Bihar election results, what it means to rest of India?

Bihar election results gave quite a bit of shock to BJP. Most of the analysts got it wrong to understand the mood of the Biharis, at least those 63% who voted for a progressive India (Bihar). Bihar is no more home to snake charmers and rat eaters (the Mahadalit community Ex-chief minister Jitan Manjhi belongs to). Bihar produces larger number of IAS, IIT goers and arguably home to some of the best minds of India. Unfortunately, it simultaneously contains the largest backward caste and economically weaker section, thanks to Lalu’s jungle raj tthat took a toll in the development of Bihar, when rest of India was on move. Lalu successfully managed to keep up the caste politics and communal politics (appeasing of Muslims despite their wrong doings) for more than a decade. Loot, kidnapping and collecting ransoms were synonymous to everyday life that used to happen under the banner of RJD. Despite being arrested on fodder scam, he installed an illiterate Rabri Devi to rule the state with third largest population in India and the voters could not do anything about it. It was of course partly possible due to significant booth capturing, proxy voting and the election was barely a nemesis of governance.

Nitish kumar rose to limelight to end all these non-sense with able support under the banner of NDA and successfully offered governance, transport, education and was a man with a mission and urge to transform the backward Bihar. Name any sector, it was in doldrums and there was a need for an able administrator and Lalu was running a buffalo shed in the chief minister’s residence. Nitish was voted for the best chief minister award numerous times as he redefined everything from scratch and the term development was almost absent in Bihar’s dictionary before him.

His political ambitions however rose on many occasions. This was partly due to the Bihar like administration by Congress in New Delhi. People looked forward to an alternative for ending Congress raj of corruption, negative industrial growth, poor diplomatic and political relations with big powers across the World. BJP seemingly offered an alternative under the NDA banner and projected Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate. This was unacceptable to Nitish Kumar, who saw him as a counterpart (of Gujrat) so far and felt he could equally race for this top post. After a series of tussles, he snapped ties with NDA after 12 years of alliance, terming it as communal. Additionally, bent by the crushing defeat of JD-U (the party NItish belonged to) in Lok sabha election, he resigned and installed Jiten Manjhi (a Mahadalit) as CM with a wish that he could remove him at will but will still count on the vote banks of those castes. Manjhi turned out to be more glued to the seat than he was expected to (by Nitish), as a result Nitish used his veto power to remove him from the CM post , thus making him a political enemy.

Meanwhile, as the elections in Bihar was drawing closer, Nitish aligned with rest of the unholy forces who had a tainted background, including Congress, RJD, SP etc. calling it a grand alliance. They were assembled together to root out the communal forces (according to Lalu). Amit Shah was again assigned to spearhead the battle (of Bihar elections) with the cast, creed equations to repeat the Lok Sabha performances from UP, which was roughly similar in equations.

Here are few points that went wrong for BJP, costing it five years in Bihar.

What didn’t work in favor of BJP was a clear lack of leadership (no chief ministerial candidate decided because BJP was not quite sure if it can pull the results in its favor). The weak grounds team always resorted to a combative politics and fell prey of the minor attempts made by Nitish gang. They brought out beef politics, which is never considered as a political agenda by educated/uneducated, rural/urban, rich/poor mass. By denying a particular kind of food, you are basically denying the fundamental rights of someone, irrespective of his/her religious subscriptions. The tiny unwarranted battles made even the common mass (the 62% voters) believe that BJP is not serious about Bihar and its people. Another mistake that BJP suffered big way was to embrace Jiten Manjhi with open arms without evaluating his credibility to really pull in those vote banks, he was promising for.

•        There was so simple tactic that BJP could offer against NItish that Nitish just could not be believed due to his political alliance, which was the sole reason for his own entry to Bihar chief ministe ship decades back! How can he dilute the basic philosophy that he stood by, years ago, as history remains unchanged for both Congress and RJD? Projecting the opportunistic angle of NItish could really turn things in BJP’s favor in a big way. But, BJP did nothing of that sort and instead did similar tactics of RJD- the caste equations. That was bound to fail! Because, the voters have learnt to move on beyond this. They were looking for tangible practical solutions to their problems and Nitish in a way has been offering that despite his political associations (which he claims to swing to remain in power and offer forward moving Bihar). So the path taken by Nitish was acceptable to his junta of Bihar.
•       After Lok Sabha election, the people of Bihar did not see any translated commitments from BJP that they could further count upon. Modi’s rallies during Lok sabha elections didn’t do any changes in ground for common man in Bihar in the form of industrialization, educational setup (IITs etc.) and so on. The minor credits were carried away by Nitish diligently leaving any credits for BJP!

As a result, Nitish is now acceptable at least for the next five years, unless Lalu prefers to change guard, which is not unusual of him. But nevertheless, it’s a job well done, Nitish kumar, a calculated one but still impasse for Modi and Amit Shah.

Long live democracy, where citizens are the king and Modi is a Pradhan Sevak and Nitish?? Time will say..

But for sure, he will learn to move up in the ladder and take head on Modi in some form.

Till next time …

© Subrat Sahoo

Rising intolerances

Rising intolerances

There is a concerted effort by malignant bodies to bring down everything that is going smooth. There are two such elements present in large in post Modi era in India. I am not sure, who coined the word (“rising intolerances”) but whosoever did it, did their homework as much as possible to make noise without a drumbeat! And the result: there is a mass movement to find out those left wing pseudo characters, who never have the guts nor caliber to join a free or healthy debate, but would oppose development for the sake of opposing by returning awards, blabbering statements like “Modigovernment doesn’t know ABCD of Science/arts (thankfully they presume Modi government knows a lot about commerce, as Modimeans business).”

Congress may not be blamed, either they don’t have hand in it, or they are too smart to keep people like Rahul Gandhi out of this business, otherwise there are always people like him, who would spill the beans to flabbergast: “yes, we did it.” But certainly, it’s a concerted effort by the opposition elements including some impotents like Udhav Thackrey, who is in a desperate bid to stay in limelight like Raj Thackrey used to do before Maharastra and India’s general election. I wonder Shiv Sena still wins these municipal elections in Mumbai, despite being a shame for all the Marathis! The definition of intolerance should be inclined towards them- the way they are creating chaos, despite being in the government, defacing invited guests, shameless posts and public rallies against Pakistan as a nation! According to me, this is no patriotism at all, coz Patriotism doesn’t teach denigrating another nation or creating hatred for them, as its not the individuals in the country who has ill motive but the country unfortunately is run by ISI and Taliban in masks! Shiv Sena at least should learn a lesson or two from Gita’s custodians!

Coming back to the intolerance issue, I am not sure, what is the effect of this (rising intorlerances) at the national level that is making these so-called brilliant minds returning Sahitya awards, Padma Bhusan and the likes but they seem to follow a spree, which is internally sponsored by a section of pseudo-secularists! And mind you, most of these awardees are receiver of the award during Congress regime, so I have no idea what they want to prove to the BJP government, when they try to return this award! The other day, I came across a nice cartoon which read that- “you can return the award in the nearest local club for a return of 200/2000 rupees (quote any figure there), depending on what you have been promised to make this show off!” Amazing, isn’t it, at least most of these awardees who were long forgotten characters are getting a media coverage for another handful days!

But, to my assessment, Modi is doing right by remaining unabated by these transient situations. Thus, he proves to be a seasoned politicians not to pay heed to these minor heroes! Nor, he is appeasing them to reconsider their decision by clearly showing they don’t count nor matter in Modi’s scheme of things, that is a developed India, more outward looking (beyond US, Europe and Asia- Africais the new destination), more talked about (in global arena- 10billion dollar footstep in Africa), more digital! He does what he wants to do, he doesn’t necessarily indulge in ugly war of words with the likes of Digvijay Singh, who provokes him a lot though.

As a human, you are prone to errors and he has some personal enemity against Nitish Kumar. So, he responds to his (Kumar’s) barbs during election rallies in Bihar, but that’s part of politics and acceptable in India. But to me, it hardly matters whether or not BJP wins in Bihar, as that doesn’t change the global equations nor Amit Shah’s score card much. The loss (if it happens so) could be due to the fact that BJP could not rise to the match of Nitish (as a chief ministerial candidate in Bihar). Nitish has undoubtedly made a relentless execution of governance that remains rooted, plus or minus Lalu.

Lastly, I would wish Modi to continue to operate, the way he has been in coming days and the rising intolerances will fall “well within the tolerance (limits).”

© Subrat Sahoo
image credits: IBN

Hope for a better tomorrow, hope from Narendra Modi

Many in the internet age called him Feku, the man who promised a lot but delivered none. I realized myself that there has to be some smoke for a fire to start up. (Narendrabhai Damodar) Modi is a man, who is arranging that smoke from multiple places so that India gets back the lost fame from World map. It has been proved by many that if you instill confidence in a person, the person will grow just by the gesture of people’s goodwill. Modi seems to inherit them by virtue of his selfless good work.

He never bunks office, sleeps or drowses in meeting, remains passive during debates draws the wrong string, while meeting the technocrats and bureaucrats. In short, he always has something to discusss with anyone and everyone he meets and he is India in mind, whenever he talks business! My god, he meets five hundred to thousand people a day on a one-on-one basis, especially when he is on travel to a country like USA! I wonder how he manages to keep everything balanced along with his body. Mere Yoga and some hot tea, that’s all he offers as his secret to the journalists those interview him!

Of course, his speeches are written by his speech writers, he is well versed with a series of officers, who make life rather easy for him, but mind you, he is an impromptu speaker, when it comes to address public. He connects up with audience and also rejuvenates enthusiasm amongst the people. His Madison square speech was without notes, same is going to happen in bay area. That makes him special, there was hardly any man in the short history (68 years) of India, who had or bothered to have this much charisma. You might blame technology, coming to his advantage but that’s just an excuse, he is gliding with his own talent and will power. And we wish, he will bring a better out of India, at least much better than what Congress managed to offer, primarily because they wanted to rule the country, they never had an agenda than improving their own funds. They didn’t improve India’s stature in world map as a respectable country, a country to do business, a country that can compete with China for affordable labor costs.

I admit we have problems of poor land acquisitions, worst pollution in the capital of the country, polluted ground water and river water, corruption issues, hunger, poverty and the list is endless. All this need systematic cleansing, like how NItish kumar started in Bihar after Lalu raj, till he joined back with Lalu again. But, we also need to understand that we have a huge demographic dividend, a huge self-determined middle class who do not subscribe the idea of corruption, who are willing to thrive a better india and are willing to lock horns with Amazon by creating Ola, snapdeal, flipkart. We have Ratan Tata, Narayana Murty, who believe that things can improve, if we give ourselves a chance.

There is always a sunrise after a sunset, we just have to keep our “Umeed” alive, options open and heart warm to embrace. Simultaneously, we have to eradicate all those who come (hindering) in the process of progress, may be it Mullayam, Lalu or few more names who have or soon going to be history. On a lighter note, we have to force stop Robert Vadra to change guards to Robert Gandhi to keep the dynasty alive. There will be several Modi of Namo style, who promise to deliver and deliver the promise, there will be several Modi’s (of Lalit Modi style) and Mallya’s and (Subrata) Roy’s, behind the bar for making a mockery of the institutions. There will be a dawn that will begin with sustainable, exporting, economic and strong world power: India

Ameen!!

© Subrat Sahoo

What does Independence Day mean to us?

What does Independence Day mean to us- those who are born after Gandhi-Nehru era?

It’s a million dollar question, which many of us ponder to have answer about. Without any credible reasoning, we resort to spend the day (after all it’s a much deserved holiday) in a mall or an outing with a leisurely spending of the day. Sometimes we flaunt ourselves with tri-colors, asserting our patriotism to ourselves as well as to others. We sing the national anthem, take part in some Indian tricolor furling but always have a big confusion about what does Independence day mean to us?

 As I am writing this, I am quite sure that the definition is quite varying, sometime contradicting to people of same generation, whereas there exists a wide chasm, when it comes to those who fought for this. A good 99% are gone by now and few have sporadic encounters with the independence struggle. Even a bigger percentage of them could still be normal people who were not necessarily part of various movements made by revolutionaries.

I keep assessing the situation of our generation, to avoid confusion let me say people born after independence. There was a sea change in things on rolling out of five year plans to make India grow as there was to be a lot of industrialization, globalization by cooperation of foreign investments and participation, welfare of people with improved education system, health care, agriculture and source of income that is scalable and more importantly export oriented so that we grow as the external needs increase. There were a lot to be addressed when Angrez left us as they had the only intention of prospering Britain at the cost of further down spiraling of India. This has been very much argued by Dr. Tharoor in Oxford union on “What Britan owes India for reparation.” That was the post-Independence challenges, which was preceded by the challenge of how to evade British from India both through violent (teaming up with like-minded parties like Japan) or non-violent medium. The history gives all the credit to MK Gandhi but my interpretation is he served a wing of the movement, which would have been impossible without the sacrifice of the likes of Bhagat Singh, Bose and the countless true patriots, who preferred their guts not be surrendered by a handful British employees those enjoyed serving their boss at the cost of some traitors to the rank of so-called kings of India! The truth be told, we never rose to the occasion of a socialistic country. The colonialism was existing even before the British empire. Our history also tells that we are the ones love to be ruled without any contribution from ourselves from becoming a part of the system and that exists till date!

Today, we seek shelter in social media to vent our anguish instead of confronting. We think someone else will do the job for us - our job is to just play moral police. Don’t you think that way communists are better? Heard better? They take to the roads at least thinking little as “operating with a mask!” Of course, the former approach of anonymous or virtual reporting works only if there exists a perfect system and the system cares of its users. But, in current generation after five decades of okay (read poor) governance, a lot of mass (who happen to be part of the system) has understood and understood really well that there exists short cuts, tampering provisions or the least excuses to tweak/ by pass/ weaken the system. So, why not follow the easy path? Dr. Tharoor pointed it right (during IIMA CHAOS speech), with some (or more) education, we feel perplexed to put our feet in the mud, then there exists a moral angle, which is often diluted by the surrounded people, who force you to change for bad. Some say, Kejriwal started with a good intention but in the journey got to know how to play politics.

All these sound lecture, when there is no medium to fight it out for better. The other day I read about a smart city in Japan- Kashiwa-na-ho (google if you want to know more about it). The idea here is for lakhs of people living as a family, sharing everything that is possible- still not invading to personal space. This is a concept, where technology goes hand in hand with humanity. We in India are also talking about smart cities as well as Amruts, which sound nice in technology, but how do we bring in the humanitarian angle? How do we stop violence towards child abuse, sexual maniacs, rich-poor gaps, racism and more importantly corruption? Someone made a valid statement-“ it starts at home,” well then why don’t we do it and not just that, spread the message? The problem is so grave that we don’t feel it safe offering a lift to a stranger in highway or city nor feel safe to ask for a lift. The trust factor is gone. The racism, rich-poor index is only widening though there is no caste-based business existing anymore in India by and large.

The problem is wide spread and each one of us are aware and concerned about it. What’s the solution? Well, lets take baby steps but not get derided in the process. It’s a pledge, we have to take for the interest of our next generation and the greater sense of patriotism so that we keep hold of the Indian values, which is “Atithi devo bhaba.”  Here are few resolutions I think for me, which sounds appropriate to you as well. So let’s give it a try!!

1.    Lets offer a welcoming gestures to the foreigners in India by not luring them, trapping them, not considering them as super rich tourists J. They could be poor back packers to have a glance of what this part of the world got to offer them! Lets enrich their experience. Read what a foreigner thinks about India from her angle.

2.    Lets be little courageous not to offer bribes to those who are seeking it and before that lets not overspeed, indulge in traffic incidents, wear helmets, carry a driver’s license. Lets use social media to expose the babus who are directly and indirectly asking for bribes for the basic needs of us- like ration card, registration documents.

3.    Lets show solidarity to Modi’s digital India initiative, that will shut doors for corruption in multiple ways.

4.    Try helping others in any possible way, you could. Take it as an action to help someone during your day and see the contentness within self. In return, ask him/her to extend the same to someone else. Let there be a chain reaction.

5.    Lets promise ourselves not to throw garbage by the road when you go out to work from your home. Its everyone’s duty towards a Swachh Bharat. Lets plan our toilet plans such a way that we don’t have to answer nature calls unwarranted, you know what I mean J!

6.    Let’s switch from “Chalta hai” attitude to “nahin chalega-unacceptable” progeny.

The list could be endless but the point is we can still instill Indianness and teach others no matter what our education and profession and family teaches us.

I was quite fascinated by some of the figures Modi showed on his independence day speech, what caught my attention is-

-       20 lakh people have given up LPG subsidy – as they are rich enough not to have it, isn’t that incredible?

-       425000 toilets were built in school in last one year- it’s a shame that it took so long but it better late than never.

Long live our independence.

Jai Hind

© Subrat

Happy Republic day- 2015

We have come a long way (though not as long as history of United states, for example) from pre-independence era, making some remarkable progress on multiple fronts. This suddenly gives us some momentum, if we try to assimilate and sum up the achievements so far. Since, Rome was not built in a day and for us, we lost quite a few years to destruction and loot by many those were ruling the country from Mughals to British, we barely managed to survive and struggle for independence than to grow ourselves on science and prosperity, which is the index of the modern world on being a developed nation. Subsequently and quite unfortunately the nation was time and again run by unfit leaders, who had their vested interest of running the country through dynastic politics and no development plans, thus stalling the progress to such an extent that we could not even take the advantage of the rapid progression of the world, where Europe and later on Japan and China learnt to recuperate and move ahead. These were preambles and despite having a democratic set up, we didn’t manage to pull in the trigger at the right moment, partly due to lack of right education and partly because of the lack of a suitable political alterative that could bring development and prosperity of common people. During the process, certain companies with goodwill ran and became important like the Tatas but those were not enough to compete the ever rising US, ever powerful USSR (and later Russia), formidable Europe and subsequent growth of East Asian giants: Japan and China. We, as Indians, unfortunately grew every day to multiply our number in terms of being population intensive (thanks to systematic improvement (reduction) in malnutrition, improved quality of life etc.) without significantly adding to per capita income.

Lower cost of living is a plus, I would say (lets compare Chandrayan, a real moon mission costing 75 MUSD, which is less than the Hollywood movie gravity -100 MUSD)³, since it attracts multitude of investment from others but what we lacked was a challenging business opportunity and to make in India either for India or elsewhere. China makes literally everything for rest of the world (ha including for India), it doesn’t matter if it were due to cheap labor or intensive product base and the willingness of the government to allow foreign companies to make their products manufactured there. Even for a population of 1.2 Billion, we have been importing significantly our defense equipment thanks to the manmade unrest around us by our neighbours, which is nicely promoted by US through aids (such as internally displaced Pakistanis -532 MUSD), Srilanka and the mighty China. Whatever, the cumulative support may be, in the process we end up having a defence spending of roughly 40 BUSD in a given year¹. Here is a chart from defence spending around the world (from 2013, figure 1). Though, it’s a meagre number, reflecting the military presence of respective countries in their own as well as foreign territory, India’s defence budget is all the time inclined towards its self defence and is time and again mired by corruption from army chiefs to defence ministers and middle men, everyone is in the process making money to make way for an otherwise unsolicited vendor! Irrespective of the situation, India could restrict those amount of foreign imports with able scientists and gradual increase in indigenous defence research projects! But that does not happen due to lack of political will as well as lack of mentors and scientific advisors who could make themselves free from politics to think beyond, for the wellbeing of Indians.

Fig.1 Worldwide defence spending- 2013

A UK based agency predicts that defence spending of US, India and China are going to match each other in the next 30 years². Some of these are unprecedented but the need of the hour is not to increase your defence budget but make the people more aware about many best practices that they need to do as Indians, if we were to compete on an international level.

We need to set our houses in order, when we get ready to welcome some visitors and that doesn’t mean to be throwing garbage into the neighbour’s backyard, just to keep ours clean. Believe me or not, an international colleague of mine pointed out (during one of his visit to India and in the process a visit to one of the Indian family) “how come you Indians manage to keep your house so neat and clean and orderly, whereas the roads, pavements are out from a far cry?” This is true, isn’t it? No doubt, many aware citizens are doing their bit in improving the standard of living. This is just one part of the story, such amount of carelessness is reflected in almost all walks of our life and its difficult to really come out of it, not impossible though.

Many of the Indians would bluff on a situation unknown to them than plainly denying or pleading ignorance. That kind of affects in our professional life. Remember, every single thing we do to others, we are counted on the basis of our background as in a broad international environment it is “Bharatiya-ness.”

This piece is to be continued and we need to really do a lot if we were to outsmart Chinese, US and lately Italians! But, to begin with I hope that our present breed of politicians (post 2014 to be called as Modi era) give us a platform to develop and grow beyond self and contribute to the true nation building, coz some big Mahatma once said getting Swaraj (Independence) is part of the problem solved and the bigger one is about its sustainability coz we need independence from caste, culture, racism, religion, gender, inequality and many more giant issues to be called as truly independent practitioner.

With a quest for Swachh (in all sense) Bharat

Wish you all a happy republic day, may we prosper together by every bit of it we do for others.

May India shine with clean Ganga, clean roads, clean sanitation, clean (corrupt free) system and a clean attitude, of each one of us.

To be contd..

References:

¹ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indias-defence-imports-40-times-its-export-basket/articleshow/45313520.cms

² http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-07-03/news/51057854_1_defence-spending-defence-budget-china-and-india

³ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/business/international/from-india-proof-that-a-trip-to-mars-doesnt-have-to-break-the-bank.html?_r=0

© Subrat creations