Aung San Suu Kyi Begins Her Party Website

Recently freed Nobel Laureate aung San Suu Kyi starts a new website for the National League For Democracy nldburma.org.

The website is still under construction although a few videos have been uploaded.

Aung San is rebuilding her party and her social work is very much on.

The supporters of Aung San did a fundraiser by selling traditional clothes, t-shirts and Aung San's paintings and collected 11000 US dollars in two days, the money will be used to help the families of political prisoners in Burma and fund social programs of NLD.

Winds of Change in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen

By Manuwant Choudhary

Winds of change sweep the middle east...it started with Tunisia..moves to Egypt and perhaps even protests can be seen in Yemen.

The United States under George Bush wanted to export democracy to the Middle East but what we now witness is that the Americans don't know where to look and whom to support - an ally `dictator' or the freedom loving people of Egypt.

Egypts President Hosni Mubarak has dismissed his government but like all dictators he does not yet see the writing on the wall and talks about protecting his people.

The people want him to go.

The people want a better Egypt.

They want freedom.

This revolution is not Islamic. It is for freedom.

Thats why the Egyptian government blocks twitter and facebook.

Democracy and freedom will come to that region as you can see the courage with which the youth face police brickbats and teargas and even armoured vehicles don't scare them anymore.

They have nothing to lose, except their chains.

Will this also spread to India?

Well, India could also see some agitations as corruption and the governments role in dealing with it comes under a cloud.

India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and his government need to act fast to address growing concerns if they want a stable and prosperous India.

It just takes an incident to push a country towards chaos or freedom, whicever you may choose to call it.

India's New Fight Against Corruption

By Manuwant Choudhary

A march against corruption in New Delhi on January 30 led by Swami Agnivesh, Baba Ram dev, Kiran Bedi, Anna Hazare to make India's government accountable and stop corruption.

Swami Agnivesh says India must bring back all the Indian money stashed away in Swiss banks...he tells NDTV anchor Vinod Dua that the only way to bring back the black money of tax defaulters is by citizens stoppping to pay taxes to the Indian government.

He says the money in Swiss accounts is equivalent to 9 years of all taxes collected by the Indian government and all its states - if the money is brought back India can have a 9 year tax holiday.


Anti-corruption movements in India have been popular in the past and governments have also changed yet corruption has always increased.

Not just oil mafia..in everything you do you pay money...even if you want a gun licence.

The only way to reduce corruption is by reducing the role of governments, but this motely crowd of anti-corruption movement will always want more regulation, more government being fed on socialism all their lives.

It is only Rajaji's Swatantra formula that can bring corruption to its minimum but India's social and religious leaders don't understand economics and the root cause of corruption.

Yet, the public mood in India is getting hotter and the anti-corruption movement could spread across India and there could be more civil unrest on the streets in months to come.

Jaipal Reddy You Are Bluffing

By Manuwant Choudhary

India's Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy addresses a press meet after a high level meeting to tackle adulteration.

His high level meet was with publc sector oil companies who have given 25 lakh rupees to the kin of Mr. yeshwant Sonawane.

He now talks of re-introducing the marker system.

But admits that kerosene tankers don't even have a lock on them when they leave oil depots.

Its also surprising that while oil companies open lakhs of new retail outlets and kisan seva kendra's for petrol and diesel there is not even a oil dispenor for kerosene.

Jaipal Reddy is bluffing India and protecting the corruption of government owned oil companies.

A Burning Republic

By Manuwant Choudhary

I know politicians would not like to remember the eve of India's Republic Day but television footage of a burning additional collector Shri Yeshwant Sonawane in Mahrashtra is shocking - he was burnt alive simply because he was preventing oil pilferage.

Who did it?

The Oil Mafia.

Are the oil mafia private individuals only?

No. The oil mafia includes private individuals, government officials, oil company officials, politicians and governments.

Ever wondered why there was a fire in Jaipur Oil Depot, or just sometime ago in Bombay !

The inquiry reports are guarded secrets.

Kerosene at subsidized rates almost always go into the wrong hands - they are even smuggled out of the country.

Who pays?

The taxpayers. The poor never get kerosene.

This Republic Day we should pause and think whether we have really entrusted our great country into safe hands.

Not just Shri Sonawane, they burn India.

WHAT IS RAREST OF RARE CASE IF COLD MUDER ISN'T?

By Manuwant Choudhary

Dara Singh should have been hanged to death.

But he got a life imprisonment and the Orissa High Court judges supported a lifer and said the criminality of Dara Singh did not fall into the rarest of rare category.

The judges said he only wanted to `teach a lesson to those who convert others.'

Just to remind you Dara Singh is the Bajrang Dal activist who torched a vehicle of Graham Staines and his two sons as they slept kiling them all.

So I wonder what is a `Rarest of Rare Case'?

The riots in Bombay? The riots in Gujarat?

No.

Even the Supreme Court is harsh on Teesta Setalvad simply because she wrote a letter on the Gujarat riots to the United Nations Human Rights Organisation.

Surely the Supreme Court should have shouted at India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations.

We would not have the BJP activists forcing their way into Kashmir simply to hoist our Indian flag by force. Kashmiris don't feel like hoisting a tricolour.

I wonder if the BJPs program will make Kashmiris feel more Indian?

Just wonder whatever happened to our `Basic Structure of our Constitution'.....Secularism?

In India liberals are not allowed to have their own political parties.

Property Rights are not guaranteed either.

And now the Orissa High Court judgement shows even Secularism is just a sham.

For our courts only perhaps Ajmal Kasab falls into the `rarest of rare case'.

I am not for capital punishment yet it hurts to see how pests get away with murder.

"Freedom and Democracy Are Goals You Never Give Up" says Aung Saan Suu Kyi

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

DRONES - A Dangerous Decade

Courtesy ectropic

Almost everyday we hear how drones cross-over the Pakistan border and kill dozens of alleged `terrorists' in Pakistan but as Gayane Chichakyan of RT reports that it may feel like playing a video game but the Drone could become the worlds biggest danger as the Drone Market explodes. And what happens if the drone technology falls in the hands of the terrorists? Drones are a departure from conventional warfare but this could become a real threat to peace.

REMEMBERING SRI C. RAJAGOPALACHARI (RAJAJI)

The above bhajan (sacred chant) was written by India's First Governor General C. Rajagopalachari for MS Shubhalaxmi to be sung at the United Nations in 1966 (There is nothing to lament) but this is a remix version and even if you dont follow the language you will find the song uplifting.

This link REMEMBERING SRI C. RAJAGOPALACHARI (RAJAJI)is a tribute to Rajaji by Mr. Annaswamynatarajan (based in the United States), who remembers a great soul who passed away on Christams Day in 1972. Rajaji must be 80 when he founded the Swatantra Party in 1959 to challenge the socialism of Jawahar Lal Nehru's Congress Party. He was also a rare civilian to be receive a state dinner at the White House!

When Freedom Will Come

My friend Sauvik points this amazing quote from Frank Chodorov on Aristotle the Geek's blog:

"When people want freedom they will get it.

When the desire of the business man for “free enterprise” is so strong that he will risk bankruptcy for it, he cannot be denied.

When youth prefers prison to the barracks,

When a job in the bureaucracy is considered leprous,

When the tax-collector is stamped a legalized thief,

When handouts from the politician are contemptuously rejected,

When work on a government project is considered degrading,

When, in short, the State is recognized to be the enemy of society, then only will freedom come, and the citadel of Power collapse."

Wheat For The World

My Farm: PUSA HD 2733 Wheat Variety - a Director of Agriculture, Phillippines, visited us to see this.

By Manuwant Choudhary

India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is unfit for the top job for two reasons - he has never been a farmer nor has he ever been a businessman.

I recall Dr. Manmohan Singh as India's very successful finance minister in the early 90s at one of his last Bombay public meetings at the Indian Merchants Chamber said how his mission was incomplete..in that he had been unable to liberalise the agriculture sector.

I felt, like many other liberals, that Dr. Manmohan Singh was the right man to cure India of its problems.

But now looking back I have to admit that we were all wrong.

Dr. Singh is only a loyal Congressman, but he has no vision for India. Hence, it is not surprising that while India deals with `unacceptable' rates of inflation, the government simply has no solution to the price rise.

All that he knows is how to pump the taxpayers money into all the wrong places - from oil companies to public sector banks to NAREGA.

I got an opportunity to be a farmer for a season and there was simply no labour available. (They were all digging dirt when they could be harvesting wheat).

This compelled me to purchase a reaper instead and get the job done. There is simply no money in agriculture. You can call it subsistence farming where a farmer with small land-holdings grows potatoes to feed his family and maybe carry a sack to the market.

Its not surprising why farmers in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have committed suicides in such large numbers.

And then there are city dwellers (including neo-liberals) who believe the farmers should also be taxed.

But I still hold agriculture to be India's main challenge.

India can feed the world and get rich while doing so.

But we must first get rid of socialism.

I wonder when will Bombay run for Freedom?

And we have been experimenting for long.

After the Bihar-Bengal famine in the early 1900s a very rich individual donated all his money to build a research centre in the poorest district of India - hence PUSA was built in Samastipur getting its name from Mr. Pitts of USA - to solve the food problem.

As an autonomous institute under British rule it did commendable research but after its take-over by the Government their experiments have been kept within their own laboratories. The farmers living near PUSA can be counted as the most backward in India.

But for a year now the scientists have begun working and want to see their experiments succeed on the farms as well.

We came in touch with Mr. Govind Singh, a very active young man originally from Gwalior - and he is the officer in charge of introducing zero-tillage method in Bihar (where one saves the cost of cultiavtion as well as retain crucial soil nutrients). Mexican levellers first level the fields completely so that the plants get uniform water.

So at my farm he introduced HD 2733 PUSA Wheat Seeds, which is not hybrid variety - but gives a high yield.

The photograph you see above is taken at my farm and a week ago the Director of Agriculture from the Phillippines came to see it - my farm has never looked so green.

Is This The End Of America?

Warning: Viewer discretion is advised and indiavikalp does not advise investments yet we would like you to watch this video for the economics it contains and think about it.

Bofors - The Ghost Is Real

By Manuwant Choudhary

A day before the CBI is to tell an Indian court that the Bofors case should be `closed' due to lack of sufficient evidence, an Income Tax Tribunal's findings are made public where both the Bofor's agents the Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi and Win Chadda are asked to pay INcome Tax on the commission money that went into their accounts.

The tribunal uses the same CBI findings that the CBI plans to use to close the case.

An independent lawyer Ajay Aggarwal is doggedly opposing this `closure' by the CBI in public interest. He says if the guilty go unpunished in this then there will be no further detterent on the corrupt in India.

The IT tribunal passed this judgement on December 31, 2010 where in it held that Quattrocchi was paid 9 crore rupees and Win Chadda got Rs.52.6 crores by the Swedish gun manucaturer Bofors.

Quattrocchi had an interpol notice on him but India has failed in extradition attempts or has simply not tried and the present Congress government allowed the defreezing of his London account enabling Quattrocchi to take his money out. Win Chadda is dead.

The Congress spokesman told a private TV channel that it is not his concern if Quattrocchi or Win Chadda took money, whats his concern is that the Congress Party is not involved.

The BJP spokesman Arun Jaitley says this scam worth only `64 crores' is important because it was one scam that reached closest to the Prime Minister's doorstep.

Let us go back in time.

The Bofors exposure actually turned this country's history, even if the guilty are yet to be punished.

It also exposed that honest politicians are not needed in New Delhi.

The central character by default became Mr. Vishwanath Pratap Singh who as finance minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government had a clean image (but Rajiv's image was cleaner) but when V.P. Singh was confronted by the FAIRFAX issue where prominent persons like the Ambani's and Rajiv's own friend Amitabh Bacchan were suspected of having illegally parked money into foriegn accounts, he ordered an inquiry, so Rajiv Gandhi shifted him to defence.

This was followed by the HDW submarine scam when V.P. Singh found the German company claiming they paid 7 per cent as commission to Indian agents to secure the deal, when the Indian government asked them for a discount in two submarines that they wanted to purchase from the HDW shipyard in Germany.

But the HDW submarine deal went back to 1981 when Mrs. Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, so Congressmen viciously oppsoed V.P. Singh even in a cabinet meeting because he had not taken `permission' of the Prime Minister to order the inquiry.

V.P. Singh resigns as defence minister.

V.P. Singh was a raja without a kingdom.

Yet, a Swedish radio broadcast stunned India wherein it was said that Bofors paid 64 crore rupees as commission to agents to procure the deal.

India's Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had told parliament that no commission was paid (Paying commissions are illegal in defence deals in India).

The Hindu's Chitra Subramanyan filed hunderds of reports from abroad tracking the case but the newspaper under pressure eased her out, Chitra moved to The Indian Express, which took up the Bofors case in a big way.

V.P. Singh, who had no mass support as a Congress politician, soon saw himself ride on an anti-corruption wave that ultimately made him Prime Minister.

Of course, V.P. Singh did very little to bring the Bofors accused to book, except file an FIR (which did not name Rajiv). In fact, V.P. Singh all along did not ever say that Rajiv took the commission, he only said Rajiv shielded the guilty.

V.P. Singh is his book `Manzil Se Zyada Safar', reveals that the Bofors officials had come to India when he was Prime Minister and wanted to reveal the names, but Congressmen got wind and convinced Bofors officials that the National Front government would not last so there was no need to be reckless.

V.P. Singh launched his own brand of caste politics (to become a Mandal messiah), while the BJP went the other way on a rath yatra to destroy the Babri Masjid mosque.

The Mandal-Mandir politics put Bofors and corruption on a back-burner.

Yet, on hindsight this is not surprsing considering how the BJP leaders were caught on camera in the Tehelka expose where the BJP president himself accepted money (asked agents for dollars). So corruption is not really an issue amongst political parties.

India's former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar (who had succeeded V.P. Singh) was most candid about it ..he would often tell parliament that corruption should never be discussed in India's parliament.

So stalling parliament over 2G, wanting a JPC probe actually mean little.

Indian politics is extremely corrupt, so its really surprising how and why they charge people under `Sedition' laws. Because if Sedition laws are to be applied all our politicians will find themselves in prison.

Is it right to take money underhand, while our men die in Kashmir?

Is this Nationalism or patriotism?

Bofors should be investigated. What has been overlooked is also the role of the Indian military in the Bofors deal. At every stage of approvals it is the military that gives sanctions and if these sanctions were given after commissions were paid to agents then clearly our men with honours are certainly involved.

I was just wondering what award winning journalist Chitra Subramanyam was doing these days. Her book `India Is For Sale' is a must read. But this is what I found on the WikiPedia:

"Chitra Subramanyam co-founded a Swiss watch company BorgeauD SA borgeaudwatches.com. In a global first, BorgeauD SA has launched La Collection Gravitas, the world’s first watch that incorporates the Rahukaalam, a daily 90-minute sequence which is avoided for the taking of important decisions. The Rahukaalam calculations are part of the ancient Indian panchang."

Perhaps, India's corrupt politcians can finally be her clients. Wow a watch that tells you when you will be Prime Minister!

Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia Gandhi is the UPA chairperson, so its not surprising that Octavio Quatrochhi is being let-off. (he was after all a family freind of the Gandhi's)

We are afterall like Nepal.

As for Dr. Manmohan Singh, I just have this for him, "How High Can You Stoop, Mr. Prime Minister?"

Fatima Bhutto - On Being A Bhutto

CBI - Confused Bureau of Investigations

By Manuwant Choudhary


Since New Delhi journalists do little to unravel the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case I decided to visit the CBI headquarters to find out why even the CBI has decided to close the case:

Manuwant to CBI woman officer: Madam, what is on your forehead..have you been threatened by the Shiv Sena to wear some Hindu tika that looks like a question mark.

CBI lady officer: No, no, no, even our men officers wear it.

Me: But why men madama. Men don't wear tika.

CBI lady officer: Not outside but in CBI men also have to wear the same uniform.

Me: But it doesn't look nice. It looks kind of dangerous like those `snake' tikas worn in saas-bahu serials on Star Plus.

CBI lady officer: I like the `snake' tika also but this one is compulsory to us.

Me: But your tika looks like a question mark ?

CBI lady officer: Exactly, it is a question mark.

Me: But why?

CBI lady officer: See, because you are asking us too many questions.

Me: Ya, but thats because we want to know.

CBI lady officers: In a single day we have to handle a billion questions. Is it possible for us to answer all of them?

Me: Not answer but you have to solve some questions at least. Thats why you are CBI.

Lady CBI officer: I don't have so much time.

Me; Why?

Lady CBI officer: Even as you speak hundreds of government Babu's rob this country and ultimately its the CBI which is asked to find out who.

Me: But everyone knows the Babu-politcian who does it.

CBI Lady Officer: For you its easy to say, but we must have conclusive proof. After all every corrupt citizen in India is also `respectable'.

Me: Ok, ok, but I've come here to find about the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case.

CBI lady officer: Its too complicated.

Me: But tell me if the door was locked and Mrs. Nupur Talwar threw the keys for the maid from the terrace, it means the door can be opened from the outside using a duplicate key.

CBI: Our report says no outside person was involved.

Me: But Dr. Rajesh Talwar - the dentist - says he was asleep when it all happened.

CBI: yes, yes he could not hear the victims being attacked because he had his airconditioner on.

Me: What make is Dr. Talwar's AC.? Actually, I like one's that make the loudest noise. It keeps the `static' out just like Bose earphones.

CBI: Its made by some local engineer who has 60 years experience in loud ACs, to cut out all traffic (murder) noise. We have some of them at CBI headquarters also.

Me: Tell me what about the Golf stick? I saw on India TV all anchors and guests all had a golf stick in hand as they explained how to swing for a kill. There was even a private detective who has enough cases where golf sticks have been used to murder.

CBI: Yes, thats in our report that the victims could have been assaulted by the golf stick. The Talwars hid their golf stick from us for one year.

Me: But surely if victims are assaulted by golf sticks surely someone will hear them in the house.

CBI: We are not sleep specialists.

Me: But you have also mentioned in your report that the Talwars tried to fudge the evidence, circumstantial and even post-mortem report, so have you not charged them?

CBI: Again don't ask such questions. The case is closed.

Me: But why did you close it?

CBI: We have closed it in national interest.

Me: National interest in murder? Can't be.

CBI: WE have closed so many cases before so why you worried about this one. Did we ever solve the killing of Lalit Narain Mishra, India's railway minister, killed in broad-daylight on a railway platform in Bihar.

Me: But you made that huge effort to solve the Shilpi Jain-Gautam double murder.

CBI: No, no, we made huge efforts to not to collect Sadhu Yadav's blood sample.

Me: But why you do this?

CBI: Because Soniaji told us that Sadhu Yadav's blood is for the Congress Party only and asked us to fast-track all cases.
The only way to do that is by closing it all.

INDIAVIKALP JOURNALISM OF COURAGE AWARD GOES TO....

The Indiavikalp Journalism of Courage Award goes to Cyrus Broacha.