media Crooks

http://www.mediacrooks.com/2013/09/imported-garbage-from-new-york-times.html#.Uj5bbVMZTyQ

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Indian Media Watch…. Changing The Way You Consume News..

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Imported Garbage – From New York Times

September 19, 2013

This blog has always been dedicated to Indian news media as it was meant to be. However, considering multiple elections are looming and business abroad is not so great one can expect a lot of imported scumbags to fry their onions in the Indian heat. The American media is the inspiration behind the terribly corrupt anduntrustworthy media in India. They too have fake reports, fake awards and even bogus reports to encourage war. Even the Pulitzer Prize can be hoodwinked. Don’t believe me? Read the story of Janet Cooke in “Barkha – The Queen of Telly Trolls”. The common misconception in India is that the longest running media competition is KBC. Actually no! KBC had many breaks. The longest running media completion is “Abuse Narendra Modi and win a prize”.Unfortunately, there is hardly any media crook in India who hasn’t already won that prize so now there are imported contestants. Any Tom, Dick and Harris would do! So ‘Enter Gardiner Harris’ of the New York Times (NYT).

 

This is what Harris’ profile on Twitter says (pic on the left). Usually when you have a grand title like “South Asia” correspondent you can assume there will be a lot of stringers and side-kicks assisting the person. To put it politely, these people usually peddle “second-hand stuff”. You know, like selling used cars. If you ever met a used-car salesman he will make you believe it’s even better than a virgin car. But the Twitter profile doesn’t say much else, so a more honest introduction to Harris is mandatory. Here’s how one introduced him (edited excerpts):

“The Inconstant Gardiner: The New York Times’ Fervent Disconnect Between Drug and Vaccine Reporting: The film “The Constant Gardener”—starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz… from the book by John le Carré—is the story of sacrifice and moral constancy against the corruption of fictional corporate giant KVH, maker of pharmaceuticals and pesticides. It’s a beautiful film in many ways, and terrifying; a cross between reality check and forecast…..  Isn’t tireless repetition of “emotional words” a technique of advertising and political propaganda? Or is Harris too bored with the issue to come up with fresher adjectives?  I suppose that could explain the—cough— inconstant reporting. Inconstant: adjective; likely to change frequently without apparent or cogent reason— in•con•stant•ly adverb … Gardiner Harris—who just came out with his first novel involving a possible conspiracy in coalmining  —likes to chastise vaccine injury claimants for being “misled by conspiracy theories”.  It’s funny if you think about it. Harris’s conceit is that he himself would be in on such a conspiracy if it existed— when in reality, Harris doesn’t make decisions about what gets printed in the Times any more than a drug rep decides what to sell”.

Isn’t tireless repetition of “emotional words” a technique of advertising and political propaganda? Asks the article about Harris. Oh yes, terms like “divisive” “controversial” “fascist” “chauvinist” “polariser” are all propaganda words that fit very much with Harris’ style as it does with most of his Indian counterparts. I recommend you read the full introduction of Harris that I’ve linked so that there is no selective interpretation. What I’ve quoted is actually the nicer part. So on what basis he wrote this crap called “Campaign for Prime Minister in India Gets Off to Violent Start” about NaMo can only be described as mindless propaganda and nothing more. It’s his “first time” I suppose, so we will throw back just a couple of his moroneries back at him.  Harris clearly tries to imply that the nomination of Modi as BJP’s PM candidatesparked off the Muzzafarnagar riots. Sounds a lot like our very own Diggy, doesn’t he? Here’s what he starts with:

“India’s most important election in a generation began in earnest this month the same way consequential elections nearly always start here — with a proclamation and a deadly riot. In New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party announced last week that it had chosen Narendra Modi, one of the most divisive politicians in India’s history, as its candidate for prime minister in next spring’s national elections. Mr. Modi, the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, is an unapologetic Hindu chauvinist who has been accused of mass murder”.

So the “proclamation” is connected to a deadly riot – the Muzzafarnagar one. Of course, Harris doesn’t forget to state Modi has been “accused of mass murder”. Now who has accused Modi of this? Not a court and not even an FIR. It is scumbags like Harris in the Indian media who have done this; most prominently Vir Sanghvi and Rajdeep Sardesai. Bravo, second-hand crap is passed off as gospel. Here’s another one from Harris:

Okay, in the above para he links to an article about the Muzzafarnagar riots. This is from his own NYT barn. That linked article is “Fear and loathing in North India’s sugarcane town”. Nice! Very nice! Harris also states the riots were due to a “fake video” by a legislator from Modi’s party. See? This guy is a fast learner. Bad things it’s Modi’s Gujarat, Modi’s aide, Modi’s right-hand man. Good things? It’s Gujarat or Gujarat govt. I guess this guy must have attended classes at NDTV and CNN-IBN. Anyway, here’s what the article he linked says:

Oh, the fake video theory has been busted. But trust used-car salesmen to tell you how virgin the car is. So the riots, which actually started in August, escalated on September 7 as the NYT report  says. Modi was nominated PM candidate on Friday the 13th. Yet, like the usual Indian liars in our own media Harris makes a fake connection. I hope the UPA awards him a Padma Shri before they exit. Then Harris proceeds to write the tripe that has been peddled over and over again in India. He’s just about some 10 years late, that’s all. Oh and then he quotes the great Sushil Kumar Shinde too:

“Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s minister of Home Affairs, said that there had already been 451 cases of sectarian violence this year, surpassing last year’s total of 410. He warned that violence was likely to intensify as elections approached”.

451 cases of sectarian violence this year? What? Did you hear any of that? Did you see of any of that being reported by NDTV, CNN-IBN, TOI Group, Headlines Today or ABPNews all of whom are clones of NYT and American media? Oops! He reveals something else too. There were 410 last year. Did you hear most of that either? Thanks to Harris, at least he exposes the criminal cover-up artists in Indian media. But the Inconstant Gardiner misses something. None of the 451 or 410 happened in Gujarat or under Modi’s watch. So he will learn slowly those aren’t sectarian violence. The only communal clash ever in India was Gujarat 2002.

Harris also grandly states Modi rarely speaks to Western media. He is wrong. Modi rarely speaks to any mediabecause he knows how they are criminally ranged against him. He is smart and throws words in his speeches and lets them grovel for crumbs. But even here “second-hand” news peddler Harris is inaccurate. Modi gave an interview to Reuters just some weeks ago. Obviously, Harris is not a lover of Puppies or he would have heard of that. No?

But like I said those “South Asia” type specialists are usually assisted by local sidekicks. In this case there is one Hari Kumar from Ahmedabad and Nida Najar from Muzzafarnagar. In a tribute to John Lennon this is what Elton John wrote about the gardener he was:

What happened here
As the New York sunset disappeared
I found an empty garden among the flagstones there
Who lived here
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And now it all looks strange
It’s funny how one insect can damage so much grain.

It’s true; one insect can also damage the NYT as they know so well. “Reporter Judith Miller retired after criticisms that her reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War was factually inaccurate and overly favorable to the Bush administration’s position, for which The New York Times later apologized. One of Miller’s prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who returned to Iraq after the U.S. invasion and held a number of governmental positions culminating in acting oil minister and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006”…. “In May 2003, Times reporter Jayson Blair was forced to resign from the newspaper after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of hisstories. Some critics contended that Blair’s race was a major factor in his hiring and in The New York Times’ initial reluctance to fire him”. The NYT has won a lot of awards and also has the experience of weeds. One hopes they don’t let an insect damage the good crop.

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“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.

why Congress and all other parties blame Gujarat and Narendra Modi ??? read on

To:

  This is a very good and thought-provoking article. I would like to give a few more incidents to enable  Ashok  Malik  to refer in his future writings. Most of the  cases occurred in Congress- ruled states and  Congress was ruling at the Center.   

1) P. Rajan’s  case-  It  took place in Kerala  during  the Emergency.  You may read P. Rajan’s case  on Wikipedia and “Stripped Law- Rajan : A revisit”. At that time  Chief Minister was Achutha Menon ( A communist).  The Home Minister was K.Karunakaran (Congress)The CM never  resigned at that time.

2)Bhagalpur  blinding:-  Took place in Bihar. Police blinded 31 under- trial prisoners by pouring acid in their eye. At that time Jagannath Mishra was CM  of  Bihar. He had  not resigned at that time.

“The Bhagalpur blindings refers to a series of incidents in 1979 and 1980 in Bhagalpur in the state of Bihar, India,  when police blinded 31 under trials (or convicted criminals, according to some versions), by pouring acid into their eyes. The incident became infamous as Bhagalpur blindings. The incident was widely discussed, debated and acutely criticized by several human rights organizations. The Bhagalpur blinding case had made criminal jurisprudence history by becoming the first in which the Supreme Court had ordered compensation for violation of basic human rights.^[1]“

3) Bhagalpur  riot

The Bhagalpur riots of 1989 refers to the violence between the Hindus and theMuslims in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar, India. The riots started on 24 October 1989, and the violent incidents continued to happen for 2 months. The violence affected the Bhagalpur city and 250 villages around it. Over 1,000 people (around 900 of which were Muslims^[2]), were killed, and another 50,000 were displaced as a result of the violence.^[3] It was the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in independent India at the time,^[1] surpassing the 1969 Gujarat riots.

Satyendra Narayan Sinha was CM at that time.

In his autobiography Meri Yaadein, Meri Bhoolein, released by the then Bihar Governor Buta Singh in the presence of Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee {now President of India}, Satyendra Narayan Sinha  accused his Congress colleagues of “fanning” the 1989 Bhagalpur violence to malign him, specifically mentioning his predecessor and former chief minister Bhagwat Jha Azad and the former speaker Shivchandra Jha. He also accused the Prime Minister of overruling his order to transfer the then superintendent of police K S Dwivedi who had failed miserably to discharge his duties. The decision was not only an encroachment of the Constitutional right of the state government but also a step detrimental to ongoing efforts to ease tensions.^[25] When he stepped down from the post of Chief Minister of Bihar, Jagannath Mishra succeeded him. He recalled when he met Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi later on, he informed him about the “role of some Congress leaders” in the riots. The Prime Minister expressed surprise and said “so, the riots were motivated!^[26]

 

4) Naxal Uprising in West Bengal

 

Siddhartha Shankar Ray

After the Congress won the General Election of 1972, he became the Chief Minister of West Bengal from March 19, 1972 to June 21, 1977. He took office shortly after the Bangladesh Liberation War, and his administration was faced with the massive problem of resettling over a million refugees in various parts of the state. The civic services of Calcutta in particular found rehabilitation of the Bangladeshi refugees to be an uphill task, and failed in this aspect. The crackdown on Naxalites also took place under his watch.^[9]

Ray is often misunderstood for his role during the heydays of the Naxal uprising in the state. The Left have always blamed him for unleashing a reign of terror, which he didn’t deserve. But Ray took all the criticism without a murmur. At his time, the district magistrates and superintendents of police had enough independence. They treated the Naxals under criminal procedures. Ray didn’t prevent them from doing that. But he didn’t encourage them, either. He was deeply disturbed when the government had to call in the Army in Birbhum to tackle Naxals. “I have no child. But the Naxals, as I see them, are like my children. It pains me when I have to send in the Army to tackle them,” Ray had said. He introduced a unique method to tackle Naxals. Jail break and shoot out encounters were done to eliminate  large number of under- trial  Naxals. 

Tcg

It’s always Gujarat

Ashok Malik

 

8 Sep 2013 

 

Vijay Salaskar was killed on the evening of November 26, 2008. An inspector in the Mumbai police, he was driving the vehicle that was also carrying senior officers Hemant Karkare and Ashok Kamte when it was ambushed by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists.

 

This was a dramatic incident that made clear the intensity of the attack on Mumbai on the dark night of 26/11.

 

Following his martyrdom, the government of Maharashtra recommended Salaskar for a gallantry award. On January 26, 2009, three months after his death, the Union government named Salaskar for the Ashok Chakra. India was grateful to him.

 

P. Chidambaram, then home minister, took personal interest in ensuring Salaskar’s young daughter was given a government job. No doubt in the years to come Salaskar will go down as an authentic Indian hero and school textbooks will carry chapters on him and his colleagues.

 

What was the trajectory of Salaskar’s career before he was killed?

 

For 20 years he had been a doughty warrior for the Mumbai police, part of a band of officers responsible for cleaning up the city underworld.Criminal syndicates in Mumbai — some but not all of them later merging into terrorism — established themselves as a force by the 1980s. The state government decided to adopt a proactive policy of neutralising these groups and safeguarding Mumbai.

 

Salaskar was instrumental in this, killing his first criminal in 1983. Subsequently, he was responsible for removing some 70-80 people who, depending on how you saw them, could have been gangsters, petty criminals, terrorist auxiliaries or just plain suspects.

 

How did Salaskar do this? Presumably not by feeding his victims lollipops.

 

Salaskar was an encounter specialist. His methods were his own. The government followed a “don’t ask-don’t tell” approach. There was nobody to leak letters or even ghost-write these for him. There was no gaggle of activists out to challenge the Mumbai police or any politician who was backing it. There was no Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct lengthy investigations into Salaskar’s career record and attempt to finish him. He was lucky.

 

Sitting in his cell, D.G. Vanzara, former chief of the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad, may well be pondering Salaskar’s luck and fate. Today, Salaskar is held up as a model, no-nonsense police officer. For doing pretty much the same thing, Mr Vanzara is painted as a villain. If we get over the trite cliché that all fake encounters are bad — of course they are; though it must be said not one of
Mr Vanzara’s encounters, or Salaskar’s for that matter, have been legally proven to be fake — it is worth asking why Mr Vanzara does not deserve sympathy.

 

He has been in prison for six years now, implicated in three high-profile cases, without the trial having even begun. He is not alone; 32 officers of the Gujarat police, and virtually the entire ATS squad, find themselves behind bars and out of action. The anti-terror network set up in the state in the early years of this century has been crippled.

 

The CBI and a politician-activist cabal in Gujarat have no interest in quickly taking Mr Vanzara’s cases to resolution. A delay and a battle by innuendo suit them best because they are targeting Narendra Modi’s political future, not “seeking justice” as is claimed. If nothing else, Mr Vanzara deserves to have somebody pay for a good lawyer. If at the end of all this he is acquitted, who will give him back his lost years? Even if there are convictions, it is a fair guess that many of the 32 Gujarat policemen who are currently remand prisoners (undertrials) have probably already spent more time in custody than they may be sentenced for.

 

Thundering voices on television insist Gujarat cannot be compared to Punjab in the 1980s or Kashmir in the 1990s. True, it can’t; but that doesn’t mean it faced no threat from terrorism. In the 1990s its coastline was used by terror groups to bring in munitions, including for the 1993 Mumbai bombings. After 2002, Mr Modi began to carry the highest threat perception, greater than any other chief minister at least. This has been borne out by successive Intelligence Bureau inputs. In 2010, the WikiLeaks cables revealed Western intelligence agencies believed that the Lashkar threat to Mr Modi was clear and present and had not died out with the elimination of Ishrat Jehan and her accomplices in 2004.

 

For anybody in public life — politician, civil servant, even activist and journalist — a fundamental test of integrity is in according different subjects equal treatment under conditions of equality.

 

Has this happened with Gujarat? Why are terror threats to Gujarat and its chief minister ridiculed and the anti-terror operations of Gujarat police sabotaged? Why does this happen to no other state?

 

Take two other examples.

 

Recently, the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), headed by a Congress member of Parliament, demanded a CBI inquiry into alleged manipulation in the Tulsiram Prajapati case.

 

Prajapati, a criminal who happened to be a dalit, was killed by the Gujarat ATS. The basis of the commission’s move was a “sting operation” carried out by a conman at the periphery of the media — and previously accused of and arrested for blackmailing public servants using fake “sting op” videos — who found support from Congress Party spokespersons.

 

The NCSC’s promptness was remarkable. In Uttar Pradesh, dalit writer Kanwal Bharti was arrested for a Facebook post that criticised the state government and backed Durga Shakti Nagpal, the civil servant who took on the sand mafia in Greater Noida. Why has the commission not found Mr Bharti worthy of support?

 

Second, Mr Vanzara’s long spell in prison, without trial, is seen as justified by those who blame him for the killing of Ishrat Jehan.

 

Gopal Kanda, a former Congress minister in Haryana, has been charged with harassing, stalking and driving to suicide a woman called Geetika Sharma. This past week, he was given bail and allowed to attend the state Assembly.

 

There was no clamour in the media.

 

All women are equal but is (or was) Ishrat Jehan more equal than Geetika Sharma?

 

Now if only Geetika Sharma had lived in Gujarat and Kanda been a minister in the Modi government…

 

 

The writer can be contacted at :malikashok@gmail.com

Copyright © 2011 The Asian Age. All rights reserved.

 

Enter the Dragon- Chinese Economic growth

 

This article, though aimed at a US audience, gives a scary insight into China’s growing economic power.

 

A Little Known Reality.

June 8, 2013. Source: Michael Snyder, Guest Post

In future China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States. Chinese acquisition of U.S. businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to shatter that record this year.

The Smithfield Foods acquisition is an example.  Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world.  It has facilities in 26 U.S. states and it employs tens of thousands of Americans.  It directly owns  460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.  But now a Chinese company has bought it for $ 4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.  

Thanks in part to our massively bloated trade deficit with China, the Chinese have trillions of dollars to spend. They are only just starting to exercise their economic muscle.

It is important to keep in mind that there is often not much of a difference between “the Chinese government” and “Chinese corporations”.  In 2011, 43 percent of all profits in China were produced by companies where the Chinese government had a controlling interest in.  

Last year a Chinese company spent $2.6 billion to purchase AMC entertainment – one of the largest movie theater chains in the United States.  Now that Chinese company controls more movie ticket sales than anyone else in the world.  

But China is not just relying on acquisitions to expand its economic power.  “Economic beachheads” are being established all over America.  For example, Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, Inc. recently broke ground on a $100 million plant in Thomasville, Alabama.  Many of the residents of Thomasville, Alabama will be glad to have jobs, but it will also become yet another community that will now be heavily dependent on communist China.

And guess where else Chinese companies are putting down roots? Detroit. Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers. If you recently purchased an “American-made” vehicle, there is a really good chance that it has a number of Chinese parts in it. Industry analysts are hard-pressed to put a number on the Chinese suppliers operating in the United States.

China seems particularly interested in acquiring energy resources in the United States.  For example,  China is actually mining for coal in the mountains of Tennessee.  Guizhou Gouchuang Energy Holdings Group spent 616 million dollars to acquire Triple H Coal Co. in Jacksboro, Tennessee.  At the time, that acquisition really didn’t make much news, but now a group of conservatives in Tennessee is trying to stop the Chinese from blowing up their mountains and taking their coal.  

And pretty soon China may want to build entire cities in the United States just like they have been doing in other countries. Right now China is actually building a city larger than Manhattan just outside Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Are you starting to get the picture? China is on the rise. If you doubt this, just read the following:

# When you total up all imports and exports, China is now the number one trading nation on the entire planet.

# Overall, the U.S. has run a trade deficit with China over the past decade that comes to more than 2.3 trillion dollars.

# China has more foreign currency reserves than anyone else on the planet.

# China now has the largest new car market in the entire world.

# China now produces more than twice as many automobiles as the United States does. After being bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, GM is involved in 11 joint ventures with Chinese companies.

# China is the number one gold producer in the world.

# The uniforms for the U.S. Olympic team were made in China.

# 85% of all artificial Christmas trees the world over are made in China.

# The new World Trade Center tower in New York is going to include glass imported from China.

# China now consumes more energy than the United States does.

# China is now in aggregate the leading manufacturer of goods in the entire world.

# China uses more cement than the rest of the world combined.

# China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.

# China produces 3 times as much coal and 11 times as much steel as the United States does.

# China produces more than 90 percent of the global supply of rare earth elements.

# China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of any national defense system.

# In published scientific research articles China is expected to become number one in the world very shortly.

 

And what we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg. For now, I will just leave you with one piece of advice – learn to speak Chinese.  You are going to need 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.

 

We are not Responsible

 

 

We are not responsible!

EQUITYMASTER HOMEPAGE 24th Aug 2013

The UPA Government has earned itself the dubious distinction of involvement in several large corruption scandals. Each time various Government functionaries absolve themselves of all responsibility. Perhaps it should admit being anirresponsible Government, which it is. 

The latest is the scam at the National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL). When a group of investors, with an aggregateRs 5,500 crores stuck in the exchange, complained to Arvind Mayaram in the Ministry of Finance, the expected answer was that his Ministry was not responsible. It was the Ministry of Consumer Affairs that was, under whose jurisdiction the regulator, Forward Markets Commission (FMC) was supposed to be responsible for regulating the exchange. But FMC Chairman claims he is not responsible, as he was appointed regulator but without power! The question, raised by these columns earlier, and unanswered is, who permitted the NSEL to start operations, without first authorising a regulator to regulate its operations?
Imagine the chaos that would ensue if each regulator took a similar stance. What if the RBI shirked responsibility of a banking fraud and claimed it was not responsible? What if SEBI maintained that it was powerless against a company who, e.g. had raised money through an IPO and misused it? Is it any wonder, then, that individuals repose their faith in gold and not in paper assets? If the Government is genuine, it has to protect investors, else it will incur their wrath prior to a general election. 
Echoing the sentiment, the NSEL says it is not responsible. The top management has been sacked, which is a gesture by the promoters of the Exchange to shirk responsibility for the actions of a management they appointed.
Let’s look at other examples of shirking of responsibility.
The Finance Minister says that it is not responsible for the state of the economy, which is in dire straits. It is not responsible for the high fiscal deficit or for the unsustainably high current account deficit. For the latter, it is the citizen, with his penchant for gold, explained above, who is responsible! For the poor GDP growth it is the companies who are responsible, for going slow on investment, and not the Government, which has blocked several permissions required for the investment. The National Highways Authority of India has had to cancel 6 road projects because of not being able to get land acquisition clearance. But, of course, the Government is never responsible.

Consider the depreciating rupee. In 1947, when India became independent, the Rupee was equal to the US $. It is now Rs 65/$. So in 66 years, the currency has depreciated 65 times. The value of the currency is related to productivity of the country. This means that India has, since independence, sharply declined in productivity. The Congress partyhas been in power for over 75% of the time during these 65 years. But, of course, it is not responsible! 

The falling rupee will, obviously, lead to inflation. Crude oil, as well as gas, translated to INR, would be more expensive. This would mean that all petro products, petrol, diesel, LPG, kerosene, would cost more, and so will power from gas based plants. So the subsidies on the petro products and power will shoot up, and, in a bid to contain them, the Government will raise prices, with the velvet glove admonition to ‘kindly bear with us’. Corporate profits will be hit by the hike in costs, combined with the higher interest rates which are the consequence of a badly managed economy. Of course, the Government is not responsible. 
This is a criminal misallocation of resources. The national productivity rises when children are given a proper education and training and when laws and regulation are conducive to economic acitivity and growth. Not when subsidies are given for people to drive cars in. Annual sale of cars is under 4 m., or 0.08% of our population. The Government subsidises them instead of spending money on better education.
Only a few countries are teaching their children how to think. These include Finland, Poland, Japan, South Korea and Canada, who consistently score high on the PISA test. India scores poorly. Children become smart, and, later, productive, when they are challenged to think for themselves. In India the Government has cleared the way for all to be promoted. This does not challenge them to think. They are not as productive as they can be. Without productivity, the nation slips.The currency weakens. Other countries race ahead. But the Government is not responsible. 
So tyrannical are the rules and laws in India, and so subjective, that we destroy our own industries and encourage the brightest to go abroad. 
The sugar industry, one of the most controlled industries, is being killed. Prices for sugar cane are fixed by both the Centre and the States, both competing with each other to increase prices, never mind the viability of the sugar factories. They set high prices to get farmer votes; the cost is borne by the mills. The mills are going bankrupt. Bad politics drives away good economics. But the Governments are not responsible. 
Another example is that of iron ore exports. These were banned after cases of illegal iron ore mining (corruption, again, in various states like Karnataka and AP) were discovered. It is easy to ban, or destroy. It is not easy to rebuild. The drop in iron ore exports is a contributory factor to the Current Account Deficit. It has led to a loss of jobs. And to a fall in production of steel. Is anybody reviewing the export ban? Or is nobody responsible?
Well, companies like Tata Steel have, in partnership with a Canadian company, set up an iron ore project in Canada, and has already got permission. (South Korean Posco, after an 8 year wait in Odisha, has not). If a large FDI proposal such as Posco comes in it eases pressure on the rupee. But there is no thinking in Government. As this article in the Economist points out, economic activity is being shifted out of India.
America is anticipating an economic boom, predicated largely on a boom in output of shale gas, using a technology called hydraulic fracking. Now it is not the availability of technology that is preventing the search for shale gas in India. Technologies can be bought, or obtained, or developed. Rather, it is ownership rights. In the US, the land owner has the right to everything on, or under, his land. In India it is the Government. As a result, the prospectors for oil and gas, can deal with land owners and sign contracts for exploiting the gas below their lands. And finds a lot of it, lowering gas prices and incentivizing producers of energy dependent steel, fertilisers, metals, etc, to relocate to the US and create jobs and growth.
In India, the Government claims right to any resource under the ground of property belonging to any individual. It auctions the right to hunt for oil/gas, creates a huge mess in the pricing of it. Production drops and prices rise. The fall in production leads to higher imports, a higher current account deficit and a falling currency.
So, what is important to the Government? Is it the ownership of resources under individual land or is it the possibility of larger oil/gas finds and an easing of economic problems? A responsible Government would know the right answer.
There is something strange happening in the gold market, as per this blog. Export of gold from London (where it is not mined, but, rather, held as a backing for gold ETFs) has zoomed, to Switzerland. In 2012 exports were a mere 92 tonnes. In the first half of 2013 it is 797 tonnes. It appears that this gold is being melted to smaller sizes for export to Asia. Presumably most of it is smuggled into India, as import duties have been myopically hiked.
There is another interesting article titled ‘Hawala Logic’ by Anand Ranganathan, which points to the sharp fall in the rupee versus the US $ in the months preceding a general election, presumable to fetch more rupees when the $s stashed abroad are brought back. The only exception was when the BJP was in power in 2004 and the rupee appreciated.
It is possible that the Government may announce another amnesty scheme, in which those with funds stashed in Swiss banks and other offshore centres (which the Supreme Court is insisting on taking action against) can be brought back with a smallish penalty. The fall in the rupee more than pays for the penalty. Then the Government will take credit for the strengthening of the rupee. The stock market, where the money will be invested after the recent fall, could bounce back, and everyone will sing happy days are here again. This is just a hypothesis.
Last week the BSE-Sensex lost 79 points to close at 18,519, and the NSE-Nifty dropped 36 to end at 5,471.
International factors are ominous. As per this blog ‘What Happened in 1987’ the current rally since 2012 in US markets is driven entirely by valuations, and not by earnings. The US Fed is likely to taper off its bond buying programme from September, and is to have a new boss who may be more hawkish. On the flip side, should PC come out with a disclosure scheme that would lead to funds stashed abroad coming back, it could lead to a rally. If not for that, the economy, the currency and the stock market would continue to slide. Of course, the Government is not responsible.

Comments on this edition of Straight From The Hip: Post a comment! | Read comments

J Mulraj is a stock market columnist and observer of long-standing. His weekly column on stock markets has run for over 25 years. An MBA from IIM Calcutta, he has been a member of the BSE. He is now India Representative for Institutional Investor. A keen observer of events and trends, he writes in a lucid yet readable style and takes up issues on behalf of the individual investor. Nothing pleases him more than a reader who confesses having no interest in stock markets yet being a reader of his columns. His other interests include reading, both fiction and non fiction, bridge, snooker and chess.

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your dream Home on Wheels

 

New Motor-Home: Especially designed for the Arab Market! And they’re buyin’em in droves at $3m a piece! The moving mansion can even clean itself. “… the vehicle has been a hit among oil-rich Arab Sheikhs – the state-of-the-art homes even wash themselves after a day’s driving through the Middle Eastern desert,” the Daily Mail reports. But the amazing vehicle could also cater to any multi-millionaire or global superstar on the road. It’s available in white (shown here). Inside, there is ample space for for lounging. Upstairs (yes, it’s a double decker) there’s a master bedroom, complete with windows and wall art. It even has its own en-suite bathroom. There’s also a cocktail lounge area for entertaining. This is where the driver sits on the top floor. The eleMMent can expand at the touch of a button to give riders more interior space. And there’s a drop down staircase and pop up sky lounge at the top. Complete with couches and a table for guests. This is the WHITE model The world’s most expensive mobile home has gone on sale in Dubai for £2 million, or $3.1 million at today’s conversion rates, then there’s the GOLD model! The humongous, 40-foot-long element Palazzo from Austrian company Marchi Mobile is covered with gold and comes with a ton of luxury features, including a 40-inch flat screen, a pop-up cocktail lounge, a fireplace, a master bedroom, and underfloor heating. Gotta spare shekel or two for a poor Arab? No harm dreamin

 

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.)

 

A TREE THAT IS A FOREST

 

The Tree That is a Forest

From afar, the Great Banyan Tree in the Indian Botanic Garden appears like a whole forest. It’s only once you step into its shade and see the connection of branches that you realize it is one tree.

The Great Banyan Tree

With a canopy that spreads over 14,400 square meters, the Great Banyan Tree is the widest tree in the world. From this span, more than 2,800 aerial prop roots descend down into the earth, appearing like individual trees. It’s the main draw of the botanical garden, and although no one knows its exact origin, it has been showing up in guidebooks since the 1800s.

Main trunk of the Great Banyan Tree in the 19th century

It’s taken it over 250 years to reach this staggering stretch, and not without a few natural disasters that almost did in the whole giant arboreal wonder. In the 19th century, two cyclones hit the tree, breaking it open and exposing its main trunk which led to a damaging fungal attack. By 1925, the main trunk, which once measured over 50 feet wide, had to be removed. Yet as the sign at the tree states: “interestingly enough, the tree now lives in perfect vigor without its main trunk.”

The clonal colony continues to flourish to this day, spreading further and wider into the land around it, spawning a visual forest that is all its own.

 

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

World’s 1st Microchip Pills

courtesy: Ananthanarayanan Ramaswamy

World’s 1st Microchip Pills

Bye Bye to all expensive scans, X-rays and other unnecessary tests prescribed by doctors.

World’s first microchip pill has been introduced and approved by FDA.

The microchip is a normal digital chip made up of silicon with traces of magnesium and copper and is no bigger than the size of a normal medicine.

Once the microchip is ingested, it gets activated by the digestive fluids of stomach and starts generating electric signals.

These signals are received by a battery operated patch on the patient’s skin which forwards the medical information to a mobile app on patient’s consent.

The battery operated patch has a life of seven days and in the mean duration, it is responsible for receiving all the inner-body conditions from the microchip.

The conditions such as heart rate, temperature, body position are tracked and then forwarded to the clinicians (via mobile app) so that the patient can be medicated accordingly.

Currently the device has been approved to be used with placebo pills so as to test it’s safety and working.

If the procedure turns out to be successful and safe, microchips will be soon integrated with medication.

This chip will help to analyse Heart Diseases also.

…

INDIAN MEDIA GREATEST THREAT TO OUR DEMOCARACY

 

Dear All

Just few hours ago Times now blarred- mentioning What Samana editorial. They donot write few lines. In the Editorial it contains many matters and how Shri NARENDER MODI WILL SOLVE It- But this channel- has made a mixed MASALA of SHRI LKA and SAMANA comments about Shri Narender Modi.
Why the Following do not stand for Election- if they are worth the SALT they have consumed????!!!!!

While interviewing a person in Brothel was asked certain questions like don’t you feel ashamed doing this work- Their Response was not defensive= but quet  Heart Churning one- They said

Yes we are in this profession for Generations- but we have ethics, honesty, donot sell our Nation, insult our Mother land,talk  ill – we sell our body not our character and IMAN, JASBATH  ( HUM APNA IMAN, DHARAM AUR JASBATH KO NAHIN BIKTHEY) WE ARE HONEST TO OUR PROFESSION and it has all thehe qualities which makes a descent society. You should ask those people who boast about their Education and position the question you are asking us.
They have converted all professionals into a brothel by telling lies, spread false hood, taking bribe etc
read below the worst journos

A wonderful and hilarious article on the state of the present day journalists

 

India’s Worst Journalists. Not my list!

http://shobhaade.blogspot.in/2012/04/indias-worst-journalists-not-my-list.html

Ooooooops!!!!! Someone sent me the article and the link this morning. I am still reeling! Whosoever has written this deadly piece has sure taken on the biggies of the biz; And invested a great deal of time, effort and energy on the list.
Blogdosts…. here’s your chance to vote for your TOP TEN. Go on…. don’t be chicken. Just do it! No malice. Just fun. And if you feel like defending some from this list, be my guest… the space is all yours!
****************
The previous edition of India’s Worst Journalist in 2010 on this site still remains one of the most popular posts and also a very widely reproduced one. Over the last decade or so our journalists have come to be held in the same contempt that is usually reserved for politicians. Many of them have simply forgotten the art and science of the profession and this is a serious tragedy for aspiring journalists. How they came to such a pass is a long story. The most prominent ones are not even journalists anymore; they are ‘Editorialists’ whose main job is to swing public opinion one way or another.Add to this the epidemic of ‘paid news’ and some of our news channels and newspapers would be nothing more than Bollywood or Commercials. After all, didn’t the late Christopher Hitchens say: “I became a journalist because one didn’t have to specialise”.

Some prominent faces from the 2010 roll of honour have dropped out. Vinod Mehta has retired from active journalism and remains Chairman of Outlook. We wish him well. Suzy Roy has moved from part-time lie-mongering to full-time Maoist-Hurriyat sympathiser. ‘Pastiwalas’ are over-joyed at the ever growing size and weight of her 50+ page essays – they’re the only ones handling them now. Prannoy Roy was also dropped. He is now more into barbeque chats than any serious attempts at journalism. Even elections don’t arouse him. But there are some new faces with the old ones. Polling for IWJ ended today and thanks to all those who voted. So here are the winners from the poll, the list of India’s Worst Journalists-2012 from the poll results. Their 2010 ranking is indicated after their name:

Large & Larger..

10. Nidhi Razdan, NDTV (New entry): She has come to prominence more for many reasons other than journalistic skills. ‘Left, right, centre’ is her signature

programme and happens to be one of those mindless debates on every topic under the sun. She is proof that you can be an expert on everything with specialisation in nothing- The best part of Nidhi? Now, don’t get me wrong, she likes everything large. Whenever confounded by a brilliant argument or point by a panellist she quickly jumps to her favourite line “let’s look at the LARGER picture”. One would have thought that debates are meant to look at the finer small details. No, not with Nidhi, the larger picture is a convenient exit. Training from NDTV helps. My prediction for this debutant is that she is likely to go higher up in the list in the future.

Friendly five member 
9. Kumar Ketkar (New entry): Somewhere a brief bio about Ketkar says “He started his life as an active communist worker of the Lal Nishan Paksh (Red flag party)”. Now why is that not so surprising? And that also explains Ketkar somewhat. He is also reported to be a former speech writer during elections for Congress members. Isn’t that an accomplishment any journalist would be proud of? He has been mostly a Marathi journalist and last heard he is editor of  Divya Marathi. A respected veteran, he was one of the privileged Five invited to a private press meet of PM Manmohan Singh around June 2011. Ever since, it has been downhill. He achieved his right to be on this list through his performances as a panellist. What can I say? I hope being a veteran he doesn’t appear here in the future.

Your Banal 
8. Arnab Goswami, TimesNow (2010 #3): There can be no denying that Arnab is one of the rare patriots among journalists. Almost every one wishes our judiciary could be as quick and decisive as Arnab is. Which is the reason I conferred him the title ‘Justice Arnab’. His performance on TimesNow has definitely battered ratings of NDTV and CNN-IBN. Pick up any scam, any scandal Arnab can throw the documents at you. IB, RAW, GOI have no escape – all documents and papers have to pass through Arnab. Sometime back I remarked: Most of us wake up in the morning and want Coffee or Tea! Not Arnab, he just wants ‘answers’. Such are the never-ending questions he has. Much before Arnab became a journalist the rock band U2 wrote a song for him – “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. They were the only ones to anticipate all the unanswered questions he’d come up with. Undeniable fact is that Arnab has dropped from #3 in 2010 to #8 in 2012 on this list. That is proof of his ever-growing popularity. He can out-shout anyone in this world. Anyone, except Meenakshi Lekhi and Smriti Irani.

Fine WhINES 
7. Vir Sanghvi (2010 #9): I honestly don’t have any idea whatsoever what Sanghvi currently does. I don’t even see him on any Cookery or Foodie show. He must be doing something to merit an appearance on this list again, at a higher position even. Radia-gate has damaged him far more than any other journalist, which is unfortunate. He managed to surface sometime back on his home channel NDTV claiming the Radia tapes were doctored and weren’t authentic and were tested by reliable foreign forensic labs. Nobody bought that though. Sometimes, a wayward journalist, at his peak, forgets simple decency. Sanghvi will forever be haunted with two things: Radiagate and the fact that he called Narendra Modi a ‘mass-murderer’. He will regret both episodes. Had it not been for Modi ignoring his stupid outburst,  Vir Sanghvi would have been in prison writing a cookery book or his autobiography titled “Fine Whines!”.

No facts, please 

6. Karan Thapar (2010 #4): Readers must remember that every journo looks tall in the studio but not in actual life. KT is not blessed with stature and the same goes for his journalism. One can say he has improved a bit but still retains the unwanted scowl and growl when interviewing people. Madhu Trehan in her NewsLaundry interview showed up KT for the little puppy he was. Like the ones who just need a hug and a cuddle once in a while. And if you thought you knew nothing about KT, never mind. All you have to do is hear his signature line on his promo for his show on CNN-IBN: “I don’t want to go into the facts, the facts are disputed”. LOL! Facts are disputed? You have to undo a lot of learning to understand that facts aren’t facts and can be disputed. The worst job KT did in 2011 was massaging Kapil Sibal’s brazen attempt at pre-screening content on the internet. As if that wasn’t enough he pulled out Brajesh Mishra, former NSA, out of nowhere to call serving army chief, Gen. VKSingh, the worst ever chief of army in history. My prediction: As long as he is in the business, KT will be on this list.

Wheres the smirk? 
5. Vinod Sharma (New entry): For those who don’t know, Vinod Sharma is the political editor of Hindustan Times. That’s right, ‘Political’ is the key word – less of an editor and more of a politician. It’s not very hard to recognise VS on a friendly channel. He has made the ‘smirk’ more popular than child-molester DGP Rathore on television. Sharma has also been acknowledged by many political spokespersons and viewers as the most loyal spokesperson of the Congress party. No matter what the scam or what the scandal you can expect him to staunchly defend even the worst misdeeds of the Congress by blaming it on the opposition or anyone else he can lay his hands on. The one chance to get him off TV for longer periods was a Rajya Sabha ticket, when Shobana Bhartiya, his boss at HT exited, but that unfortunately didn’t happen. So we’re going to be stuck with VS for quite a while. His best moment in recent times was during the debate over Gen. VK Singh and the Tatra trucks scam. He was angry that the debate was going one way (in favour of Gen. Singh) so had to somehow twist it against the tide. In his business time VS writes a blog titled ‘Separated at birth’. I guess that refers to some Pakistani connection or maybe his journalistic independence was separated at birth. Someday we’ll find out.

He’s no Egghead 
4. Shekhar Gupta (2010 #10): When he appeared on the last list, a fan of Gupta wrote in stating he will email my post to SG for his response. I was wondering whether that fan objected to SG being at #10 and wanted him to be lower on the list. I guess that fan’s prayers are answered. SG has sunk further in the rankings and his Indian Express is almost on doles from the govt. His senseless programme ‘Walk the talk’ , the equivalent of ‘Koffee with Karan’ or ‘On the couch with Koel’, continues on NDTV but what sunk SG the most is his misadventure with an article on Army troop movements. In his quest to please SG’s UPA, this SG splashed a headline in IE that nearly implied the army, led by Gen.VK Singh, may have dreamt of a coup. Worse, there have been reports that the troop movement story was stale and SG’s version was actually a plant by a union minister. SG laid an egg alright but ended up with more on his face. He will forever be credited with reducing a fiercely independent newspaper like IE to a mouthpiece of a political party. His permanent place on this list is forever assured.

I washed my hands in the Hammam 
3. Rajdeep Sardesai (2010 #6): Hmmm! The guy is making progress alright. I have always maintained there are two Rajdeeps – One on TV and one off it. Whenever he is off TV his conscience strikes and one can hear a sane person, sometimes profound, sometimes emotional. But his character loses focus in front of the camera. Recently, he lamented on Twitter about being abused as a’Muslim whore and a Motherf$#!#*’. Bad, but the kind of abuse of journalistic ethics that Rajdeep has frequently allowed under his watch is far more serious. He has even given the media the right to ‘conduct hearings’ against personalities. While he wonders about ‘image makeovers’ for others, there is no way he can ever get past the Cash4Votes bungling or the terribly biased reporting on Gujarat riots. His 2007 conduct of an HT Summit which featured a key speaker reflects a character of pathetically low moral values and journalistic ethics. And to top that he defended the tainted Radiagate journalists and was rightly ‘slapped’ by his own community. Death of decent journalism owes a small debt to him. He has rightly earned the nick name ‘Hammamboy’!

If it’s Friday, it must be… 
2. Sagarika Ghose (2010 #2): Ms. Cacofonix stays where she was: at No.2. You can’t fault Sagarika for not trying hard enough to be India’s worst journalist. She has made every effort in the recent past to get to #1. Journalism gives her a bad name. For her truly pathetic and fraudulent ‘live’ show with SriSri she would have been sacked from any TV channel in the world. That in itself is a reflection of the ethics and morals practiced at CNN-IBN by her and her boss Rajdeep Sardesai. You can imagine the skulduggery behind all other programmes and debates. And if that wasn’t enough she misses no chance to prove she is a ‘journalistic bimbo’ by mindless tweets on the social network. Be it about ‘ugly Indian males’, or Orange being a colour in our national flag or sending out a Good Friday greeting and withdrawing it she is truly the court-jester of Indian journalism. What can I say? Better luck next time!

Me, Myself & I 
1. Barkha Dutt (2010 #1): For the second time in a row Barkha retains her position as India’s worst journalist in the poll, by a whopping margin. The only road to redemption is apologising for past blunders. While she and another one have been vocal in demanding apologies and expressions of remorse from public figures the same standard doesn’t seem to apply to her. No matter what she does the taint of Radiagate and many other indiscretions are unlikely to disappear. The accusations of causing deaths in Kargil or in 26/11 are also going to linger. She is probably the only news celeb on TV that has a ‘wardrobe sponsor’. All the image makeovers may not help much. Most of us have held Rahul Gandhi for the Congress’ UP election disaster but Barkha and NDTV must be credited with the disaster too. No one has singularly promoted RG and his cause and almost turned him into India’s saviour till the engine got derailed. Her penchant for Pakistani politics and politicians is another thing that disgusts many viewers. In the meantime her language keeps getting better and better. In a recent tweet she responded to sarcasm with: “… ‘Nazi Dogs’ .. if ever language betrayed desperation of loser, it is here…” Losers or not, with over 70% of the votes polled, Barkha is the absolute winner here. Cheers!

So there you are. Let’s also not forget that are many journalists who now increasingly seem to be anti-nationals. Their ties to Ghulam Nabi Fai aren’t even being investigated by the govt. Industry leaders usually raise the standards of performance of the industry as a whole. The opposite seems to be true in the media.Systematically, many of India’s journalists have brought the profession to rock bottom over the years. I continue to maintain, they are the greatest threat to our democracy.

 

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