Showing posts with label Sonia Gandhi. Show all posts

Did fighting Indian corruption rob Sonia Gandhi’s UPA of victory in the 2014 election?

Amid all that euphoria of the massive election victory of the BJP, when the whole world was impatiently watching the steps of its would be Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, what captured the attention of the media was a  bizarre thanks giving meeting organised by it.


Several senior leaders of the BJP who won the recent election assembled to felicitate Baba Ramdev, who was conspicuously absent from the meet and media glare, who helped them win the election by his  blessings, which were more mundane than divine.

However the party can neither acknowledge nor felicitate the sources of the massive funds behind its campaign so openly, though someday somehow favours will have to be returned. For now, one Indian, who set out to expose and prevent corruption in India is languishing in the Tiharjail.

Arvind Kejeriwal and his AAP were broke even before he found he had no money to bail himself out. He had acknowledged long time back that his party had no funds to take on the NDA and the UPA in the parliamentary election, a political reality glaring at him he refused to see before setting out on his mission.

Whatever Happened to the Billion Dollar Booty Of Sonia Gandhi During this Election?

For a couple of decades now everyone talked about how the Italian born Sonia Gandhi looted the poor Indians and hid the money abroad.  If she indeed has all those billions, why no one has seen any of those spent during  this election?

In fact, in comparison to the thousands of Crores  of rupees the opposition BJP had splurged so far on a massive election campaign Sonia’s Congress Party looked really a poor man’s party, with candidates having to depend on meager handouts from the election fund.

When it comes to arithmetic and the value of zeros when you put them on the right, everyone from the CAG to the aam admi on the street in India get a bit confused. Astronomical figures are attributed to various corruption charges from Sonia Gandhi’s foreign deposits to A Raja’s 2G  scandal and the Coalgate scam.

Monday, May 12, 2014
Posted by Unknown

How Rahul Gandhi, Amul Baby of India Has Become the David Of Indian Politics.

All of a sudden, the story of David and Goliath has once again been enacted in Delhi, which 1.3 billion Indians proudly call the seat of their democracy.
It is believed that the original purpose of the story was to show the identity of David, the champion of the God of Israel, as the true king of Israel, who could kill Goliath, the representative of paganism with the help of God.
Rahul Gandhi, often ridiculed by his political opposition and the Indian press as "Amul (a brand of milk in India) Baby" for his un assuming and low key leadership, seems to have done nothing less by his openness and courageous stand against a piece of legislation which would have continued to protect criminals who get elected as representatives.
Rahul Gandhi has surprised India and the world with a few spontaneous but thunderous words dispelling all notions of lack of leadership and trouncing a the painstakingly created image of Narendra Modi of the BJP as a political Goliath and the only person worthy to be the prime minister of India.

Is it Time The Congress Party Brought British Raj Back to India?


India was 'one' nation for two hundred years when it remained under the British Raj.

Today the cry for the bifurcation of yet another state of India, Andhra Pradesh, the capital of which was once the richest Kingdom in the world, is threatening its very integrity. Many more bigger and smaller states are waiting to pounce on the opportunity to demand creation of their own little kingdoms.

Futile squabbling and vacillation have ended up in wasting of so much of national resources and administrative time, hampering development and creating unsolvable political dilemmas, dividing people. Parochial interests and selfishness is driving India back to the middle ages making it easy for its vile neighbours to exercise their ambitions of hegemony in the near future without efforts.

Isn't it time educated and responsible Indians who profess love for India and its integrity investigate why and how the British Raj kept India united and prospering?

Unfortunately the very mention of the Raj will make many Indians virtually explode in indignation and bloated national pride even in the 21st century, despite passage of a couple of generations since independence along the time line.

Even the fact that India is projected to become the number one economy in a couple of decades also can't alleviate the pain of the Raj for its so called techie generation. Such is the strength of the inferiority complex on the Indian psyche imposed by the strangle hold of the Raj. In many ways, Indians need to feel liberated, despite nearly a century of independence.

However In myriad of ways, it was indeed the Raj which made the fight for Independence and its successful culmination a reality.

On the one hand, Whigs and Liberals expounded sentiments most iconically expressed by TB Macaulay in 1833: 'that... by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. ... Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.' 
From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in India 1858-1947 Dr Chandrika Kaul

In reality India under the Raj was not a fully united nation. Two-fifths of the sub-continent continued to be independently governed by over 560 large and small principalities, with whom the Raj entered into treaties of mutual cooperation. Read Maya, Mulayam, Mamta, Jaya, Nmo et al in the 21st century.

The real success of the Raj was the administrative wisdom of dividing the rest of India in to governable blocks without any regard to language and cultural identities of Indians like for example, the Presidency of Madras which encompassed parts of four southern states.

In such administrative divisions, very similar to the modern Union Territories of India, no one complained or agitated about water, land, forest, language or education. Like the Union territories, these provinces have only prospered and progressed in time, though the benefits were mostly repatriated by the ruling British.

No doubt this experiment of governance of a large landmass like India with a diverse population and culture, though co-operation with local chieftains and non linguistic and impassionate administration of rest of the land did work smoothly, bringing all around prosperity, which remain quite relevant even in the context of modern India.

Among the benefits bequeathed by the British connection were the large scale capital investments in infrastructure, in railways, canals and irrigation works, shipping and mining; the commercialisation of agriculture with the development of a cash nexus; the establishment of an education system in English and of law and order creating suitable conditions for the growth of industry and enterprise; and the integration of India into the world economy.

In reality, the Raj even succeeded in uniting Indians, albeit in common hatred for the aggressor, at least for some decades before the independence.

That, that hard won unity did not transform in to a permanent unity of a billion Indians in a sense of fraternity is the tragedy of modern India. Today India is virtually as divided as when the British found it centuries ago thanks to the religious division left behind by the British and linguistic division enforced by their successors.

Imagine if Karamchand Gandhi were to try to incite and unite the disparate and hopelessly fractured India, which 1.3 billion Indians now call their country in 2013, even against a Martian invasion ? Even the Martian's would have given up at the rueful prospect of ruling modern India!

Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejeriwal are walking examples of the fallacy of expecting the impossible; to unite India again by raising the bogey of corruption. Corrupt and jailed Jagan Mohan Reddy has won more assembly seats! Corrupt accused leaders have been elected back to power elsewhere.

Narendra Modi and his coterie with the Gujrath model development is another example of someone with their heads in cloud nine, with the idea of a united India lapping up the rhetoric. They simply don't get how divided are the states of India in comparison to the United States of Barack Obama.

By contrast, Kiren Reddy, the CM of congress ruling Andhra Pradesh is a realist who see the danger to his own political future and party, if not for the integrity of the nation, in the destructive trend.

In reality, Sonia Gandhi, the President of the Congress party has proved to be much more of a pragmatic leader who has recognised the inevitable divisiveness of India.

Not surprisingly, though inadvertently, her pragmatism in agreeing to the local aspirations of the people of Andhra Pradesh while declaring and keeping Hyderabad as a Union territory smacks of the pragmatism of the Raj.

Why just Hyderabad, every project area like the contentious Kudamkulam Nuclear Thermal Power station or Integrated Steel Projects and every Metro in the country country, where massive central government investment has been pumped in must be declared a Union territory, to clean them from the evils of parochialism and foist, unhindered growth and prosperity.

Is India Heading Towards the Best Decade For Investors?

A congruence of recent political development in 
India auger a period of stability and growth 

Despite the relative success of the first UPA government of Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh, heralding reforms and forward looking policies encouraging foreign investors, the second term which will end this year had shaken investor confidence in India.

The bottom line is, unlike their first term in power, albeit with the support of the Indian Left, the UPA is a minority government without real law-making clout in its second term which will end this year.

The government was virtually handicapped warding off waves of anti-corruption sentiment, set off by an irresponsible CAG who went on presuming mammoth losses on the Government's populist policies, which the opposition rode to stall law making and policy implementation, abetting national growth.

Despite all this, the UPA2 still has produced an impressive above 5 percent GDP growth while the U.S. and Europe by and large reeled under a double dip recession.

A congruence of recent political developments in India, however, auger a period of stability and growth in the coming decade which savvy investors will look forward to.

India, a Democracy of the People, for the People, By the Gifts.

Allegations of bribery of the electorate by Obama administration were raised by Romney after he lost the last US Presidential election. He might have been very close to be true had it been any election in India.

Electorate in India are won by timely gifts of anything from a kitchen grinders to a laptops to the electorate or even promises of such gifts if elected to power. In every state election, political parties declare the gifts in their manifesto.

In a national election, gifts are more subtle and the UPA chair person Sonia Gandhi has understood this weakness of the Indian electorate more than anyone else.

Sonia won the last election by forcing the Finance Minister Chidambaram to divert $ 13000 Million to write off farmer loans and distribute unemployment benefit under a minimum work assurance scheme.

Sonia and the UPA has put in place measures to capitalise on this by ensuring direct credit of cash subsidies in to bank accounts and the food security bill (which the BJP has stalled so far) which will be put in place well before the election by an ordinance if everything else fail.

There are however other reasons why the UPA will return to power and possibly with a better mandate, ensuring good investment climate and growth rate.

Corruption has different meanings in Indian Politics and Indian Life.

For 1.3 billion people of India, corruption is a way of life and something they can't live without. Paying a few bucks to get a rail ticket or cooking gas or college admission for a child is taken for granted, which the most agitated anti corruption protestor can't deny not having ever done.

Again, Sonia Gandhi has learned this truth and has put in to great use, to win regional elections, by supporting tainted popular leaders accused of corruption, though not always proved and punished.

Though no leader has ever lost an election in India because he or she is accused of corruption, fight against corruption is the only activity of parties in opposition, to stay alive and relevant till the next election, creating hurdles for governance at the cost of growth and development of the country.

Despite all the moralistic clamour by the urban elite, privy to high wages, who can't get the benefit of infra structure and services from the lower paid public sector, which the political opposition plan to ride on and use as an election plank, as corrupt leaders have been re elected in several states.

With administrative reforms within the party and better care in choosing candidates, UPA is closing this electoral ploy of the opposition, determined not to lose the election on this account.

Next Indian Election of 2014 Already Won by the UPA!

BJP sort of lost the election when, propped up by the Hindutwa organisation RSS and an Indian origin business lobby in the US, Narendra Modi, self proclaimed architect of development and BJP leader foisted himself as the next Prime Minister of India.

As a matter of fact the next election has already been won by Sonia and her UPA by a sort ofHara-kiri conducted by the BJP recently in their conclave in Goa, also saving the US administration a major dilemma.

Despite propaganda by thousands of misguided urban Indians who hang around social media and have no clue of reality of a billion villagers, Modi's ploy backfired when one of the real architects of BJP and its perennial Prime Minister in waiting , Advani revolted.

The problem is the anti Muslim tag of Narendra Modi by condoning a riot in 2002 leading to the death of thousands of Muslims has stuck with Modi, no matter what development he has claimed.

The Goa episode resulted in the split up of the NDA alliance , destroying any chance of BJP putting up a fight to regain power from the UPA. The departed partner JDU has claimed :

People are scared of even talking of Bihar's asmita (pride). This is not good for democracy. I say this with a sense of responsibility. An entire party has been bulldozed in the name of workers and cadre. Whoever criticizes gets abused on Twitter and Facebook. Abuses are heaped on journalists as well as others, who don't agree with a particular viewpoint or join in the propaganda. Is this democracy? What happened to right to dissent?

Monsoon Havoc Is More Votes for the Ruling Party In Disguise.

The Indian Monsoon, which bring in the rain every year to sustain agriculture has a great effect not only the economy, but also the national elections.

Traditionally, If the Monsoon is good in an election year, a happy electorate will be with the government with lower food prices and all round prosperity. As the Monsoon this year is more than good, despite havocs and death, the UPA can rest assured of a cheerful mood with the electorate.

Pending Reforms and Projects Can Only Move Forward.

Dr Manmohan Singh and his government which is on a life support by warring local parties with vested interest to complete the current term, in fact has a free hand now to push reform agenda and stalled projects. With nothing to lose and only an election to win, such actions will fill the rest of the term, paving sound foundation for economic development.

Things can go wrong in political calculations. However for India, if the pro capital BJP will somehow garner the power and win the election, Indian business will only stand to gain.

Either way the coin flips in the Next election, foreign investors with capital stand to gain in the India Story , at least for the next decade.


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