Thursday, August 15, 2013

66 Years of Independence

15th August comes again. With each passing days, India seemed to less shining and more as the great land of Al-Absurdistan. I am ranting on Independence day because we are not bothered about freedom, justice and fairness. The goal of development can't be achieved without securing these premises.

When are we putting aside petty political fights and begin focusing on the real problems that threaten our nation ? India is a capitalism encased feudal societies where people hide their prejudice behind a mask of newly coming material wealth. We are amnesic of the issues to be addressed with utmost importance for voices are hushed up or ignored in the media due to business interests or political pressure. We accumulate huge foreign reserve and emphasizing stock piles in food grains. An obsession with government jobs that give access to social and economic security without any accountability.


India possesses a range and quality of intellectuals that perhaps only few developing society in the world can match. They are considered both brilliant and scholar. But it is the lack of courage to call a spade a spade holds us back. People lack certain level of individuality to take a stand on serious matters of concern. There is no moral decline of the whole society. Our morals were always like this but it is now they are exposed in the public face.

There are lot of martyrs involved in our struggle for independence and rarely we remember them. There's no going back now. Our independence somehow was not the birth of an open mind in Indian context but only reformation through the western weapons of ideas. We as Indian rarely see ourselves as part of perpetrators and carriers of an unjust system. Sixty years of idealism, emergency, socialism, caste reservations and liberalization followed, has been bringing about the end of feudalism and the rise of equality and a new social order. Rising inequality disturbs me to a great extent. One look at human history is enough to prove that eventually it is always the freedom and inclusive institutions that has build up great nations.

It is very important to ask a simple question before making any decisions - Progress for Whom and on whose cost? Capital investment into infrastructure, Industry building or Subsidy demands sacrifices. But those who are making and those who progress are not the same set of people. I am not a communist but can 't accept an hedonistic version of America. I belong to a nation whose identity vividly unfurls in a maelstrom of violence, riots, discontent and poverty. In the end, we all want civilized, just and equitable India. I dream of India to be more humane rather than exotic and incredible.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Hard Times

Once a good economy crumbles, results go wrong, inflation hurts more frequently and GDP rate turns slow. Read these three articles to understand, how India has been ruined by Congress !

Blog Post 1 - All confusion apart, I strongly feel that the Congress (I) must not come back to power in 2014–directly or behind the scenes. They must be made to sit in opposition and lose big time like PPP did in Pakistan. That should be our first priority.

Let India not become Bihar of 1990s where you could be incompetent with impunity because you were sure to come back to power with the caste equation in your favor. There was not even any attempt to perform; there wasn’t even a pretense of integrity. Let India not become Jharkhand of today either where lobbyists rule and voters suffer–again without an end in sight to the nightmare.

Blog Post 2 - A story of destructive governance and citizens who did not speak out.

Blog Post 3 - If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, there is nothing like appearing to care for the poor to divert attention from the arduous, painstaking task of building public institutions that are critical to implement the provision of public goods for the underprivileged. Instead, progressive legislation has become a substitute for building the state's implementation capacity to do even the most basic of tasks. Indeed, it is undermining it - if you can barely do three things well, adding five more will undoubtedly ensure that everything is done poorly.

There has always been a gap between public policy and public will ; But performance of UPA is really bad and the scorn is well deserved on them !

Friday, June 28, 2013

How Hardliners Win in Chaos?

In periods of revolutionary upheaval, Islamist hardliners often begin by cooperating with moderate or libertarian-leaning groups. Once stability weakens and institutions erode, these alliances are systematically abandoned, allowing hardliners to consolidate power for themselves. Chaos provides the opening; moral certainty provides the weapon.

After orthodox and power-driven actors seize control of a movement, many moderate Muslims - often personally tolerant and uneasy with extremist actions - find themselves unable to resist. Their attachment to faith, combined with intense social pressure, discourages open opposition. Those who do resist face physical assault, exile, imprisonment, or social boycott, frequently justified through accusations of blasphemy or apostasy. As a result, individual tolerance within society does little to prevent the emergence of totalitarian control by hardliners.

A key ideological assumption underlying such movements is the belief that moral behavior can be legislated, enforced, and punished into existence. This leads to systems of morality policing, public shaming, harsh penalties, gender segregation, religious surveillance, and broad social enforcement. Power, once obtained, demands continual moral regulation to sustain itself.

Even when hardliners are granted their full list of demands, the process does not end. If religious authorities are allowed to define all societal failures and the state enacts every prescribed reform, new grievances soon emerge. Within a short time, fresh demands appear, accompanied by renewed internal pressure. Moral regulation becomes an expanding project rather than a completed one.

Individual moral failures are rarely treated as personal responsibility. Instead, blame is externalized—often toward the West or foreign cultural influence - reinforcing a perpetual sense of siege. This narrative sustains unity by defining corruption as external and virtue as internal.

Followers must also be convinced that enemies can be defeated. Through shifting rhetoric, opponents are portrayed as simultaneously overwhelming and contemptibly weak. This contradiction fuels mobilization while undermining objective assessment, a structural flaw common to authoritarian and fascist movements that ultimately leads to strategic failure.

Most insidious, however, are the so-called True Believers. They are not overtly aggressive and often act with sincere intentions. Quietly, they promote collectivist norms and moral conformity, gradually marginalizing individualistic behavior. Through denial of dissent and unquestioning belief, they help construct a society that excludes difference without appearing coercive. In times of chaos, such actors provide the social glue that allows hardliners not only to rise - but to endure.

The funny thing is replacing Islam with Communism, and all the logic will still appear to be true.

There was a great Marxist named Lenin, who did two or three million men in. That's a lot to have done in, but where he did one in, that great Marxist Stalin did ten in. - Robert Conquest.