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R. Jagannathan in the DNA:
Both the party [Congress] and Manmohan discovered their spunk only towards the end of their first term, when both knew that the only thing they had to lose was their timidity...
The soft-spoken prime minister unleashed a quiet viciousness that destroyed Advani. To Advani's repeated taunts, Manmohan replied with quiet anger and a sharp twist of the verbal knife. It ended Advani's pretence of being the hard man of Indian politics...
It works with middle class India and women; it may also work abroad. In the emerging global power scenario, China represents the much-feared macho power; India, as represented by Manmohan and Sonia, represents soft power. It looks sane in a world marred by extremist violence. This image of outward softness helps us since it can enable us to take hard decisions based on realpolitik and still appear reasonable on the world stage.
Read more at DNA
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Oct 29, 2009 AT 16:12 IST
R Jagannathan in the DNA sticks his neck out:
Where there is confusion, the voter looks for clarity. The really big question is about Raj Thackeray. Will his MNS eat into Sena-BJP votes the way it did in the Lok Sabha elections? The answer to this will decide whether the combine will win or lose. My personal hunch is that the Raj vs Uddhav battle is not happening this time; it will happen only after the election. Uddhav has pitched this battle as Bal Thackeray vs Raj and the rest, and in this battle it is not certain that Raj will have the upper hand.
On balance, this election is the Sena-BJP's to lose. Unlike the MNS, it is a serious
contender for power, and has a strong anti-incumbency vote to harvest. If it doesn't goof up somewhere, it has a clear chance this time.
Read the full piece at DNA: Tiger Tales
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Oct 01, 2009 AT 03:02 IST
OK, so let's go with the conspiracy theorists. Why is it that the knives are suddenly out for Mr Tharoor? When Mr Jaswant Singh was sacked from the BJP, one knew it was not merely for his views on Jinnah, but the fact that he had pissed off a lot of Very Important Egos.
Later when Mr Jaswant Singh's book was banned by the Gujarat government, Mr Tharoor had tweeted:
- Shocked by Gujarat ban on Jaswant bk. Freedom of expression is a constitutional right: how can it be denied to citizens in one part of Ind?
- But then some parties have a higher tolerance for heresies. Congress is a big tent, with greater room for different points of view7:11 PM Aug 19th from TwitterBerry
As is the best part about such exchanges, he was immediately questioned:
- @ShashiTharoor thats not true shashi,if a congressman wrote a book critical of nehru, would he survive? intolerance exists in all parties
To which Mr Tharoor replied:
- i've written 4 bks that do precisely that: India Frm Midnght2Millennium, Reasons of State, Grt Indn Nvl & Nehru:Invn of Ind10:48 PM Aug 19th from web
This comparison between the BJP and Congress was picked by the press as well, for example, take this article in the Hindu that pointed out some of the stuff that Mr Tharoor has indeed said about, well, the holiest of the holy cows in the Congress party:
On Indira Gandhi:
"Had Indira’s Parsi husband been a toddywalla (liquor trader) rather than so conveniently a Gandhi, I sometime wonder, might India’s political history have been different?"
“Mrs. Gandhi was skilled at the acquisition and maintenance of power, but hopeless at the wielding of it for larger purposes. She had no real vision or program beyond the expedient campaign slogans; “remove poverty” was a mantra without a method ?. Declaring a state of Emergency, Indira arrested opponents, censored the press, and postponed elections. As a compliant Supreme Court overturned her conviction, she proclaimed a ‘20-point programme’ for the uplift of the common man (No one found it humorous enough to remark, as Clemenceau had done of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, that “even the good Lord only had ten.”) Its provisions ? remained largely unimplemented. Meanwhile her thuggish younger son, Sanjay (1946-1980) emphasizing two of the 20 points, ordered brutally insensitive campaigns of slum demolitions and forced sterilizations.”
On Rajiv Gandhi:
[Instead of the] “visionless expediency that had been his mother’s only credo, Rajiv offered transparent sincerity and conviction ... the rot set in -- Compromise followed sellout as New Delhi returned to business as usual. Charges of corruption in a major howitzer contract with the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors tarnished the mystique of the dynasty; little children sang, Galli-galli mein shor hai/Rajiv Gandhi chor hai: ‘Hear it said in every nook/Rajiv Gandhi is a crook.’?”
On Sonia Gandhi:
[ pointing out that she went to Cambridge to study English, not political philosophy]:
“A builder’s daughter from Turino, without a college degree, with no experience of Indian life beyond the rarefied realms of the Prime Minister’s residence, fiercely protective of her privacy, so reserved and unsmiling in public that she has been unkindly dubbed ‘the Turin Shroud’ leading a billion Indians at the head of the world’s most complex, rambunctious and violent democracy? This situation, improbable if weren’t true, is proof again of the enduring appeal of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.”
On Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra:
“And then there is, after all, in true dynastic tradition, the need to think of the aspirations of the next generation ... Their [Rahul and Priyanka] father’s seat must, observers suggest, be kept warm for one of them — and who better to nurse the Amethi constituency he so successfully nurtured than Sonia herself?”
That was August 22. The marching orders from the hotel were given on September 8. (Interestingly enough, till July 8, Mr Tharoor was being praised by some for his, well, austere ways -- as commended by this blog itself) The latest tweet, literally about the holy cows, may have just been the last straw... That might also explain why the various Congress spokespersons are -- very non-ruminatively, one must say -- foaming at the mouth, and while the PM did try valiantly, if belatedly, to dismiss it all as a joke today, Mr Rahul Gandhi, apparently said at the same iftaar function, when asked for his views on the Cattlegate, that the party had already spoken.
Sherlock Holmes may never have said it, but it sure does seem rather elementary...The more charitable explanation at the time of Jaswant expulsion was that the BJP-wallahs were second-guessing the Sangh leadership and merely wanted to ingratiate themselves with the RSS after Mr Bhagwat had spoken. In this case, too, goes the chartitable theory, all this show of outrage at what should have been dismissed with a laugh, may well be nothing more than an effort to curry favour with the holiest of the holy cows in the Congress.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 18, 2009 AT 23:51 IST
Yes, the video -- in which the congress spokesperson Tom Vadakkan gave those ones -- is available -- apparently the full show was available on the Times Now site since last night:
and let me tell you something. I did a little research after you phoned me to find out what is the basic cause of this tweet business and some of the survey reports that I received, was Tweet is a very lonely man and he needs counseling. And I’m sure, you may make light of it, but the fact of the matter is, Jug Suraiya may make a good cartoon out of it, you may defend it, it’s not that we’ve lost a sense of humour, but let’s face it today. He is a lonely man, it is basically addictive. He [Tharoor] said things which hurts people, and that’s the line we’ve taken...
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 18, 2009 AT 17:27 IST
All right, just for the record, here's the austerity roundup since this and this post.
First, the Indian Express reported that in the age of austerity, "UPA Ministers want Spanish tiles, Italian porcelains... "a Minister of State has demanded a new toilet “on the back side of her seat” in keeping with Vaastu".
The austere "holy cows" of the Congress party did not think it was something worth responding to. The party spokesperson instead decided to join issue with Mr Tharoor's jocular remarks:
"We totally condemn it (Tharoor's comments). The statement is not in sync with our political culture. His remarks are not acceptable given the sensitivity of all Indians," AICC Spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan told reporters.
"Certainly the party does not endorse it. It is absolutely insensitive. We find it unacceptable and totally insensitive," she said when asked to comment on Tharoor's remarks on Twitter, a social networking website.
..."I am only commenting on his statement. It is absolutely insensible," she said when asked whether the party committed a mistake by giving him a ticket to contest Lok Sabha elections.
Meanwhile, one Jacob Joseph, described on his Twitter page as "Director/OSD to MoS(ST), MEA" got into the act to post the above photograph of Mr Tharoor showing him "in cattle class a month ago" and retweeting many tweets favouring his boss and suitably dissing some of the humourless holy cows in the Congress. Here's a sampler:
- RT @murali_mohan: cattle class is a common term. There is even a wikipedia entry - http://bit.ly/PFJlN . we are with you @shashitharoor.3:23 PM Sep 17th from UberTwitter
- Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor) in cattle class a month ago. http://pic.gd/d398411:42 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @rahultp : @shashitharoor: The Oxford English Dictionary lists cattle class as a term to describe economy seats on an aircraft.10:07 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @rs2802: RT @tanya25m RT @bisprad twittergate is what u get when u have an educated guy in a cabinet of humorless twits10:04 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @bvhk: @shashitharoor why don't you present a copy of The Great Indian Novel to Jayanthi Natarajan? Should result in great fun.10:03 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @crucifire: Hell Yeah! RT @hg6: @shashitharoor proving too good for Indian politics?10:03 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @abhishekrungta: english humor + outdated indian political spokesmen is a dangerous combo. avoid them! we indians are with you!9:55 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- RT @ShashiTharoor Don't let Jayanti Natarajan or any of the holy cows stop u 4m twittering. U called a spade a spade sans hypocrisy9:51 AM Sep 17th from TweetDeck
- politics and the politicians are defined by you and me. Why not break the mold. Why can't there be humor in politics?10:55 PM Sep 16th from TweetDeck
- @nakulshenoy I'm not a member of the congress party10:35 PM Sep 16th from TweetDeck in reply to nakulshenoy
Sure enough, soon there was a helpful TOI report as well:
Sources close to Tharoor said the minister had taken almost 5 flights from Aug 9, travelling to Bangalore, Chennai and Kochi, and on all occasions he had booked himself in economy class.
"The austerity measures were announced mid-August during the party's working committee meeting but it came into effect later. However, Tharoor has been on these economy flights earlier. He began taking a Kingfisher flight from Mumbai to Kochi on Aug 9," said a close aide.
Earlier in the day, the Hindu reported that "Rahul Gandhi’s flying visit to TN cost over Rs.1 crore":
“As a politician, you have a duty to be austere,” Rahul Gandhi told reporters here last week during his tour of Tamil Nadu. But the travel bill the Congress general secretary toted up during his three-day visit down south ran to seven figures, not exactly a sum the word “austerity” conjures up.
The Congress decided to austerely keep quiet.
But all this talk of cattle and cows had perhaps made it inevitable that the "foot and mouth" epidemic would spread. And sure enough, the BJP joined the fray, and its spokesman, Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy, added for good measure that Mr Tharoor had not only "blatantly insulted", but had also - mysteriously - "tantalized", a large middle class: "ostensibly mocking their austere lifestyle." He clearly wanted to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that his parsing abilities are no better than Ms Natarajan's:
Mr. Throor has termed economy class in airlines as a “Cattle Class” which outrightly smacks the insensitivity of the minister pounding the feelings and respect of a common traveller. This tantamounts to a deep injury to the self-respect and esteem of millions who travel economy class. The statement of Mr. Throor gives a display of unprecedented arrogance which in a way has been usually witnessed in the congress party.
After letting his OSD take care of the dirty work, Mr Tharoor, on his part, seemed to have decided to play the elder statesman and broke his silence on the subject with the following tweets:
- learned belatedly of fuss over my tweet replying to journo's query whether i wld travel to Kerala in "cattle class". His phrase which i rptd
- it's a silly expression but means no disrespect to economy travellers, only to airlines for herding us in like cattle. Many have misunderstd
- i'm told it sounds worse in Malayalam, esp out of context. To those hurt by the belief that my repeating the phrase showed contempt: sorry
- i now realize i shldnt assume people will appreciate humour. &u shouldn't give those who wld wilfully distort yr words an opportnty to do so
Given the surreal preoccupations of our high-minded prinicpal political parties, it seemed perfectly reasonable to read a report during the day that the VHP and the Sangh Parivar have extended their full support to the hassled minister:
the VHP President said that the fact that Tharoor offered solidarity with our holy cows is proof of his Hinduness. He also dared the press to show one statement in which a “Congresswala” has called our cows ‘Holy’. He also took strong umbrage at Jayanti Natrajan’s statement calling the cattle class reference as insulting. The Gau is given the status of a Mother in ancient Hindu scriptures, and so belonging to her ‘class’ should be a honour and not an insult, he further added.
Read more here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 18, 2009 AT 02:29 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in the Indian Express:
Just fantasise how different government’s attitude might be if everyone in government was actually asked to arrange for their own house, facilities, domestic help, etc, as others do. We might even get sensible government policy!
...The irony in the case of someone like Shashi Tharoor is that we have moved him from honesty to dissimulation. One may not agree with his choice of residence. But on the face of it, it was at least honest and (if he was paying) did not impose much on the taxpayer. Now he has to pretend that he belongs to a class to which he palpably does not. Where is there more hypocrisy? In the honest admission of privilege? Or in the pretence that you are poorer than you are? Which sort of politician would you trust more?
...Let us have an honest debate about the broad culture of consumption; we need that discussion as a society. Let us have a debate over taxpayer money or policies for the poor. But let us not pretend that forcing austerity on individuals by unmasking hypocrisy is a serious ethical issue.
Read the full article: Anti anti-hypocrisy
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 16, 2009 AT 04:06 IST
Shashi Tharoor was asked on Twitter earlier in the day:
"Tell us Minister, next time you travel to Kerala, will it be cattle class?".
"Absolutely," he replied, "in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!"
We are not sure whether the holy cows would be amused but, meanwhile, his senior minister too has joined the conspicuous austerity competition and announced that he would fly economy class to Minsk. As K.P. Nayyar reports in the Telegraph, "it will cost the government much more than any money saved by South Block's symbolic austerity measures, which are acquiring the trappings of a cruel joke on people suffering from drought."
Read on here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 15, 2009 AT 04:04 IST
Ashutosh Varshney in the Indian Express examines the counter-factual and the claims of Nehru's critics:
The current debate over partition is radically incomplete. The debate has been framed around Jinnah’s desire for a federal but undivided India, in which the states would have been more powerful than Delhi. In contrast, Nehru’s preference is said to be for a centralised polity, with Delhi given more powers than the states. It has been argued that the latter was responsible for India’s partition.
Really?
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 15, 2009 AT 03:01 IST
Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Krishnan Srinivasan says "Indians cannot even bear different interpretations of history". But he seems to have got some of his facts wrong about, presumably, the the book by James Laine:
Speculation about Shivaji’s paternity — that too, by a foreigner —provoked the then BJP prime minister in 2004 to ‘warn’ the author, caused an oriental research institute in Pune to be looted by party loyalists, the book to be banned India-wide, and the Maharashtra government to ask for the author’s arrest through Interpol. The same state government, apparently on a legal complaint by a Shivaji descendant, banned yet another book by the same author in 2006. [More here]
For as Arun Shourie pointed out in his Humpty Dumpty interview and was widely reported at that time, Mr Atal behari Vajpayee had actually opposed the ban. The Telegraph itself had reported on January 17, 2004 as follows:
He took the opportunity to hit out at the violent protests against James Laine’s controversial book Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India and the government’s decision to ban it.
“If you are unhappy with certain sections in a book, sit down and talk about it,’’ the Prime Minister said. “Banning it and destroying it is not the answer. This is not how things should be.”
On January 19, 2004, the Telegraph had another report which explained the background of the Sambhaji Brigade, which had ransacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune on January 5:
Marauders belonging to the group, which champions the Maratha cause like the Shiv Sena but was started to counter Bal Thackeray’s outfit
The same report had also explained, once again:
On a visit to Mumbai on Friday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee condemned the attack and the ban on the book announced by the Congress-led coalition of Maharashtra.
Thus, basically, it was an organisation close to Mr Sharad Pawar's NCP that was behind the attack and it was the Congress-led government in Maharashtra that banned the book. Writing for Outlook website, Dilip Chitre had recounted the role played by the then Maharashtra home minister in the whole sorry episode.
But, there is no arguing with Mr Srinivasan's larger point:
What would be the public reaction if the characters and careers of iconic figures like Rabindranath Tagore, Maulana Azad or Subhas Chandra Bose were to be deconstructed and demolished? Will India be forever prone to emotional convulsions, and could our enemies be tempted deliberately to use historical biography to divide our society?
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 09, 2009 AT 03:48 IST
Given the recession, the finance ministry had yesterday appealed to all the ministries to observe austerity in view of the pressure on its finances.
The finance ministry had also ordered a 10% cut in non-plan expenditure by way of slashing foreign and domestic travel, publicity expenses and ban on conferences in five star hotels.
Congress party, meanwhile, asked its MPs to donate 20% of their salary towards drought-relief.
It so happened that two of the senior ministers have been staying at 5-Star hotels for over three months, ever since being sworn in: S M Krishna at ITC Maurya and Shahi Tharoor at Taj Mahal because the allotted official residence in both cases is "not ready for occupation".
The Maurya’s Presidential suite on the 16th floor, where Krishna is staying, is so exclusive that the tariff is available only “on request”. The likes of US President George W Bush and Bill Clinton have stayed in these presidential suites. The tariff, though it can be negotiated for longer stays such as Krishna's, is said to be upwards of Rs 1 lakh per night.
The Taj suite, where Shashi Tharoor is staying, is apparently not as fancy and nowhere in the same league and only about 40% of the cost of Krisna's suite, approximately Rs 40,000 per night,
Both the ministers claimed they were paying their own hotel bills, but neither of them revealed the cost of their stay.
The finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has today publicly stated that he has asked the ministers to move into their respective state bhavans.
SM Krishna has now moved to Foreign Services Institute (FSI) guesthouse while Tharoor has moved to an Indian Navy guesthouse.
"I moved out of the hotel on September 1," Tharoor said.
In addition, on his twitter feeds, Tharoor has pointed out the following:
I wld be ashamed if I was spending the people's money. But I'm not - I'm spending my own savings.
yes, it's a non-story. I wasn't spending taxpyr money or using any Govt privilege. I'd much rather be in my official house!
I need 2 things daily that Kerala House doesn't offer - a gym and some privacy. But I visit pretty often and meet people there
What do you think? Is the government right in insisting that the ministers conform to austerity measures even when they are not spending the tax payer's money?
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 08, 2009 AT 14:49 IST
Jaithirth Rao in the Indian Express:
It has been wrongly argued by some that Nehru and Patel favoured centralisation while Jinnah and others preferred decentralisation. The centralisation debate was secondary. The issue was secession. Nehru and Patel were willing to live with a one-time secession but, like Lincoln, refused to countenance an ongoing “right of secession”. If the Cabinet Mission proposals had been accepted (as advocated by Seervai, Jaswant and others, who refer to it as the “last chance” for preserving a united India), one can be reasonably certain that in 1957 there would have been a partition and not just Lahore and Dacca but Jalandhar, Rohtak, Hisar as well as Calcutta, Asansol and Darjeeling would have separated from India leaving us with a husk of a country. In retrospect, rejecting the Cabinet Mission proposals which would have at best given India an illusory, unstable unity for a mere 10 years was among the smartest and most practical things that the Congress leadership did. The US had a civil war eight decades after independence. We may have avoided one 10 years after independence by agreeing to Partition.
Read the full article at the Indian Express
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Sep 01, 2009 AT 14:57 IST
Rohit De in the Indian Express:
The fatal obsession of BJP leaders with Mohammed Ali Jinnah is symptomatic of two things: the problems, historically, with a particular, “anti-Congress”, model of politics and the pitfalls of interpreting history through the deeds of “great men”.
Jaswant Singh’s and L.K. Advani’s fascination with Jinnah is best explained, actually, by the BJP’s similarities to the Muslim League. Both parties faced the Congress behemoth, which claimed to represent every social group and political opinion; it was thus dismissive of demands for autonomy, it had national presence, a popular base and a large grassroots cadre.
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 29, 2009 AT 04:36 IST
Ashis Nandy in the Times of India:
Jinnah demanded a looser, federal polity built around powerful provinces as a way out of partitioning the country. The Indian National Congress first accepted the idea and then ditched it. Paradoxically, the power that Jinnah demanded for the provinces was in many ways less than the power the chief ministers of some Indian states have exercised in recent years.
This background explains why, 60 years after the event, partition and the roles in it of individual leaders haunt our political culture. We are still debating in our hearts our birth trauma. We cannot accept that our midwives, too, were children of their times and spoke from within the colonial world in which they lived. We use them as archetypes to battle our fears, anxieties and self-doubts. We are what we are, we suspect, because of their choices, not ours.
Read the full piece where he says he looks "at the future with apprehension and fear that we may have already lost a part of our selfhood" at the Times of India
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 29, 2009 AT 01:58 IST
R. Jagannathan in the DNA argues it was:
...despite frequent lip-service to the idea of an undivided India by the Sangh Parivar and even secularists, the bitter truth is that it was the best thing to happen to us. An undivided India on Jinnah's terms would have reduced the whole of the region to Pakistan-like chaos. We would have had not just three countries, but more than 20 of them, allowing none to survive as secular nations. By agreeing to Partition, Nehru and Patel saved the rest of the nation from the mess Jinnah created. They did the right thing.
The real tragedy is not that Indians have been unable to see Jinnah differently, as some secular historians would have us believe, but that we still hold rose-tinted notions about undivided India. It is time to abandon the idea.
Read the full piece: Partition was good
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 27, 2009 AT 03:46 IST
Sugata Bose in the Indian Express
I am not in agreement with those who say that the parties are obsessed with a non-issue, 62 years out of date. The issue which revisiting partition brings to the fore is full of contemporary relevance. It is the search for a substantive rather than procedural democracy that protects citizens from majoritarian arrogance and ensures justice in a subcontinent where people have multiple identities.
Majoritarianism, whether in secular or saffron garb, continues to be a potential threat to Indian democracy. Regional rights were once thought to be a counterpoise to the anti-democratic tendencies of an over-centralised state. Regional parties run by petty and insecure dictators are proving to be as ruthless as the all-India partiepression of internal dissent. In such a scenario freedom of speech and expression remains the best guarantee of the future of Indian democracy.
More here
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 25, 2009 AT 21:40 IST
Expectedly, the Gujarat government's ban of the controversial book by Mr Jaswant Singh has been challenged in the High Court of Gujarat today.
On Saturday, V.Venkatesan had an excellent post at the Law and Other Things blog where he had pointed out, inter alia:
Not only the notification is silent on the grounds, but even the so-called justification for the ban as explained by the Gujarat Government's spokesperson is not legally sustainable. None of the reasons cited by the spokesperson, including the alleged attempt to defame Sardar Patel can attract Section 153A or 153B of IPC. If you use the reasoning adopted by the Bombay High Court in the Shivaji book ban case, the Gujarat Government has made its position vulnerable by claiming that all Gujaratis hold Sardar Patel in high esteem. If so, where is the question of promoting enmity between different groups on any ground, as there are no different groups on the question of holding Sardar Patel in high esteem. If the State Government thinks the book is likely to disturb the public tranquillity, it has not claimed so in the notification, let alone its obligation to explain it with some prima facie satisfaction.
However, even if the court rules favourably, it may hardly be grounds for jubilation, as I wrote in the comments section at the LAOT blog:
...even when legal redressal may be possible, publishers of books or exhibitors of films, for example, bow down to the mob pressures. For example, in the case of James Laine's book, if memory serves me right, the publisher decided not to pursue the matter even after the favourable Bombay High court verdict, which in any case was later challenged.
Frankly, looking at how often and easily various hoodlums have made life miserable for assorted groups, I have long felt that we need an Indian equivalent of ACLU:
I don't think PUCL/PUDR etc. have quite fulfilled the role they were set up for or are equipped to, or even wish to, play such a role.
I must admit, though, that I have not even followed ACLU other than very casually, but the little that I have -- in particular its famous stand, "ACLU has no love for the Ku Klux Klan, but does for the First Amendment" -- has always made me wonder why we do not have any such body of progressives in India who are willing to take a principled and uncompromising stand on free speech?
I wonder if LAOT would want to explore the possibility of a sustained campaign, looking into the constitutionality of various bans that are still in force -- I can imagine it would be quite a task to even compile a comprehensive list though we could begin with some of the high profile cases -- and at least to consider the possibilities of figuring out ways of fighting various ridiculous bans?
Or explore how publishers, editors etc could equip themselves to deal with law and order situations that are sought to be created, as the Statesman faced, for example, in Calcutta over the Johann Hari op-ed? I of course ask this as I have a vested interest in clarifying my own thinking over the many intertwined issues in such cases and would love to hear from all of you.
For more on this discussion, see the comments section in LAOT
Also See:
Postscript:
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 25, 2009 AT 00:49 IST
Journalist A. Surya Prakash petitioned the Chief Election Commissioner in March 2009 pointing out that Congress Party's obsession with three members of the Nehru-Gandhi family has meant that even the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi has been virtually forgotten:
Over the last 18 years, on a rough estimate about 450 Central and State Government programmes, projects and national and state level institutions involving public expenditure of hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees have been named after these three individuals-- Rajiv Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru...
Among the big ticket programmes that have been cleverly named after members of this family by the Union Government to extract unjust electoral mileage is the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (rural electrification programme)... The drinking water mission ... is also named after him and is called the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission. Other schemes, touching millions of people, which bear his name are the Rajiv Gandhi National Creche Scheme for Children of Working Mothers; the Rajiv Gandhi Udyami Mitra Yojana ( to promote small enterprises); the Rajiv Gandhi Shramik Kalyan Yojana and the Rajiv Gandhi Shilpi Swasthya Bima Yojana ( both insurance schemes).
This trend is even more apparent in the states, which have vied with each other to name programmes and schemes after these three members of the Nehru-Gandhi Family whenever the Congress Party was in power. Here is a sample: Rajiv Gandhi Breakfast Scheme, Pondicherry; Rajiv Ratna Awas Yojana, Delhi; Rajiv Arogyasri Health Insurance scheme, Andhra Pradesh; Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Mission, Assam; Rajiv Gandhi Bridges and Roads Infrastructure Development Programme, Haryana; Rajiv Gandhi Vidyarthi Suraksha Yojana, Maharastra; Rajiv Gandhi Tourism Development Mission, Rajasthan
...The most glaring example, which raises a question is regard to free and fair election is the blatant advertisement of the Congress Party on the ambulances that provide emergency medical help all over Andhra Pradesh. These ambulances, which reach every village in the state in quick time, provide efficient integrated emergency services that cover medical emergencies, police and fire. The capital expenditure on each ambulance is Rs 10 lakh to Rs 16 lakhs and the running cost per ambulance is Rs 1.25 lakh per month. All this expenditure is borne out of public funds drawn from the Union and State accounts. Yet, it is made out as if these ambulances are a gift from the Congress Party to the people of the State because every ambulance carries a portrait of Rajiv Gandhi on both sides of the vehicle with the legend “Rajiv Arogyasri”.
More here
HT: TJS George via churumuri
The Mayawati government in UP seems to have used this very complaint to counter the EC notice on statues of elephants and Mayawati.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Aug 18, 2009 AT 04:00 IST
There is simply no excuse for UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi's vicious words:
“The Dalit women [victims of rape] should throw the money [offered as financial aid by UP government] back at Mayawati’s face and she should be told, 'May you be raped and I too would give you one crore rupees'"
The newsclips showing Ms Mayawati using similar language in the past, such as the above, are no justification or rationalisation. Nor do they mitigate Ms Joshi's totally unacceptable and indefensible choice of words, even though they show this whole fracas for what it is: a highly charged political drama. Ms Mayawati taking umbrage would have carried more credibility and not sounded so rich had she apologised for her words.
But, the violence of Ms Joshi's words wreaks indescribable damage to the very cause she avowedly claims to have been espousing. While the "vendetta violence" unleashed by Ms Mayawati's party is not to be condoned, and, far from being justified, needs to be condemned, the Congress party would carry more conviction if it unequivocally condemned the remarks, dismissed Ms Joshi from her party post and then talked abou the legalities or otherwise of her arrest.
Much has been made of AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi's statement:
“whatever has happened in UP is very unfortunate. The Congress president has expressed her deep pain and anguish over the events that have taken place in UP.”
It is eerily reminiscent of the Varun Gandhi episode to be told,
“In any political organisation, decisions are taken only after considering all aspects of the problem, and not in a hurry. She is in jail right now. Any decision will be taken only hearing her version and explanation. The same thing could have been said without using those words.”
Besides, Ms Joshi has already offered her version:
“My intention was to expose a chief minister who has no sympathy for women... to remind Mayawati that being a woman she should realise that a paltry monetary compensation cannot make up for what a woman loses on account of rape.”
While that sentiment by itself is unexceptionable, and while one would agree with her that a dole of Rs 25,000 to every Dalit rape victim “was quite ironical as the state police chief was spending lakhs on the helicopter ride that he undertakes to hand over that paltry amount to the victim,” she and her supporters would do well to realise, as Ms Mayawati pointed out, the act under which she was giving financial aid to the Dalit rape victims has been enacted by the Centre and it can be nobody's case that it is meant to be a "compensation" for rape.
The policy is adopted by almost all state governments, including those ruled by the Congress, particularly in case of victims from deprived sections who are in dire need of rehabilitation. Apart from their tragedy being used as yet another occasion for politicking, in this case, instead of being offered any practical help, the victims are being further brutalised with the stigma of receiving money, paltry as it is, from the state, and are being exhorted to return it.
Much can be said against Ms Mayawati and her ways, but for now Ms Joshi would serve her and her party's cause better by offering an unequivocal and unconditional apology and not the likes of the following:
"I regret what I said in a fit of anger. If it is being misconstrued, if it's being misinterpreted, it is being taken out of context, then I regret it... I am myself a woman and I should not have spoken these words ... I really apologise."
The top leaders of her party too need to rise above cynical political calculations. Perhaps they are waiting for Ms Joshi to help them find their inner-voice -- and the higher moral ground -- by resigning herself?
Ms Mayawati too needs to ensure that those behind the arson and attack on Ms Joshi's residence are brought to justice. While Ms Joshi's choice of words was particularly unfortunate and have no place in our public discourse, no words can be cited as "provocation" for unleashing anarchy and mayhem.
One would have thought it would be obvious to all, but given what we keep hearing when discussing the seminal dates in our violent history, perhaps it is worth repeating over and over and over again like a mantra that two wrongs do not make a right.
- Ms Mayawati making similarly sick statements about Mr Mulayam Singh in 2007 does not justify Ms Joshi making such statements about Ms Mayawati in 2009.
- Ms Joshi making such statements does not justify burning down her house.
Ms Joshi has been booked under Sections 153 A (promoting enmity between two groups on ground of religion or caste) and 509 (word or gesture aimed at outraging the modesty of a woman) of the IPC, the Scheduled Castes, Tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act, 1989 and Section 7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. While fighting this detention legally and politically, the Congress would do well to send out a message that it stands for decency in public discourse.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 17, 2009 AT 01:47 IST
Arun Shourie says "you will miss the point entirely if you think, “Oh, this is about the BJP... Oh, this is about the Congress...” Instead of concluding that I am out to convey some “hidden meanings” and trying to figure these out, think of your own party or organisation, the party or organisation that you know best, from the inside — the Congress, the BJP, the Communist parties, the regional parties: Telugu Desam, the DMK, the BSP, the AGP":
The factor most responsible for the rout has been the state to which the leader and his circle have reduced the party as an organisation, but that is the one factor which the leader and his cohorts will not admit into the discourse. Is the party seen as, is it in fact different from the others? Are its candidates any different? Is every unit of the party not riddled with factionalism? That these are the reasons for the setback is manifest to all. But the leader and his circle would have none of them — for that would immediately raise further questions. The party is no longer different from others? Who has allowed the party to sink to this level where it cannot be distinguished from the very parties it has been denouncing? The candidates are no better than those of the rivals? Who has selected the candidates? Factionalism has been allowed to continue? Each state faction has a line to some ringleader in the central cabal? Who has allowed the factionalism to fester and swell?
They blame others — the rival party; the third party that has stolen their vote; the accidental reason on account of which a section whose vote was to have split got consolidated; the youth; the middle class; the poor who voted on money, the rich who did not vote; the holidays on account of which so many went out of town; the disenchantment with the party’s ally in one state, the absence of an ally in the other; the anti-incumbency factor against us in this state, the advantage that the rival party had in the adjacent state of being in office and thereby being able to use the state machinery; the ‘shameless’ use of money and muscle by the rival... In a word, everyone and everything other than themselves.
More here
Part I: On the way down
Part II: The end of ideology
Part III: How the party withers away
Part IV: Ring out the old, ring in the new
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 14, 2009 AT 09:10 IST
Congress kaa haath aam aadmii ke saath!
This, of course, is just a day after Justice R Reghupathy of Madras High Court revealed in an open court that a union minister had tried to pressure him to grant anticipatory bail to a doctor and his son in a forged mark sheets case filed by CBI. The judge has not named the minister. He should.
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POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 01, 2009 AT 14:53 IST
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