Three Strength Of Congress: Fear, Illiterate People and Poverty

When I was studying at Mecca of learning IIM Ahmedabad, there were so many marketing courses, I must say (without any disrespect to august faculty) most of that was boring although commonsense. But then commonsense as they say is one of the most uncommon thing in the world. Hmm...... so coming to the point one thing that I learnt and remembered and observed after that was "sex" and "fear" work the best for any product. It applies as much to the products as to the behavior of the people. In fact marketing is all about influencing the behavior of the people, to induce a certain behavior so that they buy a particular product. You see almost all beauty care creams are marketed on the fear off looking old similarly deodorants and big cars are marketed on the sex appeal. 

Since from the very beginning my focus was not job and all I just wanted to serve the nation somehow or other. More I started looking in this direction more I saw the problems everywhere. Corruption was omnipresent. As we look at the details of the problems of this country we get more and more convinced that if we reduce the corruption even by 50% then more than 80% of the problems of this country will be solved. Second potent problem facing this country is the illiteracy. Although we create all the hypes that we have largest population of the young people in this country but reality is that, this young population if not equipped well to deal with the problems they are going to face soon in life will become burden and not the strength. When we ask ourselves are we doing enough to make this our advantage then answer is resounding no. Corruption is there in the system because most of the parties in this country are family based and not ideology based, then be it Samajwadi party off Mulayam or Rashtriya Janta Dal or Congress of Gandhi-Nehru or for that matter DMK of Karunanidhi; all are same. Congress is most dangereous of these forces for the country because influence of other forces is limited to some particular areas but Congress is all India problem. Only ideology based parties are Left and BJP but then left has an ideology which is already outdated and BJP is painted by its rivals in very bad colours, colours of nationalism have been turned into colours of communal-ism through propaganda by its rivals. So we were discussing the threats that this country faces in the form of family based parties. Let us try to decipher how it works. For the sake if simplicity we choose Congress from amongst all these parties because it have national level presence and longer history than its sister parties. How they play with fear to deal with educated (I must say literate people) and take advantage of illiteracy of poor people. 

So lets begin with fear. This is the tool by which group of corrupt people (but these people are highly intelligent that anybody can admit, only politics is the mean to earn a lot of money and that is what these people want in life and since they have common interest with other people over there so share the common bond with them all) take the population to emotional issues rather than ideological issues. They keep on reminding them that you are Hindus or you are Muslims or Christians. Unfortunately this game is played against the muslins the most because they are most illiterate of the lot (here second strength adds to first). Muslims are told again and again that they are different and BJP will kill them all and so on. By doing this these people are keeping a whole group almost out off mainstream.  Rather than national integration these politicians from all the family based political parties keep on creating the divide and keep Muslims away from mainstream. Fashionable ideologists also start believing this propaganda. They keep on creating the divide not only for Muslims but also for other communities as and when they get the chance. 

One comparison is very apt here. Most of us know about the 1984 anti Sikh riots in Delhi and Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat post Godhara train burning. There are two things that we fail to notice here. When I write 1984 anti Sikh riots I mean that they were anti Sikh riots but never Hindu-Sikh riots, those were actually Congress-Sikh riots. But see almost all of our mainstream media depicts those riots as Hindu-Sikh riots. In fact those were the riots after which both these communities were deeply divided. But nobody talk about the real picture of Congress riots. Yes to some extent I agree here that most of the preparators of those heinous incidents were Hindus. However we should notice here that they were more Congressmen, goons of corrupt disease, servants of dynasties. In fact mostly Sikhs were the victims in those riots and not other party as it was planned massacre and not the riot as such. Hindu in itself is very loose term actually there is no religion as such called Hindu, but if here I delve in this description here then this article will be book. Only point to be noted is that these people were propagate their misdeed very differently through propaganda and were able to convince the people and divide two communities further for future political gains and all this was done on the basis of fear. 

Now look at Gujarat riots of post Godhra train burning incidence. This was triggered by one community burning the train and other retaliating. These were riots in real sense as reaction was immediate and emotional. No government in place of Modi government would have been able to contain that because it was not planned massacre but spontaneous reaction of masses. These were riots in real sense.  People from both sides dies in it and attached each other. If almost 900 Muslim lives were lost so were almost 300 Hindu lives. Muslims being lesser in strength had greater toll naturally but it was not one sided affair as was 1984 "massacre of Sikhs by Congress". In Sikh massacre official death toll was 2700 however independent human right watch groups put it 5000-10000. Hence any sane person can see through this planned massacre.

In 1984 a person none other than then then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi said, "When a large tree falls, earth beneath it is bound to shake". Was not it an open endorsement of the riots? However in 2002 did anybody from Modi's party or government did anything like that? No they did not. But our media highlight it again and again in wrong way. Since most of our population is ignorant and illiterate they are bound to believe the propaganda that is backed by fear. Hence two strengths of Congress get combined here.

You may think here that I am cynic but sometimes it seems to me that people of this country were kept illitrate by design by corrupt people party (Congress) so that they can play with their sentiments again and again otherwise how you will explain that countries like Srilanka and Malaysia who got independence after us are more educated than us, even China which was torn apart by civil war is far better off than us with literacy rate running into 90% s while we struggle at mere 65% one of the lowest in world amongst all noticeable countries. And I have reason to believe it because Congress ruled for more than 50 years out of 63 years of Independent India and these are intelligent people to notice that you can not be-fool an educated people as you can do illiterate people. Believe it or not but there are people thanks to illiteracy who still believe that Nehru is prime-minister of country. 

Now the third pillar of Congress strength. They are winning the election after election with slogan "garibi hatao" (remove poverty) but today number of poor people in this country are roughly the same as there were at the time of independence in absolute terms. But since public memory is short and they are kept poor perpetually they are easily fooled and their votes are bought. When NDA government wanted to make education fundamental right all these family parties opposed that but they took the cue from there (being intelligent people as they are) and passed "Right to education" bill, which is sham because they never bothered to arrange the funds for the same. They do not want people to gain self respect and hence run the scheme like NREGA and mid day meal. If you do not have enough funds to provide the teachers in school then why to spent money in mid day meal? Even poor people take care of food of their children, but no these politicians do not want to make them literate and respectful they just want to show them how much they care but destroying their future simultaneously, because the same very child would have learnt some trade form his parents had he not been there for alms of food (because education he is not having even here). Similarly they are spending the money in NREGA making people dependent on government and not giving them any respectable employment, at the same time creating an instrument of corruption which is not even detectable.

So people of India are caught in this triangle of fear, illiteracy and poverty created by Congress. They need to come out of it. For that they will have better solution if they do away with preparator itself. They need to eliminate Congress. 

Country Being Thrown To Dogs

Today On this auspicious occasion of Republic day I wanted to write something good, something heartening about how we have completed 61 years of republic and our country is progressing. Sixty is the general age of retirement in this country and today our republic is one year older than that. Interestingly it seems that republic has already completed one life time, president of Indonesia was the chief-guest in first ever republic day parade in 1950 and this time again president of Indonesia is chief-guest. It seems country has actually gotten old with age rather than flourish. People are taking advantage of liberal laws, corruption is rampant, present day government is spending more time in defending the corruption rather than nabbing it, it has become fiefdom of various family based parties at regional levels and one at center (Congress), minority appeasement has become fashion of the day and being against the majority culture has become secularism, all the principles with which our founding fathers laid the foundation of this republic are more the instruments of misuse rather than instruments off good governance; and in all this we the country of great tolerant people are tolerating more and more, it seems there is no end to our tolerance, we would rather die than hurt somebody. Media that was supposed to be one of the strongest pillar of democracy has become keep of some powerful  people, journalists are looking towards powerful people and politicians rather than looking towards the glories of their profession. These people are more concerned to the murder story of the daughter of a doctor (in which father itself is suspect) rather than larger issues like poverty, hunger, development and national pride. Reputed authors like Arundhati Roy are busy in attention seeking by giving anti national statements and then justifying it in the name of humanitarianism as if they only know what is free humanitarianism and free will.  Hence time for introspection has come.

One thing that hurt me the most in last two three days was the unfortunate happening in state of J&K. Some people belonging to nationalist party (BJP) wanted to unfurl the national flag at Lal Chowk in Srinagar on Rebublic day and to my utter surprise ruling party and their allies denied it and said that is is political gimmick. Even if for the sake of argument we accept that it is political gimmick, it still have a lot of symbolic significance. Lal Chowk is the place which is the center of anti national protests almost every friday now and separatists believe that its their ground literally. In this scenario this flag hoisting has got a lot of significance if we want to demonstrate solidarity with the common man of state and give them confidence in the times of trial and hardships.It is very unfortunate that our political parties have started to politicize even this issue of symbolic significance for whole nation into a political issue. They crossed all the limits of decency by declaring that they will not allow it to happen. They went to the extent of arresting the people who wanted to do service to their nation. This episode remind me off two incidents in recent history. One is Dandi march taken by Mohandas Gandhi (famous as Mahatma Gandhi) and second is the conquest of Czechoslovakia by Adolf Hitler. Let me talk one by one about both the things.

Mohandas Gandhi started Dandi March to protest against the policy of Britishers (tax on salt), and it was also a symbolic march as he could not have produced sufficient salt to supply to whole nation. Such things have symbolic significance in the annals of human history. Similarly when we are facing the problem of Pak sponsored  terrorism in valley and Lal Chowk is the epicenter of that, hoisting of national flag is the symbol of solidarity that country have with the people living in the state. By preventing the people from taling pride in the republic day celebration government of the day is behaving much like colonial government. It seems that even after more than 200 years of British rule and other foreign dominations (Arabs and Turks) prior to that country has not learnt the lesson, instead they have lost all the self respect that they had.

Second event that is conquest of Czechoslovakia by Hitler came to mind as I was thinking of present situation of India and happen to watch WW-II documentary on discovery. in 1938 Czechoslovakia was a powerful country with well equipped army and Europe's largest arms production industry and fortified border. Hitler got the foothold in Sudetenland in the name of autonomy of German population of the area and with this border fortifications of country came in the hands of Hitler. Like many parties in our country friends of Czechoslovakia followed the policy of appeasement for political gains making Czechoslovakia sacrificial animal. Once the defensive advantage was lost by Czechoslovakia Hitler captured the whole country in less than 8 weeks. Here again politicians (particularly from Slovak part of country) to gain power sold their country to Hitler. It is not much dissimilar than what is happening in our country where family based political parties sacrifice national interest to gain power and minority appeasement be it based on caste or religion is their method of choice. If these people keep on raping this country like this then day of doom is very near ffor this republic. It has already crossed all limits. 

I simply wish that people of this country stand up against the looters who are still following the policy of divide and rule, which was followed by Britishers earlier and now followed by Congress and other family based parties.

Dr Manmohan Singh - A glorified puppet

I was still in my graduation when Dr Manmohan Singh became prime minister of India. That was the time when people of our age has started taking interest in the politics. I knew little bit of it and was learning of the happenings around the world. At that time lot many things were new to my mind. Those were formative years and we were learning the things we were not in good position to make a very clear and solid view point. More than six years have passed since then and I have been through IIM between this period and traveled this country from Kashmir to Kerala. Today I believe that there are lot many things on which I can have informed opinions.

So Dr Manmohan Singh when he became prime minister was supposed to be the best candidate only P Chidambaram could have rivaled him at that time in fact even now there is nobody in the ruling camp even now who can rival his CV. At that time there used to be a mail in circulation that we have such a qualified PM and we are progressing well in this country. In fact after the six rule of NDA government and lot of investment in infrastructure we had started growing really fast to the tunes of 8% annualized GDP growth rate. That was the time when Sonia Gandhi was being hailed by our media as mother India and example of sacrifice. She achieved almost goddess like status in the mind of most of the people thanks to our free media controlled by rich people and Congress party. Dr Manmohan Singh's CV was mailed around the country so many time.

Soon however things started to clear themselves. He was nothing but a puppet. few years before that Lalu has used his wife as puppet to rule Bihar. This time Sonia has used this guy as puppet. Puppet or no puppet I had great admiration for this guy because he was best in the herd as far as honesty was concerned. But then honesty is not the thing that you require to rule a country of this size, it need leadership, it require guidance, it need somebody who can take a stand and who have a vision. In those days only I read Dr Kalam's book "India 2020" and this is very well written book and for a while it seemed Dr MMS is great continuation of legacy of Dr Kalam and Vajpayee as prime minister. We were happy that one visionary was replaced by another and there was always guiding light of Dr Kalam. 

First shock came in the light of election of Pratibha Patil as president of the country. They put a lady from nowhere in the seat which was graced by likes of Dr Kalam, Dr Rajendra Prasad, Dr Radhakrishnan. But then we thought president is symbolic figurehead and we still have qualified PM. Moreover Dr MMS had nothing to do with election of president.But that was first step where it was evident that perhaps he is the puppet. But we believed that he will rise above all this and show the mettle, I am sorry to say nothing like that happened. he disgraced himself more and more as the time passed. he was unable to take the stand on any of the issues. 

Then came 2005 and they announce NAREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme). Although I had read little bit of economics by that time but could not guess at that time that it will be most corrupt and fool-proof corrupt scheme of all time. The funds that were being invested in infrastructure development prior to that were now diverted to this scheme and as the election of 2009 came closure spending of this scheme was increased even further. As a consequence labour rates increased inflation increased but there was no proportionate increase in the productivity, in fact productivity came down. It was justified in the name of wealth redistribution which supposedly increases the productivity in the economy. But one very important factor that we ignored at that time which I came to know and understand only after reaching IIMA was that wealth redistribution will enhance productivity if it is above two basic constraints (unfortunately nobody talked about these constraints) viz. minimum level of prosperity and very skewed distribution of wealth prior to implementation if redistribution. Manmohan Singh being an economist must have known these things but still he did nothing. As the time passed we came to know that it did not reduce any poverty in last five years.

When I visited an Andhra village in 2009 I came to understand the real picture. Because of NREGA people in village are getting income without work and if you want to hire them for work they simply tell you that we are getting that much without work then why should I work for the same amount of money. Moreover there was no accountability in this scheme as people were supposed to dig some ponds and this kind of things. Now if you want to verify that if some real work was going on then you visit the place. There you will not find any pond and people will tell you that it got filled up in dues period because of rains or something or they will show u some old pond. But Dr MMS let this scheme run even though inflation was running very high (and I am sure that he is not dumb not to understand this simple fact). This inflation was because of-

1.  Increase in labour cost and hence decrease in productivity in agriculture

2. Increase in demand because of this money but no increase in production since now one of the basic resource became very costly (i.e. labour)

3. Increase in supply of money in the economy.

Hence if today onion prices are so high its not a surprise for me. It is very logical consequence of policies adopted by our scholar PM Mr MMS. But then why to blame him All decisions are taken at Ms Sonia Meno's home at 10 Janpath influenced by corrupt and sycophant people who deposit the share of Meno family in swiss bank accounts so that there is no doubt in the mind of people regarding the clean image of first family.

Then came series of corruption and scams. Now if you are man of action then you keep silent and do your work which says it all, but if you don't take any action and keep mum it is confirmation of your puppet status. Even then Dr MMS kept quite. Comonwealth games came and we were ashamed in front of whole world. These are the times when a nation try to showcase itself on international stage but we showed what nobody want to show.

Economic Reforms: 

What we know today as economy reforms are not actually economic reforms carried out in a thoughtful manner. These are the changes that we were forced to make by IMF and World Bank during crisis of 1991. We were forced to open our economy to international market. It is the sheer size of the country that we escaped that otherwise so many other states have gone in deeper crisis after that and became banana republics. Had Dr MMS been such a good economists he might have brought those changes when he was deputy chairman of planning commission and governor of RBI (only man to have seen both bodies), but as we know he did not in fact it was after his tenure at planning commission that crisis of 1991 happened. Our fiscal deficit crossed 10% of our GDP at that time and credibility ratings of the country went down.

After so many efforts government of Vajpayee brought this deficit under some control but again in his rule deficit is rising and it is already at the level of 8%. In fact falling credibility of Indian economy is reflected in the weakening currency. And here it is even more important to note that rupee is falling now already against a weak dollar. Still nobody at the top level seems to be concerned about the future of the country. MMS government is busy in defending Mr Q in Bofors rather than bring him and other offenders to book. For this government there is very special reason to defend Mr Q because if he is brought to book danger of first family of corrupt India to be exposed is higher, if that happens then danger of Corrupt party (Congress) falling apart is even more serious, because that family make the nucleus of this whole corrupt system. If nucleus is hit atom is supposed to fall apart and that is what they are saving, THE NUCLEUS. 

Real danger for this country is that if people like Dr MMS choose to be puppets what will happen to common man. However alternative fact might be he is expert puppet and reached this level of puppetry by playing the perfect puppet.

Incredible India

.......of course India is incredible....more than anybody can imagine, its almost whole world in itself
On one hand u see naked tribal, people living in hunter gatherer times, on the other hand u see burqa clad muslim women, costliest house in the world, nuclear energy
u see worse of corruption and u see best of human values
u have world's almost coolest place as well as world's almost hottest place
more than one third of people are illitrate but we have army of engineers where u will find it
On one hand there is India of which even great powers speak with respect even in private....on the other hand India in which in naxal areas govt machinery has failed........

Toll Taxes are Absurd

Today I was going to office and there are two toll tax booths on the way from Fort Kochin to Willingdon Island (one for bridge and another for insurance on island). This is regular phenomenon and I did not notice it for long time (6 months), but then I was going by ferry which make me reach over there in Rs 2 yes believe it. It is efficient system but senior managers go by car only.
...hmm so absurdity part is that Mr Santosh was very agitated by this all (although he is paying it for so many years now). His line of argument was I am paying my taxes as a good citizen and then I pay cess for so many things over and above the tax. Then I should not be paying this toll every few kilometers. What for we pay the tax if government can not provide us with good roads and bridges and all. These are the things for what we pay the taxes. Moreover if toll has to be collected it has to be done by government rather than being left to some contractor who dont use even 20% of total income to maintain these roads and bridges. Waiting there waste a lot of time that is productive time. And my friends in this case it is regular road, its not some special road which save you some traffic or extra time hence there should be no tax at such places at all.

In the same line of argument ...he continued when we buy a vehicle we pay road tax that must be sufficient for these maintenance and all other expenses. If we have to pay the toll tax after paying the road tax than what is the use of road tax at all. It is double taxation and at the same time it waste a lot of time.

These are pretty sound arguments and these forces us to rethink the whole system. In fact when we go deeper then we come to realize that there is toll tax mafia they have got all the contacts and win the contract to collect the toll tax. hence government is loosing people are loosing it is just a few of politicians and people in power that benefit out of that. We should really start some sort of movement against it. These are inefficiencies of our system we should do away with as soon as possible.

Over all this non-sense inefficiency there are 3-4 cops at every junction managing the traffic. It is not understandable where a single red light could have worked better than these 5 policeman why we are wasting manpower. And believe me these 5 people actually create the chaos rather than managing the traffic which a red light can manage better than these guys.

Only conceivable point that can come in favour of these toll taxes is that we want to discourage the people from using private vehicle and use more of public transport (e.g. in this case ferry service is more efficient than your own car). But even this argument does not hold good as these tolls are not high enough to
 discourage the people. In fact whole system seems to be designed to profit the local powerful people without giving any consideration to common-man.

I wish and I hope some day we shall be able to overcome these inefficiencies.