said - Modi can't succeed on the national stage at all considering the baggage he carries. Whether he is innocent or is cleared of all accusations, that tag will remain stuck with him forever.

So while many people may be itching to bring him on board the national arena, and even if he gets the faithful, whatever that means, to vote, he will alienate the rest. Basically the BJP does not have anybody to fill the vacuum left behind by Bajpayee ji.

This whole situation in my view is tragic. I do agree that things are not right at BJP, and what hurts me the most is that they seem thoroughly incapable of taking advantage of this great incompetence that the CONgress is displaying at all levels. I really hope that this country takes note of the grand scam that the Sonia Gandhi coterie has pulled on the nation and taken us back many years. I understand it is a tough global economy out there, but the incompetence, complacence, hidden interests, vote bank agendas and absolutely criminal rape of public finances and funds is all our own achievements.

And yet when I hear my friends telling me that there are no other options, it pains me. A part of it is, I am quite sure, the great sway on the media that the Gandhi family and their posse seem to have. The one thing that they can do better than anybody else is media management, with Times of India, NDTV and other big names firmly in their sphere of influence.

All in all, I have written many times that it is very fashionable in the country today to be a pseudo-secular, and Hindu bashing is a national past time. A lot of idiots believe it is cool to speak ill of Narendra Modi and RSS and some aspects of the BJP, and that the CONgress is the modern party that will take India into the next generation, with Rahul Gandhi at the helm. Of course, the CONgress has worked very hard to take into the next generation - of poverty, socialism, crony capitalism and corruption.

Unfortunately, the big pessimist in me believes that it is beyond the BJP or the CONgress to actually stem the social and economic rot in our country. Now that the people have tasted blood when it comes to making money by hook or by crook, any efforts by the Governments to being some semblance of rules and regulations in our currently free for all economy will be met with huge resistance, and to meet that resistance, we need strong willed governments and leadership, which we simply do not seem to possess. So its beyond the political spectrum that I believe our society to be damaged.

A lot of people, including writers in the East and West, talk of India being in this chaotic stage because this is the only way to go about the economic and social change it is facing today. It takes time for the chaos we see around us to settle down because I would imagine this is a very uncertain time for a lot of us. The tribals are afraid the big corporates are going to take over their lands and resources, some communities are afraid other communities are going to take over, some communities are afraid of being sidelined so ask for reservations, some states are afraid to let in people from other states, and this entire spectrum of fear and apprehension is buttressed by a huge cloud of hypocrisy and double standards that, to me, permeates each and every aspect of our society. That is something nothing we can solve on our own.