Should I Vote back this Government | Indian General Elections 2009

March 31, 2009 by umennet

Its time of elections. For those who vote and even for those who prefer to abstain, there is always a clear stand about who should be the nation’s next Prime Minister. I recieved a mail, in this context, Just posting here.

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I have been witnessing a spate of ‘feel good’ propaganda films of Congresson TV these days, transporting me back to the golden ‘Shining India’ times. The publicists have very cleverly used rural background in nearly all these advertisements. I have deep roots in my village and firmly believe that unless rural economies improve and people have decent incomes and dignified life, people will keep streaming into cities and all cities will slowly become mass slums – with people leading dog like lives in these slums.

From this point of view NREG scheme is welcome. But, unfortunately it has become like all socialist schemes - a money making racket for the middle men, mostly belonging to ruling parties. You just have to read Jean Drez’s interview in TOI to understand what I mean. Thus, all the hard earned money of citizens like mehas been sent down the village nullahs by this government to garner votes. Just as farmer loan waivers have only benefited their big fat farmer friends and not those who are actually starving to death and giving up their lives. The numbers are mind numbing. It is ironic that the government which came up through the funeral pyres of unfortunate farmers couldnt reduce, let alone stop these suicidal deaths.

But, for the present, let me speak as an urban citizen as most of the politicians take urban voters for granted, though they collect all legal and illegal money for official and unofficial purposes from cities.

Mr. P. Chidambaram, who has been the FM for nearly the whole term and talks down to anybody who doubts his superior knowledge and intellect has done his best to nearly halt the liberalization process initiated by Mr. Manmohan Singh in his earlier avataar, as a person possessed, to undo whatever he had done as the yes man of socialist parasites during great 5 year planning eras. NDA had taken the momentum forward and took some bold steps in a very graded and planned manner to unshackle the economy with stable policies. Thus, we saw an unprecedented growth trajectory, which Indian economy had never seen under Nehru rate of growth, taking our economy to a new orbit.

This government of ‘aam aadmi’ has made the taxation system incomprehensible again By increasing the scope of service tax and TDS to include more and more ‘aam aadmi’ in the net and empowering more and more ‘babus’.

Just take an example - one first charges service tax then the payee deducts TDS. Then, one adjusts service charges that one paid against the service charges one charged! We have FBT to penalize the companies who work harder and have people on the street to sell more and work harder. We also have various kinds of surcharges and cess to compound the confusion further. Thus, more and more paper work has helped auditors and babus, but not the ‘aam aadmi’ who sweats it out to earn is daily bread. Privileged classes like Doctors and Lawyers don’t fall into this spreading out of net. As an esteemed lawyer, he knows best why they shouldnt be brought into the net.

Ofcourse, he has a soft corner for his rich friends, so periodically he allows themvoluntary disclosures so they can sleep well. No such luck for poor salaried class. The driblets of concessions he gets in basic income tax are more than offset by reduction in savings incentives. Yes, our FM is smart! All the talk of less paper work for common man is a cruel joke on him/her. The attack is from both sides – income as well as expense. Our intelligent FM believed that Indians save too much and don’t gamble on things like stock markets - the Gods of modern economies - so incentives on all kinds of savings has been reduced.Ceilings on housing loan deductions have been reduced. In the process, we have also squeezed the infrastructure based savings through housing finance etc. Idea is to discourage savings and drain them on consumerist life style, the bane of western civilization. We haven’t learnt the lessons of history that real growth comes from real savings. Now, having been hit by recession, the truth may dawn on us, but at what cost?

In return for all this pain, what have I got? Infrastructure? I think, I will die counting pot holes, dug up roads, horrible roads, drainage system, poor conveyance options. My power bills have gone up, thanks to ‘privatization’ without accountability. May be my kids will enjoy the fruits of this painful crawling growth, may be my grand sons/daughters? Highways stopped expanding. I wonder where is my petrol cess going? All trains seem to lead to Bihar where nobody pays for them. I still have to go through a loopy root to Bangalore taking 25 hours though the direct and shorter link is available. May be the bus operators offer good incentives to our rulers for not paying attention to this region. I still take 17 hours to go to Hyderabad while buses running on such poor highways take only 13 hours! I have no fast connections between Mumbai and Chennai. I am told that many of these are still single track routes.I sincerely believe that Railway ministry should be rotational so the whole of India benefits.

Yes, air travel has grown multifold, courtesy a few brave men like Capt. Gopinath. From our government we have received two dozen foundation stones in the last month of its existence, so the sauve Civil Aviation minister and his generations to come will see his name plastered all over India. I think, after Nehru Gandhi family, his name would appear in maximum numbers all over India! But, till things improve, I will suffer with poor infrastructure and always take a flight with prayers on my lips for safe landing.

The lack of fiscal discipline and disincentive on savings, lack of infrastructure has magnified the impact of global recession much more than it should have. Had this government been prudent and carried on the good work already done by earlier govt., our economy may not have been in the shape that it is today. Here we have a government that likes to pat itself on its back for reaping the fruits of past government but eager to shrug off the failures on global trends!

And now my honest and well meaning PM, who couldnt control his FM or put some simple home truths to him wishes me to vote for him. What for? To preside another term of anarchy of a cabinet where each minister is on his own trip and country is left at the mercy of such a cabal

Dare to be Dev D

Dare to be Dev D

Dear Blogdosts. I am NOT being lazy. I wanted to share this with you, because it has generated a lot of comment - good and bad. Dev D is an important film in terms of what it is saying.... the rules it has broken. This column appeared last week in 'The Week'.
Ever since Aham initiated the Sita Sena, my inbox has been full and I am finding it hard to repond to each mail individually. Something good must come out of this. Something good has to start somewhere. Because we live in Mumbai, it is happening here. But the concern is not restricted to geography. It is a universal threat that has to be met. Pepper sprays and karate kicks are not the answer. I hate the idea of women being compelled to defend themselves. We have the right to live and act freely. The constitution guarantees as much. Whether or not Aham succeeds in getting the numbers at Gateway on the 8th of March, at least there is some awareness his actions will generate through the peaceful protest against what is going on in our society under the guise of 'teaching women a lesson.'

Dare to be Dev D

Now here’s a film that slipped into movie halls without too much of a band baaja, and has the urban, multiplex moviegoer gasping for breath. Most cinemabuffs cannot believe they are being ‘allowed’ to watch such a bold film in the first place, and without the lunatic fringe threatening to vandalise theatres screening it – oops, I hope I haven’t spoken too soon. Since the debate du jour revolves around these self-appointed moral scouts looking for evidence that nails culprits who defy their notions of ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’, this film should be made compulsory viewing for the likes of them. Their arteries may pop, but with any luck their eyes will openas well as to what’s really going on in our metros, and how nobody is blinking! Here’s a 21st century version of Sarat Chandra’s classic, ‘Devdas’, which was first published in 1917. Anurag Kashyap’s interpretation is so wild and original, it takes a second viewing to register. Bollywood is finally waking up, coming of age and experimenting with terrain that is risqué, out there and outrageous. We all know the basic Devdas story. It revolves around an obsessive hero, who doesn’t have the guts to marry his true love, and chooses to drown his sorrow in a bottle…. till he meets the proverbial prostitute with a heart of gold, who loves him unconditionally, and puts up with his petulant crap. I have never understood people’s fascination for Devdas – I think of him as the ultimate loser. A self-pitying, weak and morose guy, who has only himself to blame. But Anurag’s version of this loser is far more layered and therefore more compelling. Abhay Deol has been given the credit for inspiring Kashyap to remake the classic in this dark and sinister mould. Deol stars as the protagonist, and delivers a competent performance. But the really riveting acts come from the two newcomers who play Paro (Mahie) and Chandramukhi ( Kalki ) respectively. There is nothing long- suffering about this spirited Paro, and as for Kalki, she gives phone sex in multiple languages in one key scene, with such ease, it’s disturbing. The film explores and exposes the grittiest aspect of Delhi’s seedy Paharganj district in cinema verite style. But it is when the camera closes in on the faces of the two women, that the film maker delivers that devastating punch in the gut. It is a ferocious portrayal of twisted lives gone horribly wrong. Dev descends into living hell as he abuses his body , subjecting it to a combination of drugs, booze and demeaning sex. Chanda (Kalki) as a garishly made up child prostitute, catering to kinky , game- playing, sado-masochistic clients, doesn’t flinch even once as she goes through the motions and mouths dialogues where she describes herself as a ‘randi’ and wonders aloud why society hesitates to use that word and prefers the euphemism of ‘commercial sex worker’ to its cruder, more direct version. Paro is sexually aggressive, an unabashed predator, who thinks nothing of emailing her bare breasted images to Dev while he’s in London, or strapping a mattress to the seat of her bicycle and setting up a tryst with her lover in the middle of a sugarcane field. Both the women are entirely upfront about their sexuality and have no inhibitions expressing their voracious desires, or using their bodies commercially (Paro who opts for an arranged marriage and dutifully sleeps with a husband she does not love, Kalki who cold- bloodedly trades her physical assets in order to continue her college education). This marks a first for Hindi commercial cinema, which for all its synthetic attempts at depicting today’s free thinking women still does not have the guts to show the heroine as anything but a vestal virgin. But here are these two actresses breaking hypocritical boundaries with boundless gusto and yet doing so with enormous grace and dignity. When Chanda calls Dev a ‘slut’, it is meant as a compliment. The language used throughout the film is raw, contemporary and lethal. But you don’t squirm, because you know instinctively it rings true. This is life on the edge, with all its perverse traps and hideous denouements.Dev D socks it to the audience. The women come out on top – sexually, literally, metaphorically.

TRANSCRIPT FROM SHOBHA DE'S BLOG.

What does a trillion dollars look like?

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so my friend Mr Chay Kok Keon from Singapore took Google Sketchup out for a test drive to try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...

And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...

Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing about so much. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this? Spot the man standing in the left-hand corner :)

(And notice those pallets are double stacked)
So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about :-p