Passionate About India

Last Friday, I saw what some people are calling Bhoothnath Returns: The Election Special! Whatever you call it, this Bhoothnath has grossed an unbelievable Rs.18 crore in the first three days at the box office! Unbelievable, because it was a small budget film with no heroine or young hero; and to top it all, the film was good, but not really a masala entertainer! Well, that’s the power of the stellar Big B at 72! What a man nonpareil! Having made a film with him – The Last Lear, which went on to win the National Award – many beautiful memories of sublime moments spent with and around the matchless personality during the shoot and the promotions zipped past my mind... And similar to the film Boothnath Returns, which ended with the reel Big B – Bhoothnath – winning the elections, I believe that if he wanted to, the peerless Big B was also a man who could have been our Prime Minister, and perhaps been a good one at that. I will give you five reasons. The first reason stems from my memori...

AAP came up like no party had earlier! And is now on its way down as fast. But, has AAP lost its entire support base? Not at all! The poorer sections of the society, who are relatively less on education and understanding, are still firmly with them. AAP's non-stop claim about being an honest party has caught the fancy of these sections. And rightly so. This is a claim that is almost true. There are stray cases where people with a criminal background have gotten tickets; but by and large, I still believe AAP's intent is to remain non-corrupt. Compared to all others, they are the true "pavitra ganga jal" in this department. The lesser educated classes don't understand governance, vision, development, growth, stability and negatives of fascism; but they do understand honesty. It's a simple non-complicated term. These classes are seeing social workers, who have been tirelessly working for them, getting tickets; people from their own fraternity getting tickets; ...

Many people have been moved by Jaswant Singh’s genuine tears of pain, L.K Advani’s hurt pride and Murli Manohar Joshi’s sadness at the BJP Central Committee not blindly agreeing to give them the seats they wanted. Personally and emotionally speaking, I too have been moved by the same. Truly, compared to these BJP stalwarts, how many leaders in the Congress can you point out and say that you respect them? From the younger lot, there are some who are better than the average, but are yet to earn any respect. From the older lot, almost all are people who are impossible to respect. You look at most and feel that you are looking at seasoned scamsters. Compare that to the older BJP generation – from Vajpayee to Advani to Murli Manohar Joshi to Jaswant Singh and even to Yashwant Sinha. They are all people for whom a deep sense of respect comes almost automatically. Not one of them can I look at and think of as a thief. They may not have been revolutionary politicians and may not have given In...

Do not worry, I am a student of economics and I do not buy Modi’s highly publicized theories of development. Nor am I being paid by him, as the gaumless AAP supporters bombing my Facebook page doltishly claim, as the popularity of AAP plummets to new lows with each new immature statement and puerile act from Kejriwal (the latest being that he will jail all those media people who write against him)! But it’s very clear to me that the nation has been fooled for far too long by incapable leaders and it’s definitely time for us for once to give a chance for the first time ever in our history to a real leader. Before I speak further, let me clarify a few things. Gujarat is a high growth state but that doesn’t mean that this is due to a Modi miracle alone. Gujarat has always been a high growth state and the same pace has been retained by Modi, more or less. In fact, in the last one decade, in terms of growth, Maharashtra has been better off; in terms of human development, Kerala has been fa...

I voted for him during the Delhi elections, but I had also mentioned then that for the general elections, one must vote for Modi. At that point of time, I had believed that Arvind Kejriwal was not (yet) mature enough to be considered for central leadership. Now, I am convinced he is not even mature enough for the next Delhi assembly elections. Here are a dozen reasons why you should not vote for Arvind Kejriwal: Reason #1:Anna Hazare says in his latest interview to TSI that “obsession to become Prime Minister has gone into Arvind Kejriwal’s head”. That’s exactly why we should not vote for Arvind Kejriwal. Having the aim to become the PM is nothing wrong. But the change agent, who the country is looking out for right now, should think of doing only the right things without compromising on issues. Not an infatuated man who is risibly obsessed with becoming the Prime Minister. Arvind could not even stay away from his esurient greed to become the CM of Delhi and took aquisitive support fr...

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...