The blotch on Dr. Manmohan Singh's legacy

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I have long held the opinion that Dr. Manmohan Singh will be viewed by history as the most influential man in post Independent India. To me the three prime ministers from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty do not even come close to matching the achievements, the impact and the influence Dr. Singh has had in shaping modern India. For me two of his biggest achievements are the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Nuclear deal. Like the liberalization, the effects of the nuclear deals will be known in the coming decades as India begins to fully meet the energy needs of its population and economy.

There is so much to Dr. Manmohan Singh's achievements that cannot be listed here without rehashing his  Wikipedia entry. In a country where politics is dominated by all sorts of undesirable elements, here is a guy who is the most educated prime minister in our short history. He is more educated than all the other contemporary world leaders around. He is not a career politician, he has decades of real administrative experience spending much of his life in the Indian bureaucracy. Among the many posts he has held, he has been the Finance Secretary, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Governor of RBI before becoming the country's Finance Minister and eventually Prime Minister. Above everything else he is known and perceived to be a man of impeccable integrity.

These and for many other reasons it is painful to see my favorite Prime Minister preside over a government embroiled in many controversies and allegations of scams, with ex-ministers spending time in jail. This is after all a second term for Dr. Singh, the Congress and other UPA constituents. It was the Left parties that held back the first government from disinvestments, from pursing better relations with the U.S and objecting to the nuclear deals. The people gave a resounding answer to the Left objections by wiping them out; by taking them out of the equation for UPA's second term. Finally I thought, Manmohan Singhji would be allowed to move ahead with much need reforms without political pressure.

Since then UPA-II has been busy firefighting all the time. instead of steaming ahead They had to face the CWG scam and the 2G scam costing the country astronomical sums of money if you go by the CAG reports. Add to this is their perceived reluctance to implement a strong Lok Pal bill that can potentially be a strong deterrent against scams of such scale.

 I once read/listened to explanations from the Congress party and Dr. Singh about coalition compulsions. What I understood from all the beating around the bush was that the government will be a minority without its allies and therefore when an ally is found to be engaging in hanky-panky stuff, then coalition politics mandates you look the other way. It made sense to me actually. General Elections cost lakhs of crores of rupees and months of election drama with no guarantee of throwing up a stable government. So we have to deal with what we get in a multi-party election system and a population of a billion and more. For the sake of argument let us agree that the UPA had little choice in the matter when it came to Raja and co.

What I do not understand is what coalition compulsions forced the government to continue with Suresh Kalmadi as chairman of CWG Organising Committee (OC)? The stink associated with CWG rose much before the CWG got underway. It was missing deadlines, it had substandard construction in some places and material had been purchased at exorbitant rates. The government though continued with him. What was the compulsion? The only plausible answer is that by the time the government came to know what was happening, it had little choice but to bail Mr. Kalmadi and see that the CWG went through. The pride and the honour of the country was at stake.

Above all where the UPA-II government failed the people of this country is by sticking to the perception that they are not serious about tackling corruption. They have failed to convince me and millions others that they can stem the rot. That they do not have the political will to weed out the Kalmadi's from the system nor the will to stop their allies from doing what they want. My greatest regret is that presiding over this entire mess is my favorite but unfortunately very silent Prime Minister masterfully practicing the art of coalition politics. 

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Whistleblowers in trouble

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It was the unfortunate fate of Satyendra Dubey that first highlighted the need for India to come up with a Whistleblower Act. We still don't have one and that means that people willing to come forward and tell the truth will be as a consequence tormented, persecuted and in the case of Dubey even killed.

Wikipedia defines whistle-blowing as


A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities (misconduct) occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).

Here are some simple facts
Fact One - It was the Gujarat government that appointed a commission to look into Godhra and the riots that followed. This is undisputed.
Fact Two - DIG Rahul Sharma was ordered to probe the Naroda Patia massacre case. It was his call records evidence that linked certain politicians and right wing leaders to the incident.
Face Three - According to newspaper reports, he is set to be chargesheeted for violation of the Official Secrets Act(OSA). Why? Because he passed on CDS of the call records to the panel without explicit permission of the state government.

Why would the state government want to prevent information landing in the hands of a panel that was constituted by them in the first place? The state government now says that the call records are allegedly inaccurate and even doctored casting aspirations on the integrity of the police officer. This is the same man who as District superintendent of Bhavnagar prevent any major mishap while the rest of the state was burning. Is this is the price an honest man has to pay?

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Yobs and hoodies of London

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London will always be my second home, the place I am nostalgic about, the city where I lived for 6 years. I first went to London in my early twenties, the first time I was away from home and family for any significant period of time. I returned a year later and took up a permanent job in the city. I fell in love with the place. I walked as much as I could around central London, recognizing landmarks that found mentions in the books of my childhood. I laughed loud when I walked on London Bridge; the London bridge of my childhood nursery rhyme was a plain old bridge. Close by is The Monument, a tall stone column of 200 ft. erected in the memory of the fire that consumed much of London in the 1600s.

4 years after leaving London and those wonderful memories; I was stunned to see burning pictures of it on my TV. It does not surprise me in the least to see pictures of young men and women, in their hooded attires, sweatshirts and track pants. I have seen enough of them during my time in London. I have seen their aggressive nature, their crude banter, their loud music, their drinking ways, their drug dealings at street corners, their fights; fists and knifes. I have even walked past a crime scene cordoned off by the police, soiled in blood that involved gang shootouts.

Call it bias if you will but I always crossed the road if I saw a bunch of hooded young kids. It always felt better to be safe than sorry. You never know what thrills them the most. Happy slapping after all was an English fad. I have been offered items on sale either fenced or cheap imitations as well as smuggled European cigarettes by them. In India people are more likely to ask you for a match if they see you smoking. My experience with these guys is that they ask for the cigarettes. I have always politely declined and on some of those occasions received choice expletives in return. I have seen them taunt policemen from a distance, hollering PIGS and making a dash for it.

Peckham was one of the first places I visited in London and quite possibly one of the worst. I had been in the country for a week and knew not a single soul. Someone suggested the Loot to find cheap accommodation and one of my inquiries led me there. The streets were littered and the walls were full of graffiti. Perhaps I was there at the wrong time, but I did not see a single person that I could judge respectable based on clothing or outward behavior. That remains to this day my only visit to Peckham.
I visited Bethnal Green a number of times, once to visit the famous Petticoat lane Sunday market, on other occasions on my way to Brick Lane to visit the local Bangadeshi mosque on Fridays. I have been to White Hart Lane visiting friends and thinking how enthralled I should be if I was a visiting football fan.

I have visited homes of people living in council estates and heard first hand accounts of how much young unruly gangs disturb peace in the neighborhood. I understood finally why majority of the people at my workplace lived outside London and preferred to commute.

I do not know what makes them so angry. I do not know why they don't like to work and make a better life for themselves. I do know that nothing justifies burning down buildings, looting, intimidating the general public and causing injury to others. Lastly, why is it not surprising that most popular looting is for alcohol, gadgets and shoes. 

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Collateral Damage – US economy and the AAA rating

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The markets have reacted predictability. They have swung downward ever since the “Tea Party” Republicans and the Democrats played brinksmanship politics with their collective national debt. The S & P downgrading signaled more acute response from everyone. People seem to be running to the safety of gold and silver. Markets as they are usually prone to do; reacted nervously. None of the reaction was unexpected.

However the collateral damage of the American economy I am referring to is China. For so many years they have controlled their own currency so that they remain competitive in their exports. Economies and governments around the world complained but China paid no head. While the rest of the currency rates were determined by market factors, China’s governing bodies controlled theirs. One of the steps China took to keep the value of Yuan appreciating was to buy billions upon billions of dollars. Who better to buy from then a debtor with long standing credit worthiness?

As China’s economy continued to grow year after year, they kept buying Treasury Bills to a point where near about 50% of their reserves are now in the form of US Treasury Bills. They are the biggest creditors for the government of United States by a long distance. Second place Japan stands at $900 billion while China themselves are owed $1.7 trillion. This places them in such an uncomfortable position. It means that if the dollar erodes then it affects them proportionately. It means that being such a large creditor there is no one else who can take up the Treasury Bills from them. They can’t dump some of it on the market without causing more panic, spiraling the dollar downwards and eroding hundreds of billions of China’s reserves. They can’t dump it all without catastrophic results for themselves and the U.S. For better or for worse their fate is intricately tied with the fate of the U.S; at least in the short term. So much so that in order to protect the dollar from misadventures, they will in all probability continue to buy more debt from the Americans. This in turn will continue to allow the American lifestyle of borrowings and low interest rates in an attempt to inject life in a slumbering economy.

This leads to a delicious irony. China and the United States are two of the most powerful countries in the world. U.S has long been the sole super power ever since the demise of USSR. In normal circumstances, you would expect China to be quietly satisfied with the American problems. Now however the world’s largest capitalist and the world’s largest communist are bedfellows.

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My first post from a smartphone

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This is the first time I am writing a blog entry using a smartphone instead of my regular laptop. I want to check if I can actually use my phone to blog occasionally.
There are some limitations to using the phone; at least according too me. I have used qwerty phones as well as touch screens to type messages. I have been told how ancient it is that I feel no comfort with the new qwerty nor with the touch screen. I rarely use sms on my phone because typing the message is cumbersome. Or so I felt.
The other point to understand is that I feel a bit out of place in this twitter generation. How does one express his thoughts in 140 characters. in our generation writing an essay fetched you good grades at schools. You were told to be expressive and articulate, explained how a skilled writer leads his viewer through a trail before putting forward his arguments. Writing transformed through the internet. You could express yourselves no matter how rubbish you really are and you could still attract an audience; even better this audience is anonymous. It doesn't know you and it wouldn't judge you.
All things however change. The attention span of the average internet surfer compares to that of a  Toddler. If you are not going to make your point within a few lines then you have probably lost your audience.
Imagine having to type this on a phone. Certainly a new experience for me. What changes my view on using the phone to type is the beta version of swype. This entire post had been written using swype and if it wasn't for swyping I would not be using my phone for chatting or messaging much less to write a blog entry. You should give it try if you have an android based touch screen.

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