Enlisting Nandan Nilekani should only be the first step…

There is no excuse left for the Government of India not to do what it needs to do. Dr Manmohan Singh is no Indira Gandhi; he has a very fine brain. Sonia Gandhi is no Indira Gandhi; she lets others use their brain. Rahul Gandhi is no Indira Gandhi either, he actually uses his brains. The Government always had Montek Singh Ahluwalia, then they got Kapil Sibal in the cabinet and then Shashi Tharoor in the Ministry of External Affairs. Now that the Government of India has also enlisted Nandan Nilekani to head the department of Unique Identification Authority of India, there is no reason why India should not leap-frog to the next level of development. It has the required brain-power to articulate the vision for a new India! Shweta Rajpal Kohli of NDTV spoke to Nandan Nilekani on Monday August 24, 2009, on his appointment as a full cabinet rank minister by Dr Manmohan Singh to streamline the identification card system. Nandan underplays the appointment and compares himself to a plumber who is assigned a job to create a pipeline to the consumers. This is a huge statement and he is exactly right. What India needs is a set of good implementers who can make things happen. Just THINK about his statement!

There are always some very good ideas available to the Government of India but it never had the resources to implement them. Now that they have the money to do the things that have been discussing for decades, the communists and their ‘Left Front’ became the cog-in-the-wheel. That problem has also been solved by a sophisticated Indian voter early this year. What remains to be seen is if this government has the backbone to stand-up to the entrenched interests and implement the much touted reforms. Nandan Nilekani has been extremely articulate in his book ‘Imagining India’ about the problems India faces and some simple solutions to those impediments. The Unique Identification Card system is one such solution. Nilekani believes that once the remote consumer is identified and given a tamper-proof ID card, they could then access any product or service directed towards them by the government or any other agency. The problem that I see with this very exciting proposal is that how do you guarantee that the consumer got the service and that he or she was able to retain it? Take for example cash transfer, the remote consumer could be in debt and the creditor could be waiting alongside the recipient to strip him/her off the money. In this case the identified recipient would be left high and dry. How would the government guarantee that the aid or any other service is received by the needy and used to achieve the objective? I hope Nandan has an answer to that!

The ongoing ‘Akhand Path’ in Pakistan!

The continuous recitation (without any break) of Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir and Kashmir for the past 60 years is like an ongoing Akhand Path in a pathetic ‘State of Pakistan’. You can not have any conversation with a Pakistani without inserting the “core issue of Kashmir”! What is the point in having a dialogue if India insists on talking about terrorism and Pakistan about Kashmir only? We have seen the same ‘nautanki’, many times before! The US and Pakistan insist on a dialogue with India and India has nothing to discuss if Pakistan does not stop state-sponsored terrorism. The biggest problem is the contradiction within Pakistan. The Pakistani Army-ISI combine can not survive without their only objective i.e. an all out effort of destabilizing India and the Pakistani political objective of holding on to power with the help of America and therefore India. Let me make a prediction, as long as Rahul Gandhi and his generation remains in power, India will not concede an inch on Kashmir. Translation, no compromise on the territorial issues for the next 20-30 years, with or without the American pressure. Where does it leave Pakistan with their unstable political process? Only Pakistan has to solve this problem, sorry guys!

The only solution to the Kashmir problem is through the “ballot box”! If the proponents of ‘Independent Kashmir’ want, they could contest state elections and win by atleast 51% majority. If they win enough seats in the state assembly, they would have their own ‘Chief Minister’. The ‘Constitution of India’ allows sufficient autonomy to the states if they operate within the confines of the established parameters. The case in point is the state of West Bengal that has been ruled by the ‘Left-Front’ for the past 30 years or more. The communist parties that constitute the left front have been largely faithful to their Chinese Communist Party masters rather than their own motherland, India. Despite such liberty, no secessionist sentiment exists in West Bengal or most of the eastern states of India. Kashmir could follow the example of West Bengal and have a government headed by a political party like ‘All Parties Hurriyat Conference’. The only problem is the Hurriyat Conference does not enjoy the support of even 30% of the population and their leaders know that. This is the reason the proponents of ‘Independent Kashmir’ refuse to participate in the political process of the state of Jammu & Kashmir. America and Europe and the entire ‘Western World’ are aware of this frustrating reality but still sing the song with Pakistan… “Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir and Kashmir”. Do Pakistanis really care about Kashmiris?

The troubled states of India!

India is a union of 28 fairly independent states governed by elected state legislators and a Chief Minister. In the initial stages of our republic, Nehru and Indira Gandhi used to treat the States as their personal fiefdom but for the past two decades, the Central Government has kept its hands off the administration of ‘Indian States’. This is the constitutional way of center-state relationship. Having said that, some ‘State Governments’ have been acting rather unilaterally and high-handedly. Punjab and Tamil Nadu are on top of my mind at this point followed by West Bengal, Kashmir and Gujarat. All five States are prone to regional jingoism, not to forget the goonda Raj in Maharashtra and Karnataka. The minorities in these states are always on the edge!

Once again Punjab is on fire and the State Government is probably playing politics. In such circumstances, it should be incumbent on the federal government to intervene and protect the life and the, property of the citizens. In any case, the Akalis have been in power for too long and the rot has set in. Unfortunately, the Congress leadership in Punjab is worst. It is time Rahul Gandhi starts building the youth cadre in all 20 districts of Punjab. We do not know too much about Sukhbir Singh Badal, Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab and the son of Prakash Singh Badal, the current CM of Punjab. We only hope he is a little more enlightened and secular compared to his predecessors! Punjab remains a sensitive border state and a national concern.

Indians might reward Dr Manmohan Singh!

Incumbency is considered a liability in most of the democracies, India included. Voters are always unhappy with the current state of affairs in the country. There is no other reason for NDA (National Democratic Alliance) to have lost the general elections in 2004. The same kind of cynicism could be the fate of the now ruling UPA (United Progressive Alliance) in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in India scheduled for April/May 2009. Somehow sitting here in the United States of America I get the sense that atleast the middle class voters in India are not really unhappy with the current Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. He is perceived as an honest man.

Indian National Congress, the largest constituent of the UPA government at the center, is not exactly the paragon of virtues this time around, least of all it’s President Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Despite her and INC (Indian National Congress), Dr Manmohan Singh personally enjoys the trust and affection of the Indian people. He stood up to the Left Front during the Indo-US Nuclear Deal agreement last year and he has managed to keep the ‘Indian Economy’ more or less on track. His Home Minister  Shivraj Patil disgraced him but despite the dismal internal security record Prime Minister Singh has presided over a relatively calm 5 year central government term!

Congress Party (Indian National Congress) general secretary, Rahul Gandhi, also gets some credit for the image of the UPA government. Unlike his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul is a much sober young man. He is in no hurry to become the next Prime Minister of India and appears to be using his own brain rather than his mother’s. Rahul Gandhi might also be able to pull some seats in the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh for his alliance. He is differential to the Prime Minister of India and that impacts his and Dr Singh’s reputation in the eyes of the common voter. The general misbehavior of the NDA also helps the UPA this time around.

Dr Manmohan Singh recites ‘Deh Siva..’ in Indian Parliament

The Nehru-Gandhi family is culturally Anglocentric

Starting with Motilal Nehru and right down to Rahul Gandhi, the entire Nehru-Gandhi family is the product of the British academia and the ‘English Civil Institutions’. This legacy has not served India and its people in any way. It is tragic that our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and his colleagues in the Congress Party decided to adopt a Parliamentary Democracy for a diverse country like India. This form of government has undermined our freedom and creativity. Indians have no say in the election of our Chief Executive or the Commander-in-Chief. The ruling party decides as to who would lead the nation of 1.2 billion people and who would be the Commander-in-Chief of one of the largest defense forces in the world. The people of India have no say what so ever in this matter. What could be more outrageous? This is the legacy of Nehru-Gandhi family. We need to THINK long and hard about it!

How many people in the free-world would believe that just one individual in the largest democracy in the world decided as to who would be the next Prime Minister of India? In May 2004, it was left to Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to decide the next Chief Executive of India and she chose Dr Manmohan Singh to head the coalition government. She also single-handedly decided who would be the next President of India once the then incumbent Dr APJ Abdul Kalam finished his first term in office. The universally respected President of India was not offered the second term because ‘Madame’ did not like the idea. Do you call this form of government a democracy? I don’t! This is an insult to the billion plus people of India. Yet, there is nothing that ordinary Indians can do about it. When the largest democracy in the world is ruled by a ‘Madame’, you know what it should be called!