Passionate About India

The Modi juggernaut is on a roll! Every opinion poll now by the day is predicting higher and higher seats for Modi! And yet, the English media is not going all out in support of him and his achievements. There are still detractors trying their best to project him as a mass murderer and as an anti-Muslim. First things first. That’s not a fact. What happened in Gujarat was a tragedy of the highest proportion; but most unfortunately, such riots are a frequent occurrence in Indian politics since Independence. And Modi happened to be there in Gujarat as a new Chief Minister in the middle of a very unfortunate event in Indian history. Yes, Rajnath Singh has offered to apologise for any mistakes that his party may have committed against Muslims. However the irony of that tragedy also is that while Gujarat has roughly 10% of Muslim population and 90% Hindus, the number of Hindus and Muslims killed in the riots were approximately the same. That means that the fraction of the population of riot...

While Arvind Kejriwal’s stubborn defence of Somnath Bharti’s illegal and racist attempts at vigilante justice against African women and Kumar Vishwas’ racist comment on nurses of Kerala got written about, Arvind’s support for Khap panchayats (labelled as the Taliban of India by women’s right activists) got sidelined. Yes, people are writing about how in his politics, women’s issues have been sidelined. But it is his support for Khap’s dictats – which are shocking and shameful and range from banning women from wearing Western clothes and using mobile phones to ordering killing of young couples – that has hit women’s groups (especially those who want Khap panchayats dismantled) the most. In India, politics has forever been about the vote bank. That means, politics has always been aimed at helping those who are having some problem with the normal course of law and procedures. Politicians, by giving promises to help such people, by circumventing the law and bringing new laws/policies, hav...

There is no doubt that BJP is the party to go for in the upcoming elections. No party has such a variety of support from intellectuals as the BJP has. No intellectual worth his mettle is supporting Congress, and barring a few slogan-mongers, no one is interested in AAP either. Definitely, not a single mainstream intellectual has any feelings for AAP. And truthfully, why not? While Congress has a few, very well spoken people (in English, I should add), BJP has the pick of the intellectuals, and to go with it, well spoken leaders too. Yes, many of them may be far better orators in Hindi, but that is the language that matters in this country! My articles are very often the result of some recent book I may have read. Likewise, today’s editorial is influenced by Nitin Gadkari’s India Aspires – written by Tuhin A Sinha. While Modi is the lion of the party on the roll and nothing much needs to be said on him, it is Gadkari who has never failed to impress me with his social vision, combin...

This editorial of mine is on behalf of my African and North Eastern brothers and sisters in India to every shameful racist in India, and to every parent and teacher who unknowingly are creating future racists at their homes and schools… to all those who practice racism in any form towards not just Africans and North Easterners, but towards any human being… to all those who promote products that fuel racism and those who endorse such products and to all those uneducated leaders who do so less to change it all. I feel ashamed that in this land of peace and tolerance, the land of Tagore – who found solace in the North East and wrote some of his most beautiful pieces there (including Shesher Kabita, Raktakarabi and Shillonger Chithi), and whose landmark poem Africa is perhaps the world’s most touching as well as one of the most revolutionary poems on racism – there are people who still practice racism, are unashamed about it and give pathetic excuses to justify their acts. The racist in...

Raghuram Rajan is potentially great news for the Indian economy. Anyone who talks about “Saving capitalism from the capitalists” has to be good news, for humanity per se. The IIT, IIM educated man is an intellectual of a relatively high calibre. Not that all his arguments are correct – mainly because of his lack of understanding of the positives of a planned economic system – but his heart is in the right place. Having spent most of his life in USA, his panacea for all ills, as expected, is capitalism. Where he scores however is his better understanding of capitalism’s ills and where capitalism’s ‘fault lines’ are. He has rightly championed the cause against monopolies and oligarchists – and that’s the key reason why he is the man India needs. Rajan’s analysis about India very correctly observes that the big Indian billionaires (the guys I call “Blood billionaires”) are in those sectors where there is high government interference, and where licensing and price controls are highly ...

A lot has been said about Steve Jobs. Indeed, he was a fighter and his success story is most inspiring. His biography ‘The journey is the reward’, written years ago, inspired me personally to try and achieve more. And since Steve Jobs was the creative wild and hippie underdog during the same era as Gates, perhaps he overshadowed Gates largely during our times. Yet, I have always maintained that Bill Gates is the man who is the real visionary. Far beyond any businessman the world has seen in our times. For who is a greater business icon? The man who makes billions and keeps them as reserves or the man who makes billions and then uses that money to change the world into a better place to live in? Yes, that’s what differentiates Bill Gates from all his contemporaries. Greatly inspired by the Rockefeller family, Bill Gates, in the year 2000, by combining three of his and his wife’s charities, decided to do what no one could ever imagine. He decided to give away 95% of his wealth to ch...

On the 13th of January, 2014, our current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for one of India’s largest nuclear power plants in Haryana amidst protests from various groups. Had logic and public opinion been something that our Prime Minister or his government respected, then AAP perhaps would not have been there in the first place. But these have not been his forte; as is well known, he neither uses his mouth (the absolute lack of communication from him), nor his ears (the disregard for public opinion). Or perhaps he has sold his soul so massively to Western interests that his skin has become far too thick for anything to affect him, including the imminent end of his official tenure. I have been a diehard anti-nuclear energy man from day one, and wouldn’t spend too many words delving into the scary possibilities of a Japan-like natural disaster and its possible effects. But the fact is, nuclear plants can be most fragile and such incidents can have disastrous cons...