Say what you mean and do what you say!

By saying what he meant and doing what he said, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became a Mahatma. Obviously not of the same exalted stature, but Rata Tata of the "Promise is a promise" fame was still considered impeccably honest for an Indian businessman until the red hot Radia tapes scorched many carefully cultivated reputations. He is on an audio tape strategising with his lobbyist how to put A. Raja up again as the Telecom minister in the UPA 2.0 Central government and this in May 2009 when Raja's alleged malfeasance since October 2007 was common knowledge.

Now Tata has moved the Supreme Court charging those who have leaked the tapes to the press of violating his and his lobbyist's privacy, he has also appealed to the court to stop publication of more tapes. Perhaps he has the letter of the law on his side and the court would grant his requests, but it will take a life time to rebuild his reputation of utmost probity. And at seventy three, Ratan Tata does not have that kind of time.

Politics as a magical wand

Under the heading ‘JAGAN’S COMPANY AFFAIRS’, today’s Times of India (New Delhi edition) writes that in 2004 Jaganmohan Reddy had declared his total assets worth Rs.9.19 lac but for the first half of the current financial year, 2010-11, he has paid an advance tax of Rs.84 crore on a projected income of Rs.500 crore for the full year; then the news item goes on to give out details of his stakes in various companies. For having a net annual income of Rs.500 crore it is reasonable to assume that his present net assets would amount to at least Rs.3,000 crore. If it be so, it would mean that his net assets went up to more than 30,000 times in a mere six and a half years. This type of asset growth in such a short period was not achieved even by Dhirubhai Ambani’s history-making Reliance Industries.

Of these six and a half years Jagan’s father, late Y.S. Rajsekhara Reddy, was the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh for about five years and four months, from May 2004 to his untimely death in a helicopter crash in September 2009. Jagan was already in the business of mining, cement, power, etc. when his father first became chief minister but his phenomenal rise, nearly all of it in his father's reign, perhaps could be explained by the extra-ordinary powers enjoyed by YSR not only as the chief minister of a major state but as the Congress' plenipotentiary in the south.

Most Indians have been feudal in their outlook and are not known to be in the habit of asking their masters the source of their out-of-this-world riches but the others who are not, should not keep quiet. They should ask Jagan and his counterparts in the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Reddy brothers of Karnataka, such inconvenient questions and also compel the central government to act, for a change, to uphold the law of the land.

Should sedition charges be filed against Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Arundhati Rai?

My answer to the question is an unequivocal 'No' and this for two reasons. First, what the Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Arundhati Rai had recently said in Delhi on the Kashmiris' right to freedom from Indian control has been said over and over again by thousands in the Kashmir Valley for years. This year itself has seen hundreds of processions of young people in Srinagar and other parts of the Valley shouting slogans of 'Azadi'. Since Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India, all those slogan shouting young people are Indian citizens like Geelani and Rai; and if they have not been charged for sedition the government has no business to do that to Geelani and Rai.

Secondly, by filing a first information report against the duo a halo of martyrdom has been put around them quite unnecessarily and the lady with the poisoned quill will take the fullest advantage of it. She has already lined up some greats of India's recent history on her side and will do everything possible to garner more and more publicity and sympathy for her cause. She feeds and lives on publicity and the only way to see the last of her is to deny that to her but in their thoughtless bravado the government and the court have ended up doing what she would love them to exactly do.

The U.S. has no control over the Pak nukes

Some of us have had the belief that there was no chance of the Pakistani nuclear bombs or fissile material falling into the hands of Al Qaida or other jehadi terrorists because the U.S. forces would be proactive enough to spirit them away to safety at the first sign of any danger. But as the latest Wikileaks expose of the U.S. State department's correspondence reveals, the Pakistani government had been successful in completely denying to the U.S. technologists access to its nuclear plants fearing that they wanted to exercise some kind of control over the fissile material in the name of protecting it from terrorists. And even after much diplomatic wrangling Pakistani authorities refused to budge from their position.

So, the possibility of the jehadi terrorists' stealing or in some other way getting enough weapon-grade fissile material to make a dirty bomb is very much there and India must take this into account while charting out its defence strategies. Even otherwise, it does not behove India to bank upon another country to protect its vital interests; it is time India finally realised that being one sixth of the world's population it had to depend on its own capability to defend itself.

Cheap technology imports from China could be a threat to India's security

Indian power companies are today sourcing almost fifty percent of their power generating equipment from China. Even Indian public sector telecom companies are now buying high technology products and systems form the Chinese giant Huawei, a leading global telecommunications solutions provider. Now this revelation that A. Raja of the Rs.1.76 lac crore or US$39 billion scam had developed a soft corner for the Chinese simcard exporters. According to government reports tens of millions of simcards were imported from China in just one year, 2008-09, even when in violation of the Indian government's instructions the Chinese companies had not established simcard personalisation centres in India.

India's increasing dependence on China for high technology equipments and solutions in the power and telecom sectors may not bode well for national security, considering the Chinese record in scientific and industrial espionage and hacking. At the moment it may not be possible for the Indian entities to put a stop to these cheap imports but the government must see that they showed a declining trend from now on. For the sake of saving a billion dollars or two the national security can not be allowed to be jeopardised.

Ex-soldiers on the streets

It is a shame for the government that ex-soldiers, who in their time gave security to the nation by guarding its land border, coastline and airspace day and night, have had to take to the streets demanding their inalienable right of 'One rank, one pension'. It is not that this principle of calculation of pension is foreign to the government. Right from the president of India, prime minister, judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, members of Parliament to the secretaries to the government of India, they all are beneficiaries of 'One rank, one pension'. That it should continue to be denied to ex-soldiers defies all logic and fairness. Even the argument that the government could not spare a few thousand crores to give out arrears and increase in pensions to about two million ex-servicemen does not hold any water, not at least now when the same government could splurge seventy thousand crores on the inconsequential Commonwealth Games and the prime minister could tolerate the revenue loss of a GDP-scale Rs.1.76 lac crore or US$39 billion in the 2G spectrum scam absolutely nonchalantly.

Earlier, I was very upset that thousands of ex-soldiers had returned their medals to the president of India, the supreme commander of the armed forces, as a mark of their protest. But today having attended their protest rally and seen more medals being collected to be returned to the president, I am not too sure whether this extreme step could have been avoided. As the protesters said they were registering their disappointment and frustration at the government's unsympathetic attitude by giving up something very dear to them. They knew that their returning the medals could affect the morale of the serving soldiers adversely but the government had not left them any alternatives.

I am glad that I was with the retired soldiers supporting them in their fight for justice, and since I was the only civilian there I got a chance not only to address them but also to freely interact with quite a few of them, from old sepoys to a retired 3-star general, and learn of the fierce pride they still feel in the defence forces they once served. And how can I ever forget what Malerkotla's Beant Singh, a wizened ex-sepoy, told me, that people would always do the right thing if they let their mind's Arjun be guided by their conscience's Shri Krishna? I am grateful to the Sikh gentleman for sharing with me the essence of the Bhagvad Gita's wisdom.

We have so much to learn from the U.S.

The former U.S. House of Representatives majority leader Thomas DeLay has recently been convicted for money laundering by a Texas jury and can be jailed for up to 99 years. His crime was that he gave US$190,000 to three republican candidates for the Texas State Legislature out of corporate donations. In 23 states of the U.S., including Texas, corporate donations to candidates in the State election are banned.

Not an ordinary politician, DeLay was a powerful majority party whip in the U.S. House of Representatives and was rewarded for his good work in 2003 by the Republic Party with promotion as majority leader. He, however, fell from grace in 2005 on being charged for felony.

By Indian standards, DeLay had done no crime, there could not, therefore, be any punishment for him. In any case, what is US$190,000 for an Indian politician? Not even a crore of rupees! The standards here have gone up so high that anything below Rs.1.76 lac crore or US$39 billion is liable to be dismissed as small change.

So, the heading of this post is wrong, it is the U.S. that has to learn so much from us. Our per capita income may be one forty seventh of that country but the appetite of our politicians is scores of thousands times that of theirs.