I AND MY WORDS

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried.   - Winston Churchill The world, or at least its youth, the torchbearers of our society, culture and democracy, are really angry. They are angry about lack of jobs. They are angry at inflation and price rises. Go to the European countries fighting recession, and there is a strike a day targeting government betrayers and vested interests (namely the financial world) for leaving them high and dry on every front, ruining their prospects for a better tomorrow. China is worried about the repercussions of the inability to absorb millions of fresh graduates in the next few years amid suicides over pathetic salaries for making iPhones. Brazilians were angry over increased bus fares in the light of abysmal low wages. They are angry about the state of law and order within their countries. Brazil, India and even Nepal have seen massive protests where law and order has been a major topic

Yesterday, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the municipal body of Bengaluru, uploaded a document that was submitted by an expert committee to the Honourable Karnataka High Court on the issue of garbage (mis)management in the city. A good look at the document shows all that is wrong with the manner in which local governance takes place in India. It is ironic that at the very beginning of this document the committee notes that the garbage disposal issue has in recent times become an issue of grave concern. What it conveniently ignores (though it is not their mandate) that while this issue was growing in menacing proportions, the councillors of BBMP, cutting across party lines, were busy fighting with Vijay Mallya, Anil Kumble, Karnataka Cricket Association (KCA) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for free passes for IPL matches taking place in Bengaluru. Even as you scan across the document, you see how confused and muddled the issue is, with the exp

Gujarat elections are due soon. While the Indian media has never behaved so excitedly even about the Uttar Pradesh elections (because of you know who), it is silly to be stuck around the cult of Narendra Modi and not pay attention to what the real gist of this election is.This election is truly important. While the media keeps talking about this being the last chance to contain Modi within Gujarat, this election is even more important than Modi's ambitions and Congress' nervousness. Finally there is an election that talks issues and has led people on either side of the pole named Narendra Modi to discuss threadbare the economic surge of Gujarat. I will not get into numbers and statistics, but the fact remains that while there has been polarization in Gujarat and major environmental degradation (which is now being given attention), Gujarat was written off in the eighties and nineties due to the incessant labour unrest and the consequent flight of capital and business. With an

For all the brouhaha that we have been witnessing from the politicians in outshining each other in their indulgence in corrupt, unethical practices, an important issue keeps coming back to the center of the discussion table. This issue is the issue of how Corporate India has been equally complicit in promoting the quid pro quo way of doing things in India. I remember an interview of Ratan Tata that took place at the time when crisis of confidence in journalism ethics began to surface. The Radia (or is it Radiia?) tapes that had 'leaked' had pointed the complicity of a few Kashmir expert news editors as well as some medium term analysts (I will not take names) among many others. Ratan Tata had joked that work starts after six in the evening in India because Dubai is two and a half hours behind us. This was followed by an interview of K P Singh, owner of DLF, who discretely admitted to having bribed his way to 'success' (or whatever you may call it) and was in fact st

Our media channels have been living in a delusion all this while. They love to deny certain facts (though it is difficult to say why). Manmohan Singh, a doctor in economics, is always looked up to as someone who has been the original reforms man, and who can be the only one who can promise reform. However, there is more to the story than what the eye can see. Most people tend to forget that Manmohan Singh was the governor of the Reserve Bank of India during the Prime Ministership of Rajiv Gandhi, where a certain Pranab Mukherjee was the finance minister. Prior to that, he was in the IMF and was also on the Planning Commission.  The crisis of 1991 was precipitated by decision making during that decade (with the Left and Right doing no good either). It was a group of people, including P V Narsimha Rao, Dr. Subramaniam Swamy and N Govindarajan, all of whom were given Cabinet Minister level ranks by Rao, the unsung hero of India, who steered the economy around from a position of nationa

So much coal wash slurry has flown into the Yamuna because of the serious washing of dirty coal in public by the premier Ruling party and the principal Opposition party that the whole debate is becoming confusing to follow. Here is a lowdown on what is the whole matter all about. There was allocation of mines between 2006 and 2009 by the UPA government after discussing the matter with various state governments. So what? One may ask. Well the devil, as they always say, is in the fineprint of the whole allocation process. There was briefly talk of allotting mining leases based on auction prices. Eventually the government abandoned in the 'face of stiff resistance of the states'. It is an excuse of convenience, because as quite a few former CAGs have pointed out (and which I also pointed out thanks to their observation) that Seventh Schedule under Article 246 of the Indian Constitution defines the subjects on which Centre and State governments can legislate, and it clearly sp

Much sewage has flown in the channels of the Yamuna, and several hours have been wasted trying to discredit Anna Hazare and his 'team' (though they do not have a lot to their credit except for their work). News has now said that these guys will enter politics. In my opinion they already were in politics, though their contest in the electoral foray is certainly welcome. It makes sense that they contest. In this age of live Lok Sabha telecasts, it would make sense for them to come into the Parliament and expose the corrupt deeds of the people who are disconnected from the ground reality. Till now, they had just an urban audience; they can now get even the rural audience's attention. Moreover, all they need to win elections is the anti-corruption agenda. The urban voters are angry and need the kind of alternative that this group can provide.In this day of coalition governments, even a handful of seats can make a huge impact. My personal assessment is that IAC can win about 20

Seeing the amount of hot air over the various issues of chalta hai attitude that afflict this country, I wonder why people think this is appalling. Anyone who has travelled across the country would tell you horror stories of the terrible infrastructure (or mostly lack of it) in this country across a range of public services that would otherwise be considered a public right in developed nations (I do not count the United States in this). Lack of beds in hospitals, horrifying mental asylums. incessantly long queues at hospitals, strips of roads in potholes (and not the other way round), open manholes and deep flowing drains. no remediation of the annual breakouts of dengue, malaria and chikungunya across the country during monsoons - you name the problem, you find its evidence in abundance across the country. Nobody however seems to be trying to diagnose the disease. This country has a law that can declare strikes of people working in 'essential services' illegal. There are al

Reading the comments given by the interlocutors on how to deal with the issue of Jammu and Kashmir (sometimes it feels like a cottage industry enterprise of a handful of people), I am forced to question the 'breakthrough' Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari really achieved by churning out lassi from the yakhni (yoghurt) that was all over in the first place. Many mistakes have been committed, but the biggest mistake is being committed right now by the Indian media by not discussing the report of the interlocutors threadbare. Keeping the state united in my opinion is not an option now. The regions of Ladakh and Jammu are financially supporting the Kashmir valley, but there is a lot of anger and hatred in these areas for the Kashmiri separatist sentiment, which goes beyond the religious divide. Go to places like Bhadervah in Doda, and you realize just how fed up the Muslims there are of the incessant calls for bandh issued by the Hurriyat, and the unrelenting hatred

No, I am not merely recalling Bill Clinton's unofficial slogan for his presidential re-election bid of 1996. This is what I want to tell a host of mandarins (elected and unelected ones, ruling and opposing ones) sitting in South and North Block who have decided to bury their heads like ostriches into the sand. If I do not see the hunter, he is not there. Similarly, they can wish all that they want to, but any complaints about the more than 7 rupee hike in petrol prices is just a signal of the financial mess that we have created for ourselves right now, thanks to myopic work done by the ruling dispensation. Add to that the oversell of Manmohan Singh, Kaushik Basu and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. three 'progressive' economists who just seem to be warming chairs, and outsiders fail to understand where we went so horribly wrong. If one wants to put the economy on track, we need economic reforms. That does not stand only for FDI in retail (which by the way does NOT need

A lot of verbal diarrhea has flown into the sewers of the press since India voted for a watered down, non binding resolution over human rights abuses that was passed by the UN Human Rights Council. All of it can pretty much be described as paranoia, and we are certainly stuck in the foreign policy mess that we got as a legacy from Jawaharlal Nehru and his ideals of Non-Alignment as rightly pointed out by Sadanand Dhume . Again and again the China-Pakistan bogey has been raised. But all that is frankly nonsense if you were to ask me. Here's my counter to reasons due to which this move is being counted as a foreign policy failure in major sections of the Indian media. India has pushed away its most trusted ally Not true! Its a fallacy to think that any of the South Asian countries except Bhutan are trusted allies. One need not forget the double game that Ranjana Premadasa and TS Jeyawardene kept playing with our mandarins and leaders over the Tamil issue for decades, because of whi