Fareed Zakaria, the Bombay-born anchor of the CNN show, GPS—and son of the renowned Islamic scholar Rafiq Zakaria—at “Express Adda“, the informal conversations organised by the Indian Express:
“My personal opinion is that Narendra Modi is unlikely to be a national leader in India and he may not even be a regional leader come December. He has been able to achieve certain kinds of things, but he cannot be the face of India.
“Karl Marx said that history repeats itself twice—first time as a tragedy and second time as a farce. There is not going to be a Hindutva takeover of India—this is one stream that will be diverted in the long run.”
Also read: Why our silly middle-class loves Narendra Modi
Tags: Churumuri, CNN, Express Adda, Fareed Zakaria, Karl Marx, Narenda Modi, Narendra Damodardas Modi, Rafiq Zakaria, Sans Serif, The Indian Express
31 March 2012 at 6:13 pm
I hate to admit it but Zakaria is right. Modi can never ever become a national leader. He doesn’t have it in him. When he is not acceptable in his own state, party and alliance; it will be next to impossible for him to be acceptable all over the country. And further the recent by-election result is ominous and there is a possibility that Modi could be defeated this year-end, in which case his national ambitions will have to RIP. Even if he wins, Delhi will still be ‘door ast’ for Modi.
31 March 2012 at 6:30 pm
Some people live so far removed from reality. The author of this blog is one.
31 March 2012 at 10:42 pm
Is it the same fareed Zakharia who was challenging India to ‘stand up’ for the right thing – In other words, join Uncle Sam in its propaganda to attack Iran ?? Oh well…Modi has turned into a latest obsession for all the fake seculars and the activists from ‘peaceful’ community!! They want to get him so bad and make him the biggest ‘criminal’ in the eyes of India and world. Take a look at the way journalist-for-hire at Tehelka, NDTV and other media outlets are spinning the story everyday. After all, Prince Raul to our own URA believe that RSS is the biggest terrorist organization. The attacks on Modi, RSS and BJP will continue…
31 March 2012 at 10:51 pm
Narendra Modi never be prime minister of India In next election of Gujarat assembly he will get majority or not that one is big question..He have no capacities to run the hug country just like India.
31 March 2012 at 11:29 pm
THERE WILL BE ONE AND ONE RELIGION IN THE NEAR FUTURE CALLED “HUMANITY/HUMAN RELIGION FORMED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE VERY SHORTLY.”
THE EXISTING 13 RELIGION IN THE WORLD WILL NOT WORK IN THE FUTURE AND PEOPLE BELIEVE IN UNITY WITH PEACE AND PROSPERITY ALL OVER THE WORLD.
UNITE OF 13 RELIGION WILL TAKE GRADUALLY AND BY 2025 THE GREAT “NEW DAWN NEW ERA” WILL ESTABLISHED.
GOD IN HUMAN WILL WAKE UP VERY SHORTLY WITH THE HELP OF 8 MYSTIC POWER AS ALREADY THE WAR BETWEEN EVIL AND THE BEST STARTED INVISIBLY.
FINALLY, THE BEST WILL WIN OVER THE EVIL AND GREAT ERA WILL BE ESTABLISHED.
SAHHASRA SAAGARAAMRITA
2 April 2012 at 12:57 am
Not sure about Modi becoming a leader in India or not, but for sure Zakaria won’t!
If Modi becomes a leader of India or not will depend largely on the the kind of alliance govt. that’ll be formed next year. If BJP needs too many allies, then they’ll use his 2002 record to kick him down. But, if BJP does well, and especially well in Gujarat, then perhaps allies will have less of a say.
While I don’t feel Modi should become PM of India, till he apologize and makes amend for failure of law& order during riots and subsequent failure in providing semblence of justice, I also think he is a better PM candidate than Rahul Gandhi!!
2 April 2012 at 3:38 am
wow churumuri gets another inspirational character, and it only helps that he is well connected and a muslim. way to go churumuri, keep it up.
2 April 2012 at 11:06 am
sahhasra saagaraamrita – Did you forget to take your medication today
2 April 2012 at 11:43 am
The secularists have begun their duties in all earnestness, 9 months in advance!!! We can see several such articles by eminent personalities like Burkha Dutt, Sri Rajdeep Sardesai, Smt Sagarika Ghose, Sri Praful Bidwai, Sri Siddarth Varadarajan, Sri Ashis Nandy, Sri Aakar Patel and others explaining to us, the utterly clueless and ignorant people, the reasons behind the likely downfall of NaMo.
Ofcourse it is another matter that last time around too they had tried to enlighten us BEFORE the elections and once the results were out, the entire blame was laid at the feet of ignorant, criminal and communal minded people of Gujarat. This time around too, such explanations will see the light of the day in friendly,sickular media, once the election results are out and NaMo is elected back with a thumping majority.
3 April 2012 at 10:37 am
it all depends on the vote of the Gujarati farmer.
5 April 2012 at 12:19 pm
The myth has been busted several times. Modi’s regime is neck deep in Corruption. Here is proof of CAG
http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-cag-slams-modi-govt-for-huge-financial-irregularities/20120330.htm
Modi’s govt is neck deep in debt. Badly managed financial State. At least 7 other states have managed double digit growth in the last five years. Several states have much much greater GDP than Gujarat. Among several socio economic indicators, Gujarat is miles behind developed states.
***
Gujarat runs a revenue defecit state – it spends more than it earns. Clear case of badly run state. Several other states have improved their fiscal positions. 20 states preceded Gujarat in implementing VAT. Several states besides Gujarat have shown double digit growth in recent years.
The state govt recently admitted that they can supply only 8hours of electricity contrary to nonsense claims of 24 hours. Gujarat is one of the most backward states in primary education and higher education. Girl child is the most neglected in Gujarat. Like this there are a 100 more reasons to prove Modi is taking Gujarat backward. NO wonder his party lost a seat in Gandhinagar last week,.
5 April 2012 at 12:59 pm
Typical biased bigoted pseudo-secular ranting. Oh and I dare not use religion or the M word lest I be branded with all sorts of rude adjectives. Or why not, since the author plays the Hindutva card? Tell it like it is, fanatic Muslims like this man and a whole lot of others only care for his religion, his community and let everything else perish. These are the true anti national elements, not Modi.
5 April 2012 at 2:13 pm
@Simple: Congress led union budgets are result in fiscal deficit only. So please don’t give economic gyaan without funda! Have you ever been to Gujarat that you say that it is miles behind? Do not sit in front of a screen and feign wisdom… rather, do not fool yourself in pursuit of becoming a hardcore congressi!
5 April 2012 at 2:16 pm
@Rafiq Zakaria (Author): While saying that Narendra Modi cannot be the face of India, are you expressing a wish or, a prayer, or, are you forecasting? The first two are only expected reading your name, you have a long way for the third case!
7 April 2012 at 10:35 am
Glad to see that the Hindutva crackpots have not swamped the comments section! ^^
7 April 2012 at 12:37 pm
The congressis and its supporters believe in one thing for sure. Keep repeating a lie in the hope that by some kind of magic, it turns into truth. This is possibly true about this CAG report and its so called findings. Ofcourse, our resident Congress supporter boldly says that “Modi’s govt is neck deep in debt. Badly managed financial State. At least 7 other states have managed double digit growth in the last five years. Several states have much much greater GDP than Gujarat. Among several socio economic indicators, Gujarat is miles behind developed states.”.
To what extent is this true? To what extent is this garbage recycled as gospel truth?? There can be only one place to find the answers. The CAG report itself. While it is not possible to produce the entire report here, I will quote verbatim a few findings of the report which will prove that the “pick and report” style of newspapers is pointless and the screaming of Congies and their supporters that Modi government is in a scam is worthless. So here we go:
Chapter 1: Finances of the state government. CAG says “Gujarat State has shown a relatively high economic growth in the past decade as the Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of its Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) for the period 2001-02 to 2010-11has been 17.16 per cent as compared to 14.68 per cent in Other General Category States”.
I was curious to know which are the other general category states. The footnote given by the CAG clearly mentions the names of these other general category states whose performance Modi Government clearly bettered. And these states are : Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This is 16 out of 26 states of our country. The ones which are left out are small states like the seven north eastern states, Goa etc.
In the same chapter, CAG says that the revenue receipts grew by 25.66 percent over the previous year and Interest payments as a percentage of revenue receipts as well as revenue expenditure declined from 22.36 per cent and 23.71 per cent in 2006-07 to 18.38 per cent and 16.76 per cent in 2010-11respectively.
Wait a minute. As per some of the naysayers, Gujarat Government is neck deep in debt. Conventional wisdom says, if a person is neck deep in debt, his interest payouts should be actually increasing year on year. But the CAG report says the interest payouts in case of Gujarat government is decreasing year on year. So who is right? Somebody who utters rubbish or the one who audits the finances of the state government and then publishes a report????
In the same chapter in a table given by CAG it is very clear that Development expenditure, Capital Expenditure, Social Sector Expenditure, Educational Expenditure and Health Care Expenditure carried out by Gujarat are far higher than the other General Category States. This clearly shows that the government knows it priorities. CAG very specifically says “Increased priority to physical capital formation which will further increase the prospects of the State by creating durable assets.”
This is more important. Modi is spending money on actually creating assets for the state unlike the huge burden the Central government has put the country through its NREGA scheme.
One more lie nailed. Simple said “The state govt recently admitted that they can supply only 8hours of electricity contrary to nonsense claims of 24 hours.”. However, in a WRITTEN reply to the State Assembly, the Gujarat Power Minister Saurabh Patel has said that against a demand of 40,793 million units, the state had produced 43,848 million units and it has sold excess power to other states”.
Again who is right and who is wrong? If the statement as given by the minister was wrong, the Congress in assembly would have created a huge issue. They kept their mouths shut because they knew that Gujarat is one state where there is power supply 24 hours.
Infact speaking on the occasion of Business Standard’s Businessman of the Year Award Function, Modi has said that in other states Continuous power supply becomes news whereas in Gujarat people have taken the power supply for granted. Only power cuts becomes news!!!
I have lots more to add. But then this much info is sufficient to say that Modi is the right person to become the PM of this country.
10 April 2012 at 7:33 pm
So the more the media demonizes narendra modi, the more he becomes famous. lol
IMO, he will probably become the first dalit PM of india
11 April 2012 at 12:53 am
Great Post Anitha !!
Now that SIT has declared Modi as innocent in the Gulbarg case and has formally asked the SC to close the case on Modi, the psuedo secular media will have heart burn all over again and teesta and gang will furiously look for fresh non existent issues to pin on Modi
11 April 2012 at 6:35 pm
As expected, there is not a whiff of news on the clean chit given by the SIT to NaMo in Churumuri. I am not surprised. I would have been surprised had there been a mention of this.
Thats another topic for another day.
Have you noticed the hit and scoot tactics used by the sickulars and liberals???? They rant and rave and rant and rave, with utter lies ( Hello, anyone remember the ghastly incident of a pregnant woman getting raped and the foetus ripped open by the blood thirsty hindus which was repeated ad nauseum by Teesta and her gang, which later was proved to be completely false??).
Why do they do it this way? Because for a long time in the history of India, the only voice which was heard was that of leftists, liberals and sickularists. The state owned media never gave platform to anyone else to air their views. The control the government had on media was so total that very few dared to antagonise the powers that be and newspapers were also out of bounds for the saner voices.
Net result, they perfected the art of uttering total lies & getting away with it. When, by chance, someone confronted them with data, facts and figures to disprove what they have been uttering, either they were branded as right wing lunatics or plainly lunatics, who did not deserve to be given response. Silence greeted them. Not because people who presented the other side of the story were wrong, it was the opposite.
Now take the latest issue of CAG report on NaMo and his government. Barring a few noises by the Congress, where is this issue?? There was no issue in the first place. The media took few soundbytes out of context and made it sound like this government had indulged in corruption of monumental scale. But once the entire report was available to ordinary folks, they realised that their conceit would not work and kept their mouths shut.
If NaMo cannot be the face of India, we the nation will be at a loss. But then, dont we have the track record of always chosing the second best when it mattered??? I mean, can anyone imagine what we would have become had Patel been chosen over Nehru way back when we got independence?
15 April 2012 at 8:42 pm
Modi is an authoritarian and a totalitarian,Modi is a bachelor,he is a strict vegetarian and do not drink smoke or womanise ,he belongs to a lower caste community thats why so many A/c arm chair pundits hates him.
17 April 2012 at 9:22 pm
Contrary to popular beliefs, modi is a jain. Though like many people in india, he praises other gods which are part of indian religions. He actually belongs to a caste of vegetable sellers which is a part of the BC caste.
20 April 2012 at 10:06 am
Sri Simple Sir,
Today CNN IBN has reported that Gujarat Government is giving 24 hours electricity supply to over 18000 villages. To quote verbatim from the report “As the hot summer triggers increased use of electricity, load shedding and power cuts in rest of the country, the power-surplus Gujarat is sitting pretty, defining the season differently. Gujarat has emerged as the largest solar power maker in India with more than 18,000 villages of the state receiving 24-hour electricity.”
Sometime back I had also quoted the written statement of Guajarat Power minister in the assembly which almost said the same thing.
Imagine, if Modi can do this wonder to the whole of India, how blessed our people will be!!!
21 April 2012 at 4:31 am
Modi will be confined to Gujarat, in spite of the wet dreams of cheddis.The rest of India is not ready for fascism yet.
24 April 2012 at 11:53 am
Guajarat gets world’s FIRST Canal Top Solar Power Plant. The plant has generated 200,000 unites of clean power since it was commissioned two months back.
The canal top power plants are a huge blessing to the land starved states since it eliminates the need to acquire huge tracts of land needed to set up solar power plant. Not only that, the canal top solar power plant also helps in reducing the water evaporation through heat.
And this can happen only in the state of the Visionary Leader NaMo. In my last post I had written about the uninterrupted power supply to the villages of Gujarat. And now with this unique canal top power plant, Gujarat is surely going to become more POWERFUL!!! (Pun intended)
NaMo becoming Prime Minister may be wet dream of nationalists, but certainly it is the kind of nightmare anti nationalists and sickularists would like to avoid at any cost!!! What say AG??? LOL
12 June 2012 at 10:13 pm
Simple make way for Namo or perish jai Ho Modiraj he will undo the anti Hindu leftist work done by Nehru !!
9 August 2012 at 11:27 pm
some stupid people indian and outside india live in a dream world of their brains, people like MAD fareed zakaria, burkha dutt and rajdeep sardesai, to name a few, are always on the bandwagon of downgrading SHRI NARENDRA MODI, for what reasons i think only known to them, i am pretty sure if they do not talk negative about MODI, they would not be able to make their livelihood, but the sad part is, rather aiming for a BETTER INDIA and supporting NARENDRA MODI in his quest for a proud and better INDIA, people are just out their to BREAK INDIA and US INDIANS.
21 January 2013 at 8:02 am
Zakaria on CNN. Ek karela dusre neem chadhah. Bravo.
18 February 2013 at 11:05 am
The writer is rightht in this way : the present face of india that WAS bharat, is one of sleeze and corruption, of hypocracy of secul;arism with dogma groups getting unjust prominence . Now Modi will certainly change this face provided he sticks to his present convictions, he can bring the face of india into its prestine glory of the sages( note indias ancient sages were not casteist). the evergrren hindu way of life . thet is life style of all those on other side of sind were charecterized by inquirt for truth and that will prevail, wrongs will be changed; there will be no dogma like ” my gad is gad” etc secondly let every bloke remember always -without hindu way of life dominating this land will become dogmatic, there will be no progress in any field only coercion