Muscat-Muttrah at its best - A Photo Feature

Muttrah Corniche with Fort Silhoutted against a setting sun

Evening time Muttrah Corniche

The road through the hills towards old Muscat is easy on the eyes

Come Winter the City is decked with Flowers - Sultan's personal Yacht can be seen on the harbour

Chanakya Sutra's relevance today

Chanakya Sutras have relevance even today;

In a state where the ruler lives like a common man, the citizens live like kings do. And in the state where the ruler lives like a king, the citizens live like beggars do - This is quite true of India, these days. One has to only look at the assets in thousands of crores of the first family, ministers and even first time MPs, and their lavish life styles to understand why 60% of the population still lives below the poverty line, and another 20% struggles to make both ends meet.

Wise men should never go into a country where there are no means of earning one’s livelihood, where the people have no dread of anybody, have no sense of shame, no intelligence, or a charitable disposition - Is it why India is not getting enough FDI? Our laws are investor unfriendly which affects foreigners making reasonable profits from their Indian operations, our businessmen have no fear of law and as such no dread of violating business deals, and shame and Indian businessmen are as far away from each other as possible

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth - This is something Indian's dont understand. They cry hoarse when US supports Pakistan, not understanding that US does only what is good for their country and dont give a damn about relationship with India getting hurt. We expect everyone to be behind us, while refusing to take a stand on any single issue of relevance in the global stage. We neither form friendships nor do we protect our self interests. It is why we are friendless even amongst SAARC countries.

Omerta broken at last

Massive and unimaginable levels of corruption is the single most talking point in India these days. It is gnawing at the very foundations of Indian Economy, taking the country backwards, and as one infamous son-in-law remarked recently 'has made the country a "Banana Republic". One would expect any Prime Minister, who has at least a semblence of decency left in him, to provide at least lip service to the cause of fighting corruption. Instead, what we have from the moron is that 'Graft Charges bad for India's Image'. Note the meaning;  Graft is not bad for the Country, but Charges made of Graft are bad!!

For a long while, all the political parties have followed the old Italian principle of 'Omerta'. Silence about each others corruption (even if it is brought out for political purposes, a sham enquiry would be ordered and the whole issue dragged for ever till no one cares about it - remember Bofors, Harshad Mehta, 2G Spectrum, CWG? In Kerala, an Ex-Minister was convicted with a sentence of 1 Year RI, for graft after nearly 2 decades! And he was pardoned by the State Government after a few days in the Jail, of which 90% was spent on a 5 Star hospital for imaginable diseases. The guy has not gone near a doctor for the past one year since he has been released!!!) was the rule, as everyone was corrupt, and no one wanted to be compromised. It  was a win-win situation for the political leaders, with the only loser being the people of the country. It is also why, the opposition parties kept mum on Robert Vadra dealings, despite having evidence on their hands for more than a couple of years, and it is also why the massive corruption of Sonia and her family is not even mentioned casually.

But Aravind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan has broken the Omerta by taking on Robert Vadra head on. The panic reactions of Congress shows that they have much to fear about the next arrow hitting where it hurts most - Sonia herself. The beauty of Omerta being broken is that now all opposition parties will be forced to compete with each other in bringing out corruption deals of the First Family and Congress Ministers, or else they will be ridiculed by the common man. Watch out for more fun in the days to come.

Condemned to Suffer

The Government has recently hiked the Diesel price by Rs 5. And now,

"Raise diesel price by Rs 4 a litre, govt panel tells Centre: India should try to completely deregulate diesel prices by the start of financial year 2014/15 as part of a strategy to cut its ballooning fiscal deficit, a government panel report made public on Friday said. The report, submitted to the government on September 3, before a hike in prices of diesel in mid-September, also recommended increasing the price of fuel by 4 rupees a litre. It also suggested cooking gas prices should be raised by 50 rupees per 14.2 kilogram cylinder"

Till the last hike, the reason given for hike of petroleum products was the high oil prices, that leads to a foreign exchange outflow. Now Government is very quiet about this, because the Crude oil price is less than $ 90 per barrel.  If rise in Crude prices is an attributable reason for hike in Petroleum products price, then the corollary should be true. The oil companies have always parrotted that market price should define the price of petroleum products, and as such should we not be reducing the prices rather than increasing it?

Our Government is flat broke. It gave concessions worth $ 1 Trillion to the Big Industries during the recession in 2008-2009. And has continued to refuse taxing the rich. Wasteful schemes like NREGA and many others, initiated by Sonia Gandhi and her irresponsible leftist 'advisors' in the National Advisory Committee has destroyed the Country's finance. Government wants the common man to tighten his belt, while refusing to even make a token effort on its part or the industrialist's part to do so. The highly subsidised industrialists have siphoned off profits made in India to invest outside the country.

The FDI in retail, civil aviation followed by Insurance and Pension will not help Westerners as many thought. The Western companies and countries are broke themselves. They dont have money to pay their debts, forget about investing in India. What will happen is the Black Money stashed outside the country will find its way back to the country as FDI, FII through the opening up of the economy, and this will lead to higher inflation.

We have never seen a Government that is as apathetic to its people as the current one- and that includes the ones led by Indira Gandhi, and later by VP Singh et al. And this is saying a lot. It takes special skills to damage an economy to crumbs in 8 years, as Manmohan Singh has done. He can get his second Ph.D writing a thesis about how he did it.

But when the Country is run by a school drop out dumbo like Sonia Gandhi and a guy with a brain the size of a peanut - Rahul Gandhi, ably supported by downright idiots like Montek Singh Ahluwalia and a team of World Bank (which itself is in doldrums) experienced 'economists' who doesnt know Trivandrum from Aizwal, what else can you expect?

When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa and wanted to join the freedom struggle, the great Balagangadhara Tilak asked him to travel across India to understand the problems faced by the countrymen across the length and breadth of the country. Gandhi was wise enough to follow the advice, and the rest is history.

If you look at the decision makers, Sonia Gandhi, Radhul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Subbarao, Ahmed Patel, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Ambika Soni, Pranab Mukherjee (till recently) and of course the NAC members, one thing common is that not one of them have any experience at grassroot politics nor do they have any contact with the common man. They just sit in their ivory towers and churn out western theory based text bookish solutions that is far away from the ground reality.

Only when our country is ruled by grassroot politicians, will we have an empathetic government. Till then, we are condemned to suffer.

Reforms? The Government must be joking

The so called 'reforms' supposedly unleashed by the UPA Government is the biggest joke of the year.

How come increasing the Diesel prices that lead to inflation (argument against is that not increasing diesel price will lead to fiscal deficit increasing, which leads to inflation - so it is a case of heads I win and tails you lose to the Government- it is inflation either way - one now, other defered) be categorized as a reform? In the first place why are we not asking the question "What led to the spiralling of the fiscal deficit in the first place?". Why are we not even talking about reducing non-plan expenditure, curbing the cost of the bureaucracy, discarding with the unwanted ministries? Why are we not doing a cost benefit analysis of the porous NREGS, where only less than 15% reaches the beneficiary? NREGS is the single largest culprit for the spiralling fiscal deficit. Why should only the common man pay for the profligacies of a wasteful government? Why are we not hearing about Ministers, including PM and the NAC Chairman doing a cost cutting on their security detail? We may not save much, but at least it gives a feeling that everyone is tightening their belt.

In the first place we need to be transparent about the claims of under recovery that leads to notional losses in the oil industry. I am an ex-oil industry guy myself. With oil prices remaining stable during the past one year, how come the subsidy bill is spiralling day by day?

What is required are sacrifices made by everyone, starting from the top, including industrialists. There are so many ways to raise revenue. Increasing tax collection ( tax evasion is very high in the country, especially sales and corporate tax), reducing expenditure, spending more money on infrastructure that generates employment, restructuring the government and the bureaucracy, abolishing at least 40 ministries at the centre and many more in the States, reducing interest rates that allows entrepreneurs and small businessmen to invest more instead of banks pampering the big industrial houses......... ............the list is endless............

We talk about FDI retail in another post.....................

Mid term polls in January -February 2013???

Few apparently unconnected incidents/policy decisions indicate Mid-Term Poll in India.

The Coal Scam in which the PM is heavily indicted. Sonia asking Congressment to be aggressive in taking on the opposition (Because the Scam hits close to home???). BJP has upped the ante and has not allowed the parliament to function till MMS resigns, not will it the next session too.

Mulayam Singh Yadav questioning Rahul Gandhi's credentials and announcing the decision to go alone in the next Parliamentary elections, thereby scuttling Congress's plan to form an alliance in UP. Also, the disasterous performance of Akhilesh Yadav's government means every day delay in SP pulling the plug on the UPA Government means loss of seats for SP, reducing its bargaining power in the post poll scenario.

Government deciding to hike the diesel price by Rs 5 and putting a cap on subsidised LPG cylinder to 6 a year. UPA is sure this policy decision will force some of its allies to withdraw support as it is so blatantly anti aam admi. Trinamool Congress and NCP have already made their displeasure known, and both are itching to walk out of UPA.

Now the final nail in the coffin.By allowing 51% FDI in retail, broadcasting and aviation, Congress has left SP, TMC, BSP with hardly any room for manouvre. Their opposition to FDI in retail is well known. They just cannot take this humiliation any more, which means they have to walk out.

Congress knows it will get less than 50 seats if it waits till 2014, knowing how discredited the current regime is. Better to get 100 odd seats now, and hope to support a third front from outside than be irrelevant in 2 years time. And they can take the high moral ground of having been forced to go to the people because of SP, BJP, TMC, BSP claiming they were victims of being reformist, after destroying the economy for 8 long years.

I will stick my neck out and predict that the General Election will be held in January- February 2013, so that Congress can confine Modi to Gujarat, whose Assembly election will also have to be held with it, rather than losing Gujarat now badly, and then having to face a stronger Modi in 2014.

Watch out for January-February 2013!!

Dispelling some myths #2

We are a Secular Country

There can be nothing further from the truth than this. Secularism means the right to follow the religion of ones choice freely. The current version of Secularism that is being practiced is a sham. We have one set of rules for certain communities and another for the majority community. The minority institutions can function under their own syllabus, do whatever they want and they are even supported by the government. The madrassa eduction, which cannot be in any terms called secular, is made to be on par with the conventional education. Even the Christian run schools promote their religion at the expense of other religions. But Hindus, by virtue of being a majority, cannot have any privileges for running their own schools. A veda pada sala, which should be encouraged as it passes on the wisdom of centuries of advanced human thoughts collected as Vedas and Upanishads, is branded communal and left unrecognized. Even the new Right to Education act and reservation in schools for the underprivileged is not applicable to minority run schools. So a minority benefits two fold- he gets reservation in a majority run institution and his seats are protected in his community run institutions.

Even the generic definition  of Secularism is not applicable any more. Would any minority community look passively if one of theirs convert himself or herself to a majority religion? There are numerous cases where people have been killed because of this, and there are many more that are left unreported by the secular media.

And why should the minorities enjoy special privileges in any case? They have as much right as you and me with respect to educational opportunities and employment opportunities on merit. If, after 65 years of reservation, they are still backward and needs protection, frankly they need to look inwards.

India is currently a country not for the majorities and as such not secular.