More terror, the merrier. Carry on Pakistan (in Kashmir)

Now that India has withdrawn its condition that unless terrorism in Kashmir is put on a leash, there would be no further talk between India and Pakistan, the news item on the first page of The Statesman may be edited in the follwing manner to give a truer picture (with apologies to the Statesman News Service):
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan singh today asserted that the delinking of dialogue process with Pakistan from its action against terrorism was a dilution of India's stand.
The US Secretary of state Mrs. Hillary Clinton told a news channel that she was very amused with the discussions between Dr. singh and Pakistan PM Gilani.
That way it is nearer to the truth.

Manmohan Singh loves George Bush

Whe Manmohan Singh said - all the Indians love Gerge Bush, he was under a hypnotic spell which made him push through the Indo-American Nuclear Deal. Now the whole world is laughing at the gullible Professor of Economics. Nothing of that Deal is valid except the provision for buying some outdated nuclear reactors from the USA; but no nuclear fuel. What we have lost is the right to do nuclear reasearch on armament. Over and above we have the hawk-eye of IAEA breathing down our neck.

The Taliban

The Jinn is out of Aladdin’s Lamp, and refuses to go back in. This is the truth about the Taliban, its creation and the far-fetched problems it is creating. President Zardari himself has said that Taliban is the creation of Pakistan (ISI) and USA (CIA).
During the period of the Presidentships of George W. Bush and General Musharraf, there had been half-hearted attempts to contain the Taliban; and now it has attained such colossal proportion that it has become very difficult to contain or crush it, though President Obama has warned about the gravity of the situation. The picture has been well depicted by Leonard Spector in his article ‘Pakistan, Taliban and the global security’( The Statesman13 May) and by Salman Haider ‘Crack the whip’(The Statesman 14 May). There is some resentment among sections of the Pakistan’s people, mainly because of the sufferings of the civilians, and also because of religious sympathy towards the Taliban.
The thrust against the Taliban has been intensified, but a new potential danger has raised its head. When Pakistan first exploded its nuclear bombs in 1995, there were widespread apprehensions that this was the beginning of the ‘Islamic Bomb’. However, this was dismissed as a joke, as they thought that the USA was in full knowledge and control of nuclear technological developments in Pakistan, - though the truth is that China had a big part to play in this.
Be that as it may, later developments with Dr. A. Q. Khan exporting the nuclear weapon technology to Islamic countries like Libya, Iran etc. the picture was totally altered and the fear of an Islamic bomb became very real, notwithstanding verbal assurances from the USA. USA, the originator of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty could not do anything about it, and A Q Khan went unpunished.
Now, on the one hand the nuclear technology in the hands of Iran is becoming a problem for the USA, and on the other, the possible seizure of Pakistan’s nuclear armaments and technology by the Taliban and other extremist groups is threatening world peace. Whereas the USA failed to nip the first sign of Islamic bomb in the bud, the gangrene quickly spread, and is now out of control.
The solution is the complete nuclear disarmament of Pakistan and removal of all nuclear installations and facilities from there, for the sake of world peace. But will the USA be up to it? It may not be out of place to mention that through the Indo-US Nuclear Deal the USA has already stopped India’s weapon-grade nuclear research quite effectively, placing India’s nuclear research under the vigilant gaze of the IAEA. So, Pakistan will have no ‘nuclear’ danger from India.

Slumdogs and Congress

I am intrigued by the euphoria in Congress on the success of the film “Slumdog Millionaire” (“Congress tries to bask in Slumdog glory” The Statesman 4 February 2009).
According to the Congress party, the success of the film in winning Oscars is a sequel to the government’s ‘governance accomplishments’. I wonder whether the vast slum at Dharabi in Mumbai suburbs is considered an ‘accomplishment’ or a shame to any national government.
Congress wants to showpiece the vast slum area with its filth, muck and widespread deprivations, exploitation and ruthless trampling of human rights as an example of “achieving India”, so much so that the President and the Prime Minister came out in hailing the film.I am glad the film exposes the hypocrisy of the Indian politicians in all its aspects. They will take advantage of everything, from success to failures and convert them to their vote-bank. They are exploiters too, like the ones shown in the picture

CPI(M)'s dichotomy

In his letter ‘Friends of China’ ( The Statesman 18 March 2009), Mr. S. S. Chattopadhyay has expressed surprise that the CPI-M is ‘spewing venom at the USA’, and at the same time the Chief Minister is meeting a 10-member delegation of US-India Business Council to discuss prospects of American business in West Bengal. This only betrays the dichotomy in the CPI-M’s word and action. This is also very obvious when we see that the CPI-M cried itself hoarse when Tata withdrew its Nano works from Singur, blaming it wholly on Mamata Banerjee, but caused the Tata Metalik to withdraw its venture from West Bengal by its apathetic attitude and sloppy work of WBIDC, the CPI-M’s industrial wing. So, on the one hand, the party declares that it wants industrialization in West Bengal, and on the other, it forces industries to leave West Bengal.
Regarding the Party’s preference of China to India, the Party wants to project itself as a socialist (communist) party which it is not. They look up to China as their mentor, but China does not care; it rather helps Pakistan by supplying nuclear bomb technology and materials.
Again, while the CPI-M stresses the right of workers to strike work in factories, they conveniently forget that in China, neither the labour union activities, nor the ‘right to strike work in factories’ exist.
Lastly, the CPI-M has the least interest in the integrity and well-being of India. This is the reason why they are not only silent on the continued occupation of a part of Indian territory by China and its designs on Arunachal Pradesh, but they are also allowing illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to freely settle down in West Bengal, supplying them with Ration Cards and Voter ID Cards; the CPI-M is also actively supporting the increase in the activities of Madrasas so as to inflate its vote-bank. There is neither any place for patriotism, nor is there any moral principle in the CPI-M’s political programme.

Auto-Rickshaws of Calcutta (Kolkata)

March 2009
For the last six months, the West Bengal government has been sitting on its hands over the July 2008 High Court order to ban the two-stroke auto-rickshaws. It wakes up ‘one fine morning’ on January 1, 2009, and fonds that they would have to eliminate sixty-thousand autos at one go. So, the government decides to ‘go slow’. How slow? Well, they seize ninety autos in ten days! That is slow enough, considering that the target is sixty thousand. Does anyone remember our Chief Minister’s slogan “Do it now”? It appears he himself has forgotten his motto.
The fact is that the West Bengal government is not keen on banning the two-stroke autos for the sake of its vote-bank. After all, the ministers and the bureaucrats spend their time in air-conditioned offices and travel by air-conditioned cars. So, they don’t have to breathe in the Kolkata air, rendered carcinogenic by the katatel-fuelled autos. For the ordinary mortals, let them suffer from chest cancer and be damned.

The Transport Minister

The name of Mr. Subhas Chakraborty, the minister in charge of transport and sports is frequently in the limelight, but always for the wrong reasons.
He has been known to be the mentor of the notorious ‘Hatkata Dilip’; he was known for harbouring criminals in the stadium which seems to be his personal fief. He is known as a friend of the building-promoters, particularly those who want to usurp government land and want to fill up water bodies, environment be damned! But he excels in his role as the transport minister.
He is a great friend of the bus-owners and the drivers and conductors. Whenever the price of petrol increases, he agrees to an increase in bus fares, but does not tell his friends to reduce fares when the petrol prices come down. He allows decrepit and dilapidated buses to ply on the streets of Kolkata; he allows buses to exude noxious fumes ( all that hullabaloo about pollution, again, be damned), and does not allow the very old buses in a ramshackle condition to be condemned; he allows the drivers with or without a license to drive buses causing accidents, allows racing and overtaking on the wrong side with devastating effects, like what happened on April 4 on the VIP Road, and plying on the wrong side of the road as shown in the picture on The Statesman( Kolkata Plus) (8 April). One may say that keeping the buses in check and to check that the driver and the passenger have seat-belts on, or that the riders on two-wheelers put on helmets are the duties of the police, but when these offending drivers are supported by the transport minister, the policemen can do precious little. These killer drivers get away with a small fine, and continue their killings. If the police confiscate their licenses, the Regional Transport Authority quickly issues a duplicate license
Last but not the least, all the five transport corporations under him are making losses and are being subsidized by the tax-payers’ money.
His latest feat is the refusal of funds for the restructuring of the loss-making transport corporations. The funds are being provided by the “Department of International Development”. He is opposing restructuring of the transport corporations citing “funds from imperialist forces” . Has anyone heard of anything more disgusting and hypocritical?

P.S. In spite of an High Court Order of July 2008, (i) the unregistered auto-rickshaws, (ii) the two-stroke auto-rickshaws and (iii) the carcinogenic smoke emitting katatel-using auto-rickshaws have not been removed from Kolkata roads. So much for rule of law in West Bengal.

Security of the common Indian

There is so much verbal blasting and bombing from our big-mouthed leaders that it would have wiped out Pakistan from the map of the world had it been the real thing. Thank God, it is only for the consumption of the people of India in order to divert their attention from the question of the lapse of internal security which is the only subject on which the leaders should have investigated and concentrated.
But this question of internal security failure which has been causing so much bombing-blast in the cities causing so many deaths, and humiliating attack on Indian territory from outside has been, and will be sidetracked because of the simple reason that the so-called leaders, the powers that be, are happy to protect themselves and their next of kins with the maximum security. May I ask, why should Jyoti Basu need any security at all. Or, for that matter, the grandchild of Sonia Gandhi; and all at the tax-payers’ expense? In fact the general perception among Indians is that the lives of the thousand odd “leaders”, the MLAs, the MPs and their keens are not so valuable as to attract the cream of our security forces to protect them, while the valuable lives of our unprotected citizens are at the mercy of the terrorists. Our sham democracy has been reduced to an oligarchy.
That the leaders are not at all concerned about the security of the common people has been well highlighted by Prof. N. D. Batra (“Fighting terror is not for wimps” The Statesman: 17 December,2008). We are not like the Americans who have stopped all acts of terrorism in their country for the last seven years, since 9/11/2001. He has very rightly commented on “these girlie men surrounded by 24/7 body-guards” who “do not care much for India”.
India is now like the sub-saharan countries that are governed by war-lords who loot the country and are protected by their own militia, and do not care a fig for the people. Cry, beloved country!

About "bail" in India

13 Nov 2008
About “bail” in India

Previously I had mentioned about the wonderful thing called ‘bail’, by exploit of which convicted criminals can roam about freely, can go about their business as usual (including criminal activities) and can even become MLAs and MPs to be in good company.
A news item published in The Telegraph, Calcutta (13 Nov 2008) has drawn attention to this fact.
“A British journalist who was raped by a guesthouse owner in Rajasthan last year today spoiled attempts to promote “Incredible India” at the World Trade market in London by accusing the Indian government of not giving due attention to sexual crimes against women”
The facts of the case as reported are: The journalist was raped by one Parbat Singh alias Rana who ran “Pardesi Rest House” in Udaipur and Parbat was convicted by a fast-track court and given a jail term of 21 years. Now, that was quick justice of course! But hold on….. this Parbat alias Rana got out ‘on bail’ in a few months time (in July this year) and is roaming a free man. Now, how a convicted person serving a 21-year jail sentence can get ‘bail’ and not parole in a few months is something which beats me!
The story does not end here. The victim of the rape, the journalist fought back to have the bail rescinded. But lo, and behold, the government prosecutors who were supposed to oppose the bail just did not turn up at the Supreme Court hearing!!
Now, one wouldn’t say that this is exactly what we understand by ‘Rule of Law’, right? I refer to a speech by our Prime Minister: “Our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has declared (The Statesman:“India now a successful democracy: PM”; 20 Dec 2007) that India is “a successful democracy”, “a rigorously functioning democracy” “committed to the rule of law”.
One might say that I am not doing justice to our good and honest doctor by citing just one example, but the emerging facts in India do point to the fact that the governments in India, Central as well as the States, are equally bent upon being soft on the criminals and terrorists – in most cases out of consideration of vote banks. Most recent example is the activity of Raj Thekre (Thackeray by affidavit) who is shattering the edifice of national unity and integrity for his personal gain and the government is refusing to do anything to stop him.
There, your honour, rests my case of Rule of Law in India

A Cynic's Comment

Some Indians (like me) who still believe in the old-fashioned ideas of Justice, Rule of Law, Fairplay etc. would be elated by the news that the two rapist-murderers of Tapasi Malik of Singur, themselves big shots in the CPI-M, have been convicted and sentenced to Life Imprisonment.
But cynic as I am, I feel that this euphoria should be short-lived. Living under the CPI-M rule for the last thirty years, haven't we seen the subversion of the Rule of Law again and again, and again? Haven't we seen one Mandal, convicted of murder in a lower court, appealed to the High Court and became an MLA, and remained an MLA; the outcome of that appeal has never been known.
Also, more recently, we have seen here in Kolkata that a CPI-M 'leader' was reported to the High Court as 'absconder' and "could not be found by the police", while this "absconder" attended his office regularly in the Writers' Buldings as a Minister of the West Bengal Govt. closely working with Chief Minister who is also the 'Police Minister'.
These instances are only the tip of the iceberg, but they point to the distinct possibility that these two convicted murderers would move about freely even if their conviction is not set aside by the High Court. After all, there is this wonderful thing called 'bail' that gives complete freedom to the criminals to go about their business, and even become MLAs and MPs.
Contrast this with the case of Dr. Binayak Sen, the selfless worker among the poor tribals who has been in jail for more than a year without trial! So, how about Justice, Rule of Law and all that..?

About Singur

The following was written in response to a mail on Singur:

We in Kolkata have been closely following the developments in Singur through newspaper reports.
The first thing I agree to is that the Tatas are not to blame at all for this fiasco. They are businessmen and will go wherever they can make profit. Also, I know that the Tatas have the most humane face among all the industrial houses in India. So, no stigma on them.
Now, Mamata. She is a politician. Not a very wise or crafty one. But she has a large following due to her sincerity and many believe that she is not a hypocrite. She is doing all this for votes, as any other politician would do. Once we have blamed the CITU for closing down thousands of factories, making the workers unemployed and ruining them, and ruining West Bengal. Now it is Mamata's turn to 'pay them back in their own coin'. I do not say that it is ethical. But is there anything ethical in today's Indian politics?
I would blame the CPI(M) equally for this mess, since they went into a "secret" deal with the Tatas. No public dealing can be secret unless it concerns the country's security. To this day that secret deal has not been revealed.
A government can acquire land for a public purpose. But gifting away multi-crop agricultural land to a private company for building a factory for their own profit is not acceptable. This is not a 'public purpose'.
Lastly. Industrialisation of West Bengal.

Industrialisation does not come through building factories only. It comes from the cooperation of the employees, from the will to work, from the love of work of the workers. Now, this love for work has been totally destroyed by the CPI(M) in their thirty years' rule. Now the very moment a worker joins a company, he views his employers as exploiters, as his enemies. This way no state, no country can be 'industrialized'. Tell me if I am wrong.

Singur and Industrialization

In a "Letter to the Editor Mr. S. N. Datta of Katwa has been naïve enough to draw the conclusion that the Supreme Court ruling that “the government as a sovereign power can acquire land for public purpose" should set at rest the vexed Singur issue (Letter: SC judgment should set at rest….23 Sep).

He has not noticed that the West Bengal Government acquired the land at Singur not for “public purpose” but, on the one hand, to gift it to the Tatas under a “secret” agreement to enable them to use it to profitable business and, on the other, to deprive the farmers of Singur of their land because they had voted for Trinamul Congress in the last election.

Now, one argument in favour of acquiring the multi-crop fertile land in Singur (on the strength of an archaic Imperialist British Act of more than 200 years old) is that West Bengal is in need of ‘Industrialization’, which seems to be the present-day catchword instead of the old-fashioned terms like ‘revolution’, ‘class-struggle’ and ‘building a class-less society’etc. that we had been hearing for the last seventy years. West Bengal was known as the most industrialized state before the Communists came to power. Then the CITU, the wrecking machine of the CPI(M) closed down sixty thousand factories in West Bengal to bring it to the present state. Now, if we want to talk about bringing West Bengal back to the same level of industrialization, we should either reopen the closed factories or acquire those to be run on a profitable basis. No one seems to be thinking on these lines.
One more point. It is argued that the Tata small-car factory will generate employment. This is an eye-wash. In the capital-intensive industry in its modernised factory, almost everything is done by automated machines, and the generation of employment opportunity is very limited. Why couldn't the Tatas employ at least one member from each family of the farmers who lost their land??