Babu of delhi Posted: 27 Jul 2013 05:46 AM PDT Keep IAS out keep-IAS-outTelecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chief Rahul Khullar has suggested that his successor should preferably be from outside the IAS fold. The suggestion naturally raised eyebrows, as it was made publicly. More than reviving the old specialist versus generalist debate, observers were trying to read the tea leaves for any deeper significance in Khullar’s remarks. Like Khullar himself, former chairmen of TRAI including Pradeep Baijal, Nripendra Misra and J.S. Sarna have all had an IAS background and previous experience as Telecom Secretary before being appointed to the regulatory body. Besides the IAS, the Indian Revenue Service and Indian Telecom Service too also supplied a steady stream of officers to TRAI. But perhaps Khullar really has a genuine non-IAS candidate in mind when he aired his view. Babu’s revenge The taxman is feared by everyone, apparently even by the heaven born! Madhya Pradesh IAS officer Rajesh Rajora, for one, recently discovered the perils of annoying an income tax officer at some considerable cost. In 2008, Rajora, who was Home Secretary and also in charge of allocating Government houses to Central Government officials, apparently ignored a request from S.S. Rana, Director General of Income Tax for a sarkari bungalow. Rana, sources say, then got a bungalow allotted by approaching the Chief Minister directly. But Rana allegedly also ordered an income tax raid on Rajora, who was suspended for nearly 33 months. However, the State High Court has now come to Rajora’s rescue and vindicated his stance that the IT raid conducted at his premises was for not allotting a bungalow to the IT official. The Bench stated that the raid had no logical reasoning and was conducted without sufficient ground. That must have sounded like music to the aggrieved babu’s ears. Cop versus cop cop-versus-copA senior IPS officer in Bihar who was suspended recently on an alleged extortion charge has now claimed that he has become victimised by his superiors. Former Deputy Inspector General Alok Kumar, a 1997 batch IPS officer of the Jammu amd Kashmir cadre, has registered a case against Bihar police chief Abhayanand and two Inspector-Generals Amit Kumar and Praveen Vashistha for allegedly using casteist remarks against him during the course of the investigation. By registering a case against his peers and superior, the suspended officer created a stir in Patna’s bureaucratic circles. Unfortunately, the FIR filed by Alok Kumar has now been rejected, and he faces a case for “forcibly trying to file a case”. Alok Kumar, however, is determined to carry on his fight. Though Director General of Police Abhayanand has not reacted to the suspended DIG’s accusation, it is clear that the case will not be resolved any time soon, given that it now involves the State judiciary. The post Babu of delhi appeared first on Chauthi Duniya [English Edition]. Parliament is a chimera, at best a smokescreen The Harsh Realities of India Posted: 27 Jul 2013 05:43 AM PDT he immense potential of the country and its people has been wasted — a colossal crime against the people and indeed against humanity, which has prevented half a billion people from clawing their way out of poverty…The fact is that India is falling further and further behind the rest of the world. Half the world’s poor, half the world’s blind, half the world’s sick and malnourished, are in India.… Indian Parliament is merely ornamental, and a playground for the children of political bigwigs… Parliament is merely a place to park the hereditary scions of the ruling castes… 100 per cent of the Congress party’s members below the age of 35 were sons or daughters of some senior party person… the-harsh-realities-of-indiIndians live in a state of illusion: they believe there is progress, there is a democracy, and that the State is a benign mai-baapnanny State. It turns out that they are wrong on all counts, but apparently this political and economic theatre is quite enough as anodyne for the long-suffering ordinary Indian. I was impelled to write this after reading ‘The Great Indian Rupee Trick’ by Krishnara at and a piece in The Economist magazine of June 13, 2011 (Big Mac index: Value Meal). Although the two disagree — the former suggests the rupee has a long way left to fall, while the latter suggests that the rupee is the most undervalued currency around right now — it is a tribute to the fecklessness of the Indian Government that the rupee has tumbled so far so fast (from around $1=Rs 45 in 2011 to $1=Rs 61 now, some 30 per cent). I also happened to leaf through an old issue of ‘National Geographic’ from 1988 with a story on Kerala, and it mentioned that $1=Rs 12 at that time. Thus, the rupee has, in about 25 years, lost 80 per cent of its value, and quite a bit of that in the last few years (mostly coinciding with UPA 2). In simple terms, the fall of the Indian rupee reflects the lack of competitiveness of the Indian economy. The dramatic increase in the current account deficit suggests the same thing: that there is little India makes that foreigners want; whereas Indians want to import a lot of things others make. It was blithely predicted by India’s mandarins that the rupee’s fall would lead to a surge in its exports, but on the contrary, India’s exports have actually shrunk by 4.6 per cent year to year. We don’t need to go far to understand why this has happened: it is because of pure economic mismanagement. The immense potential of the country and its people has been wasted — a colossal crime against the people and indeed against humanity, which has prevented half a billion people from clawing their way out of poverty. Why have Indians allowed a clutch of clever political entrepreneurs to do this to them? It must be because Indians are satisfied with delusion (is that why Bollywood is so big?). They are happy with the illusion of progress; they are happy to have the illusion of a democratic republic; they are happy to have the illusion that our wretched are being looked after. In fact none of these is true, but they happily suspend their disbelief. They live in a make-believe world. The fact is that India is falling further and further behind the rest of the world. Half the world’s poor, half the world’s blind, half the world’s sick and malnourished, are inIndia. Things are not getting better; they are getting worse by the day. India is regressing rapidly. Why have Indians allowed a clutch of clever political entrepreneurs to do this to them? It must be because Indians are satisfied with delusion (is that why Bollywood is so big?). They are happy with the illusion of progress; they are happy to have the illusion of a democratic republic; they are happy to have the illusion that our wretched are being looked after. In fact none of these is true, but they happily suspend their disbelief. They live in a make-believe world. Remember how India was compared to China and other developing nations, courtesy Goldman Sachs and the convenient BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) epithet? But have you noticed that these days India is increasingly bracketed with Africa — and sometimes contrasted negatively with sub-Saharan Africa, for instance in malnourishment — as the last reservoir of the world’s miseries? China appears to have decisively trounced India in the race for growth and prosperity. There is, some argue, the effect of democracy, as though there were a democracy penalty. But this is absurd, because India is not a democracy. It is a hereditary feudal monarchy with a large set of court jesters and other hangers-on. Parliament is a chimera, or at best a smokescreen. There are what look like elections, what looks like an assertion of the people’s will. But this is a hugely expensive, elaborate charade like the Potemkin villages of Tsarist Russia. In fact, Parliament is merely a place to park the hereditary scions of the ruling castes. Patrick French’s 2011 research (‘The Princely State of India’, in Outlook magazine, January 17, 2011) showed that 100 per cent of the Congress party’s members below the age of 35 were sons or daughters of some senior party person. Furthermore, Parliament is just a rubber stamp. There is the gigantic Food Security Bill, which will add many a billion dollars to the nation’s budget deficit. It was enacted not after parliamentary debate, but as an ordinance, or executive order. Similarly, a few years ago, the ‘nuclear deal’ with the US was signed by the executive without ever informing Parliament about how much was being given up in national security in return for virtually nothing. Therefore, the Indian Parliament is merely ornamental, and a playground for the children of political bigwigs. But Indians are under the comfortable illusion that they live in a Parliamentary democracy. Yes, that and ten rupees will get them a cup of coffee. Then there is the fantasy that the Indian State is benign. And that it looks after its poorest and worst-off. Which is the alleged reason that the unelected National Advisory Council (a truly motley crew) has rammed through various hare-brained schemes such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Education, and the latest turkey, FSB. And what is the reality with all this spending — which amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars? The Indian State is actually a predatory State, the direct descendant of the colonial construct intended to loot and pillage. In a March 23, 2011, article titled ‘India can’t fumble its ‘food right’ plan’, the ‘Wall Street Journal’ noted that, according to theGlobal Hunger Index, India is in the category of ‘alarming’ along with Haiti, Bangladesh, Sudan, Cambodia and Nepal. This is worse than war-ravaged Afghanistan and Iraq. The only countries were hunger is worse than India are: war-torn Congo, Haitiand Bangladesh. This is how the UPA has helped the common man? Even worse, reporting on a study in the British medical journal Lancet, The Economist pointed out in February 7, 2011 (‘Global Obesity: An expanding world. How men’s waistlines have grown since 1980′) that there are only three countries in the world where people have grown thinner in the recent past (ie. 1980-2008): Afghanistan, Congo and India! That means malnutrition is endemic in India, while much of the rest of the world struggles with obesity. (Note that Congo and Afghanistan are wretched, war-torn States). A more recent update is even more damning. Quoting the Asian Development Bank, ‘The Economist’ of July 6, 2013 (‘Widefare’) points out that of all the welfare states in Asia, India’s is the worst-performing: it has neither depth nor breadth. That is, neither is the alleged welfare net reaching a large proportion of the people, nor is the per-person welfare amount high. Even Pakistanmanages to give its welfare recipients more. So this is the reality of the welfare State: yet another figment of your imagination. I will close with a final illusion: that of toilets in trains. Even in higher-class compartments, if you use the stinking toilets, you will notice that there is no way you can clean your bottom with dignity. There is a chained mug and a faucet, thus giving you the idea that you can wash yourself. Much of the time, there is no water. The rest of the time, you are frustrated because the chain is just slightly too short — there is no way you can wash yourself without twisting yourself into contortions, or without spilling soiled water all over the toilet floor. The bureaucrat who specified the length of that chain just three inches too short is a perfect metaphor for India’s ruling classes. They have no interest in your welfare, only in giving you the frustrating impression that you can actually accomplish something, which of course you cannot. – rediff : The great Indian rope trick and other illusions of progress The post Parliament is a chimera, at best a smokescreen The Harsh Realities of India appeared first on Chauthi Duniya [English Edition].
Posted on: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 16:11:03 +0000
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