Can Pasta Become Paratha?

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re:#165 by MaheshG2
Feeling has nothing to do with realities.
I may feel on top of the world without having anything.
We are talking about realities. Is the surge in GDP in India being translated into more people able to afford houses, better food and better clothes? Are more people able to send their children to schools? Nobody is saying what is happening to this increased GDP in real terms. BJP is just using a slogan just like Indira Gandhi used the slogan of ``Garibi Hatao``. I became convinced of this when is started reading this ``India shining`` agenda day in and day out in the Indian newspapers.
Sridhar

Sridhar #162,

Hmm, my parents shouldn`t feel good about the fact that I just finished at the top of my graduating class because my brothers and sisters were failures.

Ref Tamil-Fraud #21

[You are forgetting that (the other) Mrs. Gandhi also was a widow but that didn`t get in her way.]

When Indira Ganshi announced her 20-point program, Doctor Artist Leader the Fund of Compassion announced the addition of one more point to the program in Tamil Nadu: widow remarriage. He also said that if Indira Gandhi came to Tamil Nadu, he would find her a husband.

Do you think now that he is kissing up to Sonia Gandhi, he would add widow remarriage to his policy plank and offer to find her a husband?

[Sonia`s nationality should not matter. She is as much an indian and be able to empathize with majority of indians as much as the Gandhis could..]

Let me see. I, whose family can trace its connection to its native village in southern Tamil Nadu for 9 generations, is a Northerner and ought to go back to North India. But Sonia Gandhi who took refuge in the Italian Embassy along with her children is acceptable to you as the Prime Minister of India.

This is like kissing a$$ when that woman is sitting on the sh!tter. You bring new meaning and further disrepute to the term ``brown-nosing``.

Have you no shame?

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re: Is India really shining?
Continuing on the theme Is India really shining, the following article throws some more light on the reality of the situation in India:
http://headlines.sify.com/2811news1.html?headline=UN~group~ridicules~India`s~`feel~good`~factor
Excerpts:
``.....1.25 million children below the age of one year died in India in 2003. Around 50 million children were out of school and half of India`s children were malnourished, he said.

``These stark realities juxtaposed with the government`s claims of an eight percent growth paint quite a sorry picture,`` said the New York-based Shetty.

Shetty, earlier chief executive of ActionAid, the London-based international development organisation, added: ``You cannot fool a starved man by telling him his stomach is full. These segments do not care about the `feel good` factor.``

``What is frustrating is the fact that a little effort and all these goals can be achieved in the required timeframe.``
Clearly, BJP spindoctors are at work here in the election year. It is easy to see thr` all this if one is politically savvy. Naieve people like Gujjubania will keep jumping up and down like jackass for nothing.
Sridhar

MJ`s sarcasm fails to match the vulgarity of FV`s bitching.

M J Akbar has a column on Sonia and the Congress:
http://www.deccan.com/columnists/mjakbar.shtml

Sub kuchh luta ke hosh mein aaye to kya kiya…

Excerpts(most of the article, sorry!)

..A song that still haunts my senses begins with an imperishable line: Sab kuchh luta ke hosh mein aaye to kya kiya… What is the point of coming to your senses when all has been lost?

It echoed and re-echoed in my mind when I saw Sonia Gandhi standing beside Sharad Pawar. The strained smile on their faces was more eloquent than any words they said.

For 250 weeks the two have been on either side of an emotive, but important, line: the foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi. Do they expect everything to be forgotten in the 10 weeks left for a general election? Leaders might find it convenient to forgive; the voter does not forget.

Five years ago, Sonia Gandhi hounded Sharad Pawar out of the Congress because he suggested that the Indian voter would be apprehensive about her inability to communicate, and wonder why she lived in India for 16 years after her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi but could not find time to acquire an Indian passport.

It was never a question of religion. Their Christian faith does not make George Fernandes or P A Sangma or A K Antony unacceptable.

For five years the primary purpose of the Congress has not been to remove the government, but to make Sonia Gandhi Prime Minister. There is a subtle but vital difference between the two objectives.

It is the difference between Opposition politics and Coterie politics. After 250 weeks of seeking the first objective, the Congress has kept aside 10 weeks for the second objective.

The problem is not the wish, but wish fulfilment. Sonia Gandhi believes that a fudge will work. Privately she has assured Sharad Pawar and other Opposition parties like the DMK and the CPI(M) that she will not be a candidate for Prime Minister.

Publicly, Congress spokespersons are under instructions to say that such questions will be dealt with after the elections...``

``...Even after humiliation in the last Assembly elections, all Congress leaders sent to television studios insisted that their belief in Sonia Gandhi was non-negotiable. Sonia Gandhi herself left no doubts on this score, while those closest to her, like Ambika Soni, were vociferous.

As late as in December, she was saying that the BJP seemed scared of a “mere woman”. It is a somersault to now suggest that a “mere woman” is scared of the BJP.

There is no need for others to be discreet. As his colleague P A Sangma correctly points out, Sharad Pawar cannot accept Sonia Gandhi as any alternative coalition’s leader without compromising on his party’s basic constitution.

Democratic politics does not provide space for “private” assurances on public policy. This is why Pawar has said that any Secular Front against the NDA must accept the principle of collective leadership.

It was the question of leadership that prevented the formation of such a Secular Front at least a year, or even two years ago. If you want to be a Front, and Secular, what better opportunity could come your way than the Gujarat Assembly elections after the riots?

There is reason to believe, after analysis of the vote, that such an alliance would have defeated Narendra Modi, and reshaped the swell of Indian politics. But Sonia Gandhi spurned all suggestions of an alliance and mounted a soft-Hindutva plank. It was only after the results of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh that the fantasy began to evaporate.

The key question now is: Has everything been lost, or is reversal possible? Is it Sab kuchh luta ke or merely Bahut kuchh luta ke? The very idea of unity has brought a spring to the Congress step, but before taking a leap, a few facts need to be placed in perspective.

Two years ago, the Congress would have been the central glue of such a Secular Front, because it was still a closed fist: the hollow within had not been exposed. Today, the Congress will be isolated if it contests alone, and squeezed if it opts for an alliance.

The Left has been Sonia Gandhi’s most loyal ally, but it will not concede a single seat to the Congress in Bengal, Kerala or Tripura. What the Left does elsewhere does not much matter.

In Bihar Laloo Yadav will give unto Congress banter, and keep unto himself all the seats. The Congress share, out of 40, will be in single digits. In UP, Mayawati bargains like a moneylender: whatever she gives will be at high interest. The DMK has fewer problems, because the Congress is already marginalised in Tamil Nadu.

The Congress will get a better deal in Maharashtra, but that is a bit of a Barmecide’s feast: neither the Congress nor Sharad Pawar will be able to retain the number of seats that they have in the present Lok Sabha. Every Congress ally will be expansive with words and miserly with seats.

True alliances are built not in drawing rooms, but on the streets, when party workers mobilise for a common cause. One of the curious facts about the Congress is that it has not taken up, in any significant manner, a single issue in the last five years.

Statements by nominated spokespersons from television studios have replaced the politics of the street; it has become an air-conditioned party. On the two issues central to the BJP campaign in the coming elections, peace with Pakistan and prosperity in India, it has had very little to say.

There is no alternative economic policy that has been articulated. And on a subject as important as Pakistan, there is dead silence.

And so Congress space continues to ebb on the electoral map, leaving pools of resentment where the party once had a candidate. The party recedes, stage by stage, State by State. A wit might suggest that it is headed for the shrink, but there is nothing funny about this development.

Indian democracy needs the interplay of two national parties, even if their presence is not effectively nationwide. The Congress needs internal strength far more than external support.

Sharad Pawar should be inside the party, discussing strategy with outsiders, rather than outside discussing options with Congress. If the Congress is run on traditional lines of rotating presidents and a muscular working committee, all the bits and pieces that have fallen off over the years will return. A political party is a collective, not a fiefdom.

The sight of a leader, who once waited for the world to call on her, flitting about from home to home is indicative of disarray. But once again, what would have been effective a year ago, seems desperation 10 weeks before the polls.

Against such disarray, the BJP enters this election with only one problem: the cockiness of those of its second-generation leaders who are beginning to behave as if they have already won.

The BJP has dismounted from the Ayodhya rathyatra, and climbed on to the Vajpayee chariot. The wheels of the Vajpayee chariot are not a temple and a mosque, but economics and peace. It is a formidable vehicle, driven by a leader at the top of the popularity charts.

The positive response to the Pakistan initiative proves that Vajpayee is correct in his belief that while conflict might get votes, peace can reap a much higher dividend. His biggest problem might be complacency: he needs to restrain his party from getting too clever by half with leaders like Jayalalithaa.

As Talat Mahmood also pointed out, albeit mournfully, there are two kinds of fire. There are the ummeed ke chiragh: the lamps of hope must never go out in the Congress.
Alas, their dilemma might be better summed up in a line that Jaipal Reddy, who is from Andhra Pradesh and will therefore be familiar with Urdu, the language of the old Nizam state, will understand: Khud hi laga ke aag tamashai ban gaye… It is difficult to translate the nuances of Urdu into English, but let me give it a try: We have become spectators of a fire we ourselves lit.``

Romair

Please, stop hiding behind yourself behind your profanities and respond to my interact #114

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Romair

Might I trouble you to respond to my interacts #123 & #124 on this thread? In 124, I also have the link to an interact of mine from a couple of weeks back that you did not respond to.

re: Pak`s fault lines
I do not dispute the fact that Pak`s economy may be turning corners. Romair is right in claiming that 2004 may prove a good year for Pak what with a lot of investment coming in and Pak suing for peace with India which means it can now divest its energies towards nation building.
Pak`s problems lie elsewhere. It has too many fault lines.
The oldest perhaps is the way Pak is constituted. It is divided on ethnic lines. What has united Pak so far is Islam and a common enemy viz India.

Latter is now fast becoming a friend. And, very recently, Mushy turned his back on the other thing that excited all Pakis: fight for Kashmir. While the fight may continue in different ways, jehad will have to cease. USA is making sure jehad will not be a state policy anymore. All of a sudden, Mushy made a lot of enemies and by virtue of being a ruler, Pak has gained notoriety among the Kashmiris and jehadists who once praised Pak for standing firm on Kashmir. This break was necessary for Mushy`s, nay Pak`s survival. Recently, Mushy was in Davos for WEF and defended his country well. World community, especially western powers are applauding him. But his recent turnabout has created a big fault line with which he and Pak have to deal with in future.
Post-9/11 Mushy had opened another fault line by making an about-turn on Taliban. Taliban sympathisers are spread around Pak and in Pak Army. This i believe is the biggest fault line for Pak. Someday, Mushy may get deposed/killed by one of Taliban sympathisers in the Army. This person may immediately sue for peace with USA but try and revive the policy of Jehad in Kashmir. This will create a serious problem for Pak`s survival.

So, i would rather be watching how these things pan out in future rather than how Pak performs economically. Economic performance with foreign investments and aid is easier than dealing with the fault lines that i have mentioned.
Sridhar

gujju/moronicbania:

Are you arjun?

Anyways, you have learnt a lot from brainless arjun on copy and post operations.

It was 1999-2000 survey showing Indians living under $1 a day. But never mind, your brainlessness would not allow you to make intelligent decisions.

The remaining contents of your posts are copy and paste operations and we all know how Pakistan has fared in the past and is gearing up in future.

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``The pakistan army of course has its own (naraa-i-takbeer and Yo Ali).``

Ya Ali battle cry is no more in Pakistan army. It was taken off in early 80s.
This is becuase its a shia battle cry, also used in past slave dynasty regiments(deccan sultans), and the wahabification of army purged this cry.