A Dozen Grown-Up Questions for Indian Politicians Dreaming of Becoming/Deciding India’s PM After the 2009 General Elections

April 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

The 2009 General Election campaign is supposed to elect a Parliament and a Head of Government for the Republic of India, not a Head Boy/Head Girl at an urban middle-class high school or the karta of a joint family. Unfortunately, our comprador national-level media seem to be docile  and juvenile enough in face of power and privilege to want to ask only touchy-feely koochi-woochi pretty baby questions of the “candidates” for PM (several of whom are not even running as candidates for the Lok Sabha but still seem to want to be PM).   Rival candidates themselves seem to want to hurl invective and innuendo at one another, as if all this was merely some public squabble between Delhi middle-class families.

So here are a set of grown-up adult questions instead:

1. Pakistan is politically and strategically our most important neighbour. Can you assure the country that a government headed by you will have a coherent policy on both war and peace with Pakistan? How would you achieve it?

2. Do you agree with the Reagan-Gorbachev opinion that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”? If so, what would your Government do about it?

3. If there are Indian citizens in Jammu & Kashmir presently governed by Article 370 who wish to renounce Indian nationality and remain stateless or become Pakistani/Afghan/Iranian citizens instead, would you consider letting them do so and giving them Indian “green cards” for peaceful permanent residence in J&K and India as a whole?

4. Do you know where Chumbi Valley is? If so, would your Government consider reviving the decades-old idea with China to mutually exchange permanent leases to Aksai Chin and Chumbi Valley respectively?

5. Nuclear power presently accounts as a source of about 4% of total Indian electricity; do you agree that even if nuclear power capacity alone increased by 100% over the next ten years and all other sources of electricity remained constant, nuclear power would still account for less than 8% of the total?

6. The public debt of the country  may now amount to something like Rs 30 lakh crore (Rs 30 trillion); do you find that worrisome? If so, why so? If not, why not?

7. The Government of India may be paying something like Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) annually on interest payments on its debt;  do you agree that tends to suck dry every public budget even before it can try to do something worthwhile?

8.  If our money supply growth is near 22% per annum, and the rate of growth of real income is near 7% per annum, would you agree the decline in the value of money (i.e., the rate of inflation) could be as high as 15% per annum?

9. Do you agree that giving poor people direct income subsidies is a far better way to help them than by distorting market prices for everybody? If not, why not?

10. How would you seek to improve the working of  (and reduce the corruption in) the following public institutions: (1) the Army and paramilitary; (2) the Judiciary and Police; (3) Universities and technical institutes?

11. There has never been a Prime Minister in any parliamentary democracy in the world throughout the 20th Century who was also not an elected member of the Lower House; do you agree BR Ambedkar and Jawaharlal Nehru intended that for the Republic of India as well and thought it  something so obvious as  not necessary to specify in the 1950 Constitution?  What will your Government do to improve the working of the Presidency, the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State Assemblies?

12. What, personally, is your vision for India after a five-year period of a Government led by you?

Subroto Roy,

Citizen & Voter

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Posted in 15th Lok Sabha, Academic research, Afghanistan, Air warfare, Aksai Chin, BR Ambedkar, China's expansionism, China-India Relations, Chumbi Valley, India's 2009 General Election, India's Army, India's Banking, India's Budget, India's bureaucracy, India's Constitution, India's constitutional politics, India's Democracy, India's Diplomacy, India's Economy, India's education, India's Election Commission, India's Electorate, India's Foreign Policy, India's Government Budget Constraint, India's Government Expenditure, India's higher education, India's History, India's inflation, India's Judiciary, India's Lok Sabha, India's Macroeconomics, India's Monetary & Fiscal Policy, India's nomenclatura, India's Personality Cults, India's political lobbyists, India's political parties, India's Politics, India's Polity, India's pork-barrel politics, India's poverty, India's Presidency, India's private TV channels, India's Public Finance, India's Rajya Sabha, India's Reserve Bank, India's Rule of Law, India's State Finances, India's Supreme Court, India's Union-State relations, India-China relations, India-Pakistan cooperation against terrorism, India-Pakistan naval cooperation, India-Pakistan peace process, India-Tibet Border, India-United States business, India-US Nuclear Deal, International diplomacy, Iran, Jammu & Kashmir, Jammu & Kashmir in international law, Jawaharlal Nehru, Just war, Laddakh, Land and political economy, LK Advani, Manmohan Singh, Pakistan's murder of Indian POWs, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan's terrorist training institutes, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Press and Media, Sonia Gandhi, Stonewalling in politics, Voting, War. Leave a Comment »

Politics can be so entertaining :) Manmohan versus Sonia on the poor old CPI(M)!

April 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy

My January 14 2007 article “On Land-Grabbing” started by saying:

“AT a business meet on 12 January 2005, Dr Manmohan Singh showered fulsome praise on Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as “dynamic”, “the Nation’s Best Chief Minister”, whose “wit and wisdom”, “qualities of head and heart”, “courage of conviction and passionate commitment to the cause of the working people of India” he admired, saying “with Buddhadeb Babu at the helm of affairs it appears Bengal is once again forging ahead… If today there is a meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata, it is because the ideas that I and Buddhadebji represent have captured the minds of the people of India. This is the idea of growth with equity and social justice, the idea that economic liberalization and modernization have to be mindful of the needs of the poor and the marginalized.”  With such support of a Congress Prime Minister (as well as proximity to Pranab Mukherjee), Mr Bhattacharjee could hardly have feared the local Congress and Trinamul would pose any threat in the 2006 Assembly Elections despite having more potential voters between them than the CPI-M.  Dr Singh returned to the “needs of the poor and the marginalized” at another business meet on 8 January 2007 promising to “unveil a new Rehabilitation Policy in three months to increase the pace of industrialisation” which would be “more progressive, humane and conducive to the long-term welfare of all stakeholders”, while his businessman host pointedly stated about Singur “land for industry must be made available to move the Indian manufacturing sector ahead”.   The “meeting of minds between Delhi and Kolkata” seems to be that agriculture allegedly has become a relatively backward slow-growing sector deserving to yield in the purported larger national interest to industry and services: what the PM means by “long-term welfare of all stakeholders” is the same as the new CPI-M party-line that the sons of farmers should not remain farmers (but become automobile technicians or IT workers or restaurant waiters instead).  It is a political viewpoint coinciding with interests of organised capital and industrial labour in India today, as represented by business lobbies like CII, FICCI and Assocham on one hand, and unions like CITU and INTUC on the other. Business Standard succinctly (and ominously) advocated this point of view in its lead editorial of 9 January as follows: “it has to be recognised that the world over capitalism has progressed only with the landed becoming landless and getting absorbed in the industrial/service sector labour force ~ indeed it is obvious that if people don’t get off the land, their incomes will rise only slowly”. “

I went on to say

“Land is the first and ultimate means of production, and the attack of the powerful on land-holdings or land-rights of the unorganised or powerless has been a worldwide phenomenon ~ across both capitalism and communism.”

It is interesting and amusing to see today’s newspapers report that the person who appointed Dr Manmohan Singh to be India’s PM, namely Sonia Gandhi,  has taken a  180-degree turn on this subject while sitting beside Mamata Banerjee yesterday.

She apparently said:  “I am happy so be sharing the  dais with Mamata Banerjee once again….in Nandigram and Singur the State Government had unleashed dictatorship in the garb of democracy… . In the name of development (the CPI(M)) created terror in Nandigram and Singur.  In the name of development, they snatched the land from the poor people there.”

Now what is the poor old CPI(M) to think after all this! Politics can be so  entertaining.  😀

Subroto Roy

Posted in Communists, India's agriculture, India's Agriculture & Food, India's communists, India's farmers, India's grassroots activists, India's Land, India's peasants, India's political parties, India's Politics, India's pork-barrel politics, Land and political economy, Mamata Banerjee, Manmohan Singh, Political cynicism, Political mendacity, Singur and Nandigram, Sonia Gandhi. Leave a Comment »