India Votes - and How!

Ref Jayabharti, RSidhar and Left-wing Loonies:

Have all the thousands of crores invested by the government in publicly-owned companies had any results even closely resembling this?

On the other hand, when interest rates are falling, the Leftists in India are demanding 12% interest to be paid on Provident Fund schemes!

From The Indian Express:

A shy little town and its people are counting their hi-tech millions

Premji Sr set up firm in Amalner in 1947. And gave shares to locals. Azim’s done the rest

RAJESH MENON


AMALNER (JALGAON DIST), JUNE 5: Maybe this is one small town market-bashers should visit in these days of frenzy.

It’s like any other remote Indian town—dirty bylanes and bullock-carts, harassed cyclists pulling up to let cattle and people pass, rickshaw pullers and hawkers of red chillies and clove.

The difference, though, is that many of them are lakhpatis—even crorepatis. It is an amazing story of what a company, Wipro, and its shares can do to the lives of ordinary people, hundreds of miles and tech generations away from Dalal Street.

Most here may not know what a computer looks like, mobile telephones go dead 30 kilometres from their borders, and morning newspapers don’t reach them until long past noon. Yet in this little sepia town, 425 kilometres from Pune, small-time traders and factory hands double up as stock brokers and financial news junkies.

Much of this town’s life and hopes revolve around Wipro shares, those pieces of paper stashed away in too many home cupboards since 1947, when Azim Premji’s father Mohammad Hussain Hasham Premji set up the company’s first plant here. Then it was Western India Vegetable Products and had got listed on the stock exchange in 1946.

Decades and an info-tech boom later, Amalner’s residents are cashing in on Wipro. ‘‘If you want to marry off your daughter, buy a Wipro share the day she is born, leave the rest to Azim seth,’’ is now Amalner’s mantra. Or if it’s a hospital, a mosque, or anything else that requires money to build — they simply dip into their Wipro shares.

‘‘Park your vehicle somewhere nearby. It will not go inside the lane,’’ a 26-year-old Alpesh Thakkar, assistant to local broker Satish Khanderia, points to Barabhai Mohallah, now Jewellers’ Street. It is a row of houses screaming for a coat of paint. The only thing out of place is the spanking new two-storey mansion of Shaikh Masoom.

Zahoor Ahmed Haji Sheikh Masoom, 65, the patriarch of a 32-member family, owns about 70,000 Wipro shares—last valued at over Rs 10 crore. ‘‘Mujhe thodi si English ati hain,” says the retired headmaster as he throws a smile at his curious kin peeping through the door. ‘‘My father was a tobacco merchant but also sold Wipro products. Mohammad seth used to come to our shop and that’s how he took those shares,’’ he explains.

The five shares that Shaikh Masoom bought in 1947 from Premji senior for Rs 100 each have today gone up — after several bonuses, stock splits and a bit of trading — to 70,000.

Today, Zahoor and his brothers, all except one (Kamil Ahmed, who works for Wipro), lead a contented retired life. ‘‘He (Azim Premji) is a Kohinoor. He deserves to flourish. With his growth we will also grow. Azim seth ne Amalner ka naam bahut uncha kiya,” says Zahoor’s younger brother Manzoor Ahmed.

Hamzabhai Kadarbhai Bohari, 86, who gave up his hardware business some time ago, is paralysed and too ill to talk. His son says Hamzabhai bought five shares for Rs 100 each a long time ago. He’s today rich enough to spend Rs 50 lakh to build a Bohra masjid.

There’s also a retired commerce professor who sold all but 50 of his Wipro shares to build a Rs 13.5-lakh hospital for his son. ‘‘In a single trading, I made a windfall and now the stock market is my full-time passion,’’ says Prof R.R. Bahujune. The hospital, of course, is named Wipro House.

RSridhar, Jayabharti and other Left-wing Loonies:

Read this from the Ney York Times and then tell me which Indian government owned company comes even close to this kind of performance.

A Giant So Big It`s a Proxy for India`s Economy
By SARITHA RAI

Published: June 4, 2004


MUMBAI, India - In the tumult of putting a new government in place in India, the stock of Reliance Industries was a good gauge of expectations about the prospects for continued economic liberalization.

It registered each low and high point in the political process. It plunged at the incumbent prime minister`s surprising loss and chugged upward as fears of a sharp leftward swing abated and a new prime minister, Manmohan Singh, an economist who began the liberalization of India`s economy, was named.

Reliance Industries, the country`s largest private-sector business enterprise, is just one - albeit the biggest - piece of India`s largest conglomerate, the Reliance group of companies. The group, a behemoth with interests in many businesses like energy and telecommunications, is in many ways the face of India`s industrial renaissance.

Its sales equal 3.5 percent of the country`s gross domestic product, more than the combined global sales of all of India`s outsourcing companies. Its $3.6 billion worth of exports are 6.1 percent of India`s total. It helps fill government coffers, contributing 9.4 percent of India`s so-called indirect tax revenues, from things like sales taxes, customs and duties.

Foreign investors bullish on India`s economy and its recent double-digit growth rates are even more enthusiastic about Reliance Industries, with its huge, ultra-modern projects. In 2003, they bought $900 million worth of its shares, an amount that constituted 13 percent of the total foreign inflows into Indian equity.

``Reliance is a great indicator of India`s corporate growth, the bullishness of its reforms and the robustness of its consumer market,`` said Rahul Singh, an analyst at the Mumbai-based equity research firm SSKI Securities.

Reliance Industries, an integrated giant with numerous products, including oil and textiles, has big American customers - it sells ingredients to detergent makers like Unilever, and the plastic resin for Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottles, for instance.

Its business muscle is the envy of competitors as well as a magnet for complaints of abuse of power. It is 34 percent owned by the Ambani family, mainly by Anil D. and Mukesh D. Ambani, who have been running the show since the death of their father, the group`s founder, in 2002.

In an interview in the group`s elegant corporate headquarters here, Anil Ambani, the vice chairman of Reliance Industries, spoke proudly of his heritage. ``We are rooted in India, but have set our sights on becoming a world-beating company,`` he said.

That is no mere pipe dream. The Reliance group - five listed companies and an undisclosed number of unlisted ones, with complex ownership structures and with interests that also include energy distribution, mobile and broadband services, insurance and financial services - reported net profits of $2.8 billion for its fiscal year ended in March. Sales were $22.6 billion, more than Coca-Cola or Halliburton reported for 2003.

The group has grown aggressively in India, a country where per capita consumption of gas, electricity and polyester fiber, three of the group`s main offerings, is among the world`s lowest. Exports are 20 percent of the group`s total revenues, so there is room to grow, there, too. A recent acquisition of a British company is a signal that the group is venturing farther overseas.

Reliance is frequently compared to General Electric for its ambition and drive. And the Ambanis are likened to the Rockefellers for their political and financial influence.

``If most Indian business houses have corporate lobbies, theirs is the strongest,`` Mr. Singh, the analyst, said. ``If other Indian business groups fund political parties, Reliance holds the most powerful of strings.``

``Think Big`` is the group`s unofficial motto, and expansions, these days largely by acquisitions, are often aimed at controlling all aspects of a business.

Reliance Industries, which accounts for 30 percent of the total profits of India`s private sector, runs the world`s third-largest refinery, in Jamnagar, in the western state of Gujarat. The $6 billion refinery accounts for around 28 percent of India`s refining capacity.

Reliance Energy struck the world`s largest gas find of 2002, and the country`s biggest in three decades, in the Krishna-Godavari basin in eastern India. In January, it announced plans to build the world`s biggest gas-fired power plant, in northern India, with a $2.2 billion investment.

And when the power distribution systems in India`s two biggest cities, New Delhi and Mumbai, were privatized in 2003, Reliance Energy became the largest electricity distributor in both cities.

Reliance Infocomm, despite being a late entrant into the country`s booming mobile phone market, is already the market leader a year after the introduction of its cheap wireless service.

In the 13 years since India`s economic reforms process began, the Reliance group has grown at a healthy clip, and many stockholders are said to have built homes and paid for their children`s education through profits from shares in the Reliance companies that trade.

Tens of thousands of investors joined many of the group`s 90,000 employees in 2002 at a memorial service for its founder, Dhirubhai Ambani, hailed as the first son of capitalist India. His rise from gas station attendant to creator, in 1958, of what became the country`s biggest industrial conglomerate, is the stuff of legend here.

Like the country`s other prominent business families, including the Tatas and the Birlas, Dhirubhai Ambani started with a textile business. ``But unlike the other groups,`` Anil Ambani said, ``we neither had the strength of capital nor strength of lineage.``

In 1977, when his father floated a public stock offering in what was then Reliance Textile Industries to finance his expansion plans, thousands of investors bought in, setting off an equity market boom among India`s middle class. There were so many investors that shareholder meetings were held in a soccer stadium.

The Reliance group companies now have more than 3.5 million shareholders, and the Ambani brothers have a combined personal wealth estimated at $6 billion.

Reliance`s initial growth came in prereform India, in the era of the License Raj, as India`s infamous, monopoly-perpetuating system of granting licenses and privileges was called, and it was slow going.

But while the fortunes of most of India`s old business dynasties fell by the wayside when the economy opened up, Reliance flourished. And it holds its own against India`s new-economy stars.

The Ambani brothers now overseeing the vast Reliance empire seem to be good foils for each other. Anil, 44, Reliance Industries` vice chairman, is an outgoing man, a financial whiz married to a former Bollywood movie star. Mukesh, 47, the company`s chairman, is a quiet man, an engineer who is a stickler for detail.

Though both received M.B.A.`s from American business schools - Anil from Wharton, Mukesh from Stanford - people at the company said their survival skills were honed in the ``Dhirubhai Ambani school.`` They inherited their father`s tenacity, his intuition in consolidating businesses, even his ability to work India`s convoluted bureaucratic system to their advantage.

They also inherited their father`s drive to become the biggest, or nearly, in whatever business they were in, often to the derision of others along the way.

For instance, when Reliance announced plans in the mid-1990`s to build its petrochemical refinery in a barren stretch of India`s west coast, competitors predicted it would be the group`s downfall.

One Reliance veteran, Yogesh Desai, the president for corporate development, recounted how Mukesh Ambani, who had taken over the daily operations of the company, met the challenge. ``The approach was: `There`s no road? Let`s build a road. There`s no power? Let`s build a power station. There`s no port? Let`s build a port.` ``

Now, thousands of acres of once-arid land support thriving mango orchards. There is a bustling township with a school, a hospital, even a hotel. Nearby villages have schools, hospitals and drinking water, courtesy of Reliance. And the huge Jamnagar refinery is among the world`s most efficient.

The group has also made a big foray in the country`s booming telecommunications sector. With an ambitious $4 billion plan to make the mobile phone ubiquitous, even among the poor, in India, the world`s second-most populous country, Reliance Infocomm introduced a rock-bottom-priced wireless service in 2002.

Initial glitches predictably appeared. So did the doomsayers.

But Reliance said it was determined to leverage the cost advantages of Qualcomm`s code division multiple access, or C.D.M.A., technology, widely used in the United States. ``Our strategy is to make money on scale, not from skimming the market,`` Anil Ambani said.

From a subscriber base of 500,000 in 2002, Reliance had 7.8 million mobile customers by the end of March, more than 20 percent of the total market, leapfrogging the previous leader, Bharti Tele-Ventures. Its countrywide fiber optic system, scheduled to be completed in 2005, will further broaden the service`s reach.

In January, Reliance Infocomm acquired its first non-Indian operation, the London-based FLAG Telecom, a bandwidth supplier with underseas cable connecting Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the United States, in a $211 million deal.

Though the group has remained vibrant in the post-founder era, there have been murmurs that differences between the Ambani brothers fueled by such things as Anil`s conspicuous absence from the rollout of Reliance Infocomm, his brother`s pet project, will eventually affect the group.

For now, there is no obvious friction. Their families share a 100,000-square-foot luxury building in Mumbai`s upscale Cuffe Parade neighborhood, complete with multiple servants` quarters and a temple, though Mukesh Ambani is planning to move out as soon as his mansion in the Altamount Road neighborhood is built.

Reliance`s competitors declined to comment for this article.

Reliance has come in for criticism for its recent back-door entry into the booming wireless market. While global system mobile communications companies with international investors like AT&T and Singapore Telecommunications bid for cellular licenses that have averaged hundreds of millions of dollars each in public auctions, Reliance received limited-mobility rights along with fixed-line licenses sold by the government at a fraction of the cost.

By interconnecting different circles of limited-mobility services, Reliance has assembled a nationwide network comparable to that of the G.S.M. operators` systems.

Cellular operators accused Reliance of breaching regulations on limited-mobility phones. But Reliance turned the commercial dispute into a technological one, settled out of court, and became the prime beneficiary of a changed regulatory regime.

``Reliance managed a de facto national license for a bargain price,`` said Mahesh Uppal, director of Telecommunications and Computer Information Systems, a consultancy based in New Delhi. ``It is a company of amazing dimensions; it works on all different planes.``

Even some of the company`s staunchest critics find much to admire.

India`s former privatization minister, Arun Shourie, who as a journalist crusaded against Reliance in the 1980`s, said he did ``a 180 degree turn.`` In a speech on the first anniversary of Dhirubhai Ambani`s death, Mr. Shourie said, ``Dhirubhais are to be thanked not once, but twice over.``

``First, they set up world-class companies and facilities in spite of those regulations,`` he said, ``and, second, by exceeding the limits and restrictions, they created the case for scrapping those regulations. They made a case for reforms.``

RSridhar, Dost-Mittar, Congresswallahs and Left-wing Loonies,

Here is some statistic that ought to get you thinking.

In the US, 7% of the population is engaged in agriculture.

In India, agriculture employs 70% of the population and produces 26% of the GDP.

What you all want is continued mollycoddling of these parasites whose productivity is abysmal.

You need to get them off the farms and into factories. Which was what the Industrial revolution accomplished in England, Europe and the US. And what China is trying to do with a great degree of success.

Continuing to keep them on the farm is a recipe for economic disaster.

But that is what the Left-wing Loonies want to do.

Ref rsridhar #473

[Gold is a hidden wealth in India. It is a locked up capital. Traditionally, it is kept in Indian households for future security. If attempts at bringing this asset to open market has failed in the past, it does not still take away the fact that the asset exists and is of enormous value.]

So is real estate. Why live in modern housing when a thatched hut is so much cheaper? Let everyone in India move into a thatched hut, save tons of money and invest it? Convert all of India into Dharavi!

Do you think you could get your parents to agree?

Ref rsridhar #472

[India`s poverty has nothing to do with Nehru.]

It has everything to do with Nehru. At the end of WW II, India was one of the creditor nations with the UK owing hundreds of millions of pounds to India for the war effort and India had one of the strongest foreign exchange positions in the world. All that wealth was squandered by Nehru and his loony socialist policies.

[If India were a colony today, Mr Harimau Iyer would not have the freedom to call Nehru a bandit but would be washing an Englishman`s A$$ and not have the luxury of having a muslim driver drive his car.]

Sure I could call Nehru a bandit if the Brits were still in India. They wouldn`t mind it all!

I probably would have had a car earlier in my life because there would be none of this crap of affirmative action. After all, didn`t Nehru himself continue to live on the wealth created by his father? So I see no reason why I couldn`t have gotten ahead in British India in a technical/professional environment.

No idea whymy post came so many times.
Gujjubania, this is not about my own gold, which is next to nothing, anyway. It is about the co-opting of women`s assets by a patriarchal society and the assumption that women should give up what they own without a protest. I don`t expect you to understand, any more than rsridhar understands. This is a feminist issue. I am sure there are men who understand, but it`s not the end of the world if some don`t.

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rsridhar,
I have what little gold I own in the bank, so do all my female relatives, because it is unsafe to keep it at home. What good is it doing India there in the bank locker?
Besides, is the problem with personal ownership of the gold?That`s dangerously close to communism.
Why not ask people to contribute the money they spend on cars and hi-fi systems to the government instead? Gold usually belongs to women, the one asset in their name. No government has been able to give women-Hindu or Muslim- any modicum of security. In the last week, there has been an appalling rape of a medical student by a doctor in Delhi-the police told her parents to give her a shower before bringing her to the station, because they wanted all evidence to be lost! If the government can`t look after us, we will have to ourselves.
I`m not going to get into Modi, because I wasn`t there. The evidence I have seen doesn`t suggest the police went out and rioted, but I`m not saying it can`t happen.

rsridhar,
I have what little gold I own in the bank, so do all my female relatives, because it is unsafe to keep it at home. What good is it doing India there in the bank locker?
Besides, is the problem with personal ownership of the gold?That`s dangerously close to communism.
Why not ask people to contribute the money they spend on cars and hi-fi systems to the government instead? Gold usually belongs to women, the one asset in their name. No government has been able to give women-Hindu or Muslim- any modicum of security. In the last week, there has been an appalling rape of a medical student by a doctor in Delhi-the police told her parents to give her a shower before bringing her to the station, because they wanted all evidence to be lost! If the government can`t look after us, we will have to ourselves.
I`m not going to get into Modi, because I wasn`t there. The evidence I have seen doesn`t suggest the police went out and rioted, but I`m not saying it can`t happen.

Ref Jayabharti, RSridhar, Loonies of the Left and Congresswallahs who can`t get enough of Nehru.

From Rediff:

Forty years ago, India`s first prime minister passed into the ages. On his death anniversary, May 27, Lieutenant General Eric A Vas (retd) commenced rediff.com`s series to evaluate Jawaharlal Nehru`s legacy with a perspective of the premier`s relationship with the military.

Today, national security and foreign affairs expert Brahma Chellaney continues the debate with an assessment of Nehru`s foreign policy.

Talleyrand, the illustrious foreign minister of Napoleon and the Bourbons, prescribed one basic rule for pragmatic foreign policy: by no means show too much zeal. In India`s case, gushy expectations, self-deluding hype, and oozing zealousness have blighted foreign policy since Independence, constituting the most enduring aspect of the Nehruvian legacy, other than the hold of the Nehru family dynasty over the Congress party and the continued strength of Indian democracy.

Zeal is to Indian diplomacy what strategy is to major powers. India has rushed to believe what it wanted to believe. Consequently, India is the only known country in modern history to have repeatedly cried betrayal, not by friends but by adversaries in whom it had reposed trust.

Reflecting India`s decline in its own eyes, however, while one `betrayal` in 1962 hastened the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, another in 1999 kept Atal Bihari Vajpayee going as if it did not happen despite his public admission that his `bus to Lahore got hijacked to Kargil.` It was finally the voters who decided they had had enough of Vajpayee.

Earlier, in 1972, even the strategist Indira Gandhi slipped up at Simla by trusting her opponent`s word on Kashmir.

The strength of any nation`s foreign policy depends on the health of its institutional processes of policy-making, on realistic goals, strategies, and tactics, and on the timely exploitation of opportunities thrown up by external conditions. Indian foreign policy, regrettably, has been characterised by too much ad hocism, risk aversion, and post facto rationalisations.

Institutional processes are operationally weak and there is no tradition of strategy papers to aid political decision-making. An uncritical media only encourages a political proclivity for off-the-cuff decisions.

In the absence of a set of clear, long-term goals backed by political resolve, Indian foreign policy has not been organised around a distinct strategic doctrine. Without realistic, goal-oriented statecraft, the propensity to act in haste and repent at leisure has run deep in Indian foreign policy ever since Nehru hurriedly took the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council without realising that the Security Council, as the seat of international power politics, has little room for fair dealing.

The India-China territorial dispute is another problem bequeathed by Nehru to future generations of Indians. Nehru`s first blunder was to shut his eyes to the impending fall of Tibet even when Sardar Patel had repeatedly cautioned him in 1949 that the Chinese Communists would annex that historical buffer as soon as they had installed themselves in power in Beijing. An overconfident Nehru, who ran foreign policy as if it were personal policy, went to the extent of telling Patel by letter that it would be a `foolish adventure` for the Chinese Communists to try and gobble up Tibet -- a possibility that `may not arise at all` as it was, he claimed, geographically impracticable!

In 1962, Nehru, however, had to admit he had been living in a fool`s paradise. `We were getting out of touch with reality in the modern world and we were living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation,` he said in a national address after the Chinese aggression.

Nehru had ignored India`s military needs despite the Chinese surreptitiously occupying Indian areas on the basis of Tibet`s putative historical ties with them and also establishing a land corridor with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir through Aksai Chin. Although Indian military commanders after the 1959 border clashes began saying that they lacked adequate manpower and weapons to fend off the People`s Liberation Army, Nehru ordered the creation of forward posts to prevent the loss of further Indian territory without taking the required concomitant steps to beef up Indian military strength, including through arms imports. Nehru had convinced himself grievously that China only intended to carry out further furtive encroachments on Indian territory, not launch a full-fledged major aggression.

In fact, Nehru accepted the Chinese annexation of Tibet in a 1954 agreement without settling the Indo-Tibetan border. While Nehru thought he had bought peace with China by accepting Chinese rule over Tibet on the basis of the five principles of peaceful co-existence, Mao and his team read this as a sign of India`s weakness and a licence to encroach on strategically important areas of Ladakh.

So betrayed was Nehru by the 1962 attack that he had this to say on the day the Chinese invaded: `Perhaps there are not many instances in history where one country has gone out of her way to be friendly and co-operative with the government and people of another country and to plead their cause in the councils of the world, and then that country returns evil for good.`

Four decades after Nehru`s death at the age of 74, the Nehruvian legacy in foreign policy continues to influence Indian policy-making. Much before the recent national election made Sonia Gandhi the most powerful political figure in India, the Nehruvian legacy was intact in Vajpayee`s foreign policy. In fact, nothing pleased Vajpayee more than to be compared with Nehru.

Vajpayee`s foreign policy was in reality an updated, post-Cold War version of Nehruvian diplomacy.

Nehru and Vajpayee mistook casuistry and word games for statecraft, with the latter addicted to parsing and spinning his words. Both valued speech as a substitute for action or camouflage to concession. Vajpayee`s fascination with telling the world about the `greatness` of Indian culture was his rendering of Nehru`s moralistic lectures to the mighty and powerful. Like Nehru, he was so enthralled by his own illusions and desire for international goodwill that he could not deal with ill will from India`s implacable adversaries. Even in war, Vajpayee declined -- unlike Lal Bahadur Shastri -- to take the fighting to the aggressor`s territory, battling the enemy on the enemy`s terms and relying on the United States to midwife a `victory` in Kargil.

Except for a period under Indira Gandhi, India has found it difficult to kick its `hug, then repent` proclivity. Take the case of the past decade. The 1990s began flamboyantly with the famous I K Gujral hug of Saddam Hussein and ended spectacularly with Jaswant Singh`s hug of the thuggish Taliban, as the then foreign minister chaperoned three freed terrorists to Kandahar. In the midst of the IC-814 hijacking saga, Jaswant Singh fed to the media his hallucinations about driving a wedge between the Taliban and its sponsor, Pakistan.

Until India fully absorbs the fundamentals of international relations, it will continue to get `evil for good.` The fundamentals include leverage, reciprocity, and negotiating strategies that do not give away the bottom line. For five decades, India has put itself on the defensive by publicly articulating its Kashmir bottom line as the starting line -- turning the LoC into the international border.

Some nations have a built-in craving for revision or hazardous gain, while others want only the status quo. Randall L Schweller, in his brilliant study Deadly Imbalances, labels the revisionist nations `wolves` and `jackals`, while the status quo states are either `lambs` or `lions`. India certainly qualifies as a `lamb,` surrounded by `wolf` China and `jackal` Pakistan. The `lamb` status is in keeping with its intrinsic disposition and meek objectives. Although its borders have shrunk since Independence and it is a poor state, India is, lamb-like, content with the status quo.

Only a `lamb` state will make unilateral concessions and deal with invaders and hostage-takers on their terms. Again, only a `lamb` will accept the outside portrayal of Kashmir as a bilateral dispute between India and Pakistan, condoning the third-party role of China, in occupation of one-fifth of J&K. A `lamb` state is wary of traditional friends, but wishes to cuddle up to elusive new buddies or even enemies. Its diffidence makes external affirmation and certification important for its policies. A `lamb` also assumes that others change their beliefs and policies as rapidly as it meanders to a new course.

Ref RSridhar various posts

If you read today`s ``Dinamalar`` (www.dinamalar.com, you may need to install Tamil fonts to read the news), you will find that water from Veeranam lake has come to Madras through the pipeline and tests are being conducted on the pipeline for leaks before full-scale pumping of water begins.

I guess it is a bit too late for your parents to go and vote in the elections.

``Let us start in India by prohibiting polygamy, divorce through `talaq`, marriage of Muslim children to Arab sheiks for money, subsidy for the Haj pilgrimage and supporting the right to convert FROM Islam and the right to alimony after divorce.

Let us see how much you then b!tch about the anti-Islamic nature of India.``

I agree. How come there is separate family law for Muslims in India. There should be only one law in India strictly based on the correct definition on secularism.

I am waiting for that day.

Aameen.

re: Harimou`s post # 456
``Oh, give me a break. Pandit the Bandit recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet whereas the British government had only conceded Chinese suzerainty. Bandit didn`t say `Boo` to the Chinese in any domestic or international fora. Don`t take credit for not handing over the 19-year-old Dalai Lama to the Butchers of Beijing.... handing him over would have been the most contemptible thing any human being could have done. ``
If Harimau Iyer read Mao Tse Tung`s biography, he will realize that the attack on India had as much to do with inflicting a huge blow to Nehru`s personality and fame as to territorial ambitions. After the war, Nehru`s fame as a leader of third world took a nosedive. Mountbatten would comment later (after Nehru`s death) how Nehru would have been remembered a great leader of Asia if it were not for the 1962 war. A victory for China also added personal glory to Mao Tse Tung.

India`s poverty has nothing to do with Nehru. Nations that depend on one individual do not attain their goals. I see in USA the flame of individual liberty and drive driving the nation to greatness. OTOH, India is one of those nations which seem to resurrect somebody to the exalted post of a hero and then, when the nation fails, the leader then becomes an easy scapegoat.
Nehru, Gandhi and others made India`s independence a reality. Nehru did not impose himself on Indians. They elected him, time and again, with overwhelming numbers.
Recognize this single fact. It is the Indians who failed.
Today`s generation of Indians have become so pathetic that they fail to even acknowledge the greatness of their leaders who made them free. If India were a colony today, Mr Harimau Iyer would not have the freedom to call Nehru a bandit but would be washing an Englishman`s A$$ and not have the luxury of having a muslim driver drive his car.
Sridhar

re:#440 by harimau
Find out why only 10% of Indians pay taxes. I have personally known many people in India (including a prosperous medical practioner) who have a cynical attitude when it comes to paying their dues. Then they expect the govt to do good!

Nehru`s socialism did create poverty but then it also created an era of building institutions, fostering democracy all of which are being used as launch pads today.
Gold is a hidden wealth in India. It is a locked up capital. Traditionally, it is kept in Indian households for future security. If attempts at bringing this asset to open market has failed in the past, it does not still take away the fact that the asset exists and is of enormous value.
Sridhar