The musical genius of Dr Raj Kumar is one of the least appreciated bits of an actor whose only national award was for singing. The uncharitable view is that “The Family” didn’t like P.B. Srinivas shining in the reflected glory of providing the lips to the legend, and so he began to sing for his own films.
Whatever be the truth, the truth also is Singanallur Puttaswamayya Muthurajaka Raj Kumar could sing, and sing very well.
A background in Carnatic classical music in his theatre days as part of the Gubbi Veeranna Company seemed to have been enough to enable him to face the baton of hard task-masters like Ilayaraja, hold his own against pros like S. Janaki, and demonstrate his skills before full orchestras; even ending up providing the playback for a singer (S.P. Balasubramanyam) acting in a movie!
On his third death anniversary, two very contrasting numbers—the very classical Naada maya ee lokavella from Jeevana Chaitra, which fetched him the big prize; and Jeeva hoovagide from Neenu nanna gellalaare.
ALOK PRASANNA writes from Oxford: Whoever else wins or loses in an election, saree makers, liquor manufacturers, flag and poster makers always seem to have a field couple of months during election season.
If a Sensex listed company manufactured any of these things on a large scale, you can imagine erudite analysts on CNBC telling us that the stock has just spiked on the announcement of election dates by the EC.
Every other day brings us news of so many bottles of liquor seized here, or this many sarees confiscated there. It is supposed to make us feel better that the authorities are doing their best to conduct a lawful election. Yet, I cannot shake away this unease whenever I hear the glee with which these confiscations are publicized.
For one thing, I think we should really thank elections for putting black money into circulation in the real economy. This seems a far more cost-free and efficient way to retrieve black money than penal taxation or “let’s-go-to-Switzerland” bravado.
It is a direct transfer of wealth from the incredibly haves to the desperately have-nots. What’s wrong with that?
You say liquor is bad? Sure, it is. But, we haven’t banned the trade of liquor have we (save for Gujarat)? Even if liquor is bad, what’s so bad about sarees? Or televisions? Or any other totally harmless product (like, oh say, Modi-masks) handed out by political parties during election time?
In fact, I think soon all parties will cut out the middleman altogether and just hand over bundles of notes to the voters, thus sparking a burst of economic activity that works better than any “job creation scheme”.
I don’t know about you, but this law (and its implementation) smacks of middle class paternalism where the masses are not supposed to be able to make a reasoned decision when tempted with material goods.
Apparently they should vote on the basis of, I dunno, religion maybe?
Or caste?
No, no, you say, they should vote on the basis of the manifesto, the content of the character of the candidate, the familiarity of the name, or some such noble and “democratic” ground. Of course they should, but why can’t they accept a gift or two in the process?
It’s not like any of us would stop working if we stopped getting bonuses (unless of course we are investment bankers, in which case Thank God!). If the regularity with which incumbent governments are thrown out for non-performance is any indicator, we know that the voters are not stupid or blind to such issues.
But wait, you say, you haven’t dealt with the problem of money power in elections. Surely, you point out, we don’t want elections to be determined solely by money power alone. Of course I don’t. I want elections to be determined solely on the grounds of who has the better mike throwing arm. But we all can’t have what we want all the time.
It is a fact of life that running for elections costs money. You need money to organize rallies, to get your message out to the masses, to print posters of your Photoshopped face, copies of your manifesto, and, believe it or not, getting people to come out on a holiday and cast their vote for you (obviously).
Issues are important of course, but how do you get your viewpoint across if you are not willing to spend money to tell anyone?
Let’s face facts here. The average Lok Sabha constituency size in India is more than a million voters. You need to convince at least 500,001 of them to vote for you, or even accounting for low turnout, 300,001. The current level of spending caps leaves a candidate about Rs. 2.50 per person in the constituency.
Let’s face some more facts here. The reason why crooks, liars, cheats, rapists, murderers and Pappu Yadav (who is in a category of his own) keep getting elected is not because they have a superior fund raising or spending capacity, or some secret tap of inexhaustible funds. It will not even do to blame just caste calculations since pretty much every party (except the Communists) know how to appeal to which caste (nominate a member of that caste) so they cancel each other out.
At the end of the day, it is still the refusal of middle class India to do the work that is necessary to get elected to the legislature.
The “work” is not a fancy CV or a college degree or any of the typically middle class markers of “success” (or for that matter winning a game show called �Lead India�). It involves actually being involved with the community and working with the people at the ground level.
Despite the disparaging remarks of the Republican Party, “community organizing” got Barack Obama started off as the fine politician he now is. If middle-class India refuses to contribute at ground level governance, how can it expect to be given the reins of power at the highest level?
And how will seizing truck loads of liquor or sarees get us there?
If the Congress and BJP and Mayawati can use the wired world to get the message across to the voter, surely so can Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan? Therefore, they do, with a cryptic message that leads to “the most preferred ‘whipping-boy’ of the masses”‘s “website“, which also delightfully lets you in on his PAN card number and general “cast” category.
Every single opinion poll so far has refrained from even venturing to suggest that either of the two “national” parties may touch the “magical” 150-mark on their own. But The Times of India‘s latest guesstimate, done the old fashioned way, bravely predicts the Congress may actually do so.
The UPA sans Lalu Prasad Yadav‘s RJD, Mulayam Singh Yadav‘s SP and Ram Vilas Paswan‘s LJP is expected end up just short of 200, the NDA minus Naveen Patnaik‘s BJD with 176. The Third Front, says the paper will get 109, and others and independents 60.
S.R. RAMAKRISHNA writes: MiD-DaY has been reporting on Bangalore’s gangland murders these past couple of weeks. The murder of Narasimha Murthy, alleged don of what is known as the ‘coolie mafia’, was the most brazen, and took place in busy Chamarajpet.
A dozen men, led by a stocky film financier called KapaliAnanda, flashed their choppers and finished Nararasimha Murthy off in full view of the neighbourhood’s strollers.
It was a bad gangster movie coming alive.
Looking at photos of Narasimha Murthy, you could well imagine how he must have terrorised the poor labourers at K.R. Market. He was tall, beefy, and wore a load of gold to proclaim to the world his riches (and ability to pay his way out of any police trouble).
He and Kapali had been old rivals, vying for money generated from K.R. Market, Bangalore’s oldest, busiest and filthiest wholesale market.
The death of Narasimha Murthy, whom the Tamil labourers called Poone (‘cat’, because he had cat’s eyes), came soon after the murder of another K.R. Market gangster, GateGanesha. Over seven years, Ganesha had earned notoriety in the same squalid setting, and made enough money to be able to contest elections in his native Tamil Nadu. A rival lured his men, and they did him in.
What exactly is the coolie mafia?
Hundreds of lorries arrive at K.R. Market through the day, bringing fruits and vegetables from all over Karnataka and adjoining States. Poor labourers do all the unloading. A coolie gets Rs 5 for every gunny bag he moves into a shop. The mafia allows him to keep Rs 4, and pockets Re 1. At least 30,000 bags are unloaded in a day, and the gang ruling the market collects Rs 30,000 from these labourers alone.
The don pays off his cronies, officiously called ‘supervisors’, and takes home a cool Rs 25,000 at the end of the day.
That amounts to at least Rs 7 lakh a month, and Rs 8 million a year.
The don also collects Rs 10 from each wayside vendor as protection money.
With so much ready cash rolling in, the gangsters are tempted to get into what they call the ‘meter baddi’ business. ‘Baddi’ is Kannada for interest, and ‘meter baddi’ refers to interest that mounts fast, perhaps like the fare on a rigged autorickshaw meter.
Some venture into financing films as well.
All this can’t thrive without the tacit support of the police, and whoever happens to be the politician reigning in the constituency. Narasimha Murthy reportedly owed allegiance to a Congress leader, who had risen to eminence by exploiting, and then selling hope, to the miserable lot labouring away at the market.
Behind these murky stories are the human stories.
The women in Narasimha Murthy’s family told him it was inauspicious on that particular day for him to have a haircut, but he hadn’t heeded their words. They are distraught, and certain he died because he defied their religious beliefs.
Kapali, who killed him, got his name from working at Kapali Bar, and selling tickets in black at Kapali cinema. And the boys caught in the gang wars have their own tales of despair and bravado to tell.
The Kannada film industry keeps cribbing it has no good scripts, and pays a ransom each time it buys remake rights from a Tamil or Telugu producer. Any film-maker with any interest in human drama would find in K.R. Market enough material for a whole Godfather-style series.
Or a Slumdog Millionaire series, if you please.
(S.R. Ramakrishna is the resident editor of MiD-DaY, Bangalore, where this piece was first published.)
In the either-or, black-or-white world we now inhabit, it is easy to ignore the shades of grey about the Tata Nano and proclaim that it will clog up our roads, clog up our air, endanger our lives and limbs, kill Olive Ridley turtles, and make a generally bad situation even worse.
Till you hear the story of Maruti.
Maruti is a mochi, a cobbler on the streets of Bombay. He saved money for six years for his dream set of wheels. Yesterday, when booking opened for the Nano, Maruti made an all-cash down payment to realise his dream. It’s poetic justice, of course, Maruti buying a Nano, but it is also an epiphany of Ratan Tata‘s dream.
The Week magazine has joined the opinion poll fray with a set of predictions made for it by the pollster, C-Voter. The Congress, it says, will emerge the single largest party with 144 seats, with the BJP close behind at 140.
# 37 per cent of those interviewed felt Congress-led UPA can handle the issues before the nation better than the NDA; 27 per cent supported the NDA.
# Samajwadi Party 32, NCP 13, DMK and allies 13, Trinamool Congress 11, RJD-LJP 15, UDF two, National Conference three, and JMM one.
#JD(U) 18, Shiv Sena 12, Asom Gana Parishad five, Akali Dal five, RLD four, and INLD two.
# Left parties 33, BSP 29, AIADMK and allies 24, TDP/TRS 14, BJD nine, JDS two, HVM one, PRP two, and others nine.
The sample size, the polling dates, and other details are not known as per this report.
For the record, the humble farmer from Haradanahalli has more liabilities (Rs 64.99 lakh) than assets (Rs 32.55 lakh). For the record, the “diploma engineer” and his wife have two Ambassador cars, one of 1974 vintage worth Rs 15,500. For the record, the petrol bunk owner of the other part is wealthier than the former prime minister of India at Rs 1.65 crore. And the only parity the couple have is in jewellery worth Rs 1.25 lakh (current market rates).
Photograph: Former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda at the inauguration of a jewellery showroom in Bangalore on Thursday (Karnataka Photo News)
Nothing captures the Indian political sitcom/tragicomedy of tu-tu-main-main better than a strong political cartoon, and nobody does it better than E.P. Unny day after day in The Indian Express.
Indira Gandhi‘s killers were hanged inside four years of her assassination, but the killers who killed in her name were roaming around free for 25 years, fighting (and winning) elections in a serious disadvertisement to the “wisdom of the voter”, and the wisdom of the “majority”, in whose name a million crimes are committed.
Jagdish Tytler has now pulled out of the race for the Lok Sabha elections, giving the single shoe of the journalist who flung it at home minister P. Chidambaram an unheard-of power.
Who will throw the shoe at the televised perpetrators of Gujarat?
Or the televised hate-mongers of Pilibhit (and countless other places)?
Or the televised killers of Nandigram (and countless other places)?
If many of our politicians begin their cheery march to power with a lie (or ten) about their financial, educational, criminal and other backgrounds, many of them also begin by unwittingly breaking the law. Here, H.N. Ananth Kumar, the BJP’s candidate for Bangalore South, takes off on his Honda Activa Dio™ without a helmet on Wednesday, with the party’s latest recruit D.B. Chandre Gowda riding pillion, and other equally helmet-less followers following suit. It’s a photo-op, of course, but one rule for ‘em, another for us?
* Similar caveats would, of course, be applicable to members of the Congress party, CPI(M), CPI, JDS, RJD, SP, Vatal Paksha…
Rajat Sharma‘s India TV has given the BJP and the NDA a slight edge over the Congress and the UPA, respectively, in an “opinion poll” conducted by over 200 reporters.
The channel says the BJP will get 11 seats more than the Congress, and the NDA will get 9 seats more than the UPA, if Mulayam Singh Yadav‘s SP, Lalu Prasad Yadav‘s RJD, and Ram Vilas Paswan‘s LJP stay away from the latter. If, however, they come together after the polls, UPA will have about 235 seats. The UPA will then need another 37 seats to cobble up a majority.
On the other hand, if some constituents of the Third Front minus Left (120 minus 35) join with NDA (187), the NDA may still need break-away groups from the Fourth Front. In Karnataka, the poll gives 17 for the BJP, seven for the Congress, and four for the JDS.
Rajat Sharma was an advisor to the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA government.
As if to match with all the cheap talk of chopping off of heads and arms and legs emanating from various parts of the State and the country, the skies over the main Amba Vilas palace in Mysore turn blood red on Tueday evening as an exasperated sun dips somewhere behind it.
All that women may get by way of acknowledgement in Indian politics is lip service, but on the highways of Bangalore, a motorist (hopefully, a male) gives women their rightful due.
Lalchand Kishinchand Advani wants a debate, and he is getting one. Not from the man he wants to take on, but from the woman who is taking him on in Gandhinagar: Mallika Sarabhai. And, given how busy the BJP’s prime minister hopeful is, at a place and time of his choice.
Mallika, who has declared she will fight a model election without the name-calling, dirt-throwing that has become emblematic of our democracy, has thrown down an extra gauntlet: a set of five questions which she says she will ask every Monday, like Ram Jethmalani used to ask of Rajiv Gandhi during the Bofors row.
1) How many and what kind of questions has Advani raised in the Lok Sabha about Gandhinagar in the past five years?
2) Why did he not speak against the violence and atrocities against women in Gujarat and specifically in Gandhinagar?
3) What did he do towards creating educational and livelihood opportunities in rural areas of the Gandhinagar constituency?
4) Why did he not show any concern towards local issues as well as Gujarat despite being an MP from here for the last 20 years?
5) How much funds did he use under MPLADS scheme to benefit the deprived and underprivileged in his constituency?
“Secularism, like communalism, is no longer a first principles debate; it is a pretext for forcing issues where none exist. The only two interpretations of secularism that are current in India are deeply warped: secularism as erasure of identity, or secularism as communal parity. Neither interpretation has room for the core meaning: secularism is about the freedom of individuals to make of themselves what they will; it is about making “identity” irrelevant to politics, not about its enforced erasure.”
Mainstream parties may not have given him a ticket despite his healthy bank balance, but the brain behind India’s first lowcost airline, Captain Gorur Ramaswamy Gopinath, steps into an “Air Bus” in Shantinagar to campaign for the Bangalore South constituency on Monday, before the conductor blows the whistle for takeoff.
In an election devoid of a unifying theme other than hate and fear, “Swiss Bank Money” has emerged as a major mantra on many a political lip.
From L.K. Advani to Sitaram Yechuri, bringing back “unaccounted money” stashed away in tax havens like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Cayman Islands has become the refrain. The amounts mentioned are astronomic: The BJP says Rs 5,000 billion crore up from; CPI(M) pegs it at $1.4 trillion; JD(U) says it is $1,456 billion; Rs 692,328 crore in the last five years alone; anywhere between Rs 25 lakh crore and Rs 70 lakh crore.
Underlying all the flagellation is the belief that the Swiss banks will readily divulge the names of Indian “tax evaders, corrupt individuals and criminals” like they did in a Florida tax evasion case involving UBS Bank, and the assumption that the current global financial crisis is the right time to strike the iron. An IIM Bangalore professor says “India will be in the top five league if all the ill-gotten money is brought back.”
Advani, for his part, goes the whole hog. Even if we take the lower limit of the estimated amount of Rs. 25 lakh crore, the money is sufficient to, he says:
• Relieve the debts of all farmers and landless
• Build world-class roads all over the country – from national and state highways to district and rural roads;
• Completely eliminate the acute power shortage in the country and also to bring electricity to every unlit rural home;
• Provide safe and adequate drinking water in all villages and towns in India
• Construct good-quality houses, each worth Rs. 2.5 lakh, for 10 crore families;
• Provide Rs. 4 crore to each of the nearly 6 lakh villages; the money can be used to build, in every single village, a school with internet-enabled education, a primary health centre with telemedicine facility, a veterinary clinic, a playground with gymnasium, and much more.
Questions: Are these numbers real, or are Advani, Yechuri & Co merely flaunting a fictitious chainmail and indulging in politics by insinuation? Will any government—even a BJP-led one—really be able to bring back the money? Will the Swiss banks oblige? Is all the money in Swiss banks illegal? Can our parties and alliance take the risk of rubbing individuals and industrialists who finance them on the wrong side?
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: Our grandparents mostly used neem twigs to give a brisk rub-in to their teeth first thing in the morning. This simple device was good enough to keep their teeth clean and sparkling for almost their entire lifetime.
They ate anything from ragi mudde to jowar bhakri and chicken, pullangai unde to dink laadu.
Despite these rigours, their teeth used to be like The Wall—strong, reliable and always ready to tackle what the opposition threw at them all day. Most of our ancestors even capped their sumptuous meal by chewing the juice of a betel nut or doing a small ceremony with betel leaves, sunna and sugandhi betel nut powder.
Teeth, thus nurtured and nourished, lasted years. Tooth ache? There was always a dash of soothing lavang (clove) oil massage to calm the nerves.
They had never heard of a species called the dentist.
Then came charcoal powder, B.V. Pandit’s sweet and pinkish tooth care wonder “Nanjangudhallu pudi” in a 4-inch by 3-inch brown paper bag. You made a small, triangular hole in the corner and inverted it on your palm to pour out only that much quantity for a one-time brushing.
If a bigger heap fell out, you just ate a part of the pudi!
Using the forefinger as a brush, one stroked the power to the left and right of the mouth, brushing the teeth and strenghtening the gums at the same time. Left, right. Left, right, it went on. There were some who went on like this for ages till their mothers shouted at them to ‘stop’ it! A dash of water, rinsing and one was ready for filter coffee.
Still not many knew who or what a dentist was because he/she had yet to appear on the horizon.
Next came the era of toothpaste. Dazzling tubes with colorful caps which squirted white, red, coloured and sometimes stripes of paste! Binaca, Colgate, Kolynos, Forhan’s (“Doctor’s Toothpaste!”) without ‘jhag’ (lather).
The marketing of Binaca was done by Ameen Sayani’s ‘Binaca Geet Mala’, which the whole country heard on radio on Wednesday nights between 8 and 9, irrespective of which toothpowder or paste one used, or whether one brushed the teeth at all.
Dinner used to be after the buglers sounded the song of the week based on the 78 RPM records of Hindi film songs sold in Bombay during the week.
After toothpastes came the marketing blitzkrieg on toothbrush. Hard, medium, soft, conical, comical bristles would take care of your teeth. You could vigorously brush the enamel on your teeth to certain death.
Around that time, some doctors who, for some strange reason called ‘Dentists’ were spotted near the market area.
Soon, with the advent of peppermints, toffees and chocolates, they started multiplying like, well, flies on a sweet. As imported and local fancy chocolates entered the scene with silver and gold wrappers, dentists started opening their swanky shops complete with water jets, spittoons and high speed jets for both water and hot-air.
People casually started dropping words like “I have an appointment with my dentist” in the middle of a conversation. “Excuse me; I have to see my dentist.” The dentist replaced your tooth with a gold, silver, even a diamond tooth like a diamond ear-ring depending on the bulge of your purse.
Models smiling from ear-to-ear for no reason and doctors in front of tooth cutouts started appearing on TV forcing Babloos and Chintus to smile, again, for no reason.
Soon after, electric tooth brushes arrived, enabling busy people to brush their teeth with a whirr, just like they shaved with an electric shaver. You could get a shining sparkling set of teeth not by old fashioned brushing, but by electrolysis which simultaneously made a big hole in your pocket.
You could keep on X-raying your errant tooth till, by the sheer dosage, your tooth could get tuberculosis.
Now like the software scenario, the toothpaste bubble seems to have burst. Leading orthodontists are now saying electrolysis weakens the gums and is dangerous to the heart. Oral scientists and orthopantomographists are saying grandma’s methods like brushing with fingers and using neem twigs are best and it is the best way of taking care of your teeth!
The declaration of financial assets and liabilities as a prerequisite for contesting elections has become a joke. As a personal confessional offering a peek into the probity of the candidate (and his/her family), the clause is unexceptionable. But at the hands of wily politicians, their lawyers and auditors—and individuals and institutions happy to look the other way—the affidavit has become just another piece of paper.
Bogus numbers are bandied without batting an eyelid, but neither opposing candidates nor the Election Commission, or the income-tax department or the media, are interested in digging deeper to establish their veracity. Even the supposedly wise voter, it seems, cannot be bothered about such niceties beyond a point.
A good case in point is the honourable Member of Parliament from Amethi Lok Sabha constituency, Rahul Gandhi.
# In 2004, he declared total assets of Rs 22 lakh. In five years, the assets of the first-time MP have shot up 10 times to 2.25 crore.
# In 2004, he held bank deposits of Rs 11 lakh, £30,000 and $19,200; shares of Rs 3.9 lakh; LIC and other savings certificates in Rs 3.80 lakh; jewellery worth Rs 1.25 lakh; and a farm house worth Rs 9.8 lakh.
# In 2009, he holds bank deposits of about Rs 20 lakh, LIC and other savings certificates of Rs 10.2 lakh; land worth Rs 40 lakh, jewellery worth Rs 1.5 lakh; and two shops in a mall worth Rs 1.63 crore.
What is the one question you are dying to ask Rahul Gandhi about his assets and liabilities? Keep your questions short, civil and proportionate to your known source of income.
Both the UPA and the NDA have seen parties exiting their ranks. The Third Front seems to be chugging along nicely, and smaller micro-alliances have cropped up. Yet, Congress man turned BJP man, Arun Nehru remains unrelenting in his belief that the Congress-led alliance will end up ahead of the BJP-led one.
In his latest back-of-the-envelope calculations published in Deccan Chronicle, Nehru says the Congress will get 150 seats on its own and the UPA in its present form will get about 225, while the BJP will end up with 132 and the NDA with 181, a margin of 44.
“The Left is still relevant even if their numbers drop from 65 seats to 33 seats, but they will get totally isolated if they obstruct regional forces from negotiating with either the Congress or the BJP. In this context, the Samajwadi Party general secretary, Amar Singh, may well be a major player as he understands politics better than others. The joining together of the SP, RJD and LJP should give a suitable signal to both the Congress and the BJP that their options are limited in the future.”
SHOBHA SARADA VISWANATHAN, in New Delhi, forwards a self-explanatory YouTube video of US President Barack Obama taking a question from Simrat Ghuman, a reporter from The Times of India‘s television channel, Times Now, at the G-20 summit in London, on Thursday.
Q: Hi, Mr. President.
Obama: How are you?
Q: Thank you for choosing me. I’m very well. I’m (inaudible) from the Times of India.
Obama: Wonderful.
Q: You met with our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. What did you— what are you—what is America doing to help India battle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?
Obama: Well, first of all, your prime minister is a wonderful man.
Q: Thank you. I agree. (Laughter) I agree.
Obama: You know, did you have something to do with that? (Laughter) You seem to kind of take credit for it a little bit there. (laughter)
Q: We’re really proud of him, so…
Obama: Of course. You should be proud of him. I’m teasing you. I think he’s a very wise and decent man and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being prime minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world….
Sonia Maino Gandhi and Lalchand Kishinchand Advani may be united in their contemputous fulminations against the Third Front and smaller, regional parties. But there is still no stopping “The Others”, according to an opinion poll conducted for India Today magazine by ORG-MARG-AC Neilsen in 98 constituencies in 19 States.
The sample size was 12,374 respondents.
# Advani & Co may contemputously call Manmohan Singh the weakest PM, etc, even disgracefully mocking his absence from work following his heart bypass heart operation. But the PM’s rating is higher than that of the PM–in-waiting: 42% say his performance was average, against 41% for Advani; 39% term it good versus 28%.
# 25% per cent say projecting Narendra Damodardas Modi as the PM candidate in the next general elections will have no impact on the BJP’s prospects in this election.
“Conventional wisdom has it that weak coalitions at the Centre are bad for the economy because an excessive preoccupation with political survival and with keeping coalition partners in good humour impedes any attempt at initiating bold economic reforms or offering good governance….
“But, in fact, India’s experience of coalition governments at the Centre and with economic growth demolishes that argument — or, at the very least, underscores an important exception to that rule.
“It’s no coincidence that the time-cycle of India’s move into a higher orbit of economic growth matches pretty closely the period when coalition arrangements have come to occupy centre-stage at the Central level.
“Virtually all the economic opening up and reform programs that enabled this speedier growth were carried out when motley, multi-party coalitions were in power: this is just as true of Congress-led arrangements as of those led by the BJP or the extremely nebulous and politically malleable “United Front”.
The Race Course road in Bangalore is being widened, resulting in the demolition of buildings and establishments that have existed within its precincts for decades. Unmindful of the developments, and following the immutable laws of nature, the hair of Turf Club employees continues to grow. Thankfully, there is still a barber, perilously perched, to step up to the plate.
E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: India ranks 105th out of 127 countries in education as per the UNESCO education for all development index report for 2004. The UN body says it’s doubtful that India will achieve the education for all goal of 100% enrolment in primary schools by 2015—one of the United Nations’ millennium development goals.
China, with a larger population than India, ranks a respectable 54th.
Infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of infants less than one year old in a given year per 1000 births in the same year. This rate is often used as an indicator of the level of health in a country. In the United Nations world population prospects report 2006, infant mortality rate for India stands at 55.0 stands between Ghana at 56.6 and Solomon Islands at 54.5.
Our immediate neighbours Nepal , Bangladesh and Bhutan are better than us at 53.9 and 52.5 and 45 respectively.
Even countries such as Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Chile fare far better at 9.90, 7.2 and 7.2 respectively.
These are just two parameters with which world will evaluate India. These are cold figures which are not being discussed on television or in the expert newspaper and magazines columns by the pundits this election season.
These figures do not mean anything to Sonia Gandhi or L.K. Advani, Manmohan Singh or Mayawati, or all the potential prime ministers waiting in the wings, from Sharad Pawar to Ram Vilas Paswan, or the kingmakers, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri.
Both the UPA and the NDA have seen parties exiting their ranks. The Third Front seems to be chugging along nicely, and smaller micro-alliances have cropped up. Yet, Congress man turned BJP man, Arun Nehru remains unrelenting in his belief that the Congress-led alliance will end up ahead of the BJP-led one.
