Passionate About India

Yogi Adityanath   as the   CM  of   UP  might have come as a rude shock to many. But it was always on the cards. Narendra Modi has been growing too big for RSS. And after becoming PM, he hadn’t once supported openly a single of the innumerable nonsense pelted out by RSS or its fringe groups. And make any analysis. Call the Congress anything, the Rahul-Akhilesh combine didn’t lose because Akhilesh was very bad and definitely not because of Rahul Gandhi. Akhilesh has been quite decent and speaks very well and keeping the memes aside Rahul Gandhi today speaks better than most of the BJP leaders who were campaigning in UP. He has worked hard on his communication.  In fact, the Congress won three of the five states irrespective of who formed the government. So, ‘Rahul Gandhi means no seats in states’, is a bogus theory and argument. What is happening the world over and in India right now is high voltage personality contests. Modi being the world-beating lead...

Mark Twain famously said, “Religion was invented when the first fool met the first con man”. Nothing could be more spot on. In place of nations having their own laws to govern human   behaviour, some – perhaps well meaning and probably good – men found the use of a cooked up evidence-less concept called God and His will, a better way to make people behave the way they wanted to. From keeping control on women to making people fight against others to conquer their land, it served both the purposes well. Specially the purpose of keeping their women well behaved behind them as they went to loot, plunder and rape others from neighbouring land, as is evident from verses from each of the three major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. I quote from the Bible, Ephesians 5:22-24 “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submit...

I had decided to delay this month’s editorial for   The Sunday Indian   till 11/9 (writing 9th of November the American way) because i wanted to write the edit on the next American President. But as the jokes go, Modi decided to upstage the American excitement, at least in India! But before coming to Modi, let me finish writing on why Trump as POTUS makes me reasonably happy! I followed the elections in the US with maximum enthusiasm till Bernie lost. Have written earlier too that I wanted Bernie to get the Democratic nomination like no one else ever, including Obama! And had it been Bernie, today most likely, Democrats would have been the guys celebrating! Post Hillary getting the nomination, all excitement died. Yes, I would have loved to see a woman finally breaking the Presidential glass ceiling! But did that mean supporting Hillary? When Susan Sarandon was asked why wouldn’t she support Hillary when the man she supported – Bernie – wanted support for Hillary, she s...

The big question that people have in mind the moment they hear of NITI Aayog is, is this something like Gurugram – just a change in the name with everything else remaining the same? Most people i speak to seem to think so. And that doesn’t sound too exciting, given the amount that needs to be done in the nation. The truth is, the Planning Commission indeed needed changes. Sweeping changes. And the thought was indeed in the right direction by Modi. Having been a member of the consultative committee to the Planning Commission of India briefly, and then interacting with its members, I know first hand the lack of dynamism and focus that was there in the Planning Commission. In any case, the Planning Commission of India had become a pure insult to the word “planning” within a few years of its setting up. The word planning has to necessarily be inclusive of people and the masses as that’s where the centre of focus should be. What we had in India was hardly ever planning. Yes, the idea...

What’s gone wrong with the Congress? My answer is: nothing! Absolutely nothing new has gone wrong with the Congress Party. If there was anything wrong, it’s been for about 70 years. There is nothing new that has happened. The media painted these elections as the wipeout of Congress and the mega win of BJP. I am totally stunned as to how the conclusion was reached. Which party ever (apart from the extreme case of CPM through brutal force and scientific rigging) has ever come back to power after 15 continuous years in power. The anti incumbency was sure to take its toll in Assam and Kerala. And yet, in these five state elections, Congress won almost double of BJP’s 64 seats; their winning ratio per seat contested was three times that of BJP. All of BJP seats came virtually from one of the five states while Congress’ seats were well distributed in all states. It’s also strange that the Congress PR machinery too – after two weeks of the same – failed to put this simple point across. Tho...

Kudos to TO I, Advocate Ravindra Bana and the sensitiveness of a bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and N. V. Rama n, this Supreme court ruling can change India One of the most embarrassing aspects of Bengali culture has been the act of taking one’s aging mother or aunt for “teerth” or trip to holy places. Not that it’s a bad idea. But often it has been observed that while on visit to a place like Vrindavan, the son would make his mother sit somewhere saying he is just coming and would then disappear forever. The mothers, mostly being uneducated and with no means to go back, would end up spending their lives on the streets in these places. And the son would go back home and announce that he lost his mother in the crowd or that she passed away and he did her last rites there itself and came back. Thus, streets of places like Gaya, Varanasi, Vrindavan have many homeless widows – a large proportion from Bengal (not that this tradition is completely absent in people from other states)....