India Votes for Stability

Riaz:

India has 8th largest industrial base when it is of poor productivity and quality. If these are improved the base is adequate for India.

When I said let market forces decide, means let the market of 470 million cell phones decide where they are made. Hyundai is moving their auto production for certain cars entirely to India (Chennai). Because they want to get a market share.

Riaz:

There is no standard bearer of democracy. Democracy is not written in a book. It cannot be it is for the people, by people, of the people. This means it will be what people want. Therefore, plant and transplant are meanining.

Dear Pakistan Hijras Worldwide Riaz Haq saheb,


According to Forbes, India has 47 companies in the Forbes Top 2000 Global companies list.....Pakistan only has 2....and the 2 Pak companies have a combined market value of under $3 billion...pathetic...what do you have to say about that ?


http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/08/worlds-largest-companies-business-global -09-global_land.html

Re: # 416
tahmed: I have nothing against democracy as a system of governance, I just don't think the system imported and transplanted from US or UK would work well every where. And each has its own limitations. What I like about the US system is the local grass-roots democratic participation in matters such as school boards, libraries, city commissions etc. that allows people to have tangible influence and makes their reps accountable to people. What I don't like about the US system is the inordinate power and influence of big corporate donors/contributors in Washington that works against the people.

British democracy has its own flaws because it does not distinguish between legislature and executive and diminishes the contribution of non-politician technocrats in running the key ministries. And often lead to unstable, fractured and weak coalitions that lack the power to do what must be done to serve the greater interest of the vast majority of people. Small parties with their narrow agendas are able to dictate policies in such coalitions.

Both presidential (US/France) and parliamentary (UK) require a fairly literate and discerning electorates to vote based on key issues and overall agenda rather than region, religion, caste, ethnicity and other considerations that subvert the larger national agenda.

Indian democracy suffers from most of the ills I list above.
The absence of rule of law and extremely slow and unresponsive judicial and criminal justice systems in India make matters worse.

In order to become effective in dealing with the massive challenges of hunger, poverty, lack of opportunity, poor infrastructure, India needs a more decisive and assertive executive that is not hamstrung by slow-moving, unresponsive and corrupt legislators involved in serving their own petty little interests.

May be a directly elected president or prime minister whose job does not depend on the support of the shifting alliances of legislators would work better, especially if it allows him/her to go over the heads of the legislators directly to the people to get broad support on crucial policy decisions.

A California style direct ballot initiative process may also be helpful in more decisive action on key policies to bypass the legislators.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Alumni WW don't waste your time with tahmed, he is skirting around the real issues just so that he can throw "America" out there as terms of the contract based on which he has sold his soul to the white man. Democracy exists nowhere in the world, it cannot exist in a capitalist world order where the few own the means of life period. It is a good idea but for the idea to become reality it needs several preconditions without which it cannot become a reality and those preconditions cannot be achieved by sloganeering about democracy as the US elite and tahmed are doing...Anil on the other hand does not have a clue about anything, he can just recommend that you read the economist and throw out entrepreneurship from the Adam Smith Victorian capitalism era as if that describes the monopoly capitalism of the present....the guy is a total _______.

TNITC masadi

TNITC masadi

RiazHaq: You answer is fine - but it is not the answer to the question I asked in #409.

Second question: Is there any country in the world that has something closer to democracy than India? And if you think there is, why do you think so?

Thanks in advance for your response. (these are not rhetorical questions btw, but an attempt at having an educated discussion on this important subject).

Re: # 412 Prof R.Haq you are wasting your energies preaching to people who are blind followers of democracy.We are different race people and two different people, religion so as waters separate and go different way but end at last in dirty sea.Same Indian so called democracy is giving misery and we have same thing with awami hukumshahi or military hukumshahi end is same begger with increasing begging bowls and humilation. Wonder what is all use of hukumshahi or democracy when finally all people beg for rights. Some times it must be fault with what we drink, breath or eat may be Former president had point when he said humid hot makes blood hot for civil rule. That may be reason ?

Re: # 411
Anil,
I agree that the Indian government should focus on infrastructure as a priority, along with access to public education and healthcare. But it must also promote mass manufacturing as a macroeconomic policy. Currently, a number of industry sectors have scale restriction by law to help small and medium size enterprises. But these restrictions make them uncompetitive relative to other players such as China.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Re: # 406 He said something like this. Democracy is bad system of governing but nobody has found any thing better. ( except Nizanm E adl)

Re: # 409

If you believe India is an example of democracy, then I don't see why anyone would want Indian-style democracy. Who wants the kind of abject poverty, hunger, crime, disease, joblessness, thousands of farmer suicides, general lack of opportunity, violence against minorities, etc that Indian democracy has given the vast majority of its people?
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Riaz:

India's startegy:

1. Invest in infrastructure
2. Focus on Service sector
3. Leave manufacturing to market forces

is sound.

I have to go with my daughter. I will answer rest of your points.

Democracy is one man one vote to accumulate power, and let the representatives so elected distribute power. This what Lincoln meant.

Riaz#408:

No, it does not, neither does America's for that matter.

RiazHaq #407 If India is not a democracy, what is it?

bulleya#386:

You have to dig deeper into the past to know the background of hindutva.

People generally consider Jinnah/Iqbal to be the father of the two nation theory. They are wrong: the real founder of this theory was Veer Damodar Savarkar, the father of the hindutva ideology. He was a remarkable character - an atheist hindu who admired Islam in the same way that our kaal/eklavya does and wanted Hindus to emulate it by having a similar umma-type identity. Incidentally, he was the first Indian who called the 1857 mutiny the first war of independence, believed in violent agitation against the British rule and was sent to Kala Pani (Andaman) for that. He was the founder of the famous Hindu Mahasabha. When the RSS was formed much later, he was contemptuous of it because the Sangh shunned political participation and had a mission of cultural reawakening of the Hindus. The RSS came indirectly into politics in 1951 when it sponsored Jan Sangh (it still claims to be non-political) and for some time the JS and HMS were political rival; however, the Jan Sangh which later became BJP displaced HMS as it had a superior cadre of RSS workers behind it. Now, ironically, Savarkar is an icon of the BJP and they have succeeded in having a portrait of him in the Parliamentary gallery during their rule at the Centre.

Re: # 406
Dost,
The best definition of democracy for me is Licoln's definition: “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people�

Do you think the current Indian democracy fits this definition? If your answer is yes, please explain how.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

Riaz#380:

If democracy was that you say it is, then Churchil would not have called it the worse system in the world except for all others; or your own Iqbal would not have derided it as a system in which hands are counted, not heads.

You don't have to change the definition of democracy to suit your hatred.