SSridhar wrote:Happened to see Dr Swamy in one of the channels last night when he was asked about the letter by Pranab da to the PM on Chidambaram's dubious role. He said that he was not relying on that letter and he had documents to prove everything contained in that letter. Such confidence and access to information.
Gun jumping public officials looting public money... something similar, but OT here:Minister’s PA, assistant and clerk arrested for taking bribe"While the meeting of the Telecom Commission was postponed from January 9 to January 15 in 2008, the DoT on January 10, 2008, issued 122 LoIs (Letter of Intents).
"DoT did not want the commission to go into it. The base price of 2001 (for the spectrum) which was extended in 2003 continued. DoT jumped the gun," the senior advocate said.
He said Chidamabaram could not have taken the decision himself on the spectrum issue without consulting his subordinate officials...
The home minister, recently the target of a finance ministry note that said he could have stopped A Raja’s sale of underpriced spectrum (“the 2G scam”) if he wanted, has told the PM that he will hold his fire till he returns from the US, according to the Hindustan Times.
The finance minister has told US CEOs that the government will rediscover its reformist agenda in the winter session of parliament, when several bills will be introduced and passed.
What’s interesting about these statements is that none of the people concerned holds real power in the UPA dispensation.
The PM's confidence in Chidambaram is not relevant when his fate will be decided by Sonia Gandhi.
The PM’s confidence in Chidambaram is not relevant when his fate will be decided by Sonia Gandhi.
Chidambaram holding his fire does not matter when it is the courts that will decide whether he colluded with Raja in the spectrum scam or not.
Pranab Mukherjee cannot guarantee the passing of any of his reformist bills. Only Sonia Gandhi can ensure that by pulling in her allies in the coalition.
The destruction of the UPA’s credibility over the last year has exposed the contradictions in the power structure adopted by Sonia Gandhi for the last seven years, and till these are resolved, the UPA cannot perform despite a huge mandate in 2009
Contradiction No 1: The division of power between PM and party president simply cannot endure. The relationship between Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi has been reduced to one between a bureaucrat and his minister, with Sonia being the minister who has to take the decisions and Manmohan giving her the options.
But Sonia has not been taking key political decisions, and so Manmohan Singh is busy shuffling his papers and waiting for a green signal. In our parliamentary democracy, there is no option but to invest the prime minister with the political authority to govern. Else he will fail – as Manmohan Singh has.
Contradiction No 2: An unbalanced coalition where one or two state powers call the shots. In the current coalition, three regional parties – the Trinamool Congress, the DMK and the NCP – are laws unto themselves. This is the central factor that allowed a Raja to continue with his scam with impunity. He knew his party boss would tell Sonia Gandhi to back off – and this is what tied the hands of the PM and Chidambaram.
The 2G scam and the failure against inflation is thus the failure of Sonia Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh or Chidambaram or Pranab Mukherjee.
Contradiction No 3: You can’t run a presidential system in a parliamentary democracy. The prime minister of India has to be elected by the people, not nominated by the party president. He has to lead the house, not the bureaucracy. His cabinet cannot be overshadowed by Sonia Gandhi’s super cabinet of the National Advisory Council.
Contradiction No 4: Politics cannot be divorced from economics. Thanks to its internal contradictions, decision-making in the UPA is divorced from reality. In a political economy political decisions cannot be hermetically sealed from economic consequences and vice versa. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul cannot dictate the political imperatives and a costly social agenda and expect Manmohan Singh to somehow manage the economics of it all and pick up the bills. The political decisions shoved down his throat are partially responsible for the current raging inflation and economic slowdown.
The Congress party's internal assessment is that it will not greatly increase its seats' tally in the 2012 UP assembly elections which Mayawati may advance to February confident of winning it. The Congress thinks it could go up by five seats to twenty-seven or five down. It is not winning UP and believes it will worsen its chances in the 2014 general elections.
Who benefits? Logically, the BJP, which fits with conventional thinking. After the exposure of the UPA's mega scams, the BJP had taken a lead. Anna Hazare's anti-corruption campaign, although not meant to, has further consolidated the BJP's winning position.
The big trouble that the Congress sees in UP is that scandals like 2G have produced outrage in the rural hinterland. The complicated nature of the scams has, however, made no difference to their easy understanding, mediated by the campaign of Anna Hazare. Congress insiders report of despair about UP.
It’s quite amazing that many Union ministers are more interested in who will perform the duties of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when he is out of India, rather than how is he doing at home. The Prime Minister is leaving for the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly session early this week. He will be away for almost a week. At the same time, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will also be in the US to attend the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Though there is no constitutional provision for an acting prime minister, it has always been Mukherjee, however, who calls emergency Cabinet meetings in Manmohan’s absence. Now with both away, various ministers are speculating on who will be authorised by Manmohan to stand in for him. According to convention, the Prime Minister nominates one of his Cabinet colleagues, in writing, to coordinate on his behalf with all other ministries, and preside over full Cabinet meetings to discuss and decide on matters of importance. So far, the finance minister was performing this role. Now the Prime Minister appears to be in a dilemma as he has to choose between Home Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A K Antony. Since the Prime Minister’s decision has political implications for both the party and the Cabinet, he has to consult Congress President Sonia Gandhi before taking a final call. In normal circumstances Chidambaram would have been a normal choice. Since he was nominated as one of the four members of the committee to deal with political affairs during Sonia’s absence, the Prime Minister may find the decision justified. But Manmohan isn’t sure whether he will be able to meet Sonia before his departure. He also has the option of not nominating anyone, and leaving it open until a situation that needs a stand-in arises.
Will the CAG be gagged?
The Congress party already stands accused of subverting various constitutional institutions like the judiciary, the Chief Vigilance Commission and even the Election Commission of India. Now an attempt is being made to undermine the authority of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Vinod Rai, a 1972 batch IAS officer from the Uttar Pradesh cadre, has rubbed the ruling establishment the wrong way with his highly critical reports on 2G, Reliance, and CWG. He has made the CAG the country’s most feared and respected audit agency. Stung by Rai’s reports, a section of the ruling party is encouraging some of the smaller parties to mobilise MPs for moving an impeachment motion against him. Rai, who was appointed in 2008 has three more years to go and can be removed only with the consent of both Houses of Parliament. A legally correct representation is being drafted to collect at least 80
signatures, which is to be submitted for discussion during the Winter Session of the Lok Sabha. What angered the Congress was the CAG’s greed for excessive publicity and the premature leakage of some of its reports. Only extraordinary precautions taken by the Government ensured that the last two reports on Reliance and Air India didn’t find their way to the media until the last day of Parliament. However, some others smell an attempt to intimidate the CAG so that his reports don’t make headlines in the near future.
Uncle Sam trains India spooks
It’s surprising that both Indian and Pakistani counter-intelligence agencies are being trained by the US to tackle terrorism. Last week, American spooks concluded a two-week-long counter-terrorism programme at the Indian Detective Training School in Chandigarh. They trained agents how to decipher and decode digital evidence. The training was partnered by the US Embassy and the Home Ministry and led by US State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security under its Anti-terrorism Assistance (ATA) programme. Over two dozen officials from the National Investigation Agency and other covert organisations from the Indian Central and state police participated. More importantly, senior diplomats from the US Embassy, New Delhi, were allowed to address the Indian security establishment. The US has been conducting similar training sessions in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Though the course was altered to fit Indian needs, the excessive access given to the US by the Indian counter-terrorism establishment has raised eyebrows, since the US has failed to contain terror emanating from Pakistan. Indian officials also suspect that it may use the information collected from India to its advantage in dealing with Pakistan.
Didi shows her might to Pranab
After snubbing the PMO by withdrawing from the Indian delegation to Bangladesh, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is now setting the tone for dealing with the next man in command at the Centre. According to the bureaucratic grapevine, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee wanted a particular junior officer from West Bengal to replace Manoj Pant, his private secretary in North Block who is due to retire soon. But when the name was sent to the chief minister for the final relieving orders, she decided to put it on hold. Suddenly, the concerned civil servant serving as a district collector in Birbhum had become indispensable to the state Government! The suspicious Banerjee was given the impression that the officer was being rewarded for services rendered to Abhijit Mukherjee, the finance minister’s son, who won the election from that district. If a section of the local Congress is to be believed, Didi’s decision is aimed to cut the stature of the finance minister to size in his own state, where he still commands more respect than she does. Didi’s message is clear: ‘When it comes to West Bengal, I am the reigning deity’.
This is where Man Mohan Singh's and INC's patriotism comes into question.vijayk wrote:Contradiction No 3: You can’t run a presidential system in a parliamentary democracy. The prime minister of India has to be elected by the people, not nominated by the party president. He has to lead the house, not the bureaucracy. His cabinet cannot be overshadowed by Sonia Gandhi’s super cabinet of the National Advisory Council.
Message from Modi
Bharat Karnad
Last Updated : 22 Sep 2011 11:37:49 PM IST
Finally, there is a political leader of stature, with significant achievements to his credit, daring to think big for the nation. Having proved himself a remarkably adept administrator and a hard driver and shaper-upper of the ordinarily lax, lethargic, and slothful apparatus of state government, Narendra Modi has outlined some elements that, if fleshed out, would constitute a coherent ideology to rival the Left-of-centre, middle-of-the-road, vacuities that currently pass for state ideology.
Early in the speech ending his three day ‘Sadbhavana’ fast in Ahmedabad on September 19, the Gujarat chief minister exhorted the people to ‘think big, dream big’; without a grand vision for the country there is, he declared, no resolve and, hence, there’s no ‘possibility’ of India ever becoming a great power. It was fresh thinking about 21st century India, whose minders, for far too long, have been small, diffident, men with limited ideas and blinkered sights, incapable of articulating a potentially great nation’s sense of its self. Modi did not provide details, but it was enough that, for a start, he pointed to the lack of a grand national vision as the main reason for the ills that have befallen the country in the last 60 years. He followed up with an even more startling insight. The best thing the government can do for the people, he said, is to get out, and stay out, of their lives. Were the people not required to deal with government agencies manned by bribe-seeking officials at every turn, their hard work and enterprise, he averred, would propel the country forward. Such a rousing indictment of the nanny state and intrusive government has not been heard for over 40 years now.
Narendra Modi’s economic ideas resonate with the views of the free market economist B R Shenoy, who in the 1950s vehemently contested the statist notions propagated by the statistician, ‘comrade’ C Mahalanobis — the master designer of the planned economy that has hobbled India ever since. From the same school of economic thought as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Shenoy opposed deficit financing and the quasi-soviet state erected at Jawaharlal Nehru’s bidding, which reflected the worst attributes of the laissez faire system, such as crony capitalism, and the totalitarian state. Except, as a practitioner of a facilitative government, Modi has the unique experience of overriding the systemic defects, ridding Gujarat of much of corruption the governmental apparatus was prone to, and — within the constraints of a federal structure — extracting performance from the decrepit colonial-socialist machinery of state to deliver development and industrialisation on a scale unmatched by any other provincial government.
Modi also targeted vote-bank politics. May be the show of Muslim ‘support’ at the event was a bit of political theatre, in the same league as Congress-wallahs staying overnight in Dalit hutments in the full glare of television cameras. But, there is little doubt that Muslims in the state recognise they are as much beneficiaries of good governance that Modi has delivered as anybody else, and that when he says he will not pander to them it means he will seek their votes as Gujaratis, not as Muslims. While the residents of Naroda-Patia seem unwilling to forgive and forget the incidents of 2002, their insistence on punishing Modi has the potential of again aggravating the communal divide that the spreading prosperity has begun to bridge.
Modi’s emergence on the national scene ensures that, for the first time, there will be a distinct, alternate, ideology for the voters to mull over while keeping in mind its successful run in Gujarat. He offers an antidote to the bankrupt, left-leaning, populism the Congress invariably falls back on when the going gets tough, to wit, the various social welfare schemes, such as MGNREGA, launched in recent times despite mountainous evidence showing that the billions of rupees allotted for such programmes are decanted by ‘middle men’, politicians and officials. Modi’s success in Gujarat emphasises the fact that a strong-minded leader determined on making the administrative system responsible for producing results, can radically transform the defunct, over-bureaucratised, system of government the country is saddled with.
No leader in his own BJP or in any other political party, has come close to mustering Modi’s inclusivist development record. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is the exception; he has worked a miracle, and because Bihar was much less developed when he took over that state than Gujarat was when Modi assumed office, Nitish Kumar’s accomplishments may be greater, except he has to update his Jayprakash Narayan-derived philosophy for the new millennium. This makes Narendra Modi a standout in a political landscape littered, on the one hand, with former chief ministers like Lalu Prasad, Mulayam Singh Yadav and, prospectively, Mayawati, who having run their states into the ground, aspire to be prime minister to wreak similar havoc on the country as a whole and, on the other hand, the legion of politicians within the Congress and in its coalition who, when not owing their exalted positions to family connections, are in public life mainly for the loot, as Dayanidhi Maran unabashedly explained to an US embassy official (WikiLeaks).
Modi’s rather novel views actually hark back to the Fifties and the Sixties, when, as founding members of the Swatantra Party, ‘Rajaji’ C Rajagopalachari lambasted Nehru’s socialism for handicapping the private sector by forcing it to run in a “three-legged or gunny bag race” refereed by ‘arrogant officials’, and Minoo Masani lampooned Nehru for creating a class of politicians who instead of living for politics, lived off politics. But it took Piloo Mody, in the Seventies, to really get up the Congress’ nose and square up its socialism as dangerous pretence if not an outright joke. Piloo slammed Indira Gandhi’s policies, including the nationalisation of banks and insurance companies, as an “equal sharing of miseries”, warned that her authoritarian bent tended towards fascism — a view substantiated by her imposition of Emergency, and he identified corruption as the biggest industry in the country.
Narendra Modi may be just what the doctor ordered to revitalise India’s ailing body politic and to unify a young and ambitious nation, yearning for freedom from nitpicking government, skills, innovation and incentives, that has been deliberately fractured along sub-caste, caste, religious, and regional lines to serve narrow interests. He could fill the need, Rajaji writing in his newsletter Swarajya in August 1957 voiced, for “a strong and articulate Right” stressing small government and good governance, and a big ideological void as well.
Bharat Karnad is a research professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
E-mail:
bh_karnad@yahoo.com
It was on January 10, 2008 at 2.45pm when a press release was issued from the office of A Raja (Sanchar Bhawan) by his assistant R K Chandolia. The release read that the spectrum bid will take place between 3:30 to 4:30 pm in the day. The atmosphere was complteley transformed from calm to tense as everybody only had 45 minutes to initiate the whole activity.
2G scam: RTI activist Vivek Garg feels lucky to get Pranab noteshyamd wrote:Re: SS Source.
If it was a govt official - Kangress would have got rid of him in all ways possible - find some sort of case or something or the other to get rid of him. Worst case scenario - they would have ordered a hit (via D company if needed).
If it was a minister - there would be high profile corruption case or they would have paid him off to silence him ..
So who/what does that leave? Someone with diplo immunity from a western country - using pvt sec detectives to get the evidence. Besides these countries will have all the intercepts etc to prove what happened and whats going on - use on the ground spies to get the evidence. Meet with an aide or SS directly - pass on the info.
Sonia goes to america under the guise of medical treatment - meets with whoever in the USG. Cuts a deal of some sort. Who knows?
Talking about his success Garg says, ''I feel that some officers felt that they should release these documents in the public domain but they could not release it directly. Luckily they got my RTI.''
Garg's Right to Information request, which prompted the PMO to release the controversial finance ministry note that says 2G spectrum could have been auctioned at better prices had then Finance Minister P Chidambaram insisted. Garg's efforts has once again fuelled the 2G debate, with the Opposition training its guns once again on Chidambaram.
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Garg had filed the RTI applications in June and started receiving replies from the PMO by August. The Department of Telecommunications however is yet to send him a reply. But the fact that Garg got a reply at all from the PMO has amazed and delighted RTI activists.
PMO released documents under RTI and defending Dossiermaster (is it decent, ramana garu?).How CBI can say its boss is culpable?The hat of an RTI activist, as he is being frequently described, is only one of the many that Garg wears. He is also a registered advocate, helps run a family-owned book publishing house, Manas Publications, and earlier this year, was asked by BJP to be the convener of its RTI cell. He accepted.
"They wanted me to train grassroots workers on how to file RTI applications," Garg says, pointing a close friend in the BJP had approached him to take the job. But it is publishing that helps run the Garg household.
"We have been into publishing books for three generations," says Garg, who has filed 4,000 RTI requests over the last decade.
The family switched to publishing books by retired police, defence and administrative officers that have occasionally landed him in trouble.
"Had there been a Jan Lokpal now, Chidambaram would have been in jail," Hazare, who earlier branded the Union home minister as a "mischievous person", said.
His chance of becoming PM has evaporated with RTI under which babus in PMO quietly released damaging docs . Pranab da and Chiddu aren't known to get along comfortably.RamaY wrote: PC got involved in this because he was in Fin Ministry and is from TN. One it is his chance to become PM by blackmailing die-nasty. He is getting LBWed because of his ambitions...
Ravana was ten headed King and same we see in the 2G scam. Each head is coming under scrutiny one by one after Laxman rekha is crossed. So Chiddu is only one of the ten heads to roll.Maran asked the PM to ‘kindly recall’ their meeting on February 1 when they had ‘discussed the issue of the GoM relating to the vacation of spectrum by the defence.’
He said: ‘You had kindly assured me that the terms of reference of the GoM would be drawn up exactly the way we wanted, which was to focus only on the issue of vacation of spectrum.’
A closer reading of the letter shows Maran’s objection to the inclusion of spectrum price in the mandate of the GoM. ‘I am, however, surprised to note that the GoM as constituted has much wider Terms of Reference,’ some of which, he argued, ‘impinge upon the work normally carried out by the ministry.’ Meaning the GoM should look at a diluted agenda and not consider the pricing issue.
Maran went a step further and urged the PM to ‘modify the Terms of Reference as suggested by us, which are enclosed.’ While the original terms of reference, a copy of which is available with DNA, had listed six issues, including pricing of spectrum, Maran sent across five points, all of them dealing with the defence ministry vacating additional spectrum. Once it was vacated, he would be the sole arbiter of the price at which the spectrum would be allocated.
What did the PM do? He just sent across a bland letter to Maran acknowledging receipt of his letter seeking critical dilution of the GoM’s mandate.
Subsequently, the GoM’s mandate was diluted and it looked only at the release of spectrum by the defence ministry. On December 7, 2006, the cabinet secretariat issued the revised terms of reference, deleting the issue of spectrum pricing.
Chiddu is special and probably the Meghnath of the Ravan empire.chaanakya wrote:Ravana was ten headed King and same we see in the 2G scam. Each head is coming under scrutiny one by one after Laxman rekha is crossed. So Chiddu is only one of the ten heads to roll.
SS has been professor at Harvard Business school. that place is known to attract the elite. Most of his "students" end up in very high positions in government and private sector jobs. Some of the students (Indian and foreign) can also be ideologically motivated to do something good for India. Although corruption cases are against government officials, one has to remember that Kshatriya and Brahmins class never generate wealth. No matter how willing a minister, neta, judge, babu, jernailist is sell his body, wife, life and soul to the highest bidder, the money per se comes from industry and businessmen. And it is possible that many of his students who are highly placed in industry played a major role in relaying the info and the opening salvo.shyamd wrote:Re: SS Source.
If it was a govt official - Kangress would have got rid of him in all ways possible - find some sort of case or something or the other to get rid of him. Worst case scenario - they would have ordered a hit (via D company if needed).
If it was a minister - there would be high profile corruption case or they would have paid him off to silence him ..
So who/what does that leave? Someone with diplo immunity from a western country - using pvt sec detectives to get the evidence. Besides these countries will have all the intercepts etc to prove what happened and whats going on - use on the ground spies to get the evidence. Meet with an aide or SS directly - pass on the info.
Sonia goes to america under the guise of medical treatment - meets with whoever in the USG. Cuts a deal of some sort. Who knows?
After going hammer and tongs at home minister P Chidambaram over 2G spectrum scam, the BJP has now trained guns on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over a letter written to him by former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran asking him to stay off the spectrum pricing issue.
The letter allegedly suggests that it was the Prime Minister himself who had allowed the telecom ministry to keep spectrum pricing out of the terms of reference of the Group of Ministers in 2006.
In January 2006, the PM had approved, in principle, a GoM to look into the release of additional spectrum from the defence ministry for private telecom players. The group’s terms of reference included the issue of pricing of scarce 2G spectrum.
The GoM was supposed to submit its recommendations in June 2006, after which the government was to decide a policy and price for selling the spectrum.
Prime Minister met Dayanidhi Maran on February 1 and then he allegedly allowed the Telecom Ministry to keep out of 2G pricing.
Referring to the letter, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said that the Prime Minister owes an explanation to the nation as it is not a matter of being a mute spectator, but of complicity.
BJP's allegations come three days ahead of PMO's explaination of its stand on record to the Supreme Court.
Looks like he lost the bet. Is that why Somnath stopped posting here his logically illogical theses?somnath wrote:Unfortunatey, not just Sibal, it will be darn difficult to get anyone to go to jail in this case...Unless the CBI finds out money trails between the beneficiary companies and Raja et al, which in turn would be well nigh impossible...Dhiman wrote: Not finance 101 class, he should be sent to jail for attempting to delude the public and to cover up a scam.
Its not easy to prove that a "loss of revenue" to govt because of a policy decision is due to criminal intent..As matter of routine, the govt takes dozens of decisions in the Finance Bill and in other places...Is the reduction in excise duty on "ultra light" cars over heavier cars an attempt to favour Tata Motors (NAno) over others or is it an attempt to promote fuel-efficient cars? Licenses given away for free is to favour certain telcos or to bring down telecom charges? It can get really tricky..
