The 100 days of UPA.

Dr Manmohan Singh has created a history in Indian politics by winning the faith of the nation consecutively for the second time. He has been the second prime minister after Pundit Nehru to achieve this in the history of India.

For the UPA government led by Mr Singh, it has been 100 days since the reinstatement for the second time. The people of India has laid utmost faith in the Congress led UPA as evident form the better numbers gained in Parliament by Congress in battle 2009. The people of the country have reinstated Mr Singh back to power with a hope, a hope for betterment of the economy in the lieu of global economic melt down, a hope for better governance on a whole for a better tomorrow for the generations to come.

It shall not be right on the part of any critic to slam or praise the government for a mere hundred day rule or just less than one seventeenth of the total spam of entitlement to govern the nation. But for this has been a only a continuation of the previous term, I feel that Mr Singh deserves an appraisal for his performance over the past 6 years.

I shall start the process of appraisal with the department, for which Mr Singh is considered an expert of his contemporaries, the economy of the country. In the turmoil of the global economic melt down I shall appreciate Mr Singh for not letting the ill effects of recessions reach the average Indian so long, but I shall certainly term it a failure on his part for the sky rocketing prices of essential commodities. The price rise has not been an unusual phenomenon across the globe, but is defiantly an issue to be pointed in India for the reason, the price rise of the world has been by product of recession, where as in India it is set on run by the greed of the traders by illegal stocking of food grains in godowns. The performance of the government in this concern has been poor and deserves a rating below 4 on scale of 10.

The next on list is health ministry for the inefficiency to face the crisis like swine flu. It’s a matter of national shame that only 4 labs all across the country have been equipped for a long time when the disease was on spread to test this. Mr Azad also deserves no more than 4 for his poor show.

The other major aspect has been with security and defense, the government seemed to learn no lessons from the 26/11 attacks. An American national has recently traveled all over the country with an illegal possession of a gun in his baggage via air. This exposes the severity of security lapses across the country and the side effects of the VIP syndrome from being frisked in India. I am glad that there have been no significant terror attacks in the country in recent times, but I shall not call this an achievement of the government for the reason it may be a clam before a cyclone or the international pressure on terror breeding countries post Mumbai attacks.

The bilateral talks with Pak have been proved a diplomatic blunder by Mr Singh for the inclusion of Baluchistan issue which had rather been an internal headache of Pak for decades. It was a complete failure of diplomacy in this regard. Also the ways pursued by th government to put the master minds of 26/11 before bars has added to the failure of external affairs.

The drought had been yet another failure of the government. Though it has been anticipated by the end of June for the less rain fall to come in the days to follow, government has taken no steps for the drought relief to the farmers of the country. This has been yet another poor performance of the ruling body.

Amidst so many failures I term only one person successful in the whole government. None other than Mr Kapil Sibal for the educational reforms he structured for the sick educational system prevailing in India, which credit and torture students to score marks. He is the only one in the whole government who deserves applause from every section of society.

For the overall performance of the government has been very poor and far below the line of expectation of people of the country. To the end I would like to advise Mr Singh to not let down the people of the nation for giving him a historic second chance to rule the country. I shall remind him of the Independence Day speech for the special provisions being formulated for the minorities, its better in a secular country if he viewed the all the sections of society with eyes of equality for the reason there are many more people even with majority section who need a bail out package from government. I hope Mr Singh sets aside this minority appeasement and the vote game in the days to comes and reaches out to every deserving individual.

BJP and Jaswanth.

To the fact I have not read the book by Mr Jaswanth Singh on the partition of India, still the reviews in media provide enough air to speak of this. So I dare to write this blog.

Jaswanth Singh has raised the controversy of partition of the country again by claiming Nehru and Patel to have caused the partition of India than Jinnah. He opines, it was the reluctance of Nehru to share power with Jinnah that brought about the creation of Pakistan. Singh also has praised Jinnah to be an ambassador of Hindu- Muslim unity in early days of freedom struggle, only on his alienation in Congress has he moved into Muslim League. Jinnah no doubt was a great freedom fighter along with Gandhi and Nehru, and also an ambassador as termed by Jaswanth, to Hindu- Muslim unity in early days. But the fact still remains, that only on his call to Muslim League workers was the huge scale of communal violence instigated during partition.

Pakistan was no brain child of Mr Jinnah, but still to the end he was the leader who caused the difference by advocating the need of Pakistan. To be clear in words he made use of the opposition in Muslims towards a democratically elected Hindu Prime Minister to create Pakistan. He was the one who, to meet his own political desires brought about partition of India. Jinnah being senior to Nehru in Indian politics could not bare the dominance of Nehru during and after freedom struggle, also feared his political future. There by he went about with creation of Pakistan to sustain his political domination and supremacy. The means he used to attain his goals were definitely communal and he was the one behind the human slaughter during partition. Its a pity that leaders of BJP are taking turns to praise him secular. I fear the word secular may commit suicide for the way being attributed to communal people by modern politicians to meet their own ends.

Mr Singh also needs to be reminded of the basic principle of democracy, the one with majority backing can be called a leader and can hold the post such as Prime Minister. Nehru was the one who had the backing of masses than Jinnah during independence and he by no means can be blamed for not sharing power. Democracy is run by majority masses, but not by communities and communal leaders. Jinnah apart from creation of Pakistan, has left a long communal gulf in India that has ever lasted since Independence. So in no terms he deserves to be called secular.

The next controversy put forward by Mr Singh is the alienation of Muslims in India. I shall ask Mr Singh if he could list one right that Muslims have less than rest communities in India. When the world is learning rocket science and advancing to new shores of technology and living comforts with a progressive thought of liberty, whom does Mr Singh want to blame for the growing demand for Madarsas than Schools. Government has always tried for the upliftment of Muslims by recognising education in Madarsa equivalent to CBSE. I shall take the opportunity to ask which secular country in world funds all money for a religious tour like Haj. If he wants to speak of socio economic conditions, then i shall remind him the number of Hindus and Christians with similar conditions are more. I shall only term the claim another minority appeasement scheme in lines of Congress.

To conclude, Mr Singh has every right to publish his thoughts and do all the minority appeasement he whishes to as a citizen of India. But before hand he should have voluntarily resigned to BJP, when he found his ideas in contradiction to party's core principles. The media is only tyring to demonise BJP more than Jinnah and there by trying to project BJP as anti Muslim to gain its own TRP. The fuss raised is Media is not worth watching for the fact Mr Singh good or bad penned down his thoughts, which when found contradicting to party's ideology was expelled.

Tryst with destiny - First Words of Freedom

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength. We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility. The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India. Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow. Some of those pains continue even now. Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today. The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams. Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure. This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill-will or blaming others. We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell.

The appointed day has come-the day appointed by destiny-and India stands forth again, after long slumber and struggle, awake, vital, free and independent. The past clings on to us still in some measure and we have to do much before we redeem the pledges we have so often taken. Yet the turning-point is past, and history begins anew for us, the history which we shall live and act and others will write about.

It is a fateful moment for us in India, for all Asia and for the world. A new star rises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes. May the star never set and that hope never be betrayed!

We rejoice in that freedom, even though clouds surround us, and many of our people are sorrowstricken and difficult problems encompass us. But freedom brings responsibilities and burdens and we have to face them in the spirit of a free and disciplined people.

On this day our first thoughts go to the architect of this freedom, the Father of our Nation [Gandhi], who, embodying the old spirit of India, held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us. We have often been unworthy followers of his and have strayed from his message, but not only we but succeeding generations will remember this message and bear the imprint in their hearts of this great son of India, magnificent in his faith and strength and courage and humility. We shall never allow that torch of freedom to be blown out, however high the wind or stormy the tempest.

Our next thoughts must be of the unknown volunteers and soldiers of freedom who, without praise or reward, have served India even unto death.

We think also of our brothers and sisters who have been cut off from us by political boundaries and who unhappily cannot share at present in the freedom that has come. They are of us and will remain of us whatever may happen, and we shall be sharers in their good and ill fortune alike.

The future beckons to us. Whither do we go and what shall be our endeavour? To bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman.

We have hard work ahead. There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full, till we make all the people of India what destiny intended them to be. We are citizens of a great country on the verge of bold advance, and we have to live up to that high standard. All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations. We cannot encourage communalism or narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

To the nations and peoples of the world we send greetings and pledge ourselves to cooperate with them in furthering peace, freedom and democracy.

And to India, our much-loved motherland, the ancient, the eternal and the ever-new, we pay our reverent homage and we bind ourselves afresh to her service.

This was the first address to nation after Independence by Pundit Nehru.

Jai Hind.

Drought & Contingency

Drought or a situation of below normal rainfall is not some thing new to India today. There have been several such instances through out the world all through the history of man kind. The great Bengal famine as described by Pandit Nehru, in his autobiography, has claimed lives of thousands of people and livestock owing to the negligence of the then British government. There is no wonder learning some foreign government bestowing the step mother affection on the people whom it treated no less than slaves, but it is shocking to see that the later governments of Independent India have learnt no lesson from this, paid no attention to build in a contingency plan to the rain dependant farmers of India. It worries me more to see that even in the age where technology has grown drastically taking the world to new peaks, farming in India is still dependent on most uncertain monsoons which have been regularly skipping the course in recent years. Still to the amaze of the nation's populace the government has no plan to deal this situation, added to the astonishment of the people a popular leader of North has funds to erect statues but not to deal drought.

The country has been claiming to touch new heights in stock markets, calling itself a booming economy. The ground reality is out of proportion growth of prices of essential commodities. The cost of rice, the fundamental need of every Indian has gone up by 100% in the last five years, this alone explains the price hike of the rest commodities. The drought that has hit the country this year has already come in picture with the economic consequences to face. The cost of pulses have already started to soar high.

Government every year takes the pain to identify the drought effected districts in the country and provides the people with a minimum period of employment. It just clears the tears off the eyes, but is not the required healing touch. No government has acted on to take the challenge of liberating Indian farmers from the monsoon dependency. The rulers and leaders of the country may have asked the farming sections to switch towards electric pumps for irrigation, but still will the power production of the day meet the demands and needs of all the people even if this is to happen. The alarming fall of ground water levels is another big concern and a challenge to the Indian society. Governments may not be able to reach out to every village and colony to harvest rain water. But the attention paid towards creating an awareness in people towards ground water table and rain water harvesting techniques is poor and unsatisfactory.

Overcoming drought is not a overnight fight, it needs years of planning and hard work from each section of society. The central and state governments across the country now looking for a action plan is just a stunt to show people that it is a prime concern at the minute, where as the reality goes far different, and nothing is feasible to save the nation from clutches of this drought in this short span. Governments lacked professionalism to address such a key issue in a country like India where irrigation is the prime occupation to majority masses. Its time that governments wake up and come up with strong action plan to face future famines. The people of the country learn how foolishly they have been dependant on monsoons and should look for other options breaking the dependency. The awareness of the ground water table and the ways to harvest the rain water are the key stones to answer the situations like this in future.