Passionate About India

In my editorials, I have vividly written on our Parliament and Parliamentarians. From suggesting that our Parliament be outsourced (after 26/11), to asking political parties to pave the way for educated youth, to criticising the way our Parliament works, to how our Parliamentarians put their personal priorities above the national ones, I have often written about them. Be that as it may, the recent deadlock in our Parliament that lasted over eight long days made me come up with a few more urgently required and practicable measures. These eight successive days of adjournment cost the exchequer a staggering Rs 63 crores! In this whole winter session of Parliament, except for a couple of days, neither of the houses functioned normally for even one single session. For the uninitiated, as per official figures cited in various media, the total budget for the two houses for 2010-11 is estimated to be around a whopping Rs 530 crore! For the first eight days of the Parliament in this season, on...

I am sure that after reading the heading, everyone must be restless to know how? But have some patience. It’s a story I repeat often. And I must repeat it again today. As a child, I remember having considerable friends in school. I am sure everyone has. But my friends’ circle from the very beginning had a specialty – it had only those people who were all very, very good in studies. If you are wondering how, the answer to that is in the place I used to stay, and still stay; a locality called Chittaranjan Park in New Delhi. This was originally that locality in Delhi where all those who had gotten displaced from Bangladesh during the partition were given a place to settle down. So, it used to be called the ‘EPDP colony’ i.e. East Pakistan Displaced Persons’ colony. This locality had its very special characteristics – maybe someday I will write about them all – including the one I referred to; i.e. it gave me, during my very early childhood, a group of friends who were all toppers! Being a...

Barack Obama came, he spoke and he conquered. At least that’s what some of the biggest media houses would have you believe. Nothing could be more misleading for the Indian public. Here are the reasons why the trip was only of feel-good value, that too for dumb people. 1. Obama had a clear cut mandate. And that mandate was to show Americans that he was taking back jobs for them. He took away business worth 10 billion dollars and 50,000 jobs. These 10 billion dollars could have been used in India to create 200 times more jobs, because for every American job we create in America, we can roughly create about 200 jobs in rural India. It was a classic game of begging that the new America is now seen playing in India and China. With India, it’s about access to its markets and deals with the government. And with China, it’s about the revaluation of the Chinese currency to reduce their foreign debt and make Chinese products uncompetitive in American markets! I would even say that it was indee...

AND HUNDREDS OF ‘ADARSH’ MILLIONAIRES! Amidst a long list of myriad scams and land grabbing acts, the recent Adarsh Cooperative Housing society scam appears to be one of the most unfortunate of all. The housing society, which was supposedly meant for Kargil martyrs’ families, ended up getting allotted to everyone but the actual beneficiaries. As if the scam pertaining to buying of coffins was not enough, the widows of the martyrs had to go through this ordeal too. In fact, the location of the society speaks volumes. Being located at one of the costliest areas of Mumbai, in Colaba, the political, defence and bureaucratic classes of India left no opportunity to illegally get their names registered in the list of beneficiaries – despite having no links with Kargil martyrs. What is most hilarious is the way our babus and politicians reacted after being exposed by the media. On the one hand, while the Maharashtra Chief Minister offered to quit, on the other, the former Indian Army Chief Gen...