Does Anyone Even Remember Liberhan?

For those who don’t, here’s the dope: The Liberhan Commission was set up in 1993 to probe the circumstances leading to the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6th December 1992. This one-man panel was expected to submit it’s report within three months.

So, what happened later? Well, the Commission today got it’s 44th extension. Imagine, 44th! This whole sham has been going on for 15 years and it has incurred an expenditure of more than Rs 7 crore so far. The term of the Commission will now end on April 3, 2008.

Ironical, isn’t it? Even the secular government currently in power can’t get the job done. A few years down the line, you will be reading that this Commission has got it’s 100th extension. All I want to say is, don’t be surprised when that happens.

Information Source: The Times of India

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No One Is Serious…About The Budget

And why should anyone be serious about it? It’s so boring, isn’t it? All those figures and statistics that are read out in every Budget session induce us into a stupor. We need instant entertainment. And our MPs oblige us. After all, they are our representatives, aren’t they? And they don’t disappoint…

TNN reports,

The longest session of India’s Parliament is traditionally the Budget session, which underlines the importance of the business of getting the legislature to scrutinise the Budget.

In reality, however, Lok Sabha in recent years has spent less and less time discussing the Budget — in fact, it spends much more time interrupting the session.

The result is that year after year an overwhelming majority of the government’s expenditure plans — the demands for grants of the various ministries and governments — have been passed by Lok Sabha with no discussion on them in the House.

The report further says that 95 per cent of the demands for grants are passed without a discussion in the Parliament. And when the demands for grants now total in the region of Rs 18,00,000 crore a year, you get the general idea of the situation, don’t you? But who cares, we get instant entertainment, don’t we? Those shouting matches, those near-scuffles in Parliament when the whole world is seeing, that is what we want. Economics be damned!

As I have already said, the MPs are the representatives of the people. So, the way they are behaving probably showcases the shallowness of the people too. We don’t think anymore. As I am constantly rambling on my blog, we know only one way of protest nowadays: riots, violent bandhs, etc. Gandhiji is forgotten and Satyagraha is passe. It’s not a big surprise then, that this mindset manifests itself in our Parliament, is it?

Update:

The Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee seems to agree with me! Today, he was forced to adjourn the house till noon after opposition MPs gathered near his podium shouting slogans.

As reported by Times of India, this is what he said about the Members of Parliament,

You are all working overtime to finish democracy in this country. It is a matter of great sorrow.

With great sorrow and sadness… I am forced to adjourn the house. Let the country decide what is to be done.

And I can’t agree more with him.

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No Fine, No Ban; Hayden Let Off With Reprimand!

This is really unbelievable stuff! Matthew Hayden called Harbhajan Singh an “obnoxious little weed” in a radio interview on Tuesday, in which he ridiculed Indians, Harbhajan and Ishant Sharma. This was in violation of Cricket Australia’s (CA) Code of Behaviour. Today, CA asked Hayden to attend a judicial hearing in Melbourne. Which he did, and was let off with just a reprimand. Nothing else.

Now my blood is boiling. Really. WTF is happening? Why hasn’t the BCCI registered a complaint with the ICC till now? Harbhajan was banned for three test matches without any evidence of his saying anything racist (of course, this ban was later lifted). And now, when Hayden is launching such cheap verbal attacks against India in front of the whole world, on radio, he is let off with just a reprimand?

Heh. Now let the Aussies come to India. We have been tolerant of their stupid antics for long enough. They want to play in the IPL, isn’t it? Well, let’s teach them a lesson they will never forget.

Do the Australians deserve to be called the ‘world champions’ anymore? They seem to be more like ‘pathetic losers’ to me.

And yes, this is what Bhajji says about this new fracas: Aussies losing crown, losing temper

Read the transcript of that radio interview here.

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Heh. Boycott ‘Jodhaa Akbar’?

I recently received an email from the eternal jokers, whom we affectionately call ‘Bigots’. This email is from Arindam Thapar.

Here I have copied that email.

Namaskar

This is an awareness drive to awake people to boycott movie ‘Jodhaa Akbar’.

The movie Jodhaa Akbar is a vile, vicious, and covert attempt by a mischievous producer/director from Bollywood (Mumbai) to make quick bucks by denigrating and vilifying the Hindu (Rajput) people. Sonia’s (Antonia Maino) Congress government promptly banned ‘Da Vinci Code’ movie after Christians’ protest, but this Secular (?) government is so insensitive about Hindus protest about ‘Jodhaa-Akbar’ !

Visit – http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/3815.html to -

• Know true story of Cruel Akbar and Jodhaabai
• Know the people behind this conspiracy (The movie crew)
• View glimpses of protests

Send this mail to your friends for creating awareness and protecting self-respect.

Shameful Hindus who throng to watch Jodhaa-Akbar, a film which glorifies Hindu hater Cruel Akbar, are worthy of getting killed by Terrorists!

Huh? Conspiracy of the movie crew? What’s conspiratorial in that movie? If I have heard correctly, there was a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie stating that multiple versions of this story exist. The ‘movie crew’ has presented one of those versions.

And yes, Cruel Akbar? I was taught in school that he was quite a secular guy. Heh. Guess I will just have to re-learn everything from our ‘Bigot’ friends.

And it gets even better. On the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti website, the following table is provided,

Read carefully the crew of movie:

Director	Ashutosh Gowariker
Producer	Ashutosh Gowariker, Ronnie Screwvala
Cast	Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai
Story	Haidar Ali
Screen Play	Haidar Ali and Ashutosh Gowarikar
Religious and Culture Advisor	Omar Khayyam Saharanpuri
Music	A. R. Rahman
Lyrics	Javed Akhtar

You get what they want to say, don’t you? But I see only Indians in that table. No one else.

I was going to see this movie very soon. So, basically I am a ‘Shameful Hindu’ and I would request our terrorist friends to come and kill me because my ‘Bigot’ friends think I am worthy of just that. Heh.

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The New Mentos Ad: It Rocks!

Heh. I loved it.

Dickhead Communists! They Want Twenty20 Cricket To Be Banned!

Heh. I knew all along that the Left parties are run by a bunch of dickheads stubbornly sticking to their rusted ideologies, but I didn’t know that these guys are retards too. Why did I just say that? Well…

PTI reports,

The government should ban Twenty20 cricket and ascertain the source of income for the BCCI-backed multi-billion dollar Indian Premier League, veteran CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta demanded on Saturday.

Describing Twenty20 cricket as a “gamble” involving “widespread betting” and “free investment of unaccounted money”, Dasgupta alleged that a cabinet minister was involved in the “caricature of the game and looting cricket lovers.”

Hmm…that cabinet minister is obviously our Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. Before banning IPL, I think we should ban the Left parties in India which are single-handedly responsible for blocking many reforms that would have immensely helped India in her quest to become a developed nation.

I too don’t completely agree with this whole IPL drama being played out. But ban it? Nah! At least, let the matches start. Who knows, this may turn out be a great development for world cricket!

And yes, it seems we Indians have a very short fuse nowadays. If we don’t like something, or if we think something has ‘offended’ us, it should be banned. Period. No debate, no reasoning. WTF?

Want to know why I don’t completely agree with the IPL format? Read this post:
IPL? It’s All About The Money, Honey!

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The Coolies…err…Porters Have A Point Here!

PTI reports,

The demand is feeble, not even listed in the charter of demands that they would present to the Railway Minister. But they plan to broach the issue at an appropriate time, why call us ‘coolie’?

“It is one of our several demands including a forth grade employee status to coolies and a pension scheme for those coolies attaining age of 60,” says Mangat Ram Saini, Chairman, All India Railway Coolie Organisation.

Coolies, the inseparable entity of one of the world’s biggest Railway network and the biggest non-governmental structure supporting the Indian railways have come up with these demands during their ‘Sansad Ghero Abhiyan’ in the capital.

“This name, ‘coolie’ smacks of the British Raj and still gives us a sense of ’slavery’,” says Saini adding a better calling name was much required to uplift their social status.

“Being called as ‘Coolie’ is a little degradation of the kind of service, we provide to the millions of passengers everyday,” he says.

I support them. ‘Coolie’ does sound a bit degrading. Let’s call them ‘Porters’ from now on (that’s what they are demanding). They also want to be considered as fourth grade employees under Indian Railways and want a pension scheme for their colleagues who cross 60 years of age. Those are legitimate demands.

And who, according to them, will help them in their struggle? Read the following quote,

“However, we are very optimistic with the assurance of assistance and cooperation from the Congress secretary Rahul Gandhi,” said Mangat Ram Saini, the chairman of the union.

Heh. Rahul Gandhi? Last heard, he was para-gliding in Pune with his friends and organising cricket tournaments somewhere else; purportedly to promote team spirit. Don’t ask me how. And this retard is being projected as the next Prime Minister of India! God save India and our Coolies…err…Porters!

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IPL? It’s All About The Money, Honey!

OK, now that the initial euphoria over the Indian Premium League auctions is over, let’s think. Let’s remember that whenever the Indian team fails miserably (the World Cup?), the reasons given are ‘excessive cricket’ and ‘packed itineraries’. Our Indian cricketers don’t have enough time and energy to play for ‘Team India’. And now they have a new addition to their ‘packed itineraries’. The IPL matches.

So, what’s going to happen now? Well, the IPL is like a gold mine waiting to be exploited. Everyone will want a share of it. And then maybe, just maybe, our cricketers may start giving the ‘Team India’ matches a miss so that they can play in the IPL.

Of course, one more option exists, the international tournaments can be scheduled in such a way that they don’t interfere with the IPL matches (Heck, I hope that doesn’t happen!). But then, wouldn’t that become ‘excessive cricket’? How could our delicate, fragile cricketers cope with that? I wonder.

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What If India Doesn’t Need The Nuclear Deal?

First, let’s take a look at today’s report in The Indian Express,

Pressing India to speed up implementation of the nuclear agreement, three influential US Senators on Wednesday said the negotiations with IAEA and Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) should be wound up by May failing which New Delhi will not get a “similar” deal. Senators Joseph Biden, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here, said if the deal is not taken up the US Congress by June and the process completed during the tenure of President George W Bush, any new US administration will “renegotiate” the deal.

They talked about the possibility of Indo-US relations being impacted if the deal does not go through, saying there could be “misunderstanding” in India and questions as to whether the failure was deliberate by the US Congress.

There are many people who will say that the nuclear deal should go through and that the communists are unpatriotic idiots serving their Chinese masters (which they are!).

To be frank, in the beginning, even I supported the nuclear deal. But then, an article by Arun Shourie in The Indian Express really changed my opinion. He showed that every argument that the UPA government has put forward in favour of the N-deal is a fabrication, or at best, an exaggeration of facts.

Here is a small excerpt,

The fabrications in regard to uranium

The argument that we need nuclear power would not have been enough to justify the deal — for the response could have been, “All right, use domestically available uranium to generate it.” Hence, two further myths were fomented: we are woefully short of uranium; such uranium as we have is of poor quality.

The authoritative compilation on uranium supplies is what is known as the Red Book of the IAEA and OECD. The latest one — published in 2005/06 — records India’s uranium reserves as being 94,000 tonnes. Of these, 64,000 tonnes are what are termed as ‘RARs’, Reasonably Assured Reserves; and 30,000 tonnes are EAR-I, that is, ‘Estimated Additional Reserves’. Currently we are using 1,334 tonnes a year. By every stretch, these are enough to see us through to the time we will master fast breeder and thorium technologies. What is probably the best available study of the potential of these reserves, Atoms for War? (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006) has been done, in fact, by one of the architects of the deal, Ashley Tellis. In it, he shows that India has more than enough uranium — even if it were to aim in the coming decades at a nuclear arsenal of 2023 to 2228 weapons.

Now see how the twin myths are formented. The Planning Commission’s Integrated Energy Policy states: “India is poorly endowed with uranium. Available uranium supply can fuel only 10,000 MW of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors. Further, India is extracting uranium from extremely low grade ores (as low as 0.1 per cent uranium) compared to ores with up to 12-14 per cent uranium in certain resources abroad.” Notice the sleight of words: our average — 0.1 per cent — is compared to other unspecified countries’ highest, their “up to…”

The facts are more reassuring! The most important suppliers of uranium are Australia, Kazakhstan and Canada — half the world’s output comes from them. The most recent account of uranium reserves, put out as recently as November 2, 2007, again by the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that it is only in Canada that the ore — about a fifth of it — is above the 1 per cent grade. “In Australia, on the other hand, some 90 per cent of uranium has a grade less than 0.06 per cent. Much of Kazakhstan’s ore is less than 0.1 per cent.”

You can read the full articles here:

Part I: Necessity is the mother of fabrication too

Part II: The fabrications of government

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Now, An Ombudsman To Check Discrimination In Pvt Sector. WTF?

Well, that’s what CNN-IBN reports,

The government is taking the minority issue a step further and now wants the private sector to stop discrimination on the basis of caste or religion.

One of the recommendations of the Sachar Commission may soon become a reality.

The ombudsman will be empowered to check discrimination of any kind, in recruitments and promotions, in public and private sector alike, against not only Muslims but any social group.

Heh. Look who is talking? The very government that advocates reservations based on caste and religion. Isn’t that discrimination? This Mannu Singh government is constantly scaling new heights…of hypocrisy. Everything that this pseudo-secular government does is proving to be an obstacle in India’s attempts at becoming a developed nation.

The private sector doesn’t look at the religion or caste of a person. The only criterion is merit. And I am sure out genteel Prime Minister knows this, being the great economist that he is. But heck, what are we talking about? He isn’t the man in charge, is he? No, there’s a pin-headed Italian woman who is really in charge. I just don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this state of affairs. Sigh.

So what are you doing? Laughing or crying?