Independence Day-State of the nation.

[Philip]

Greetings to all on this the 66th I-Day.It cannot be a day of celebration after the catastrophic events in Bombay,a day therefore filled with deep sadness instead of one where we can celebrate our Independence,so bitterly fought for for decades,nay a century, by our gallant freedom fighters including Mangal Pandey,the Rani of Jhansi and those patriots who joined in the "Great Indian Mutiny",which we call our First Freedom Struggle.
The second struggle led by Ghandiji,Bose,Nehru,Patel,Azad,and others too numerous to name,finally brought us victory over the colonialists and imperialists.It ended 500 years of European domination of Asia. But what of today? The "West Indian Co." led by Uncle Sam has returned to replace "John Co.",as we sell off the family silver.FDI comes in and FDI goes out with more than it brought in.The Rupee is in free-fall,the economy in tatters,prices skyrocketing,farmers "suiciding",
power shortages galore,industry collapsing-thanks to cheap Chinese imports savaging small-scale industry and indigenous products.Add insult to injury, the never ending litany of corruption and scams,amounting to billions upon billions of $$$,unprecedented in the nation's history,its stench even emanating from the doos of the so-called "first family".

But most serious is the security of the nation within and without,which we are all aware of in the numerous threads and posts.We have heard the insipid lack-lustre speeches of our beloved PM,the CM of J&K,and the speech of the "PM-in-waiting",Mr.Modi. The empire of Shah Alam was said to extend from "Dilli to Palam",that of our latter-day imperator Man Mohan Singh ,has difficulty in reaching from "Race Course Rd, to the Inner Ring"!

With the multitude of crises thus plaguing us,with the enemy at our gates,what should the ordinary Indian do to stem the rot,individually and collectively?

[Philip]

I am posting editorials from the major papers for a wider viewpoint.

http://www.thestatesman.net/news/10478-edits.html

The Statesman
15 Aug 2013

Lip-service only
Independence Day 2013, like Republic Day earlier, will be celebrated under the shadow of the killing of Indian soldiers on the Line of Control. Admittedly there are a host of other concerns, disappointments, scams, political fires and so on that will figure in any reflection of the present state of the nation: yet the belligerence of Pakistan, and an indication of how India will be responding to that will be expected from the Prime Minister’s address to the nation.
The killings of soldiers always generate much hype and more jingoism from the netas ~ but is their sympathy limited to mere lip-service? No, we do not endorse cries for revenge in blood, and momentarily shift focus away from problems pertaining to defence acquisitions, to put the political establishment to test on the sincerity of its commitment to the welfare of defence personnel ~ in particular the veterans whose well-being plays a decisive role in attracting young people to the uniform. Elections are not far away, and a check on the unfulfilled promises made in manifestos for the last poll will point to the government yet again backing from the one-rank one-pension assurance. It triggered such severe heartburn that a decidedly unbecoming campaign of “returning” medals was launched.
Cause to assess the government’s sincerity has been provided by the Retired Defence Officers Association recently returning to the Supreme Court to pressure the defence ministry into implementing its previous order on the “rank pay” issue. In a response elicited under the RTI, the ministry on 4 June admitted that over 13,000 veterans were yet to be given even part-payment of their due. While the devil could lie in the detail, the overall attitude of the ministry is what merits undiluted derision.
A scrutiny of the cases pending in the Armed Forces Tribunals and other judicial forums will reveal that a vast majority pertain to pension payments, and a common underpinning would be that traditionally and consistently have the babus used every rule they could find to deny or delay payments due to veterans ~ it is an attitude issue. Heart-rending stories are told by ex-servicemen and their families to secure the pittance provided to them for their efforts to keep the country secure.
Admittedly there are complications, several factors have to be taken into account when fixing an individual’s pension, but that brings small solace to the man who feels cheated. A comprehensive overhaul of the pension mechanism is the least AK Antony can do before he completes his current term in office. He might then be remembered for more than his failure to contain corruption, protect the nation’s frontiers, and deter elements in Pakistan from deeming our jawans easy pickings.

[Philip]

Hope must be kept alive
Hiranmay Karlekar ---The Daily Pioneer.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/ ... html[quote]
Thursday, 15 August 2013 | Hiranmay Karlekar

However, as things are shaping up, we may soon have a Government of the criminals, by the criminals and for the criminals

Those who remember August 15, 1947, and the surge of joy and hope that had swept the country then, cannot be blamed for feeling profoundly sad and without hope when they survey the state of India now. It is not just that the majority is poor and the human development indices abysmal. The chances of things improving appear slim. With the passing of single party rule at the Centre, effective inclusive governance by a heterogeneous coalition, which seemed to promise much during Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's prime ministership has become faded memory. At the helm at the Centre is a political alliance that is as corrupt as it is incompetent and clueless, and is perhaps the country's worst Union Government ever.

Weakness in dealing with enemies, the latest example of which is the pusillanimous response to the killing of five Indian soldiers on our side of the Line of Control by Pakistani troops on August 5, has become one of the two principal characteristics of India's foreign relations. Brave words are spoken to be eaten. Witness the fate of the strident declaration after 26/11 that there would be no talks with Pakistan without action against the perpetrators of the dastardly terrorist attack, and also of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement, after Pakistan's beheading of an Indian jawan in January 2013, that henceforth, it could not be business as usual with it. Yet dialogue was resumed.

The other principal characteristic is the betrayal of our friends. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh has handed over to us key functionaries of the ULFA and has destroyed the bases the secessionist insurgent/terrorist groups of north-eastern India had set up in Bangladesh with support from Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Yet, we failed to sign the Teesta accord because of opposition from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. This is shocking. If the Centre could clear the legislation permitting foreign direct investment in retail trade despite her opposition, there is no reason why it could not do so regarding Teesta waters. Similarly, India has yet to implement the enclaves' agreement with Bangladesh despite having signed it. Here the BJP needs to support the Constitution amendment Bill which is required to sanction the implementation of the agreement which involves mutual land transfers by both India and Bangladesh.

India's letting down of Ms Hasina on two critical issues as well as its shameful bullying of Bhutan, another steadfast friend, is sending out the signal that it is unwise to help this country. This warrants serious concern, as does the fact that no one in the corridors of power seems to be bothered about it.

Things are crumbling not at the Centre alone. In Uttar Pradesh, the State Government's suspension of an upright young IAS officer, Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal, for taking on the sand mafia highlights the criminalisation of politics and governance in the State, as does the attempt to communalise the issue by falsely accusing her of stoking communal tension by demolishing a wall of a reportedly illegal mosque. In Rajasthan, an IPS officer gets transferred for acting against the history-sheeter father of a ruling party MLA. In Haryana, an honest IAS officer suffers for acting against the interests of Mr Robert Vadra.

In Uttarakhand, the cataclysmic Himalayan Tsunami exposed years of illegal constructions and rape of the environment by politicians, bureaucrats and criminal builders and developers acting in tandem. One can go on citing instances. Worse, not just politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen and manufacturers but increasingly large sections of the people, are also getting de-sensitised to criminality, if not criminalised. It is time people who care asked what has gone wrong and what needs to be done, and then get together and act. It is an enormous task but needs to be undertaken. Otherwise, India will soon have a Government of the criminals, by the criminals and for the criminals. Those who consider such writing alarmist will need to recall that many in the late 1920s and early 1930s had similarly dismissed all talk of Hitler coming to power in a Germany lumpenised and rendered bereft of hope.

[/quote]

[Philip]

Deccan herald.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/350 ... umour.html

The evidence of humour
MJ Akbar, Aug 12, 2013 :

The evidence of humour
MJ Akbar, Aug 12, 2013 :

The fulcrum of a tipping point in public life is that mortal enemy of a politician: humour.

A joke might not destroy reputation quite as effectively as a corruption scandal, but it deflates credibility. Through his long career Defence Minister A K Antony has been wise enough never to get tempted by a wisecrack; wit is not his forte. He might therefore be a little bewildered by the artillery fire of jokes after his disastrous mismanagement of the border incident in which five Indian soldiers lost their lives. Such humour has a memory. The voter will remember 'Pakistan has two deadly weapons: AK-47 and AK Antony'.

If it is any consolation to Antony, jokes about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi are far more harsh. As we leapfrog our way towards another general election, the Congress might discover that its biggest problem is ridicule.
It does not matter now when the next general election is held. We are in the last chapter of a drama that has gone on too long. The life of this government is over; dreaming of resurrection on a deathbed is a waste of time. For most of this term, policy was lost in a swamp. Now, decisions are made to serve as slogans.

If the Congress had truly believed in Telangana, it would have completed the process three years ago, used this time to absorb reaction and respond by showcasing the practical merits of its decision. An announcement now is mercenary: to milk the environment for what votes it can bring, and postpone ensuing problems. The timing is determined not by advantage to the people but by thoughts of benefit to the party.
But politics is not a parlour game, even when the parlour is as charming as one in a spacious Delhi bungalow. All that Telangana has managed to achieve so far is to split the Congress, spur rage on the Andhra street, and provide more fodder to separatist banners. The dispute over Telangana has generated a dispute over Hyderabad. The second can become as chronic as the first. What was intended as a win-win situation could become a lose-lose scenario.

Likewise, nothing stopped the UPA from passing food security legislation in the first six months of its second term, rather than the last six months, except fear that implementation would expose inadequacies of the project. Congress spin-masters still believe that this will help revive a formula that was brilliantly effective in a year when most of the present electorate was not born: 1971. Indira Gandhi won a tremendous victory that year with a simple proposition: Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, main kehti hoon garibi hatao [They (meaning those opposed to her) say remove Indira, I say remove poverty].

Odour of corruption

A promise is only as good as the worth of its trust. In 1971, Indira Gandhi was not enveloped by the odour of corruption, including within her own family. The poor believed that she would usher in an Indian version of socialism that would end their misery. No one laughed at Indira Gandhi, or indeed her defence minister, except at his own peril. There are other reasons for scepticism. The Congress has been in power for three of the four decades since 1971, in sustained spells rather than the sporadic bursts of V.P. Singh, Chandrashekhar, Deve Gowda or Inder Gujral. Indira Gandhi's promise is still a dream.

Every election is another gate towards the future, not a backdoor to the past. We must solve inherited problems, of course, the most important of which is surely poverty. But this needs an economic programme that takes change forward in quantum leaps, not throwaway sops. In 2009, the UPA won handsome endorsement because voters believed that if it got five more years, it would create a new India. Five years have passed. We are staring instead at a very old India, one we imagined we had shed in the folds of the past, weighed down with cynicism, its middle class ill with angst rather than alive with the vibrant optimism that was the story of the first decade of this century.

The dark side of today's political satire is the evil of corruption. There is a school within the ruling establishment selling the theory that corruption as an election issue has been deflected. This is delusion.

The voter is not going to be finessed by the argument that all politicians are corrupt, and so theft of the present lot should be condoned. A jury can punish only the person in the dock, and the present government is on trial in the next electoral court.
Jokes are the evidence and the argument in this trial; the voter is both lawyer and judge in the court of the people. But there is some good news for those on trial. The maximum sentence is just five years in wilderness. The next five years will pass as quickly as the last five.

[Philip]

Tribune Chandigarh:

Being Indian
Nation celebrates Independence Day
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130815/edit.htm#1

Being Indian
Nation celebrates Independence Day

Indians today celebrate Independence Day in a nation that has a major presence in the world. We have come a long way since 1947, when we gained independence after a long and peaceful struggle against what was one of the mightiest colonial empires of the time. Indeed, as we look back at the more than six-and-a-half decades, we see many dimensions of progress-famines are history; we manufacture much of what we need and are no longer threatened by competition from across the seas. We have opened up our economy, reaping many benefits. New kinds of industries, like IT services, provide young Indians with employment avenues and add to the overall prosperity of the nation.

We are the world's largest democracy. Yet lack of transparency, crony capitalism and petty politics show how we have not been able to bring in quality into our democratic functioning. Parliament grinds to a halt often because of disruptions by members. It has barely functioned in the recent months. The checks and balances needed for the healthy functioning of various institutions need calibration, and there is widespread anger against the pandemic of corruption. Lately, the economy has been slushy and rising prices, even those of staple items of consumption, have made life difficult for the common man. The government must take steps to ensure the fiscal health of the country and put the economy firmly on the growth track.

The past year has seen its ups and downs. The rape of a young student in Delhi exposed how vulnerable women continue to be; the Uttarakhand tragedy has laid bare the cost of development when pursued with disregard to ecology; the mid-day meal tragedies in Bihar and other places were a painful reminder of the cost of apathy in implementation of government schemes. People’s aspirations have risen in independent India. They want more, especially from the education and health sectors. They also want jobs. As we celebrate the 67th Independence Day, we must remember the freedom fighters who sacrificed themselves and their present for our tomorrows. We owe it to them to become better citizens and fight dishonesty wherever we see it, within and outside. Indeed for India to become more powerful, its sons and daughters need to work with dedication and honesty and to keep the Tricolour flying high.

Top


Haryana land deals
Hold an independent inquiry

The Robert Vadra land deal controversy was raked up in Parliament on Tuesday, resulting in heated exchanges and disruption of proceedings. The BJP members raised the issue, while the Congress stand as expressed by Sandeep Dikshit was that individual matters should not be discussed in Parliament, especially when the Haryana government had already responded. Whether the issue could be raised in the two Houses was for the presiding officers to decide. But, as expected, there was hardly any meaningful discussion, and Parliament, once again, ended up wasting much of its precious time. Recurring disruptions have frequently tested the patience of Rajya Sabha Chairperson Hamid Ansari, who lost his cool on Tuesday and dubbed MPs “anarchists”.

While one can understand, and even question, the BJP's political compulsions to raise the land deal — entered into by the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi — in Parliament, the Congress can no longer afford to be wishy-washy. It has to come clean and put the controversy at rest. Telling the BJP protesters to go to Haryana or to court does not help. The Haryana government, on its part, could have buried the issue had it held a credible inquiry. Now conflicting versions of the land transfers given by IAS officers serving the same government have confounded the public and given a handle to opposition parties to exploit it politically.

The Congress MP from Gurgaon, Rao Inderjit Singh, has further muddied the waters by alleging that 21,000 acres of agricultural land has been used for commercial and industrial purposes through permissions for change in land use (CLU) obtained from ruling politicians and bureaucrats. The grant of CLUs and illegal registrations of land transfers, if any, must be looked into. Certain Congress leaders of Haryana have accused their own party's MP from Gurgaon of developing an unauthorised colony and obtaining a CLU permission for a private company. The murky affairs require a thorough and independent inquiry so that all those handing out state patronage or causing loss of revenue to the government are brought to book regardless of their position, party affiliation or relations with the powers-that-be.

[Philip]

Visionaries!

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130815/j ... gzsoFNAbB0

A CHRONICLE FORETOLD
- The first three Bharat Ratnas saw the future with clarity
Gopalkrishna Gandhi

(From top) : C.V. Raman, S. Radhakrishnan, C. Rajagopalachari

Three Indians were decorated with the Bharat Ratna in the very first year — 1954 — that the civilian awards were instituted: the elder statesman, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, the vice- president, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and the Nobel laureate, C.V. Raman. No one said at the time that all three were south Indian, all three Brahmins. Their pre-eminence was manifest. They accepted the decoration with respect and went about their work according to their lights.

All three had a Calcutta connection. CR had served as the first governor of West Bengal, the other two had taught, with distinction and dedication, at the University of Calcutta. Om krato smara kritam smara, the Isha Upanishad tells us. The work alone is to be remembered, the work alone.

It is instructive to see, on the anniversary of our Independence, what these men had to say in the midst of and, indeed, from the very heart of their work, about their country, their people.

CR was a prisoner of the raj in 1921. Holed up in Vellore Jail, he could have been bitter about his jailors, about the imperial power. He could have looked forward to swaraj as one might to a dreamlike goal. But no, he did something that surprised his contemporaries then and surprises us now. He wrote in his jail diary: “We all ought to know that Swaraj will not at once or, I think, even for a long time to come, be better government or greater happiness for the people. Elections and their corruptions, injustice, and the power and tyranny of wealth, and inefficiency of administration, will make a hell of life as soon as freedom is given to us. Men will look regretfully back to the old regime of comparative justice, and efficient, peaceful, more or less honest administration. The only thing gained will be that as a race we will be saved from dishonour and subordination.”

This was a full quarter century before swaraj was attained.

Radhakrishnan was a member of the constituent assembly on the midnight of August 14/15, 1947 when, with Jawaharlal Nehru, he made a speech of surpassing value. Reminding the nation of “our national faults of character, our domestic despotism, obscurantism, narrow-mindedness, superstitious bigotry”, he said almost exactly what CR had said 25 years earlier. Radhakrishnan’s words: “Our opportunities are great but let me warn you that when power strips ability, we will fall on evil days… From tomorrow morning — from midnight today — we can no longer throw the blame on the British. We have to assume the responsibility ourselves for what we do. A free India will be judged by the way in which it will serve the interests of the common man in the matter of food, clothing, shelter and the social services. Unless we destroy corruption in high places, root out every trace of nepotism, love of power, profiteering and black-marketing which have spoiled the good name of this great country in recent times, we will not be able to raise the standards of efficiency in administration…”

That was said at the very moment free India was born.

I do not have access to any comment made by C.V. Raman on the eve of Independence but the following observation of CVR’s to young Indians is an agnatic cousin of CR’s and SR’s: “Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you and there is nothing worth in this world that can come without the sweat of our brow. I can assert without fear of contradiction that the quality of the Indian mind is equal to the quality of any Teutonic, Nordic or Anglo-Saxon mind. What we lack is perhaps courage, what we lack is perhaps driving force which takes one anywhere. We have, I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit…”

Today, those three Bharat Ratnas would have been saddened to see their apprehensions and prognoses coming true. Generalizations are wrong but who can deny that efficiency of administration is not India’s best introduction ? Who can deny that our elections have brought us a great stature in the world but have also brought corruption? And where is the doubt that the power and tyranny of wealth — CR’s startling phrase — rules the land?

Power, political and monetary power, outstrips ability by a long measure. And corruption in high places — Radhakrishnan’s astonishingly prescient expression — has disfigured the image of our public life.

As for the sweat of the brow, Raman’s ideal, that has long since ceased to be valued, especially in oneself. The concept of hard work, of service, of what used to be called pride in one’s work, is now an archaism. Except in our gifted artisans who survive miraculously, in our armed forces, in the body of farm labourers across the country and in a few remarkable professions like those of nurses and teachers, ‘work ethic’ is a national casualty.

We seek to derive the maximum advantage from the minimum effort. There is a mentality, widespread if not omnipresent, which sees the plodder as a fool, the successful shirker as clever. It only follows that the man or woman who is honest with money is regarded as naïve, to be pitied and the crook who gets caught making illegal money as unlucky. It is the honest politician, by which I mean one who does not encash files, sell favours, turn opportunities of service into ATMs, and there still are many of those, who keeps us in hope. It is, likewise, the exceptional official, doing the work of a hundred, who keeps the administrative machine from collapsing. Thank god there are some such exceptional men and women, still, amidst us. But by and large, the surface density of work-shirking, responsibility-dodging, blame-shifting, back-biting, tale-carrying and, alas, palm-itchy laggards has swelled beyond belief. What we are, the State is.

Radhakrishnan also spoke of intolerance.

This trait takes many forms but nowhere more seriously than in politics. Ironically and paradoxically, the denominationally intolerant are being projected as administratively able. Those with a questionable secular integrity are said to be men of unquestionable financial integrity.

The first three Bharat Ratnas foresaw more than ordinary mortals can. But even they could not foresee the self-contradictory piquancy of our predicament today. The liberal Indian, the Indian with a secular conscience, an innately democratic instinct, a value for civil rights, is shown up as effete , a political pansy, whereas the macho rattler of sabres, is offered to the nation as its saviour. A country with its work ethic weakened, its abilities outstripped by narrow self-interests, and its domination by the power and tyranny of wealth well-nigh complete, is easily persuaded to say ‘give us a benign dictator’. Fascism comforts the sloth of mind, the slow of thought, the valuationally sluggish. Fascism excites the timid, the languid and the bored.

And so we are seeing rise in the very heart of a democratic but languorous India a poison plume of the most corrosive intolerance. In the coming months the nation will be obsessed with who will ‘make it’ to the Lal Qila next August 15. That is only natural. But we should be agonizing about what kind of flag will be unfurled on its ramparts — the great national tricolour or one with a skull and crossed bones sewn behind it.

PS:Sadly,Mr.Gopal Gandhi suffers from acute myopia.The "Pirate flag",the skull and crossbones is already fluttering in the breeze,unfurled this morning at Congress Bhavan by the pirate chief!

[ramana]

Happy Independence Day!!!

[Vayutuvan]

Happy Independence day.

[Philip]

Happy Post-Independence Day indeed.The stock market has collapsed,tanked by 800 points,the whoopie, aka the rupee has breached the 62-to-the$ mark,and the Humpty Dumptys of the UPA are instead of minding the store ,fulminating against Mr..Modi for his speech which detailed the woes of the nation under the UPA!

Don't ask about prices and inflation,the state of the economy is critical,investors are fleeing,and unless this miserable,despicable regime is put out of its misery asap,and elections are held immediately,we may see our mortal enemies China and Pak strike within months.Meanwhile the mendicant of peace,still nurtures a "peace in our time" with Pak!