Bharat Rakshak

enqyoob wrote:Pulikesi:

If I read your line of argument right, it is that India has failed in developing "thought leadership" comparable to what existed thousands of years ago. The evidence is that Harvard, Stanford etc have done so as examples, but there is no comparable entity in India.

enqyoob wrote: Also, that the "scientific coolie" generation has achieved nothing that is notable.

OK, here is my counter to that:

1. Inside one generation (around 40 years) from 1947, India changed from a begging bowl to a food exporter, even as population more than doubled.

enqyoob wrote: 2. Inside one generation, a bullock cart economy generated nuclear and space technology that put India among the top 10 nations in those fields, definitely.

enqyoob wrote: 3. These were done without the help of major national cataclysms. THAT was thought leadership.

"Leadership" implies willingness to recognize NEW directions and ways of doing things and thinking about them. NOT the ability to imitate and parrot Harvard or Stanford or anyone else. So I would seriously question your definition of the problem, and whether you are not exemplifying what you describe as "scientific cooliness".

In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.
Charles de Gaulle

ramana wrote:Would creating a portal for Indian ex-servicemen and their families and interested people be a useful work?

We have so many web savvy experts here on BRF who can be involved in this task.

Why has the USA never managed to achieve any prosperity?

you may prefer to live in the past 230 years!

For Whom The Bull Bellows

If it took an Indira to rule it, India is no democracy

We dont even have a football stadium

enqyoob wrote: Hello? What is the remaining takleef pls?

ss_roy wrote: India has competent people, but unless the current setup collapses no one will listen to them.

RayC wrote:If China could do it, I wonder why we cannot!

nukavarapu wrote: - Most of the indian girls dont wear jeans

Sridhar wrote:
India has not had a more clear-headed leader before and after her. How I wish we had somebody with that clarity of thought and purpose in these times of great challenge and great opportunity.

Pranav wrote: Sushma was apparently conspiring with the Bellary Reddy brothers to bring down the BJP gov't in Karnataka - Karnataka government crisis is a proxy for BJP-RSS war ... So it seems that the Advani coterie is thick with the mining mafia. Janardhan Reddy had apparently teamed up with Jagan Reddy (YSR's son) to blow up the Sunkulamma temple. YSR was also financially linked with the Reddy Bros. The links of the YSR group to evangelical forces are well-known.

On the other hand, it was the Congress gov't of AP that recently took some action against the mining mafia.

1. The BJP is in a pathetic condition.

2. Mohan Bhagwat provides some hope, but the jury is still out on that. In any case his influence seems limited.

The actual position of the state of finances of the Indian Railways does not endorse the claims of turnaround during the five-year tenure of Lalu Prasad as minister, says an official report released on Friday.

The white paper, tabled in parliament by Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, says changes were made in the accounting procedures during her predecessor's tenure to show some questionable cash surpluses, which were also not stacked away but spent.

The same SONIA-SINGH DUO praised Lalu's all bugwash with the artificial smile in the Parliament, as at that point of time he & his Hon'ble (sheep of MPs) were all required to avoid the collapse of the Govt ! Now when he's discredited, the Duo are using Didi's stick to beat him with !!

The Media too played its part in heaping praises & eulogies on Lalu as the unlettered genius, doctorate, etc .. Why even from the USA, MBA students started pourig in to hear him at the Rail Bhavan & Delhi auditoria as to his techniques of making the white elephant--rather Juggernaut--a profitable venture .. that is all nothing but a MIRAGE !!

As for the passengers, his classifying ten months out of a year as the PEAK and the remaining two as the Non-Peak periods for concessional fare, etc, is nothing but FARCE .. Biggest amongst his short-sighted policies was to RESERVE NEARLY ONE-THIRD OF THE NORMAL QUOTA FOR "TATKAL" Scheme, thru' which the Public was simply LOOTED. In order to please Lalu, the Southern Rly Management OVERDID this Tatkal business to maximum extent, as to deprive the genuine passengers even before five days of the journey!!

Didi's white-paper shd be treated as the genuine legal document to proceed against Lalu in an appropriate Court of Law for all his misdeeds !!

**Ram & Ravi**

Sridhar wrote:Don't know if this is directly relevant to this thread. But I came across this interview of IG from 1971 that I had not seen before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OdRm7AS ... re=related

India has not had a more clear-headed leader before and after her. How I wish we had somebody with that clarity of thought and purpose in these times of great challenge and great opportunity.

Rahul Mehta wrote:Many are now pinning hope on Modi, who is only BJP leader who is still not an EJ agent. Little do they know that Modi has already become an MNC agent and it is matter of time before he becomes EJ agent as well.

Pulikeshi wrote:
Ipso facto - what is your takaleef? It must be me!

Pranav wrote:
I haven't made up my mind about this as yet. But the way Modi was making statements supporting the Global Warming Fraud was not a good sign.

Had it been Jyoti Banerjee lying unattended in a filthy general ward of SSKM Hospital in Kolkata and not Jyoti Basu in the state-of-the-art ICCU of AMRI Hospital, among the swankiest and most expensive super-speciality healthcare facilities in West Bengal, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would not have bothered to arrange for a video-conference for top doctors at AIIMS to compare notes with those attending on the former Chief Minister of West Bengal.

Jyoti Banerjee, like most of us, spent his working life paying taxes to the Government. Jyoti Basu spent the better part of his life living off tax-payers’ money — the conscience of the veteran Marxist was never pricked by the fact that he appropriated for himself a lifestyle shunned by his comrades and denied to the people of a State whose fate he presided over for a quarter century. Kalachand Roy laid what we know today as Odisha to waste in the 16th century; Jyoti Basu was the 20th century’s Kala Pahad who led West Bengal from despair to darkness, literally and metaphorically.

Uncharitable as it may sound, but there really is no reason to nurse fond memories of Jyoti Basu. In fact, there are no fond memories to recall of those days when hopelessness permeated the present and the future appeared bleak. Entire generations of educated middle-class Bengalis were forced to seek refuge in other States or migrate to America as Jyoti Basu worked overtime to first destroy West Bengal’s economy, chase out Bengali talent and then hand over a disinherited State to Burrabazar traders and wholesale merchants who overnight became ‘industrialists’ with a passion for asset-stripping and investing their ‘profits’ elsewhere. A State that was earlier referred to as ‘Sheffield of the East’ was rendered by Jyoti Basu into a vast stretch of wasteland; the Oxford English Dictionary would have been poorer by a word had he not made ‘gherao’ into an officially-sanctioned instrument of coercion; ‘load-shedding’ would have never entered into our popular lexicon had he not made it a part of daily life in West Bengal though he ensured Hindustan Park, where he stayed, was spared power cuts. It would have been churlish to grudge him the good life had he not exerted to deny it to others, except of course his son Chandan Basu who was last in the news for cheating on taxes that should have been paid on his imported fancy car.

Let it be said, and said bluntly, that Jyoti Basu’s record in office, first as Deputy Chief Minister in two successive United Front Governments beginning 1967 (for all practical purposes he was the de facto Chief Minister with a hapless Ajoy Mukherjee reduced to indulging in Gandhigiri to make his presence felt) and later as Chief Minister for nearly 25 years at the head of the Left Front Government which has been in power for 32 years now, the “longest elected Communist Government” as party commissars untiringly point out to the naïve and the novitiate, is a terrible tale of calculated destruction of West Bengal in the name of ideology. It’s easy to criticise the CPI(M) for politicising the police force and converting it into a goons brigade, but it was Jyoti Basu who initiated the process. It was he who instructed them, as Deputy Chief Minister during the disastrous UF regime, to play the role of foot soldiers of the CPI(M), first by not acting against party cadre on the rampage, and then by playing an unabashedly partisan role in industrial and agrarian disputes.

The fulsome praise that is heaped on Jyoti Basu today — he is variously described by party loyalists and those enamoured of bhadralok Marxists as a ‘humane administrator’ and ‘farsighted leader’ — is entirely misleading if not undeserving. Within the first seven months of the United Front coming to power, 43,947 workers were laid off and thousands more rendered jobless as factories were shut down following gheraos and strikes instigated and endorsed by him. The flight of capital in those initial days of emergent Marxist power amounted to Rs 2,500 million. In 1967, there were 438 ‘industrial disputes’ involving 165,000 workers and resulting in the loss of five million man hours. By 1969, there were 710 ‘industrial disputes’ involving 645,000 workers and a loss of 8.5 million man hours. That was a taste of things to come in the following decades. By the time Jyoti Basu demitted office, West Bengal had nothing to boast of except closed mills and shuttered factories; every institution and agency of the State had been subverted under his tutelage; and, the civil administration had been converted into an extension counter of the CPI(M) with babus happy to be used as doormats.

After every outrage, every criminal misdeed committed by Marxist goons or the police while he was Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu would crudely respond with a brusque “Emon to hoyei thaakey” (or, as Donald Rumsfeld would famously say, “Stuff happens!”). He did not brook any criticism of the Marich Jhapi massacre by his police in 1979 when refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan were shot dead in cold blood. Till date, nobody knows for sure how many died in that slaughter for Jyoti Basu never allowed an independent inquiry. Neither did the man whose heart bled so profusely for the lost souls of Nandigram hesitate to justify the butchery of April 30, 1982 when 16 monks and a nun of the Ananda Marg order were set ablaze in south Kolkata by a mob of Marxist thugs. The man who led that murderous lot was known for his proximity to Jyoti Basu, a fact that the CPI(M) would now hasten to deny. Nor did Jyoti Basu wince when the police shot dead 13 Congress activists a short distance from Writers’ Building on July 21, 1993; he later justified the police action, saying it was necessary to enforce the writ of the state. Yet, he wouldn’t allow the police to act every time Muslims ran riot, most infamously after Mohammedan Sporting Club lost a football match.

Did Jyoti Basu, who never smiled in public lest he was accused of displaying human emotions, ever spare a thought for those who suffered terribly during his rule? Was he sensitive to the plight of those who were robbed of their lives, limbs and dignity by the lumpen proletariat which kept him in power? Did his heart cry out when women health workers were gang-raped and then two of them murdered by his party cadre on May 17, 1990 at Bantala on the eastern margins of Kolkata? Or when office-bearers of the Kolkata Police Association, set up under his patronage, raped Nehar Banu, a poor pavement dweller, at Phulbagan police station in 1992? “Emon to hoyei thaakey,” the revered Marxist would say, and then go on to slyly insinuate that the victims deserved what they got.

As a Bengali, I grieve for the wasted decades but for which West Bengal, with its huge pool of talent, could have led India from the front. I feel nothing for Jyoti Basu.

Ramdev faces threat to life
http://www.dailypioneer.com/230382/Ramd ... -life.html

Navin Upadhyay | New Delhi

Terrorist groups, MNCs targeting Baba

Yoga guru wants security to be upgraded


Yoga guru Baba Ramdev is facing threat to his life and intelligence agencies are keeping a close watch on his security.

Alarmed by a spate of emails, letters and independent feedback that pointed to the ever growing threats to his life, Baba Ramdev has informed the Home Ministry and intelligence agencies that he could be targeted by Islamic militant groups and multinational agencies.

“Yes, Baba has informed the Government about the threats to his life,” says Bala Krishna, a close associate of the Yoga guru.

Talking to The Pioneer over phone, Bala Krishna said IB sleuths have been visiting the Patanjali Yogpeeth at Haridwar and trying to assess the nature of threats. “They have met the guru and discussed the whole issue of threats and security with him. We feel that Baba’s security must be upgraded,” Bala Krishna said.

The man who has revolutionised yoga teaching and taken the Indian tradition of medicine and cure to different corners of the world, has been provided Y-category security that involves protection by nine policemen.

Sources said that Baba has specifically identified two potential threats; one from Islamic militant groups, and the second from MNCs. Baba is reported to have told IB sleuths and officials that based on personal knowledge and feedback received from his well-wishers, he apprehends that he was on the hit list of Islamic groups for preaching religious tolerance and communal amity.

At the same time, he has expressed fears that several MNCs could be keen to see him eliminated because his preaching of ‘swadeshi’ and campaign to avoid harmful consumer goods produced by these multinationals.

Baba has been in the centre of many controversies in the past. He has repeatedly lashed out against colas and advised the people to use them as toilet cleaners. His advocacy of Indian medicine and his claim that he could cure AIDS and cancer with yoga and pranayam has also won him many detractors.

Talking about threats from extremist outfits, Bal Krishna said, “Baba’s thrust on reaching out to even the Muslims has angered several fanatical elements. They think he is a kafir who should be eliminated for teaching yoga to the Muslims.”

Bala Krishna added that Baba’s campaign against corruption has also earned him many enemies. A section of people are threatened by him, and they have every reason to eliminate him. We have repeatedly drawn the attention of the Government to the threats, but adequate steps have not been taken to protect him.”

Bal Krishna said that ‘hate’ emails and letters could have been dismissed as handiworks of ‘cranks’, but independent inputs from different sources have suggested that certain elements were actively plotting to eliminate Baba.

“We hope that the Government will take the threat seriously and act accordingly by upgrading his security cover,” Bal Krishna said.

enqyoob wrote:So if India had developed "thought leaders" we should have instead have had a few civil wars, and then had a few guys write novels on the horrors of these wars, like the gay cat-lover Ernest Hemingway. Maybe Ernestoswamy Hem Singh Way?

For Whom The Bull Bellows

?

In 1984, right after the assasination of Indira Gandhi, the resident dummy Editor of the Atlanta Fishwrap, one Robert Ackerman, wrote a long column titled:

If it took an Indira to rule it, India is no democracy

The Editor's theme was that India was about to crumble - a theme that reflected the Fishwrap's oft-expressed PRC-funded dreams.

My evil 4th cousin thrice removed, well.... wrote a response that the Fishwrap, amazingly, published. Sort of ripped the Editor a few new musharrafs.

But the fact is that it is a miracle that India has held together. A far better miracle that there has actually been a gradual upward movement.

And for all this, Indians deserve no credit? A generation of "scientific coolies"? As opposed to Thought Leaders a.ka. "Scientifically illiterate junkies"? "Superstitious holies"? "Pompous drunks"? (What else were Hemingway, Thoreau, Cervantes, Lenin, or Marx?) Or "educated mass murderers"? What else was the Sorbonne-PhD Pol Pot? Does Thought Leadership get any more exclusive than Le Docteur de la Sorbonne?

Pranav wrote:Thought leader Baba Ramdev's life under threat?

There are plenty of people who have takleef with Ramdev Baba - not just multinational and Jihadist interests but also entrenched corrupt types. Ramdev Baba is a deeply subversive phenomenon.

Klaus wrote: On the same note, you could also say that the Dalai Lama's life is also perennially under threat because he is a thorn in PRC's side? Doesnt that make the Tibetan cause worthy of salvation? Or are we Bharatiyaas going to stick to some "boundary" which was decided within a "blink of an eye" as far as the history of this civilization is concerned and say that Tibet is none of our business?

I'm not going OT here, I'm just trying to get the others to see the "bigger picture". In thinking of strategic future, one must encourage lateral thinking, I say that instead of thinking "outside the box", we Bharatiyaas just demolish the box and think "outside"!

Jarita wrote:^^ For the cost of those useful MNCs to the environment - Coke, Monsanto esp., we could easily build heavy industry to develop infrastructure and generate sustainability.
But I guess that kind of thinking is hard to ask for from our politicians.
And why American MNCs, why not a good old german engineering firm? Why these non essentials, why not a lockheed martin?

ramana wrote: This caused dissension and disloyalty to the claimant and into the breach stepped in the colonial traders and gained ascendency.
In all these cases the claimants wanted to convert an appointed post into a heriditary post and found dynasties.
We see the same effort in the gradual conversion of the Nehru family from elected politicians to a ruling dynasty and others in same manner in the different states.

NEW DELHI: The Congress brass’ conspicuous refusal to comment on the P V Narasimha Rao era during the party’s 125th foundation day anniversary function last week once again demonstrated the leadership’s cultivated disconnect with the former party president-cum-prime minister.

Giving a new twist to this enduring political puzzle, former external affairs minister and one time insider of the Gandhi family, K Natwar Singh said it was not Mr Rao but then vice president Shankar Dayal Sharma who was 10 Janpath’s first choice for the post of prime minister in 1991 in the immediate aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. It was only after the late Sharma politely declined the offer on health grounds, did Mr Rao’s candidature come up, he added.

Mr Singh’s disclosure brings a new insight into the backroom moves that culminated in the dramatic elevation of Mr Rao as the Congress president and the prime minister. It brings forth some hitherto unpublicised twists and turns behind the eventual coronation of Mr Rao after Ms Sonia Gandhi turned down the Congress Working Committee appeal to take over the party presidentship soon after her husband’s assassination. Mr Singh’s close association with Congress and the Gandhi family abruptly ended in the wake of the Volcker oil scam that consumed his ministership and Congress career in 2005. Mr Singh is now a self-proclaimed “gentleman at large with no desire to return to active politics”.

Maintaining that he felt, at the age of 80, the need to put in right perspective a historic behind-the-scene-event that took place almost two decades ago, Mr Singh told ET in an exclusive interview: “After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Sonia Gandhi, in grief, conducted herself in an extremely dignified manner and like a Hindu widow. She, rightly, turned down the CWC appeal to become the Congress president which also, then, meant the post of the prime minister of the new government. At the same time, she received, in a very composed manner, the many world leaders who had called on her when they came down to attend Rajiv Gandhi’s funeral. I, along with Rahul and Priyanka, was present with Sonia Gandhi during those meetings at 10 Janpath”.

Even in the midst of the national tragedy, Mr Singh said, he was aware, as were other party colleagues, of the emergency task to choose a new leader to head the party and the government. It was also clear to every Congress leader, he added, that even though Ms Gandhi had turned down the CWC request, only she could make the process of selecting the new leader acceptable to all. “So, after the funeral, I broached the subject with Ms Gandhi. I told her she was right in not accepting the CWC appeal but then the fact remained we had to address the issue of choosing someone to lead the party and the new government. She listened but kept quiet. Then I suggested that she discuss the matter with P N Haksar (the late key advisor of Indira Gandhi who was also a trusted family confidant) too. She asked for 24 hours to think about it,” Mr Singh said.

"A day after, Ms Gandhi asked me to tell P N Haksar to meet her. Then Haksar and me met her and discussed the leadership issue. At some point, Haksar told her that the then vice-president Shankar Dayal Sharma might be the right person to lead the party and the country at that juncture. She paused for a while, though about it, and then agreed with the suggestion. Soon (late) Aruna Asaf Ali and me called on Shankar Dayal Sharma with the proposal. We were in for a big surprise," said Mr Singh.

“When Arunaji and I met the the then vice president, we told him that we were placing the proposal before him as the emissaries of Ms Gandhi. Mr Sharma thought for a while and said, given his advanced age and failing health, he would not be able to do full justice to the post of the prime minister which required at least 20 hours of work every day. He said he felt honoured by the proposal and asked us to convey to Ms Gandhi his respectful gratitude. Both Arunaji and I were completely surprised by his response. After all, how many leaders turn down a proposal to become the PM! Arunaji and I returned to 10, Janpath to convey the news," Mr Singh said.

{ I guess SD Sharmaji wasnt power hungry like both these courtiers!. He was honest and deserved to be the President which he later became}

He said another round of discussion then took place between Ms Gandhi, Haksar and himself. “Then Haksar felt P V should be the next choice and she agreed. Here I must say I was not involved in discussing the matter with Mr Rao. Some others did that. Once Mr Rao, who was denied a RS re-nomination and was ready to return to Andhra Pradesh, agreed and after Sharad Pawar was made to bow out of the race, the CWC and Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) met to elect him as the new Congress president and the prime minister”, Mr Singh added.

{See the double deal. Nominate Rao who was down and out and make Pawar bow out. BTW, PVNR was then a known diabetic and heart patient. I think PN Haskar chose people with health problems in order to ensure they dont get too powerful and supplant the family. Interesting that Notwar doesnt talk about how Arjun Singh was kept out. }


Mr Singh refused to comment on the nature of Ms Gandhi’s relations with Prime Minister Rao and on the reports that she was unhappy about the manner in which the ex-PM dealt with the investigations into the Rajiv Gandhi assassination. But then he said there were occasions later when Ms Gandhi became the Congress president she would ask him or Manmohan Singh, from time to time, to show the draft of some important statements to P V who was a skillful draftsman. “Whenever, Manmohan Singh or me took those draft to P V he made some alterations that really improved the contents”.

{Yet he mangaes to get a favorable impression of a kind Rajmata consulting the slighted former PM! Courtiers never lose their courting.}