Hail Democracy!

Well... I'm not sure how to start this one, to be honest. I just couldn't digest the fact that India has chosen THE WORST party to the nation one more time. 60+ years of independence and the nation has moved from good to bad to worse; completely under the spell of this party; with the heights of its impotence reached on December 26th, 2008. No development whatsoever is possible under (pardon my language here) a bunch of old brats lead by an Italian!

I can keep writing pages and pages about this without any reduction in my irritation; but let me share a few points that are quite interesting and annoying.

1. Election malpractices reached a historic high this time; including rigging, bribing the voters and rejection of electoral rights for lame reasons. For instance, in Madurai (my home town), Tamilnadu; the polling % was 70+ when many of my friends and acquaintances didn't get to vote; and out of that Azhagiri (the corruption king's son) won by a margin of 2 lakh votes (the entire constituency has only 7 lakh voters). Further every home in Madurai was given 500 Rs per vote.

2. The polling % in Mumbai was in the lower 40s. Probable reason - Long weekend; and everyone planned trips to Goa and other nearby spots. In one simple sentence 'Shame on you Mumbaikers'. It's not sufficient to just talk and compose sentimental emails about blasts, insecurity and the loss of lives. What did you actually do to save your butt? Nothing! Even worse, Congress has won all the Mumbai constituencies; while the home minister shrugged his shoulders and told you that he has no idea about the nation's security.

3. I can't think of any improvements in the past 5 years; and in my view this was one of the worst Governments India ever saw. Corruption was at its peak; and in Tamilnadu alone thousands of crores were swallowed by MK and co.

4. Rahul Gandhi, except for his surname has no business whatsoever in Indian politics. IMHO there are a million other deserving youngsters fit to rule India better than him.

5. This is an illustration of how stupid the system of democracy can get. Reminds me of Hitler's lines in Mein Kampf where he says democracy will never allow a great person to raise up to power, purely because of the impedence mismatch between the brilliant few and the masses. This result just testfies every word of that sentence.

In a nutshell, I sincerely hope that the sanity of the Indian masses improves in the future; and that they get out of this silly sentiments of electing a party just because it has been ruling us for a long time. My dad's history book read "India is a developing country" and mine did too; but even if my son's book doesn't read "India is a super power"; let it not read "India is an underdeveloped, poor nation in the clutches of hunger". May God bless Indians and save the country from this destructive path. Jai Hind!

P.S: The ONLY thing I like about this election result is that the commies have got a nasty blow; and they've been castrated this time. At least one news to be happy about. :)

Elections...

Elections - One term that will be lingering in Indian hearts (at least in those of the politically active/responsible citizens) for the past month or so. With the final phase of elections happening today, the fate of the nation for the next few years would be decided in a few more days.

I'm not a political expert per se; and given that I'm in US now (and that the Indian Govt provides no options for people like me to cast their votes), I don't even have my name in the electoral list. But I just wanted to share a few thoughts about the way things are poised; and I'd also like to take this chance to cross verify my ability to analyze political strategies depending on the similarities/differences between my analysis and the actual proceedings.

Congress doesn't have anything to boast of as an achievement save the fact that a puppet PM compelted his term and that they signed the nuclear deal. Whether the deal is good or not in itself is a mystery and a highly debatable topic. That said, the Govt has a lot of negatives against it, primarily lack of internal security and absolutely no development whatsoever. In Tamilnadu, its allies (DMK) have taken corruption to a new level and they are setting role models for how one family can loot thousands of crores of taxpayer's money by controlling and distributing power among its members.

So does that mean the BJP will sweep the polls? Definitely not. Several reasons can be attributed for this fact. 1. Single party majority is almost becoming out of question in the current decade. 2. National parties, though known across the nation, aren't particularly strong in all states. Classic example being Tamilnadu; where the the Dravidian parties take the lead role in controlling politics. 3. The pseudo secular media (almost all the Indian news channels are under this category) and parties have always tried to portray BJP as some Hindu fanatic organization that will gun down everyone from the minority if it comes to power.

Personally I feel (1) is going to be the deciding factor in this election. BJP doesn't have a real strong alliance in the southern parts of India; and almost in all four states save Karnataka (where BJP actually commands some vote bank) BJP is almost deserted. In the north, I feel BJP will do quite well especially in states where it is in power. Even otherwise, there isn't anything that prevents people from voting for BJP; unlike congress that has a bunch of negatives tailing it. So assuming that the BJP does well in the north, all it needs is some solid support from the southern states; and I believe they have a plan in place - the third front. The third front in my view, is more or less like a short term parking place and honestly speaking, it has absolutely no sense in it because the parties cannot contribute to each other in anyway! So the whole point of the third front is to get some MP seats and then trade them on either sides depending on individual interests and profits.

That said, ADMK in TN and TDP in AP are likely to join the NDA; and the notable point there is BJP didn't even contest in many constituencies just to make sure that the anti-congress, anti-DMK vote is not split. With ADMK+ winning a large number of seats in TN; and TDP winning at least 50% seats in AP, added to the fact that BJP itself will get something out of Karnataka, the party doesn't really need to struggle very hard to cross the magic number. If at all my assesssment is right, Advani has taken this political game into a new level of post-election competition, which is kind of new to our setup. The party is seemingly very weak in the south (encouraging the opponents and giving them a relaxed mindset); and down the line when everything is finalized, all the silence might pay off and the lotus might bloom in the center. Let's wait and watch :)

Srilanka...

"Munnai itta thee muppuratthile
Pinnai itta thee thennilangayilae
Annai itta thee adivayittrilae
Yaanum itta thee moozhga moozhgavae"

The pyre that I lit is in front... The flames that were started by a tail; are back south in Srilanka (an excrept from Ramayana)... The flame of separation lit by mother is glowing inside me... Let the flame I lit, engulf this body!

-- a famous Pattinatthar song that was plagiarized by Kamal/Vairamuthu for Alavandhan, speaks about the pain of a son cremating his mother, requesting the God of flames to engulf the body. Flames and SriLanka have been having such a close relationship that it hits the mind of a poet and fits into a metaphor on flames. For a long, long time; Srilanka has been in the clutches of war and it's been a seemingly never ending problem that has been on for quite a lot of time now, consuming hundreds or thousands of human lives.

"The Sinhala government is trying to crush us and refuse the rights to Tamizh people in Srilanka. We need to make sure that the Tamils are given their rights and India needs to interfere in this matter to speed up the process." -- LTTE, Tamizh politicians in Srilanka and majority politicians/press reporters/actors/etc in Tamil nadu.

"LTTE is a terrorist outfit trying to ruin the peace in Srilanka by exploiting innocent Tamils. India should help us crush them as a personal victim that lost a Prime minister in a bomb blast organized by the LTTE." -- Srilankan government, Sinhalese, a few politicians in TN.

"LTTE is exploiting us and I was forced to take a gun against the Srilankan army" -- a Tamizh boy in a video.




"It is an internal affair of Srilanka and India cannot really get into it" -- Indian Government.

"Several including two Indian engineers were killed as the LTTE bombed the Srilankan communication centers" -- News.

As Al Pacino says in "The Scent of a Woman", I'm not a judge or jury to really assess who is right and who is wrong here; or what is true and what is not. But the fact is that a lot of innocent people are dying day after day and beyond the layers of politics, international affairs, exploitation, misunderstanding and grudges; there is something called humanity that is supposed to rule every human's heart. Somehow I feel that it's been totally forgotten in this issue and unless humans replace the fabricators, soldiers and politicians involved; I don't think a solution would be possible!

Pseudo-Secularism

If you had a chance to read through my earlier posts, you would've come across the word pseudo-secularism in so many places... It's time to explain what I exactly meant by that phrase...

"Secularism is generally the assertion that certain practices or institutions should exist separately from religion or religious belief" -- Courtesy Wikipedia. As we all know India declares itself to be a secular country and often Indian National Congress and other parties boast of their secularist stand while accusing Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) for being anti-secular. Logically combining the above statements, the Indian National Congress says that it is totally independent of any religion or religious bias. Let's take a look at some facts...

The Haj Committee Act, 1959 says that Haj pilgrims chosen by the designated committee would be given subsidy for their religious pilgrimage. Ironically, no muslim country offers subsidies to this pilgrimage. At the same time, there is a 10 Rs registration tax applied on pilgrims to Amarnath.

There are constituencies reserved for minorities a.k.a Christians and Muslims... Quite obviously there are no constitutional privileges for the Hindus even though they are minorities in a lot of North Eastern and Northern states.

Somnath temple was reconstructed with funds from public (under the pressure of M.K. Gandhi post independence) while mosques in Delhi were re-constructed with Government funding.

Kashmir has intentionally been deprived of the major Hindu population and heights of injustice - a hindu cannot buy land in Kashmir.

We have a Government board that controls the revenues from Hindu temples across India and it is being used like revenue from any other Government sources. But churches and mosques can raise their funds and spend them at their will...

The examples are innumerable but my words and time are limited. So let me not dwell into these differences now. Suffice it is to say that the Indian National Congress (the party that ruled India for 50+ long years to change a developed country into a developing country), in the name of secularism has served as a pro-minority agency targeting on the minority vote banks and thriving on the divide and rule strategy established by the British.

I'm not against Christians or Muslims but the concept of secularism is now becoming synonymous to anti-Hindu and that is something I find difficult to digest. To put the whole concept in a word, I call it 'pseudo-secularism' - the false version of secularism.

When Narendra Modi was questioned by the press if muslims will have security in Gujarat, he said - "Every Gujarati will have security in my rule"!

What is in a name...

People who had a chance to take a close look at the TN assembly elections last time (2006), two new parties got a lot of attention - DMDK (started by actor Vijayakanth) and Lok Parithraan (formed by a group of IIT passouts). DMDK had a state-wide popularity and Vijayakanth is not a new face to the public. So I'm shifting focus towards Lok Parithran - a party that contested only in selective areas in Chennai!

If we carefully analyze the base on which the whole party rested, we could eventually drill it down to three letters - IIT. So many voters in Chennai decided to vote for the party just because it is formed by IITians!! I have no second opinion in the fact that IIT is one of the best educational institutions in the country. But does that suffice to form a political party and contest in elections? My honest reply would be a strong NO. A party that relies on emails, website and sms alone for its campaigning; a party that never really understood the problems of the constituency, a party that placed a guy from North India who studied in IIT and stayed in the US until he came back to contest in this election at a constituency like Mylapore and Triplicane (just examples) in my opinion is unfit to be called a party and voting for it is out of question. If the person wins there, will there be any advantage offered by him to the commoner, the poor and the down-trodden? Will he/she at least be able to converse with him in fluent Tamizh? Absolute question mark!

Education exposes a person to different things and the way the person grasps it and really applies it to suit the needs of a commoner is completely subjective. Voting for a person because of good looks, caste, education (alone), craze is all the same in my view and it results in very poor selections at least a vast majority of the times.

In my opinion, a man like Vijayakanth who knows the problems of the society & has the guts to fight is better suited to be a MLA despite the fact that could hardly pronounce the word English or Tamizh correctly; as compared to someone who speaks English with the perfect diction without knowing the constituency and the people there!

Congress, India, Election and Budget

In 1947, India was brought under a worser rule in the name of transferring the beautiful land into an independent country from a British colony. Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru sworn in as the Prime Minister of India and for a 50+ year span from then, Indian National Congress, now termed Congress (I) has been ruining the country inventing and introducing problems from nowhere. At the end of 50 years, American dollar's value went up to 45 rupees per $ from a point where INR had a better value than US $. A whole lot of the nation's unsolved problems could be attributed to Congress, its corrupt ministries, incapable leaders, senior citizens who hardly know anything but stage speaking in favor of an Italian lady and the legal heir system they introduced in raising to power.

Today, the finance minister of India brings in a budget that reduces the nett revenue of the Government just to make sure that the party performs better in the elections... If this attitude is continued, I would never think India can report a profit/surplus budget. The worst form of this betrayal comes in the form of waivers. I really couldn't comprehend the concept of waivers till date. Let us take the farmers loan waiver as an example. I completely understand that Agriculture is dependent on a lot of natural factors and there is a good possibility that a poor farmer suffers in poverty after all the hard work. But when the Government offers a loan to improve their status, shouldn't they take any measures to help the farmer improve the yield? That'd never happen... The loans would pile up. The farmers would end up in a loss and finally they'll waive all the loans just to please them and get their votes. A country that pioneered in arts, science, maths, medicine and so many other fields is now believing that all the valuable contributions to these fields came in from the west and we crave to live our lives like the Westerners. But in the name of corruption, mismanagement, vote bank politics, poor planning and incapable politicians all we are achieving is a bigger and bigger hole in an average Indian's dream to live in a country that he could proudly and comfortably be a part of!

DMK, MK and K...

Disclaimer: The abbreviations used in this title are supposed to be expanded as Dravida Munnaetra (!) Kazhagam, M. Karunaanidhi and well... um... hmmmm.... Knowledge! :) The author doesn't assume responsibility for any other expansions provided or guessed! ;)

One party that uses (psuedo) secularism to its fullest advantage is the DMK and as it own party members say, DMK is synonymous to Dr. M. Karunanidhi. With all due respect, this interesting character surely deserves special attention!

Let's start from the positives... Beyond question, he has a great command over Tamizh and he uses that to the fullest in all his interviews, writings and speeches even at this age. Undoubtedly one needs to appreciate that. I'm not sure if I'd be able to understand what is being asked at that age. Second, the strategy. When it comes to political planning and strategies, he is one of the best in India or perhaps the world. If a party called DMK has survived this far, the credit completely goes to Karunanidhi and his political brain. That's the best I could think of from the positives front and let me know if I'm missing something.

But using all his political brains and Tamizh knowledge what has he achieved? The only state deprived of Hindi knowledge? The only state where all direct and indirect relatives of the CM and his tens of wives are in key positions minting money? The only state where an open statement against Hindu beliefs are made by the Government and the CM? The only state that promises to abolish cast while devising schemes to increase cast-based reservations based on 1951's Census in all areas including private sector? The only state where people have been tuned to vote merely based on rhyming lines in Tamizh ("sarpam dhaan karpam tharikkumaa... erudhu dhaan virudhu vaangumaa" - as Vivek says)? So many questions flow so easily but none of them could be answered with a happy heart! Just because Jayalalitha was immature enough to publicly demonstrate the wealth she amassed by corruption and because our great leader is smart enough to own half of TN under different names, a person who introduced the concept of bribe and corruption is considered to be a corruption-free leader! Hail Indian politics...

Let us keep our fingers crossed to have more and more dedicated, principle-driven and simplistic leaders like Modi rule TN and India! Vaazhga Tamizh. Jai Hind.

Democracy, Cho and Narendra Modi

Ironically, "For the people, by the people and of the people" somehow works better in paper and media than in reality! One genius who realized this way back in the 1960s and 1970s is Cho Ramasamy usually called Cho. His film Mohammed Bin Thuglak literally slandered the basic attitude of politicians and how the concept of collective responsibility could end up in a deep disaster was practically shown in the movie. Dialogs like "A person who thinks about the next election is a politician... A person who thinks about the next generation is a leader... I don't think about both and so I'm a democrat" were testimonies to his foresight and revolutionary thoughts.

When he supported Narendra Modi in an interview and wanted him to be the next Prime Minister, I was quite surprised despite the soft corner I had for Narendra Modi. Slowly, I came to know the bigger picture and as usual Cho wasn't wrong in his choice. Winning an election purely on the developmental front despite the lack of support from media and the pseudo secularists is nothing less than an day dream and Modi turned the dream into a reality. Industrial growth, agro revolution, complete usage of technology in improving the state, delivering fast and accurate justice to people, corruption free governance, focusing on the youngsters, their education and development and so many other credits backed him like guardian angels and gave him a landslide victory in Gujarat. Perhaps he made people visualize that even democracy needs an excellent and responsible leader to make it work and India no doubt needs more Modis for a collective progress and an entry into the G8.