A Bold Agenda for United Progressive Alliance (UPA)

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Clash of Titans Laloo Vs Balasaheb (this will sell hot as a pay-per-view event)

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/nov/21mum.htm

Apparently laloo has promised to take revenge on shivsena as a rail minister. He has also openly challenged Thakre to set his foot in Bihar. He incidentally addressed an election rally in Thakre heartland of Shivaji park without incident. So expect laloo to use railways as his personal jagir, with its employees as serfs. I wish he was the defense minister.

harimou:
``What is so sad? Aren`t you the one who wanted Sonia G@ndu and her party in power?``

Of course, I did. And no regrets either!
The choice to me was between economic growth with communal divide and that with communal harmony. On that score I have every expectation of the Sonia/Singh govt. healing some of the scars left by the Gujarat episode.

But I am not a devotee of either the Congress or the Nehru dynasty, and cannot but condemn what I think is a wrong move on the new govt.`s part. By their stupid and totally unnecessary inclusion of Jagdish Tytler -it almost seems as if they want to pick on the old scabs again- they have undone quite a bit of the good feeling among the sikhs generated by MS`s selection as the PM.

I am, however, willing to be more understanding of Manmohan Singh than of ABV`s posture. Vajpayee was indispensable to the party whereas MS is not; he owes his job to Sonia whereas ABV owed his job to his acceptability to BJP`s coalition partners.

nasah#106
``to give Railways to Laloo amounts to allowing the Fox to gaurd the chicken coop....``

I recently took a train from Delhi to Benaras. The service deteriorates as the train heads east. I was told that it becomes truly dismal when it enters Bihar. There, people pull the chain and stop the train at will without any consequences because the railway police will not do anything. I was told that even senior army officers posted in Bihar do not feel safe from interference from the politicians. I hope his becoming the minister of railways does not mean the bihari-style ``democratisation`` of railways in the rest of India.
Like other middle class Indians, I also loathe Laloo as a symbol of democracy meaning the power to the lowest common denominator in terms of competency (not that the US is any better:)). Yet, I cannot but be amazed at the hold he has over his people. Delhi now has a fairly large Bihari population of the very poor and marginalised poor who had to leave their state because of the complete lack of opportunities there. You would think that these people are the most disaffected with Laloo, yet his hold over them is so strong that they always wait for his instructions before deciding who to vote for in Delhi elections. Democracy is not an unmixed blessing!

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Ref sadna #102

[dost-mittar
Jagdish Tytler is in the Union Cabinet and we have not heard a squeak out of all those self-professed `secularists` who have never ceased to condemn BJP for Gujarat.]

That is secularism in India for you. I remember several interactors on Chowk (Indians) condemning the BJP over Gujarat while of course maintaining silence over Godhra, Now that we have a ``secular`` government in place, it should be okay for Congress thugs to target Indian Muslims and Sikhs while simultaneously cheating the Hindus for personal enrichment and continuation of dynastic policies.

[I wonder do not these people care to even APPEAR credible and consistent, that forget the politicians, even the so-called human rights/civil rights activists can not issue even a simple statement of protest?]

When you are all in the pay of foreigners (remember Indira Gandhi`s famous ``foreign hand``? It used to be behind even the collapse of an overpass under construction in Delhi though the contractor just used too much sand in the concrete) do not expect objectivity.

The Leftists, including most of the Congress and every variety of the Communist Party and the various Socialist parties, are and have been consistently anti-India, not just anti-Hindu. These are traitors that in any other country would be hanged in a public place for their carcasses to rot and to be eaten by vultures.

Ref dost-mittar #103

[sadna:
That`s so sad! I wish that the sardar had shown some guts and refused to take Jaggi. I guess this is what happens when the singh is fed by someone else instead of doing his own `shikaar`. Aage aage dekhiye hota hai kya!]

What is so sad? Aren`t you the one who wanted Sonia G@ndu and her party in power? Do you think the G@ndu had no influence on the selection of the ministers?

I just read in the Tamil daily ``Dinamalar`` that not content with 7 ministerial seats, the DMK (with a sum total of 16 MPs) has decided not to accept these Cabinet positions (despite them having been sworn in) because it does not like the portfolios allotted to them.

Imagine what the Communists with nearly 60 seats can do!

As I tell the Pakistanis, be careful what you wish for because you may not like it when you get it.

Pray for really really bad monsoons and a major drought for the next 5 years. That ought to screw the present government and the Maasanamuthus of Tamil Nadu and the Bhagwan Dasses of the North will vote out these street thugs.

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Romair

I think you need to visit Pakistan for a reality Check.

Kashmir is a subject now talked only by Mussaraf (Army) or the foreign office or the PTV. It does not excite anyone else as it did some years back. A lot of water has flown under the Ravi bridge since UN Resolutions or Plebicite. Even the free media is not concerned. Dost-Mitter must have noticed it.

That is how it should be. Relegate this issue to the level of fishermen exchange or the Yaks that the Chinese recently returned to Pakistan.

If the Pakistani Kashmiris and the Indian Kashmiris are alloweed to freely mix across the LOC, this issue will lose 80% of its sting.

Here again Pakistan is insisting that UN documents should be used instead of Passport to cross the LOC. The justification is that Passport means an international border.

I do not agree with it. If the Durand Line has not become an agreed border after 56 years of Passport use, LOC also can not. But insisting on the UN document is just a needless spanner in the flow of the events. (may be we are in the habit of wasting a few years and then retracting)

Let everyone cool down, do trade & live normally for a few years. Some kind of solution will automatically come up - and accepted by both sides quietly.

As SAFTA did without any hitch or hype.

There can only be a fedup-solution of Kashmir & not an excited-solution.

One wishes the Congress led Govt. a lot of luck

since it is certainly going to need it.

Romair, your views on Kashmir appear here a bit too early.

Let us see what is on the table by July-September

But I do think that this time we will not all be back to

square one.

Ras

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dost miiter ji

Vajpayee has earned his place as the elder statesman of India -- I am sure Manmohan Singh will keep him in the loop of his foreign policy especially vis a vis Pakistan. It would be nice to give him the charge of Indo/Pak Peace Process....

in the US with the regime change in November -- Clinton may be assigned the same role as a peacemaker -- to repair the damaged relations -- between EU anmd US in particular -- and between US and the world in general..

btw....it is alarming to see three hard core criminals in Manmohan Singh cabinet -- Jagdish, Laloo and Tasleemuddin -- to give Railways to Laloo amounts to allowing the Fox to gaurd the chicken coop....may not augur well for the image of a squeaky clean Prime minister...

Sadna #102,

I agree - this borders on criminal negligence. And our pitiful progressives
haven`t said a word simply because this is not the in-thing any more. The
intellectual vacuousness of the ideological left (and right) is there for all to
see.

sadna:
That`s so sad! I wish that the sardar had shown some guts and refused to take Jaggi. I guess this is what happens when the singh is fed by someone else instead of doing his own `shikaar`. Aage aage dekhiye hota hai kya!

dost-mittar
Jagdish Tytler is in the Union Cabinet and we have not heard a squeak out of all those self-professed `secularists` who have never ceased to condemn BJP for Gujarat.

I wonder do not these people care to even APPEAR credible and consistent, that forget the politicians, even the so-called human rights/civil rights activists can not issue even a simple statement of protest?

nasah:
I think that there is a role for Vajpayee if Manmohan Singh can be imaginative. If Vajpayee showed passion for anything, it was improving relations with Pakistan. Manmohan Singh can make him a special envoy incharge of overseeing the talks with Pakistan. Vajpayee is easily the most trusted politician in India and perhaps even more so in Pakistan. I think he would love to finish the job that he wanted to and might even still get a nobel for it. More importantly, if he is involved with a compromise, the BJP won`t be able to call it a sell-out which they are likely to do if the Manmohan Singh govt. makes a compromise on its own.

``one must give credit that Vajpayee through his successful economic policy -- did raise the threshold of Indian masses expectations -- that in turn saw not even a semblance of trickle down coming their way....``

This is not completely true. Some crumbs did come their way; actually the poverty rate did come down significantly during this period. But at the same time income disparities went up too; in other words, the poor did get marginally better off but the middle and upper classes improved a lot more. This unfortunately has almost always happened; as the Chinese leader Deng put it famously, for China to grow rapidly, some Chinese will have to grow faster than others; fortunately for the Chinese, they do not have to face the electoral wrath of those left behind. I also saw a chart once showed that in India there is direct relationship between poverty reduction and income disparities, i.e, the greater the income disparities, the greater also is the reduction in poverty. And there is a sound economic theory behind why this happens.

BTW the economist in my previous post was none other than Jagdish Bhagwati, who is frequently mentioned as a possible nobel contender.