UPA's spurious budgets

The Union Budget 2011-12 is a spurious statement. The titanic revenue foregone in the consecutive budgets of the UPA since 2005-06, as brought out by S Gurumurthy, is a deliberate fraud committed on the nation. As a result of the skewed budgets of the Manmohan Singh regime, the nation's economy is on the verge of disaster, waiting to delcare bankruptcy one day or another. The costs of healthcare, education and housing are becoming unbearable for the people, but the latest budget doesn't offer succor to the common man. Though the requisite good has not been done to the primary sector, we should thank the elections that come every five years that no proposal has been made in the budget that would decimate the farm sector unlike the UPA's notorious anti-agriculture policies. Instead of assuring the aam admi in these tempestuous times of food inflation and scams, the PM has patted Pranab and celebrated that the budget will pave way to insurance and banking reforms.

By Viswanath V
Published: The New Indian Express

Hillary's awful concerns

The WikiLeaks cable revealing Hillary Clinton's questions on Pranab's business relations, his views on Manmohan's economic agenda and 'who he seeks to help through his policies', is awful. That Ms. Clinton, an important figure in the US administration, is concerned about such matters is revelatory. She even wants to know why P Chidambaram or Montek Singh Ahluwalia was not chosen as the Finance Minister in her mail to the Indian Embassy in New Delhi. Only a naive person would now not see the UPA's policy-making establishment (read Dr. Singh and Ahluwalia) as having close links with America. It is clear from the cable that Washington is concerned about the penetration into Indian markets of US corporates - be it through more FDI, multi-brand retail or SEZs. Interestingly, the same are on the agenda of the PM-Deputy duo.

Not mere gossip

Some readers have expressed the view (Letters, March 19) that the diplomatic cables could be just ordinary gossip. The powers-that-be have stubbornly rubbished the WikiLeaks, particularly the cash-for-votes exposé, saying the cables are speculative, unverifiable, etc. Could a diplomat have imagined an MP telling him that a government was trying to buy MPs to save it during a crucial trust vote? Would a diplomat have scripted a concocted story and incorporated the names of MPs in his despatch to his bosses?

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Modi, Nitish's inadequate contributions

Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar did not deserve plaudits from a person like Anna Hazare. Nobody disputes that their economics has been pro-poor, but aside from the fact that the two celebrated Chief Ministers are personally clean and have shown the will to keep the administration corruption-free, they have not done much. Many candidates with criminal cases pending against them were given the ticket by Mr. Modi. Mr. Kumar's party too has its share of tainted legislators.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Raja's criminal genius

Karunanidhi, expectedly, says that A. Raja is behind bars for helping the poor. But the Congress has gone a step ahead. Kapil Sibal and Montek Singh have argued that the undervaluation of 2G spectrum resulted in low call charges and empowered the aam aadmi! Fork-tongued that the grand old party is, it has choreographed a whitewash of the scam, even while criticising the NDA’s telecom ministers for putting an “improper” policy in place (implying that the bjp’s Mahajan-Shourie duo apparently bequeathed a ‘faulty’ policy which Raja’s criminal genius turned into a socialist boon) and making a virtue of Raja’s ouster.

By Viswanath V
Published: Outlook

Begal and India

They say Bengal is poverty-stricken and curse the comrades’ rule. But why don’t they talk about Manmohan’s India where poverty and hunger are rising? How does the irony of dismal agricultural growth in the India of neo-liberals escape their attention? Those celebrating the ouster of the Communists in Bengal are casually blind to the murder of the egalitarian dream; the rape of fertile lands through sezs; the murder of livelihoods and rape of indigenous systems; and the murder of, to quote Vandana Shiva, food democracy across India. Give Manmohan a free hand; he won’t take 34 long years to destroy India.

By Viswanath V
Published: Outlook

Azad's killers

The sudden and violent death of Maoist ideologue Azad, especially when he was talking peace, is shocking. P. Chidambaram apparently gave Swami Agnivesh a cold shoulder when he went to meet him to demand a probe into Azad’s killing by the AP police. The media must expose the Congress’s double game forthwith. On the one hand, its leaders in the upa establishment are unwilling for a judicial probe into the ‘encounter’; on the other, they are patting Mamata’s back for sympathising with the deceased Maoist. Did the home minister, caught up in his Op Green Hunt, have the peace-minded Azad—who was well-regarded even beyond Maoist circles—‘taken out’ lest he lose his case for a ruthless attack on the Maoists, who he and the media in cahoots with the capitalist class have lustily portrayed as India’s enemies?

By Viswanath V
Published: Outlook

Patrick French's glib statement

French states rather glibly that “several hundred million people have been taken out of extreme poverty” since economic liberalisation started. The fact is that over 300 million have actually been added to the bpl list in the reform years. The Indian Statistical Institute, in a report in 2009, said that rural poverty has increased by 20 per cent since 2004.

By Viswanath V
Published: Outlook

Terror and US-Pak nexus

To believe that the death of Osama is the end of terror is to be naive. As columnist S. Gurumurthy once wrote, terror can’t be ended as long as the US, a trader in terror, is in alliance with Pakistan, a perpetrator of terror.

By Viswanath V
Published: Outlook

Left's loss

Left's loss

The Left started off impressively by kicking off a social engineering agenda and heralding revolutionary land reform which helped entrench it in rural Bengal. Operation Barga, a three-tier panchayat system aimed at decentralising democracy, a three-tier health service system and the food-for-work scheme were its flagship programmes. Several innovative social sector schemes won it the support of the poor. The success of the Left government in decelerating rural poverty, which was 73 per cent in 1973-74, was unparalleled.

However, its radical agenda was handicapped by several factors in the last two decades. For example, fragmented land holdings, which helped decelerate poverty, became a disadvantage in the liberalisation era with the increasing cost of production, thanks to the Centre's policies. The small and marginal farmers also bore the brunt of a credit squeeze, because banks did not give them loans.

Thus, the biggest achievement of the Left — land reform — stopped yielding dividends to the poor. Besides, the Left's own blunders in not taking up irrigation projects, perpetuating contractor raj and its failure to strengthen public sector units affected the State's agricultural and industrial growth.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Hazare's movement

Had Anna Hazare and his cohorts not upped the ante, a toothless ombudsman Bill is all we would have got. Mr. Hazare's movement is worthy thus in building up the public's moral momentum around the idea. Only after the promulgation of a Bill will we know how effectively it is endowed to deal with the jeopardy of corruption in high places.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Conflict in the world

All conflict in this world can be terminated only when human nature is transformed. This is not possible until all nations engage in a dialogue at the cultural, spiritual and political levels. Solutions to our problems will be in vain unless all men are taught the spirit of service and love.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Parading an impossibility

The HT claim that its controversial report did not say anywhere that perfectly healthy girls were being surgically converted into boys is unacceptable. The headline and the use of phrases such as ‘Son Fetish' and ‘Gender Bender,' not to mention the accompanying graphic, are explicitly misleading. More worrisome is the newspaper's claim that the media are not medical experts.

The HT should have been more careful with facts and aware of medical possibilities before setting out with the lofty intent of creating “public debate about the need for monitoring or legislation.” An impossibility has been paraded.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

What does Rahul mean?

Although it may be difficult to stop every single terrorist attack, should we not aim for the complete elimination of terrorism from our land? Is Rahul Gandhi suggesting that the government cannot guarantee citizens' safety? Our metros are under perpetual threat round the year. It is possible to protect innocent citizens from terrorists of all hues, if only our leaders learn to act with an iron fist against convicted terrorists. The government should curb the mushrooming of domestic outfits like the Indian Mujahideen. Above all, it must strengthen the intelligence, security and police system.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Kadapa bypolls

Going by the huge amounts splurged by candidates and the electoral offences being committed by the three parties in the fray, the byelections are the shame of Andhra Pradesh. Jaganmohan Reddy of the YSR Congress has no other prop to lean on other than the charisma of his father, the late Rajasekhara Reddy. The Congress strategy has been to project YSR as corrupt and, at the same time, claim to be the true inheritor of his legacy to win votes on his home turf in Kadapa. Given the tricks employed by the contestants, the byelections are sowing the seeds for a culture of abusive use of money and muscle power in order to overwhelm the rivals.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Ramdev's fast

Baba Ramdev's mission to stir the government into action to bring back the black money spirited away abroad is admirable. However, instead of putting forward quixotic demands like “replacing the British-inherited system of governance, administration, taxation, education, law and order with a swadeshi alternative”, he would do well to raise public awareness on India-U.S. deals like Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, rampant nuclearisation, anti-farmer policies, decimation of indigenous medicinal systems, etc., which are the real dangers confronting us.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

Cash-for-votes

I felt ashamed on reading the report on cash for votes (March 16). The cable sent to the U.S. State Department by Frederick J. Kaplan on the electoral offences brazenly indulged in by cash-rich political parties does not come as a surprise to many though.

Parties across the political spectrum, especially in south India, are known to distribute currency and liquor to voters in the weeks during the run-up to elections. In Andhra Pradesh, too, the tradition has been kept alive by the Congress and the TDP. I have decided not to vote for a party that follows this unacceptable practice.

By Viswanath V
Published: The Hindu

The cash-for-votes incident at the time of confidence vote in 2008 should be seen as a scam and it tarnishes the image of the UPA government further. WikiLeaks states that "Manmohan Singh and others tried to work on Akali Dal (8 votes) through financier Sant Chatwal and others." It was a begrime incident that would make the UPA-I's existence from July 2008 to till it lasted immoral. When some MPs displayed wads of currency notes in the Parliament, the government could get away by projecting it as a machination of the BJP and LK Advani to unseat the UPA and describing it as a sensational act. It turns out that the MPs served the nation by denuding the clandestine deals behind the doors before the nation. Will the Congress now answer what was the source of the money with which the support of some MPs was bought? Can the Congress prove its transparency today?

By Viswanath V,
Published: The New Indian Express

Congress' Claim to YSR's legacy

The Congress is claiming that it is the truest legatee of YSR in the hope of gaining political mileage over Jagan in Kadapa. Since many of its leaders have called YSR a corrupt person, it seems the party has a two-pronged approach. Its strategy is to besmirch the late CM in bad light generally, but play his tune to win the votes in the name of the departed leader on his home turf. In any case, in his interview to Express, Kiran Reddy has said that YSR's legacy can't be separated from the Congress. So, can we conclude that the Congress is corrupt like YSR was?

By Viswanath V
Published: The New Indian Express

'Murder and Rape' in Manmohan's India

Rahul has seen the enemy. And it looks like the UPA. The 'murder and rape' remark he made with reference to the administrative high-handedness in UP, metaphorically describes the general situation in Manmohan Singh's India. He has invited rebuke for speaking a literal falsehood, but his words carry relevance to the murder of the egalitarian dream and rape of fertile lands through SEZs; the murder of livelihoods and rape of indigenous systems; and the murder of, to quote Dr. Vandana Shiva of Navdanya Trust, "food democracy".

By Viswanath V
Published: The New Indian Express

Poverty in Super Power India

The World Bank has noted India's potential to be a super power by 2025. Much as it is heartening to hear, one expresses scepticism about how it will improve the ordinary lives. For the high churches dictating financial policy and their neo-liberal disciples in India, the magnitude of wealth is the final indicator of prosperity, not its equitable distribution. Given such policy-makers, it is likely that the combined net worth of a few billionaires will exceed the GDP of several States in 2025. I was in high school when AB Vajpayee spoke of creating a hunger-free India. How long is it going to be a pipe dream?

By Viswanath V

Black Money Issue to the Fore

With Hazare vowing his support for Ramdev , the game plan of the Congress to drive a rift in the civil society camp has gone awry. Ramdev's fast is likely to have a remarkable effect in the country because of the credibility that he carries. A clutch of politicians and a section of the media will try to paint the agitation in saffron. Nevertheless, like the way Anna successfully built a public momemtum around the idea of Lokpal some weeks ago, the yoga exponent too will bring the issue of black money to the fore equally well.

By Viswanath V

Undeclared Emergency

The ruthless eviction of Baba Ramdev and the brutal police assault on his followers has evoked strong political indignation with some recalling the Emergency. The comparison reminds me of a recent Arundhati Roy speech where she spoke of an undeclared emergency. The poor are being looted across the country and human rights violations are rampant. The nation is in the grip of corporate thugs and their servants who are our parliamentarians. To expect dharma or black money back from a praetorian political establishment is like living in fool's paradise.

By Viswanath V