Poverty-line PM aspirants

By Manuwant Choudhary

The other evening my chief minister Nitish Kumar was on a CNN-IBN show since a survey indicated he has greater chances of being India's Prime Minister.

The interview went on for hours and at times it seemed the chief minister himself wanted to get up and leave.

But there were luminaries in the audience so how could he possibly do that.....

N.K. Singh..his agent in Delhi sat in the front row...and Abhishek Manu Singhvi..the Congress spokesperson..listened attentively...possibly for a clue on 2014.

But Nitish is a clever politician...he just talked about poverty and special status.

This was the same news channel that gave Nitish Kumar the `sarvshresth mukhya mantri' darja...(status)...just a few days after he became chief minister!

But when u hear our politicians on national TV...whether Nitish or Modi...you know for sure that they have nothing to offer India.

Nitish Kumar's biggest achievement is the bicycles he distributed to school children.

When asked about urbanisation he said his state does not need massive urbanisation..the fact is that Bihar doesn't even have a single city ! You heard that right...Patna is hardly even a town!

I took a train and arriving in Patna as I took an auto I noticed Patna does not have traffic lights..or even street lights.

So I got talking to the autowallah and to my surprise he spoke with more intelligence....

"Saheb, desh mein sirf teen mahanagar hain....dilli, bombai aur kalkatta...Patna mahanagar kaise banega....mahanagar kisi ke banane se nahin banta...uske andar shakti honee chahiye..."

(The counrty has just three cities..Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta...Patna cannot become a metro city with an announcement...Patna must have inner strengths to become a Metro..)

"Desh mein gareeb nahin hongen to sab ruk jayega...padha-likha engineer yahan nut-bolt bhee nahin choota hai..."

(If there were no poor in India the entire economy would have come to a halt..the educated engineers here don't like to use their hainds to fix anything..)

"Neta to sirf apne paise kee firak mein rehte hain..desh ke liye kaun sochta hai..Humar rajya bhee gareeb jai..dekhte nahin kaise mukhya mantri katora liye kendra ke paas jaate hain"

(The politicians are just after making money...who thinks about the country..My state is also poor. Our chief minister goes to the centre with a begging bowl."

Ofcourse, on national TV the same evening my chief minister talked about things like `Global Meltdown' and Bihar's growth story..while reprimanding the anchor for calling it a Model.

But Nitish was right..there is no Model..rather there is no policy..it is pure consumption.

The anchor also listed the consumption statistics of Narendra Modi and they were similar except the heads on which they were spent were different.

It hurts to see India being run this way.

I often wonder whether it is our policy to keep India poor !

A friend who lives abroad said India has become a laughing stock with its economic decline..(our foriegn exchange reserves can last just 7 months as of now.)

The country is desperate.

But what does the Congress Party do about this - they create one more state - Telengana. More governments, more chief ministers, more Governors.....more costs.

Let India burn.

Let Pakistan cross our borders whenever they feel like and shoot down the soldiers.

But we don't hear anything from loudmouths like Raj Thackeray when four Biharis and one Marathi together lay down their lives for India..fighting Pakistan.

At a time when even the US pulls out consulates from different countries..India sleeps.

We talk about peace talks.

They forget the ancient saying, "If you want peace prepare for war."

Before I became a journalist..rather the first interview of my life...was with Minoo Masani, India's great liberal...and it was just liberalising...but this is what Masani said, "This is liberalisation through bankruptcy, not intelligence..."

The latest slew of  `opening up' decisions in Foriegn Direct Investments just shows how FDI is being used not as a policy decision but as a way to `Beg' for foreign money...(but its too late for some..one of India's best airlines Kingfisher was allowed to go to ruin..before the skies were opened up)

But why should the world invest when you say you are poor and desperate !

I really don't care about the Modi's and the Nitish's and the Rahul's.

The best Narendra Modi can offer is a nasal version of `Meren Doston...!(my friends)

But today I'd like to wish Narendra Modi a very happy Eid and offer him a skullcap Made In China sold at Patna's langartoli!

She Walks Like Rihanna

The Wrath Of The Rivers

By Manuwant Choudhary

I visited the four temples or dhams more than 20 years ago alongwith my parents and sister so the recent calamity in Uttarakhand pained me.

But even 20 years ago I could see it coming.

Deforestation and dam building was the governments only concern...we could see hundreds of dumpers clearing away the hills to build one more dam.

And the mountains looked barren....landslides common...the Himalayas look so much better at Darjeeling.

But the trip we had was memorable.

Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath....we did it all...

From Haridwar we took a pilgrim bus and I recall the tickets were so cheap....but the journey is not easy.

As the bus wound its way up the Himalayas the roar of the rivers would get louder and that is when they were not angry.

I can't imagine what happened a few weeks ago.

I write this article not for the governments but for the friendly people of  Uttarakhand..

The last point where the bus stops at Yamnotri then had just one shack....and my parents were in no position to do the 18 km trek as I wanted them to save their energy for Kedarnath (something told me Kedarnath was worth it)

But with no hotels how do we pass the night? We may all just have to sleep in the bus.

As me and my sister sat looking at the brave pilgrims ready to trek up the Himalayas....a youth came up to us and started talking. He offered us tea. (He looked cute like Amir Khan)

So we took our chance and asked a complete stranger if he knew of a place where we could sleep for the night.

And to our surprise he told us he was the owner of the only shack that existed there.

He told his brother to give us the room with four beds and mattresses.

The brother ran a restaurant alongside and we could sea a jeep unloading brand new steel utensils for the season.

We had dinner and slept.

It was better than the Taj Mahal Hotel.

The next morning they refused to even take money, instead they asked us to tell them honestly about the quality of the food in their hotel.

So even as we left I asked my friend why he did this for us and he replied, "We see thousands of pilgrims daily but when I first saw you and your sister I thought you were different..."

In the India of today where money matters most...I wonder how many of us have had experiencies like this.

So I pray for my friend in Yamnotri.

Travelling from Yamnotri to Gangotri is also not easy..one has to come back to the vallay and make the climb again.

As we reached Gangotri and we took a walk in the temple premises ....a man came up to us and very confidently told me mother..."You are the sister of Vidyaji..."

He was right....he was my aunt's panda..but no no one had told him that we were coming...he just knew it.

But yes Kedarnath was amazing.

The 14 kms trek was beautiful and our panda a complete stranger but who looked after us well and even prepared khichri that cold night.

I think it was May 16 0r 17 and the temple had just opened....there was snow all around the temple.

It was freezing.

My parents of course took rest as me and my sister stepped out onto the snow courtyard and walked barefeet to the temple for the evening aarti.

I think we were just a few of us in the temple as the panda's read out sanskrit mantras and the lights offered to the God looked beautiful.

Something crossed my mind that evening but I kept it to myself.

On our return journey my father insisted we have a good breakfast...but like always we missed the breakfast.

My father had a large breakfast before boarding the bus.

And as we were on way we noticed all the shops had shut down...we found out why...Rajiv Gandhi, India's former Prime Minister, had been killed by LTTE while campaigning for elections in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.

I cried.

I cried not because Rajiv Gandhi had been killed but I cried because India seemed so weak and vulnerable that anyone could kill a former Prime Minister.

I prayed and asked God to give me some strength to do something for my country.

I don't remember asking God for anything else.

I prayed for a peaceful and prosperous India.

That day we all fasted...my father was right...we should not have missed our breakfast.

I was still a student at Bombay's St. Xavier's College and the years there offered me opportunities to serve my country and also learn about her....not in the way youth would normally do in terms of jobs and paychecks and apartments...

I became a journalist...and that gave me the platform to understand India. I travelled to drought hit Beed or reported on a fire in Bombay...or travelled by train to Mumbra to report a building collapse and report on how a baby girl was rescued...and find her a new home.

I have been grateful for many things but I was vey lucky working under a great editor like Behram Contractor of the Afternoon Despatch & Courier.

His Round & About column signed off as Busybee was brilliant.

We all wondered how he could create such magic with words.

One day he wrote about his Himalayan trip to the four temples some 30 years ago but there was so much clarity.

He wrote, "If there is God, he lives at Kedarnath..."

But how did he know...that's exactly what had crossed my mind.


























































 

Prism

India's Enemies Within

By Manuwant Choudhary

The latest lethal Maoist attack on Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh has shaken up the Indian state and India's Home Minister says that now the Maoists are more dangerous than even terrorists.

But others in the Congress Party like Ajit Jogi and Digvijaya Singh still call it a `social' movement.

While Jairam Ramesh says India should stop romanticising the Maoists !

The BJP blames the Congress and says the Maoist sympathisers are in fact members of Sonia Gandhi's National Advisory Council.

But I am just waiting for the Outlook cover story by Arundhati Roy where editor Vinod Mehta generously hands her 20 pages to write in gory details about how the Maosists butchered the Congress politicians and how they deserved it after all.

I am not extreme in that sense.

But yet I would like to point that it is the Congress Party that has romanticised the Maoists ever since independence.

Its not surprising that they still have Maoist sympathisers as `advisors'.

In fact, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was himself a stalinist.

He did not believe in property rights.

His second five year plan followed a socialistic path.

Had it not been for the Swatantra Party in the sixties...India would have been a full Communist State.

One of Nehru's best freinds turned critic was Minoo Masani.

And in independent India it is really hard to come up with an example where a politician gave up his friendship for the sake of India and for principles like freedom.

I was fortunate enough to meet Minoo Masani several times first as a student in Bombay and later as a liberal youth activist.

I recall in one of his interviews he told me how his freindship with Nehru came to an end.

Recalled Masani, "You know I used to have breakfast with Nehru every Sunday morning when I was in Delhi. So one Sunday in 1948 I told Nehru that he should reconsider Stalin."

Nehru instead banged the table, "You think I have no intelligence?"

Masani, "Yes, I know you are intelligent but on this point you are not being intelligent. You think Stalin is God but Stalin is no God."

Masani told me how he thought to himself that Nehru was unfit to talk to. "So from that day onwards I never spoke to Nehru in private. We spoke to each other only in Parliament !."

The only other time Masani met Nehru in private was when he was seriously  ill in 1963 and Nehru sadly accepted that he had blundered on Kashmir. He told Masani to help him make a last attempt at solving Kashmir.

So Kashmir's Sheikh Abdullah flew to Pakistan and the Pakistan President  Ayub was to come to India...but Nehru died on May 11.

Said Masani, "I cried not because Nehru died but because the last chance to solve Kashmir was lost."

Its some irony that Minoo Masani too died on May 11 !

Since Nehru India became more socialist..with Indira Gandhi nationalising banks and then finally the emergency...its an irony that VC Shukla, among those attacked by Maosists, was the I&B minister who banned Kishore Kumar songs because he refused to sing at a Congress rally !

India's land ceiling laws and abolishing private property as a fundamental right from the constitution and even banning liberal parties from contesting elections are all examples of why the Congress Party believes Maoists are leading a social movement.

In fact, Maoists never attacked politicians before....and the politicians were hand-in-glove with them.

Those who bore the brunt of Maoist violence were ordinary policemen ambushed while doing a patrol.

As a jouranlist I have covered several such attacks...and met teary eyed policemen who asked me why the Indian state has forgotten them when they are willing to lay down their lives to protect the people and India.

Many widows never even got pensions...they had to fight for even their basic rights for compenstation.

When Laloo Yadav and Nitish Kumar together readily divided Bihar..the Maoist attack in Jharkhand became deadlier...and one policeman asked me, "Sir, why did Lalooji do this..after all I am also from Chapra...."

This was long before the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Maosists as India's biggest internal threat.

But we still don't see this realisation being matched by any strategy.

The Maosists have a strategy, India doesn't.

In fact, the Indian government is now seen as a violator of private property..more dangerous than the Maoists.

In West Bengal the Maosists protected the private property being forcibly acquired by the State to be given to private industry.

If India has to win this war within..the government must be on the side of freedom and property...and only then will the people move away from the Maosists....

And please stop this hogwash about `social' movements......its all about violence, power and money.

Mercy & Sanjay Dutt

By Manuwant Choudhary

India it seems is simply incapable of mercy.

The TV debates have stopped..(Even Arnab)

The judges satisfied for upholding the law....

The politicians now don't care about knowing a nationalist called Sunil Dutt.

As Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt is sent to Arthur Road jail and kept in the same cell as terrorist Ajmal Kasab.

But Sanjay has not been convicted of terrorism...and after mumurs and protests the judge allows him a fan and mattress !

In my years as a journalist..working in Bombay for some years..I do not recall ever doing a story for Sanjay Dutt.

But I did meet many others...poor people...like drivers....and their mothers accused of  aiding terrorism.

Sanjay Dutt does not know me or remember...though I met him briefly outside Arthur Road jail...when I did a story for the municipal sweepers who were Shiv Sainiks....and a lanky Sanjay was called by the sweepers "Arre Sanju..idhar aana..."

Yet, today I write for him.

I think Sunil Dutt was a fine man...I have seen him at Delhi airport while he took a Jet airways flight. returning after attending parliament....no security...no nothing...a simple white kurta-pyjama....a briefcase....and a smiling face if anyone wished him.

I hated the Congress Party but I liked Sunil Dutt.

Yet I am not writing this because of even Sunil Dutt.

Having watched the TV debates and comments I think everyone just missed the point.

As a journalist I have seen many of India's prisons..even Arthur Road jail...and they are so hopeless and miserable.

If you want to know the true picture of a  superpower called India is...don't look at the nuclear arsenal  ...but at the condition of its prisons.

Just yesterday Pappu Yadav..accused of murdering Ajit Sarkar...came out of prison after the Patna High Court freed him of all charges for `lack of evidence'.

Pappu Yadav in return thanked the judges for their `honesty'.

Remember Purulia arms dropping case...where AK47s were airdropped by a foreign airline over Purulia in Bengal....and many of the beneficiaries were the ganglords of Purnia including Pappu Yadav...and later Md. Shahabuddin...

Anand margis were accused of being the beneficiaries....we still dont know the full story.

I hate the commies but in Seemanchal the conflict over land became uglier...Pappu Yadav became the face of the landowners whose properties the State did not guarantee protection....(In India there are no property rights)

Atal Behari Vajpayee the then opposition leader told a rally at Bombay's Shivaji Park "Yeh kaisa desh hai humara jahan astra aur shastr kee varsha hotee hai..."(What kind of country is ours where weapons pour from the sky like rain...)

The same Atal Behari Vajpayee freed the accused foreigners in the arms dropping case after pressure from Britain.

I wonder why the law is not upheld by our judges even most of the time ?

First everyone from Katju to god knows who became champions for Sanjay's mercy..others accused him of aiding terrorists....and then followed the loud debates...the law points...and it went on and on...never ending..until a weepy Sanjay told the media to shut up since he has not even sought a mercy petition.

Some called it drama..

But Sanjay has gone to prison as asked by the courts.

For some months I have been pondering over this bruhaha.

Yet its strange nobody bothered to understand the word `mercy' itself.

Mercy does not mean the accused is free of guilt or he did not commit the crime.

Rather mercy is given to a convict.

Mercy comes from various religions...and God is Merciful..even Islam...mercy is about forgiveness, compassion and kindness..so says the wikipedia.

In Judaism mercy is  emphasized in the Babylonian exile, "The Lord has comforted his people and is kind to his arms. [...] Can a woman forget her infant, a mother the child of her womb? And even if they would forget him. I will never forget you "(Isaiah 49,13.15) why is the demand of mercy to the people". It is good to pray and fast, to be merciful and just "(Tobit 12:8).

I began this article by saying India is incapable of mercy.

Wikipedia mentions how mercy is not about outside pressures but rather it should be from within.

Our President Pranab Mukherjee is now referred to as India's hangman President rejecting so many petitions for mercy....sending all to the gallows...we don't even debate over abolishing the death penalty.

A Cyrus joke suggested Sanjay Dutt should have entered the Italian embassy instead like Italian marines !(a brighter chance)

Wikipedia explains the ethics of mercy...

In a legal sense, a defendant having been found guilty of a capital crime may ask for clemency from being executed.

To be "mercy", the behavior generally can not be compelled by outside forces. A famous literary example that alludes to the impact of the ethical components of the mercy on the legal aspects is from The Merchant of Venice when Portia asks Shylock to show mercy. He asks, "On what compulsion, must I?" She responds:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

If God is merciful so Kings who are Gods representatives on earth were also to exemplify the same mercifulness...

Now we have not kings but the Indian state ...but over the years it has forgotten its origins and also how mercy is an important part of being rulers...does it mean that a people's government is the least merciful?

The king was a king because he had many powers....the biggest power was that to give mercy.

My grandfather once hosted the King of Nepal..a Rana ruler..he was old and on his way for treatment by a special train to Calcutta..he took rest for 4 days at hour home....relatives of many prisoners followed the King...and they met my grandafather and requested him to plead with the king to grant mercy.

My grandfather put up this request and the King came out onto the porch and with one wave set free all prisoners in Nepal.

There was jubilation and Nepal became stronger, not weaker.

The British treated our campus as `Nepal Hata' or embassy...the colonial British police did not enter our campus even if  a thief took shelter.

Are we worse now?

If I was India's President I would free not just Sanjay Dutt, or few others..but lakhs of prisoners...most have already served more time in prison as undertrials than what they would if convicted.

India's jails need to be freed up...its overcrowded...inhuman.

But so is India.

Pakistan Politics - Back To Future

By Manuwant Choudhary

Even as Pakistan goes to the polls...under the Taliban's threats...and the worlds gaze...I wonder how and whether Pakistan will ever emerge from its troubles to give to its people the peace and prosperity that every government must strive for...

But from the soundbites and recent happenings...its definitely not promising.

And for this just look at its leaders.....

Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, who refers to himself as a `liberal' on Indian TV, but in Pakistan he is more like a jihadist...and even the Taliban offer no threats to him...and the only one who could freely campaign..until the big fall.

Then you have Zardari...he is so corrupt...that from 10 per cent we are not sure what to call him now....even his son Bilawal has ditched him...

His former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani seemed a resaonable guy but now his son has been kidnapped in broad daylight while electioneering.

And not to forget the General...Musharraf..braver in his return to Pakistan than to cross the Loc before Kargil.

But he is in prison.

And Nawaz Sharief..the Punjab heavyweight...who talks about Pakistan needing mature politicians who can make the A-bomb...someone who was not even aware his General planned an attack on India.

But more worrying is the fact that Mr. Sharief could come to power just like the Congress has won in Karnataka and he wants the Americans to go home...but does not say much about how Pakistan will fight Taliban terror....

Democracy is a way to recycle politicians..not a way to dump them altogether.

I fear for Pakistan...and I'm happy the other Bhutto ...Fatima...is not running...

Politics is hazardous....and after what happened to Imran Khan..even our Lalooji's car fell into a ditch.

And Laloo has his own rally this 15th...and even with glass splinters in his head he has been doing the rounds of Gandhi maidan in Patna to make sure the stage does not collapse like Imran's !