Day 3 - Another blast and the blame game begins

Day 3 - 27th July, 2008

It was disheartening to see the start of a new blame game after the serial blasts at Bangalore. If amateurs with destructive ideals are going to use ammonium nitrate and make explosives, where are we heading too?

The BJP says there is no check on the rise of terror attacks from the center. The Congress says its a state subject also. In the meantime, Left blames both and launches a multi million campaign on inflation. Again full of chaos and making no sense to the ' COMMON MAN' when he is striving to get home/work in a safer environment.

I was asked funny questions from my friends from Turkey, China, Chile, Germany, Belgium, war countries like Israel and of course the States. These questions seemed funny to me but very conscious and important for them to know.

Who is responsible for the attack?

Who do you think would be behind it?

How does it affect the local citizen?

You ve been at war with Pakistan for almost 60 years. Do you think they would use such methods to obtain Kashmir and divert public grievances.

Do you think a political party might be behind this?

Does it make any difference when 10 people die in a country of 1 Billion + population.

To all this, i just had to say, we are bound to think in a manner in the way the politicians and journalists want us too. They want us to sympathize on attacks at Mumbai trains, we do that. They want us to revolt on attacks at Akshardham we do that. They want us to remain neutral and do nothing when there is curfew at Jammu, we do that. We've become their slaves in today's Information World. Our reactions are no more risen from within with pity, sympathy or agony. You see vengeance, anger, hatred and repulsiveness against the people who perform such acts.

Its not a defense in any way but simply, the manner of our thinking needs to be autonomous and think and look upto with some softness. There is a very different reaction I witnessed in the Indians back home and in London. People in India were little less moved or shaken compared to the people who were here. God knows why or is it all to do with perspectives.

Nevertheless, I feel sorrow for the citizens of Bangalore and all Indians

Singing off for the weekend. - Back to home sweet home ! :)

You can find newbollymusic at facebook also by its name as a group.

Shashank

Laal Salaam

I find this letter beautifully depicting the plight of CPI M in modern India and the basic errors committed by them. The problem remains the voter is too smart and political parties do not often learn from their strategic errors. Way to go for them and all.. liberal article so no offense to anybody.

- Shashank

Red Letter Day

A letter to the Left

Lal Salaam Comrades! Your tenure in government seems to have ended. How different things were four years ago! Four years ago you were faced with a unique opportunity. The 'communal' BJP-led NDA had suffered a surprising electoral defeat. The 'secular' UPA was to take over the reins of government. In a hung house, you with your 60 MPs formed the crucial outside support to the government. At that time you smiled broadly with your hands held aloft with other leaders of the UPA. You delivered sharp sound bites on the Common Minimum Programme, on the basis of which you gave your support. With your best ever electoral performance, it seemed as if the Communists had finally arrived on India's national stage.
Today, four years later, where are you? The Congress government is getting ready to survive its remaining few months in power without you. Prakash Karat's dream of the 'non Congress' 'non BJP' Third Front lies in tatters. Mulayam Singh Yadav with whom you once shared an anti-Bush platform has ditched you and made common cause with your dreaded Indo-US nuclear deal. The CPI has long ceased being a national party and the CPM is preparing to go back to writing stirring editorials in People's Democracy. In a few months, AK Gopalan Bhavan will wear a deserted look. Even the TV cameras will switch off. Alas, comrades. You are men and women of such unimpeachable personal honesty, such depth of scholarship among so many of your leaders and sympathizers. You have stood sentinel against religious hatred and never hesitated to scream out against social evils. Yet in the end, you have scripted your own tragic drama of irrelevance.
Why did this happen? Your first mistake was that you refused to join the government or take on ministerships. You preferred to be the eternal college campus rebel, always oppositional, always agitational, but never responsible, or adult enough to recognize that in this country, managing change is about negotiating a myriad interest groups. You could have taken over portfolios like the HRD ministry or Women and Child Development where your progressive commitments and social sector expertise would have been put to excellent service of the people. But you refused to hunker down and work with processes of governance, instead you preferred to criticise from the sidelines. Perhaps you are just in love with your own youthful avatar, refusing to grow up because you cannot accept that you are no longer fiery and young. Perhaps your rage against the world is simply fury against the inexorable truth of advancing years.
Your second mistake was that you failed to realize that you are aged in a country of the young; you have failed to come to terms with the new India. Economic globalization, despite your consistent opposition, is raging through the country like a wildfire. Like it or not, India's young are rushing towards new opportunities with open arms. Today a constable from Himachal can become a wrestler on the world stage. A police officer's orderly can become an Indian idol. The son of a Congress worker can build a telecom empire. The son of sweepress can set up his own fast food business. A conquering cricket team can be made up of boys whose fathers are railway mechanics and tyre repairmen. Icons of the poor like Mayawati are not dressed in rags and jholas, instead they are proudly clad in diamonds and silk, embodying the tidal wave of aspiration that every reporter sees in the dirt tracks of UP and Bihar. There are lots of things wrong with this New India. It does not have the social conscience you like, it is creating vast inequalities between rich and poor, it is pauperizing traditional trades and providing little hope for those scratching out worms from riverbeds to survive.
But this New India is also shaping itself into an avalanche of upward mobility. You are trying to tame the avalanche. You have stalled pension reform, stalled banking reforms and for long stalled the privatization of airports.You did not realise that keeping airports as a state monopoly was only preserving it as a sector for the rich. That all over the world air travel is dirt cheap precisely because it is privatized. When leaders like AB Bardhan say, 'Baadh mein jaye Sensex' (to hell with the Sensex)he pours scorn on millions of middle class Indians who invest and trade.
But what must lead you to BJP-style atma chintan is the crisis confronting you in your bastions. In Kerala you are factionalised in a way that makes even the Congress look good. You are split wide open down the middle. In Bengal you badly misread what happened in Nandigram leading to shocking gram panchayat defeats in both Nandigram and Singur as well as recently, very important defeats for you in civic body elections. Last year, your protests against joint Indian and American naval exercises got little response from the public. This year your so-called campaign against petrol price hike was largely ignored by the people.
Your opposition to the nuclear deal once again shows your distance from India. Sure, it's a commercial transaction, but why is anything to do with commerce necessarily evil? Even at the height of the Cold War 2 million Indians lived in the US. The links between India and America are so massive, that as a leading economist put it, the Indo-US nuclear deal is an offshoot of a long process of civic exchange with America, not the basis of it. You hate America, but do Indians feel the same? There are important reasons to criticise a country that bombs and invades other countries at will, but there is also the need to recognize that anti-Americanism is hardly hardwired into the Indian DNA.
No to nuclear deal, no to reforms, no to change, no to newness, no to price rise, no to America, negativism seems a reflex action. Your contempt for change, your constant lamentation, your moral righteousness are incongruous in a country shouting 'Chak de India.' Eleven years ago you committed the 'historic blunder' of not letting Jyoti Basu become prime minister because you were unwilling to share power. Today you have committed suicide because you did not know how to use power.
Posted by Sagarika Ghose - CNN IBN

Day 2 - Politics Tamasha

Day 2 - 25th July, 2008

Finally the great summer of UK is coming to an end for me when i will be heading back home. I think this was most the fruitful 4 months spent in UK since i have been here.

I am sure everybody saw the big tamasha in the Parliament on the trust vote day. Lot of criticism and lot of shame. The other angle of the Parliament Paradox is that YES India still is the most democratic nation in the world. A person could come to the top most legislative house and demonstrate what he was being offered (or put up an act of that). I am not defending what happened. But there was a lot of praise in the US NRI media after the incident and coined "Upholder of the democracy".

IS this what we want or is this the new face of Indian politics.

At the same time it is a delight to see "JAAGO INDIA Party" 's advert in India Today - the one with Amar Singh at the cover. If you guys recall it is the same party formed by ex-IITians to remove corruption and bring young intellectual Indians in the mainstream politics. More of Mani Ratnam's Yuva may be.

Some friends, journalists, critics found Rahul Gandhi to be quite mature and articulate in the script he recited in the parliament. It took him 5 hours to write down what an Indian thinks and how was he defending the government's actions by not talking about the transparency in the Nuclear Deal or was he trying to avoid the subject because he knew little about it just like all other INDIANS.

People like to laugh even if Laloo makes no sense in his jokes. Is it just the manner in which he speaks or is it the content what he speaks that is funny. Or is it that the only thing left with him now is his funny manner with no content in it. It was disheartening to see news channels giving him all attention and praise for his crap yet again.

Today's blog was about crisis in the Indian Politics and how helpless one feels about it.

Anyways hope India Performs better on DAY 3. All the best to Sachin.

Cheers,

Shashank