The coalition against our PM is hinged on following points:

1. To counter combined hindu fold, create caste divides.

2. Since many Muslims have been traditionally voting against B.J.P and Modiji especially, opposition wants to further create a vote bank by promoting and aligning Muslims with caste- dominated parties.

3. Opposition thinks that polarization on hindu muslim basis, will harm them therefore they do not want open polarization as they think that silent polarization of muslim in their favor is a good situation. opposition further thinks that open polarization of hindu votes will be adversely impacting them.

4. The opposition led by congress wants that Hindus should remain divided among caste based parties like SP and B.S.P etc to weaken the composite vote base of B.J.P.

5. Opposition further wants that backward castes and dalits should remain separated from hindu polarization and remain aligned with Muslim vote seeking parties.

6. Opposition is funding and promoting anti establishment agitations like breaking of Ambedkar statue, defacement incidents and kisan riots to depict that Govt is elitist. It expects that state forces to control law and order will further breed anti BJP feelings among people. In case majority BJP states use force against backward caste and dalit caste affiliated kisan leaders during riots and agitations, it will create Anti Dalit and anti backward image of B.J.P.

7. Jignish Mavani of Gujarat and Hardik Patel were nurtured by congress to spread caste divides to weaken the B.J,P vote base in Gujarat.

8. Similarly academic institutions like JNU, Jadavpur University are being systematically planted with such student leaders to create student unrest in the country.

9. Congress wants that small issues of student and farmers should be bloated out of proportion and there should be loots and arson on the roads so that people start loosing faith in the government and governance.

10. In the coming months congress will try to create law and order issues, kisan agitations, rail agitations and labour unrests to bring down the economy to discard the claim of good governance and growth .

11. Since the congress coalition comprises of tarnished image leaders from all corners, Congress will not like to be challenged and contest elections on issues of good governance and growth centric policies.

Congress will like to derail the election agenda on non-issues and to blow them out of proportion to disrepute the Modi led BJP Government.

What next for B.J.P.

1. To divide the coalition by wooing potential leaders so that coalition remains confused and suspicious about some leaders.

2. Too woo other leaders of backward and Dalit castes to support the B.J.P. or form the coalition like apna dal etc in U.P.

3. To divide important coalition of leaders like Mayawati, Naveen Patnaik, Mulayam Singh Yadav, OP Chauthala, Jagan Reddy and other South Indian leaders so that the coalition is not able to polarize opposition votes against B.J.P.

Main forces of Indian Politics which must be kept in good control.

1. Pro kisan measures, the government should not only do but appear to be doing that.

2. Pro business policies fixing aberrations and other such problems in the implementation of G.S.T.

3. Creating more jobs on contract models so that huge chunks of people can be benefited.

4. Keeping good control on university campus politics and issues.

5. Keeping goods control on cow vigilantes to avoid issue less media controversies.

6. Expediting the Ram Janam Bhoomi issue so that a huge wave of Hindu self respect may be generated to counter the caste divides.

7. Expediting infrastructural and rural development projects.

8. Creating good infrastructure and eco system to help farmers to double up their income and ensuring health insurance and crop security to all farmers of India.

9. Keeping the price under control specially with regard to oil and fertilizers.

10. Better media management to keep motor mouths of BJP silent.

11. To expose people and media about the ground governance initiatives

12. Flogging political representatives to work among people to show case the achievements of govt.

13. The coalition of opposition parties has been broadly engineered by congress against Modi led B.J.P. However congress is ready to concede the state space to these parties . But many regional parties are themselves competitors of each other and are afraid of pan India expansion of BJP in all states. Now BJP should rethink about conceding regional space in lieu of central politics.

14. Many regional parties have been fighting against regional parties like SP with BSP , DMK with AIDMK etc. and their alliance will remain intact only till Lok-sabha elections. After Lok-sabha elections their alliance will shatter upcoming assembly elections. If BJP does the master stroke of Ram Janam Bhoomi temple, increasing the retirement age of supreme court judges,government employees and elections of state and center at one time then the opposition coalition can collapse much earlier.

15. Congress is trying to sacrifice regional ambitions to negotiate for lok sabha elections. Congress is not bothered to make its own chief ministers in many states but to make Rahul as the Prime Minister . In case both elections happen together the divides among regional parties will be too much to reconcile and that can very well be exploited by BJP to make reasonable deals with them to stop the vote polarization against BJP. In this process, BJP may have to give up certain states to the regional parties and become second fiddle as congress has done in Karnataka. BJP should think that centre is more important and states may have broad coalitions with alliance partners to share the power. These regional parties have no ambition for centre and that’s why they were alluded by congress smoothly.

16. Another strategy of BJP should be creating better acceptability among other backward castes by giving leadership opportunities to their leaders also so that some regional caste based parties with OBC strong holds, may not be able to blame BJP as an upper-caste dominated party.

17. With these strategies and better selection of candidates keeping in mind the caste profile of constituencies and making of constituency wise manifestos, BJP with its great brand Modi image can form government at Center in 2019. I am sure that each every nationalist person who thinks that nation is first, fully supports the idea that modi should at least be given one more chance to form govt and implement the policies and programs started by his government.

(Abhishek Tiwari: A law student in Amity University mntiwari@hotmail.com 7011988964)

New Delhi needs to clearly understand that Imran Khan, hoisted to power by the Pakistan Army, will do what the Generals ask him to, particularly when it comes to Kashmir

Fatima Bhutto cites two horrific incidents in a searing piece titled, ‘Imran Khan is only a player in the circus run by Pakistan’s military’ in The Guardian of July 24, 2018. On July 17, supporters of his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), “tied a donkey to a pole and punched its face till its jaw broke, ripped open its nostrils, and drove a car into its body, leaving the animal to collapse, having been beaten to an inch of its life. Before they left, they wrote ‘Nawaz’ (the name of the former prime minister) into its flesh, seemingly inspired by their leader, Imran Khan, who has taunted Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) workers as ghadday or donkeys. The donkey was rescued by the ACF Animal Rescue Team, a private organization, who noted that, even days later, it could not stand up on its own because of the ferocity of its torture. It soon succumbed to its injuries, an innocent creature beaten to death for entertainment.”

Bhutto further states in the article that another donkey was mercilessly attacked the day after. In her words, “the skin on its face was ripped off, the flesh on its forehead was ripped apart till all that remained between its eyes was a pulpy, bloody hole. The RCF did not say whether the animal was a victim of the same party but, in a landscape of venomous online trolling, people are afraid to say very much these days.”

One had expected Pakistan’s playboy cricketing icon, now set to become the Prime Minister, to at least come out with a strident, public condemnation of the savage torture of the two donkeys and remove the culprits from his party. There is no indication that he has done either or both. Any argument that compassion for animals, and anger over cruelty to them, are personal attributes and have nothing to do with governance will not wash. Compassion and sensitivity to cruelty are indivisible. The overwhelming majority of those who are kind to animals are also kind to humans and vice-versa. Compassion for the poor and suffering and anger over cruel suppression of the rights of people and legitimate, peaceful protest, is central both to the ethos of a liberal, democratic society, and the framing of policies that define a just and fair Government. Compassion for trees — sentient living beings — is important to the protection of forests, which is a critical component of efforts to save the environment. Not surprisingly, Ar-ticle 51-A(g) of the Constitution of India, states in the context of the Fundamental Duties of citizens, “It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures.”

If Imran Khan has not acted severely against those who have savagely tortured the two donkeys, then the fact underlines the allegation by many that he is utterly insensitive person who is not moved to anger by savage, wanton cruelty. The incident provides an equally damning commentary on his followers’ characters. A large section of them clearly comprises the dregs of Pakistan’s society. The question is: How does this country deal with a person like him, particularly given the kind of supporters he has?

While the dregs have played a significant role in Imran Khan’s rise to power the others who have contributed include members of Pakistan’s urban middle class with their hope for a cleaner politics and better governance, fundamentalist Islamist organisations to which he has been pandering over the years, and pious Muslim moved by the growing religiosity that he has been publicly displaying.

The enabling, over-arching support has, of course, been the Army which did everything it could to ensure PTI’s victory. The process began long before the elections. The Army manipulated the movement launched by three fundamentalist organisations — Tehreek-i-Labaik Pakistan, Tehreek-i-Khatm-i-Nabuwwat and Sunni Tehreek Pakistan — demanding the dismissal of Pakistan’s Law Minister, Jahid Hamid, holding him responsible for alleged changes in Pakistan’s Election Act 2017 altering the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat (Finality of Prophethood) oath compulsory for electoral candidates. They were not moved by the Governments attribution of the change to a “clerical error” and amendment of the Act to remove it. Finally, the Government had to surrender following a three-week siege of Islamabad and other cities; Hamid resigned on November 27, 2018. The Army’s role became clear when, despite being ordered by the Interior Ministry to restore law and order, the Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, suggested peaceful handling of the protestors. After Hamid’s resignation, the Labaik chief, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, thanked General Bajwa’s for his help in ending the stand-off.

Earlier, the Army had played a dubious role in relation to the movement accompanying the “Azadi March” which lasted from August 14 to December 17, 2014. The march was a synchronized campaign, albeit with different agendas, by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Muhammad Tariq-ul-Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek, for the removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It led to much violence before Imran Khan called it off on December 17, 2014, following Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, which had caused 141 deaths, 132 of which were of school children. The Army’s role had become clear almost at the very beginning of the march when it had issued a statement calling for restraint by the police. There was no condemnation of the agitation which sought to remove an elected prime minister, whose party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) had won 190 of the 342 seats in Pakistan’s parliament in the 2013 General Elections, through street upheavals.

As the July 25 parliamentary elections approached, a number of measures like Nawaz Sharif’s disqualification from holding political office, his and his daughter’s arrest, intimidation of his party’s candidates into not contesting or changing sides, and massive, intimidatory Army presence on election day, were part of an all-out effort to defeat PML-N and ensure Imran Khan’s victory.

Imran, who, in 2014, demanded Nawaz Sharif’s resignation on the ground that the latter had become Prime Minister by wholesale rigging of the 2013 elections, has now become Prime Minister on the basis of an election widely considered rigged. While this, the underlying irony is engaging, critically important for India is that he has been put in office by the Pakistan Army and will do its bidding on all issues, particularly ties with India and Kashmir.

(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)

Write: Hiranmay Karlekar

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The Opposition is in discussion with the EC to consider replacing EVMs with paper ballots to prevent tampering.

On the face of it, the plan of the 17 Opposition parties including the Congress to meet the Election Commission and press for the re-introduction paper ballots alleging Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) can/have been tampered with by the ruling dispensation is a classic example of neo Luddite behaviour. This move has also been described variously as a case of sour grapes, ignorance of the Constitutional mandate for the conduct and monitoring of elections which is with the EC and expressly not the Government of the day and a political manoeuvre reflecting sheer desperation as the Narendra Modi juggernaut threatens to flatten them electorally. All the above are correct in large measure. But there is something deeper underlying this move. The fact is that a large section of the Opposition has decided to run a campaign against the BJP in all spheres of political activity based on questioning its intent. And intentionality, as anyone who knows anything about the law, is notoriously difficult to prove. Their line of attack is clear, the EVM versus paper ballot issue has just been added to this list. It may, however, may just give the BJP the platform it needs to bring all the issues raised by the Opposition to attack its intent together and debunk them at one go. Nothing irritates voters more than sore losers.

Those who remember how in the 1980s a small town in Haryana called Meham became the symbol of the violence and ballot-stuffing associated with paper ballots would also remember the popular demand that arose as a consequence for electronic voting machines to be used. Across vast swathes of India from 1947 till the purchase of EVMs in 1989-90 and their introduction in 1999, paper ballots were stamped by the sack-full by toughs in favour of their candidate of choice; vote-rigging was easier, not more difficult, for the locally powerful. The BJP is sure to argue that this is precisely the reason nearly all regional parties save Biju Janata Dal and Telangana Rashtra Samithi are in favour of paper ballots.

For the Election Commission, which the Opposition is to approach next week with its demand and which has repeatedly and in a transparent manner thrown upon EVMs to hackers to prove their reliability, it’s a no-brainer to continue with them unless demonstrable proof of their widespread manipulation is provided. The cost and logistical factor too will be of great import to the EC. The long-term savings by using EVMs despite initial outlay being high — the first batch purchased in 1989-90 cost Rs 5,500 per unit and the additional buys in 2014 came at Rs 10,500 per unit — are not insubstantial when compared to the cost of production and printing hundreds of crores of ballot papers. Logistics regarding the collection, transportation and storage of ballot papers and the many more officials, who will need to be reimbursed, needed to count them by hand must also be taken into account. Bogus voting reduces substantially with EVMs because the vote is recorded only once. And with the decision to ensure voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT-enabled EVMs are deployed as widely as possible, doubts should be laid to rest, unless of course those opposing EVMs now are happy to step down from the elections they won were not conducted with paper ballots.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The ‘friendship pillar’ placed in Lhasa reads: Tibetans to be happy in the land of Tibet and Chinese in the land of China. The authorities seemed in China seems to have forgotten to provide a translation of what it reads.

In 821 AD, Tibet’s great emperor, Tritsuk Detsen and his Chinese counterpart entered into an agreement “seeking in their far-reaching wisdom to prevent all causes of harm to the welfare of their countries now or in the future.”

The Peace Treaty signed between Tibet and China was carved in Tibetan and Chinese language on a stone pillar which was placed in front of the Jokhang Cathedral in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. A few years ago, the Chinese decided to restore the pillar describing the grand alliance; the communist authorities, however, forgot to give the translation of the ‘friendship’ pillar.

Last week, when the Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Lhasa, he walked down to the stone pillar and affirmed that the monument was a model for unity between the Tibetans and the Chinese. Li probably did not read the Treaty: “Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to the east is the country of Great China; and all to the west is, without question, the country of Great Tibet. Henceforth on neither side shall there be waging of war nor seizing of territory. If any person incurs suspicion, he shall be arrested. …Tibetans shall be happy in the land of Tibet, and Chinese in the land of China. Even the frontier guards shall have no anxiety, nor fear.”

This was forgotten when the communist troops walked into Tibet in October 1950. Today, Tibet is an ‘unalienable’ part of China (and the frontier guards have shifted to the Indian border). The ‘unalienable’ part was highlighted by Premier Li during his visit. It is the art of rewriting history with Chinese characteristics.

Interestingly, it was the first ever visit of a Chinese Premier to the Roof of the World. It is usually the Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, also a Member of the all-powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo (presently Wang Yang) who visits Tibet, not the Premier. The head of the United Front Work Department also regularly ‘inspects’ the Roof of the World. One reason for this unexpected change might be that President Xi Jinping (who was then travelling in Africa) finally tries to delegate some of his responsibilities to Li Keqiang; rumors to this effect have recently been circulating in China.

The coverage of the visit is another sign that all is not smooth in the Middle Kingdom.

Usually such an important visit would be announced after the VVIP is back in Beijing; only then reports would appear in Chinese and later the English version would come out, tailored for the foreign public. This time, it was rather chaotic; some English websites broke the news on the first day of the visit, while Xinhua kept mum till Li was back in Beijing. Are there two voices of China?

Remember in March, after the legislative and consultative meetings, China decided to unify its voice. The State Council announced that the Government had formed the world’s largest media group called Voice of China, combining the existing China Central Television, China National Radio, and China Radio International under one unified umbrella and name. It was the responsibility of the publicity (ex-propaganda) department to manage it. But in the case of Li Keqiang’s visit to Tibet, China spoke incoherently. While the media affiliated to the State Council covered it nearly ‘live’; Xinhua waited for Li’s return to Beijing to report.

What were the visit’s highlights?

The atheist Premier went to the Jokhang Cathedral in Lhasa, he told some monks in attendance that he hoped that “Tibetan religious patriots could learn from the eminent monks in history, and devote themselves to maintaining the unity of the state, ethnic solidarity, a harmonious society and smooth religious affairs.”

All the monks are obviously not good ‘patriots’, a fact which worries Beijing. Li also urged “religious circles to continue to make contributions in safeguarding national unity and promoting ethnic solidarity as well as social harmony.”

China Tibet Online had reported earlier that Li Keqiang visited Southern Tibet on July 25. Apparently, Li went directly to Nyingchi prefecture, bordering Arunachal Pradesh where he visited a village in Mailing County; this is a new village inhabited by Monpas, who have been ‘relocated from impoverished areas’, located next door. Metok County is situated on the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), north of Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh.

Li went to a newly-built house of a Tibetan named Kunsang; he sat with the ‘migrant’ family and talked to the six members of the household about their daily life. Kunsang told Li that his family moved from Metok County, where “road travel is fairly difficult”. This is rather surprising considering that since 2013, when a tunnel was opened, the Chinese propaganda has been stressing the ‘changes’ in Metok, principally mentioning better communications. So why move people to a nearby County, if the situation had improved so much in the first place?

Li was said to have been really pleased “to see that the villagers have cast off poverty through the relocation programme and lived a prosperous life.” The Premier wished the family an even more prosperous life in the future.

It is difficult to understand why this family was ‘shifted’ from Metok to Mainling County in the first place. Were they creating problems for the Chinese government near the Indian border? It is possible. Metok, like several other places on the border, has been the focus of very generous investments from the Central Government, the local Government as well as different Provincial Governments. It is doubtful if ‘poverty alleviation’ was the reason for this transfer of population.

For the Tibetans, it should be worrying, considering that the Premier’s visit takes place just days before the yearly summer retreat of the party’s top bosses in Beidaihe, which is always the occasion to discuss ‘new’ policies. Will reallocation of Tibetans within Tibet (like it is happening in Xinjiang) from border areas be discussed?

Incidentally, Li met with the hard-core Old Guard: Phakpala, Raidi, Jampa Phuntsok, Legchok and Passang, who served in Tibet for decades; he praised their past work for the ‘stability’ of Tibet.

Has Beijing decided to return to ‘pure’ communist policies of the old days, symbolised by these cadres? It is quite frightening.

(The writer is an expert on India-China relations and an author)

Writer:  Claude Arpi

Courtesy: The Pioneer

A “game changer” for coastal Konkan region and State’s economy, the 103-km long Kolhapur-Vaibhavwadi line on Konkan Railway will soon witness its beginning.

The decision on the launch of Rs 3,ooo crore project was taken at a review meeting of Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC) that Union Minister for Industry and Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu held in New Delhi on Tuesday with the Chairman of Railway Board, the KRC Chairman & Managing Director and other officials.

Prabhu said that the construction of this railway section would be a game-changer not only for the KRC, but also for the coastal Konkan region and the state’s economy.

Sanjay Gupta, Chairman and Managing Director of KRC informed the minister that in order to improve services of the KR network to cover more villages and towns, said that 10 new stations were being built along the 103 km Kolhapur-Vaibhavwadi route. The first station would be inaugurated in January 2019. The Centre and Maharashtra government will bear 50 per cent of the total expenditure to be incurred on the project. Slated to link coastal Konkan region with western Maharashtra, the proposed railway line will boost tourism, lead to development of ports and harbours, including the Jaigarh and Dighi ports and allow flow of goods from the hinterland to the coast

Writer: TN RAGHUNATHA

Courtesy: The Pioneer

The DMK leadership, and the people of Chennai are gravely concerned about Karunanidhi’s health, as he battles for his life at the hospital. The party may as well start planning life after Karunanidhi, for the public’s best interest.

Close family members and senior leaders of the party are busy finalising the arrangements to face any eventualities taking into account the advanced age of Karunanidhi, the five-time Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. The DMK has convened a meeting of its general council, the highest decision making body of the party, in the second week of August. It is widely believed that Stalin may be elevated as president of the party in this edition of the general council meeting.

The question going around the party followers is where their leader would be interred. Former Chief Ministers CN Annadurai, MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa have been buried at Marina Beach in Chennai. But what stands out against this honour for Karunanidhi is that Annadurai, MGR and Jayalalithaa died in office while he is only a former Chief Minister. People close to Karunanidhi had quoted him as telling that he would like to be buried near the tomb where Annadurai had his final resting place.

Karunanidhi’s dream could be realised only if the present Tamil Nadu Government allows the DMK to fulfil their leader’s wish. The DMK itself was against the burial of Jayalalithaa at the Marina Beach and had got some of its supporters to file PIL in Madras High Court challenging the Tamil Nadu Government’s decision to build a memorial for her at Marina.

The Ministry of Environment and Finance of the Union Government has to approve the request by the DMK and then the State Government has to give green signal for the same.

“Taking into account the politically explosive situation in Tamil Nadu where the DMK is always on a course of agitation against Chief Minister Edappady Palaniswamy on a number of issues, getting clearance for such a honour for Karunanidhi is anybody’s guess,” said a commentator who did not want  his name to be quoted.

Environmentalists are unanimous in their opposition to a move like this. “Asia’s longest and beautiful landscape should not end up as a graveyard. There is no guarantee that such demands would not be made in future for other political leaders for which there is no dearth in the State,” said an environmentalist of repute.

Writer: Kumar Chellappan

Source: The Pioneer

It’s just been 2 months since the coalition of the JD(S) and Congress was formed, headed by Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, and the alliance is already in crisis. More unfortunate news is that the crisis has erupted just before the 2019 crucial general elections, which may affect the chances of collation partners and many in the corridor of power.

Many  netas in the Congress  are worried over Kumaraswamy’s handling of the situation and internally blame him for the irresponsible statement made by him which stoked the emotions.  Congress still remembers under Siddaramaiah the controversial dividing of Lingayat issue backfired and helped BJP in the North Karnataka.

Meanwhile in a major political development as a prelude to the issue of separate State for North Karnataka, on Tuesday  more than 30 powerful seers of religious mutts of North Karnataka protested in front of Suvarna Vidhana Soudha at Belagavi  against lack of developmental initiatives in the region by successive Governments.

The agitation assumed significance in the back drop of North Karnataka Bandh on August second demanding separate Statehood.  However, the seers were clear in their stand that they were not in support of separate statehood for the region, but wanted the Government to take up overall development of the region which was neglected for decades.

The agitators warned the JD(S)-Congress coalition Government headed by Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy that agitation will be intensified and the State Government will become responsible for the consequences if developmental activities were not taken up.

Opposition leader in the Legislative Assembly BS Yeddyurappa, who met the agitating Seers, expressed his party’s full support for their cause and underlined that the BJP was against division of the State and will not support bandh call on August 2.

He said  “I appeal to those who have given call to withdraw it since nothing can be achieved by becoming a  separate State. I assure them that BJP will fight for the cause both inside the Legislative Assembly and outside for overall development of the region.”

Yeddyurappa  blamed JDs, its supremo HD Devegowda and his son Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy for stoking the issue of separate state for north Karnataka.

He said  “father and son playing politics by flaring up cry for separate Statehood for their selfish motto.  As a Chief Minster Kumaraswamy has no right to say that this part of the people have no right to ask for development projects since they have not voted for his party.  He is the Chief Minister of entire State and not of only 37 MLAs of his party.”

He also  demanded Congress leaders to make public their party’s stand on the issue.  He alleged that senior Congress leaders including that party leader in the Lok Sabha M Mallikarjun Kharge and former Chief Minster Siddaramaiah were  silent on the issue despite a strong criticism is aired against the Government.

Leaders from the region, consisting of 13 districts, are planning a bandh on August 2 to press their demand, much to BJP’s delight.

Meanwhile, several BJP workers, who are in support of the demand for a separate state, protested outside Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s home in Hubballi and tried to vandalise the property.

The local police, deployed at the spot detained several BJP workers and dispersed the crowd.

Writer:  Kestur Vasuki

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Dare to stop Amar Singh; he is Machiavellian politician who knows business world better than any finance minister of India is back with a bang at the national scene. Singh said his life is now devoted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Clad in traditional saffron kurta, Amar Singh attracted media headlines at the ground breaking ceremony in Lucknow when Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to him in his 30-minute speech. While taking a jibe at the Congress over crony capitalism, PM said that ‘Amar Singh is sitting here and he has their history of playing with top industrialists behind curtains’.

After his speech, PM Modi met Amar Singh and had a brief chat with him. The PM’s mention of his name and then a brief chat suddenly catapulted former Samajwadi Party General Secretary into limelight in the saffron camp. Later, his meeting with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath at his 5 Kalidas Marg residence has given air to rumours of Amar Singh making attempts to adorn ‘bhagwa’ (saffron).

Once a trusted lieutenant of Mulayam Singh Yadav, Amar Singh had stated last November that he will join the BJP if invited. He even went to the extent of saying that he would campaign for Modi in 2019 Lok Sabha polls on his own. An unattached lawmaker, Amar Singh has been vocal in his criticism to SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav calling him his enemy. BJP is hoping to consolidate its vote bank and break opposition unity index via Amar Singh.

A few BJP leaders were surprised over his presence during the Ground Breaking Ceremony. Close to country’s top industrialists,  a senior BJP state leader confided that the party leadership was using Amar Singh’s services to bring investors in the state and explore ways how to keep the SP and BSP separated from forging an alliance in UP.

Apprehending a major trouble, SP leader Azam Khan has cautioned the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi against building ties with veteran politician Amar Singh. Voicing his concern over reports that Amar Singh is cosying up to the BJP, Khan advised that they should maintain a distance from him.

Singh, who was a Rajya Sabha MP from the Samajwadi Party, was expelled from the Akhilesh Yadav-led outfit last year. When his exit was announced from the SP, there were rumours within the party that he had got a special puja performed in Vindhyachal, which led to a feud in the Yadav family. Singh had later claimed that the Mulayam-Akhilesh fight ahead of the UP Assembly elections was a ‘scripted’ one. Amar Singh is likely to keep the status quo in the family and break SP-BSP possible alliance to ensure BJP superiority in the next upcoming general elections. So the entire fortune of the next BJP government hinders on the popularity of PM Narendra Modi and live political skills of one man – AMAR SINGH.

Report filed by Prakhar Prakash Mishra: Political Editor Opinion Express Group

The Congress has made a mountain out of molehill with Modi’s proximity to Gujarati industrialists.

The Prime Minister is right, he does nothing wrong in meeting and talking to industrialists. The accusation made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi that this is a ‘suit-boot ki sarkaar’ (a Government for industrialists) is a very shallow one. Shallow, because at the end of the day, even a poor Dalit farmer would likely want his/her children to wear a ‘suit-boot’. Modi’s contention that he met industrialists openly and worked with them for the development of the country instead of kowtowing to them behind ‘closed doors’ was an important statement, even in a country as mired in the politics and economics of social justice.

Modi has been accused of being far too close to fellow Gujarati industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, Chairmen of their eponymous industrial conglomerates. It is true that Narendra Modi has known both these men for a really long time and has interacted with them intensively, after all, Gujarat is the home to these men’s greatest industrial assets, the Jamnagar refinery and the Mundra Port. The fact is that Modi, as the Gujarat Chief Minister, recognised that industrialisation led to economic benefits for many. Of course, in his urge to promote industrial development in Gujarat he made some bad calls as well. When he offered land at Sanand to Ratan Tata to move his Nano plant from Singur in West Bengal, he gave it on extremely favourable terms, but while the Nano won plaudits from the media, it was a commercial disaster. And that is the way of the world, but the Government in India does not have the bandwidth to invest in new industries and nor should it. India needs more companies to thrive, it needs more companies to rise to the top of the global charts it needs private money to grow economically.

One assumes that the Opposition realises this for the large part, but the fact is that the Opposition believes that this is a perceived weakness of Modi. However, keeping business and businessmen at a distance does nobody any good and in today’s day and age, we need businessmen. And while Rahul Gandhi might continue his misguided attack on Modi and his ‘friends’ one must realise that the enactment of the GST and the Bankruptcy Code even though the latter has been diluted slightly are monumental reforms this Government has managed that attack the crony capitalism highlighted by the 2G spectrum allocation and coal mine allocation cases under the Congress-led UPA. A lot of the bad loans being suffered by Indian banks today are thanks to the profligate loans given out by Congress Finance Ministers. While they were never seen together with Congress leaders, the precarious state of the economy was thanks to these businessmen. If anyone was the ‘suit-boot’ sarkaar it was UPA-2. Industrialisation and industrialists are important and they should not be thought of as the devil incarnate.

Writer: Pioneer

Courtesy: The Pioneer

Konversations with Kapil
Twitter: @kk_OEG

26/11/2008 has gone in history as the day the whole of India, and the wider world, awoke to the constant cross-border terrorism that India has had to face for decades. Some ten terrorists from Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan, carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks in Mumbai that went on for four days. In the trail of this unwarranted terrorist attack on India, it left 164 people dead with some 308 more who were wounded.

Whilst most of the attacks were of public buildings frequented by a diversity of people, one people in particular had been singled out for their faith. This was at Nariman House. Locally also known as Chabad House which is a Jewish Centre. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka Holtzberg, who was six months pregnant at the time, were murdered with four other hostages. Security forces who freed the Chabad House from this terrorist attack also lost lives and many were injured.

Photo of Chabad House the day after the attack.

In 2010 January I was honoured to accompany HRH Prince Michael of Kent on our visit to the Chabad to witness, and to hear, first-hand accounts of what actually transpired. It was also a clear sign of our support for the Jewish Community in Mumbai, and to the victims who suffered so greatly during that attack.

Photo: HRH Prince Michael of Kent being informed of the impact of the attack by Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz of the Mumbai Relief Fund. With me on the right.

I present this as my starting position since it crystallises for me the immoral attack that both Hindus and Jews have had to endure for decades. Hindus and Jews have lived side by side with our Muslim brothers and sisters for a long time. However, this resurgence of the militant Islamic ideology that has spread throughout the world now threatens all of us yet again. Our two communities are the most in danger from these terrorists since they view our communities as a direct threat. The Jewish community have endured more than a millennia of savagery from it’s neighbours, and almost always on grounds of faith and race. In similar vein, Hindus have endured more than a thousand years of invaders and their persecution. With this amount of murderous intent and persecution, both the Jews and the Hindus have survived. Once again, these two communities are beginning to rise up and rise above their historical disadvantage and are now leading the way in the world in all spheres of life. The values imbibed within these two communities of truth, righteousness, peace and love for the whole of humanity is a message that the world needs at this most critical juncture in time.

However, whereas in the past the attacks upon us were primarily physical, in the 21st Century we see these attacks being supplemented with the dark art of social media, political coercion and the wholesale distribution of militant Islam by way of the Petro dollar. In the last few years even the most ardent supporters of these extremist regimes have finally realised that this is now an unsustainable model that must be deconstructed if the world is to enter this new millennium with any hope of peace for the whole of humanity. Duplicity that has been the cornerstone of the work of the United Nations now has to be challenged. It is time that right-minded people, leaders with a moral and ethical spine, and the independent institutions come out and challenge the bigots on the world stage who thrive on terror and extremism. Silence is no longer an option. As Albert Einstein said rightly before, “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”. Couple that with the words of the Mahatma, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always”. And then we have the famous quote from Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”. Quotations are great, and these quotations are so often quoted by the very same people who hide their true duplicitous nature with a smile in the public arena. We the silent majority must now find our voice. Social media is great, but it has been taken over by the extremists from the far left and the far right. Increasingly the threat is in fact from the far left who have moved so far to the left, that they have morphed into the fascists of the 21st Century. Under the cloak of equality and diversity, they hoodwink the masses with their grotesque outrage at anything and everything. They have in fact become a pack of ‘mischief’ who are intent in causing as much mischief as they can under the camouflage of premeditated anarchy. The question arises, who is funding this global phenomenon? After all, does anyone seriously believe that it ‘just’ happens? Surely one cannot be that deluded!

In this era of orchestrated chaos and white noise, is it any wonder that we now have at the same time on the world stage, leaders like President Trump, PM Modi and PM Netanyahu. You must not confuse right of centre and nationalist leaders with the ‘far-right’. Everyone abhors the ‘far-right’ and rightly so. However, in the world the vast majority of the silent voters are beginning to find their voice by voting in politicians and leaders who are right of centre and those who wish to protect the people and the nation. I have listed three major leaders, but you are welcome to traverse the globe, continent by continent and you will soon see the dynamics at play. However, in countries like France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Poland we have seen a move whereby the frustrations of many people are now leading them to support far-right parties that are beginning to make inroads into mainstream politics. For Europe at least, the warning signs cannot be clearer or louder. Ignore them, as in the past, at your peril. Don’t be too surprised to see the opposite in some countries where far-left and socialists come into power, but their own agenda of governance by anarchy.

There are but two options for the world order. Either there is a global re-alignment which ensures that duplicity over terror and extremism, whether it comes from a religious ideology or from a political ideology, is tackled head on and put in check. Or there will be a violent reaction from the grass roots that will overwhelm many of the nations. We witness this churning in the European Union at present. Its leaders blinded by their own self gratification and the need to cling on to power by gerrymandering the social fabric of voters. However, the people at the grass roots are increasingly losing their patience. We have seen the eruption of riots in many of these countries. In some countries, no go areas have been created such that even the local Police are too frightened to patrol. The politicians and many of the intuitions with vested interested can ignore the people, but at their peril. And who are the people who will suffer greatly? Yes, it will be us the ethnic minorities. We will all be labelled under the same banner, we will all be attacked, and we will all pay a price for the crimes of the few. The PC Brigade that appears to champion our cause are in fact the very reason for our demise. They are, for all intents and purposes, the new imperial masters who have conquered the art of being your friends and having the capacity to brain wash our communities into believing that they have our interest at heart. Nothing can be further from the truth. Their aim is to usher in the most extremes of a socialist order where any form of challenge or disobedience will be met with wholesale bullying, harassment and abuse. We witness this already on social media and in how our streets are trampled on, at will, with protest after protest. They want to turn society into a paradise for anarchy, the arena in which they reign supreme.

So folks, be warned. I titled this piece for the Hindus and for the Jews. However, that which attacks these two communities today will also have the capacity to destroy the peace of the world tomorrow. Be warned, we allowed far right monsters to reap havoc with devasting consequences. We also allowed the far-left dictators space and they murdered millions for their ideology. The political elite of yesteryears are now out of touch with the people they claim to represent. Increasingly one is left with the view that the PC brigade’s dictum: ‘We do not need to be tolerant; you need to be tolerant to our intolerance’, is fast becoming the one and only commandment of the political left and of the socialist fraternity.

On the world stage we see how the United Nations has been hijacked by the extremist. They will pass Anti-Israel (Gaza related normally) and Anti-India resolutions (Kashmir related normally) for fun. Am I surprised when the United States recently declared that they were opting out of the United Nations Human Rights Council. I am surprised frankly that many other leading countries, including India and the UK, have not followed suit. If a nation appeases the extremists agenda at the UN in the hope for world peace, then they are sadly mistaken. Appeasement is the required first step for these agents of doom to systematically dismantle all international structures that have hitherto kept them in check. On the international plane the only two countries who have a sound moral and ethical compass that has passed the test of many millennia are India and Israel. Increasingly I am seeing that maybe the only protection this world has or will have is for these two bastions of humanity to forge a partnership to take on the extremists wherever they might be, and in whatever form they hide. Countries like the United States, and I hope the United Kingdom, will have to lend support overtly. The stakes are too high, and we cannot be complacent this time round.

So I leave you with one thought, that from Martin Luther King Jr, ‘He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it’.

Note about the writer: Kapil Dudakia is a seasoned businessman and a leading thought provoking writer from the UK. His command of detail and his ability to see issues and events years before they come to fruition is worthy of note. He has advised very senior politicians on a variety of issues. Being independent of thought, he does not compromise, nor does he bow to pressures to become politically correct. He understands the East, and he lives in the West. A unique grasp of perspectives that is often food for thoughts for all of us.

Frequent and persistent droughts, floods, and earthquakes are a sign of our impending doom, unless we mend our way when it comes to abuse of natural wealth. A major example is the wrath of rains in Kerala, and the destruction that followed is alarming. The time is to implement some corrective actions.

When it strikes, Nature does not differentiate between the rich and the poor. That is what Keralites, especially people in Kottayam, Idukki, Ernakulam, Alappuzha and Thrissur, have gone through in the past fortnight. The southwestern monsoon has unleashed its fury over the State that is caught in a wonderful geographical trap — with towering mountains in the East and roaring sea in the West.

The monsoon, which touched Kerala early this year, started its rein of destruction by triggering landslides and mudslides in Idukki, Kozhikode and Kottayam district by mid-June, killing  dozens. But it assumed catastrophic proportions in its second spell that began around July 9. The result? Nearly 125 have died, over 300 houses totally destroyed, more than 4,000 damaged, crops in nearly 12,000 hectares washed away, hundreds of kilometres of road becoming totally or partially useless. All this leading to losses that has run into several hundred crores.

“There was nowhere to run. There was water everywhere — the level rose rapidly till the entire region was submerged,” Ramakrishna Pillai, a small-holder farmer of Kuttanad, known in the sobriquet of Kerala’s Rice Bowl, in Alappuzha district, says. Pillai and his family like the other 18 families who had shifted to a relief camp — nothing but a big house with relatively dry floor — are yet to return to their homes. To their relief, the flood waters have started receding from most areas of Kuttanad. “It would take months for life to return to normal. I had gone to my house the other day in a boat. We had some ducks and a goat. They were not there. Almost all the household utensils are lost,” Narayani Amma, a neighbour of Pillai, laments.

The villages in the Thuruths (islets surrounded by water and paddy fields) were nothing more than a sight of tiled and concrete rooftops and tips of coconut trees and plantains looking up desolately at the merciless skies from the expanse of water. As it happens, it took the authorities a few days to become fully aware of the seriousness of the situation. Around 1.5 lakh people from over 45,000 homes had to be shifted to relief camps — though there was no relief in these camps in the practical sense of the term — in less than a week in Kuttanad alone. All of them had left their homes in the islets surrounded by paddy fields (known as Padasekharams) with nothing but clothes on their backs as there was no time to salvage anything when floodwaters brought down from the mountains in the East by the rivers and streams kept swallowing the farms. “We will now have to start life all over again. Everything is gone. The property documents, identity papers, children’s school books, kitchen and farm equipment — everything is gone. It will take several years” Kunjappan, an inland fisherman from Valiyathuruthu, Kuttanad, tells you.

Flood-hit Kottayam, known as ‘Town of Letters and Latex’ in east-central Kerala, is living proof that Nature does not differentiate between the rich and poor when it strikes. The poorest of the poor living in the shacks made of plastic sheets and logs had left at the first indication of how destructive the rain Gods could be while many most well-to-do families, complacent in their cozy two-storey and three-storey bungalows, could be seen standing in their balconies in Thiruvanchoor and elsewhere looking at the hip-deep floodwaters in their courtyards. “I never thought the monsoon could bring such misery. I am 58 and have never seen anything like this in my entire life which has literally come to a standstill. There is an adage : Water, water everywhere not a drop to drink. We now know what it means. We have been trapped here for four days now. The provisions may run out in a day. That means there will be no food as well,” Jacob Chacko, a resident of Thiruvanchoor, Kottayam from his first-floor balcony, shouted.

Though, this was not the first time that Kerala is witnessing heavy rains it is perhaps for the first time that the State is facing such a situation. “We had heard of the deluge 90 years ago which had redrawn the topography in many areas in Kerala, especially in the upper reaches of Idukki. If the rains had continued with the fury with which it had started this year, it could have caused a deluge worse than the one in the past,” Govindan Nair, a trader in Kochi, says who went through hell for a week when all the roads in his area were waterlogged with no means of access to the main city.

Experts point out that Kerala has experienced an unprecedented calamity this monsoon despite the fact the rainfall is only about  21 per cent in excess. It is true that some districts — Idukki, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Palakkad — have received more than 40 per cent excess rainfall, it should not have caused such a serious situation, they argue. One factor that might have contributed to the situation is perhaps the fact that so much rainfall occurred within a few days but such a phenomenon is not unheard of, they opine.

“There must be other reasons. We have destroyed our habitat. For our thirst  development, we have transformed our territory senselessly. What we just went through calls for a review of our development policy and urbanisation. We must look at whether we should be blocking rivers, whether there should be land-filling of the paddy fields and wetlands. The floods are giving us a message. Our rivers have become narrower, our wetlands have shrunk and we have turned out farmlands and forests into concrete jungles. There should be policy shift,” Ajith Kumar, a Kochi-based hydrologist, shares.

The first major incident of the present monsoon calamity was reported in  mid-June from Pallivasal near Munnar where the hills are dangerously steep. At least five houses were destroyed in a landslide that had started near multi-storey tourist resorts — all constructed illegally and without any regard for the terrain.

The first real tragedy of the monsoon occurred at Kattippara in Karinchola near Thiruvambady in Kozhikode district in the wee hours of June 14, 2018. It came in the form of a landslide along a steep hill that had been transformed into a human habitat. The landslide killed 14 within seconds. It took four days for scores of rescue workers to recover the bodies from under thousand ton rocks, rubble, mud and fallen trees. To add to the woes, at the top of the hill was an illegally constructed tank which could hold 50,000 litres of water.

Experts are of the opinion that the tragedies and flood situation witnessed during this monsoon are connected with human intervention. “That should be the reason why a fairly safe town like Kottayam submerged. The lifeline of almost the entire Kottayam district is River Meenachil. Uncontrolled sand mining and encroachment has changed the topography over the last two or three decades. A dozen or so major landslides that have occurred this monsoon have been near illegal constructions or stone quarries,” an official with the Kerala Mining and Geology Department, says. “Same is the case with other major rivers like Pampa, Bharathappuzha and Periyar,” he adds.

“The present flood situation in the State is inevitably related to the development surge we have witnessed since the start of liberalisation and globalisation back in the 90s,” argues environmentalist Babu John.

“The opening of avenues for big investors and the opportunity it provided led to an increase in corruption at political and bureaucratic levels leading to large-scale plundering of natural wealth, primarily in the construction sector. Construction needs land and materials. We have lost our paddy fields, wetlands, hills and rivers to the real estate and quarrying businesses which are controlled by mafia,” Babu said.

According to hydrologist Sadanandan Nair, a hectare of paddy field can hold two crore liters of water underneath it. “If we had preserved the paddy fields we had forty years ago, we might not have witnessed such a disastrous situation in this monsoon. Between the start of the millennium and now, Kerala’s paddy fields have shrunk by 35 percent or 1,09,000 hectares. On an average, Kerala received 310 cm of rainfall a year which brings more than 7,000 crore cubic meters of water. If we had preserved our paddy fields, they might have absorbed a large part of that volume,” he says.

Nair tells you how the State’s wetlands have shrunk by 49 per cent since 2004 — from 3,28,402 to 1,60,590 hectares. It should be noted that the Kerala Government, which is headed by the CPI(M), a party that has so far stood for the preservation of farms and protection of farm labour and conservation of environment and the eco-system, is now embarking on a programme to dilute a Legislation passed in 2008 to facilitate liberal land-filling of farmlands and wetlands for promoting development initiatives.

“We are inviting trouble. We should put at least a comma for this madness somewhere,” senior journalist, PVS Warrier, says.

Even in Kuttanad, carelessness, callousness and corruption are said to be the root cause of the monsoon-triggered deluge. Kuttanad, a vast paddy field chequered with canals and islands of human habitation, is where the waters showered down by the rains in the eastern Kerala districts of Idukki, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta are deposited and flooding in monsoons is not uncommon.

“We are not unfamiliar with floods but this time went out of hand,” a local politician, Sudevan of Chathankari farm collective, says. The flooding this time was caused by the breaches in two embankments that keep waters from the east out of the paddy fields. The faulty implementation of the MS Swaminathan committee recommendations for the rejuvenation of Kuttanad was the cause of the situation, he feels.

“Bunds were built unscientifically. Proper attention was not given to the flow of water in the construction of embankments. Corruption is also a part of this. As a result of all this and the quite natural annual water inflow, we saw one of the biggest floods of history here and the lake areas of Kottayam district,” he adds.

The State Government has come under severe criticism for its alleged inability to cope with the situation. The authorities failed to arrange proper and timely supply of essentials. Despite the fact that the State Cabinet has three Ministers from Alappuzha district, not even one of them visited the flood-hit areas. Kuttanad people say that a positive change occurred only after the visit by two Ministers from the Centre — Kiren Rijiju (Minister of State for Home) and Alphons  Kannanthanam (Minister of State for Tourism) on July 20, 2018.

“In short, we were left to fend for yourselves till then. Our condition would have been even more pathetic if voluntary workers and several companies and associations had not intervened. We are living in water but have no water to drink. The essential commodities the Government had promised had not come for several days. We were left to prepare our food using rainwater or floodwater. The worst was there is no toilet facility and the Government did not care to provide us with portable bio-toilets despite tall promises,” Kausalya, a mother of two in Valiyathuruthu, says. “Let us hope this does not happen again,” she says.

Writer:  VR Jayaraj

Source: Sunday Pioneer