Of US and Controls

Sometimes I wonder if the US sub-prime mortgage industry was the only part of America's economy that was unregulated. I was talking to a friend today and suddenly it struck me that the US is ruled by cartels. Look at telecom - AT & T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile...you are stuck with either one of these. Locked phones, bound contracts, shoddy customer service(some of which is maybe outsourced to our country) etc etc.

Now look at Hollywood. Who rules? Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal, Paramount, Disney, DreamWorks(Maybe). The big six or seven. They are supreme. So much so that someone like Woody Allen,who now makes his movies only for European audiences, said - "In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million."

Some people would say the same about American automakers. They(Ford, GM, Chrysler) created and stopped innovating. And then the Japanese swooped in with their Toyota Production Systems and Kaizens and what not. But that is a story for another day!

Cricket in the USA

Yay! The IPL gets a mention in the New York Times.

While we are still on the NYT, this bit about the big four competing and overlapping markets is interesting.

Smooth talker, ain't he?

He might be corrupt, we don't know yet. But what we do know that our Minister of State of External Affairs is a smooth smooth smooooth talker. Sample this

Aren't Indians simply

awsome?

Courtesy : Rediff.com

Karan Johar

Once said,"2.6 Billion people know Tom Cruise. 3.2 Billion knew ShahRukh Khan".

Apparently the latter does not include a US Immigration Official. wink wink...

India's original angry young man

Gavaskar Vs Tendulkar?

You can keep arguing over this but I don't think you can underemphasize the importance and the sheer genius of this first little master's contribution to Indian cricket and Indian sport. The original fighter, the original 'Ganguly', the one who scored 13 centuries in 27 tests against the mighty West Indies, the one who took the battle to the enemy's post, the one who never ever gave up, one can go on and on.

To whatever he did and achieved, I can only say, Thank You Sir! Thank you very much indeed!

Let Sarabjit hang

Yep, that's what I believe in.

He was a spy. He was caught. And now they want to hang him. If we think he is innocent, we should well go the Israel way i.e. invade Pakistan, get Sarabjit, make history and alter some geography on the way. On the other hand, if we feel that we don't have the balls to do that, we could put this little charade on the fast track and hang this guy at least.

The man who never gives up

Arun Shourie once famously said in an interview to Swapan Dasgupta - I'm shameless. Nothing signifies that more than his piece here in the Indian Express. While the entire media has been singing praises of how Rahul Gandhi's dimples are the best thing to happen to India, Shourie Sir meticulously tears down the UPA's 100 day agenda. Worth a glance!

And since we are indulging in China bashing, here is DNA's Jagannathan with his brilliant take on the rogue state that is China.

China's biggest threat

is India.

Now that the knives are out in the open, can the UPA govt start sharpening theirs?

Also Read :

India Sleeps, China grows
A Beijing Editor takes his gloves off
Chinese in the Indian Ocean
Don't forget 1962 : Brahma Chellaney

A matter of choice

On the nomination of Meira Kumar for the post of the Speaker, Congress party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi makes the following statement.

Congress would be creating a historical milestone by opting for the first dalit woman speaker. In the past also, Congress chose the first woman PM, youngest PM, first woman President.

Great! History has been created again. By the Congress party's refusal to accept the fact that they were always a 'crowd around a family'. My only question to him is - Did you have any choice, at least in the first two cases?

Sick!!!

Its bad. But it ain't so bad!

And the mandate goes to The Congress Party esp Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi.

Looks bad? Isn't it? It took me exactly 48 hours to figure out that this 'has' happened and probably 'why' this has happened.

This is not a vote for the UPA. This is a vote for the Congress, overwhelmingly. All across the country urban or rural, there has been a wave towards the congress. And so strong has been this wave, riding on socialist and populist measures of the UPA regime, that it has been able to overcome the non-performance of the Manmohan Singh govt.

Rahul Gandhi's positioning has been very clear. We are pro-poor whereas the NDA is the party of stock brokers and the rich(Yep he actually said that) which is ironical. While the NREGA, reservations in higher education, Loan waiver took care of the rural voter(unemployed youth as well as farmers), the Jyotiradityas, Sachin Pilots, Milind Deoras and Sandeep Dikshits ensured that the urban voter connects with them. If you don't agree with me then kindly check out the margin of victories in Delhi and Mumbai of Congress candidates(a fact also mentioned by Swapan Dasgupta). So a combination of youth with a heavy dose of socialism did it for the Congress.

About the BJP, well what to say. Varun Gandhi, 'weak' PM, not supporting the nuclear deal and some other factors like MNS were the main reasons I feel. The congress had supported the BJP in passing many bills(including private sector insurance) during 98-2004. But the way the BJP including Advani behaved in the nuclear deal was disgusting. Dunno about Modi. Even if he had any effect, the congress wave was too strong for him to withstand. He could hardly manage to hold on to his own seats in Gujarat.

Will they learn their lessons? I don't think so. Last I heard, M M Joshi was ready to take over any responsibility given by the party.(sic)

And now for the best part! Third grade politicians with ten to thirty MPs wanting to be PM have been resoundingly KICKED. So no Maya, no Mulayam, no Amar Singh(Sunil Bharti Mittal must be relieved), no Karat, no Yechury, no Pawar. Which means no statues, no ban on english, no moneymaking, no arm twisting, no dhamki-dena. For all these factors itself, this election has been worth it.

Lessons to learn from this election

1. Youth is the key
2. Negativity will not help
3. Socialism is back
4. Charisma is essential

Some other great columns on this verdict

Vir Sanghvi in HT
Tavleen Singh in Indian Express
Shekhar Gupta in Indian Express
S S Aiyar in TOI

The NDA's masterstroke

Well great minds do think alike! The other great mind here is the inimitable Swapan Dasgupta, who writes

"The Narendra Modi-Nitish Kumar photo-op in particular was good piece of showmanship. NDTV was particularly agitated and made it appear that Nitish's main crime was to have reneged on an assurance to Barkha Dutt. However, I don't think that Nitish was too happy over being ambushed by Modi--such public displays are not his style."

Since this unspeakable act of communalism, doublespeak and treachery(pun intended) has happpened, NDTV is at it. As if Nitish and Barkha are committed to each other and having made a statement on a horribly biased news channel is treated as signed confession in the supreme court of India. Not that I believe Nitish will NOT move to the UPA if the numbers are with them, I am just happy at the plain simple fact that NDTV is bloody hurt.

Whoever conceptualised this(Was it Jaitley?) deserves a pat on the back!

On a totally unrelated note, is it just me or are Priyanka Gandhi's clothes really getting tighter and tighter as the elections are nearing the end phase?

We must hit back

Says Vir Sanghvi. I have to say, Vir Sanghvi never fails to surprise me. Apart from Shekhar Gupta of the Indian Express, he is becoming one of the saner voices of the TOTALLY BIASED Indian media.

Pleasantly surprised!!!

I knew nothing.....

I knew nothing about the Babri demolition - Says Kalyan Singh

Close on the heels of Kalyan Singh's confessions on the Babri demolition, some other notable public figures are readying their confessions. A sneak peek :-

I knew nothing about cricket - John Buchanan and/or Shilpa Shetty

I knew nothing about 'getting elected from the Lok Sabha' - Manmohan Singh

I knew nothing about socialism(read NREGS) - Sonia Gandhi

I knew nothing about hair oil, only gel - Shivraj Patil

I knew nothing about the flight to Kandahar and Jaswant in that flight - L K Advani

I knew nothing about Hindi - Pranab Mukherjee

I knew nothing about unbiased reporting - Barkha Dutt/Rajdeep Sardesai

I knew nothing about whose son I am - Sanjay Dutt

Rajnath Jee listens

finally. Remember this guy from good, old doordarshan?

Get your own Sehwag

Says Harsha Bhogle, in his usual style.

Where have all the speakers gone?

It's funny right! For the last five years we have had a spineless PM and a spineless govt.

• A PM who needs 'permission' even to go to the loo. A PM who slept while 'Indians' were getting killed in blasts and 'could not sleep' when Dr Haneef was in an australian jail.
• A home minister who spent more time putting gel in his hair than running the ministry.
• An external affairs minster who was incomprehensible and un-understandable, in either English or Hindi.
• And lastly, a heir-apparent, indulging in poverty tourism and dalit-house-hunting, which seems to me racism of the worst kind and also tells me he was born even further away from his mother's birthplace Italy.
  

In view of the above, I thought the BJP had it on a platter. But they are fumbling. There was a time they had the best speakers(Sushma, Mahajan, Jaitley and the best of all Vajpayee). And look at them now. Last saturday I was watching 'The Big Fight' and the topic was Hate Politics. Balbir Punj of the BJP, whilst facing NDTV Aunty Brinda Karat and Mani Shankar Aiyar, was not only fumbling, mumbling and doing a Sonia i.e. reading out from his notes in a live debate, his debating skills left much to desire. The media as such does not give them any leverage, we know that. Add to this, some stupid statements here and there. And some stupid actions, too.

If the BJP wants to, or should I say, needs to improve its image in the minds of first time voters, they 'have to' get some new anchors fast which means, simply, add some new products to its portfolio. They might be a little foolish like Manish Tewari of the Italian National Congress but they have to be fluent, presentable and debatable.

Rajnath Jee, are you listening?

P.S. - Where the hell is Arun Jaitley? I know he is strategizing, but we need to see him on NDTV, Times NOW and CNN IBN day after day everyday taking on the likes of Sibal and Brinda.

Bush floors India

How can any Indian not like this guy?

Whom do you believe?

India's most secular 24 hour English News Channel or India's number 1 website.

Kashmir Vs Democracy

I got to know this from my brother. India's best blogger is asking - "Is Kashmir more important than democracy?" and also providing links to Swaminathan Aiyar's latest as well as Vir Sanghvi's latest.

Well, I seem to agree with all three of them. We should 'gift' away Kashmir to democracy. Similarly, we should conduct plebiscites in parts of western UP, parts of Assam, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Ahmedabad etc etc. We should also ask Shabana Azmi to take part.

And after all this is done, we can kiss India goodbye.

P.S. - Fortunately for us fundamentalists and nationalist elements, there are individuals who have other ideas.