Knowing the power & powerful

...by the way

 

Knowing the power & powerful

 

when intelligence agencies heads retire, the Government is always in a fix as they know a lot about the system, and knowledge, it is said, is power. So their services are utilised as members of think-tanks, appointing them as Governors or sending them as heads of various diplomatic missions. Today, there are many ex-Intelligence chiefs and Army Chiefs whose services are valuable and they are working in different fora of the Government. But, the problem arises when some top officer is not adjusted due to various reasons and he starts lobbying to grab a coveted post. Sanjeev Tripathi, the former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), retired in December 2012. He has been sitting at home since then, in a manner of speaking. Sources now tell us that Tripathi, the son-in-law of G S Bajpai, again a former chief of R&AW, wants to be the chief of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) or Governor of some State. Gfiles carried a diary item pointing out how Sanjeev Tripathi became the chief of R&AW in December 2010. KC Verma, the then Chief of R&AW, had mysteriously resigned in December 2010, six weeks before his scheduled retirement. Tripathi at that time was heading the Aviation Research Centre and had only one week left for retirement. It was also the period when it was decided that two spy planes would be bought from the Israeli company, Elta. The US company, Raytheon, which Elta beat to grab the deal, complained to the Prime Minister about ‘irregularities’. A three-member team, headed by the then Defence Secretary, Pradeep Kumar, was constituted to inquire into the issue. This pushed the deal into the ground, with the delivery of the planes yet to take place. But, as it always happens, Tripathi knows too much and it is this that helped him become the R&AW chief and may even get him another coveted post in the not-so-distant future...Read More

Tweet and twitter

Bric-a-brac

hits & misses

 

 

Tweet and twitter
modi on social media

 

narendra Modi, the controversial Chief Minister of Gujarat, makes an interesting subject for every management student to learn how to manage political meetings and publicity. His every speech is an eye-opener, one that leaves little option for the media—electronic or print or the internet—but to cover him. This has little to do with where he delivers his speech; it could be Delhi, Chennai, Jaipur or Mumbai. The hype around him starts making the news much before he delivers his speech. Consider his recent address in the national capital. The news that he was there and was to address a gathering hit the social media even before he climbed the dais. People started tweeting two hours before the meeting, Facebook was flooded with his photographs and comments and by the time Modi actually ended his address, the news had gone viral. It is not only the public that is engaged in this, even Modi’s followers and team members come armed to every venue with mobiles, ipods, ipads and the like. They start tweeting and taking photos, and uploading these on Twitter, Facebook and other social sites and groups across the world. All Modi has to do is open his mouth and the word is out; every bit of Modispeak is on air and live until he calls it off. This is an art which every leader should learn and management students should seriously study. But, being live does not come without its problems; managing security for Modi is a Herculean task. For, the crowd that travels with Modi gives nightmares to his security staff. Care should also be taken here to give due weightage about his points on governance and good administration of Gujarat. For, it often appears that for Modi, Gujarat is India while for the rest of us Gujarat is a part of India. But, the dynamics of governing India is much bigger and more complex...Read More

Caught on camera

Bric-a-brac

hits & misses

 

Caught on camera
haryana shenanigans

 

if there is any State where the supernatural aids the Government in power, it is Haryana. Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda can only thank the Almighty for removing any obstacles that hinder his governance. One normally goes to a temple to seek divine blessings, Hooda does not even have to that; the Gods appear to be showering him with their blessings right at home. Thus, it was only natural that Hooda was blessed with the leakage of a video of his 80-year-old competitor in party politics. The 1.32 minute-long video of this senior party leader, who is the father of a handsome young minister in Hooda’s cabinet, is in circulation on every social media site, including Youtube. If one carefully watches the video, one can only say that age is no barrier when it comes to this particular type of performance. It is a video that has got tongues wagging in the corridors of power, but nobody, including the media, is willing to take names for lack of tangible proof though some websites have published photographs. When gfiles contacted top leaders of Haryana, they pretended ignorance even as they wanted to know the details of the video. They were also clear that any action against this leader could be taken only by the Chief Minister or the party high command. The video has come as a blessing in disguise for Hooda, as the son of this 80-year-old party leader is considered to be the political rival of his son, Deepender Singh Hooda, an MP from Rohtak. This Jasmine revolution is the first of a three-part series and was uploaded in Egypt as per sources. Earlier this year, Om Prakash Chautala, former Chief Minister, and his son were sent to jail in the teachers’ recruitment scandal...Read More

All in the family

Bric-a-brac

hits & misses

 

All in the family
mulayam’s extended parivar

 

had Ram Manohar Lohia the prominent socialist leader been alive, he would have jumped into the Ganges on seeing the model of socialism that Mulayam Singh Yadav is implementing: family first, society later. Most of the kith and kin of Mulayam Singh’s brothers and extended family members are very active, especially in Noida, Lucknow, and Kanpur. Officials of these particular districts don’t know whose orders have to be followed. Sources say that ministers are only showpieces in the State administration, with Mulayam Singh, his brothers, their sons and daughters ruling the roost. Today, the young princes of the State can be seen driving their newly purchased luxury cars – clearly excess power leads to excess show. Recently, senior Cabinet Minister Shivpal Yadav’s son, Adtiya Yadav alias Ankur Yadav, was declared elected unopposed as the director/chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Pradeshik Cooperative Federation (UPPCF), an organisation that comes under Shivpal, himself, who is the Cooperative Minister. UPPCF is involved in processing, packaging and marketing of agricultural products, providing logistics to farmers like seeds and fertilisers, and setting up purchase centres for paddy and wheat across the State apart from construction and management of warehouses and cold storages, areas that link directly with the vote bank that Mulayam is protecting. News emanating from Etawah informs that Shivpal is planning to induct his wife, Sarla, into politics by getting her to take charge of cooperative banks. Another interesting fact emerging is that Akhilesh Yadav’s stepbrother Prateek Yadav, the Samajwadi Party chief’s son from his second wife, Sadhna Gupta, is planning to contest from the Azamgarh Lok Sabha constituency. It should be understood here that Mulayam Singh seems to have decided to repose trust in his family members and promote them. For, in today’s era of deceit and betrayal, it is unlikely that this veteran socialist can be seen asking his neighbours to take over such coveted posts...Read More

Attack on pawn

Bric-a-brac

hits & misses

 

Attack on pawn
turn of jitendra singh?

 

if you are too close to the Prince, in this case Rahul Gandhi, then you can be sure that tongues will wag, both within and outside the palace. This is what Bhanwar Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports, and Defence, is finding out. There are many papers floating both within the Congress party office and outside that tell a tale. In a nutshell, they highlight the confusion about the ownership and the resultant misuse of certain properties that the Minister claims ownership of. This is clear if one looks at the different affidavits filed by Jitendra Singh regarding the properties owned by him and his wife, Ambika Singh. This apart, there have been allegations that he is using the Kushalgarh Lodge, a disputed property, which is located in a reserved forest, as his personal property. Sources say that Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has been under tremendous pressure to change the land use of a prime property in Alwar. The situation took a turn for the worse when Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Banwarilal raised the question in the Rajasthan Assembly of how a private hotel could be run in the Sariska Tiger Reserve. Denying that it had given any such permission, a defensive Rajasthan government said that if such a hotel was being operated, it was being done illegally. Similarly, the Rajgarh Fort, which Jitendra Singh claims to be his inherited property, is allegedly under dispute. Jitendra Singh is a powerful member of the Rahul Gandhi team while Ambika Singh has all the right and proper connections in the Nehru-Gandhi family. Party insiders, however, say that the real story is quite different and they are only waiting for the right time to hit out at Jitendra Singh...Read More

Toys they force you to buy

COVER STORY

defence dud deals

 

Toys they force you to buy

Logic in the world of bullets, bombs and ballistics dictates that China is the most populous, Gulf is overflowing with petrodollars, Israel or Iran have the utmost threat, conventional wars may never happen. Still why is India buying so many weapons – to be the world’s largest weapons importer and fourth-largest defence spender by 2020 ahead of France, Japan and UK. Is India really under so much threat or is it because few individuals and countries make money in every deal? Buying the most expensive or sophisticated arsenal is not end of the problem but the beginning of a new arms race.

 

by Neeraj Mahajan & Anil Tyagi

 

Money is everything and there is no patriotism, ethics, morality, sanctity of borders or qualms about supplying arms to army or mercenaries—in the business of weapons and missiles. The huge and unending demand from Army, police and terrorists who are the biggest consumers – makes arms a recession-proof industry. Armed forces spend over $1,000 billion annually to purchase or upgrade military hardware and consumables. A thin veil divides the legal and illegal business of arms. There are no separate factories, channels of supply might be different but products are the same. An AK 47 in the hands of Police or militants might originate from the same factory.

 

The $1.465 Trillion global arms industry is largely unregulated and controlled by —USA, UK, France, Russia, and China and some 35 less significant weapon producing countries. As the only five permanent members of UN Security Council – the big six sanction all make war and peace and pocket 90 per cent of profits from the arms exports. It is an industry, where effectiveness of a product is decided by the number of people it can kill, where death and destruction is celebrated as victory. French investigators probing the charges of bribery against former President Nicolas Sarkozy in the ‘Karachi Affair’ involving the sale of French submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia discovered that the 11 French naval engineers were killed in the Karachi bomb blast allegedly triggered by Pakistan’s ISI to seek revenge because bribes secretly promised to them were not paid...Read More

 

Buy Indian

COVER STORY

arms deals shubhabrata bhattacharya

 

 

Buy Indian

There is a need for a sustainable PPP model to take
the Indian defence industry out of the mud

 

For the past 25 years, the political discourse in India has been overshadowed by scams relating to defence procurement. It all started with Rajiv Gandhi, the man who got the largest-ever popular mandate in 1984, and who was ousted from power five years later due to the Bofors howitzer scam. Till date, the mystery of the Bofors payoffs has not been fathomed. But all of us remember that when India defeated Pakistan in Kargil, the pride of the armed forces was enhanced by the prowess of the equipment selected by Rajiv Gandhi. Similarly, the Mirage aircraft, purchased during the last days of the Indira Gandhi regime (when Rajiv Gandhi was part of the political decision-making machinery) too provided the necessary sinews during the Kargil war.

 

The merit of choices made therefore need not be called into question. However, as more pay-off scams have surfaced, it needs to be ascertained if the policy of not allowing agents, followed since the eighties, is prudent. Till the late seventies, agents were not only allowed but the existence of an Indian agent of a foreign supplier was also encouraged, as in those days of a foreign exchange crunch the agency commission of the Indian entity was deducted from the deal amount and paid by cheque in Rupees...Read More 

BAD & UGLY

COVER STORY

defence wheeler-dealers

 

BAD & UGLY

They have what it takes to make the graphs in the Indian arms trade go up or down. This is a peep into the world of the Ravi Rishis, Win Chadhas, Nandas, Chandraswamis, Choudhries and Saxenas who officially don’t exist or do anything but who still determine the way the water will flow or the dollars roll in every arms deal that the country enters into. These middlemen and agents are the people who drive India’s arms deals. Here’s how:

Abhishek Verma & Anca Neascu

The uncrowned King and Queen!

Abhishek Verma, and his Romanian wife, Anca Neascu, are a jodi (couple) that is made for each other. He is a typical big, bad guy, a conman accused of the gravest crimes from leaking India’s defence secrets – he was the prime accused in the 2006 Navy war room leak case to manipulating the defence and trade policy, money laundering, forgery and tax evasion, to hobnobbing with notorious arms and drug dealers. She is a divorcee and mother of a five-year-old girl, who married Abhishek in New Delhi just four days before his arrest, and has since stood by him through the thick and thin...Read More 

MERCHANTS OF DESTRUCTION

COVER STORY

defence lords of war

 

 

Merchants of destruction

The global arms trade has had its share of warlords, middlemen, go-getters, path-finders, fixers and agents. They have insight into the needs of both buyer and seller, the infrastructure and logistics to procure and ensure timely delivery as well as the financial backing to procure and sell. Here are some of the greatest deal crackers of all times

 

Dale Stoffel

Tech specialist

Dale Stoffel, formerly a technician in US National Guards with expertise in advanced radar, electronic warfare, and electronic intelligence, left the service to join some defence and intelligence contractors. His new job was to buy missiles and other weapons produced in the former Communist bloc countries for Pentagon and US intelligence agencies who wanted to analyse them. Charmed by the lifestyle that people associated with the arms trade were living, Stoffel then decided to venture out on his own. He made his name by procuring a $40-million order from the Iraqi Ministry of Defence to refurbish Soviet-era T-55 tanks and artillery. It was, however, a short-lived success; his bullet-ridden body landed up in a Baghdad morgue after he was gunned down on his way into Baghdad along with Joseph Wemple, 49, his friend and colleague.

 

Viktor Bout

High flier

Hailed as Russia’s most famous arms dealer, the world’s most recognisable gunrunner and the Russian version of Osama bin Laden, Viktor Bout reportedly has a reputation as large as the money he has made through the arms trade. He is learnt to have made a cool $50 million in profit by selling arms to al-Qaeda and Taliban in the late 1990s, delivered weapons in Afghanistan and helped arm both sides in Angola's civil war besides selling weapons to governments in Central Africa, Congo, Sudan and Libya. He also helped the French government ferry equipment after the genocide in Rwanda. A former Soviet military intelligence officer, Viktor had a flair for flying and it was this that helped him set up a fleet of around 60 aircraft, mostly military planes lying unused on Russian airfields, to help run his defence operations.  Bout, the businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals supported former Liberian President Charles Taylor's regime to destabilise Sierra Leone.

 

Monzer Al Kassar

Embargo buster

A wealthy Syrian, Monzer Al Kassar is one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers, who the United Nations say is an ‘international embargo buster’. On one side, he owns an import-export company that conducts legitimate business while on the other, he is known as a notorious...Read More

 

Top 10 who profit from war!

COVER STORY

defence war factories

 

Top 10 who profit from war!

They say the arms industry never changes its leaders who control the demand and supply, dominate the world’s weapons market and its bulk profits. Their interest is to keep wars going. Corruption, bribery, espionage, forgery, fudging of records, fraud, blackmail, drugs and prostitutes — they consider nothing as unethical or immoral in their business. Wars come at a price… each bullet, each rocket costs. Wonder why, the top arms companies are in the US or Western Europe?

 

The US arms giant and manufacturer of F-16, F/A-22 fighter jets, spy planes Hellfire, Javelin missiles and Patriot missiles, which cost $91 million per missile, is the world’s #1 military contractor as well as the world’s largest arms exporter getting $105 from each taxpayer and $228 from each household in the US. In 2001 the company was awarded a $200 billion deal – the world’s largest weapons contract ever – to build the Joint Strike Fighter, a ‘next-generation’ combat jet that would eventually replace the aircraft used by the US Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. The SEC is investigating insider trading and falsifying of accounts.

 

This British aerospace and defence contractor sells around $32.9 billion of arms and is the largest military contractor in Europe. The BAE range of aircraft, defence electronics, vehicles, naval vessels and small arms include M2/M3 Bradley fighting vehicle, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Type 45 destroyer and Astute-class nuclear submarines. BAE reportedly paid bribes through a network of middlemen, Caribbean and Swiss bank accounts to win contracts across the world for fighter planes. It is now paying $450m in fines after pleading guilty of false statements and accounting practices in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania. BAE chairman Dick Olver admitted commission payments to a marketing adviser for radars sold to an African country in 1999. Another investigation into bribery in the Al-Yamamah deal was reportedly dropped at the behest of Tony Blair on the ground that it might upset relations with the Arab kingdom and threaten national security. The Saudi leaders were threatening to stop intelligence cooperation on terrorism. BAE Systems was fined $450 million for corruption in Europe and Middle East. BAE even held talks with Libya while the arms embargo was still in place. BAE Systems has faced many investigations and was fined $400 million for attempting to defraud the US and paid £30 million to UK for accounting ‘mistakes’ – setting up shell companies to facilitate bribes and bag deals. A three-year old JV between BAE and Mahindra ended in a divorce recently. BAE had invested $5.83 million in the $21.5-million JV to get 26 per cent equity in Mahindra Defense Systems – the maximum permissible in India. With its headquarters in Delhi and manufacturing facilities in Faridabad, Mahindra Defense Systems was making specialised military vehicles and developing a mine-protected vehicle for the Indian Army...Read More

 

WHO’S AFRAID OF ‘VINOD RAI’?

GOVERNANCE

cag m g devasahayam

 

Who’s afraid of ‘Vinod Rai’?

Vinod Rai and Digvijay Singh have raised and responded contrastingly to two very critical issues directly related to democracy and democratic accountability

 

In the mid-sixties, there was a popular play titled ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf’?’, a parody of the song ‘Who’s Afraid of Big Bad Wolf?’ from Walt Disney’s The Three Little Pigs. The story revolves around two couples trying to suppress certain truths, which to their consternation manage to come out leading to thunder and fury. In her writing, Virginia Woolf attempted to reveal the truth. When the couples sing the song together, they make a mockery of their own fear of the truth and attempt to project a false image.

 

The song is a witty joke, but it also represents the very real, though also very petty, fear so common in intellectual circles.

 

Do we see a parallel in this with Vinod Rai, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and the present scenario? Indeed, we should. More than the CAG’s horrid exposure of humongous scams – Commonwealth Games, 2G Spectrum, Coalgate, to mention a few – it is what Vinod Rai said in a speech on ‘Social Obligation of Public Auditors’ at Harvard Kennedy School the other day that saw the ruling ‘intellectual’ cabal going to town mocking him!...Read More

All airs about nothing

GOVERNANCE

prasar bharati

 

All airs about nothing

Formation of committees is the only activity done since Jawahar Sircar took over as CEO of Prasar Bharati. And amidst all this activity there is no plan in sight to revive the organisation.

 

by Arvind Tiwari

 

It has been one year since Jawahar Sircar became the CEO of Prasar Bharati, time enough to make one’s presence felt. But the only thing that seems to have been done in this period is formation and dissolution of a number of committees and sub-committees. This was revealed in response to a RTI plea on the working of the Prasar Bharati in the last one year.

 

Sircar seems to have smartly diverted organisational inadequacies to a horde of committees and now sees his future secured! These committees have lofty titles, including Lokvani Committee, Strategy and Vision Committee, Channel & Content Review Committee, Audit & Systems Committee, Technologies & Options Committee for Archives, etc. But none seems to doing anything concrete. All they seem to be ‘achieving’ is wasting hours by drafting ‘minutes’! 

 

These committees comprise of former bureaucrats who do not seem to have grasped the fact that television is medium that works by the minute and thus needs minds who could devise content on the spur of the moment.

 

During Prime Minister V P Singh’s tenure, professionals in Prasar Bharati organised a mile-long protest in form of a human chain near the PM’s residence demanding ‘functional autonomy’. He did give that in 1990 but autonomy got trapped in the superfluity of committees that today have become the order of the day. The result:  Prasar Bharati is facing low public estimation and viewers and advertisers are deserting it...Read More 

Picking pockets

GOVERNANCE

unclaimed funds insurance

 

Picking pockets

Both life and non-life insurance companies are sitting on huge funds
belonging to the investor or policy holder

 

by Dr G S Sood

 

Mis-selling of products is the single most important reason that is hurting the growth of insurance industry in India.”. This statement by Finance Minister P Chidambaram only reflects the deep malaise that is plaguing the financial services industry in general and insurance sector in particular. There is utter lack of transparency and deliberate denial of information to consumers and investors. But for the recent study published by Mint, no one knew the amount investors in the insurance sector have been duped of. As per the study, the sector collected Rs 3.7 trillion from the sale of fresh regular premium policies in the last seven years wherein the investors lost Rs 1.56 trillion.

 

The question that needs to be asked is how do insurers move the lapsed money and other such monies belonging to the investors to their profit and loss account when the same rightfully belongs to the policyholders. The Society for Consumers’ & Investors’ Protection (SCIP) was flooded with such questions and requests relating to unclaimed money running into thousands of crores lying with various public and private insurance companies for some reason or the other. These reasons primarily comprise the failure of insurance companies to search, find and make payment of the said amount to legally entitled claimants and beneficiaries...Read More

The quiet innovator

MANDARIN MATTERS

the 1990s prabhakar menon

 

The quiet innovator

Foreign policy under PV Narasimha Rao reflected the growing realisation
in India of its own capabilities or lack of them

 

India’s foreign policy formulation and practice in the late 1980s/early 1990s was more attuned to domestic and external realities, and obliged the country to temper its idealist-visionary view of international relations into something more down-to-earth. One astute practitioner of the down-to-earth - ‘pragmatic’, as some termed it- foreign policy mentioned above was Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. He had earlier served as Indira Gandhi’s minister for external affairs, a job for which he had no proven background, but which Mrs Gandhi seemed to have entrusted to him with uncanny prescience. Rao was able to bring to his subsequent prime ministership an earnest, cogitative and analytical view of India’s place in world affairs; moreover a place that did not ignore India’s identity as a struggling developing nation which nonetheless possessed intrinsic, unique and potential worth for the extant world order.

 

He was the first Indian prime minister to give some coherence to what the home media called his ‘Look East’ policy, that is, India’s renewed interest in strengthening ties with South-East Asian countries. Abandoning the hitherto episodic nature of India’s contacts with these countries, he worked on defining the increasing political, strategic, economic and cultural convergences between India and the region; and on the timeliness of cooperation in various fields for an evolving Asian architecture that, in jettisoning the ramshackle, often mutually adversarial, pattern of previous decades – aggravated by the hostile camps into which the Cold War and the Vietnam conflict had split the regional solidarity...Read More

Storm in the cesspool

MY CORNER

criminal justice amitabh thakur

 

Storm in the cesspool

The Delhi rape case has opened a Pandora’s Box and thankfully, one of the most hotly debated topics today is improvement in the criminal justice system

 

The recent Delhi rape case can certainly be regarded as a watershed event in the history of Indian sensibility towards crime and criminals. As a citizen of this nation, most of us had got used to our daily bouts of crimes of different kinds, but the public reaction, ably and justifiably fuelled by media, ensured the coming together of people from their comfortable cocoons and raising their voices against crime, criminals and societal disorders.

 

It is no wonder that the report by a judicial committee came out much before the stipulated period. It is again a heartening feature that almost immediately after the submission of the Verma Commission Report, an ordinance was passed keeping in view its major recommendations...Read More

Pain multiplies into suffering

PERSPECTIVE

life sadhguru

 

Pain multiplies into suffering

 

Why is life so full of pain? Why do human beings suffer? These are recurrent questions for many. The point is pain is a physical phenomenon; suffering is not. Pain is of the body and is even good for you. Suffering, on the contrary, is something that you create.

 

When I say ‘pain is good’, I am not blessing you with it! Pain is good because you do not have the necessary intelligence to preserve your body in its absence. Suppose there was no pain in the human body, you would have, in the name of fashion, mutilated and destroyed yourself in no time! But now, if you are walking on the street and a bicycle comes along, you stand back – only because you know the consequence of pain. If there were no pain, you wouldn’t budge. So, pain is good. When you truly accept it, there will be just pain, no suffering. There are a number of examples of this.

 

A wonderful instance is the yogi, Sadashiva Brahmendra. He lived in Nerur, near Coimbatore. He was a nirkaya or bodiless yogi. Sadashiva had no sense of the body. Consequently, the question of wearing clothes did not arise. On a certain day, this naked yogi walked into the king’s garden, where the latter was relaxing with his queens. When he saw Sadashiva, the king grew angry. “Who is this man who dares to walk naked before us?”...Read More 

Corruption is in the genes

SILLY POINT

humour mk kaw

 

Corruption is in the genes

indira Gandhi once said famously, “Corruption is a global phenomenon”, as if by being global it ceased to be an anathema. The bhrashtacharis of today speak of corruption being universal, both in respect of time as well as space. Now if corruption has always been there, it would be interesting to analyse whether there are ups and downs in this journey. It is my humble assertion that periods of high economic activity also witness a higher level of corruption.

 

Take the period of Emperor Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya. Kautilya says in his Artha Sastra that bureaucrats are like fish that live in water. The revenue of the State passes through the hands of the bureaucrats in the same way as water passes through the gullet of a fish all the time. Thus, it is but natural that a bureaucrat will imbibe a part of the water, wittingly or unwittingly...Read More 

Finally, Buddha is fighting

STATE SCAN

panchayat polls west Bengal

 

Finally, Buddha is fighting

Just for one-third of the panchayat pie, the Congress and CPI-M

have come to a secret understanding

 

by Diptendra Raychaudhuri

 

Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is back. After a long stupor, the former Chief Minister is again making his presence felt by hurling accusations against the Trinamool Congress party and its government. He has even raised questions, albeit indirectly, about the integrity of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. It is for the first time since the washout of the Left in May 2011 elections that the man, who paid so dearly for his misrule by losing even his own constituency, has amassed courage to launch a counter-offensive.

 

This is the most appropriate moment for the leaderless and radarless flock called the CPI-M. Panchayat elections are due in May and two-thirds of the electorate will ink their opinion in favour of or against the two-year-old government of ‘change’. Obviously, Bhattacharya and his colleagues would try their best to take their tottering ship to the shore. Exactly five years ago, the countdown to the downfall of the Left had started with panchayat elections. Next three years only upped the graph for Mamata Banerjee, culminating in her sweeping victory in the assembly election of 2011. The last two years have been marked by innumerable faux pas by the Mamata-led government. The Left therefore feels that from its old base it would be able to make some sort of comeback to the state politics.

 

Quite strangely though, the once-mighty Left has become modest enough to eye only one-third of the seats at the gram panchayet level, and seeks taking control of three to four districts at the zilla parishad level. If they can do it, the Lok Sabha election 2014 would become a goldmine for it as even 14 seats out of 42 from the State would be rejuvenating. To make that happen, the tally in the panchayat elections has to be one-third of the gram-level seats...Read More 

Budget has come & gone

STOCK DOCTOR

dr gs sood

 

Budget has come & gone

 

the Union Budget has become a non-event for some time now and those analysing and predicting what lies ahead for the market needs to do so in the broader policy framework that is being outlined in the months preceding the Budget. However, the Budget still retains its importance as the benchmark for future policy directions and as the guide to address issues like the current account and fiscal deficits and overall growth.

 

Since the stock market is a barometer of the economy, the immediate reaction of the market indicates that this year’s budget does not inspire any big positives. Given the Finance Minister’s mool mantra of higher growth leading to inclusive and sustainable development that seeks to limit the fiscal deficit to 5.3 per cent of the GDP for fiscal 2012-13 and to 4.8 per cent for Fiscal 2013-14, the issue on hand is how will the Government do this...Read More 

Wounds of an exodus

Book REVIEW

kashmir memoir

 

Wounds of an exodus

 

Talking about his book Palimpsest, the US literary great Gore Vidal made the interesting observation that ‘a memoir is how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked’. Judged by this definition, Rahul Pandita’s Our Moon Has Blood Clots is both a memoir and an autobiography– for it is quite clearly how Pandita has remembered, and continues to remember, his own life even as the co-terminous historical bits that provide the overall tapestry appear to be well-researched.

 

Its sub-title ‘The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits’ is an apt caption for the overall concern that the book shares and which is narrated through the memory of a young boy cut suddenly from his moorings and cast adrift. This memory grows and evolves into a memory of adulthood with its attendant heartbreaks and heartaches, broken dreams and hopes, always in one exile after another, of overlapping lives and memories of many other people...Read More