In defense of MMS, Shivraj Patil and others

MJ Akbar wrote: “Even Pakistan is treating the Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi government with total contempt. They know how weak it is.”

This is a fact, the whole world knows it. Even a tiny Sri Lanka don’t care India today. Imagine, Vajpayee was the PM and Sri Lanka behave that way. Or Pakistan.

Only solution:
Remove Congress-UPA, save Bharat/India from total collapse.
Vote-BJP-NDA, save Bharat and our common future.

Perhaps blaming politicians is not enough. We also need to seriously examine if these people and parties are really committed to national integrity and unity. We have a communist party whose most public leader Jyoti Basu once said that India was never the idea anyway, and whose current most public figure, Karat, seems to be more in touch with China than India.

We have a Congress party which allows 30 million (yes, million) illegal bangladeshis to live in India and vigorously opposes any move to have ID cards for Indian citizens and refuses to deport the illegals.

We had the BJP who rose to power partly because they promised to have a uniform civil code and abolish special status for Kashmir. Of course they did neither.

So who exactly has national interest at heart?

John McCain once said during the course of running for US president that he would rather lose an election than lose a war.

Where is our John McCain?

Hi Harapriya,

The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance can fulfill the 3 promises (Ram Mandir, Article 370, Uniform Civil Code) only if gets a absolute majority on its own in the Parliament.

If the BJP-Shiv Sena needs the support of other NDA coalition partners (ex: secular parties like JDU, Samata Party, Biju Janata Dal, Trinamool, AIADMK which were in the past government), then they will be forced to follow the NDA’s Common Minimum Program (CMP) which does not include the 3 issues.

Lets ensure that the BJP-Shiv Sena get a clear mandate (absolute majority) from the voters this time – with no need for the other coalition partners.

I also hope they choose good alliance partners this time around.

Unless the BJP-Shiv Sena get a clear mandate (absolute majority) from the voters this time, their choice will be to either pragmatically govern India (to the best possible level); or let the Congress-UPA mis-rule India again.

Inspite of pressure from the irritating NDA allies in the past, BJP still tested the Nuclear Bomb, crushed Islamic Terror groups (to the maximum possible extent) and fought & won the Kargil war with Pakistan. Nationalist Hindu organisations faced no pressure of being banned etc under NDA rule.

During the 5 years of L.K.Advani as Home Minister, the entire land-border with Pakistan was fenced and sealed. (The Congress did not care to do this in the last 50 years of its rule). That is why the Mumbai Jihadis had to sneak into India using the sea-route.

During the 5 years of L.K.Advani as Home Minister, nearly two-thirds of the border with Bangladesh was fenced and sealed. The remaining one-third borderline has riverine boundaries and marshy borders, which are difficult to fence and take longer to seal.

The West Bengal administration, which had taken a serious view of the illegal Bangladeshi invasion problem in the initial stages of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government, has now seems to have accepted it as a fait accompli since the Congress-UPA coalition took power in 2004.

The West Bengal chief minister had adopted some steps to contain the illegal Bangladeshi invasion menace when the BJP strongman L.K.Advani was the union home minister from 1998-2004. But his initiative has slackened after the installation of the UPA government at the Centre since 2004. The rest of the Indo-Bangladesh bordered has not been fenced by the Congress-UPA government to facilitate the increase their potential votebank.

Dear All,
Please do not fall for this 49-O as this is counterproductive, costly for us as a nation and there is no gurantee that the next leader that the political party annoites is a fit for the job candidate anyway….I also agree with Snantanu that this is treasonous.

After all, how many 49-O rounds would you want to have as a voter?

Taking a stand and putting oneself forward for an election is a much more positive and respnsible stand- if taking a stand is what this is all about.

Pragya- I share your sense of frustration but sadly 49-O is not an answer.

Thanks,
Ashutosh

If he (Shivraj Patil) is sacked may be the act OK but we hope he resigned feeling genuinely compassionate for the common man.
The RAW, IB, Army, Navy, Air Force, Central Police, State police all are at the disposal of the government. What are they doing for the largest democracy in the world???????

What is the fault of the common man in India so that the government he elects is unable to take care of his security till he is attacked? Even if the elected government does not feel it right to convene the Parliament to debate over the terror attack in Mumbai & find out a permanent solution. What are they waiting for?? The Parliament to be attacked 3 4 times more or after Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore etc are attacked Like Mumbai???

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/03mumterror-quit-india-mumbai-says-again.htm

Jai Hind!

While the sentiment of the post is fine, but I am not sure why you need to “defend” MMS and Shivraj and others (assuming others who failed to do their job). There is nothing defensible about what these people in power and organizations did and continue to do.

As much as one likes to blame ordinary people, not everyone can be a home minister, for example – ie not everyone can be everything. So institutions are set up to deal with tasks of the society and people responsible are in charge of those institutions.

Else one is talking of anarchy – every person for him or her self.

A Political Awakening – Ramesh Ramanathan

For years, India’s upper classes have been waltzing through life making minimal contact with the government. We have been going above the government, below the government or around the government, but we never really engaged with the government. Possibly because we didn’t ever need the government. A telling sign of upward mobility in India is a reducing dependence on the state—the sump/overhead tank to smooth out the erratic water supply; the UPS system to protect against power cuts; the chauffeur-driven car to offset the inconvenience of an indifferent public transport service; the security guard at the gate to make up for the ragged police system.

Last week in Mumbai, all that changed for India’s aspirational class.

We’ve come up against the one issue where we can’t dodge the dependence on the state: terrorism. Suddenly, we are waking up to discover that the same state that we have ignored for the past 60 years is necessary for us to make sense of our lives (a visceral glimpse into the life of the poor). And with it comes a whole new definition of the citizen-state relationship. This is existential exfoliation.

Talk of unintended consequences. The war on Mumbai was meant to undermine the country, but could become a dramatic inflection point in India’s political trajectory where a weak democracy suddenly finds its elixir vitae—the coming of age of a new Indian voter, one whose livelihood is not dependent on the state, but quality of life is. The political system has never felt the heat of an irate middle-class such as it has in the Mumbai aftermath. Already, the term “political leader” is getting replaced by “public servant” with greater frequency. If sustained and channelized correctly—a big if—this anger has the potential to fundamentally change the behaviour of the political class. Because, unlike the poor, who can often only act once in five years by booting the incumbents out of office, this breed of voters can make life hell on a daily basis—demanding more accountability, transparency and responsiveness from their political and administrative representatives.

Our past attitude of benign disregard is being replaced with ferocious annoyance. Witness the public declamation of R.R. Patil, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Narendra Modi, V.S. Achuthanandan—the barrage of criticism has been swift, handed out to all parties and has had serious political consequences (salaam to the media). These developments are good for the country, irrespective of whether one is poor or rich (this isn’t the time to sermonize to the upper classes about where they were when the state was failing the poor; ultimately, political engagement will open the third eye to the larger reality of India). Political awakening is a good thing.

But there is another dimension, a troubling one, to the fallout from the Mumbai attack. Our agitation in demanding more from our politicians is going so far overboard that we are overlooking our own flaws. After all, we are the ones who provide the breeding ground for the disease of identity politics—of caste and communalism. We don’t evaluate our candidates for their development vision or administrative competence, only whether they fit into some quota of some subcaste that has little consequence in our lives. And then, we are shocked when these same representatives prove to be utterly incompetent in discharging the complex responsibilities of running a modern state.

We ask for a tough state, when we ourselves are a soft people. I mean it in the harshest sense: Most of us are selfish, inward-looking cowards who quaver at the slightest hint of risk to ourselves or our family. Witness what happened in Kandahar—most of those who had family members as hostages were pleading with the Indian government to release the terrorists. We salute those who defend us, or light candles, but don’t do much more.

Another example: Mandatory military service of all 17-year high school graduates, an idea that is being floated now in India. Singapore has a law that demands this of its citizens. Thousands of Indians have lived in Singapore for years, if not decades. But most retain their Indian passports—or at least those of their children—not so much out of a sense of patriotism, but so that they can avoid this year of service. The new home minister should include this as part of his solutions, and then see the public palpitations.

The truth is that we haven’t fully accepted our own obligations as citizens. But crises such as these are also crucibles to reinvent ourselves, to think beyond the boundaries of our own limiting lives.

The Mumbai attack could be a significant moment in our country’s history in an unexpectedly affirmative way. As we demand more of our politicians—and we must—it’s time to also demand more of ourselves. Maybe the latter needs to come first.