Indian Shuakat Aziz and Pakistani Manmohan Singh

Do you know who Ashok Mitra is?

He is one of the most ideological and hateful of the west bengal communists. He was the finance minister during the 70s when I lived in Calcutta. He single-handedly destroyed most of bengal`s industrial base. He supported violence against the ``enemies of the people`` - meaning anyone who wanted to do constructive work. In one family I know, the father committed suicide after he was repeatedly harassed and beatern at work. His crime - he was a manager of a small factory. The goverment did nothing - the goverment of ashok mitra and jyoti basu.

He still writes articles full of crazy anti-american non-logic. My guess is that he is mentally ill, I hope the situation of improvement in west bengal causes him a lot of pain.

If it is true that Shaukat Aziz and Manmohan Singh are sent by the US govt to govern these countries it means only one thing...and that is that US has very good intentions for the well being of poor souls of these nations.:) Just imagine US sending asome corrupt souls like Zia or Indira instead.:-)

pay no heed 2 these losers Mr. Farooqui. U & i know that these guys r just amrikan stooges;)

Re: # 9 Yup yup...idiots

bj`s article gets deleted while ``conspiracy`` theories like this one get posted on FP!

this should belong to the humor-section of chowk (if there is any).

Mr. M. J. Akbar has unveiled an open secret.



Is the author an idiot? M.J. Akbar hasn`t unveiled squat...it`s the commie Mitra dude who is making the allegation....

``Oxford and Howard``? hahahahaha...this has got to be the stupidest thing ever written on chowk..

Idiotic commies...40 yrs of shackling the Indian entrepreneurial spirit and idiotic gandhi swadeshi mantra bullsiht, were the golden days to these sihtbirds.

My ratings on this article ....

UTTER BULLSHIT !!!!!

Letter to Editor, The Asian Age

Manmohan Singh’s appointment as FM

Sir, M.J. Akbar’s Byline of February 4, A Prattler’s Rattle, refers to Dr Ashok Mitra’s new
book, A Prattler’s Tale: Bengal, Marxism and Governance. In the book Dr Mitra has revealed that to bail India out of a critical foreign exchange position, the US administration sought P.V. Narasimha Rao’s agreement to the appointment of a finance minister nominated by the IMF and the World Bank after consultations with US authorities. It is also stated that the first person whose name was proposed by Washington DC declined the invitation. M.J. Akbar has rightly called this a startling revelation. Let me reveal something that may throw some light because of my own involvement.

During the 1991 elections to the Lok Sabha, I was assisting the late Rajiv Gandhi as a principal aide with a team of some very close associates that included Sam Pitroda. The team worked only for Rajiv Gandhi (RG, as we referred to him). I was the link between the team and the Congress Party’s Central Election Committee presided over by P.V. Narasimha Rao. I attended all meetings and conveyed RG’s instructions and decisions. As such I was working closely with PV at the time of RG’s assassination.

In the aftermath, I got involved with almost all matters during the transition including PV’s nomination as Prime Minister by the party’s Working Committee, till P.C. Alexander was summoned by PV to assist in the formation of his ministerial team. I am mentioning this as a background to what I know about what Dr Ashok Mitra has ``revealed.``

As mentioned in my book, Working with Rajiv Gandhi (Harper Collins, 1995), by 15 May 1991, RG sensed that he would be back in power. He asked me to start preparations to assume responsibility. As stated on page 222 of the book, we had already started preparations and Sam Pitroda had on his laptop a seven-page document. We knew that the first priority would be the appointment of a highly qualified economist with sound knowledge of financial management, and one who also commanded the trust of the IMF and the World Bank as finance minister. RG tentatively cleared three names. These included Dr I.G. Patel, Dr Manmohan Singh and someone whose name need not be revealed. Sam Pitroda and I knew Dr I.G. Patel very well, he, because of a Baroda connection, and I since my days with the commerce ministry in 1965, and later in the United Nations. IG was then director of the London School of Economics. We failed to secure his agreement.

Dr Manmohan Singh, if I recollect correctly, was at that time out of India on an important assignment. RG asked me to visit Bombay and find out his whereabouts through Venkitaramanan, Reserve Bank of India governor. I was also to meet some selected persons from financial and economic circles in Bombay. As stated in my book, I was on my way to Bombay when I learnt of RG’s assassination. I immediately returned to Delhi and got involved in political activities centred round the nomination of the president of the Congress Party. As soon as it was clear that PV as president of the party would be the candidate for PM’s post, I briefed him on several matters we were dealing with, prior to RG’s death. Especially the fact that RG had cleared the name of Dr Manmohan Singh in case Dr I.G. Patel was not available. Dr P.C. Alexander in his book, Through the Corridors of Power (Harper Collins, 2004), has described when and how he sought Dr Manmohan Singh’s agreement for appointment to that post. Thus Dr Manmohan Singh was appointed as finance minister.

There is another matter in Dr Mitra’s book to which M.J. Akbar has drawn attention: ``Washington sought an implicit guarantee ... that ‘the IMF and the World Bank would nominate the finance minister of the country after consultations with the US authorities’.`` About this, at this stage, let me only state that the financial crisis was so severe that the United States’ representatives on the IMF and the World Bank had started seriously looking into the post-election scenario and how to bail India out of the economic crisis. However, to the best of my knowledge, there was no name proposed for the post of finance minister. In any case, the person for that post had already been selected by RG. PV had accepted the name without reservation.

R.D. Pradhan

Former Governor of Arunachal Pradesh

Mumbai

ek aur ch`tiye ne ulti kari chowk pe ....

In all my 7 years of reading chowk silently this piece has to take the cake. After reading this article, ihave been humming

Ding dong bell
pussy in the well
who put her in
little America kin

Whatever next!

Daayum, this was so good I was thinking of reading it as a bedtime story for my two year old except I balked at the bad grammar, bad english and the really bad spelling of ``hanki``.

What use is a ``hanki`` without a ``panki``?

You don`t want to corrupt impressionable young minds.

Now I have seen it all......