Passionate About India

It has been quite sometime since Barack Obama was elected the President of USA and his iconic speech of “Change we believe in” left the whole world enthralled. The fact that the Western world and many in the rapidly developing economies like India and China could relate to his speech and felt that such changes would benefit their countries too was not something new. But I shouldn’t be surprised if many in some other parts of the world, which are not conventionally considered to be open minded or liberal, too were watching with intent and hoping for change in their countries as well. Over the last few months, as the Obama administration settled down with work and the rest of the world forgot much of them, at least some of the real changes have started showing their presence. No, I am not talking about the initiatives being taken by Obama to bail out loss making American companies; and neither am I referring to the restrictions on outsourcing that are being imposed by him. On the contrar...

economically growing Indians are the envy of the recession-struck developed world! Before we talk about the jaundiced racist attacks on Indians in Australia, we have got to go to some basics. And unfortunately, the basics lie in India's enviable growth story of late. As long as the western world was growing, India's provocative growth story made great news. After all, the altruistic western media had to look charitable and benevolent to their lower ranked earth mates. The problem, however, began as their economies started getting into recession – something that was of their own doing. Instead of looking at going full throttle to develop markets in lesser developed regions like Latin America, India, China etc, Europeans and Americans kept capriciously selling to their own citizens through artificial means like luring non-creditworthy people into taking loans – in the process making their people dehumanized materialistic consumer dustbins. The delinquent process bombed, their ban...

If anyone has destroyed CPM, it is the CPM itself. I can personally bet that most workers of Trinamool Congress are also communists at heart because in Bengal, most hearts beat for the masses. The revolutionary fervour is a part of Bengali blood stream. It’s no wonder they tolerated a rotting communist party for so many years rather than vote for anyone else. The amazing thing is that even in these elections, out of a total population of 5.73 crores who voted in Bengal, Trinamool Congress got only five lakh votes more than the communists. Of course, rigging happened in many, many places where the communists won – from people not being allowed to leave their homes in the first place (something that can be never caught by the CRPF personnel who were posted) to threats at the voting booths, every trick in the book was rampantly used. But then, there are people who voted for CPM without coercion too. From people who actually benefitted from their regime, to their grassroots party supporter...