Independent India - Musings on the IDay 63

Every August, it will be Independence Day just like it was since the day it all began way back in 47 which many of us would've never seen.... The entire nation will wear a festive look. The tri-colour will flutter on the buildings and roads. The media will recapitulate the events of the freedom struggle. Political leaders will display their oratorical prowess from public platforms listing out their achievements and calling upon the masses to be vigilant in guarding the country's sovereignty against external aggression. As usual, they will dish out more promises to work for the uplift of the downtrodden and poor and ensuring equal rights and opportunities to one and all as enshrined in the Constitution.

As we all would know, ours is a predominantly agricultural country. You like him or not, Mahatma Gandhi had said, "the heart of India lies in its villages". The majority of our population lives in villages. Even after 62 years of Independence, most of them live below the poverty line and are socially oppressed. Though we have made impressive and spectacular strides in various fields like science and technology, education and industries, Its imperarative that the benefits have not reached the common man (Aam Aadmi) . Basic needs such as drinking water, electricity and shelter are still a distant dream for many. We should look deeper inside within so as to develop our outlook. There are lots more to be done at the grassroot level. Developing the villages (gaav's) should be our topmost priority for us to move forward to reach the status of the superpower. Rather we are making deals and working with cities just to make them more glamorous and attractive towards the FDI's and VC's. Unless we develop our basic infra nothing gonna change even if things seems so won't last for years and aren't worth to take us to the level we all aspire of.

Our economic order has been liberalised and has drifted away from nationalisation to globalisation even still we stayed a bit conservative which almost saw us through these recession thing thatz rocking the world these days. Our foreign policies have always stayed introversive. But still oflate we've managed to pull of deals with other G8's to collaborate on all front to advance in Science, Technology, Industries, Textile, Engineering, Sports and even Literary & Arts. We have leaders in every front but still we lack the professional approach and the lack of proper stystem to groom the future aspirants still haunts and its not just the UID's thatz gonna help us in our way forward we need a inspiring vision with palpable action.

Our political system has become corrupt to a degree none of us can imagine. Our Politicians are totally engrossed in driving wedges between communities, religion, castes and what not to gain political mileage and strengthen their vote banks. Even the face of terror proved futile in bringing us together. Parliaments are full of dogfights without consensus on any issues. We are left fighting selfishly on every issues of national importance.

I wish every Independence Day there should be a time for political introspection by India’s political leaders and its polity as to whether they have been able to deliver on the political promises made by them to the people of India. It is also the time for personal introspection by India’s political leaders in that whether they themselves personally have contributed to the strengthening of the ‘moral fabric’ of India in terms of setting exemplary standards of political probity, honesty and integrity and also ensuring that their political flock does likewise.

Independence Day had come and went like every year but has left in its wake the troubling thought as to whether India really has ‘dignified political leaders’ or they all have juggled the spelling of ‘leaders’ and ended up as ‘political dealers’ devoid of political morality and conscience. Especially the country's current state of affairs seriously demands a reality check on everyone of us and the country as a whole. It is true that we have lots of things to boast off over the last year but its equally eventful in terms of adversities and mishaps. I would not like to dwell too much on any of the issues as it would only evoke grave criticism.

I've not been wonderstruck at the electrifying spectacle of the English parting us at the stroke of the midnight when Nehru delivered his landmark speech 'Tryst with destiny. Iam still wondering as to why India’s politicians who succeed them and those who head them can no longer recreate those electrifying moments on every passing Independence Day. The answer is obvious as there are no political leaders left of the genre of India’s freedom movement. India today has been left with ‘political pygmies’ whose sole political activity is focused not on nation-building but on devising political tricks to capture power and survive in power at any cost.

How does one term the sordid spectacle that India’s polity put on display (on the event of last elections) for the citizens who voted them to power hoping that somehow even if they were ‘not fit to lead’ they would ‘at least provide honest governance’? Will their hopes be realised or will their needs be ever fulfilled. Defenitely not as it seems so in the due course. But will this pain ever abate is left to be seen.

The Worst of all was as to how the Indian Muslim communal card was being played by the so called secular parties. In the Parliament debate where India’s national issues should have been in the forefront and especially those really connected with the trust vote in terms of honest governance no effort was spared to dramatize the Congress Party’s so called secular credentials by lionizing the speeches of Indian Muslim Members of Parliament singing praises of the Congress

Few obvious questions arise from this sordid display of low political morality. The first is whether the Congress President and the Congress Prime Minister can absolve themselves from all that happened inside and outside the Parliament last year in terms of political wheeling and dealing. Secondly, both of them should be asking themselves whether all their wheeling and dealing was politically worth it keeping in mind that they are indeed debasing further the state of political affairs in the country which is already facing a severe lack of moral credentials upon which they are built upon. They somehow had lost their ultimate goal and are fighting only for their survival and in-turn their loyals to stay in power.

The answer however to many of such questions is a resounding ‘no’. If it is their contention that by winning a trust vote or just by signing a deal with US or showing their great indifference to any of the burning issues and still boasting off their resounding win by politically and morally questionable methods has raised India’s stock in the international arena then they are deluding themselves. They have only belittled themselves and in-turn had left us in a hapless state.

Finally, the people of India themselves are to blame for facilitating the rise of a motley group of unprincipled political midgets to power by an apathetic indifference to India’s political affairs and India’s political governance. This particularly applies to India’s rising middle class like me.There had been several calls over these years that stressed on the imperatives of India’s middle class politically empowering themselves to break the stranglehold of India’s captive vote-banks on India’s electoral arithmetic

Having said all these i believe the country is at the crossroads. Its for them to take a call (timely call) on framing the path ahead and rise to the call of duty beyond all issues and adversities. I wish the current leaders would focus on taking the country in the right direction and bring about development, prosperity and peace. May thins IDay be just another beginning of a new India... Truly Independent India

A betrayal of India’s constitutional vision

A betrayal of India’s constitutional vision - V.R.Krishna Iyer

Sovereign India is justly sceptical about the Manmohan Singh government’s specious nuclear strategy.

There are shining victories to be won in the cause of peace and social justice. We shall reach the new freedom by not submitting to economic slavery… forward with the people.

— From an editorial in Daily Mirror in 1945, as reproduced in Hidden Agendas, by John Pilger; Vintage, Great Britain, 1998.

The unity and integrity of India are tending to dwindle amid the divisive polemics over the ongoing dubious nuclear politics. But the real issue is not the import of enriched uranium, nuclear plant equipment or technology from the U.S.: it goes deeper. The issue involves U.S. suzerainty over India’s national economy and foreign policy, although the countrywide debate is currently centred on the nuclear deal. American nuclear big business is keen to make India its meg a-market, using for the purpose a willing and weak Prime Minister.

The grave implications of this business are profound, as is obvious from Dr. Manmohan Singh’s defiant do-or-die determination demanding a confidence vote in the Lok Sabha. He is staking his government’s very survival on the energy deal. Whoever wins the vote in the House, the nation has lost its solidarity, integrity and fraternity. George Bush’s stubborn hegemonistic strategy promoting U.S big business investment has become India’s national policy, facilitated by the Sonia-Manmohan commitment. This is virtually a reversal of the Nehru-Indira socialistic non-alignment stance and the principles of Panch Sheel. This basic battle is at the raging core of the controversy. The hideous hidden agenda could spell the de facto defeat of the Indian people’s historic tryst with destiny, the betrayal of India’s constitutional vision and mission.

We should not miss the real nature of the ideological war involved in this naively simplistic treaty dispute. Let us not be beguiled by the nuclear alibi. Are we a sovereign nation, or a mere satellite? Who decides our import-investment policies, the direction of swadeshi agriculture and native industrial development? Are we a ‘banana republic’ of sorts? The Sonia-Manmohanomic party is neither Indian nor national: the Congress has formally become the brand name of a political business corporation. We have politicking operators with no democratic swaraj ideology or crimson nationalism. Communal concatenation and power-crazy cliques are the shopping complexes in the Indian power bazaar. Mr. Bush browbeats or buys these political engineers as his proxies. The Constitution is now rendered irrelevant by logomachy.

Parties barter seats and votes and try to make Parliament an enterprise with commercial stakes. The media report of seats and deals for high prices, and micro-parties and independents as being available commodities. The Supreme Court’s stultifying jurisprudence on parliamentary bribery being immune to judicial discovery has made ‘horse trading’ a less risky operation than democratic decency would have tolerated. Appalling judicialese sometimes incinerates finer values, lets opportune alliances going and allows corruption inside the hallowed House.

My entreaty is to preserve undiminished the dynamics, dimensions and dialectical realities of our democracy without the authoritarian patronage and commanding directives of a big power beyond the Atlantic. Do not ‘nuclearise’ our freedom. We need no U.S. nuclear imports to attain energy swaraj. We have uranium of our own yet to be mined. We have large thorium resources. We have enough alternative resources and technology. But where is the will to tell Mr. Bush that we do not need him? We shall not surrender our freedom in disgrace. Parliamentary votes are not private commodities. Bondage to Mr. Bush and U.S. big business is nothing but colonialism.

At the recent meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Manmohan Singh, where the staggering mutual admiration was evident, it was stated in a spirit of (tragic) triumph that in the field of space, defence, educational exchanges and other strategic areas Indo-American “cooperation” has attained a new high status — which is but a euphemism for acquiescence by India in American domination.

The common Indian masses are totally innocent of this vicarious but unveracious appreciation by some people of the hated Mr. Bush. Mr. Manmohan Singh never consulted Indians by means of a referendum or a House debate, and the fake tribute paid to the Prime Minister by a lame-duck President is of little consequence.

To be fair to Dr. Manmohan Singh, I hold him as being personally simple, clean, gentle, non-communal and capable. What scandalises me as a puzzle, a riddle and pro-Yankee obscurantism, is his forsaking of the Indian have-nots. He is gravely neglecting his socialist, constitutional oath-bound commitment to liberate the poor and implement poverty economics and going for globalisation and privatisation, which are liberal with imports and investments. This drive is also marked by a Bush-friendly foreign policy and defence strategy and an extravagant addiction to American nuclear import dependence.

Do we require nuclear generation of energy? No. It involves the potential for dangerous radiation, high-cost generation, and the use of delicate technology that could be disastrous. After all, it feeds nuclear bombs in a world that faces instant annihilation with nuclear terrorism under big-power arsenals. Terrorists are everywhere and nuclear pilferage is a grave possibility.

Crime against humanity
The diabolic, dreadful immortality of nuclear waste that can cause lethal radiation after two or three decades of use of each nuclear power plant represents the gravest crime against humanity. The proposed deal violates the principles of nuclear non-proliferation. Let us be honest. Anyone who is knowledgeable in nuclear affairs will agree with the irony of the treaty. “It is almost as if the Titanic was going down, and the passengers were watching TV. India’s atomic energy programme has been subjected to a stunning managerial disaster over the past two decades, the results of which are visible now. We have known through the 1990s that India has all the uranium needed to run its nuclear power plants, currently running at half their capacity, wasting Rs. 16,000 crore of taxpayers’ money.” (Neelesh Misra, Hindustan Times, June 30, 2008)

Three great nuclear scientists who have been in high office without blame, Dr. P.K. Iyengar, Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan and Dr. A.N. Prasad, have fiercely opposed U.S. imports for reasons they have spelt out in a signed statement. Sarkari scientists, looking out for personal prospects, will obviously sign away contrary assertions.

The cult of the atom, those who know swear, is the enemy of ecological safety and the good earth where humanity still survives in billions. The high priests of the nuclear religion are specialists in the art of misleading public opinion. Neither Russia nor the U.S. will dare have a nuclear power plant after their bitter experience. Chernobyl (USSR) and Three Mile Island (U.S.) remain sombre warnings to humanity. Most Western nations, save France and Japan, now avoid new nuclear power plants.

But the nuclear barons have the power of unveracious propaganda. The political economy of nuclear electricity is forbidding. A widening agenda of dissent and oppositional strategies are mounting against atomic fission. Leading research-oriented jurists like Ralph Nader regard the menace of the atom as a culture of global destruction. Then why go in for this terrible worldwide thanatos?

Our country has abundant solar energy and the technology is accessible. It is culpable default for the authorities in the States and at the Centre not to explore, exploit and execute projects that run on solar power — which is far less costly and far safer than the nuclear graveyard alternative. We have potential hydel power from rivers that range from the Ganga to the Krishna, and tidal power from the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. We have prodigious wind energy potential. We have thermal power and coal-generated energy. Astonishing is the discovery that we have unused uranium in mega-quantity but not yet mined.

Amid this opulence of energy resources, why beg for or borrow American stuff that has strings attached and involves unfamiliar technology? History will one day record the traitor-tainted guilt of those in state power who, drugged by dollar power, run after Mr. Bush and big business. Their offer is aggressively expensive. Their supplies constitute a big-power gamble. The technology they offer is unfamiliar.

Why is the U.S. itself not building nuclear plants? Every patriot in Parliament must examine the relative implications of swaraj and exotic nuclear raj from the angle of Indian autonomy and alternative energy sources. Why are we boneless satellites? Why is there such indecent haste? What is behind this undignified speedy mendicancy and this mad seppuku instinct? The nuclear deal that Dr. Manmohan Singh is in a hurry to sign is a fatal testimony of subordination, what with the Hyde Act and other prints brought out as proof by Ashok Partharasathi (The Hindu, July 15, 2008).

Parliament has supreme power. Here is my appeal to India’s parliamentarians. Beware. The secret deal constitutes a game against India’s autonomy. It involves a dubious alibi and a hidden agenda. To seek to hitch Bharat’s wagon to the U.S. star at this phase of eclipse for Mr. Bush is but seppuku. The Prime Minister should tell the House the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Otherwise, any confidence vote that he may win will lose its value.
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DREAM !!!!