UPA's reckless spending

Sadly, UPA, under the "eminent economist and honest PM", is creating havoc with disastrous fiscal policies. High fiscal deficit is pegging interest rates at uncomfortable levels. Unlike manufacturing and services, agriculture is unlikely to experience blistering growth rates. But what really hurt the agriculture sector is government intervention by way of populist schemes. Through doles via schemes like NREGS, UPA created artificial wage inflation in rural areas. It peeled peoples off the land and clung them onto the mammaries of the state.

UPA's fiscal policies are not creating assets or building infrastructure. Government allocation is creating and feeding inefficiencies
within the system, while increasing income disparities. UPA-1 has already pushed 100 million Indians into poverty. All indications are that UPA-2 is accelerating the pace of perpetrating penury.

The Pioneer > Online Edition : >> Growth for some handout for many

The total fiscal deficit (the Central Government plus the states) is nearly 10 per cent of the GDP.
... manufacturing grew by 9.3 per cent last year and services by 8.5 per cent. By contrast, agriculture, which still sustains some 60 per cent of the population, struggled to experience a 0.2 per cent growth.

S.V. sees no wrong in the Dynasty and UPA rule

Siddharth Varadarajan seems to be keen to emulate Harish Khare, who used to praise the dynasty endlessly until he was rewarded with a plum post. The disastrous economic policies, the social reengineering or the runaway inflation pushing about a 100 million people into poverty do not seem to affect Varadarajan's assessment of the UPA rule.

Notice how he finds the nuances of governance in UPA and absolves Rahul Gandhi's group, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh of all failures. The other two groups are the culprits. Why is this not surprising. And he also tells us that such groupism is a good sign of internal contestation! So, there you go -- it is all good when it happens in the Congress.

He stops short of pleading, weeping and begging for Sonia Gandhi to lead from the front. He might achieve a fastrack to nirvana by emulating the act put up by the congress worker when Sonia Gandhi returned from a meeting with APJ Kalam.
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : A year of living indecisively

Many of the problems the NDA regime ran into sprang from the sangh parivar's assertiveness. In contrast, the UPA's problems arise from Ms Gandhi's failure to lead from the front.

Ramar Sethu issue- Govt.'s illogical positioning continues

The Ramar Sethu issue is one which clearly exposes the UPA Govt's clear and defined attack on Hinduism and sentiments of millions of its followers. The Government decided to sign up to create a channel without realizing the strength of the people to fight it. The Supreme Court after going through the arguments by Dr. Subramian Swamy and others asked the Government for clarifications.
Apparently when hell freezes over, the Devil will start quoting scriptures.
In this case the UPA Government in a marked change from its earlier positions is now trying to quote versions of Ramayan to bolster its case.
The central argument being,

after returning from Sri Lanka upon His victory over Ravana, Lord Rama “took his heavy bow and with it made several breaches in the bridge so wide that nobody could pass over it on foot.”

This statement is quite ridiculous.

• Unlike todays bridges which crack with a light storm or flood, the Ramar Sethu was build with layers of boulders and primitive cement (as per the ancient scriptures). Now if you take a jackhammer and try to make huge breaches so deep and wide that people cannot cross (say 4ft by 4ft by 10ft) it will take several days if not weeks to finish the task.


• Secondly after the war and crossing the bridge, Lord Ram is supposed to have done a quick pooja to the Sea God and flown over to Ayodhya. (As per the same scriptures)

Another idiotic statement by Mr.Parasan, counsel for UPA Government,

“The religious texts relied [upon] by him themselves showed that the bridge had been built and had been broken by Lord Rama himself.” Mr. Parasaran had also argued that anything broken could not be worshipped.

Building any structure would mean that something else would've to be broken unless it exists naturally like Amarnath. Hence going by Mr. Parasaran's logic, Christians cannot visit churches as rocks were broken to build the church, same goes for Muslims too.
The Supreme Court should ignore these asinine statements and order a CBI and Income Tax investigation into the DMK leaders who benefit the most by the channel due to kickbacks from the construction and shipping companies.
For those interested, this article here details more historical evidence of existence of the bridge.

Why there is no Patriotism within Kashmir?

As per the implementation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution there are thousands of crores being spent on the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir every year. This includes the military resources used to protect the common citizens from militants. In the light of the Amarnath issue which was precipitated a state logjam by certain Kashmiri Islamist groups who now decide that the money and security provided by India is not enough. They would rather decide to live in poverty, squalor and terrorist mayhem that is Pakistan. As reported by the Chindu in an article titled, Islamists plan pro-Pakistan protest .
Mr. Praveen Swami a proponent of the imaginary theory of socio-economic inequality being a key reason of Islamic terrorism is the bearer of the bad news.

In an unprecedented development, the Jammu and Kashmir government has allowed Islamists to stage a massive pro-Pakistan protest in the heart of Srinagar ignoring warnings from India’s intelligence services that the decision could lead to a meltdown of state authority.

The entire article reads how the various pro-Islamic and quasi-terrorists like the Hurriyat have held the state in a state of virtual blackmail. Even the police is no exception,

Last week, Kulgam Senior Superintendent of Police Imtiaz Mir was reported to have been surrounded by a mob and compelled to raise pro-Pakistan slogans.

The silver lining here in this case appears to be that the moderate leaders like Yasin Malik and Maulvi Shaukat Shah have condemned the secessionist approach followed by the Islamist leaders.

Protestors from various political groups have infiltrated crowds celebrating Shab-e-Baraat a night of fasting and penance when, in popular Islamic tradition, Allah prepares the destiny of mortals for the coming year.

One hopes that in addition to preparing the destiny, some pragmatism is also given to the Islamists.
The Chindu has blamed everyone from Ghulam Nabi Azad to Saurav Ganguly to the BJP and has abrogated the Islamists so far for all their nonsense.
It would be interesting to see how LiC and his cronies would approach the patriotism test when the Islamists ask for an Independent Kashmir or perhaps secession to Pakistan.

Khare's 'Advice' to UPA on Statecraft

Harish Khare’s op-ed on ‘statecraft’ is a good read of how not to conduct it. He starts out fine:

As most political innovations go, the UPA was born out of sheer expediency. It remains essentially a power-sharing mechanism, tactically an anti-BJP conglomeration, and symbolically an anti-communal, secular front. It has yet to realize its promise as the arrangement that will help the Indian state maximize its power potential at home and abroad.

So far so good. Then it goes off the rails.

If the BJP and the NDA find themselves stranded in the margins of political imagination, it is because the Left parties have managed to appropriate the opposition space. Be it people-centric issues or the disquiet over the proposed closer ties with the United States, the Left was first off the block in protest. In any case, because of its class composition and ideological preferences, the BJP has long ceased to speak for the masses, especially the poor. The Left may have caused considerable discomfort to the UPA but it has also helped to checkmate the NDA.

Left has managed to appropriate the opposition space. Left has checkmated the NDA. Eh? The left is limited to three small states in India and that is it. It is hardly in a position to checkmate a major national party like the BJP. BJP has ceased to speak for the poor. How does Khare know? Did the poor call him up to inform him about their changed preferences? The left and the BJP have been taking very similar positions on most issues. Yet, in his eyes, the Left gets all the credit and the BJP gets none. Both of those claims are mutually contradictory which only goes to show that they are not only patently false but utterly confused.

Perhaps in no other country have the Islamist terrorists been so forthrightly isolated within their community as in India. It is no surprise that the “Indian Mujahideen” (the group that claimed responsibility for the Jaipur blasts) reserves its harshest words for those Muslim leaders who have tried to inoculate the community against the jihadi agenda.

If the terrorists were so isolated within their communities, the intelligence community ought to have been able to gather information in advance and prevent it. Yet, the fact that the blasts were carried out successfully tells a different story that they are not entirely isolated and have managed to build and sustain a critical mass of support within the community that allows them to carry out their sinister agenda. Their harsh words for the Muslim leaders indicate their outrage that the clerics have sold out their community. The email and the blasts may well be their way of attempting to win their community’s hearts and minds by highlighting their grievances while highlighting their ability to take revenge for them at the same time – a case for vengeance and a show of strength at the same time. It tells me that the battle for hearts and minds has only begun, not ended as Khare seems to think.

This wholesome beginning needs to be encouraged to deepen and consolidate itself if this country hopes to defeat the terrorist’s challenge. That challenge can be met only if we are allowed to prefer the politics of inclusion and accommodation over the politics of division and exclusion (code words: minorityism, appeasement, vote-bank politics, etc.). The terrorist’s tactics are calculated to provoke rage; the secular challenge is to defeat all those whose politics depends on working on the citizens’ anger, anxiety and resentment over the terrorist’s ability to get away.

The secular challenge is not to defeat terror but to defeat the politics that accompanies and follows the attacks. No word on the need to mobilize the country to defeat these devastating attacks on soft targets that are occurring almost as a matter of routine, only advice on PR strategy to deal with its aftermath. God help India with advisers like Harish Khare.

Thus, between now and the next Lok Sabha election, the UPA leaders need, first, to convince themselves and, then, the voters that the country has done reasonably well in providing a caring, governing arrangement. By accommodating regional voices and aspirations, the Manmohan Singh government commends itself as a worthwhile experiment in initiating regional leaders into the responsibility of governing from New Delhi this vast country.

Someone ought to tell Khare that coalition governments have been the norm for quite a while and this is hardly the first time that the experiment is being conducted. National Front government led by V.P.Singh, United Front led by Gowda and Gujral – remember? Even the NDA government was a coalition. What exactly is so new or commendable about Manmohan Singh ‘accomodating regional voices and aspirations’? It is not as if the Congress does not want to be ruling on its own. It is simply that they have been forced to accommodate regional voices for the sake of getting the magic number.

It may be that often these regional leaders have not met the “mainstream” standards of probity and competence; but these standards can be enforced only in an environment of non-partisanship and non-divisive politics. Be that as it may, the best interests of the Indian state can be defended and promoted only if the “national” and the “regional” leaders and parties arrive at a working protocol.

‘Not met the ‘mainstream’ standards of probity and competence’ is polite language for corrupt and incompetent. National and regional leaders and parties should arrive at a working protocol says Khare. Actually they have. It is called a coalition government where cabinet positions and other appointments are parceled out to party leaders to fill with their chosen nominees. Failed nuclear deal,no firm action on terrorism,a virtually halted reform agenda, overreach on the price rise issue, eviction of Taslima - certainly the list of documented ‘achievements’is a long one for everyone to see how the best interests of the country are being defended by this ‘working protocol’.

However, irrespective of the BJP’s inadequacies in answering the polity’s needs, the country will still yearn for a more decisive and more effective governance than the UPA has been able to provide these last four years. The “mainstream” discourse insists on a “firm” response to a meddlesome Pakistan, and an insensitive United States…

Mainstream India insists on a firm response so that it does not recur. The focus is not on any country but on solving the problem. The answer is the same whether it is people within India or Pakistan or Bangladesh. An ‘insensitive United States’? The US concluded the nuclear deal with India. They have offered sophisticated military equipment for the Indian military to buy. And they have pressured Pakistan into peacefully resolving Kashmir. How is any of this ‘insensitive’?

Khare’s cheap partisan potshots have gotten the better of his analytical abilities. His motives and assertions are so hollow, blatantly partisan and transparently false that his and his paper’s credibility are likely to be the only casualties of his casuistry.