Five Years of Congress I Misrule - From an Insider

We already know how corrupt Congress I politicians have been and continue to be. Until now there were no major corruption scandals exposed because the ministers in Manmohan's cabinet scratch each others back while donating a small cut to Sonia/Rahul duo and the party coffers.

Here is an IAS officer disgusted with the corrupt and incompetent Manmohan's government laying it all out in an open letter to PM after the recent Mumbai Islamic terror massacres.

Economic reforms stopped long ago, for your allies didn’t want them; there are many ministers in your cabinet who have perfected Wal-Mart’s cash-and-carry model and you can’t do a damn about it. You have failed on all counts as a leader. So, at least now, when India is under attack on its own soil, please act. And if you can’t act, please get out of the way and allow someone more effective to run the country....

You have personally demonstrated integrity, but what use is that alone, when almost every key minister in your cabinet is treating every file as an opportunity for cash flows? Are you telling us you don’t know that your telecom, environment and shipping ministries are the home of organized mafias looting the exchequer?

We know from The Pioneer expose that the telecom minister, A. Raja, and his wife, M.A. Parameswari, made 755 crores in one year - that's an average of 2 crores per day! We are told Central Vigilance Commission (sic), TRAI, finance ministry, and others could not stop the corruption of the humble dalit from Tamil Nadu!! Of course, the apparently clean prime minister does not act.

Apparently there are no checks in the great Indian democracy.

We haven't heard anything about the environment ministry - but one can only guess, with the growing economy and expanding industrial sector, how the environment minister could wave the world class environment protection laws on the books, which are never implemented anyway, to stuff his pockets.

Also, I am curious about the former underworld dealer from Bombay, the current minority affairs minister, A. R. Antulay's recent dupliticity on Mumbai Islamic terror massacres and the murders of top ATS officials including chief Hemant Karkare.

Antulay, who was present in the Lok Sabha, was seen smiling at the opposition members, gesturing them to continue with their protest. At one point, he even displayed the 'thumbs up' sign.

Apparently the rest of the psec media and liberals/progressives didn't get his memo because they appear confused and wondering why Antulay is doing what he is doing.

But not the Congress I party. Why? Because they know who Antulay is before Sonia, the queen, made him minister in Manmohan's cabinet. He was part of Bombay underworld providing services to the likes of Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Menon and probably continues to be a conduit for Dawood's money funneling into Congress I party funds. So Antuley can provide cover for Dawood revenge killers, who ended up, I think by luck, killing Karkare and the rest of top ATS officials, with impunity. It took Antuley about three weeks to get in touch with his former mentors in Pakistan and come up with a story to create outrage and plausibility of alternative narrative and, of course, Hindu -Zionist conspiracy which for some reason plenty of, otherwise sane, desi Muslims seem to gobble up. He is doing his work well for terrorist supporters in Pakiland and India. Congress I is playing along with the probable top fund raiser and possibly to get political mileage from anti-Hindu vote bank politics.

So all the tough talk from Manmohan, Sonia, and Pranab Mukherjee is a show because they can't even fire a lowly minister who has contacts with terror supporters across the border. Of course more and more Muslims jumping on Antulay's band wagon makes their show easier.

It is classic Congress I party that Nehru built which is now even deeper in the sewer.

Incredible: We Are Fighting By Doing Nothing, Seriously, Says PM

Even as western news agencies provide cover for Pakistani's inaction,

India pressed to share Mumbai evidence with rival
By SAM DOLNICK, Associated Press Writer

India demanded that Pakistan crack down on militants, shutter charities linked to extremists and jail suspected plotters.

With a flurry of raids, Pakistan took many of those steps this week. Now it's up to India to do what it likes least: share intelligence with its archrival about what it knows and how it knows it.

Keeping the alleged plotters in jail will require unprecedented investigative cooperation across a border mined with distrust and suspicion, and the onus has shifted to India.

Pakistani authorities say they will prosecute in their own courts anyone linked to the three-day siege in Mumbai that left 164 dead — they just need the proof.

India names Pakistani masterminds, date plot to 07
By SAM DOLNICK, Associated Press Writer

NEW DELHI – A Pakistani militant group apparently used an Indian operative as far back as 2007 to scout targets for the elaborate plot against India's financial capital, authorities said Thursday, a blow to Indian officials who have blamed the deadly attacks entirely on Pakistani extremists.

the tough talking Pranab Mukherjee is giving interviews to TV stations saying we may act but closes options on coercive actions,

Mukherjee asserted that the government will take all steps to protect the territorial integrity of the country but ruled out war as a solution to the problem.
(Did we miss something? Mumbai Islamic terrorists or any number of terrorists acts, in the past few years, were about separating Mumbai or other cities from Bharat? Is that what these acts of Islamic terrorism are about?)

and the nice talking Manmohan says he wants peace with the country the trained, armed, and funded the Mumbai massacre.

“It has always been my view that both countries (India and Pakistan) need to build their relationship together through mutual understanding. We want to make our relations normal with Pakistan,” he said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is playing its role as tough-to-get - on the one hand it claims to the victim and on the other letting go of perpetrators of terrorism, that it just put in "house arrest" - meaning free to travel to TV stations to give interviews.

The fault is not the pressure from US or UK, or presence of nuclear weapons in Pakistan, or even the Islamic terrorists who openly roam in that country, it is us and the so-called government in charge. Apparently recently held state elections gave the signal, to the psec media and Congress I lead government, that terror is not an issue any more, just days after Mumbai massacres, with the electorate. The inaction is probably the result of the presiding queen hasn't approved any action against the Land of Pure. I am sure there is a way to deal with enemy nations and enemy actors, but this is not it.

So it is back to business as usual as far as Manmohan and his apparent government is concerned.

Hope Next $1000 Will Be Much Faster

I hadn't looked at Bharatiya macro economic data in a long time. I knew the GDP crossed a $1 trillion sometime last year. But here is some data, I think, that should be celebrated, except for population growth rate.

Annual data 2007(a)
Population (m) 1,130
GDP(US$bn; market exchange rate) 1,132(b)
GDP(US$bn; purchasing power parity) 3,094(b)
GDP per head (US$; market exchange rate) 1,000
GDP per head (US$; purchasing power parity) 2,740
Population growth (5-year average) 1.7

(a) Economist Intelligence Unit estimates. (b) Actual.
Source: Economist.com Country Briefings

Sure there is a long way to go before poverty is controlled under a manageable 5-10% of population. One hopes the next $1000 GDP per capita will be achieved much much faster, say, in 7 years, if we can hit the real Hindu Rate of Growth of 10%.

I also worry about population growth rate of 1.7 because it is below 2.1 replacement level. To be sure, I don't consider India's populations to be excessive. Silly people (and politicians who get nothing done) blame population for the sins of bad governance and non-management of urban and rural living spaces. If low population was only key to development, African nations with much smaller populations would be highly developed and Japan with a population density larger than Bharat would be poorer. The answer to degraded infrastructure and scare resources is better governance and better management of both, not shrinkage of population. I think the huge land of Bharat can easily sustain a 100 or 150 crore (1-1.5 billion) people. So population growth should be at least at a replacement level to make the country productive and balanced for the foreseeable future.

Do Something About Live Advantage to Terrorists

Like most people I was appalled at the live intrusive TV coverage of the Mumbai Islamic death cult murderous rampage. One never knows, but it is likely a few people lost their lives because their whereabouts were broadcast to the Islamic terrorists live. And I am sure the various counter-terrorists operations were impacted by the live broadcast.

Composer Vishal Dadlani of the Vishal-Shekhar duo is trying to do something about.

...he believes will protect the lives of the security forces during anti-terrorism operations.

He has taken a stand against the live telecast by news television channels, which he says, exposed the plans of the military and National Security Guard as they tried to overwhelm the terrorists and rescue hostages.

Please sign his petition.

Incredible: Shivraj Resigned. But Why?

The home minister named after the brave Maratha warrior finally resigns. I haven't seen his resignation letter, so I am curious what reasons Shivraj gave for his resignation.

But why now? We are told by the press that he has become too hot even for maharani Sonia to handle. Apparently the sleeping queen just woke up to realize that he wasn't doing his job for the past four and half years and that we have had terrorists incidents every two months for past few years killing thousands of innocent children, women, and men. Of course, the brave fellow soldiers of socialist Congress I brought out their own knifes to finish of dead body. Are we supposed to believe this nonsense!

Now the sleeping queen has new taxi driver too. That's nice. Apparently having a full time taxi driver is more important then having a full time finance minister to deal with current global financial crisis. Won't it better if Manmohan himself retained home ministry because the intelligence agencies report directly to him anyway. Also, any reformation of intelligence agencies and new agencies that would sprout from the Mumbai Islamic death cult massacre would have be handled by the prime minister and his office anyway. But surely a prime minister cannot be a full time taxi driver for the sleeping queen. The cabinet shuffle makes perfect sense.

Why Didn't the Police Shoot The Terrorists

Photographic editor of Mumbai Mirror, Sebastian D'Souza, describes how he got close up pictures of perpetrators of Islamic death cult murderous rampage at Chhatrapati Shivaji Station, on November 26, in Mumbai. He was curious of one fact about the horror he saw. The much vaulted and exulted Mumbai police, who were taking cover from blood thirsty Islamic terrorists fire, won't shoot the terrorists, who were walking openly on the platform, although they had fire arms with them!!

But what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."

As the gunmen fired at policemen taking cover across the street, Mr D'Souza realised a train was pulling into the station unaware of the horror within. "I couldn't believe it. We rushed to the platform and told everyone to head towards the back of the station. Those who were older and couldn't run, we told them to stay put."

The militants returned inside the station and headed towards a rear exit towards Chowpatty Beach. Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera."

Why would that be? Surely some police were cowards. But none of them returned fire to take down the free roaming terrorists!

My guess is they were carrying the vintage bolt action rifles - .303 SMLE No.1 Mark III. (The vintage rifle was discarded much before the World War-II by every major country, except one, of course, in the world.) These rifles are standard issue to police in India, and the police also, probably, didn't have ammunition loaded. It another symbol of antiquated laws and bureaucratic procedures that Indian government follows. (Some company, probably owned by a minister's son, still makes them, just like the ambassador cars, the classic symbol of desi socialism, are still made and bought by the government).


The rifles were just show pieces. The best the much vaulted Mumbai police could have probably done was to physically throw those rifles at the AK47 carrying Islamic terrorists. One could say, stones would have been better arms for the vaulted Mumbai police.

Key Question When at Home in Orbit

ISRO made the final orbital maneuver to slow Chandrayaan I into a 100 km circular orbit on Chandra. The most crucial maneuver was few days ago when the spacecraft went from an Earthly orbit to an orbit around the Moon. After that there were series of maneuvers to slow the spacecraft to current orbit - opposite of what they were when orbiting Earth.

Courtesy The Telegraph

The next significant milestone would be when a lunar probe is dropped onto Chandra's surface. As a technology demonstrator and a scientific venture the project is a great success.

But one continues to hear complains that we should first solve some earthly problems before we can "ape" others. As I briefly said before, those complains miss the larger lesson of this project's success. The point is not which tasks we should put on hold until we are economically successful i.e., everyone in the country has basic necessities such as power, water, and access to health care and infrastructure. After all, the entire Chandrayann I project cost little more than Rs. 300 crores. It would cost lakhs of crores to create the infrastructure that would provide the basic necessities to all communities in the country. If one were cynical, Rs. 300 crores is a fraction of, for example, what Laloo Yadav skimmed off during the so-called fodder scam few years ago.

The lesson is not to put on hold so called non-essential projects or expenditures until every person in the country is well feed and is a happy being. And it's not like the government hasn't spent enormous amounts trying to do just that for the past 60 years and failed at it miserably. The lesson to learn is: how is that a small organization within the same failed government establishment can challenge itself to do an extremely complex outer space project and get it done inexpensively and on time? It's not just ISRO. The integrated missile development program, also a rocket based technology, achieved its objectives spending lot less then most other defence projects. In fact, the program was so successful it was dismantled few years ago because the stated objectives that it set out to do, in the early 80s, were complete.

What makes these little funded government organizations succeed, while the vastly better funded government infrastructure projects have failed repeatedly over several decades? Also, if there were no Chandrayaan projects, would it make a difference to other, supposedly more essential, projects? One has to suspend reality to believe that. It can be argued that the government should not be involved in lot those failed infrastructure projects in the first place. But still, why do some projects, based on high tech, succeed, while others, more mundane ones, fail repeatedly?

That should be the key question to ask of Chandrayaan I success. Making some quasi-socialist necessity verses luxury trade off argument misses the point.

Flawed Debate on Revenge Terrorism

There is More to It Than Name Calling

The debate over arrest of at least two Hindus - the first arrested was, interestingly, a women, Pragya, and that too a sadhvi - who apparently planted bombs in Malegaon, is assuming proportions of silliness. Sure call them Hindu terrorists and condemn the violence. The police and their so-called anti-terrorism squads of various states are trying to piece together the puzzle of who is who and how they are connected. Apparently some worked for BJP or were with RSS or ABVP years ago. And that's the fodder for p-sec media tamasha.

What is missing from the debate and analysis is why this is a surprise. Islamic terrorists and their masters in the Land of Pure have been at this for 15 years since Mumbai terror bombings that killed over 200 people. Remember prior to those terror bombings the masters supplied weapons and ammunition to Muslim areas in Mumbai to kill any Hindus rioters that would have come that area. They wanted open riots and killing, something close to an open warfare, amongst Hindus and Muslims. And the terror bombings never stopped since. Now that Hindus are forming entities to make that a reality is somehow surprising? A normal sane country would have understood what the Islamic terrorists puppets and their masters are up to and pursued a twin strategy of taking out the masters while destroying the puppets. Instead all we got were denials year after year - one terror attack after another.

We were told a peace treaty over J&K with Pakistan apparently would somehow pacify the masters - as though negotiations and signatures on a piece of paper ever satisfied evil. Obfuscation and appeasement became the strategy for dealing with the in-house terrorist puppets. Everything was, and still is, being looked at from political and vote bank angle. As though the terrorists and their strategies would somehow stray to the vagaries of votes and democracy. Nehru's and Indira's socialism already created a entitlement culture, sense of oppression, and a class culture among many. Combine that with the appeasement politics of the past two decades (or longer) and one has to wonder how exactly is an Islamic terrorist satisfied?

Also, there is a parallel between what the Christian cult groups are doing to undermine Hinduism in the country and what the Islamic terrorists are up to. Formation of Hindu entities to undertake revenge terrorism purportedly against Islamic terrorism and against soul harvesting Christian cult groups is a logical outcome of the way the State of India works. That work ethics was, and continues to be, drawn from the way Nehru and his cronies functioned from day one of democratic India. The complete and utter disregard for anything Hindu - cultural, spiritual, social, and historic - and in its place trying to create a disgusting and contorted entity called a (pseudo) secular India. That experiment is about to fail because of its inherent contradiction and immorality it wants to impose on the vast majority of people of the country.

Revenge terrorism and anti-Christian cult actions are just a start. One has to remember that Hindus are normal human beings - they solve major societal and existential problems, such as invasions and civilizational destruction, by going to war. In fact, the entire religion of Hinduism is based on celebrating the victory of good over evil - not by appeasing evil or signing a peace treaty with evil, but by fighting it, every time, throughout its history. This is especially true when the State, that legally has the sole power to use force, is unwilling to deal with the cultural existential threat to the majority and hiding behind the banner of secularism. Gandhi's peace activities of the 1920s through 1940s were an aberration in Bharatiya history and the so-called peaceful transition, or independence, paid it's prize with partition of the newly independent land (with lakhs of people killed) and continuation of non-native British politics, policies, and law. There was never a clean break from the old imperial tyranny and the contorted morality of socialism imported from Britain.

With the State living in denial, that so called peaceful transition of 60 years, artificially propped up by socialism, seems to be coming to an end. And, as could be expected, the p-sec analysts, conditioned to think a certain way for decades, seem to be missing the big picture, again.

It's Official - Maoists and Islamists Are Now Partners in Terror

Call them the Mao-Islamists - Only Group Left to Join in is Our English News Media

One had a nagging feeling when the so called human rights activists, sympathizers of Maoists terrorists, try to divert attention when an Islamic group kills tens or hundreds of people during their bombing fests, as happened as recently as Jaipur bombings. Or when the left wingers join forces to defend a terrorist conspirator, Mahmood Afzal, for attacking, of all places, the Parliament when it was in full session.

Apparently all that was ground work for what was to come next - an official partnership between the two terrorist group and their various support groups.

Calling themselves “the victims of state terror”, the two improbable partners had sat together for the first time and called for resistance against all kinds of terror unleashed by the State and Central governments against Maoists and Muslims. The meeting was held in Kerala last month.

The main forces behind the move are — ‘Porattom’, a Maoist group having base in South India, Minority Watch, a human rights organisation suspected of having close links with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and National Democratic Front (NDF), a radical Muslim group accused of having similar links with the banned Islamic Sevak Sangh (ISS)...

The meeting was also attended by some civil society movements including Confederation of Human Rights Organisation (CHRO) and People’s Union Civil Liberty (PUCL) working against encounter killings and anti-terror laws.

Normally, non-secular Islamics fundamentalists would crush any left wing activities in the areas under their control, say, in the Gulf region. And the Godless Maoists would push any religious activities underground, like the Stalin's Soviet or Mao's China. But ideology of terror can make strange bedfellows.

One can only imagine the English media joining in transforming their role from being just apologists to both the Maoists and Islamic terror groups. Unsurprisingly, as suspected even by casual observers, many of the so-called "human rights groups", groups doing the bitting for Maoists and Islamic terror groups, also joined in the partnership.

Also imagine if the major foreign powers joins in from the east and north to support the entire Mao-Islamists terror infrastructure to undermine the country when they deem appropriate. It would be the continuation of thousand year assault on Bharat - the Islamic onslaught since the 8th century followed Christian European onslaught since the 16th century. I think our nationalists celebrated too soon, in 1947, when India finally got independence, that the assaults will finally cease.

One has to wonder if the Bharatiya state is capable of standing up to this partnership and fight back. Surely more than half the political spectrum, the secular apologists all, which are already steeped in appeasement of Islamic forces - those quotes and reservations and, of course, first claim to national resources - and in apologizing to Maoists terror - "they are our family", cannot or will not put up a fight. The task is daunting indeed for the right thinking people in power. I shudder to think what if Sri Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sri Advani and their cohorts decided not to form BJP and call it quits after the dismantling of Janata Party post-1980 elections losses. Who would right minded people turn in a democracy if not the political parties?

And the GOI Has a Kalpavriksham!

The price raise, based on global market prices, should have been "Rs 21.43 a litre on petrol, Rs 31.58 on diesel, Rs 35.98 on kerosene and Rs 352.99 on an LPG cylinder."

Instead, actual price raise, controlled by the wise Government of India was "Rs 5 per litre on petrol, Rs 3 on diesel and Rs 50 per cylinder of cooking gas LPG while keeping kerosene, the poor man’s lighting and cooking fuel, untouched."

How does the government plug the difference? By taking on more debt via oil bonds. Why? In order to control inflation which is already mangled by all sort economic distortions from agricultural products to steel.

Sure, short term inflation may be held down. But at what cost? First, oil bonds are the debt of the people, not some faceless government. The current users spurge oil at lower cost, but their children will be paying for it for decades to come.

Second, because the oil bonds are huge - subsidies are huge - they are going to crowd out productive investment in the economy impacting cost of borrowing for everything from infrastructure to agriculture investments. Here is what the oil bonds are going to take in:

"With the OMCs having to absorb Rs 20,000 crore of the loss as against Rs 16,125 crore last year, the leftover loss of Rs 135,000 crore would be handled by the government with the Finance Ministry issuing oil bonds every quarter based on actual numbers. However, to provide immediate liquidity to OMCs, the government would allow them to daily place Rs 1,000 crore of previous oil bonds with the central Reserve Bank of India in lieu of foreign exchange to import crude oil."

Third: because the actual price raise is a small fraction of what the price raise should be, energy consuming people will not make dramatic adjustments in their consumption habits. A Rs. 20 increase in petrol cost would surely make more people to drive cars less by curbing unnecessary driving or switching to two-wheelers and force vehicle owners to maintain their vehicles better to increase the mileage of the vehicles. A Rs. 300 increase in LPG cylinder would dramatically change peoples cooking habits ensuring minimum wastage of LPG. The prime motivation for changing peoples behaviour is taken away by not increasing prices of oil products to market levels.

Fourth: people, media, and opposition political parties would have forced the government to find more oil/gas within the country itself. Instead of underinvestment and slow progress of prospecting for oil and gas fields, there will be a big push for increased investment and, hopefully, increased privatization for finding and drilling activities.

And lastly: high oil/gas prices will create an immediate market for alternative energy sources - more people will use solar or alternative means to get energy. That in turn will boost investment in alternative energy, presumably low cost technology that we excel at, by private players who want to serve the alternative energy market.

The last three are critically important for future energy needs and future growth of the economy. The first two will surely hurt the economic growth in the long run.

None of these are achieved by subsidizing oil products and taking on more debt by the current government which will have to be paid for by future generations. In 2002-03, when price of energy was at a low point, there was considerable discussion in NDA government on allowing markets to determine price of energy that people consume in the country. Baby steps were taken. UPA, which came to power in 2004, folded the baby steps and went back to the old socialist ways of command and control of energy markets and distortion of prices.

Meanwhile Communists, partners in current government's bed, say they will hold dharnas. And BJP's Sri Advani takes a swipe at UPA that it's one more instance of UPA's bogus aam aadmi policies. And why not the swipes.

The only positive that seems to come out of this sorry oil story is that the government is cutting all kinds of taxes that are a norm on petroleum products in the country.

"The government took a hit on its revenue by cutting customs duty on all products by 5 per cent, abolishing that on crude oil and lowering rates on petrol and diesel to 2.5 per cent. It also cut the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Re a litre to Rs 13.45 and Rs 3.60 per litre respectively. While the increase in retail prices would bring in Rs 21,153 crore for the OMCs, the duty cuts would reduce their tax outgo by Rs 22,660 crore."

Let's hope those duty cuts will stay even after oil price come down to earth as it seem to finally indicate (down to $122 from $135 a future barrel of crude just a few weeks ago), although it's still very high.

Communal Mindset Shows

One can guess from the support Shivraj Patil is getting from the leftist Congress I, that the leaders of that party looks at the issue of putting to death a murderous terrorist, who brazenly attacked the Parliament building, when it was in full session, as part of their Muslim appeasement policy.

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil has drawn a curious parallel between Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, an Indian in an Indian jail, and Sarabjit Singh, an Indian in a Pakistani jail. Calling for Afzal Guru’s death, he said, doesn’t go with demanding clemency for Sarbajit.

The taxi driver for the maharani (one called her "Great White Queen"!), whose other job is to be the Home Minister of the country, says he was misquoted. But he doesn't say what he actually meant.

If ever there was a case where Congress I can claim it does not have policy of Muslim appeasement, hanging Afzal Guru could have been it. He had the best ultra-left wingers and terrorist sympathizers defending him at every level of the judicial process. But the case was too tight and Supreme Court won't have any of the bogus arguments of the leftists. The terrorist could have be hung years ago, for good reason, and non-Muslims who always wanted to give the dynastic party the benefit of doubt would have been satisfied.

But the Muslim appeasement agenda is intertwined into communal Congress I DNA. It never could calculate what the downside of hanging a Islamic terrorist would be - doing the right thing was, of course, far from its mind. What would vocal left-wingers, it's core base, say; what would desi Muslims think? It's better to keep the hanging in suspension and let the BJP take the rap for it at a later time, when they hang the terrorist. It probably never occurred to the appeasing party that may be the vast majority of desi Muslims won't care if a terrorist is hanged, as long as he had the due process of justice. May be it's too much to expect that desi Muslims, just like any other group in the country, as the recent OBC reservation debate has revealed, would actually be offended that the appeasing party would be calculating the impacting of punishing a terrorist on its pro-Muslim agenda.

So there is no outcry, by the media or left-wing intellectuals, that the communal Congress I considers all desi Muslims as, apparently, Pakistani Muslims and somehow action on a Muslim has to be compensated by a similar action on a Hindu. But one can imagine the venom of the media, and their brothers in arms - those so called human rights activists, that would be spewed on BJP if it were to suggest the same in reverse.

Mistry Lets It Rip

In a wonderfully column in Business Standard, Sri Percy Mistry, who enabled the MIFC report - a plan to convert Mumbai into an international financial center on par with New York City, London, and Tokyo - which is now gather dust, of course, lets it rip. On the meddlesome nature of Indian babucracies, especially those dinosaurs called chief economic advisers, who seem to populate a dinosaur institution, the Planning Commission, which is currently blocking, among many things, the building and deployment of international airports in Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, because, get this, they are too large (sic), despite the go head by the Ministry of Aviation, which actually did a study on the growth airline passengers, and the politicians mostly steeped in doctrine of socialism, including the apparently brilliant people like P. Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh.

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Apparently, primitivism protects India from financial crises. Hence proper insurance, risk management, and derivatives markets are not allowed to develop. Banning futures markets is believed to reduce commodity prices! That is like the Aztec belief that daily blood sacrifice is necessary for the sun to rise every morning!... The belief prevails that attempting to manage risk will exacerbate it because the tools involved are double-edged. To be sure, a sharp knife can be used to murder people. So should it be banned? We could always cut onions with our fingers, toes or teeth! That is the practical equivalent of what we are doing now in the world of Indian finance. If the thermometer gives you a reading you don't like (like prices being signalled by futures markets), then break or discard it!... Goaded by commentaries of retired CEAs and RBI executives also living in the past, but unfamiliar with the problems of today (or of how similar problems are addressed elsewhere) the counterproductive beliefs of our ignorant leaders are bolstered. There seems to be a fundamental reluctance to accept a self-evident (inconvenient?) truth in 21st century India, that is, the socialist mixed-economy paradigm they have grown up with is bankrupt. It does not work. It never did; not at macro-, meso- or micro-levels. It was rooted in bad theory and good intention — the same combination and dynamic that paved the road to hell. [Paying the price of ignorance - BS]

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The entire article is a gem. Please read it to understand how badly the country economy continued to be badly managed. (The article via Ajay Shah's blog.)

Can We Expect A Dozen This Year?

Yes, it's already May, but the prime terror season hasn't started yet based on recent attacks pattern. This time seven bombs, all near temples, with the eight defused near Hanuman Temple in Jaipur - a city I was in just last month, along with my family, walking around the tall, slender, and beautiful Hawa Mahal and shopping in the old pink city streets. At the moment 80 killed, with more to succumb - mostly because they were Hindus.

The terrorists apparently want Hindu-Muslim clashes - our news media and politicians speculate. Apparently simply killing people does not suffice as an explanation and necessary cause for action. One more intelligence failure - everyone being surprised adds nothing new to the mystery of terrorism. Apparently this was an intelligence failure where as killings from multiple bombs terror in Hyderabad, about an year ago, was not. While I am sure many terror plots were foiled or averted, the intelligence system, as it exists, is simply not working. And then we have Muslim appeasement, mainly to keep their leaders happy, to consider - as though Muslims don't die in terror attacks.

Looks like the terrorists didn't listen to the recent call by Deobandis, widely praised by our media, of course, to stop terror attacks - apparently they didn't specify who the terrorists were. The terrorists were probably thinking of those Hindu terrorists. After all, the equally dumb, English media seems to be confused too.

Coming to the pattern of terror attacks, they have been raising since 2005 (source PTI):

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2008, Jan 1: The year started with an attack by LeT militants on a CRPF training centre at Rampur in Uttar Pradesh. Seven CRPF personnel and a civilian killed. Militants escape under cover of darkness. 2007, Nov 23: Simultaneous blasts rock three Uttar Pradesh cities of Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow. 15 people killed. Oct 13: Blast in Ludhiana’s Shingar cinema hall leaves six dead. Oct 11: Ajmer Dargah targeted by militants. Two persons killed. Aug 25: Twin explosions rock Hyderabad. 44 people killed. May 18: Bomb blast at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad kills 11 people. Feb 19: Indo-Pak Samjhauta Express hit by terror blasts. 68 people including Pakistani nationals killed. 2006, Sept 8: Twin blasts at a mosque in Malegaon. 30 dead and 100 hurt. July 11: Seven bombs on Mumbai’s trains kill over 200 and injure 700 others. March 7: Twin bombings at a train station and a temple in Varanasi kill 20. 2005, Oct 29: Three bombs placed in busy New Delhi markets a day before Diwali kill 62 and injure hundreds.[What was left was smoke, blood all around - IE]

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One in 2005; four in 2006; six in 2007; I would say 10-12 in 2008. The terror season seems to be concentrated in the second half of each year.

The utterly incompetent left-wing UPA apparently will still be in charge, with the support of their anti-nationalists Communist allies - who seem to be able milk the UPA goat dry and still keep going. Expect no terror relieve until a new government comes in and make changes to the way intelligence is gathered, terrorism is fought and kept under control, sometime in 2009.

Why Microloans Are No Panacea

With Mohammad Yunus getting the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his microlending idea, implementation (mainly in Bangladesh), and global promotion, the practice of microlending reached a high point. There have been some complains about microlending - the main complaint is the almost astronomical interest rates that this type of lending charges - 25-50%, or more, annualized. Some of it can be explained away as risk premium. But Yunus claims a repayment rate of 99-98%, mainly due to peer-pressure of the community. Based on the default rates claimed and possible risk, the interest rates still are very high.

Another main grouse against microlending is that it's not a substitute for good goverance, free economic policies, and social spending by government. James Surowiecki, writes in the New Yorker, that there may be something to this.

The fundamental flaw in microlending promoters is the assumption that all people are entrepreneurs - i.e., a poor women running a family can buy that cow, or chickens, or rotating mobile phone to increase or complement sustenance income and very soon the family would move into lower middle class. It works for many people. But most people are not entrepreneurs. Most people want a steady sustainable income. For that, small to medium size businesses (SMBs), many of which require no- or low-skill, have to be promoted with wise economic policies and good governance - low taxes, ease of setting up business, and having access to cheap credit. Microlending can do none of that.

Surowiecki uses a study by Karol Boudreaux and Tyler Cowen to write that for poor society to become well off, promoting small and medium businesses (SMBs) is the key.

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What poor countries need most, then, is not more microbusinesses. They need more small-to-medium-sized enterprises, the kind that are bigger than a fruit stand but smaller than a Fortune 1000 corporation. In high-income countries, these companies create more than sixty per cent of all jobs, but in the developing world they’re relatively rare, thanks to a lack of institutions able to provide them with the capital they need. It’s easy for really big companies in poor countries to tap the markets for funding, and now, because of microfinance, it’s possible for really small enterprises to get money, too. But the companies in between find it hard. It’s a phenomenon that has been dubbed the “missing middle.”[What Microloans Miss - New Yorker]

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A condensed version of the article at IE.

Although Surowiecki talks of angels and venture capitalists, the key to nurturing SMBs is bureaucratic reform such as easing business hurdles - reducing time and money needed to form SMBs and labour reforms that gives SMBs hiring flexibility. The key indicators for ease of doing business are in the annual "Doing Business" publication by World Bank. Unfortunately Bharat is always in the bottom quartile, along with most poor-income, high unemployment countries. The UPA government has done nothing to ease the burden of promoting SMBs in the past four years with all indicators decreasing or static for 2007 and 2008 (presumably for years 2006 and 2007), except for credit and cross trade profile. Over all Bharat is still categorized under "difficult."

Pitamah, But No Ratna

Manmohan Singh seems to have realized, after dealing with unyielding fair-weather collation political partners and having to deal with an aggressive Narendra Modi, that live was better when former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was leading BJP. After dissing and shutting out Vajpayee and Advani soon after coming to power in 2004, unlike his predecessor who conferred with Sonia, as leader of opposition, and Manmohan Singh, as senior leader and leader of Rajya Sabha, on most foreign policy and security related issues, Manmohan Singh and Congress I is coming around. Their brothers in left-wing politics, communists of all colours, have taken them for a ride for the past four years essentially allowing nothing to happen on major economic or security policy fronts other than increasing subsidies and creating more deficit inducing and corruption enhancing welfare schemes and living of off NDA era economic policies that came to fruition in the past few years after NDA left office.

Compared to what NDA era, under Vajpayee, achieved, UPA, under Manmohan/Sonia, has nothing to show for. And their term is almost ending with big whimper. Manmohan seems to have realized that and seems to have a new found respect for Vajpayee.

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“The Bhishma Pitamah of Indian politics Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee should listen to his conscience and let national interest prevail upon narrow politics,” Dr. Singh said in the Rajya Sabha [The Hindu]

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But don't ask for a Bharat Ratna for the pitamah.

What Else - Corrupt Praising a Dictator

The oldest dictator apparently resigned. Fidel Castro came to power 50 years ago - he come to power when Nehru, another self-proclaimed indispensable leader, was still clinging to power in his third term, I think. Last time one heard, Cuba is still not heaven on earth - it's still the same miserable place for lot of Cubans. No matter. Fidel says he'll still have something to say about the new government which he handed over to his younger, by a few years, brother, to keep the revolution going!! Talk about revolution fervor and nepotism. I wonder what M.K. Gandhi would think about that.

Our own official Communist daily, The Hindu, at least the editorial section of it, has an op-ed praising the dictator. The article was written by the self-proclaimed doyen of Bharatiya Foreign Policy, K. Natwar Singh, apparently from the experience he gained when he wasn't sipping Saddam's corrupt oil which was meant to provide food and medicine to poor Iraqi children.

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Mr. Castro is a most-admired, genuine friend of India. He is not just a very great man. He is a phenomenon. He has retired, but not out. May he live many more years. In his own way he has on, several occasions, set the time table of mankind. [The one and only Fidel - The Hindu]

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Do these men have no shame?

It's Muddled Capitalism

Every Way But The Right Way?

UPA finally, after four years in power, has a plan to generate employment opportunities, apparently based on markets, instead of on subsidies and brainless government run employment schemes that only promote corruption and political patronage. The plan is not to simply de-reserve the existing 114 SSIs and allow existing SSIs to seek capital to expand to generate economic growth and employment opportunities, but to allow large companies compete with the existing SSIs!

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Explaining its implications, Nath said: “This is important because we have got to modernise our SSIs. It is not that some reservations that are there would go away. Excise and other benefits will remain. The SSI sector needs foreign equity.” “If today someone wants to set up an SSI unit and ancillary units, they cannot fund it because it is not allowed. Now there is no limit. They can own an SSI. FDI would be allowed, but it will be governed by the investment policy. So if a large industry is allowed 51 per cent in that sector, then they will also be allowed 51 per cent in SSIs as well.” [To open up small scale industry, Govt set to remove restrictive law - IE]

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If this is not a muddled way of doing things, I don't know what is? While competition is a great thing - the competition should be on a level playing field.

The reserved list of 114 items for SSIs still remains. Now larger, much better capitalized companies, will open shop to under cut the existing SSIs and send them out of business within a few years! Soon the large cap companies will have a monopoly in these 114 reserved industries, will enjoy the excise tax breaks, and they can do little for generating employment in these reserved industries, because they can't grow as the industries have to be SSIs!

What a mess. This is not crony or free market capitalism - it's muddled capitalism. The ultimate beneficiary will be shifted with this policy - now it will be new, but large, companies, where as de-reservation would have allowed the existing small companies a fighting chance. The losers will be the unemployed, as is currently, but also the existing industries which can't compete with the big dogs. Smart SSIs will sell to interested large companies, at the earliest, and get out of those industries. The not-so smart ones will be out of business soon enough, probably bankrupt. The government again is picking the winners, with little to gain in terms of employment opportunities, with its muddled policy instead of allowing the market to sort it out and in the process actually generate much needed employment.

Secret Brookes-Bhagat Report - Babus Protecting Babus?

While the military planners still seem to be a puny ones with no strategic thought behind actions:

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This is illustrated by a meeting of the hush-hush China Study Group in 2004, when the Indian army opposed the plan of constructing 12 strategic roads in Arunchal Pradesh, saying that these would be used by Chinese Peoples Liberation Army to come into India. At this point, the then home secretary testily told the then director-general, Military Operations, that if the army was so afraid of meeting the PLA on the foothills, it should prepare to meet it in Delhi.

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the secrecy around the Brookers-Bhagat report on the 1962 Chinese war against India, written soon after the war ended, from December 1962 through May 1963, is mind boggling. Common notion seems to be that Congress I politicians do not want to embarrass the first PM Jawaharlal Nehru, who belong to the original INC, and his clan that continues to rule the newer Congress I party single handedly. But two different opposition coalitions, Janata Party, and Bharatiya Janata Party, ruled during various times and these parties too, which had every incentive to drag Congress I through mud, did not release the ultra secret war postmortem document.

I think it's more to do with babus protecting babus - one should never underestimate the power of babus and overestimate the power of politicians in the country.

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In the late eighties, then minister of state for defence, Arun Singh, tried unsuccessfully to ask the defence secretary, S.K. Bhatnagar, to lend the Report to the army chief, General K. Sundarji, so that he could read it, but to no avail. In 1997, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, N.N. Vohra, was successful in accessing the Report, with a deputy secretary of the defence ministry waiting inside his office to ensure that there was no attempt made at photocopying it! [Truth of ’62 is locked away - Shishir Gupta, IE]

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Urban Capitalists Are Here

Summarizing Pew's 2007 survey on openness of people, mostly urban, to free markets, foreign companies, and free trade, Ajay Shah points out that the urban Bharatiya are becoming more capitalists and are more open to free markets rather than to government intervention in dealing with economic issues.

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The report also shows sharp changes over the last five years. On page 16, they show support for foreign companies in India went up from 61% in 2002 to 73% in 2007, a gain of 12 percentage points. On the question People are better off in free markets, support went up from 62% in 2002 to 76% in 2007, a gain of 14 percentage points. Most interesting is page 20, where the fraction that believes that government has too much control has risen from 52% in 2002 to 71% in 2007 - a rise of 19%. If you looked at the rhetoric of political parties in India, you wouldn't think that this was the way the people think. Of course, this is not quite how voters think. The Pew Institute's sampling in India has a 79% urban weightage. [Ajay Shah's blog]

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Also, his analysis on how liberal, in terms of economic policies, each country surveyed is shows that the so-called self-anointed open free market economies, mainly the west, are nothing but and most of the so-called closed third world countries are lot more capitalistic and market oriented. At least that's what the people say. But the politicians and economic policies followed by their elites in each country may be quite different as India's economic policies of the last three years show abundantly.

CM as Chief Manipulator

When intelligence came in March of 2007 that six kgs of military grade explosives came to Hyderabad by terror handlers, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, whose primary job is to provide security to the people of the state, was calculating the risk of losing some votes in an election long time from now. With a 5% reservations for Muslims in the state by amending the state constitution, after repeated rebuff from the state high court, under constant pressure from the terror sympathizing parties like MIM, which support the ruling Congress I party, YSR Reddy thought he had the Muslim votes sealed. Sure many will vote for MIM, but Congress I will get the spoils.

Day after terror attacks YSR (second from left) seen laughing enjoying
himself with his fellow Congress I coterie (Barbad Katte via Acorn)

So the intelligence input was ignored and the police were asked to stand down. Terrorists were by and large Muslims, and so no terrorists, i.e, no Muslims, will be pursued. Then came the Mecca Masjid bombing in May. RDX and mobile phone controlled precision IED was used. Some Muslims went on a short riot. But mostly masjid personnel didn't want the police to do anything. They didn't provide much help. They would with deal the bombing on their own. CM had nothing to do. No extra vigilance. No extra security was put in place. The standard explanation was we don't know who did it. Terrorists were by and large Muslims, and so no terrorists, i.e, no Muslims, will be pursued.

No tough questions were asked by the apparent secular national media that likes to count bodies based on religious affiliation.

The disowned Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin was attacked at a book ceremony of her book translation into Telugu. Local news media personnel protected the writer. The police did little with their hands tied. The attackers were from MIM party, supporters of Congress I in power. The police knew who they were dealing with. They can't protect innocent victims because they had standing orders.

Indian intelligence has known since March 2007 that eight kilogrammes of military-grade explosive were delivered to an HuJI operative in Hyderabad. However, for its own reasons, the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh did not allow the kinds of aggressive — and unpopular — policing that the Central Bureau of Investigation and city police felt were necessary to secure the city. Neither during the recent communal incidents nor in response to the attack on Taslima Nasrin by fundamentalist thugs did the government demonstrate the kind of even-handed political and administrative resolve needed to address the deep communal strains in Hyderabad. It is true that successive governments have failed on this count since 1993, when the first Lashkar-e-Taiba terror module formed in the city. This makes the latest inaction all the more inexcusable. [Resurgent terror, wider implications - The Hindu]

The terrorists, instead of going away like the CM dreamed, set of a series of bombs in crowed market places and parks using that military grade explosives and mobile phone precision IED that they perfected at Mecca Masjid bombing three months prior. They killed 43 people and maimed 51. Now the chief manipulator wants to explain away. Within hours of explosion, the CM talks of Bangladeshi terrorists working with Pakistani terrorists. That to deflect question about local terror support structure that formed under his very nose. And to provide a mask for terror sympathizer supports like MIM - his friends and allies in power.

Dr. Reddy declined to give details of the investigation, merely saying that this “dastardly attack against humanity” had similarities with the May 18 blast in Mecca Masjid (in which HuJI operatives were suspected to have links). Denying that there was intelligence failure, he said the police could not be blamed for not foiling a plot hatched in a neighbouring country, but executed here. [External forces behind Hyderabad blasts - The Hindu]

The chief minister is not just a chief manipulator but also facilitated the terror and mayhem just like the local terror infrastructure that made the bombs, planned the attacks, and killed scores of people. CM was part of the terror infrastructure.