Abraham Lincoln once said “It is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”

I always had a different idea about this statement until recently. My thoughts revolved around the fact that it is always to be on the side of the err than to be not on any side. Likewise, my father always preached and practiced this adage “Wrong decisions are always better than indecisions”.

Many a times in life you’d have across some incidents that changes your perspective about certain way of living. Sometimes you defy the common, sometimes you follow the herd and sometimes you are in a world of your own.

Mr. Vincent wrote an article on elections being bawdy carnival . In the article he focused more on Varun Gandhi and his histrionics, sometimes reminding India of the grim past that it had during election seasons – from Advani’s Rath Yatra to VP Singh’s Mandal Commission, from Gujarat Riots to Pilibhit, the hatred of politics and the politics of hatred growing in tandem, competing with each other and defying the youth of our country a chance to dream of a democratic and secular sovereign .

What Varun Gandhi said was totally unacceptable by any means. Even his so called claim that the video has been doctored, although, seems a bit too clichéd his latest stunt as he surrendered to the law enforcement agencies is nothing sort of a melodrama, causing a near riot and a few clashes of the saffron men with the local police.

I chanced upon an article in Indian Express, which further vindicated my thoughts on this Gandhi.

Apparently, in his writ petition Varun Gandhi submitted

“That the petitioner is a well-educated and peace-loving citizen and has done his BSc Economics from the London School of Economics in the year 1999 till 2002, and thereafter went on to do his MSc in public policy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in the year 2002-2004.”

Both LSE and SOAS have now said Gandhi’s claim is not accurate. This, if found true, would mean that Gandhi lied under oath and the court can initiate contempt proceedings as well as perjury charges which could lead upto 7 years behind bars. Phew!

If that’s not all, Varun Gandhi has been booked under National Security Act, attempt to murder and for inciting communal riots. This would mean a detention of at least one year.

The last couple of weeks Gandhi has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. If he was in his sane mind, he would never have gotten into something as rotten as this. Such are the times, you do one bad deed and you knowingly or unknowingly get into the habit of doing bad deeds – one after the other and the end doesn’t seem to be in the horizon.

This is definitely a lesson for the youth of this country. It is also a message to the political sycophants of the communal minded that the politics of the hatred will soon see an end in the resurgent India. For once, the UP government has done the right thing. And all my kudos to Mayawati for not succumbing to political pressures. Some might call the arrest of Varun Gandhi as a political vendetta and others might call it being opportunistic.

Whatever said and done, what Varun Gandhi has displayed is the height of futility …an epitome of foolhardiness!

Now, I know why sometimes “Silence is Golden”

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After a long wait, Tata Motors will be commercially launching the Nano car on March 23, 2009.

When the Nano was introduced on January 10, 2008, the world was totally different. The crude price briefly crossed $100 in January 2008 and reached an all time high of $147.27 on July 11, 2008. Given this background, and the fact that the Nano boasted a fuel economy of around 22 Km/L, the world sat up and took notice.

At a price tag of Rs.1 Lakh or roughly $2000, the car aroused huge interest all around. When an alloy wheel in US costs around $2000, it was natural for people in the West to wonder how it is even possible to make a car at that price. Tata was India’s pride and rest-of-the world’s envy. Tata scaled another peak when it acquired the prestigious British brands, Jaguar and Land Rover. Given India’s colonial past, this move by Tata was a big boost for the Indian psyche.

Events then that took a turn for the worst. The global economic conditions deteriorated soon and car sales plummeted. This was more pronounced in the case of luxury brands like Jaguar, and Tata was saddled with loss making brands (The seller of the brands, Ford Motor Co., jettisoned the Jaguar and Land Rover brands to Tata in time and was able to do a lot less badly than its peers in Detroit).

For Tata though, the biggest blow was that it had to abandon the Singur factory site and relocate to Gujarat. In this process, Tata suffered huge losses and learned the costly lesson that Indian politicians care less about the country’s progress and more about their own careers. Moreover, the raw material (steel, energy) costs were shooting up and selling the car at the promised price point did not look like a viable option.

Now, the worst seems to be over for Tata with the announcement of the launch date. There still seems to be a huge interest in the car and it will be interesting to see how customers react to Nano in the changed economic situation.

One thing for sure is that the global car industry is undergoing profound transformation and we may truly be entering an era of small, fuel efficient cars. President Obama of USA has embarked an ambitious program to reduce pollution by making emission standards stricter and supporting research in small cars. In China, the government has cut taxes for small cars and is encouraging a shift away from big cars. This trend is likely to spread all across the world. The truly Indian cars, Nano and Reva, will hopefully benefit from this paradigm shift in the automotive industry. Let us wish Tata Nano success and hope Tata will continue to bring glory to India.

Before I close, here is an interesting article that I read in New York Times. Thomas Friedman, the author of “The World is Flat”, narrated the story of how a couple of Ivy league students from USA went on a 2100 mile trip from Chennai to New Delhi in Reva cars fitted with solar roofs. Friedman uses this journey in Revas to show the bigger picture of how idealistic young people can make a difference in this world, especially energy conservation and environmental protection. He concludes with this powerful statement from one of the students.

“Why did this tour happen?” asked Ringwald. “Why this mad, insane plan to travel across India in a caravan of solar electric cars and jatropha trucks with solar music, art, dance and a potent message for climate solutions? Well … the world needs crazy ideas to change things, because the conventional way of thinking is not working anymore.”

Come to think of it, didn’t Tata Motors do exactly the same thing?

Throwing away the conventional way of thinking, coming up with a crazy idea and changing the very idea of a car by presenting the world an absolutely fantastic car called Nano?

Image Credit: B Balaji

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I started working about a decade ago and bumped into this pretty girl from a state in India called Gujarat. She was hired to work for me and I must clarify that I had no role in her selection…these were early days you see!!

We got chatting about our lives one day when I asked her the question, “What gets you to Bangalore?”. She didn’t pause a second to think and replied pat saying “I am looking for a bright career in the IT industry”.

I was real cocky those days – cocky about the fact that my city was considered the Silicon Valley of India and was a real magnet in terms of attracting all these young people from different parts of the country. I’ve had countless conversations when I’ve raved about Bangalore and ridiculed her state for being “under developed”. I’ve even gone to the extent of ragging her saying “do you guys have roads, public transport etc back home?”.

Gujarat’s transformation from being one of those under developed states about a decade ago to being a top draw for investments has been phenomenal.

How did all this happen?

One man and his desire to make things happen – Narendra Modi. Here comes a leader who like most of his counterparts says, I will do X, Y & Z and unlike his counterparts goes on to deliver all of them. The result – public loves them and want more. To do what he did with the Tata’s to bring in the Nano was probably the tipping point in this state’s ascendancy.

His leadership and the state are raved about today. And why not?

A recent corporate summit had Sunil Mittal and Anil Ambani suggested that Modi’s prowess should get him the big job in the country soon – being Prime Minister. What baffled me the following day were the reactions that were expressed for Industry leaders making that remark. The party that he is a part of, itself, was in arms, needless the mention the Congress and the other numerous fingers and toe parties that are around the country.

That gets me to ask the question… WHAT THE HELL?

Here’s a guy who has done what he said he will – that is the fundamental principle of good governance and people like it. All that they want is someone to focus on development and do what he/she promises to do. India over the last 12 months has clearly seen and recognized this – If Modi won a second term and Sheila Dixit a 3^rd, it’s just the fact that the work they do speaks volumes for them. It’s a known fact that no politician is clean and I don’t want to even go there.

What people want is good governance, tangible signs of development and keeping up of promises.

As leaders running businesses, it is extremely frustrating to see the lack of this across the country. Case and point to this is what’s happened to Bangalore over the last decade. While Gujarat was on it’s upswing, the Congress with Dharam Singh and the Son of the s(p)oil, Deve Gowda but Bangalore and Karnataka into reverse gear.

Bangalore bursts at its seams with little to no development in the last decade – the results here to see in the form of crippled infrastructure, no new industries coming in and of course, traffic jams turn this city to a standstill at pretty much any time of the day.

I consider myself fortunate for not having to bump into that pretty girl often these days – she must be dying to give back to me some of the hell that I gave her!

Is it unfair for the people of India and the business leaders to ask for someone who’s proven himself at governance and delivering on his promises to lead them? I think we’ve had enough of the days of Presidents who can’t walk and Prime Ministers who can’t talk (we’ve had exceptions alright, but the need is for exceptions to become the rule).

Come on… these requests are not unfair at all – it’s not about being favorable to one party or the other.. it is picking someone who is the right man to drive the bus, and drive it forward of course!

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After the historic reforms that came up in the 1990s, India has been growing in leaps and bounds with its GDP at 8% consistently. Many Indian service providers especially the ones in the fields of IT, Pharma have emerged as global players.

According to one stat in the year 2007 a total of 676 M&A deals worth around $57 billion were signed. There have been predictions by many eminent Economists about India having a potential of becoming a super power by 2020. India Inc. has been growing and shining, but is our society also been growing the same way?

According to Compact Oxford Dictionary one of the synonyms for Society is

A particular community of people living in a country or region, and having shared customs, laws, and organizations.

One of the major benefits of Civilized Society is to co-exist with people from different cultures peacefully. But are we fully acknowledging the meaning of society or are we failing to address any of the above?

Let us look at a few facts:

• Over the past one and half decades there have been hundreds of cases in Kashmir where people have been disappearing. According to Human Rights Watch, most of the Kashmiris who have been picked for questioning by the Police or the Army have either been tortured brutally or have never returned.

• After the Demolition of Babri Masjid on 6^th Dec 1992, India got into a grip of communal violence. No part of the country was spared and around 1500 people were killed in violence that lasted for over a week

• In 2002, post Godhra, India was again on the brink where in Gujarat was a victim of communal riots, where two communities resolved to lawlessness. According to an official estimate, 1044 people were killed and 223 people were reported missing, 2,548 injured, 919 women widowed and 606 children orphaned.

• On an average, two Dalits are assaulted every hour, three Dalit women and children are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and at least two Dalits are tortured or burned every day

• According to a report a total of 7,913 complaints on Domestic Violence against women were filed in India. But there are many cases that have gone unreported resulting in dowry deaths.

• According to the National Commission of Human rights of India, more than 62,000 human rights violations are recorded annually.

Looking at all these facts one begins to wonder where are we heading as a society?

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In the late 80s and early 90s Narendra Modi  was virtually unknown. He fought very hard to accomplish the tasks given to him by the Senior Leaders of BJP. Towards the later part of the decade, we saw a belligerent Modi moving closer to his political ambition of becoming the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

In 2001, Narendra Modi became the Chief Minister of Gujarat, got promoted to the office at a time his predecessor Kesubhai Patel lost the by-elections. In July 2007, he became the longest serving Chief Minister.  Later the same year, he was re-elected for the third consecutive term as the CM.

In 2001, just when he took office Modi was given the task of rebuilding Gujarat. This was in the wake of the biggest natural calamity India had seen – The Gujarat Earthquake which killed nearly 20000 people and another 170000 injured.  Modi was a man on a mission

In 2002, he faced the biggest test of his life – There was a communal riot in which Hindus and Muslims killed each other following a Godhra train incident. The riot killed nearly 2000 people and about 150000 were displaced.  The entire nation was pitted against him and some even went to the extent of terming the Godhra incident as an attempted genocide, a largescale massacre.

Modi did not sit quiet. What followed was a successful stint – one after the other. In his first term as the Gujarat Chief Minister, the economic growth touched 10%. In 2007, the growth touched a stunning 11.5% reducing the fiscal deficit of the state economy by a stunning 50%.

Other noticeable achievements included infrastructural developments, electrifying rural Gujarat, the Narmada success story etc.

Narendra Modi’s leadership and his extraordinary capabilities made him the darling of media. And soon a brand called Moditva emerged. Modi translated excessive criticisms and a burgeoning popularity into mass votes which made gave him a landslide victory in his third time.

Advani once said about Modi

A leader who, after being subjected to a malicious and prolonged campaign of vilification, has been able to impress even his critics with his determination, single-minded focus, integrity and a wide array of achievements in a relatively short time.

The year 2008 saw Modi take a complete u-turn with industrialists and politicians alike yearning for a piece of the pie in the Gujarat success story. Budha’s pain was Modi’s gain. Under the leadership of Modi, Gujarat opened the doors for Tata and Sanand became the Nanoland.

Modi did not stop there. He continues to woo Bangalore based IT and BPO companies to set up their units in Modiland. 

If this was not enough, Modi surprised all his critics as late as last week. He embarked on a demolition drive of “illegally built temples” in Gujarat including that of a Sai Baba and a Hanuman shrine. Facing the axe are another 161 illegally constructed temples.

Modi invited widespread criticisms for his actions especially from VHP – the erstwhile ideological partner of the BJP. In fact Ashok Singhal, of the VHP compared his government to that of Aurangazeb’s. Modi loyalists however argued that he was painting a picture of a Nationally acceptable, Secular Leader

Read the words once again – “Nationally Acceptable, Secular Leader.” Wow !!!

That made me think a dozen times before I wrote this article.

Is Narendra Modi really trying to lead by example ? Your comments please…

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Image Credit: bbjee

About a couple of weeks back, we ran a story Mamata sings for Singur, Tata says Tata Tata, bye bye. When we ran this article we were pretty sure that Tata would eventually move out of Bengal. And they did, leaving a thousand farmers wondering about their future.

West Bengal is supposed to be the intellectual capital of India. With the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, Netaji and thousands of learned men, this land of the learned has slowly and steadily become the land of agitators, unions, addas, lazy babus and most of all “pointless” fighters. Their greed and fight for unjust right has always landed them in trouble with Corporate India. Now, every corporate or multinational that plans for India will plan India sans Bengal.

I am happy for the farmers of Singur that they got back their land. But I am not happy with the fact that thousands of farmers who were in the brink of rejoicing a great future for their children, a secured job and an opportunity for growth will miss it indefinitely until a new Corporate messiah dawns the soil of West Bengal.

I will not be surprised, if a few of these farmers take some extreme steps. We have already seen this happening in other parts of the country where farmers took their lives after they landed themselves in financial crisis and Singur is no exception.

In a smart and quick move Tata Motors on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gujarat government for relocating the Nano plant to Gujarat. The plant will be located in Sanand, near Ahmedabad and will have an initial capacity of 2.50 lakh units, which will be expanded up to 5 lakh units. The project, comprising the mother plant and the vendor park, will come up on an area of about 1,100 acres.. This project is expected to generate over 10,000 direct and indirect jobs.

It is learned that the launch of Nano, will be slightly delayed – apparently in the first quarter of 2009. Tatas had earlier said the rollout will be in the last quarter of this calendar year.

According to sources close to Tata Motors, the company would assemble the first few units from their Pune and Pantnagar plants. Tata Motors currently makes  the Ace Minitrucks from its Pantnagar facility.  It would be interesting to watch Tata sticking to its original promise.

Whatever said, Budha’s loss is Modi’s gain in the fight for Nanoland.

On a different note, immediately after Tata’s exit from Bengal Karan Thapar ran a “War of Words” show on CNN IBN featuring CPM politician Neelotpal Basu, Trinamool politician Trivedi, industrialist Sanjeev Goenka and industrialist Rahul Bajaj. Here is the link – Tata gone, West Bengal wonders whom to blame

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Bangalore bombed – 2 killed, 20 injured.

Ahmedabad bombed- 49 killed and still counting

Surat on a rampage – 20 bombs discovered

Bomb threat to Vadodara Stock Exchange, cops on alert

Five days, 21 bombs later – Cops still clueless

Sushma Swaraj blames Opposition, says

In two BJP-ruled states in a span of two days and within four days of the UPA Government winning the trust vote have some meaning, and what I am saying is proved by enough circumstantial evidence

And later on comes to the forefront and does a CYA exercise by saying

I stand by what I said earlier. It was a personal remark made by me and was not a part of the NDA. I still firmly stand by what I said

Introspect the contradictions, now - Why did she have to say it in a press conference anything that is even closer to a personal remark ? If it was a personal remark, she could have spoken to her husband, her in laws or any of her other friends and relatives. Correct ?

Moving on, lets take the example of the self made Godman of Gujarat, Modi saab.

Narendra Modi did not blame anyone but says it is a proxy war that the nation will have to fight.

Well, coming from a  person who is alleged to have hands in Godhra riots and shied away from answering intelligent questions (refer Karan Thapar’s interview on CNN IBN’s Devil Advocate ), is indeed a surprise move and may be a smart one too.

Advani plays neutral. He neither supports the Modism, nor is he a fan of Sushma, in this case. He wants to play safe as he knows come next elections, his eyes are on the Prime Minister’s seat and he can not afford to displease anyone, even if it means taking a political stand.

Net net, BJP seems to be the boiling pot of confusion at the time of crisis. I am not sure how well this will go with the public with elections round the corner.

Congress, on the other hand, doesn’t want to speak on the subject. Home ministry is silent on the issue. Shivraj Patil has not uttered a productive word on this. 

Priya Ranjan Das Munshi who was in limelight during the Aarushi murder case for asking certain sections of the media and the entertainment world to use restraint seems to have lost it this time.

Either he is not doing what is right or may be he is following the orders of the high command.

BJP, however confused they are,  is still pleading with folded hands to revive POTA. Congress doesn’t relent.

Every body is playing the blame game. In the middle of this crisis, the common man is paying the price. His life is not secured at the very least. There is fear, tension, turmoil, chaos all over. And what is the basis of all this – the ever growing political confusion.

Will this ever end ? Can India take a tough stance on terrorism as United States or any other progressive nations ? Will there be a day where one can walk freely on the road without having to fear what’s in store for the next moment ?

It is this lack of accountability and irresponsiveness that has made our nation the target of many terrorist experimentation. Our government needs to take accountability of the situation and do all it takes to avoid another attack on our land, even if it calls for sending a training team to one of the best counter terrorism squads in the world or spending millions to uplift the security levels.

We simply can not afford to be the cynosure of the terrorists’ eyes !!!

Image Credit : Ozgurum

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