2021 Strategic and Political Analysis-1

[sanjaykumar]

My post was not about Christians per se. the topic was religiosity in Panjab. Or a variant.

I am always bemused with the stock Hindu responses.


Arre baba, there was nothing there to attack Hindus. It is like the Jews. Ultimately your god has written me off, not being chosen. No problem dude, just keeping killing, poisoning and in general making a pest of yourself. But keep it to your chosen people.


Sure the other desert book has benign verses. But it’s the ones calling for killing of kaffirs that ultimately concern me.


Santji’s veneration certainly impinges upon my well-being.

The fundamental problem is Hindus who draw a false equivalence between Hindus and Sikhs. Sikhs cannot be fanatical because Hindus are not. Right. Look at the evidence.

The reason is because they are invested in Hinduism and it’s offshoots. I could not care less if a religion/cult arose from Judaism Baha’i or rub di tuni.

I hope it deal with realities before they deal with me.

[sanjaykumar]

In short be like the Jew-sorry you are not chosen. Or be like the Hindu- do your own thing and let us do ours.

The moral position of Hindus is by far the best.

[darshhan]

In short be like the Jew-sorry you are not chosen. Or be like the Hindu- do your own thing and let us do ours.

The moral position of Hindus is by far the best.

But for survival and growth Jewish position is a much better option. The second option only leads to extinction.

The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority

How Europe will eat Halal — Why you don’t have to smoke in the smoking section — Your food choices on the fall of the Saudi king –How to prevent a friend from working too hard –Omar Sharif ‘s conversion — How to make a market collapse
The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don’t work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers’ wisdom).
The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. The rule we discuss in this chapter is the minority rule.
The minority rule will show us how it all it takes is a small number of intolerant virtuous people with skin in the game, in the form of courage, for society to function properly.

This example of complexity hit me, ironically, as I was attending the New England Complex Systems institute summer barbecue. As the hosts were setting up the table and unpacking the drinks, a friend who was observant and only ate Kosher dropped by to say hello. I offered him a glass of that type of yellow sugared water with citric acid people sometimes call lemonade, almost certain that he would reject it owing to his dietary laws. He didn’t. He drank the liquid called lemonade, and another Kosher person commented: “liquids around here are Kosher”. We looked at the carton container. There was a fine print: a tiny symbol, a U inside a circle, indicating that it was Kosher. The symbol will be detected by those who need to know and look for the minuscule print. As to others, like myself, I had been speaking prose all these years without knowing, drinking Kosher liquids without knowing they were Kosher liquids.

Figure 1 The lemonade container with the circled U indicating it is (literally) Kosher.
Criminals With Peanut Allergies
A strange idea hit me. The Kosher population represents less than three tenth of a percent of the residents of the United States. Yet, it appears that almost all drinks are Kosher. Why? Simply because going full Kosher allows the producer, grocer, restaurant, to not have to distinguish between Kosher and nonkosher for liquids, with special markers, separate aisles, separate inventories, different stocking sub-facilities. And the simple rule that changes the total is as follows:
A Kosher (or halal) eater will never eat nonkosher (or nonhalal) food , but a nonkosher eater isn’t banned from eating kosher.
Or, rephrased in another domain:
A disabled person will not use the regular bathroom but a nondisabled person will use the bathroom for disabled people.
Granted, sometimes, in practice, we hesitate to use the bathroom with the disabled sign on it owing to some confusion –mistaking the rule for the one for parking cars, under the belief that the bathroom is reserved for exclusive use by the handicapped.
Someone with a peanut allergy will not eat products that touch peanuts but a person without such allergy can eat items without peanut traces in them.
Which explains why it is so hard to find peanuts on airplanes and why schools are peanut-free (which, in a way, increases the number of persons with peanut allergies as reduced exposure is one of the causes behind such allergies).
Let us apply the rule to domains where it can get entertaining:
An honest person will never commit criminal acts but a criminal will readily engage in legal acts.
Let us call such minority an intransigent group, and the majority a flexible one. And the rule is an asymmetry in choices.
I once pulled a prank on a friend. Years ago when Big Tobacco were hiding and repressing the evidence of harm from secondary smoking, New York had smoking and nonsmoking sections in restaurants (even airplanes had, absurdly, a smoking section). I once went to lunch with a friend visiting from Europe: the restaurant only had availability in the smoking sections. I convinced the friend that we needed to buy cigarettes as we had to smoke in the smoking section. He complied.
Two more things. First, the geography of the terrain, that is, the spatial structure, matters a bit; it makes a big difference whether the intransigents are in their own district or are mixed with the rest of the population. If the people following the minority rule lived in Ghettos, with their separate small economy, then the minority rule would not apply. But, when a population has an even spatial distribution, say the ratio of such a minority in a neighborhood is the same as that in the village, that in the village is the same as in the county, that in the county is the same as that in state, and that in the sate is the same as nationwide, then the (flexible) majority will have to submit to the minority rule. Second, the cost structure matters quite a bit. It happens in our first example that making lemonade compliant with Kosher laws doesn’t change the price by much, not enough to justify inventories. But if the manufacturing of Kosher lemonade cost substantially more, then the rule will be weakened in some nonlinear proportion to the difference in costs. If it cost ten times as much to make Kosher food, then the minority rule will not apply, except perhaps in some very rich neighborhoods.
Muslims have Kosher laws so to speak, but these are much narrower and apply only to meat. For Muslim and Jews have near-identical slaughter rules (all Kosher is halal for most Sunni Muslims, or was so in past centuries, but the reverse is not true). Note that these slaughter rules are skin-in-the-game driven, inherited from the ancient Eastern Mediterranean [discussed in Chapter] Greek and Semitic practice to only worship the gods if one has skin in the game, sacrifice meat to the divinity, and eat what’s left. The Gods do not like cheap signaling.
Now consider this manifestation of the dictatorship of the minority. In the United Kingdom, where the (practicing) Muslim population is only three to four percent, a very high number of the meat we find is halal. Close to seventy percent of lamb imports from New Zealand are halal. Close to ten percent of the chain Subway carry halal-only stores (meaning no pork), in spite of the high costs from the loss of business of nonpork stores. The same holds in South Africa where, with the same proportion of Muslims, a disproportionately higher number of chicken is Halal certified. But in the U.K. and other Christian countries, halal is not neutral enough to reach a high level, as people may rebel against forceful abidance to other’s religious norms. For instance, the 7th Century Christian Arab poet Al-Akhtal made a point to never eat halal meat, in his famous defiant poem boasting his Christianity: “I do not eat sacrificial flesh”. (Al-Akhtal was reflecting the standard Christian reaction from three or four centuries earlier — Christians were tortured in pagan times by being forced to eat sacrificial meat, which they found sacrilegious. Many Christian martyrs starved to death.)
One can expect the same rejection of religious norms to take place in the West as the Muslim populations in Europe grows.

Figure 2 Renormalization group: steps one through three (start from the top): Four boxes containing four boxes, with one of the boxes pink at step one, with successive applications of the minority rule.
So the minority rule may produce a larger share of halal food in the stores than warranted by the proportion of halal eaters in the population, but with a headwind somewhere because some people may have a taboo against Moslem food. But with some non-religious Kashrut rules, so to speak, the share can be expected converge to closer to a hundred percent (or some high number). In the U.S. and Europe, “organic” food companies are selling more and more products precisely because of the minority rule and because ordinary and unlabeled food may be seen by some to contain pesticides, herbicides, and transgenic genetically modified organisms, “GMOs” with, according to them, unknown risks. (What we call GMOs in this context means transgenic food, entailing the transfer of genes from a foreign organism or species). Or it could be for some existential reasons, cautious behavior, or Burkean conservatism –some may not want to venture too far too fast from what their grandparents ate. Labeling something “organic” is a way to say that it contains no transgenic GMOs.
In promoting genetically modified food via all manner of lobbying, purchasing of congressmen, and overt scientific propaganda (with smear campaigns against such persons as yours truly), the big agricultural companies foolishly believed that all they needed was to win the majority. No, you idiots. As I said, your snap “scientific” judgment is too naive in these type of decisions. Consider that transgenic-GMO eaters will eat nonGMOs, but not the reverse. So it may suffice to have a tiny, say no more than five percent of evenly spatially distributed population of non-genetically modified eaters for the entire population to have to eat non-GMO food. How? Say you have a corporate event, a wedding, or a lavish party to celebrate the fall of the Saudi Arabian regime, the bankruptcy of the rent-seeking investment bank Goldman Sachs, or the public reviling of Ray Kotcher, chairman of Ketchum the public relation firm that smears scientists and scientific whistleblowers on behalf of big corporations. Do you need to send a questionnaire asking people if they eat or don’t eat transgenic GMOs and reserve special meals accordingly? No. You just select everything non-GMO, provided the price difference is not consequential. And the price difference appears to be small enough to be negligible as (perishable) food costs in America are largely, about up to eighty or ninety percent, determined by distribution and storage, not the cost at the agricultural level. And as organic food (and designations such as “natural”) is in higher demand, from the minority rule, distribution costs decrease and the minority rule ends up accelerating in its effect.
Big Ag (the large agricultural firms) did not realize that this is the equivalent of entering a game in which one needed to not just win more points than the adversary, but win ninety-seven percent of the total points just to be safe. It is strange, once again, to see Big Ag who spent hundreds of millions of dollars on research cum smear campaigns, with hundreds of these scientists who think of themselves as more intelligent than the rest of the population, miss such an elementary point about asymmetric choices.
Another example: do not think that the spread of automatic shifting cars is necessarily due to the majority of drivers initially preferring automatic; it can just be because those who can drive manual shifts can always drive automatic, but the reciprocal is not true [1].
The method of analysis employed here is called renormalization group, a powerful apparatus in mathematical physics that allows us to see how things scale up (or down). Let us examine it next –without mathematics.
Renormalization Group
Figure 2 shows four boxes exhibiting what is called fractal self-similarity. Each box contains four smaller boxes. Each one of the four boxes will contain four boxes, and so all the way down, and all the way up until we reach a certain level. There are two colors: yellow for the majority choice, and pink for the minority one.
Assume the smaller unit contains four people, a family of four. One of them is in the intransigent minority and eats only nonGMO food (which includes organic). The color of the box is pink and the others yellow . We “renormalize once” as we move up: the stubborn daughter manages to impose her rule on the four and the unit is now all pink, i.e. will opt for nonGMO. Now, step three, you have the family going to a barbecue party attended by three other families. As they are known to only eat nonGMO, the guests will cook only organic. The local grocery store realizing the neighborhood is only nonGMO switches to nonGMO to simplify life, which impacts the local wholesaler, and the stories continues and “renormalizes”.
By some coincidence, the day before the Boston barbecue, I was flaneuring in New York, and I dropped by the office of a friend I wanted to prevent from working, that is, engage in an activity that when abused, causes the loss of mental clarity, in addition to bad posture and loss of definition in the facial features. The French physicist Serge Galam happened to be visiting and chose the friend’s office to kill time. Galam was first to apply these renormalization techniques to social matters and political science; his name was familiar as he is the author of the main book on the subject, which had then been sitting for months in an unopened Amazon box in my basement. He introduced me to his research and showed me a computer model of elections by which it suffices that some minority exceeds a certain level for its choices to prevail.
So the same illusion exists in political discussions, spread by the political “scientists”: you think that because some extreme right or left wing party has, say, the support of ten percent of the population that their candidate would get ten percent of the votes. No: these baseline voters should be classified as “inflexible” and will always vote for their faction. But some of the flexible voters can also vote for that extreme faction, just as nonKosher people can eat Kosher, and these people are the ones to watch out for as they may swell the numbers of votes for the extreme party. Galam’s models produced a bevy of counterintuitive effects in political science –and his predictions turned out to be way closer to real outcomes than the naive consensus.
The Veto
The fact we saw from the renormalization group the “veto” effect as a person in a group can steer choices. Rory Sutherland suggested that this explains why some fast-food chains, such as McDonald thrive, not because they offer a great product, but because they are not vetoed in a certain socio-economic group –and by a small proportions of people in that group at that. To put it in technical terms, it was a best worse-case divergence from expectations: a lower variance and lower mean.
When there are few choices, McDonald’s appears to be a safe bet. It is also a safe bet in shady places with few regulars where the food variance from expectation can be consequential –I am writing these lines in Milan’s cental train station and as offensive as it can be to a visitor from far away, McDonald’s is one of the few restaurants there. Shockingly, one sees Italians there seeking refuge from a risky meal.
Pizza is the same story: it is commonly accepted food and outside a fancy party nobody will be blamed for ordering it.
Rory wrote to me about the asymmetry beer-wine and the choices made for parties: “Once you have ten percent or more women at a party, you cannot serve only beer. But most men will drink wine. So you only need one set of glasses if you serve only wine — the universal donor, to use the language of blood groups.”
This strategy of the best lower bound might have been played by the Khazars looking to chose between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Legend has it that three high ranking delegations (bishops, rabbis and sheikhs) came to make the sales pitch. They asked the Christians: if you were forced to chose between Judaism and Islam, which one would you pick? Judaism, they replied. Then they asked the Muslim: which of the two, Christianity or Judaism. Judaism, the Muslim said. Judaim it was and the tribe converted.
Lingua Franca
If a meeting is taking place in Germany in the Teutonic-looking conference room of a corporation that is sufficiently international or European, and one of the persons in the room doesn’t speak German, the entire meeting will be run in… English, the brand of inelegant English used in corporations across the world. That way they can equally offend their Teuronic ancestors and the English language[2]. It all started with the asymmetric rule that those who are nonnative in English know (bad) English, but the reverse (English speakers knowing other languages) is less likely. French was supposed to be the language of diplomacy as civil servants coming from aristocratic background used it –while their more vulgar compatriots involved in commerce relied on English. In the rivalry between the two languages, English won as commerce grew to dominate modern life; the victory it has nothing to do with the prestige of France or the efforts of their civil servants in promoting their more or less beautiful Latinized and logically spelled language over the orthographically confusing one of trans-Channel meat-pie eaters.
We can thus get some intuition on how the emergence of lingua franca languages can come from minority rules–and that is a point that is not visible to linguists. Aramaic is a Semitic language which succeeded Canaanite (that is, Phoenician-Hebrew) in the Levant and resembles Arabic; it was the language Jesus Christ spoke. The reason it came to dominate the Levant and Egypt isn’t because of any particular imperial Semitic power or the fact that they have interesting noses. It was the Persians –who speak an Indo-European language –who spread Aramaic, the language of Assyria, Syria, and Babylon. Persians taught Egyptians a language that was not their own. Simply, when the Persians invaded Babylon they found an administration with scribes who could only use Aramaic and didn’t know Persian, so Aramaic became the state language. If your secretary can only take dictation in Aramaic, Aramaic is what you will use. This led to the oddity of Aramaic being used in Mongolia, as records were maintained in the Syriac alphabet (Syriac is the Eastern dialect of Aramaic). And centuries later, the story would repeat itself in reverse, with the Arabs using Greek in their early administration in the seventh and eighth’s centuries. For during the Hellenistic era, Greek replaced Aramaic as the lingua franca in the Levant, and the scribes of Damascus maintained their records in Greek. But it was not the Greeks who spread Greek around the Mediterranean –Alexander (himself not Greek but Macedonian and spoke a different dialect of Greek) did not lead to an immediate deep cultural Hellenization. It was the Romans who accelerated the spreading of Greek, as they used it in their administration across the Eastern empire.
A French Canadian friend from Montreal, Jean-Louis Rheault, commented as follows, bemoaning the loss of language of French Canadians outside narrowly provincial areas. He said: “In Canada, when we say bilingual, it is English speaking and when we say “French speaking” it becomes bilingual.”
Decentralize, Again
Another attribute of decentralization, and one that the “intellectuals” opposing an exit of Britain from the European Union (Brexit ) don’t get. If one needs, say a three pct. threshold in a political unit for the minority rule to take its effect, and on average the stubborn minority represents three pct. of the population, with variations around the average, then some states will be subject to the rule, but not others. If on the other hand we merged all states in one, then the minority rule will prevail all across. This is the reason the U.S.A. works so well as, I have been repeating to everyone who listens, we are a federation, not a republic. To use the language of Antifragile, decentralization is convex to variations.
Genes vs Languages
Looking at genetic data in the Eastern Mediterranean with my collaborator the geneticist Pierre Zalloua, we noticed that both invaders, Turks and Arabs left little genes and in the case of Turkey, the tribes from East and Central Asia brought an entirely new language. Turkey, shockingly, still has the populations of Asia Minor you read about in history books, but with new names. Further, Zalloua and his colleagues have shown that Canaanites from 3700 years ago represent more than nine tenth of the genes of current residents of the state of Lebanon, with only a tiny amount of new genes added, in spite of about every possible army having dropped by for sightseeing and some pillaging.[1] While Turks are Mediterraneans who speak an East Asian language, the French (North of Avignon) are largely of Northern European stock, yet they speak a Mediterranean language.
........

[Prem Kumar]

Population growth at 30 to 50 % in 10 years is not sustainable. Soon they will start finding way to every corner of the country and start breeding again. There cannot be a solution without a clash. Its better now rather than later, as their population will only increase.

+100. I've said this before: its an unpalatable/politically-incorrect POV:

If there is a clash with Islam now, 10s of millions will perish
If there is a clash with Islam in 50 years, 100s of millions will perish
If there is a clash with Islam in 100 years, Hinduism will perish

Take your pick

[Prem Kumar]

Best news of the day: Edu Min duffer Pokhriyal has resigned. Will be replaced by another useless moron, I'm sure: continuing in the hoary tradition of Smriti Irani, Javedekar, Pokhriyal

[darshhan]

Best news of the day: Edu Min duffer Pokhriyal has resigned. Will be replaced by another useless moron, I'm sure: continuing in the hoary tradition of Smriti Irani, Javedekar, Pokhriyal

This coming cabinet reshuffle is already being promoted as some kind of social justice exercise where x no. of sc/st/obc are being made as ministers. This is the state of the country.

[Cyrano]

Resigned so far:

Santosh Gangwar, Labour minister
Debasree Chaudhuri, Minister of State for Women and Child Development
D V Sadananda Gowda, Union Chemicals and Fertilizers Minister
Sanjay Dhotre, Minister of State for Education
Babul Supriyo, MoS Environment, Forest & Climate Change

Cant recollect notable achievements of any of the above, so if they don't get any new assignments that seem like necessary clean up.

I read somewhere that Modi maintains a performance report card for everyone of his ministers. Would be great if some (parts) of them are made public.

[chetak]

will punjab reserve 12 seats for Hindus or is this a minority only one way street

or is this merely another kaneda khalistani ploy....

just asking onlee

Shiromani Akali Dal urges J&K Delimitation Commission to reserve 5 seats for members of the Sikh Community in Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly: Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)

@ANI · 22h

[Ambar]

The good news is 5 duds including Dr Harshavardhan , Sadananda Gowda and Pokhriyal have resigned. The very good news is finally Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal and Narayan Rane will get inducted into the cabinet. The bad news is it looks like Javdekar and RS Prasad are set to continue and it does not bode well to see Sadananda Gowda replaced by someone even worse like Shoba Karandlaje who is sure to lose her seat next election.

[chetak]

The good news is 5 duds including Dr Harshavardhan , Sadananda Gowda and Pokhriyal have resigned. The very good news is finally Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal and Narayan Rane will get inducted into the cabinet. The bad news is it looks like Javdekar and RS Prasad are set to continue and it does not bode well to see Sadananda Gowda replaced by someone even worse like Shoba Karandlaje who is sure to lose her seat next election.

[Sumeet]

Guys good news both Prakash Javedkar and Ravi Shankar Prasad resign as well

Scindia is included. Sachin Pilot must be scratching his head

[Ambar]

That god for small mercies ! Hope we've seen the last of Javadekar and RS Prasad.

[Sumeet]

That god for small mercies ! Hope we've seen the last of Javadekar and RS Prasad.

True that Ambar ji. Lets see how many of these turn out to be Shourie or Yashwant Sinha types. Surjewala is already tweeting in support of Dr Harsh Vardhan.

[Ashokk]

Judge recuses self from hearing Nandigram poll plea, imposes Rs 5 lakh cost on Mamata Banerjee

KOLKATA: Calcutta high court judge Kausik Chanda on Wednesday recused himself from hearing West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee's petition challenging the election of Suvendu Adhikari from Nandigram.
The chief minister had objected to justice Chanda hearing her petition citing "likelihood of bias "due to the associations the judge had with the BJP during his days as a lawyer".
Observing that a deliberate and conscious attempt was made to influence his decision before the recusal application was placed before him, Justice Chanda imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on Mamata Banerjee and directed that the amount be deposited to the Bar Council of West Bengal within two weeks.
"Such calculative, psychological and offensive attempt to seek recusal need to be firmly repulsed and a cost of Rs 5 lakh is imposed upon petitioner," he said in the order.
Banerjee had already written to acting chief justice Rajesh Bindal seeking recusal of Justice Chanda.
Banerjee's election petition challenges the election of BJP candidate Suvendhu Adhikari, who defeated her in Nandigram in the recently-held West Bengal assembly polls.

[Sumeet]

Chetak, Ambar and others any news on what happened to Gadkari & Piyush Goyal ? They both are pretty competent.

Seems like Sitharaman will continue with Finance ministry and Rajnath with defence.

Also, what happened to Jay Panda ?

[darshhan]

The best news is that harsh vardhan is out. Instead of working out the oxygen logistics for covid crisis, this guy was actually getting hindus arrested on Diwali eve for bursting crackers.

[darshhan]

Chetak, Ambar and others any news on what happened to Gadkari & Piyush Goyal ? They both are pretty competent.
......

Can Namo govt do without them?

[darshhan]

Looks like RSP and PJ have also resigned. Wow. This is the Namo we need. I only hope they are not reinducted.

[chetak]

That god for small mercies ! Hope we've seen the last of Javadekar and RS Prasad.

jay panda doesn't seem to be around.

paknaik has put the hex on him.

patnaik knows how to extract a price for his support and in return he ensures that he is left alone in odisha.

[chetak]

Looks like RSP and PJ have also resigned. Wow. This is the Namo we need. I only hope they are not reinducted.

prasad was wearing two hats.

Maybe he gets to keep the one.

not too long to wait for all to be revealed.

[Ambar]

Gadkari and Piyush Goyal are among a handful of ministers who perform, so it is imperative they continue in the cabinet and hold on to their current portfolios. Besides, Gadkari has a burning ambition to be the future PM (the man must have hired atleast a 1000 people to start youtube channels/instagram profiles to cover infra development) , and he has the backing of RSS so he will remain. I am very keen to see who will replace Harshavardhan . It will also be interesting to see what Amit Shah's plans are for future, he was always portrayed as the natural successor to Modi but he is not known to be close to the current RSS top brass, besides Shah's rise within the party and as a politician is coupled with Modi's rise, so after Modi steps down he may not have enough support within BJP. It is entirely possible that Shah will go back GJ at some point and aim for the CM seat.

[chetak]

Chetak, Ambar and others any news on what happened to Gadkari & Piyush Goyal ? They both are pretty competent.
......

Can Namo govt do without them?

those not told to resign will remain untouched.

Those form the core of the Modi team.

Looks like puri may be elevated to higher rank to soothe the akalis

Looks like Modi is planning to do something big in panjab and he needs face

[Ambar]

Guys good news both Prakash Javedkar and Ravi Shankar Prasad resign as well

Scindia is included. Sachin Pilot must be scratching his head

It is not exactly a promotion for Scindia, he was in the council of ministers throughout UPA administration. The big prize for Scindia is when he will be chosen as the CM candidate for MP.

[kvraghav]

This term is last for Mamaji of MP. I think Scindia will be the CM candidate for the next election. I am disappointed with Shobha karandlaje being made minister. I expected Pratap Simha to be made a minister.

[chetak]

Pashupati Kumar Paras, Kiren Rijiju and Raj Kumar Singh take oath as ministers.

Pashupati Kumar Paras has to behave now or he is for the high jump.

IIRC, he is the guy who had politically halal cut paswan's son's throat and taken over the leadership of that small party

[darshhan]

While Namo should be rightly praised for showing the door to deadwood like HV, RSP and PJ, one major oversight has happened. RCP Singh of JDU who is the father of police officer responsible for murdering Hindu boy Anurag Poddar in Munger, Bihar has been made minister.

[chetak]

Guys good news both Prakash Javedkar and Ravi Shankar Prasad resign as well

Scindia is included. Sachin Pilot must be scratching his head

It is not exactly a promotion for Scindia, he was in the council of ministers throughout UPA administration. The big prize for Scindia is when he will be chosen as the CM candidate for MP.

this is not about promotion but a message that has been sent to the congi dissidents that possibilities exist in the BJP

[Sumeet]

It is not exactly a promotion for Scindia, he was in the council of ministers throughout UPA administration. The big prize for Scindia is when he will be chosen as the CM candidate for MP.

this is not about promotion but a message that has been sent to the congi dissidents that possibilities exist in the BJP

Exactly which is why I mentioned that Pilot must be scratching his head.

[chetak]

While Namo should be rightly praised for showing the door to deadwood like HV, RSP and PJ, one major oversight has happened. RCP Singh of JDU who is the father of police officer responsible for murdering Hindu boy Anurag Poddar in Munger, Bihar has been made minister.

this is the malice of nitishwa.

his time will come.

naidu is dead in the water and his die-nasty will sink with him.

Naidu sank his own boat by fatally mistaking Modi for ABA and, NDA-2 for NDA-1

nitishwa has ambitions that keep him fixated on the gaddi in dilli and this will be his undoing. His BJP mentor LKA, has been put out to pasture thus handicapping nitishwa enormously.

i am certain that he has already been contacted for the maha thug bandhan that is allegedly taking shape with multiple hydra heads that include onion merahants, hilsa premis and commie cutlets.

[chetak]

This term is last for Mamaji of MP. I think Scindia will be the CM candidate for the next election. I am disappointed with Shobha karandlaje being made minister. I expected Pratap Simha to be made a minister.

with sadanand gowda gone, some semblance of "tribal" balance has to be maintained in KAR to minimize challenges to yeddy.

so many mutts and their "swamis" need to be placated, pleased, pampered and paid

the political equations in KAR are among the muddiest in India

[Ambar]

Shobha Karandlaje is Yeddi's nominee, its a open secret in KAR how close she is to Yeddi in more ways than one. In any case she has zero political base and she will 100% lose from the safe constituency she's been given now in the next elections. As for RCP Singh, unfortunately politics is a game of brains and not hearts, there are political compulsions in coalition politics. Niteshwa had demanded a "fair share" for Bihar given how many NDA MLAs/MPs are elected from the state. It looks like Chirag Paswan has been left out to dry and is now all but certain he will join RJD until he is strong enough to float his own party. It sure is confusing given that his decision to go against JDU in every seat couldn't have been his own with Amit Shah and top BJP brass blessing the plan, and had he not done what he did then Niteshwa would have been far more powerful today with more seats than BJP.

Also, it was strange to see CDS Bipin Rawat in the ceremony. Future Raksha Mantri maybe ?

[Prem Kumar]

Its sad that most observers were able to see Harshvardhan, Javdekar & RS Prasad for the duffers they were, in mere months. While it took Modi several years to do the same.

Speaks volumes about the man's inability to build a talented team around him. This was evident in Gujarat too. Modi is a great project manager. But a poor team & institution builder. This is our tragedy.

[chetak]

Shobha Karandlaje is Yeddi's nominee, its a open secret in KAR how close she is to Yeddi in more ways than one. In any case she has zero political base and she will 100% lose from the safe constituency she's been given now in the next elections. As for RCP Singh, unfortunately politics is a game of brains and not hearts, there are political compulsions in coalition politics. Niteshwa had demanded a "fair share" for Bihar given how many NDA MLAs/MPs are elected from the state. It looks like Chirag Paswan has been left out to dry and is now all but certain he will join RJD until he is strong enough to float his own party. It sure is confusing given that his decision to go against JDU in every seat couldn't have been his own with Amit Shah and top BJP brass blessing the plan, and had he not done what he did then Niteshwa would have been far more powerful today with more seats than BJP.

Also, it was strange to see CDS Bipin Rawat in the ceremony. Future Raksha Mantri maybe ?

yeddi is 78.

There is very little chance of any hanky panky.

Yes, he may be pushing for a reliable supporter to retain power but so what, it's all part of the game.

How many slandered irani and Modi. Did anything stick or anyone in the real world believed what was being said.

Shoba is very aggressive and vocal. She has been pushed to take this stance by her detractors.

aggressive and vocal are qualities not appreciated by the majority of the MCP jokers in India and hence the heartburn, envy and jealousy.

whenever she stands next, yeddi will ensure her victory, as will the BJP from the center.

The BJP simply cannot afford to piss off yeddi.

[darshhan]

Its sad that most observers were able to see Harshvardhan, Javdekar & RS Prasad for the duffers they were, in mere months. While it took Modi several years to do the same.

Speaks volumes about the man's inability to build a talented team around him. This was evident in Gujarat too. Modi is a great project manager. But a poor team & institution builder. This is our tragedy.

He is limited by his insecurity only. Otherwise he would have been destined for highest level Greatness.

[darshhan]

.......
The BJP simply cannot afford to piss off yeddi.

Yeddi is probably the only guy who forced BJP to break its own rule of not appointing anyone above 75 years for CMship or Ministership. Speaks volume about his mass support. In Karnataka except the coastal parts, BJP exists because of him.

[Ambar]

Let it be Chetak sir, i work from the same constituency and we know the ground reality. There was a reason why Yeddi insisted on Shobha Karandlaje getting the ticket from Udupi Chickamagaluru constituency, its because he knew all too well that Shobha has no political base of her own and needs a safe constituency where she can win using Modi's name. She has done zilch for the constituency , not even during the peak of the pandemic. If BJP wants to retain the seat then Jayaprakash Hegde is its only hope. As for Yeddi's age, in Indian politics 70s is middle age, there are plenty who continue their hanky-panky all the way to their grave. Everyone knows about Yeddi and Karandlaje but its not their relationship which irks the voters but lack of performance. There are four BJP factions in KAR, there is little to no chance of Yeddi's faction retaining the control after his term, and there is a very good chance that he wont be allowed to complete his term.

[saumitra_j]

Its sad that most observers were able to see Harshvardhan, Javdekar & RS Prasad for the duffers they were, in mere months. While it took Modi several years to do the same.

Speaks volumes about the man's inability to build a talented team around him. This was evident in Gujarat too. Modi is a great project manager. But a poor team & institution builder. This is our tragedy.

He is limited by his insecurity only. Otherwise he would have been destined for highest level Greatness.

That is not correct. Prakash Javdekar despite all his fault is completely corruption free and has ensured the most important thing for NaMo: Environmental clearance. He may be a political nobody (especially because he is NOT corrupt and as a consequence has inability to raise funds for the party), he did the job for NaMo where needed. NaMo actually recognised him for his honesty despite his political unimportance, something very few political leaders will have the guts for. I do not know about RS Prasad but Harshvardhan is clearly out for his utter stupidity in calling the Corona crisis as over in February.All the good work he did in steering his ministry to deal with Corona was destroyed in that one statement.

[saumitra_j]

To be fair, we do not know to what extent PMO was hand holding MoHFW and to what extent the minister was doing things independently. That is something we will never know. IMHO, Nitin Gadkari wont make it to the top, ambition aside. I would rather think that Yogi/Himanta/Devendra Fadanvis have better chance with Smriti Irani being the dark horse. I won't be surprised if she is suddenly elevated, especially post 2024

[chetak]

Its sad that most observers were able to see Harshvardhan, Javdekar & RS Prasad for the duffers they were, in mere months. While it took Modi several years to do the same.

Speaks volumes about the man's inability to build a talented team around him. This was evident in Gujarat too. Modi is a great project manager. But a poor team & institution builder. This is our tragedy.

He is limited by his insecurity only. Otherwise he would have been destined for highest level Greatness.

oftentimes, nagpur indicates preferences and the govt is expected to accommodate the chosen.

ram madhav and javdekar are the prominient ones that come to mind.

Both are hitwicket and are back in the pavillon. One for his Icarus like solo performance and the other for somnolence.

If Modi is given a free hand he will be better off. But because of electoral compulsions, the umbilical cord cannot be cut so easily.

gadkari is one of the few chosen who has delivered as have fadnavis and goel. gadkari also seems to have some unwanted Icarus like qualities.

nagpur is ideology oriented and the govt is performance oriented. They haven't yet been able to figure out the right mix because deadwood is mixed with the performers.

Moreover, the govt has performance parameters but ideology cannot be so easily quantified in tangible terms

[Ambar]

List of 43 ministers and ministers of state after the reshuffle.


Narayan Rane

Sarbananda Sonowal

Dr Virendra Kumar

Jyotiraditya Scindia

Ramchandra Prasad Singh

Ashwini Vaishnaw

Pashu Pati Kumar Paras

Kiren Rijiju

Raj Kumar Singh

Hardeep Singh Puri

Mansukh Mandaviya

Bhupender Yadav

Parshottam Rupala

G Kishan Reddy

Anurag Singh Thakur

Pankaj Choudhary

Anupriya Singh Patel

Satya Pal Singh Baghel

Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Shobha Karandlaje

Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma

Darshana Vikram Jardosh

Meenakshi Lekhi

Annapurna Devi

A Narayanaswamy

Kaushal Kishore

Ajay Bhatt

B L Verma

Ajay Kumar

Chauhan Devusinh

Bhagwanth Khuba

Kapil Moreshwar Patil

Pratima Bhowmik

Subhas Sarkar

Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad

Rajkumar Ranjan Singh

Bharati Pravin Pawar

Bishweswar Tudu

Shantanu Thakur

Manjupara Mahendrabhai

John Barla

L Murugan

Nisith Pramanik