Why I Killed Gandhi by Nathuram Vinayak Godse- must read

this may be a repeat but read on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti

 

Subject: WHY I KILLED GANDHI by NATHURAM VINAYAK GODSE Gandhiji’s assassin, Nathuram Godse’s Final Address to the Court. WHY I KILLED GANDHI – Nathuram Godse’s Final Address to the Court. Nathuram Godse was arrested immediately after he assassinated Gandhiji, based on a F. I. R. filed by Nandlal Mehta at the Tughlak Road Police staton at Delhi . The trial, which was held in camera, began on May 27, 1948 and concluded on February 10, 1949. He was sentenced to death. An appeal to the Punjab High Court, then in session at Simla, did not find favour and the sentence was upheld. The statement that you are about to read is the last made by Godse before the Court on the May 5, 1949. Such was the power and eloquence of this statement that one of the judges, G. D. Khosla, later wrote, “I have, however, no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an overwhelming majority” WHY I KILLED GANDHI Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession. I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakiya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England , France , America and Russia . Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the moulding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done. All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India , one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan , my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well. Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them.. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day. In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relationsincluding the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action. In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India . It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them. The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way. Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible. Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India . It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India , Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani.. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India . His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus. From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947. Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ – whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled with direful anger. One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan , there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi. Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan . People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building. After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi. I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.

Why MODIfied India will give jitters to alienated Bharatwasis?

Subject: Why MODIfied India will give jitters to alienated Bharatwasis?

Modi: Enemy at the Gates

Modi has arrived and arrived in style, notwithstanding the bombastic resistance from the Congress and their paid agents in the BJP and Media. Delhi is finally on NaMo’s radar and his troops can see the domes of South Block, which he will hopefully occupy by May 2014, if not earlier.

The political career of the senior BJP leadership is over. They did not see the writing on the wall and have now been removed by their cadres. The BJP President, Rajnath Singh, handled it well, but in hindsight, his efforts were completely unnecessary. The lesson for the future is to let the leadership come out through open internal elections where the village, district and the state level leaders vote. Had there been a contest to choose the PM candidate, it is evident that Modi would have easily vanquished the rest. Unanimity is not required. This is true democracy.

The Congress is notably jittery. During Modi’s recent visit to Jaipur, the Rajasthan CM had the electric supplies shut so that the village folk did not see the live telecast. Their impending doom will now translate into incoherent actions. Where in the world has anyone ever heard of an opposition leader, who is only a state CM, being discussed thoroughly be it TV, print media, cocktail circuits, vegetable vendors, taxi drivers etc. NaMo is taking away 80% of their time. Nobody wastes time on the ruling dispensation. Does anybody even discuss MMS, PC, SG, RG etc? The discussions on them are generally negative and the junta only wants to know if they are likely to go to jail.

From the Aam Admi’s point of view, NaMo had made an important statement on a Zee TV program “Kahiye Janab”. He stated: “*Na mein kahta hoon, na kisi ko kahne deta hoon*”. No wonder, the levels of corruption in Gujarat is comparable to that of Singapore.

Modi at the gates of Delhi augurs well for the Indian State.
a) Sycophancy and nepotism will soon be an era of the past.
b) Good bye to vote bank politics.
c) Bureaucrats will fall in line.
d) NGOs who operate from garages of Lutyens Delhi will have to move to safe havens in Congress ruled states.
e) Many newspapers will die. The advertising budget in Gujarat was reduced by 80%.
Expect the same by the Modi Government.
f) The Armed Forces will get their much cherished “Political Control”. Issues will be solved pronto before
any soldier can say “Jack Robinson”.
g) Along with Swamy and Jethmalani, most of the black money stowed abroad will be brought back. The Rupee will challenge the Dollar.
h) NO Income Tax as per Swamy’s statement.
i) Terrorists will now have a “maut ka saudagar”. The Congress has made India the most dangerous country after Iraq and Afghanistan.
j) The Pakis and Chinese may have already gone into a huddle.
k) Modi has a good memory. The Americans had better watch out.
l) J&K will finally be Indian Territory. Enough of Article 70.

An eminent General recently wrote an article “Death of Politics”. I disagree. Modi will bring in clean politics. He has no dependents or damaad to speak of. A bright future awaits a *Modi*fied India.

Author/ Source not known
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Lets us work and make our…
Government – Proactive
Media – Reactive
Political Parties – Elective
Voters – Selective
Crowds – Constructive
Youth – Creative

MMS, the closet spiritualist

The widely respected economist and scholar has been credited with heralding a new era of economic liberalisation in India with his laissez-faire policy. Yet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been at the receiving end of late. Criticisms include use of adjectives like “ineffective”, “pusillanimous” and “understated” to “spineless” and “puppet PM.”

“It astonishes me that Manmohan Singh should talk so little and be so barely visible that we might be forgiven for thinking thatIndia has an imaginary Prime Minister,” wrote a celebrity-journalist in his blog a few months ago.

It is difficult to believe that the architect of India’s laissez-faire could be all that vulnerable, naive or “imaginary”. The non-committal, non-controversial and understated disposition that characterises the gentleman could be a veneer that conceals a far more evolved and enlightened approach towards his duties and responsibilities – in the current situation, as prime minister – that enables him to navigate life without much ado.

In a speech he gave at a public conclave held in the Capital, Manmohan Singh said: “I do not want India to be a super power; I just want India to stand in the comity of nations.” So he doesn’t seem to display any signs of being power-needy.

Perhaps he has no dark side, then. Manmohan Singh could, in all likelihood, be an advanced spiritualist who perceives himself as having absolutely no stake – neither in the country, in the species nor in the planet! He also shows great resilience in adverse situations, whether in a political, social or economic exigency. To be detached like a yogi even while living among fellow beings in the rough and tumble of politics and economics is no easy task. Guru Nanak described such a one as ‘raj mein jog’ – that is, the one who can achieve enlightenment in civic life. He also said: “The lotus in the water is not wet / Nor the water-fowl in the stream. / If a man would live, but by the world untouched, / Meditate and repeat the name of the Lord Supreme.”

Extolling the attributes of the one who has cultivated studied non-attachment to highs and lows, Guru Tegh Bahadur sang thus: “…He who has neither gluttony in his heart / Nor vanity nor attachment with worldly things, / He whom nothing moves, / Neither good fortune nor ill, / Who cares not for the world’s applause, / Nor its censure, / Who ignores every wishful fantasy / And accepts what comes his way as it comes… / He knows the righteous path…”

Some might conclude that Manmohan Singh’s proclivity for remaining a ‘Nirlep Narayan’ makes him out to be one without a stake and therefore he has nothing to win or lose. If he makes promises, they’re bound to be ones that concern issues that would get resolved if not now, later and if not later, even later, perhaps… or not.

It might not be in order to compare Manmohan Singh with King Janaka, who is the only one Krishna praises in the Bhagwad Gita for having transcended everything even while administering a kingdom. However, there are tantalizing similarities between the PM’s studied ‘indifference’ and the non-attachment and transcendence of someone like Janaka, that leads one to conclude that Manmohan Singh is laissez-faire by nature, in the spiritual sense.

How will all this pan out if Manmohan Singh and his party lose the next round of elections? He might just quote from the Ashtavakra Gita: “From one lifetime to another, kingdoms, sons, wives, appearances and pleasures to which you were attached have been lost… For innumerable births have you undertaken work, painful and exacting, with your body, mind and speech. Hence find rest at least now.”

 

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Narayani Ganesh is a senior editor with The Times of India. She writes on issues concerning the environment, science and technology, travel and tourism, heritage, philosophy, and health. She edits The Speaking Tree Sunday newspaper and daily column of that name, and is a leader writer with the Times of India opinion pages.

 

“An History of India as it Happened (not as it was written)”:

 “An History of India as it Happened (not as it was written)”:

CHAPTER 6 : NEGATIONISM AND THE MUSLIM CONQUESTS (Part II)
It is not only Indian historians, who are negationists, but also western historians and India-specialists. We know that the first historians of Indian – the Britishers – twisted India’s history to suit their theory that they had come to civilize a race which was not only inferior to them, but also was supposed to have been heavily influenced in its philosophies or arts by European invaders – read the Aryans or Alexander the Great. But what is less known is that today many western historians not only still cling to these old outdated theories, but also actually more or less will fully mislead the general European public, who is generally totally ignorant and takes these “knowledgeable” comments about India as the absolute truth. One example is France, which has a long tradition of Indianists, who devote their time and life to the study of India. The main school of historic research in France is called the CNRS (National Center of Social Research), which has a very important South Asia section, of which India, of course, is the main component. Unfortunately, many of these India-specialists are not only Left-leaning, that is they are very close to the ideas of the JNU historians, with whom they are anyway in constant contact, but are also specialists of the Mogul period of India history, which is to say that they are sympathetic to Islam’s point of view on India, while they often consider Hindus as fanatics…

Take for instance one of the recent Indian History books published in France “Histoire de l’Inde moderne” (1994 Fayard / Paris), the authors (there are seven of, all famous Indianists), having subscribed to the usual Aryan invasion theory, accuse Shiva “to incarnate obscure forces” (Introduction III) and of course use the word “fanatics” to describe the Hindus who brought down the Ayodhya mosque. Basically, the book does an apology of he moghol period in India; while keeping quiet about all their crimes. In the chapter dealing for instance with Vijaynagar, the last great empire of free India, which symbolized a Hindu Renaissance after nine centuries of savage Muslim conquests, one cannot but perceive the enmity of the authors for Hinduism. The two young princes, founder of Vijaynagar who were converted by force to Islam when in captivity, are accused of “duplicity”, because they reverted back to Hinduism as soon as they were free; then the French historians highlight the “ambition of Brahmins, who used these two young princes to reconquer the power that at been lost at the hands of the conquering Muslims” (page 54); the book then mentions “the unquenchable exigencies of the (Hindu) central power in Vijaynagar”, forgetting to say that that for the first time in centuries, Hindus could practice freely their faith, that they were not killed, their women raped, their children taken as slaves and converted to Islam. And all this to finally sum up in seven words the terrible end of Vijaynagar, which has left a wound in the Hindu psyche even up to today: “looting and massacres lasted for three days”…

But the authors of “Histoire de l’Inde moderne” do not only run down Hindus, they also glorify Muslims, particularly the Moghols. Babur for instance, this monster who killed hundreds of thousands of Hindus and razed thousands of temples becomes at their hands a gentle hero: “ Babur did not like India and preferred to isolate himself in the exquisite gardens he had devised, with their geometrical design, their crossed canals, which evoked to him the rivers of paradise”. Oh, God what a sensitive poet! And to make it sound even more glorious, the author adds: “there he translated a manual of Koranic law and a Sufi treaty of morals”. Oh, what a saint and lover of humanity… Aurangzeb, the cruelest of the Moghul emperors, has also the full sympathies of the authors: “Aurangzeb seems to have concentrated on himself the hatred of militant Hindus, who attribute to him systematic destruction of temples and massive conversion drives. But this Manichean impression has to be seriously countered (page 126)”… Unfortunately for the authors, as we have seen earlier, Aurangzeb was not only proud of what he was doing to the Hindus, but he had his scribes note each deed down for posterity… In 2006 the same authors published “L’Inde contemporaine”, with the same prejudices and bias against Hindus and their political parties.

These French Indianists have also a tradition of speaking against the BJP, which they have always labeled as “fundamentalist” and dangerous for the “secular” fabric of India, although the BJP has been in power for quite a few years and nothing dramatic has happened to the secular fabric of India. The problem is that these Indianists not only write lengthy and pompous articles in France’s main newspapers, such as Left-leaning Le Monde, explaining to the ignorant reader why is India on the point of exploding because of fanatic Hindus, or how the Harijans in India are still the most downtrodden people on earth (this is why when President Narayanan visited France in April 2000, all the French newspapers chose to only highlight that he was an untouchable and that religious minorities in India were persecuted, nearly provoking a diplomatic incident between France and India), but unfortunately they also advise the French government, who like his citizens, is often shamefully ignorant and uninterested by India. This is why, although there has been a lot of sympathy for the French in India because of their tolerant response to the Indian nuclear tests of 1998 (whereas the whole western world reacted hysterically by imposing absurd sanctions), France has not yet bothered to capitalize on this sympathy and has not managed to realize that India is the ideal economic alternative to a very volatile China.

It would be nice to say that Indian journalists are not blind to this influence of French Indianists and the adverse impact it has on Indo-French relations, but when Christophe Jaffrelot, for instance who wrote many a nasty books on Hindu fundamentalism and is most responsible for the bad image the BJP in France, comes to India to release the English translation of his book, he is feted by the Press corps and all kind of laudatory reviews are printed in the Indian Press. So much for secularism in India.

And, ultimately, it is a miracle that Hinduism survived the onslaught of Muslim savagery; it shows how deep was her faith, how profound her karma, how deeply ingrained her soul in the hearts of her faithfuls. We do not want to point a finger at Muslim atrocities, yet they should not be denied and their mistakes should not be repeated today. But the real question is: Can Islam ever accept Hinduism? We shall turn towards the Sage, the yogi, who fought for India’s independence, accepting the Gita’s message of karma of violence when necessary, yet who had a broad vision that softened his words: “You can live with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is “I will not tolerate you? How are you going to have unity with these people?…The Hindu is ready to tolerate; he is open to new ideas and his culture and has got a wonderful capacity for assimilation, but always provided India’s central truth is recognised.. (Sri Aurobindo India’s Rebirth 161,173)
Or behold this, written on September 1909: “Every action for instance which may be objectionable to a number of Mahomedans, is now liable to be forbidden because it is likely to lead to a breach of peace. And one is dimly beginning to wonder whether worship in Hindu temples may be forbidden on that valid ground (India’s Rebirth p. 55). How prophetic! Sri Aurobindo could not have foreseen that so many Muslim countries would ban Rushdie’s book and that Hindu processions would often be forbidden in cities, for fear of offending the Muslims. Sri Aurobindo felt that sooner or later Hindus would have to assert again the greatness of Hinduism.

And here we must say a word about monotheism, for it is the key to the understanding of Islam. Christians and Muslims (and Jews) have always harped on the fact that their religions sprang-up as a reaction against the pagan polytheist creeds, which adored many Gods. « There is only one real God they said (ours), all the rest are just worthless idols ». This « monotheism versus polytheism business » has fuelled since then the deep, fanatic, violent and murderous zeal of Islam against polytheist religions, particularly against Hinduism, which is the most comprehensive, most widely practiced of all them. It even cemented an alliance of sorts between the two great monotheist religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, witness the Britishers’ attitude in India, who favoured Indian Muslims and Sikhs against the Hindus; or the King of Morocco who, even though he is one of the most moderate Muslim leaders in the world, recently said in an interview: « we have no fight with Christianity, our battle is against the Infidel who adores many gods ».
But as we have seen earlier, Hinduism is without any doubt the most monotheist religion in the World, for it recognises divine unity in multiplicity. It does not say: « there is only one God, which is Mohammed. If you do not believe in Him I will kill you ». It says instead: « Yes Mohammed is a manifestation of God, but so is Christ, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Confucius ». This philosophy, this way of seeing, which the Christians and Muslims call « impious », is actually the foundation for a true monotheist understanding of the world. It is because of this « If you do not recognize Allah (or Christ), I will kill you », that tens of millions of Hindus were slaughtered by Arabs and other millions of South Americans annihilated by the Christians. And ultimately the question is: Are the Muslims of today ready to accept Hinduism ? Unfortunately no. For Muslims all over the world, Hinduism is still the Infidel religion « par excellence ». This what their religion tell them, at every moment, at every verse, at the beginning of each prayer : « Only Allah is great ». And their mollahs still enjoin them to go on fight « jihad » to deliver the world of the infidels. And if the armies of Babar are not there any longer; and if it is not done any more to kill a 100.000 Hindus in a day, there is still the possibility of planting a few bombs in Coimbatore, Mumbai or Varanasi, of fuelling separatisms in the hated land and eventually to drop a nuclear device, which will settle the problem once and for all. As to the Indian Muslim, he might relate to his Hindu brother, for whatever he says, he remains an Indian, nay a Indu; but his religion will make sure that he does not forget that his duty is to hate the Infidel. This is the crux of the problem today and the riddle if Islam has to solved, if it wants to survive in the long run.

We will never be able to assess the immense physical harm done to India by the Muslim invasions. Even more difficult is to estimate the moral and the spiritual damage done to Hindu India. But once again, the question is not of vengeance, or of reawakening old ghosts, but of not repeating the same mistakes. Unfortunately, the harm done by the Muslims conquest is not over. The seeds planted by the Moghols, by Babar, Mahmud, or Aurangzeb, have matured: the 125 million Indian Muslims of today have forgotten that they were once peaceful, loving Hindus, forcibly converted to a religion they hated. And they sometimes take-up as theirs a cry of fanaticism which is totally alien to their culture. Indeed, as Sri Aurobindo once said: “More than 90% of the Indian Muslims are descendants of converted Hindus and belong as much to the Indian nation as the Hindu themselves”…(Rebirth of India, p.237) The embryo of secession planted by the Mahomedans, has also matured into a poisonous tree which has been called Pakistan and comes back to haunt India through three wars and the shadow of a nuclear conflict embracing South Asia. And in India, Kashmir and Kargil are reminders that the Moghol cry for the house of Islam in India is not yet over.

One of the main reasons I have decided to build in Pune a Museum of Indian History, dedicated to the great Shivaji Maharaj (who is depicted in Indian History books as a petty chieftain and a plunderer), is that it will not be enough to rewrite Indian History in books, it will also have to be done in STONE. Please see our website fact-india.com and contribute financially, if you can, to the making of that Museum (we have US, UK and Indian tax exemption). We are also looking for IT persons to donate time to do presentations, animations & GAMES based on the lives of India’s Hindu heroes: Shivaji Maharaj, Maharana Pratap, Rani of Jhansi, Ahilyabhai, the Vijaynagar empire, etc. You can contact me at fgautier@rediffmail.com

courtesy  Francois Gautier, a french author and journalist, who has been covering India and South Asia for the last 35 years. All throughout his reporting years, he noticed that most western correspondents were projecting the problems, warts and shortcomings of India. Hence when Francois Gautier got a journalism prize (Natchiketa Award of excellence in journalism) from the Prime Minister of India, he used the prize money to mount a series of conferences & exhibitions highlighting the magnificence of India and the threats to its sovereignty.

Govt hikes dearness allowance by 10 per cent, to benefit 80 lakh govt employees – Business Today

Govt hikes dearness allowance by 10 per cent, to benefit 80 lakh govt employees – Business Today.

INDIA TODAY IN CARTOON

 INDIA TODAY

HOW TO REVIVE INDIAN ECONOMY WITHIN 3 MONTHS?????

 

How to lift the Rupee from its dumps..

Every news channel, every newspaper, every economist worth his/her salt has a panacea to stop the rupee tailspin and bring back some sanity. All, either shooting in the dark or vague, wishy-washy solutions – the TOI, the “world’s largest paper”, so the high priest of journalism grandly recently wrote the country needs ‘structural changes” without pinpointing what they are.

Amidst all these cacophony, only HT’s Chanakya (Sunday, 25/8/13) gives concrete steps that, to one, seem to work…

“This situation calls for a change in script. What we need are big bang measure that take effect immediately – as opposed to stpes that will begin to bear fruit six months later – to lift sentiment. Traditional monetary measures have failed and incremental steps to stop dollar outflows have proved counter-productive.

First, ban gold and silver imports (for, say, six to nine months). This will tell the world that India is serious about addressing its current account deficit problem. (Me: Gold import now attracts custom duty at about 30%. This won’t work, given an average Indian’s appetite for gold regardless of its price. By banning imports, the price in the country may further escalate.So what? Let the Indians be ready pay for it)

Raise petrol and diesel prices by Rs.4-5 per litre to help the government to pare its deficit.

Set aside $25-30 billion from India’s foreign exchange reserves to defend the rupee against speculators. (Me: This is a suggestion put forward by Montek Ahluwalia, the Dy. Planning Commission Chairman).

Settle the Vodafone tax case to signal to the world that their investments here will not be subject to whimsical and politically-motivated policy changes. (Me: absolutely spot-on. The proposal to tax Vodafone billions of dollars on their acquisition of the then cellphone brand, Hutch, from the Hongkong-based company was the single most important factor that stopped MNCs in their tracks from making further investments in the country. Our policy makers and/or the tax sleuths are singularly myopic)

Force real estate companies to cut prices to make housing affordable. This sector has linkages with more than 200 industries. And if it revives, it will set off a virtuous cycle by generating demand in hundreds of feeder industries. (Me: the real-estate companies have been exceedingly greedy and been jacking up prices every two months so much so flats have become unaffordable to middle-class buyers.)

Forget all above suggestions:

Now read few suggestions from me

 

1. Declare Economic Emergency

2. close all virtual markets trading in commodities, currencies. forex markets with immediate effect. No trading to be allowed for at least six months. Forex to be released to only genuine requirements.

3. Seal all foreign accounts of all the politicians and businessmen and declare the same as National property.

4. Declare death penalty for economic offences.
 

it would be much simpler than that if India brings back all the money stashed outside by politicians and businessman from foreign countries making Indian Rupee dearer and hard for them to save their own currencies. Will Mr PC or our great economist PM Shri MMS do it?

 

WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT NARENDRA MODI AS PM IN 2014 ? PL. READ

 

Why I shall support Modi in 2014. By .By Avay Shukla – Retired IAS o

Whatever your political inclination , this article is worth a read ..
>>
>>TODAY as we are poised to look ahead, and forward, with HOPE to a better INDIA …
>>
>>Why I shall Support Modi in 2014…
>>By Avay Shukla – Retired IAS officer
>>
>>
>>I have been getting more and more worried over the last year or so at the direction( or lack of it) in which our country is headed. It is
>> like a runaway plane falling from the skies and we are plummeting past one alarming indicator after another– inflation,economic slowdown, falling rupee,complete break-down of law and order, ever emboldened Naxalites, total internalization of corruption, an administration that answers to no one,complete lack of governance, cronyism on a scale never seen before, a brazen lack of accountability, public  intimi-dation of constitutional authorities, a judicial system that has all but collapsed, environmental disasters that no one knows how to cope with, complete paraplegia of decision-making at all levels in government, appeasement of †minorities†and Other sections that are reachingridiculous and dangerous levels, dynastic politics at the Centre and the states reminiscent of the Mughal era…….
>>
>>I could go on and on but after some time the mind becomes numb and registers only one emotion – IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE. Another five years of this and we would be well on our way to becoming a failed state and joining the ranks of Pakistan, Haiti and Somalia.
>>
>>The general elections of 2014 offers us one last chance to redeem ourselves. I have been on this mortal coil for 62 years and have never voted for the BJP but have, after much thought, decided to support MODI in 2014. This is considered a heresy in most neo-liberal circles in India today but we have to go beyond mere labelling and stereotypingto understand my decision.
>>
>>But before I go on to Mr. Modi himself, let us review the context in which this decision has been taken. The state of the country is self evident in para one above.
>>
>>
>>The next question then
is: What are the alternatives or choices that we as voters have?
>>
>>The Congress will only perpetuate the present mess-even more worrying and dangerous is the fact that, were the Congress to return to power, it would consider it to have a renewed mandate to carry on as before.
>>
>>In any case, who in the country would lead the Congress- a reluctant dynastic or an ageing economist who has discovered his true skills lie in politics, or a backroom puppeteer? Or, God forbid, all three? ( Seriously, this is a possibility- after all not one of these three want to shoulder sole accountability, and they may reason that if a dual power center can ensure two terms, a triple may be good for even more!) No, to my mind the Congress is not an option.
>>
>>Who else, then?
>>
>>Well, if we scrape the bottom of the barrel assiduously we will come up with Mamta Banerjee[ TMC], Mulayam Yadav[ SP], Nitish Kumar[JDU], Naveen Patnaik[ BJD], Jayalalitha[ AIADMK], Sharad Pawar[ NCP] and Mayawati(BSP). There is no need to discuss their achievements or ideologies at a national level (incidentally, not even one of them has a remotely national outlook or ideology since they cannot see beyond pandering shamelessly to the vote banks in their respective states) because they are state (not even regional) leaders and none of them can hope to be Prime Minister on the strength of their own Parties.
>>
>>They all realize this, of course, hence the idea which periodically emerges like a skin rash, of a Third or Federal Front. This didn’t work even when a Third Front could agree on a leader (as in the case of I.K. Gujral or Deve Gowda). How on earth will it work when every one of the state leaders mentioned above feels that he or she has been reincarnated precisely to become the Prime Minister of India?
>>
>>The negotiations for choosing a PM (if the Front comes up with the numbers, that is) will resemble one of those WWF fights where about six hunks are put into the ring to beat the daylights out of each other till one of them is left standing to claim the crown. I cannot see all of them agreeing on even one policy issue, whether it is reservations, industrial stimulus, foreign policy, dis-investtment, environmental protection, center-state relations etc. If they come to power at the Center, the paraplegia of today will become quadriplegia tomorrow.
>>Fortunately, in any case, they can never muster the 274 seats required-it will be difficult for them to reach even hundred even if they do very well in their states.
>>
>>So a Third Front is a
non-starter, and voting for any of these parties will only help the Congress by dividing the anti-congress vote. [You will have noticed that I have not mentioned Mr. Karat of the CPM. That’s because he’s become like a flat bottle of Coca-Cola – earlier he was all fizz and no substance: now even the fizz has gone].
>>
>>That leaves only the BJP, with its historical baggage of the RSS, Hindutva, Ramjanmbhoomi (by the way, this baggage also includes five years of exemplary governance under Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004) – perhaps enough baggage to dissuade me from voting for the party. Except that this time the BJP has an add-on: Narendra Modi. And that, to my mind, adds value to the party and makes the crucial difference.
>>
>>Modi has been reviled ad-nausea m by the “secular†parties and sections of the elite media for many years for the 2002 riots in Gujarat, by the former not because of any love for the Muslims (as I hope to show later) but simply in order to appropriate the Muslim vote, and by the latter because they have to keep whipping somebody in order to get their TRPs – in India only extremes succeed. Modi has been tried and condemned by them not on the basis of facts but by an opportunistic mixture of innuendo, presumption, speculation, half-truths, hear say. Look at the facts. There was a horrendous orgy of killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 where about 2000 of them were massacred. Some of Modi’s ministers and many BJP/ VHP workers were involved: quite a few of them have also been convicted, the trials of many still go on.
>>
>>The Supreme Court set up at least three SITs and is itself monitoring the investigations. Many PILs have been filed in the SC and the High Court accusing Modi of master-minding these massacres. In not a single case has either the Supreme Court, the High Court or the SITs found any evidence of Modi’s personal complicity.
>>
>>Yes, they have held that he could have controlled the situation better- but nothing beyond that in-spite of ten years of frenetic drum beating and sustained vilification.
>>
>>Now look at the other set
of facts. Under Modi’s current watch, perhaps for the first time in India, people have been actually convicted for communal rioting and murder- more than 200 convictions, with about 130 of them sentenced to life imprison-ment. All the communal massacres in India since Independence have not
resulted in even one tenth of these convictions.
>>
>>Modi’s government has to be given some credit for this: yes, the investigations were carried out by the SIT and not by Modi’s police; yet Modi could, if he was so inclined, have interfered covertly in the whole process by asking his officials not to cooperate, by intimidating witnesses, influencing judges, conveying hints to prosecutors- something which, as we all know too well, governments of all political hues in India have mastered.
>>
>>Modi could have done what the Congress has done so successfully in Delhi in three other high-profile cases being monitored by the Supreme Court- the Commonwealth Games Scam, the 2G case, and Coalgate ( not to mention also the Sikh massacres of 1984): have these cases made any headway? has wrong-doing been proved in a single instance? has anyone been convicted?
>>
>>No, Sir, these investigations will drag on and on till they are lost in the mists of time. Supreme Court monitoring cannot ensure justice unless the govt. of the day allows its agencies to function – it is to Modi’s credit that he did so allow them.
>>
>>Compare this with the manner in which the police in Delhi have been emas- culated to protect some senior Congress leaders in the 1984 Sikh carnage – everyone in Delhi knows, even after 27 long years, that their hands are dipped in blood, but the evidence will never reach the courts; the recent acquittal of Sajjan Kumar only confirms this.
>>
>>The biggest stigmata on Modi is the charge that he is †communal†and not  secular†.
>>
>>All (non-NDA) political parties never tire of tom-tomming this from the roof-tops and consider this their trump card to ensure that he will never achieve his Grand-slam at the centre. But after eleven years this is beginning to wear thin and people are beginning to question the assumptions behind this charge and even the definition of what constitutes †communal†and “secular.â€
>>
>>Nirad Choudhry had long ago given his opinion that India is the Continent of Circe where humans are turned into beasts-it is also the graveyard of the Oxford Dictionary where the meanings of words are turned on their heads to suit political exigencies! So †communal† today means a Hindu who is not ashamed of saying he is a Hindu, and † secular†means a Hindu who panders to other religions in order to get their votes at the next elections!
>>
>>By this inverse definition Modi is considered communal- notwithstanding that not a single Hindu- Muslim riot has taken place in Gujarat under his watch since 2002, notwithstanding that the BJP got 17% of the Muslim vote in the Assembly elections in the state earlier this year, notwithstanding that the party won five of the eight seats which had a dominant Muslim voter base, notwith-standing that the average Muslim in Gujarat is much better off economically  than his counterpart in Assam, UP or Bihar (headed by †secular† parties).
>>
>>Compare this with the record of the Samajwadi party in UP where more than a hundred communal riots have taken place in less than two years, with the Congress in Assam where hundreds of Muslims were butchered last year and at least three hundred thousand of them are still languishing in relief camps with no hope of ever returning to their villages, with the Congress ruled Maharashtra where hundreds of Muslims were killed with the active help of the police after the Bombay blasts. ( Needless to say there do not appear to have been any convictions in any of these pogroms). And MODI is communal?
>>
>>I am a Hindu but I stopped going into any temple twenty years ago because I was sickened by the rapacious behavior of their pundits. I am no longer a practicing Hindu in a public, ritualistic sense and frankly I don’t know how many of the religious beliefs I retain, but I still consider myself a Hindu because Hinduism is more than just a religion- it is a culture, a civilisation, a way of life.
>>
>>
>>But in the Kafkaesque India of today if you were to proclaim that you are a Hindu ( even though you have equal respect and regard for all other religions) you would be branded †communal†– this is what political discourse has been reduced to by our politicians. And being †secular†no longer means treating all religions equally: it means splintering society into a myriad †minorities†( another perversion of the Oxford Dictionary) and then pandering to such of them as suit you in your naked pursuit of power.
>>
>>In the process India has been converted into a complex jigsaw of minorities, castes, tribes, classes, sections and what have you. The British could have learnt plenty from us about Divide and Rule! But more and more right thinking people are beginning to question this recipe for disaster, and I am one of them.
>>
>>India is 80% Hindu- why should one then have to be apologetic about proclaiming that one is a Hindu ? We have been ruled and exploited and vandalized for eight hundred years by Muslims and for another two hundred years by Christians, and yet we have accorded these two religions a special status as †minorities†with privileges that the Hindus don’t have. Has any other country in the world ever displayed such a spirit of accommodation and egalitarianism? Is there a more secular civilisation in the world? And yet, a Hindu who says he is a Hindu is considered communal!
>>
>>Does a Hindu have to prove his secular credentials time and again by greater levels( or depths) of appeasement of other religions simply so that they can continue to be vote bank fodder for political parties? Modi has had the courage to raise these questions and is therefore being reviled by those political parties whose apple carts he is threatening to upset. But people are beginning to pay attention. Modi is not considered secular because he is proud to be a Hindu and refuses to give doles or concessions to any religious group( including Hindus, but that is conveniently glossed over) beyond what is provided in the constitution and the laws of the land. He believes this weakens the social fabric of the country and that even handed development is the best guarantee for equitable prosperity for all. He is not considered secular ( and instead is branded as communal) because he says publicly that he is proud to be a Hindu. And
has he done anything blatantly or provocatively pro-Hindu in the last ten years? There is not a single instance of this and yet he is vilified as communal and anti-minorities by the same party that presided over more than two hundred anti-Muslim riots in the seventies and eighties in Gujarat, that massacred 6000 Sikhs in 1984, that lit the fuse in Ayodhya by installing an icon of Ram in the mosque there, that failed to take any action when the Babri masjid was being razed to the ground! Modi has carefully distanced himself from any public support of Hindutva, has kept the VHP and the Bajrang Dal on a tight leash in Gujarat ever since he came to power there, and has even incurred the wrath of the RSS for not toeing the line on their purely religious agenda. It takes time, and some mistakes, to attain maturity; the Modi of today is not the Modi of 2002: then he was still in the pracharak mould of the RSS, inexperienced in
the exercise of power, lacking administrative experience. He has now developed into a politician with a vision, an administrator who has delivered to his people and caught the fancy of the entire corporate world in India and abroad. Rahul Gandhi has been around in politics for almost the same length of time but has still not progressed beyond his epiphanic perception that India is a bee-hive.
>>
>>Pause a while to honestly compare Modi’s qualities with his peers in the political firmament. His integrity is impeccable, both personal and vicarious. Even Mr. Manish Tewari has not been able to charge him on this score, and that’s saying something! I am not aware of a single major scam unearthed during his term( compare this with the Congress either in Maharashtra or at the Centre: the Congress has more skeletons in its cupboard than a graveyard does).
>>
>>Modi has no family to promote or to insure against inflation for the next hundred years( compare this with any other party leader, all of whom have given an entirely new meaning to the term †joint family†– brothers, uncles, wives, sons, sons-in-law, nephews-all happily and jointly looting the nation’s resources). Modi has a vision and a road map for the future and he has demonstrated in Gujarat that he can implement his vision.
>>
>>No other major leader of
the parties that are vilifying him comes even close to comparing with him in this respect – Manmohan Singh once had a vision but his unique concept of †coalition dharma†has ensured that he now cannot see, or hear, or talk; Rahul Gandhi cannot see beyond bee-hives and boats that rise with the tide, Sharad Pawar cannot see the woods for the sugar-cane stalks, Mulayam Singh has been fixated on the Prime Minister’s chair for so long that he has now started hallucinating; Nitish Kumar’s vision is a peculiar bi-focal  which  enables him to see only Muslims and OBCs; Navin Patnaik, being erudite and sophisticated must be having a vision but he has not deigned to share it with anyone yet; Mayawati cannot see beyond statues of herself and of elephants; and as for Mamta Banerjee, she is colour blind – she can only see red. Modi’s track record as an administrator inspires confidence in his ability to play a role at the
national level.
>>
>>He sets specific goals, provides the resources and then gives his bureaucrats a free hand to operate. He has ensured water availability to towns and to greater number of farmers, Gujarat now has 24X7 power and has even offered to sell power to other states.
>>Modi has realised long before his peers that future growth can only come from the manu-facturing sector since the past stimulus provided by the service sector is now bottoming out, and has prepared his state to attract capital: perennial road-blocks which have bedevilled other states – land acquisition, labour issues, law and order, lack of decision making, cronyism – have all been sorted out. It is no surprise then that Gujarat has been receiving the second highest amount of investment funds after Maharashtra.
>>His opponents, looking for anything to denigrate his achievements, cavil that Gujarat has always been a progressive state and no credit goes to Modi for all this. True, Gujarat (and Gujaratis) have always been entrepreneurial and progressive, but any economist can tell them that the higher you are on the performance scale, the more difficult it is to make incremental gains – and these gains Modi has been making year after year.
>>Gujarat has consistently been among the top five states in just about all economic, social and human development indicators, and far above the national figures.
>>Here are some figures I picked up in the Hindustan Times of June 12, 2013:
>>
>>[a] Infant Mortality Rate
>>                                     2005        2010
>>     Gujarat                      54              44
>>     Haryana                    60              48
>>     Orissa                         5               60
>>     INDIA                        58               47
>>
>>[b]  Access to Safe Drinking Water( in %)
>>                                      2002           2011
>>      Gujarat                    84.1            90.3
>>      Maharashtra           79.8             83.4
>>      Andhra                    80.1             90.5
>>      INDIA                      77.9             85.5
>>
>>[c]  Poverty Reduction ( in %)
>>                                     2004-5         2009-10
>>     Gujarat                    31.6               23
>>     Karnataka               33.3               23.6
>>     MP                          48.6               36.7
>>     Orissa                     57.2               37
>>     INDIA                      37.2               29.8
>>
>>[d]  Annual GDP increase( in %) from 2005-6 to 2012-13
>>     Gujarat                       10.3
>>     Uttarakhand               12.36
>>     MP                               8.82
>>     Maharashtra                9.97
>>     Delhi                          11.39
>>
>>Modi is no paragon of virtue. He is arrogant, does not allow a second rung of leadership to emerge, brooks no opposition, is impatient and authoritative, is not a consensus builder. But then we are not seeking to canonize a saint but looking for a political leader who can get this country out of the morass that its present stock of politicians has got us into. We are looking for someone who can be decisive rather than justify inaction under the garb of seeking an elusive † consensus†. We are looking for someone who has the courage to have a vision and the skills to translate it into reality. We are looking for someone who will work for the country and not for his †joint family†.
>>
>>We are looking for someone who can restore our identities as INDIANS and not merely as Brahmins or Scheduled castes or Muslims or Backward castes.
>>
>>We are looking for someone who will not pander to religions and be truly secular.
>>
>>And we are looking for someone who will not be ashamed to say that he is a Hindu in the land that gave birth to the most tolerant and enlightened religion this world has seen.
>>
>>Modi may fail- in fact, there are good chances that he will. But he at least promises change, whereas the others promise only more of the same.
>>
>>He offers us Hope. Shouldn’t he be given a chance?
>>===========================================================
>>** The author retired from the Indian Administrative Service in December 2010. He is a keen environmentalist and loves the mountains – he has made them his home._
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>–
>>  ZINDAGI DA KEE BHAROSA, KADDON PATAKA BOL JAYEE, so let us ENJOY
>>
>>”To fight the darkness do not draw your sword, light a candle”
>”You can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets”
>
>Note:
>If you  would like to forward this request to others, please do     Thank you.

 

Restore our faith, Mr. Prime Minister

this article is recd from a friend and is reproduced here. I am not claiming anything but just sharing this with you all. Special attention to my reader friends who have been guiding me on this. looking forward to your comments and suggestions

A WONDERFUL STRONG-WORDED ARTICLE FROM AJIT DAYAL OF EQUITY MASTER ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE ECONOMY , AND THE CAUSE FOR IT- LOSS OF FAITH IN THE GOVERNMENT-. HE GOES ON TO SAY THAT THIS RESTORATION OF FAITH IS A MUST FOR A GOOD SOLUTION  (AS SUGGESTED BY SRI. GURUMURTHY ji )OF USING OUR ‘LATENT GOLD’ (GOLD HELD BY THE GENERAL INDIAN PUBLIC) TO PLEDGE WITH THE GOVT IN EXCHANGE FOR A GOLD BOND, BUY US DOLLAR WITH THE GOLD , TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF BOP  AND THEREBY RESTORE HEALTH OF THE ECONOMY.  A VERY GOOD THOUGHT-PROVOKING ARTICLE. 

Restore our faith, Mr. Prime Minister

FROM The Honest Truth-BY AJIT DAYAL, EQUITY MASTER.

Dear Prime Minister:

In July 1991, as the Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government, you gave a long interview to the Economic Times justifying on why India needed to reform from the “license raj” days to a more open economy. That interview was, in many ways, a sort of admission of failure – without you or anyone in the Congress actually saying so – of the wealth destructive policies followed by successive Congress governments particularly under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. You and your colleagues in the then Dream Team were part of the “Cream Team” which had set India back by a few decades with myopic policies and acceptance of corruption. But, as the reforms of 1991 gripped our imagination, we were willing to forgive you for those past errors, even if they were unspoken. The one statement from you in those thousands of lines of rationale for a new way forward in the Economic Times interview which stuck in my head was “Investment is an act of faith”. The reforms of 1991 unleashed a huge outpouring of “faith” in you and in your party to lead us forward. 

Much has happened since July 1991.
From the great India Shining stories of your rivals in the BJP, to the Resurgent India and Incredible India battle cries of your own party, to the innumerable scams that have plagued India at the district, municipal, state, and federal level of government – across party lines.

India has grown from being a closed economy to one where its citizens can travel anywhere in the world and undertake an enterprise anywhere in the world.

The world, itself, has changed a lot and the monetary systems in the more open global financial markets have shown the immoral connectivity between big government and big financial firms.

Your personal life has changed, too: you have found yourself in the seat of the Prime Minister of two consecutive governments. In a seat of leadership. In a position to convert the faith we had in you – an apolitical and intelligent person – into dreams of a better India.

And, yet, as your handling of various scams and episodes over the past decade have shown you have fumbled and remained silent. You have taken the unabashed faith we had in you and converted it into a cynical distrust of you and your senior colleagues in the Administration. From being a symbol of honesty you are now seen as an

incompetent and, possibly, dishonest man. It is

possible that you may not have made any personal

money in all the incidents of grand theft. However,

an honest man retains his honesty not by being a

silent spectator to a theft but, rather, by actively

trying to catch the thieves he has witnessed perform

a theft. So far we have seen you look the other way and not use the full power of the government machinery to bring the suspects to justice. In fact, to add insult to our intelligence, we see your cabinet colleagues tossing counter-allegations on the talk shows that thrive on this absurd situation. Under your leadership, the movement by Anna Hazare to cleanse the corruption in India (a movement of the kind that Mahatma Gandhi, whose endorsement of Nehru gave the Congress Party its power, would be proud of) was converted into a convoluted discussion on irrelevant subtleties. 

The harshest proof that any leader can have is when a nation’s people no longer believe in their own currency. Having being the Governor of the respected Reserve Bank of India you will understand this. As a dream merchant, living off our faith, the key monetary indicators of your success (or failure) should be:

1. Are Indians investing in IPOs and in the stock markets – an IPO is a great indicator of faith in the future and, at its extreme, borders on insanity; politely called “irrational exuberance” this unabashed faith in the ability to create something in the future out of nothing;
2. Are Indians burying their cash in mattresses or putting it in safe bank deposits – if Indians are stashing their cash, it means they have no faith in the future and they are scared; their fear of “risk” is because their past experience has shown that they get no rewards for the risk they have taken. In fact, they have probably been slaughtered. Their rational reaction: have no faith and stay safe in bank deposits;
3. Are Indians buying gold – a global currency – or the currency of our own nation, the Indian Rupee? Here, I will give you the benefit of a partial doubt. People buy gold either because they have no faith in their own currency or no faith in the world. The reason why Indians are buying gold is, therefore, difficult to pinpoint as a loss of faith only in you, your leadership, and your government. The hijacking of the global financial system and the ownership of policies of many central banks by a few large financial firms has resulted in a desire to own something besides a “fiat” or paper currency: gold and silver are seen as these alternatives. As an Indian, I am sure you have bought some gold for your family. As the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, you must have been party to discussions and decisions on keeping gold as part of the RBI’s global reserve currencies. So, you know that gold is not just a “useless metal”, as branded by your Finance Minister.

The timing of this letter to you – when the Indian Rupee is taking a whack – is part of the delusional process of governments. Governments listen when hit by crises – they rarely plan.

Of the 3 indicators above, the data on the first two points (a dead IPO market and a surge in bank deposits) were apparent for any student of economics and finance looking for the first signs of trouble. For the first signs of a deflation of your historic “Investment is an act of faith” statement made in 1991. 

But your cabinet colleagues, your spokespersons on media, and the various “yes-men” in important positions of the administration were probably too busy trying to figure out the next “personal cash-extraction” scheme or “quick fix” to pretend all is fine in your kingdom. 

As long as the suited bankers of Wall Street firms kept the moolah flowing in for various equity portfolio products, bond funds, and infrastructure funds – and as long as the invites to speak at Davos and other hallowed destinations were alive – the local “lack of faith” indicators were ignored. Elections may be held in India, but lucrative post-retirement jobs are a function of visibility at these global conferences. After all, what can the poor Indian voter do? Even though the Supreme Court has recently ruled that a convicted person cannot stand for election, your party – along with the other political parties – is already finding ways to fight this absurd birth right that politicians seem to have to rape and plunder at will – and be elected to do it again. So, ignore the locals and let the foreigners cuddle you and make you feel good about India.

Well, the foreign financial firms are, well, foreign with (rightfully) no loyalty to any country. They need to earn their next commission. They earned commissions from making their clients “buy India”, now they will earn it from making their clients “sell India”. Don’t count on an invitation to be a key speaker at the next Davos. Discard your delusions. And now find a way to win back the “faith”. 

With an annual savings pool of about USD 400 billion (at today’s whacked rate of the Indian Rupee) and a gold hoard of an estimated USD 1 trillion sunk somewhere in the mattresses of most Indian homes, there is no shortage of money to get India back to its Resurgent or Shining days. 

Yes, we will shed the useless metal and we will be happy to take risks again and fund the dream merchants who launch IPOs.

If you launch a “gold-for-gold” or “gold for INR equivalent of future gold price” Gold Bond scheme with a 6.5% per annum interest as your government did in November 1962 (and collected 16.3 tonnes of gold, valued at Rs 5 crore today), just after India lost a war with China, it will fail.  In 1962 patriotism ran high and faith in the Congress government and politicians was at a peak. Today, patriotism is still strong – which is why any gold-for-gold scheme will fail: Indians love their country too much to entrust their hard earned wealth to a bunch of questionable, low-character hoodlums who hold positions of power. 

But, using the latent gold to actively drive the future growth of India – and stop this slide in the INR and loss of faith in India – is important.

So, when your Finance Minister comes to you to

sign off on a “gold-for-gold” scheme like the one

you had in November 1962, March 1965, and October

1965 which he is probably designing as I write, tell

him this: 

“Our citizens have lost the faith in us. We need to win it back. And we will do so by impounding the passports of every legislator and every political party officer and their extended family. Furthermore, we will impound the wealth of every legislator and their extended family and keep all these assets as collateral in this new gold-for-gold scheme. Their passports and their wealth will only be released when we have made good on our promise to the Indian citizen to return all their gold by the year 2020. And if we fail to return the gold, the assets of the legislators held in custody will be disposed off and – given that the average legislator has a lot of wealth – we will always have sizeable collateral to pay off the obligations to the Indian citizens. Only under such an act of faith from our side will the Indian citizen come forward to deposit their latent gold for us to convert it into USD, then sell that USD and buy INR to stem the slide of the INR.

Oh, yes, that Anna fellow: tell him we have placed the CBI under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and they are free to work as they see fit to root out corruption. Furthermore, here is a list of investment banks and scoundrels who have duped investors in questionable IPOs – make sure they are blacklisted from any future IPO. And add their names to the list of people whose passports and wealth is being impounded. And, finally, tell the organisers at Davos that our passports are impounded so we will restrict our travel to Indian villages. And, no, we will not eat food at a villager’s home to prove we qualify to be a Prime Minister.”

So, Mr. Prime Minister, if you still stand by your statement that “investment is an act of faith”, win back the faith and India will respond with the investment.

Otherwise, pray hard that your next visit to Washington, D.C. does not end up as an “Indian Super Power with a begging bowl in hand” cartoon in the western press.

INDIAN ECONOMY -FOOL’S PARADISE

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With Amartya Sen, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Man Mohan Singh, P Chidambaram all at the helm, Indian Government is literally living in fools Paradise

Indian economy comes to a fullstop

 MR Venkatesh

A fairly large South-Indian group with varied business interests had invited me to a strategy session to turn it around. It was the first meeting and was to be preceded by breakfast. As we waited to be served, I perused their latest balance sheet.

 

Noticing that it was a profitable, tax and dividend paying company, where was the question of turnaround I wondered? Nevertheless, I instantly zeroed in on the balance sheet. I observed that the company had invested approximately Rs 700 crore on its subsidiaries and lent another Rs 300 crore — in the aggregate Rs 1,000 crore. Flipping across the accounts, I asked a simple question – what is the return from this investment of Rs 1,000 crore?(Amounts changed for obvious reasons.)

 

The CFO was silent. The executive director hummed and hawed. The body language of the rest was a dead giveaway of their uneasiness to discuss this matter further.

 

The junior-most amongst them blurted out, perhaps unwittingly, that it was virtually nil. His answer got a cold stare from his superiors. “Nil!” I exclaimed to the horror of my hosts. “You must be paying approximately Rs 150 crore as interest annually on this sum.” I commented, probably rubbing salt into their wounds. I went on to probe further, “Why, what happened to this money?

 

This time my question was followed by thundering silence. Even the junior one was quiet this time around. May be he had already got the message. As I helped myself to the breakfast I noticed radio silence at the table. Was I at a funeral?

 

Between mouthfuls, I attempted to be at my persuasive best. Probably my training as a chartered accountant helped me. Unable to bear my repeated questioning, the CFO finally broke down. “Sir, as you are aware we are in infrastructure. That requires tremendous pay-offs to politicians and bureaucrats. We have used approximately 150 subsidiaries, some of which are foreign ones, to route these payments.”

 

I was stunned. My jaw dropped. “Sir, we expected you to know all these practicalities of our business. The turnaround strategy needs to factor these ground realities.” Obviously, this time around I was at the receiving end. The breakfast meeting concluded abruptly.

 

Importantly, I understood that India’s outbound investment policy was not a liberalisation process, but a facilitation one – one that ensured smooth pay-offs! Importantly in this mess, businessmen, politicians, professionals, bureaucracy, judiciary and even the media are involved. No one can blame the other.

 

The economics of kickbacks and payoffs

 

Instantly my thoughts raced to the Nira Radia tapes. Fifteen per cent was the kickbacks payable to the Minister concerned for approving every road contract. Add another fifteen to the bureaucracy and local politicians. Add another five to seven to bankers, lawyers, consultants and agents to procure funds.

 

What we have is a staggering 35-40 per cent additional cost to every infrastructure project.

 

That implies a road project costing Rs 100 crore would in effect be a Rs 140-150 crores project. Naturally, the toll for the stretch would not be Rs 100 but Rs 150. This has profound implications for the Indian economy. This extra Rs 50 in toll levy for every 100 km has a cumulative effect on the manufacturing cost.

 

The net result – imports from most of our neighbors of several items [despite cost of transportation and customs duty] are competitive than manufacturing the same in India. Forget competing abroad, Indian manufacturing has become uncompetitive in India!

 

There is another dimension to this issue. Somewhere down the line these “costs” were funded, mostly by our banks. Corporates altered their top-line as well as bottom-line to keep their banks in good humor. The Banks in turn suspended their sense of disbelief. As chartered accountants we too played ball in creating a mini-Satyam in most of India’s corporates.

 

The impact of gold plating

 

But this gold platting of balance sheets cannot be done beyond a point. Everything has a breaking point isn’t it, especially as the economy tanked?

 

These developments were brilliantly captured by a Report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)

 

“As the topline growth continued to slow down, the manufacturing sector as well as the non-financial services sector saw profits fall in the March 2013 quarter compared to the year-ago levels. Operating profits of the manufacturing sector excluding the petroleum sector fell by close to four per cent while the net profit fell by a sharp 23.2 per cent.”

 

The report goes on add

“The non-financial services sector managed to improve its sales growth from 3.2 per cent in the March 2012 quarter to 6.5 per cent in the March 2013 quarter on account of sectors like transport services and software. However, at the net level the sector saw a sharp 28.3 per cent decline in profits.”

 

Well, both the manufacturing and services sector are going bust.

 

Simultaneously the CMIE points out that the

 

“Commissioning of projects dropped sharply to Rs 337 billion during the quarter ended June 2013 from Rs 827 billion in the June 2012 quarter. This was lowest since quarter ended December 2006.”

 

Macro-economic data too corroborate these numbers. From a growth rate of 7.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2011-12 growth rate has witnessed a steady fall in the next seven quarters to less than 4.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012-13.

 

If data released by the Finance Ministry for the first two months of this fiscal is any indication, manufacturing has recorded a negative – yes negative growth of two percent, mining a negative of 5.7 per cent, capital goods a negative of 2.7 per cent, consumer goods a negative of 4 per cent and consumer durables a negative of 10 per cent.

 

In short, when it comes to manufacturing, forget growth, we are in negative zone.

 

The net result – twenty per cent of lending by Indian Banks is stressed.Obviously, when banks end up funding pay-offs and kickbacks, this is the end result. And that is a whopping Rs 11 lakh crores – approximately $200 billion – a sum that even the banks in USA cannot afford.

 

Added to this is the stress on account of our external accounts.The foreign debt has risen to $390 billion. This was a mere $225 billion in 2008. What is galling is that the foreign exchange reserve has remained at a constant $300 billion during this period. Needless to emphasise, the ratio of foreign exchange reserves to foreign debt has deteriorated from 138 per cent then to less than 75 per cent now.

 

What is adding to the consternation is that in the short term – by March 2014 – we need to pay approximately $172bn of our foreign debts. This works out to approximately 44 per cent of the external debtand a staggering 60 per cent of the total foreign exchange reserves of the country.

 

The short-term external borrowings are surely the villain of the piece.Remember in 1991 the short-term external debt was a mere 10 percent of the total external debt. Now it is one-fourth.

 

Another important parameter – India’s net international investment position [the net claims of non-residents against external claims of residents] stood at a negative $225 billion as at 30th June 2012. This deteriorated to a negative of $307 billion by March 31, 2013. That implies an addition of $82 billion in a matter of mere nine months.

 

Simply put, Indian manufacturing by and large is uncompetitive at current exchange rates. And if Rupee is devalued, prices of imports, especially crude oil, would increase leading to an inflationary spiral. Either way, that means increased unemployment. The services sector too as pointed out above is spluttering. And remember agriculture has been historically recording sub-three percent growth in the best of times.

 

As we witness large-scale unemployment, purchasing power in the hands of the people is rapidly decreasing. That implies demand compression which in turns puts the economy once again on the downward spiral.

 

Add to this the absolute lack of governance, indecision and Governmental apathy – you would know what it means to do business in India. Whatever be the reason – political or otherwise — bureaucracy in Delhi has simply refused to function. Likewise every assessment with our revenue departments ends up as extortion.

 

Unfortunately the Government’s response has been pathetic. Surely, increasing FDI limits is not reforms. On this the UPA Government is completely off-target. What makes the set of reforms scandalous is that the Government is indirectly bribing foreigners to invest in India. The Jet-Etihad deal is a case in point.

 

Put pithily, we are witnessing a repeat of the 1991 crisis.

 

This time around, it is threatening to make the previous one look like a walk in the park. Well what makes the crisis different this time around?

 

Contrary to the popular belief this is not an economic crisis, this is a crisis of national character.

 

Forget fiscal, revenue and current account deficits –let us first talk about morality deficits.

 

(MR Venkatesh is a Chennai based chartered accountant.)

 

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INDIAN ECONOMY FOOLS PARADISE

 

With Amartya Sen, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Man Mohan Singh, P Chidambaram all at the helm, Indian Government is literally living in fools Paradise

 

Indian economy comes to a fullstop

 MR Venkatesh

A fairly large South-Indian group with varied business interests had invited me to a strategy session to turn it around. It was the first meeting and was to be preceded by breakfast. As we waited to be served, I perused their latest balance sheet.

 

Noticing that it was a profitable, tax and dividend paying company, where was the question of turnaround I wondered? Nevertheless, I instantly zeroed in on the balance sheet. I observed that the company had invested approximately Rs 700 crore on its subsidiaries and lent another Rs 300 crore — in the aggregate Rs 1,000 crore. Flipping across the accounts, I asked a simple question – what is the return from this investment of Rs 1,000 crore?(Amounts changed for obvious reasons.)

 

The CFO was silent. The executive director hummed and hawed. The body language of the rest was a dead giveaway of their uneasiness to discuss this matter further.

 

The junior-most amongst them blurted out, perhaps unwittingly, that it was virtually nil. His answer got a cold stare from his superiors. “Nil!” I exclaimed to the horror of my hosts. “You must be paying approximately Rs 150 crore as interest annually on this sum.” I commented, probably rubbing salt into their wounds. I went on to probe further, “Why, what happened to this money?

 

This time my question was followed by thundering silence. Even the junior one was quiet this time around. May be he had already got the message. As I helped myself to the breakfast I noticed radio silence at the table. Was I at a funeral?

 

Between mouthfuls, I attempted to be at my persuasive best. Probably my training as a chartered accountant helped me. Unable to bear my repeated questioning, the CFO finally broke down. “Sir, as you are aware we are in infrastructure. That requires tremendous pay-offs to politicians and bureaucrats. We have used approximately 150 subsidiaries, some of which are foreign ones, to route these payments.”

 

I was stunned. My jaw dropped. “Sir, we expected you to know all these practicalities of our business. The turnaround strategy needs to factor these ground realities.” Obviously, this time around I was at the receiving end. The breakfast meeting concluded abruptly.

 

Importantly, I understood that India’s outbound investment policy was not a liberalisation process, but a facilitation one – one that ensured smooth pay-offs! Importantly in this mess, businessmen, politicians, professionals, bureaucracy, judiciary and even the media are involved. No one can blame the other.

 

The economics of kickbacks and payoffs

 

Instantly my thoughts raced to the Nira Radia tapes. Fifteen per cent was the kickbacks payable to the Minister concerned for approving every road contract. Add another fifteen to the bureaucracy and local politicians. Add another five to seven to bankers, lawyers, consultants and agents to procure funds.

 

What we have is a staggering 35-40 per cent additional cost to every infrastructure project.

 

That implies a road project costing Rs 100 crore would in effect be a Rs 140-150 crores project. Naturally, the toll for the stretch would not be Rs 100 but Rs 150. This has profound implications for the Indian economy. This extra Rs 50 in toll levy for every 100 km has a cumulative effect on the manufacturing cost.

 

The net result – imports from most of our neighbors of several items [despite cost of transportation and customs duty] are competitive than manufacturing the same in India. Forget competing abroad, Indian manufacturing has become uncompetitive in India!

 

There is another dimension to this issue. Somewhere down the line these “costs” were funded, mostly by our banks. Corporates altered their top-line as well as bottom-line to keep their banks in good humor. The Banks in turn suspended their sense of disbelief. As chartered accountants we too played ball in creating a mini-Satyam in most of India’s corporates.

 

The impact of gold plating

 

But this gold platting of balance sheets cannot be done beyond a point. Everything has a breaking point isn’t it, especially as the economy tanked?

 

These developments were brilliantly captured by a Report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)

 

“As the topline growth continued to slow down, the manufacturing sector as well as the non-financial services sector saw profits fall in the March 2013 quarter compared to the year-ago levels. Operating profits of the manufacturing sector excluding the petroleum sector fell by close to four per cent while the net profit fell by a sharp 23.2 per cent.”

 

The report goes on add

“The non-financial services sector managed to improve its sales growth from 3.2 per cent in the March 2012 quarter to 6.5 per cent in the March 2013 quarter on account of sectors like transport services and software. However, at the net level the sector saw a sharp 28.3 per cent decline in profits.”

 

Well, both the manufacturing and services sector are going bust.

 

Simultaneously the CMIE points out that the

 

“Commissioning of projects dropped sharply to Rs 337 billion during the quarter ended June 2013 from Rs 827 billion in the June 2012 quarter. This was lowest since quarter ended December 2006.”

 

Macro-economic data too corroborate these numbers. From a growth rate of 7.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2011-12 growth rate has witnessed a steady fall in the next seven quarters to less than 4.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012-13.

 

If data released by the Finance Ministry for the first two months of this fiscal is any indication, manufacturing has recorded a negative – yes negative growth of two percent, mining a negative of 5.7 per cent, capital goods a negative of 2.7 per cent, consumer goods a negative of 4 per cent and consumer durables a negative of 10 per cent.

 

In short, when it comes to manufacturing, forget growth, we are in negative zone.

 

The net result – twenty per cent of lending by Indian Banks is stressed.Obviously, when banks end up funding pay-offs and kickbacks, this is the end result. And that is a whopping Rs 11 lakh crores – approximately $200 billion – a sum that even the banks in USA cannot afford.

 

Added to this is the stress on account of our external accounts.The foreign debt has risen to $390 billion. This was a mere $225 billion in 2008. What is galling is that the foreign exchange reserve has remained at a constant $300 billion during this period. Needless to emphasise, the ratio of foreign exchange reserves to foreign debt has deteriorated from 138 per cent then to less than 75 per cent now.

 

What is adding to the consternation is that in the short term – by March 2014 – we need to pay approximately $172bn of our foreign debts. This works out to approximately 44 per cent of the external debtand a staggering 60 per cent of the total foreign exchange reserves of the country.

 

The short-term external borrowings are surely the villain of the piece.Remember in 1991 the short-term external debt was a mere 10 percent of the total external debt. Now it is one-fourth.

 

Another important parameter – India’s net international investment position [the net claims of non-residents against external claims of residents] stood at a negative $225 billion as at 30th June 2012. This deteriorated to a negative of $307 billion by March 31, 2013. That implies an addition of $82 billion in a matter of mere nine months.

 

Simply put, Indian manufacturing by and large is uncompetitive at current exchange rates. And if Rupee is devalued, prices of imports, especially crude oil, would increase leading to an inflationary spiral. Either way, that means increased unemployment. The services sector too as pointed out above is spluttering. And remember agriculture has been historically recording sub-three percent growth in the best of times.

 

As we witness large-scale unemployment, purchasing power in the hands of the people is rapidly decreasing. That implies demand compression which in turns puts the economy once again on the downward spiral.

 

Add to this the absolute lack of governance, indecision and Governmental apathy – you would know what it means to do business in India. Whatever be the reason – political or otherwise — bureaucracy in Delhi has simply refused to function. Likewise every assessment with our revenue departments ends up as extortion.

 

Unfortunately the Government’s response has been pathetic. Surely, increasing FDI limits is not reforms. On this the UPA Government is completely off-target. What makes the set of reforms scandalous is that the Government is indirectly bribing foreigners to invest in India. The Jet-Etihad deal is a case in point.

 

Put pithily, we are witnessing a repeat of the 1991 crisis.

 

This time around, it is threatening to make the previous one look like a walk in the park. Well what makes the crisis different this time around?

 

Contrary to the popular belief this is not an economic crisis, this is a crisis of national character.

 

Forget fiscal, revenue and current account deficits –let us first talk about morality deficits.

 

(MR Venkatesh is a Chennai based chartered accountant.)

 

Tale of two Democracies

  True Democracy in Action

                                                   JOGISHWAR SINGH

As a Swiss citizen born in India, I am many times brought to think about my 

experiences of the democratic systems prevalent in the two countries.

Before Indian ‘patriots’ start screaming murder at what I am going to say, I 

should point out that I am fully aware that I am talking about two different 

historical realities.

Switzerland has been independent for over 800 years while India is a newly 

created entity, now a mere 66 years old.

Switzerland has a population of only 8 million while India has the second 

highest population of any country in the world at over 1.2 billion (give or 

take a few million). And expected, in the near future, to even outstrip 

China, and become the world’s most populous. 

The trigger for this set of reflections was what I saw on the 7.30 pm eve. 

news on Swiss TV a couple of weeks ago.

The Swiss President, Mr Ueli Maurer,  was leaving on a five day state visit to 

China. The news showed him arriving  at Zürich airport in an ordinary private 

vehicle. The President got out of the  car by opening the car door himself. 

He walked to the nearby baggage trolley stand outside the airport entrance. 

He took a baggage trolley out, rolled it  towards the car, lifted his suitcase and 

travel bag himself, put these on the trolley which he then rolled towards the 

entrance like any passenger lambda like you or me. He walked up to the check 

in counter with just two other persons  walking behind him. He checked his 

luggage in for a commercial flight without  any special treatment being meted 

out to him.

For any Indians (or others) who might  find it difficult to believe what I have 

described above, you can CLICK on  the link provided hereunder, at the 

end of this article, to view a TV news  clip from the evening prime time 

news for July 16, 2013..

This clip is really worth watching.

Conditioned by my personal experiences of dealing with politicians and 

government ministers in India while serving as an IAS (Indian Administrative

Service) officer, I was so struck by the contrast between what I had experienced

in India and what I was seeing on the TV screen that I told my wife that this

represented one of the finest examples of democracy for me, certainly of the

Swiss variety. It made me proud to be the citizen of a country where the serving

President behaves like an ordinary citizen and does not feel the need to consider

special privileged treatment as his divine birthright. 

I remembered the countless times when I had seen the fury of Indian politicians, 

much below the level of the President of a country, at what they considered as

a slight because they had not been treated as demi-gods.

I am not a psychologist. I do not know whether centuries of slavery have 

generated this distorted VIP culture in India but I remember that we all did curse

the politicians there for causing so much inconvenience to the general public

by expecting, demanding and getting privileged treatment. 

Who in India, except maybe some politicians or bureaucrats, has not been 

inconvenienced by VIP visits for which miles of roads and highways, even entire neighbourhoods, are blocked off to traffic, and flights are delayed, awaiting the 

arrival of some VIP or even his/her flunkies/family members? 

Any such inconvenience would cause an uproar in Switzerland. 

In India, it does not generate even a whimper.

In this context, an incident from the not very distant past strongly lingers in my 

memory. A few years ago, a former IAS batch-mate of mine (1976 batch) had

visited Switzerland. 

I have noticed that Switzerland becomes a prize destination of choice for a lot 

of Indian ministers and bureaucrats during their hot summer for attending all

kinds of useless conferences which are essentially talking shops organised

by the United Nations, an organisation which is a hotbed of nepotism and

inefficiency.

This IAS officer wanted to see Switzerland, so I acted as his local tourist 

guide. 

While we were going around the Swiss federal capital, Bern, it was lunch 

time so we decided to have lunch at a restaurant very close to the Swiss

parliament building. 

As we took our seats at a table, a Swiss gentleman sitting at the next table, 

reading his newspaper while sipping his coffee, greeted us in English.

While we ordered our meal and waited, he finished reading his newspaper,

drank his coffee and called for his bill which he paid before leaving. While

going out, he again politely wished us goodbye, even saying, “I hope you

enjoy your stay in Switzerland” in English.

After he had left, I asked my visitor if he knew who the man had been. 

Obviously, my visitor did not know the answer. I informed him that we had 

just been greeted by the then serving Swiss President, Mr René Felber. 

My guest thought I was making fun of him. He would not believe me so I 

called the restaurant manager to confirm the veracity of what I had told him.

The manager duly confirmed what I had said. 

My Indian visitor was flabbergasted. He said, “How can this be possible? 

He actually paid his bill before leaving”. 

So, what struck my visitor the most had been the fact that a VIP had 

actually paid his bill! I wonder what he would say if he saw our current

President, Mr Ueli Maurer, personally loading his bags on to a baggage

trolley and wheeling it to a check-in counter just like any ordinary citizen.

His disbelief could only be countered by visual evidence on the TV!

My visitor’s reaction brought back memories of when, as a serving sub-

divisional or district level official, I had been called upon to organise lunches

and dinners for numerous collections of freeloaders travelling with ministers

or bureaucrats in India. 

I seldom remember any politician or bureaucrat actually paying or even 

offering to pay for the bonanza laid out for them. Those who did offer to pay, 

did so at the ridiculously low official daily fare of eleven rupees (today, a

mere 20 cents US) per person or something like that. 

Nobody ever asked how it had been possible to lay out a lavish meal 

comprising several dishes, accompanied by expensive alcoholic beverages,

for such a petty sum. I never found out myself who used to pay for all this

extravaganza at the end of the line. 

Like a good Indian bureaucrat, I just used to pass the buck down the line to 

my junior magistrates and revenue officials. To this day, I am unable to clarify

which poor victim — read, citizen! — who got stuck with paying for all the

freebies on offer.

While working as chief of staff to the President of the Swiss Commission for 

the Presence of Switzerland in Foreign Countries many years ago, I had the

chance of accompanying him to Strasbourg for meetings of the Council of

Europe. I also had the privilege of close interaction with several Swiss

members of parliament over an extended period of 12 to 14 months. 

The contrast to the behavioural pattern of what I had experienced in India 

with politicians was so stark that it has stayed seared in my mind even 

till today. 

I am by no means suggesting that Swiss politicians are angels, but the 

kind of behaviour that Indian politicians or bureaucrats get away with as

a matter of routine in India would torpedo their careers in Switzerland

in a jiffy.

Each such incident deepens my gratitude to Waheguru Almighty for having 

made me settle down in a country like Switzerland where the President

carries his own bags to the check-in counter. 

Where no roads are blocked for hours so that some VIP can, in the name 

of security, be whisked around in convoys of official vehicles. 

Where politicians and bureaucrats pay their bills in restaurants. 

Where grossly sycophantic behaviour is not the general and accepted 

norm. 

Where no red-light beacons or screaming sirens signal the passage of 

VIP vehicles. Indeed, the red-light-beacon culture of officialdom in India

merits a full story in itself.

I might accept India as a true democracy the day I see its President or 

Prime Minister behaving like the Swiss President before his departure

on an official visit abroad.

I don’t think I will ever see such a sight in India during my lifetime. 

You think, maybe, my grandchildren will?

To view the TV news-clip, please CLICK here.

August 15, 2013

———————–

 

Indian economy is in a mess, tasks for the next Government

 

As Vaidyanathan notes: Corporate sector which is less than 15% of our National Income gobbles up nearly half of the bank credit…credit needs of unorganized or non-corporate sector are not met by the organized banking sector but by private money lenders etc. The cost of borrowing from private money lenders may be around 70 percent per annum. Small entrepreneurs get credit from money lenders using gold as collateral. FII and FDI account for only 6 to 8 per cent of our investment needs. So,  Vaidyanathan concludes that there is a need for a separate body to develop Non-banking Finance Secor (NBFS). http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/08/how-soniag-upa-killed-indian-economy.html

 

Gurumurthy notes: Current Account Deficit (CAD) has increased from $2.7 billion in 2004-5 to $89 billion in 2012-13. The primary reason is capital goods imports which increased from $25.5 billion in 2004-5 to $91.5 billion in 2012-13. Index of Industrial Production (IIP) has fallen by 56 % during the same period. Current Account Deficits necessitated huge external borrowing which increased from $108 billion in 2004-5 to $396 billion in 2012-13. CADs also meant that India lost its wealth to other nations by providing increased import orders from countries like China.

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/08/rupee-on-ventilator-s-gurumurthy.html

 

Added to these macro-fiscal data, there has been a problem of corruption of unprecedented magnitude topped by the stashing away of corrupted loot through hawala channels and participatory notes mechanisms in tax havens, thus making the wealth not available to the country’s financial system, while benefiting the coffers of tax haven nations.

 

The level of fiscal and financial management has led to the fall in share market indices and Rupee-Dollar exchange rates have reached abysmal and intolerable levels.

 

In any democratic system, such mismanagement of the economy should have resulted in the dismissal of the Finance Minister and consequent resignation of the Prime Minister. But, strange is the state in India ruled by a person who is not a constitutionally accountable authority – Sonia Gandhi who heads the National Advisory Council and calls the decisions to profligate spending to the tune of Rs. 6 lakh crores per year on schemes such as MNREGA (Rs. 4 lakh crores) or Food Security (Rs. 2 lakh crores). Such schemes are politically justified as effective means of combating poverty. Little attention is paid while authorizing such state-sponsored doll outs, to the increase in productive capacity by increasing the skill matrix of workers or increasing the wealth of the nation. For example, the MNREGA guaranteed employment scheme could have been linked to a project like Interlinking of the nation’s rivers which could potentially add an additional 9 crores of wet land with assured irrigation with assured additions to the nation’s granary of agricultural production and agricultural employment.

Thus, economics are turned upside down in Indian polity. Even the opposition parties have failed in their responsibility to safeguard the nation’s financial resources by dancing to the SoniaG economic tunes by endorsing false promises of the MNREGA or Food Security type schemes.

 

Economics is looked upon as an esoteric discipline which requires smart operators like P. Chidambaram to ‘manage’ the economy. This  results in a serious political failure of the politicians failing to realize what causes the financial mess that the nation finds itself in with the devaluation of the Rupee and with the loss of notional wealth reflected in stock market indices.

 

As Vaidyanathan notes, the saving grace of the economy is that about 60% of the economy operates through unorganized or non-corporate sectors. The serious structural fault-lines of not establishing reasonable credit-lines to these unorganized or non-corporate sectors is a major failure of the state which has to be rectified by the next Government, which hopefully should be a clear alternative to Sonianomics and SoniaG-led UPA riddled with corruption and stashing away of illicit wealth into tax havens.

 

The policy imperatives for the next Government after the Lok Sabha polls are thus clear and unambiguous:

 

1.       Promote projects such as the Interlinking of rivers on a priority basis. Hon’ble SC has not only endorsed the project but also has suggested a monitoring authority to oversee the effective implementation of the project.

 

2.       Ban Participatory Notes.

 

3.       To enable restitution of illicit wealth stashed in tax havens, an ordinance should be promulgated to nationalize such wealth, a measure similar to the nationalization of private banks done by Indira Gandhi. The measure is to meet progressively and serve better, the needs of development of the economy in conformity with national policy and objectives enunciated in the Directive Principles of State Policy.

 

4.       Establish a Special Finance Commission to review the credit needs of unorganized or non-corporate sectors of the economy and to establish a monetary authority to oversee the working of the non-banking finance sector.

 

5.       Review the present system of opening up the nation’s mines to private sector and review the imperative of a Mines and Minerals Development Regulatory Authority on the lines of Telecom Regulatory Authority.

 

6.       Disband the Planning Commission by establishing a Special Economic Development Commission to recommend steps for sustainable increase in the wealth of the nation by productive projects, by disbanding unproductive dole outs of the MNREGA or Food Security type schemes.

 

 courtesy S. Kalyanaraman

 

Indian Rupee down in the dumps

Dear friends

This gives the value of Indian rupee against currencies of some other countries. Indirectly currency of some other countries also comes to our information from it (For those who are not so familiar)

Against Japanese Yen
1 JPY = 0.66 rupees

2. Against Zimbabwe Dollar
1 ZWD = 2.02 rupees

3. Against Thailand Baht
1 Thai baht = 2.02 rupees

4. Against Hong Kong Dollar
1 HKD = 8.23 rupees

5. Against Chinese Yuan
1 CNY = 10.42 rupees

6. Against Malaysian Ringgit
1 MYR = 19.35 rupees

7. Against Singapore Dollar
1 SGD = 49.94 rupees

8. Against New Zealand Dollar
1 NZD = 50.98 rupees

9. Against Australian Dollar
1 AUD = 57.85 rupees

10 Against Canadian Dollar
1 CAD = 61.57 rupees

11. Against US Dollar
1 USD = 63.85 rupees

12 Against Swiss franc
1 CHF = 69.18 rupees

13. Against Euro
1 EUR = 85.24 rupees

14. Against British Pound Sterling
1 GBP = 99.92 rupees

FALLING INDIAN RUPEE …………..???????

WE HEAR THE NEWS OF FALLING INDIAN RUPEE AGAINST THE DOLLAR TO ALL TIME LOW ON DAILY BASIS WE HOPE THAT WE MAY NOT HAVE TO FACE THE SITUATION OF ZIMBABWE

Here is the beggar who got a trifle last year in December. These are notes in 200 000 Zimbabwe dollars. Little millionaire, isnt he?

One such banknote is equal to 10 cents. The official rate is much higher, but nobody changes.

On December, 22nd the note in 500 000 Zimbabwe dollars has appeared.

The next was 750 000.

In January there was one more note in 10 million.

Here is the multi-millionaire.

This note in 10 dollars costs in 10 times more than note in 10 000 000 Zimbabwe dollars.

And that is February. Now beggars are not given simple 200 000 notes, they get the whole packs of 200-thousand banknotes.

Here is the local billionaire. He has got 65 billion Zimbabwe dollars in his small suitcase. Just imagine, that is only 2000 American dollars! It was in March.

The man goes to a supermarket. The exchange rate is 25 000 000 Zimbabwe dollars for one American dollar.

This pack is equal to 100 dollars.

In April the government decided to break all the records and issued 50 million dollars note.

But the inflation didnt stop. Then in May the 250 million note was issued.

These are shops prices. You must pay almost 3 billion for a T-short or trousers.

At the end of May the 500 million note was issued.

But the time doesnt stay and notes in 25 and 50 billion are appeared in June.

In July there has already been the 100 billion note!

What can you buy for this money? Probably it can be three eggs.

Soon people have begun to go to restaurants with such packs

And received such bills there..

Because of these cash heaps there was no free place in houses.

In August the government made a decision to issue new notes, this time without ten zeroes as it was with old ones.

But they have forgotten about inflation again. In September it was possible to buy 4 tomatoes for this money.

And for such loaf of bread

The government didnt stop and in September the 20 000 dollars note was issued again.

50 thousand has appeared two weeks ago. It is not excluded turning Zimbabwe to billions again till the end of the year.

And now lets see true face of this crisis. Zimbabwe is the unique country in the world where the largest note is 50 000, and the roll of the cheapest toilet paper costs 100 000.If you take 100 000 Zimbabwe dollars and change them for the smallest 5 dollars notes youll get 20 000 notes. A roll of a toilet paper has 72 pieces.It turns out, that using money instead of toilet paper is in 278 times more favourably, than buying this paper. The cheapest toilet paper in Zimbabwe is the same unpleasant, as these notes.

That is the real crisis!

என்னைக்கு இந்த நிலைமை எல்லாம் மாறுதோ அன்னைக்கு தான் இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

என்னைக்கு இந்த நிலைமை எல்லாம் மாறுதோ அன்னைக்கு தான் இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

1) ஏறி பயணம் செய்யிற பேருந்துல கல்லை விட்டு எறிவோம், எரிக்கவும் செய்வோம் ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

2) ரோட்ல கண்ட கண்ட இடத்துல அசிங்கம் பண்ணுவோம், குப்பை கொட்டுவோம் ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

3) சேலை, சுடிதார், மோர்டன் ஆடை இப்படி என்ன ஆடை போட்டாலும் அந்த பெண்னை கைபேசில படம் பிடிசுகிட்டே வரலாம், அத எவனும் தட்டி கேக்க முடியாது ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

4) வேலை இல்லாதவன் பத்தாயிரம் ரூபா திருடினா சிறைல போடலாம், அரசாங்க வேலைல உள்ளவன் பத்தாயிரம் கோடி திருடினாலும் வெளிய சுத்தலாம் ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

5) வீடு இல்லாதவன் புறம் போக்கு நிலத்துல அரையடி ஆக்கிரமிச்சா இடிக்க சட்டம் இருக்கு, பணக்காரன் ஆறு ஏக்கர் புறம் போக்க வளச்சு போட்டா சட்டமே மாற்றி அமைக்கப்பட்டு ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

6) நடைபாதை உணவகத்துல சாப்பாட்டுல பூச்சி இருந்தா உணவு பாதுகாப்பு சட்டம் பாயும இதுவே அரசாங்க உணவு சேகரிப்பு கிடங்குள பூச்சிகள் இருந்த உணவு பாதுகாப்பு சட்டமே திருத்தி அமைக்கப் படும்… ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

7) மாடா உழைச்சு நல்ல அரிசிய அரசாங்கத்துக்கு விப்பான் ஆனா மலிவுவிலை கடைகள் மூலமா நாறிப்போன அரிசிய தான் அரசாங்கம் உழவனுக்கு கொடுக்கும் அத இவன்னாலயும் தட்டி கேக்க முடியாது ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

8 ) ஆங்கிலேயர்களிடம் இருந்து சுதந்திரம் வாங்கி 67 வருடம் ஆச்சு ஆனா நீதி மன்றத்துல தமிழில் வழக்காட சுதந்திரம் வாங்கி ஒரு வருடம் கூட ஆகல, இதுவும் சுதந்திர நாடு.

9) இலங்கையில் லட்சகணக்கான இந்தியர்களை(தமிழர்கள்) கொன்னான் நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கல, அமெரிக்காவில் பத்து இந்தியர்களை(சீக்கியர்கள்) கொன்னா உடனே நடவடிக்கை எடுக்குறாங்க. யாரும் ஏன்னு கேக்க முடியாது ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

10) இல்லாதவனுக்கு ஏற்றவாறு சட்டம் இயற்றாமல் அவனை இல்லாமல் ஆக்கத்தான் சட்டம் இயற்றுகிறார்கள். இதை கேட்க்க ஆளில்லை ஏன்னா இது சுதந்திர நாடு.

11) நம்ம வரிப்பனத்துல நமக்கே இலவசம் கொடுப்பான் அதையும் இலுச்சுகிட்டு வாங்கிகிட்டு அவனுக்கே ஓட்டு போடுவோம்..

என்னைக்கு இந்த நிலைமை எல்லாம் மாறுதோ அன்னைக்கு தான் இது சுதந்திர நாடு…!!

Activists alarmed at possible EVM based fraud in impending elections

Activists alarmed at possible EVM based fraud in impending elections

Electronic voting machines with paper trail unlikely before next Lok Sabha elections

Bharti Jain, TNN Aug 27, 2012, 02.40AM IST

• 

(The need for a voter-verifiable…)

NEW DELHI: With the 2014 general elections in sight, the Election Commission is scrambling to do what is proving to be a herculean task — introducing new-age EVMs with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail. However, those questioning the tamper-proof nature of the EVMs and campaigning for a paper trail of the ballots may have to wait beyond the next Lok Sabha polls for a complete switchover to the new system.

According to sources in the EC, the huge costs involved — given that 7 lakh of the 11 lakh existing EVMs deployed in Lok Sabha polls are incompatible with a printing unit — coupled with the high incidence of snags associated with printers, have made the EC wary if it can manage a full-scale, new-age EVM-based general election by 2014. At most, senior officials at Nirvachan Sadan feel, the panel can introduce the new voter-verifiable paper trail system in some select states, while letting the other states vote with the old set of EVMs.

With elections 20 months away, the EC is holding trials for the new voter-verifiable paper trail-compatible EVM prototypes. The cost implications are huge. To update an existing EVM and have it attached to a printer is estimated to cost anything between Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000. And if all the EVMs are to be updated, the total cost would work out to nearly Rs 1,000 crore. However, of the 11 lakh existing EVMs, only 4 lakh are compatible with printers. The remaining cannot even be updated.

Besides, printers being bulky and prone to snags like ink-related issues and jamming, especially in extreme climates, and the rather-impractical task of having them serviced and maintained in between elections, the EC views the solution as highly impractical in the long run.

There is the second option of going in for an entirely new set of EVMs, which will have an in-built hardware to enable a paper trail. This will cost approximately Rs 1,800 crore, EC sources said. According to an EC official, it is more feasible to replace all the existing EVMs and bring in brand new paper-trail-enabled EVMs. However, this will be impossible by the 2014 general election.

The need for a voter-verifiable paper audit trail was articulated following the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, with senior BJP leaders alleging that the EVM design was prone to tampering. Independent experts too stepped in to allege that the EVMs were not completely tamper-proof, though they could not clearly demonstrate this before the EC.

At an all-party meeting convened by the EC in October 2010, the BJP sought a paper trail to enable the voter to verify if his vote had been cast in favour of the party which he had chosen by pressing the relevant button on the EVM. This led the EC to set up an expert technical committee, headed by former IIT-Chennai director P V Indiresan, to look at the technical feasibility of introducing a voter-verifiable paper audit trail.

The committee favoured introduction of the paper trail system and recommended field testing of prototypes.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-27/india/33423526_1_evms-voter-verifiable-paper-nirvachan-sadan

–

 

LARGE SCALE RIGGING BY RULING CONGRESS EXPECTED IN FORTH COMING ELECTIONS

Activists alarmed at possible EVM based fraud in impending elections

Electronic voting machines with paper trail unlikely before next Lok Sabha elections

Bharti Jain, TNN Aug 27, 2012, 02.40AM IST

• 

(The need for a voter-verifiable…)

NEW DELHI: With the 2014 general elections in sight, the Election Commission is scrambling to do what is proving to be a herculean task — introducing new-age EVMs with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail. However, those questioning the tamper-proof nature of the EVMs and campaigning for a paper trail of the ballots may have to wait beyond the next Lok Sabha polls for a complete switchover to the new system.

According to sources in the EC, the huge costs involved — given that 7 lakh of the 11 lakh existing EVMs deployed in Lok Sabha polls are incompatible with a printing unit — coupled with the high incidence of snags associated with printers, have made the EC wary if it can manage a full-scale, new-age EVM-based general election by 2014. At most, senior officials at Nirvachan Sadan feel, the panel can introduce the new voter-verifiable paper trail system in some select states, while letting the other states vote with the old set of EVMs.

With elections 20 months away, the EC is holding trials for the new voter-verifiable paper trail-compatible EVM prototypes. The cost implications are huge. To update an existing EVM and have it attached to a printer is estimated to cost anything between Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000. And if all the EVMs are to be updated, the total cost would work out to nearly Rs 1,000 crore. However, of the 11 lakh existing EVMs, only 4 lakh are compatible with printers. The remaining cannot even be updated.

Besides, printers being bulky and prone to snags like ink-related issues and jamming, especially in extreme climates, and the rather-impractical task of having them serviced and maintained in between elections, the EC views the solution as highly impractical in the long run.

There is the second option of going in for an entirely new set of EVMs, which will have an in-built hardware to enable a paper trail. This will cost approximately Rs 1,800 crore, EC sources said. According to an EC official, it is more feasible to replace all the existing EVMs and bring in brand new paper-trail-enabled EVMs. However, this will be impossible by the 2014 general election.

The need for a voter-verifiable paper audit trail was articulated following the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, with senior BJP leaders alleging that the EVM design was prone to tampering. Independent experts too stepped in to allege that the EVMs were not completely tamper-proof, though they could not clearly demonstrate this before the EC.

At an all-party meeting convened by the EC in October 2010, the BJP sought a paper trail to enable the voter to verify if his vote had been cast in favour of the party which he had chosen by pressing the relevant button on the EVM. This led the EC to set up an expert technical committee, headed by former IIT-Chennai director P V Indiresan, to look at the technical feasibility of introducing a voter-verifiable paper audit trail.

The committee favoured introduction of the paper trail system and recommended field testing of prototypes.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-27/india/33423526_1_evms-voter-verifiable-paper-nirvachan-sadan

–

 

Interesting facts about Bali that Indian Hindu must know.

 

Hindu must know.To:

.

Facts according to Swami Veda Bharati, a great master of meditation from the Himalayan Tradition. When I was called to Bali it was to teach and preach the Vedic teachings. But I came back with a humble realization that I have to learn more from Bali than I can actually teach them.                                                ****************************** Bali is a state of Indonesia, a secular country with the biggest Muslim population in the world. But the majority in the state of Bali, over 93 %, are Hindus. Bali is home to 4.22 million Hindus whose ancestors had to flee from other islands of Indonesia, after the great Indonesian Hindu Empire Majapahit was defeated and most of Indonesia was converted to Islam. Here are some interesting facts about Bali that every Indian Hindu must know. 1. Nyepi day, a day of total silence (mauna) once a year, when even the Ngurah Rai International Airport of Denpasar is closed from 6 am to 6 am. No cars, no traffic, no entertainment, no TV. Sit in the house, do contemplation, do prayers. Can we introduce that Nyepi Day in our noisy country? 2. The culture of Bali was begun by the Rishis of India, whose names are no longer taught in the schools of India but which are common in the schools of Bali-Markandeya, Bharadwaja, Agastya – the names we hear in the Puranas but they are part of the way the history of Bali is taught in the schools of Bali. How many Rishis can you name? Do you remember any one of the 402 names of the Rishis and Rishikas (female Rishis) from the Rig Veda (the most ancient and most sacred text of Hinduism), which are our ancestors and the forming fathers of our religion – Vaidika Sanatana Dharma? 3. The national Balinese dress for both, men and women, girls and boys, is Dhoti. No one can enter a temple without wearing a Dhoti. Except in some parts of South India, Dhoti is laughed at in India today. Why are we so ashamed of our heritage? Even most Indian priests change their dress after they are finished with the worship because they feel ashamed in a Dhoti?? 4. The social, economic and political system of Bali is based on the principle of tri-hita-karana.three benevolent, beneficent principles- that every human being has three aspects .the duty, the relationship that we have with God [Parahyangan]; the relationship that we have with human beings [Pawongan]; and the relationship that we have with nature [Palemahan] and these are the three principles on which the entire culture of Bali is built. This was all established by the Rishis whose names are just about forgotten in India which are taught in the schools of Bali. 5. Trikala Sandhya (Sun worship three times a day) is practiced in every Balinese school. The Gayatri Mantra is recited by every Balinese school child three times a day. Many of the local radio stations also relay Trikala Sandhya three times a day. Can we even think of introducing something like this to our schools in India? How many Indian Hindus are aware of their duty of Trikala Sandhya? It is as central to our religion as the 5 times Namaz is to Islam, yet? 6. In the year 1011 AD, at a place which is now known as Purasamantiga. there was the first interreligious conference of three religions: Shaiva Agama, Bauddha Agama and Baliyaga, the traditional pre-Buddhist, pre-Hindu, Balinese religion. The scholars and the leaders sat down and worked out a system by which the three religions should work together and exchange forms with each other and that is the religion of Bali today. 7. In Bali every priest is paid by the government. Despite the fact that Indonesia is a secular country with the biggest Muslim population in the world, the priest of every religion is paid by the government so every religion is supported by the government. That is the Indonesian form of secularism. Can we even think of this in India? 8. The national motto of Indonesia “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. One is many, many is one.” is inspired by an Indonesian Hindu scripture Sutasoma Kakavin. The complete quotation is as follows – “It is said that the well known Buddha and Shiva are two different substances; they are indeed different, yet how is it possible to recognize their difference in a glance, since the truth of Buddha and the truth of Shiva are one? They may be different, but they are of the same kind, as there is no duality in truth.” Why can’t we have “Ekam Sad Vipra Bahudha Vadanti” (The truth is one, but the wise express it in various ways – Rig Veda) as our national motto? 9. Bali is one of the world’s most prominent rice growers. Every farm has a temple dedicated to Shri Devi and Bhu Devi (Lakmi the Goddess of wealth and mother earth – the two divinities that stand on the either of side of Tirupati Bala ji in India). No farmer will perform his agricultural duties without first making offerings to Shri Devi and Bhu Devi. That is called culture, that SubakSystem. The agricultural and water irrigation plan for the entire country was charted in the 9th Century. The priests of a particular water temple still control this irrigation plan. And some World Bank or United Nations scientist did a computer model that would be ideal for Bali. And when they brought the model the Balinese said ‘we have been practicing this since the 9th century. What are you bringing here?’ And I don’t know how many million dollars these WTO, these World Bank people, United Nations people, spent on creating that chart which was already created in the 9th century without any computers.. and that Subak System still continues. Such systems were in place in various parts of the country. Its remnants are still visible here in India. I have visited areas where there is no water for miles due to drought, yet the well at the local temple still provides fresh water. 10. In Bali Hindus still don’t read a printed book when they perform Puja (worship). They read from a Lontar, which have traditionally been scripted by hand on palm leaf. When they recite the Ramayana Kakavin.where the book is kept, worship will be performed. There is a special ritual of lifting the sacred book, carrying it in a procession, bringing [it] to a special place, doing the bhumi puja, worshipping the ground there and consecrating the ground, then placing the book there. Then the priest will sit and recite the Ramayana.

Congress Government and Mohammed Ghazni!?

Congress Government and Mohammed Gazni!?

How revenue of Temples in India misused by governments

Please forward this to ALL Hindus all over the world”

It’s time we realize our culture is being wiped away!!!

If you care forward this….IF NOT Delete!!
Why are we Hindus taking all this lying down? 
Why is there an IAS officer as head of very temple? 
Can they dare go to a Masjid/mosque or a church? Please see the article and decide for yourself?

Foreign writer opens our eyes.

The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Act of 1951 allow State Governments and politicians to take over thousands of Hindu Temples and maintain complete control over them and their properties. It is claimed that they can sell the temple assets and properties and use the money in any way they choose.
A charge has been made not by any Temple authority, but by a foreign writer, Stephen Knapp in a book (Crimes against India and the Need to Protect Ancient Vedic Tradition) published in the United States that makes shocking reading.
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/crimes_against_india.htm
Hundreds of temples in centuries past have been built in India by devout rulers and the donations given to them by devotees have been used for the benefit of the (other) people. If, presently, money collected has ever been misused (and that word needs to be defined), it is for the devotees to protest and not for any government to interfere. This letter is what has been happening currently under an intrusive law.
It would seem, for instance, that under a Temple Empowerment Act, about 43,000 temples in Andhra Pradesh have come under government control and only 18 per cent of the revenue of these temples have been returned for temple purposes, the remaining 82 per cent being used for purposes unstated.
Apparently even the world famous Tirumala Tirupati Temple has not been spared. According to Knapp, the temple collects over Rs 3,100 Crores every year and the State Government has not denied the charge that as much as 85 per cent of this is transferred to the State Exchequer, much of which goes to causes that are not connected with the Hindu community. Was it for that reason that devotees make their offering to the temples? Another charge that has been made is that the Andhra Government has also allowed the demolition of at least ten temples for the construction of a golf course. Imagine the outcry writes Knapp, if ten mosques had been demolished.
It would seem that in Karanataka, Rs. 79 Crores were collected from about two lakh temples and from that, temples received Rs seven Crores for their maintenance, Muslim madrassas and Haj subsidy were given Rs. 59 Crore and churches about Rs 13 Crore. Very generous of the government.

Because of this, Knapp writes, 25 per cent of the two lakh temples or about 50,000 temples in Karnataka will be closed down for lack of resources, and he adds: The only way the government can continue to do this is because people have not stood up enough to stop it.
Knapp then refers to Kerala where, he says, funds from the Guruvayur Temple are diverted to other government projects denying improvement to 45 Hindu temples. Land belonging to the Ayyappa Temple, apparently has been grabbed and Church encroaches are occupying huge areas of forest land, running into thousands of acres, near Sabarimala.
A charge is made that the Communist state government of Kerala wants to pass an Ordinance to disband the Travancore & Cochin Autonomous Devaswom Boards (TCDBs) and take over their limited independent authority of 1,800 Hindu temples. If what the author says is true, even the Maharashtra Government wants to take over some 450,000 temples in the state which would supply a huge amount of revenue to correct the states bankrupt condition.
And to top it all, Knapp says that in Orissa, the state government intends to sell over 70,000 acres of endowment lands from the Jagannath Temple, the proceeds of which would solve a huge financial crunch brought about by its own mismanagement of temple assets.

Says Knapp: Why such occurrences are so often not known is that the Indian media, especially the English television and press, are often anti-Hindu in their approach, and thus not inclined to give much coverage, and certainly no sympathy, for anything that may affect the Hindu community. Therefore, such government action that plays against the Hindu community goes on without much or any attention attracted to them.

Knapp obviously is on record. If the facts produced by him are incorrect, it is up to the government to say so. It is quite possible that some individuals might have set up temples to deal with lucrative earnings. But that, surely, is none of the governments business? Instead of taking over all earnings, the government surely can appoint local committees to look into temple affairs so that the amount discovered is fairly used for the public good?
Says Knapp: Nowhere in the free, democratic world are the religious institutions managed, maligned and controlled by the government, thus denying the religious freedom of the people of the country. But it is happening in India. Government officials have taken control of Hindu temples because they smell money in them, they recognise the indifference of Hindus, they are aware of the unlimited patience and tolerance of Hindus, they also know that it is not in the blood of Hindus to go to the streets to demonstrate, destroy property, threaten, loot, harm and kill.

Many Hindus are sitting and watching the demise of their culture. They need to express their views loud and clear Knapp obviously does not know that should they do so, they would be damned as communalists.  But it is time someone asked the Government to lay down all the facts on the table so that the public would know what is happening behind its back. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is not secularism. And temples are not for looting, under It’s time we realize our culture is being wiped away!!!

HARD REALITIES………

Hinduism remains the most attacked and under siege of all the major world religions. This is in spite of the fact that Hinduism is the most tolerant and pluralistic of the world’s major religions.

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YET ANOTHER SCAM OF CONGRESS???? DELHI’S INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT….

Delhi’s World Class Indira Gandhi International Airport (T-3)

Why could’nt our expert designers and architects foresee this when they spent hundreds of crores and built this sophisticated airport, which is as functional as a bus station in Ethiopia ? Wading through rain water @ International Airport; dinghy service will start soon till taxi stand and return ………….!

BEWARE OF CREDIT CARD FRAUDS

NEW WAY OF STEALING…
ESPECIALLY LOOK AT SCENE THREE…

Be sure to read Scene 3. Quite interesting.

This is a new one. People sure stay busy
Trying to cheat us, don’t they?

SCENE 1.
A friend went to the local gym and placed his belongings in the
locker. After the
workout and a shower, he came out, saw the locker open, and thought
to himself,
‘Funny, I thought I locked the locker…

Hmm, ‘He dressed and just flipped the wallet to make sure all was in
order.
Everything looked okay – all cards were in place…

A few weeks later his credit card bill came – a whooping bill of
$14,000!

He called the credit card company and started yelling at them,
saying that he did
not make the transactions.

Customer care personnel verified that there was no mistake in the
system and
asked if his card had been stolen…
‘No,’ he said, but then took out his wallet, pulled out the credit
card, and yep –
you guessed it – a switch had been made.

An expired similar credit card from the same bank was in the wallet.

The thief broke into his locker at the gym and switched cards.

Verdict: The credit card issuer said since he did not report the
card missing
earlier, he would have to pay the amount owed to them.

How much did he have to pay for items he did not buy?

$9,000! Why were there no calls made to verify the amount swiped?
Small amounts rarely trigger a ‘warning bell’ with some credit card
companies. It just so happens that all the small amounts added up to
big one!
============================

SCENE 2.
A man at a local restaurant paid for his meal with his credit card.

The bill for the meal came, he signed it and the waitress folded the
receipt and
passed the credit card along.

Usually, he would just take it and place it in his wallet or pocket.
Funny enough,
though, he actually took a look at the card and, lo and behold, it
was the expired
card of another person.

He called the waitress and she looked perplexed.

She took it back, apologized, and hurried back to the counter under
the watchful eye of the
man.

All the waitress did while walking to the counter was wave the wrong
expired card to the
counter cashier, and the counter cashier immediately looked down and
took out the real card.

No exchange of words — nothing! She took it and came back to the
man with an apology..
(This scenario actually happened to me at a local restaurant- Falls
Terrace-between the waitress
and the front desk cashier.)

Verdict: Make sure the credit cards in your wallet are yours.

Check the name on the card every time you sign for something and/or
the card is taken
away for even a short period of time.

Many people just take back the credit card without even looking at
it, ‘assuming’
that it has to be theirs.

FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, DEVELOP THE HABIT OF CHECKING YOUR CREDIT CARD
EACH
TIME IT IS RETURNED TO YOU AFTER A TRANSACTION!
==========================

SCENE 3:
Yesterday I went into a pizza restaurant to pick up an order that I
had called in.

I paid by using my Visa Check Card which, of course, is linked
directly to my checking
Account.

The young man behind the counter took my card, swiped it, then laid
it on the counter
as he waited for the approval, which is pretty standard procedure.

While he waited, he picked up his cell phone and started dialing.

I noticed the phone because it is the same model I have, but nothing
seemed out of the
ordinary. Then I heard a click that sounded like my phone sounds
when I take a picture.

He then gave me back my card but kept the phone in his hand as if he
was still pressing
buttons.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking: I wonder what he is taking a picture of,
oblivious to what was
really going on.

It then dawned on me: the only thing there was my credit card, so
now I’m paying close
attention to what he is doing..

He set his phone on the counter, leaving it open.

About five seconds later, I heard the chime that tells you that the
picture has been
saved.

Now I’m standing there struggling with the fact that this boy just
took a picture of my
credit card.

Yes, he played it off well, because had we not had the same kind of
phone, I probably would
never have known what happened.

Needless to say, I immediately canceled that card as I was walking
out of the pizza parlour.

All I am saying is, be aware of your surroundings at all times.

Whenever you are using your credit card take caution and don’t be
careless.

Notice who is standing near you and what they are doing when you use
your card.

Be aware of phones, because many have a camera phone these days.

FORWARD THIS TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN THINK OF. LET’S GET THE
WORD
OUT! JUST BE AWARE.
Never let your card out of your sight…..check and check again!

Scary isn’t it…..

New way of STEALING… Don’t delete this one!!

How drugs pumped into supermarket chickens pose a terrifying threat to our health

 

Every second of every day, somewhere in the world the same scene unfolds.
A batch of several hundred eggs, precisely arranged in uniform rows, moves along a conveyor belt, coming to a halt beneath a machine linked to a jumble of tubes.

Once in position, the machine robotically lowers itself and then simultaneously punctures each egg with a rack of hypodermic needles.

Through these needles, a mix of vaccines and antibiotics is injected into the egg — and so into the unborn chick inside, which three days later will hatch out.

Danger: Drugs being pumped into supermarket chickens are posing a threat to our health

If the scene sounds like something from a science-fiction film, then that is hardly a surprise. Today, large-scale poultry production has precious little to do with green fields and ruddy-cheeked farmers.

Every year, more than 40 billion chickens are slaughtered worldwide for meat, the vast majority of them intensively factory-farmed.

The bottom line is profit. All that matters is the volume in which these animals, bred to hit their genetically-modified slaughter weights within 35 days of hatching, can be churned out.

 

More…

• The £20 jar of honey that needs a security tag to deter middle-class shoplifters
• Higher taxes on cigarettes make young people DRINK less as well as encouraging smokers to quit

Given the intensity of the production systems (raised in sheds of 50,000 birds, each will be lucky to have the space of a piece of A4 paper in which to live), the dangers of disease are massively magnified.

And so it is to prevent this that the chickens are vaccinated before birth against common diseases.

They are often also dosed up with antibiotics — a preventative measure that is easier and cheaper than dealing with individual illnesses at a later date.

In Britain, consumers can’t get enough of cheap chicken. On average, we eat 31 kilos per person per year — which is more than any other country in Europe.

Early start: Chicks are vaccinated as soon as their eggs are laid and before they even hatch

With a budget supermarket chicken today available for less than £2.50 per bird, cost is one of the drivers behind its ever-growing popularity.

Not only that, but with the horsemeat scandal still fresh in consumers’ minds and the fact that chicken is lower in fat than red meat, it is also seen as a ‘healthy’ option.

How deeply ironic then that scientists now believe that the nation’s love affair with the fowl could be about to trigger a devastating health crisis of its own.

Forget the fact that last month it emerged that food poisoning cases linked to infected chicken — thanks to a bug called campylobacter — struck down 580,000 people last year, putting 18,000 in hospital and killing 140.

Now experts are warning that the overuse of antibiotics in poultry farms around the world is creating a generation of superbugs that are resistant to treatment by virtually every drug in the medical establishment’s armoury.

With up to 80 per cent of the raw chicken on sale in some countries carrying these resistant bacteria, they can be transferred to humans during the handling of infected meat or the eating of undercooked produce.

The bacteria will then survive in the gut before potentially triggering illnesses such as persistent urinary infections or, more seriously, blood poisoning, also known as sepsis.

A newly-published report claims that as a direct result of this, 1,500 lives are being lost in Europe each year — with 280 of them in this country alone.

Dietary staple: Every year, more than 40 billion chickens are slaughtered worldwide for meat, the vast majority of them intensively factory-farmed

But the fear is that, as the resistant bugs spread, the death toll will rise as more and more antibiotics become ineffective.

‘We have people dying who do not need to die, because you should not be using these drugs in food animals at all, particularly in poultry,’ says Peter Collignon, a world authority on the subject and professor of infectious diseases at the Australian National University.

‘It is a practice we must not allow to continue, because basically there are no more antibiotics in the pipeline coming along to rescue us. The farming industry’s argument is that if they don’t do this, then one or two per cent of their flocks might die after they hatch. My view of that is “bad luck”.

‘A one or two-day-old chick that dies is worth a fraction of a penny. A human being is worth a million times more than a chicken — so we just shouldn’t do it.’

Someone who knows first-hand the dangers posed by the infections that scientists are warning of is life coach Susie Wiggins. In March last year, the 53-year-old from Northwood, Middlesex, headed into Central London to meet a girlfriend for lunch at an upmarket restaurant.

‘We were going on to an exhibition afterwards and I was dressed up to the nines — four-inch heels, full make-up — and was feeling absolutely fine,’ she says.

‘But as we sat down for lunch I started to feel very ill, very quickly. I had unbelievable cramping in my stomach, went to the loo and when I came back I was rambling and talking nonsense.’

Realising something was seriously wrong, Miss Wiggins’ friend immediately took her to Guy’s Hospital. Within hours she was unconscious and in intensive care.

‘Basically, the pain I felt was my organs starting to shut down,’ she says. ‘I was in a coma for two weeks, during which time my hands and feet swelled up and turned black.

‘The doctors were so worried I would die that they arranged a room for my mother to stay in so she could be with me when it happened.’

That Miss Wiggins survived was down to the fact that the doctors had quickly spotted that she was suffering from sepsis. The condition strikes hard and fast and kills 37,000 people a year in the UK.

Cheap: With a budget supermarket chicken today available for less than £2.50 per bird, cost is one of the drivers behind its ever-growing popularity

Treatment is with antibiotics, but one of the emerging problems today is finding the right one to use.

In Miss Wiggins’ case, it turned out that her illness was due to an E.coli infection, which could have been caused by chicken or another infected meal she had eaten at some point before that fateful lunch.

Doctors believe the bacteria may have passed through the wall of her colon into her bloodstream after she underwent colonic irrigation or as a result of infected kidney stones.

But it took them 48 hours and several antibiotics to identify the strain of the bug.

‘I was very lucky that my body held up that long,’ said Miss Wiggins. ‘In the past, it would have been much easier for the doctors, but nowadays they have to work out which antibiotic to use, which can cause delays. And with sepsis, you really don’t have much time.’

It is a point echoed by Dr Ron Daniels, chairman of the UK Sepsis Trust and a hospital critical care consultant.

Worrying: Scientists are particularly concerned that the overuse of a certain type of antibiotic is linked to a drug resistant strain of E. Coli

He says that in some parts of the country, 30 per cent of E.coli bacteria encountered are what is known as Extended-Spectrum Beta-lactamase E.coli. In layman’s terms, this means that they are resistant to many antibiotics.

‘An ESBL E.coli is no more likely than other E.coli to cause illness but, when it does, unless we are aware that it is an ESBL E.coli there is a danger we might start treating with antibiotics to which the bacteria is resistant,’ he explains.

‘The problem is that if we do that, that would be as ineffective as not treating with antibiotics at all.’

At least today there are a handful of antibiotics out there that still work. The big concern is that if resistance continues to spread, there will simply be no antibiotics left that can be effectively deployed.

If that happens, then the 21st century could see the death toll from infections soar to 19th-century levels.

It is a point that was made earlier this year by Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, who warned that antibiotic-resistant bacteria posed ‘a catastrophic threat’ to the population.

‘If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics,’ she said.

‘And routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection.’

In the past, the blame for the growth of drug-resistant superbugs was pinned on doctors who over- prescribed antibiotics to patients.

But there is a growing body of opinion that believes excessive use of the drugs within the agricultural world — especially cheap chicken — is equally to blame.

Scientists are particularly concerned about the over-use of a group of antibiotics called cephalosporins, which they believe are linked to the emergence of drug-resistant strains of E.Coli.

Cephalosporins are a class of antibiotics that the World Health Organisation has rated as ‘critically important to human medicine’.

‘For me the evidence is overwhelming,’ says Professor Collignon. ‘With certain bacteria, what we do with animals is making them resistant.’

He explains that of all the antibiotics used in the world, about 80  per cent are used on food animals, about 15 to 20 per cent on patients in the community, and just five per cent in hospitals.

‘What we know is that there is an epidemic of these resistant E.coli in Europe causing bloodstream infections,’ he says.

‘What is interesting is that these bacteria are resistant to antibiotics that we do not give widely in the community — only in hospitals.

Health risk: Food poisoning cases linked to infected chicken ¿ thanks to a bug called campylobacter ¿ struck down 580,000 people last year, putting 18,000 in hospital and killing 140

‘So to me the available evidence suggests that a reasonable proportion of these are coming through food, with poultry a particular risk.’

In a study published last week in the Journal for Infectious Diseases, Professor Collignon and other scientists highlighted data from Holland which showed that 56 per cent of antibiotic-resistant E.coli genes in human blood-poisoning cases were identical to E.coli genes from retail chicken samples.

The transmission of one particularly resistant strain of EDSL E.coli tripled between people and animals from 2007 to 2012, the report claimed.

Extrapolating the Dutch data to other European countries, it estimated the number of deaths caused by antibiotic-resistant E.coli associated with chicken is 62 in France; 115 in Italy; 192 in Germany and 282 in Britain.

As well as 1,518 extra deaths Europe-wide, that also equated to an extra 67,236 days of hospital admissions.

‘The number of avoidable deaths and the costs of healthcare potentially caused by cephalosporin use in food animals is staggering,’ the scientists concluded.

‘Considering these factors, the ongoing use of these anti-microbial drugs . . . should be urgently examined and stopped, particularly in poultry, not only in Europe, but worldwide.’

Fear: Up to 80 per cent of the raw chicken on sale in some countries carries drug resistant bacteria, and they can be transferred to humans during the handling of infected meat or the eating of undercooked produce

Interestingly, it appears that the less-intensively reared the chicken, the more reduced the likelihood of creating resistant bacteria.

Chickens that are organically raised are likely to come into far less contact with antibiotics. The use of the drugs in organic animals is restricted to when they are ill, and even then only when there are no alternative treatments available.

Research in 2006 compared E.coli samples taken from organic and non-organic farm animals, observing their resistance to ten different types of antibiotic.

On average, those from organic farms were resistant to one antibiotic, compared with five on non-organic farms.

But, of course, that comes at a price. An organic chicken on sale in a supermarket will cost at least two-and-a-half times more than the cheapest ‘budget’ chicken.

Unsurprisingly, poultry farmers have reacted angrily to being blamed for the crisis.

A spokeswoman for The British Poultry Council dismissed the study as ‘alarmist’ and said that it was based on out-of-date research.

She said: ‘Extrapolating the calculations of possible human deaths from the Netherlands to the UK was flawed from the outset, because antibiotics were used differently in UK poultry production . . . when compared to how they were used in the Netherlands.’

Cephalosporins, she explained, had never been administered in flocks used for meat production here.

And while they had been used in the breeding flocks, which produce the eggs that then hatch into meat chickens, the industry had voluntarily agreed to stop all use at the end of 2011.

‘British consumers can be assured that British chickens are reared according to the strict production standards of the Red Tractor assurance scheme,’ she said.

‘These standards include rigorous controls of the use of medicine under veterinary supervision. All medicines on farms should be used as little as possible and only as much as necessary.

‘We’re strongly committed to a prudent and responsible use of antibiotics in poultry and all other livestock and will continue to engage with the government, the livestock sector and other stakeholders on this matter.’

But critics are unconvinced and say that even the limited use in the breeding flocks could have been potentially problematic, with resistance being passed down through generations of chickens.

And they also point out that whatever native farmers are doing, Britain imports large quantities of chicken meat from abroad.

While 1.3   million tonnes of chicken meat is reared here (the equivalent of 900 million chickens a year), a further 700,000 tonnes is imported.

Worryingly, Holland is the biggest source of these imports, followed by Thailand — a country where concerns have been raised about the widespread use of antibiotics.

Given the growing taste for chicken in this country, it means that international action against antibiotic overuse is essential.

In the meantime, efforts are finally being taken to better understand what is behind the spread of these antibiotic-resistant E.coli.

Last month, the Government launched a three-year study into the problem. It will involve collecting ESBL E.coli samples from farm slurry and from raw meat on sale to the public.

This will then be compared with samples taken from human blood and faecal samples to see what genetic similarities there are between the two.

While scientists welcome the study, they warn that we cannot sit back and wait for the results before taking action.

Time, they say, is critical — something that Susie Wiggins knows to be the case from her own, terrifying, experience.

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