Ek gaaw mein ek kisaan.....
In a coup of sorts, Jayalalithaa, campaigning for the Samajwadi Party, addressed a rally in Allahabad in Hindi. Yes, Hindi.. you heard it right. I am being unjust to the lady by comparing her speech with the famous Ek gaaw mein scene in an old Bagyaraj movie. But, whenever a southie speaks Hindi, you cannot but avoid the comparison. She reportedly delivered a hard hitting, 15 minute speech in chaste Hindi . The crowd responded with shouts of 'Jayalalithaa Zindabad' which reportedly left 'Manya' Mulayamji blushing :)-
Karunanidhi's Pearls
Known for his penchant for writing dialogues, MK recently responded to the Supreme court's refusal to vacate the stay on OBC quotas by angrily saying that the "fate of 100 crore people cannot be left to two men".I wonder if there was any other statement made by any other person -dead or alive- that even comes anywhere close to this gem.
According to MK, a two judge bench can decide only on cases involving two people. To decide on OBC reservation, which according to MK involves over a billion Indians, you need a bench with a billion judges. Assuming that we find a billion judges and constitute a bench, Mk will not have any problems if they too refuse to vacate the stay. That is because, his pimary objection is to the number of people sitting in judgement and not their judgement.Fair enough.
Days later, a two judge bench of the Madras High Court upheld the abolition of the Common Entrance Test (CET) for admission to professional colleges in TN. They lauded the government for its efforts to ensure 'social justice'. How come these two can decide the fate of 6 crore Tamilians? Will MK oppose this? If this is not double speak, what is?
Politicising Fishermen Deaths
There have been recent incidents of Tamil fishermen being shot dead in the high seas. This disturbing trend,coming in the backdrop of renewed military might of the LTTE, is unabted.MK, meanwhile slammed the Sinhalese govt for firing unprovoked and in true filmi style , warned thatTamilians will not remain mute spectators. ( His typical statements go like this... " innumum madhiya arasu tamizhanain ratham kodhipadhay paarthu kondu irukkadhu endru ninaikiren. Rajni can consider hiring MK 's services for Sivaji).
The Lankan govt categorically denied any involvement in the firings and explicitly stated that its navy has been instructed not to fire on Indian fishermen transgressing the international waters.Meanwhile, there were reports that the Sea Tigers, the naval arm of the LTTE, could be behind the killings to sour relations betwen the two countries. The PMK, MDMK and the DMK which were vociferous in pinning the blame on the Lankan govt, chose not to react .
Now, the DGP of Tamil Nadu has confirmed that the Sea Tigers were behind the killings. How are the LTTE sympathisers planning to respond to this shameful, cowardly act?
Media Mania
It was a bumper fortnight for the media and the Ash-Abhi wedding was the most important event on earth. Headlines Today started the build up a week before the wedding, concentrating on details as silly as the amount of Mehendi to be used for the ceremony. The other channels were no better. They had the temerity to gate crash and attempt to intrude into the privacy of celebrities, but when chased away by the security gaurds , they paint the town red with complaints of high handedness.
The media's single grouse seems to be " What is preventing the Bachchans from even sharing a single pic of the couple?". Well, that's a fair question. But it's the prerogative of the Bachchans. If they choose to dump the media, what's preventing the media from returning compliments? They cannot ....because, news on the Bachchan wedding sells. And to drive their business, they want the Bachchans to oblige and compromise on their privacy. I am no defender of the Bachchans. They need the media for promoting their films, but want them out of the wedding. That speaks volumes for their character. It's a lesson for the media and I bet they would not have learnt it.
Coming back to the news channels, I can atleast excuse HT, but CNN IBN was criminal in its coverage. Despite flogging the wedding to the hilt, it ran a debate on whether the media was right to over hype the wedding. Double speak is not confined to politicians.
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23 comments:
I admire JJ for this. Her proficiency in English and probably other languages is too good compared to that of other politicians, not just in TN but in the whole country. Every time advani talks in English it sounds as if he is going through the motions. :P
Actually it was the Karunanidhi's Govt which introduced the TNPCEE system and made it run flawlessly for years. I guess political agendas have now taken precedence. Deja vu.
And welcome to the club of media haters! I dont know whether the media can produce more mindless content than they are doing now. What a waste of time and resources. I hate when the media start invoking the rights to report, freedom of speech, and other constitutional garbage when they are denied their share of a news piece. (I did mention the CNN-IBN's farce in my last post where I think I had linked to the news item too)
Its been more than 5 months since I last watched any TV channel and I feel so happy for that. (American media are no better. Or maybe I guess Indian media are just aping their American counterparts) I feel that the print edition has an advantage here. I can just directly skip to the news I want to read instead of patiently hearing the verbal diarrhoea of the news readers.
Ah! Long live the subdued reporting style of The Hindu: "sources reveal that.." and "It is reported that..". :D
escuss mee... plzz remember from DEJ's words... Sindhi is one of the most difficult languages to speak, for the fact that u need to bring ur voice from deep under the diaphragm. Advani, a native Sindhi speaker, speaks any language only that way..
and @ diarrhoea... i remember Pavan saying this quite often.. "Many of YSR's partymen suffer from a similar disorder - 'Constibation of thought and Diarrhoea of words' " ;-)
@print media - I know a creature here who reads Dinakaran e-paper every day.. once he was reading headlines aloud " Nanbanin Manavi'yidam Silumisham - Irumbu kambi'yaal adithu Rowdy Kolai "; " Kozhi meyindha thagaraaru, Veetirkum Pannaikkum thee veippu, thadukka vandha police'aar meedhu kal adi"
Disclaimer: Any direct or indirect references to any politicians from RSS or BJP are purely intended to serve the purpose of instigating abhiram and not meant to hurt the religious/political/linguistic sentiments of the general public. Any statements that are found to be reflecting the real state of affairs maybe simply disregarded as facts and no more.
wow, wat a disclaimer :)-
by the way whats the news item saying w.r.t ADMK? It says ADMK sprang form the anti-hindi and anti-brahmin agitations of the DMK?
is that the reason? as for as i know only DMK had this in their political agenda....
Saar, oru point miss panniteenge "Thani Thamizhagam" agenda in the DMK katchi "Kolgai". guess wat will be its capital?? ;-)
to my knowledge ADMK has been the only party after congress of 1965 to win elections in TN without any Relegious/Caste/Racist appeal in their campaign...
it did carry a huge "Face" value.. I dont deny that :P
@ santosh: lol...getting me agitated...i play the same game as you do to get even more harcore ppl to respond...it actually helps..helps in knowing the other side of the story so that u can get urself even stronger.....
btw dont worry i am ok with modi as long as all villages get uninturrupted power for 24 hrs( village gettin power is something uninturrupted hahahahahahha, ppl have to pay btw and t is not cheap but not many complain so its ok), the state is asked to grow at 13% so that the country can at 10( planning commision target), the state is the least corrupt ,best goverened( again gov of india), smallest cabinet ..so no lal batti ministers.. if this is what ppl do not want then ppl might as well go ahead and choose muka...btw in that aspect amma was good too atleast for the first 2.5 yrs when the MTC and TNEB actually made profits but that is not what ppl want i guess i had friends complaining of the cancellation of bus passes..as far as " genocide" goes...it has happened a good 40000+ times in india after independence small or big and a good 15 big ones in gujrat since 1950 ...
@ all: as far as the ltte and our policies go..will try and put upp something interesting pretty soon.
@sriram: agree totally...i wonder why the dmk does not want a seperate dravida nadu nation anymore...
santosh xindabad.. hamari maange poori karo( maadu ths is not poori kazhangu i mean..)
@abhiram: let there be even 100,000 genocides in the history of Gujarat, but that doesnt justify the 100,001th nor can it be an excuse....
"i had friends complaining....."
hehe i got 'instigated' all right!!! :P True. We were very disappointed when they cancelled bus passes...remember? we talked abt this during lunch..but i did accept later that the Rs.28 bus passes served no one any good, especially the transport department...
@prashanth: kya maange poora karo?
and noone answered my kosteen..was ADMK formed as a result of the anti-brahmin and anti-hindi movement?
@snatosh: not justifying riots but all i am sayin is we need to be equally critical of people we blame...grt criticise modi for his newton's third law...but why shy away from the nation's saviour RAJIV.. saying"when a big tree falls the earth around is bound to shake"...1984...surprising nobody wants to mention that..or even remember it as a part of rajiv's legacy... india is slowly but surely getting to where the US is right now....opinion formation among the amm junta is increasingly being swayed by the media(at least in the cities) and this is not what we shld be having...i have experienced this after the TN polls when i was arguing with RAM and some idots came and started praising THe hindu...and these r exactly the people i am worried about...i kind of saw what i believed in...the avg indian being increasingly swayed by the media..be it jessica lal or some other murder or the bjp or whoever...ppl r increasingly becoming goats..who can be herded into whatever direction the herdsman pleases.
And the admk was formed not on the basis of anti hindi etc...was due to the tug of war bet. MUKA and mgr...both wanted to be the undisputed leader of the party after Anna..MUKa got the better of MGR and expelled him from the party...and then came the ADMK.
Yes, I knew that was the case with ADMK's formation. I got confused by what the news item said. Another example of how we are misled by the media :) By now I hope you have understood that I am more of anti-media than being one who is 'led' by media. At this rate if there is a news item that says the earth goes around the sun, I might tend to disbelieve it...So I dont care what the media say about jessica lal, rahul gandhi,modi or aishwarya bachhan. Half of them would be nonsense.
And which Ram were you talking to and who were the idiots who praised Hindu?
@sandy: N ram.editor n chief the hindu...at a ndtv show on tn elections...ppl..amm junta who also came to the show...as usual i got into an argument of how his paper was a left liberal blah blah blah and how even his paper was indulging in selective reporting( there was this issue of maran threatening tata to give a stake in tatasky to his bro kalanidhi..every paper except the hindu reported and also there were a few anti left judgements of the kol high court esp regarding rigging in WB tha were never reported in the hindu...there were these people who came and were like saaar you paper is very good saaar i read it without missing,everything you wirte saar is ture blah blah..it was literal ass lickin and that too when some guy is tearing apart the paper's reputation... my reaction was a huge smile and that of pity for these ppl
oh really? when did this happen. You are appearing too often in the media these days...hmm..
do you have any link to that video or something. We plebeians would be pleased to see our cause being fought for agaisnt the oppressive and biased media.. :D
@abhiram- India is no ever approaching the american economy!!.. the only sector that it is booming in is the service sector for the it industry.. the facetious fact about the indian economy is that another large chunk contributing to growth is china's ever growing consumption of steel which is related in part to its preparation for the olympics after which the same will decline.. on any other front be it electronics or even software "development" for that matter, even though ppl bak home like to pat themselves in the bak by saying americans are stupid and that we indians have "brains", we have not been able to provide any kind of expertise or uality workmanship.. on top of all this there is the issue of reservation which has been discussed enough I am not going to go into that.. the
only instance of a indeginous chip developed in Indi is the whitefeild chip at the same faciility in bangalore by Intel but then Intel laid of 1200 of its employees in india in the recent past..
Santosh put it aptly.."media haters" but the same is everywhere( if u have time read my bit "subliminal brainwashing" in my blog).. and it is somewhat compensated by the number of neutral intellectuals in the country but the current situation in India does not proove the same with nobody ( me included not shying away from that fact) at some level not giving a damn..there is not one leader who inspires!!
@prash: You have misunderstood abhiram's point (hoping that I understood it correctly in the first place :D ). When abhiram said india is approcahing US, he did not mean the economy but rather he was referring to the 'media driven public opinion'.
Now that you have brought up the issue, I dont think Indian economy is doing as badly as you had said, nor are we yet as great as the Media portrays (I would rather that the media be banned!! Being under informed is better than being disinformed).
I am not sure that china's temporary process of acquiring steel for an one off event is responsible for a major part of India's revenues through steel. It has merely caused a spike in steel prices which would peter out in due course. China has been consuming humoungous quantity of steel for quite a few years now with growing infrastructural development.
And surely the growing automotive sector in India is something to look forward to.
that is purely from the sense of sales and not R&D!!.. and i did not say that the indian economy is dng badly but was saying the same thing as u were.. just tht ppl bak home( especially the middle class) have certain unfounded "securities" which I wanted to highlight.. most of the american compaanies do not want to invest in r&d back home it is a fact because we havnt been able to proove ourselves ( i am not being derogatory but it is a fact) and the govt is not helping at all. we say that here ppl work only monday to friday and dont have to work saturdays but crap we have so many national holidays it more than makes up for lost saturdays!!..
look at bangalore for example.. under SM Krishna they were making grt progress but all that was lost in just 6 months of the new govt ..
govts all over the world ar ecorrupt no doubt about that but new govts that come into power dont strive to undo all good done by the previous one there is some mount of accountability and social reponsibility that totally lacks backhome that is the fact..
and chinas infrastructurla development is predicted to slow to the extent they can do with internally produced steel it is a theory but one supported by a large number of famos economists its not a one of event post olympics
I agree!! India is not big in R&D. But I guess we can attribute that to the fact that our industries are still nascent (comparatively) and I am sure all major companies are investing on R&D now. I see papers from TATA, Ashok Leyland, Mahindra in International publications. That is a good sign.
And as you rightly said, we have too many holidays. Unfortunately we are forced to embrace secularism in all aspects and so everyone gets holidays for all regious festivals. Infact I had thought about this some time back but I was not sure what could be done about this.
@ prshant: totally agree on the r&d... i have by shouting like crazy tryin to highlight this aspect for a long time... we have a good services sector and sorry... not because we are better just the fact that we are cheaper...the day a china or a korea manages to get good in eng...we can consider ourselves to be doomed....
As far as software firms go....lets be real honest.. there is no real work that happens here or for that matter back even in the US( what indian owned companies do)..yeah indians might constitute a third of the software guys there but nobody ever bother to do a head count of how many indians are actually in the top jobs..get to the higher levels in a company(not ncessarily the ceo type..u know) and the story is the same..u will find some american guy leadin the pack....
agree with you that the kind of engineers we produce are sub standard...sorry that is the way it is ..me included..no wonder indians r used for service jobs and not for r&d.
I LIKE TO LAUGH MY ASS OFF WHEN I HAVE THE PM SAYING WE R A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY....WTF???where the hell is the knowledge??we donot do reasearch in basic sciences...we do not have proper defence research( the drdo is still stuck with programs that ought to have been complated 15 years ago...inspite of the extensions....namely the agni, prithvi and all that comes from the indian house of crap...)..we donot have universities that have world class research facilities...why even our IITs are not there in terms of research( that is why u find them ranked a miserable 63 in world's best univs...the rankings are always based on the kind of research that goes on and the kind of funds alloterd to research)...and when was the last time an indian won the nobel prize in sciences....cv raman..thats right...and dont give me chandrasekhar or the argument that the western world does not want the indians to grow...the fact is we ae growing primarily on the back of the services and more than that the manufacturing sectors....
@sandy: getting a few papaers published does not qualify for great R&D...rajaraman might soon well be publishing an international paper...that does not make him a grt researcher...u must have seen during your project itself how bloody lose two diff papers can get...ad this r&D of the tatas..the kind of money spent is riduculously low.....u know why not many chip maker can compete with intel???..the kind of money intel pumps in makes it bloody difficult for others to cope with...bottom line..money is needed for research and ind companies do not like to risk it because the chances of failure r statistically high..and not because the tatas cannot afford it.
AND finally...we all have this misconception that Americans are idiots...just because some one graduates high school and does not proceed to college does not necesarily mean he is average...just compare the skill levels the avg high school grad acquires over there and the skills an avg Bcom grad acquires over here..u will realise the american is just as good as these guys....coming to our iims the intake capacity of HBS is as much as all our iims put together(just about)..and they have got a good 20 such schools out there and again it is not as if all these r occupied by indians..most of them r americans.so where the hell does the idiot cap fit on them??And education is not for getting jobs...education at least as far as sciences and arts go..is to gain knowledge..i have always believed this....in india we study because it is the only way of getting jobs...in the west it is not necessarily so...yeah all over the world the guys who make money r the educated guys but when u compare the average guys it does not matter if the guy is edu or otherwise
Regarding the R&D part, thats what I implied too. I did not say TATA and others have done path breaking research. I just said they have entered the foray of research, getting some papers published and more importantly started to invest on R&D.
I agree totally with the american part of studying for knowledge, etc., and I am sure so will the others (esp the ones here in US) :)
@sandy: i did not sya that the research is irrelevant or small..all i said was this small amount of publishinpapers is not a new phenomenon but has been happening for a long time
ok.. I think I am coming very late.. anyway, have quite a few points to make..
@ Sandy: abt ADMK and anti brahminism.. the news item actually made an oblique reference to the dravidian roots of the party.. as u might be knowing,periyar's dravida kazhagam is the parent party..but wen Anna formed the DMK , he acknowledged the existence of God by sayin. Ondre Kadavul, oruvane devan (not really sure, but he meant there is only one god.)But after the formation of the ADMK, aethism has virtually vanished from its agenda...
and the separate dravida nadu demand, even a couple of years ago, MK said, the reasons for such a demand still exists...probably he wants to be the PM and Stalin, Dayanidhi Maran, Kanimozhi, Azhagiri, his wives,all their kids to be CMs.. barring that i dont see any other "need" for a separate state.. probably the power at the centre is keeping him mum...
@ Sri: "to my knowledge ADMK has been the only party after congress of 1965 to win elections in TN without any Relegious/Caste/Racist appeal in their campaign.".. Not true.In the South, the ADMK plays the Devar card.. it relies heavily on thier votes and it goes all out to woo them(garlanding the Devar statue in nandanam, on Devar Jayanthi, throwing peak hour traffic out of gear is jus one eg.Mind u sashi kala belongs to this community and that helps the ADMK to have a stranglehold over the devar votes.. MK is bending backwards for a large pie of this vote tooo)... the party is casteist in that the ministers in the last cabinet were given berths so that all castes were accomodated.. its a different story that the rate at which she sacked ministers, almost all caste groups at some point would have got a ministerial representation.
@ Abhi: "i had friends complaining. abt bus pass.." well, i thought that was a dig at me.. sndy responded.. but yes, yesterday the TN govt announced that 100% free bus passes would be provided to govt coll students.. so far it carried a 50% fee.actually, i realized (though a bit late)that people should stop expecting things free.. there is nothing called free lunch.. only that u dont pay and somebody else does... people should learn to pay for services.. eg Abhiram's guj example wer they pay for power...only that can ensure real and sustainable development.
Coming to the riots, wonder if there was anyother issue (other than reservation) that has managed to polarize the society as much as the riots did... there is a crying need for a neutral ground.. on the one hand Modi gives , as Abiram said, a Newton's third law explanation which the others ridicule..
then when the parliament is attacked or the Varanasi temple/akshardham/bombay is bombed, the 'secularists' attribute it to the Babri demolition.. aren't they using the same action reaction theory?
take the case of TN, when the periyar staute was desecrated, Brahmins all over the state were attacked, bombs hurled, sacred threads cut and wat not? This had the tacit approval of the state govt, otherwise, the little known dravida Kazhagam couldnt have gone on this rampage... brahmins are a minority in TN, how come none bothers about this minority?
so in effect the point is, riots have happened and this action reaction theroy has been proposed many times.. so if they find fault with modi, they should also do so wih others..by selectively targeting only a few, the so called 'secularists' are doing a great disservice to the nation.. the BJP is no doubt polarising the society.. but the Cong, left & co are doing that better ..
abt the economc affairs and the S/w industry, i ll make a separate post.. else this comment , which is already long, will become painfully long :)-
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