Jun 152011
 

We live in an India that continues to follow Nehru’s folicies1. His folicies might have resulted in some good but has resulted in Brobdingnagian blunders, which has led to the mess we’re mired in. As a result, at the end of 60-plus years, we have more things to hate than things to love about the Nightmarish Nehruvian India.

I hope to make this a regular feature published around this time every month but let’s see how it goes. It doesn’t hurt to begin though. You’re free to add your own in the comments.

1. Folicies (noun): Plural of Folicy, a portmanteau of Foolish and Policy.

1. The Government: The Unmitigated Evil. The Hydra-headed Monster. The Malicious Intruder. The Elected Mafia. You still want reasons why you should hate this government?

2. The Opposition: The Clueless Cowards. The Arch-Weaklings. When they’re not opposing themselves and washing their dirty linen in public, they play the game by the rules set by the ruling party. They race past everybody and fall asleep just when they’re two inches away from the finishing line.

3. New media: The “alternative” online pontificators who after “breaking” one sensational story, revel in it and use it as a launch pad to resort to the same mind-numbing drivel that’s all-pervasive in the newspapers and TV news channels. Exhibit 1: the piece that caused a thousand skeletons to tumble from the filthy cupboards of people in high places. And then the pontification began. Exhibits 1, 2, 3, 4…  See how it works? The alternative online pontificators sooner or later get the same scum from the old media. Respectability, credibility, readership and all that. For details, see #4 and #5 below.

4. Old media: Where does one even begin? This is one gigantic, self-perpetuating banyan tree that allows nothing to grow under its rotten branches. Over the years, it’s made itself indistinguishable from a certain political party and is populated by non-professional politicians masquerading as journalists and news anchors. It is the Fourth Estate of the selfsame political party where Estate=wealth, inheritance. As one perceptive blogger cum tweeter observes, this media is a crime scene; who knows how many crimes have been committed under the shadow of this diabolic banyan tree? 

5. Academics/Intellectuals: These are various varieties of garden manure, which sustains the banyan tree mentioned in #4. It comprises a poisonous mix of Original Sinners (defined here) and their various illegitimate offspring and pupils who are trained to perpetuate the sin. An Ashis Nandy here. An Amartya Sen there. A Genocide Suzie again. A Kancha Ilaiah yet again. A Khushwant Singh who suddenly crawls out of the woodwork. A Gita Ramaswamy who gatecrashes. The English-speaking-and-reading India is thus reassured time and again that these Doctors of the Health of Public Discourse are always hard at work. Everybody is happy.

6. Award-winners: This class one used to be pretty respectable to some extent until at least the ‘80s. Ever since, it’s pretty much gone to dogs. Each year, when the Padma and assorted sarkari list of awardees are announced, a chill runs down our spine because one knows what to expect. And it only gets worse with every passing year. A new numbskull with no distinction either personally or in terms of public service or excellence emerges from the gutter holding the plaque or posing with the shawl or similar adornment. Here’s a partial list of Padma Bhushan awardees chosen at random: Girish Karnad (1992), Mrinal Sen (1981), Aroon Purie (2001, for of all things, Literature & Education.), Irfan Habib (2005), Shekhar Gupta (2009), Ramachandra Guha (2009), Mallika Sarabhai (2010), Barkha Dutt (2008, Padma Shri)… And so the next time you hear that someone has won one of these sarkari awards,  you know you need to update your must-hate list.

7. Revolutions: Show me exactly one Revolution that has succeeded, where success is measured as a long-lasting change for the better. And so if you think the stuff that happened in Tunisia and Egypt will bring about this kind of change, please don’t wake up from your intellectual slumber. But before that, hate revolutions with everything you have. Because sooner or later some nutcase in India will try and convince you that Revolution is the solution for all problems facing India. The Tuxedo Marxists in universities and media and their bloody brothers in the jungles—the Maoists—precisely intend to do this. And they won’t give up in a hurry. Think Gandhians with Guns in the same breath as Genocide Suzie. There! You can feel the hatred building up already.

8. Bollywood: Money laundering and Prostitution on the grandest possible scale, run like a well-oiled corporate machine. Despite flop after flop one wonders how insane amounts of money keeps pouring in. Looks, talent, money,  stories, scripts, equipment, distribution, people, everything ultimately ends up serving the mafia. Just how deep the mafia has penetrated it can be gauged by exactly one question: when was the last time you ever heard a Bollywood star going to the cops complaining about threats to his/her life from the mafia? Oh and what about the widespread use of illegal substances?

9. Indians writing in English: The undeservedly pampered, utterly arrogant, unashamedly talentless and banally ignorant breed of “writers” who’ve emerged as a sort of phenomenon in recent times. I put “writers” in quotes because writing is not defined merely as someone adept at using language. If that’s the case, every blogger writing about how “I woke up and spent almost an hour trying to decide what to wear to work today” qualifies as a writer. Come to think of it: these guys are only slightly better than such bloggers but the damage they’ve inflicted is immense. Irrefutable Proof: Aravind Adiga, the latest prize-winning ignoramus extraordinaire. Majority of these Indians writing in English can’t speak—let alone read or write—a sentence of even their mother tongue without introducing an English word in it but pontificate self-righteously with an all-knowing attitude about weighty matters like “the forces that are tearing India apart,” “the urban/rural Indian experience,” “my growing up in small town story,” “the mental geography of an urban Indian,” “what it is like to be a woman in India,” and so on and on and on. What you have here is a bunch of English-educated ignoramuses with some felicity for wielding the English language fed on a heady diet of mass media and equipped with talent for trite-writing. If you’re feeling like barfing but can’t get it out, open one of these books, pick a random page and start reading. If you’re fine otherwise, hate them.

10. The Middle Class: The One with a knack for getting repeatedly screwed and deluding itself that getting screwed is actually a good thing. Nehru & co screwed it first with his big dams and PSUs. Alongside, the Communists screwed it by feeding toxic literature: look at the mental and “cultural” state of at least two generations of people from Bengal. Mrs. Gandhi then screwed it on a scale and tyranny unmatched till date. Nothing can explain how she stomped back to power after being stomped out of it so spectacularly. And so on till today when the middle class’ idea of: (a) clean governance=kissing candles (b) foreign relations=kissing candles at the Wagah border and/or if they can’t take time off from work, applauding the Professional Candle-Kissers (c) debate=agreeing with everything that demented news anchors spout on prime time (d) social change=donating to some shady NGO that invests money in printing classy brochures (e) democracy=abstaining from voting.

11. TV debates: The staple ingredient in the diet of #10 and hence merits separate mention. TV debates are today’s Importance of Being Earnest enacted in real life. The pusillanimous middle class wants to vent its ire at the Evil Politicians, the corrupt babus, the crooked constable, petrol price hike, escalating EMIs, and their neighbour’s sneaky son and think that a hysterical Bark-ha Dutt or a frothing Arnab Goswami or a “Fake the Nation” Sagarika Ghose somehow provide them the platforms to do so. And so a Ms. Disgraced Dutt is back in business almost undiminished in respect or stardom. And the dictum self-perpetuates: all TV debates are rigged equally: some are rigged more equally. They’re also amorphous and change shape and size according to the “gravity” of the “issue” on hand. Some of these “debates” turn into full-fledged courtroom-like sessions. The idea is pronounce as guilty a particular party, which has the misfortune of sporting a colour that’s perpetually out of fashion. Their Media Honours are as carefully selected as the "audience,” which is invited to the studio. The minimum qualification for Media Honours=Any stream of Secularism and that for the audience: Dumbed-downness.

12. Civil Society: A new beast unheard of at least even two years prior to 2011. A little-known Gandhian (whatever that means) bursts on the scene and threatens the Might of the Government and all hell breaks loose. All kinds of things are bandied about till nobody understands what’s what anymore. And from this confusion is born a beast called Civil Society. We soon learn that it’s nothing but Progressives 2.0. All manner of self-seekers and careerists and out-of-work hangers on form a clique demanding extra-Constitutional privileges for themselves. Some of these worthies also have links to that vile body of nation-wreckers called the NAC. Note that the #1 similarity between our erstwhile Progressives and Civil Society is the fact that these are labels they’ve assigned to themselves. So does that mean that the rest of India is uncivil? Hate them already!

13. Literary and art critics: Also known as the culture vultures with nary a shred of scholarship or scruples. Their criticism is two-pronged: praise for one of their own and abuse of anybody who doesn’t agree with them. For nearly fifty years, they’ve scavenged on pretty much everything that Indian culture and heritage has to offer and yet their hunger remains unabated. One of their Presiding Deities died a few days ago. My obituary to this Devil explains in detail how these vultures work. But hate them anyway.

14. Tihar Jail: Those that rightfully belong in Parliament are now flooding the Tihar jail and have consequently made the place uninhabitable for decent criminals. It’s like displacing an animal from its natural habitat or something. There used to be a time when it was the other way round: hardworking criminals from Tihar jail got out—either after serving their sentence or on hiatus—and contested polls and got into Parliament. Now it’s the other way round. Or should we say they merely returned home? Either way, hate it.

15. Yourself: And if you thought that #1 through #14 is absolutely correct or absolutely wrong or unfair or defamatory or thought that it was just plain funny, well, you deserve the hatred directed at you. Look any which way, you’re screwed because you brought it upon yourself. Hate yourself. Now!

  92 Responses to “Things You Must Hate About Nehruvian India: Circa June 2011 (A Beginning)”

  1. @rationalist

    Human based solutions include “stop giving Rs100 to traffic policeman” or de-localizing the problem of corruption by saying “everyone is corrupt and hence we must cure ourselves before we say anything to others “. While system based thinking would involve asking questions like “Does giving a traffic policeman bribe of Rs100 give someone else the license to do corruption of Rs. 3000 crores” or that corruption can be solved only in top-down manner.

    both look same to me can u elaborate

  2. Does this go under number 4 Old Media or number 5 Academics/Intellectuals

    http://tundratabloids.com/2011/06/breaking-news-geert-wilders-acquitted-on-all-counts.html

    In India he would have got the death penalty.

    “It’s not only an acquittal for me, but a victory for freedom of expression in the Netherlands. Fortunately you’re allowed to discuss Islam in public debate and you’re not muzzled in public debate. An enormous burden has fallen from my shoulders.”

  3. In India it is diffcult to discuss Islam.

    Read this online book to understand why.

    The Calcutta Quran Petition

    http://voi.org/books/tcqp/

    That is why in relation to 5 there should be no book banning.

    Modi is wrong to ban the Gandhi book

  4. Jooske thanks for the news. Great news indeed.

  5. @rationalist
    If you want to learn how herd mentality works and laps up propaganda read Gustave Le Bon on Crowds. You do not have to like Le Bon as an individual, he has his prejudices, lots of unsavory characters used his ideas for political propaganda…however whatever the author may have been as an individual with unpleasant qualities, his insight into herd mentality is worth a read and is insightful….

  6. Here is a gem from Le Bon on the leaders of crowds.
    http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=BonCrow.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=7&division=div2
    The “closing of the Indian mind” occurs when people read only works deemed popular, a critical mind read everything and comes to a critical assessment of what is being said, ie. its deficiencies and merits, different from following and reading what is merely popular in the estimation of others…

  7. On the origins of certain religions:
    Contagion is so powerful that it forces upon individuals not only certain opinions, but certain modes of feeling as well. Contagion is the cause of the contempt in which, at a given period, certain works are held — the example of “Tannhaüser” may be cited — which, a few years later, for the same

    ——————————————————————————–

    -131-

    reason are admired by those who were foremost in criticising them.

    The opinions and beliefs of crowds are specially propagated by contagion, but never by reasoning. The conceptions at present rife among the working classes have been acquired at the public-house as the result of affirmation, repetition, and contagion, and indeed the mode of creation of the beliefs of crowds of every age has scarcely been different. Renan justly institutes a comparison between the first founders of Christianity and “the socialist working men spreading their ideas from public-house to public-house”; while Voltaire had already observed in connection with the Christian religion that “for more than a hundred years it was only embraced by the vilest riff-raff.”

    It will be noted that in cases analogous to those I have just cited, contagion, after having been at work among the popular classes, has spread to the higher classes of society. This is what we see happening at the present day with regard to the socialist doctrines which are beginning to be held by those who will yet be their first victims. Contagion is so powerful a force that even the sentiment of personal interest disappears under its action.

    This is the explanation of the fact that every opinion adopted by the populace always ends in implanting itself with great vigour in the highest

    ——————————————————————————–

    -132-

    social strata, however obvious be the absurdity of the triumphant opinion. This reaction of the lower upon the higher social classes is the more curious, owing to the circumstance that the beliefs of the crowd always have their origin to a greater or less extent in some higher idea, which has often remained without influence in the sphere in which it was evolved. Leaders and agitators, subjugated by this higher idea, take hold of it, distort it and create a sect which distorts it afresh, and then propagates it amongst the masses, who carry the process of deformation still further. Become a popular truth the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on the upper classes of a nation. In the long run it is intelligence that shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection ends by triumphing.

  8. Now the above from Bon is interesting. This is not to say everything he says is true, but he is intelligent and intelligent people whatever their faults make you think because they are original, unlike today when most writing is politically oriented and made to prescribe to an acceptable viewpoint…that is the good thing reading writings when people did not have to be politically correct: you see their intelligent points and errors clearly, whereas when writing is politically motivated it will not teach you much, as it has nothing original about it….

  9. Very interesting…

  10. Nehru’s folicies

    Nehru’s India

    Was Nehru a Dictator? — Part 2

    http://www.deeshaa.org/2008/02/08/was-nehru-a-dictator-part-2/

  11. Aaj ka Mahabharat – Good one.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3oAnzV-z7k

  12. More Nehru’s folicies

    This one goes under 5. Education is the solution

    “It is a fact that most ‘glorified’ scholars in social sciences have strong anti-Hindu and anti-India biases. India’s Nehruvian, pan-Islamic revivalists, Leftists and subaltern scholar-propagandists have long been party to this unholy alliance, and many of them are funded through the public exchequer.”

    http://www.dailypioneer.com/348433/Imaginary-fault-lines.html

  13. Please write about ‘Religion of Peace’ & ‘Religion of Love’

  14. JUDICIARY

    may be the above is a topic for another day.

    some years ago there was a murder in bangalore involving SHUBHA N GIRISH
    with a third party involved arun or someone.

    now we have a recent judgement in case of NEERAJ GROVER murder
    same story as above with names changed
    SHUBHA is MARIA MONICA SUSAIRAJ and ARUN is EMILE JEROME MATHEW.

    the sentence handed out is at VARIANCE from the bangalore crime.

    can law be interpreted so differently …we live in strange times.

    hence i rest my case JUDICIARY IS THE TOPIC.

  15. And here’s a concise & interesting take on many other aspects we hate about the country
    http://www.wahsarkar.com/?p=524

  16. @Seema Singh.

    FYI, we don’t hate aspects about Our Country.

    Sandeep’s hate is for nehruvian india, that is different from bharat.
    Is your aim to create worthlessness in minds of indians, which can then be used as fertile ground for planting foreign ideas ?

  17. @Seema Singh, why does your website have no mention of who the writers are? You need to add more details regarding the anonymous writers and their agenda.

  18. @X – What foreign ideas? Apologies for assuming that people may ”hate” corruption.

  19. Wahsarkar seems to be another front of these jholawalas. Abusing Ramdev while hiding behind clout of apolitical anonymity

  20. Amit and Anand

    Have you read the news of Supreme court saying salwa judum is illegal? What will you guys do now to discredit a people’s movement?

  21. Loneranger
    Posted July 6, 2011 at 1:07 PM | Permalink

    “Amit and Anand

    Have you read the news of Supreme court saying salwa judum is illegal? What will you guys do now to discredit a people’s movement?”
    _

    Miyan Loneranger, you’re back. This is yet another proof of how you make assumptions about others and in the process, make an ass of yourself. I don’t remember ever having a discussion with you regarding salwa judum and Maoists.

  22. LR, not sure your point is understood. Just because Salwa Judum is legal, does not make naxalism legal!! Are you suggesting that the SC say it is fine to be a naxalite and kill innocent women and children?

  23. Sorry meant illegal

  24. BTW Miyan Loneranger, for what it’s worth, here’s an unsolicited advice – go easy on using words like “you guys” and “your party” – it just showcases your stupid assumptions and your propensity to group-think rather than adding anything meaningful to the discussion.

  25. the trinities being in a state of stupor (Legislative,Executive,Judi…).
    Judgements have lost meanings.
    I assume this verdict is for something happend in 1757.

  26. In the real world people have been beaten up,chopped there hands,
    looted there temples,money given to convert ,painted different and that list is endless.
    When the above happened/happening arent they accepting?

    this is virtual world anything goes

  27. Mian LoneRanger, despair not. Soon you can be on your way to yet another Govt. funded Haj excursion… they just found more money for you people in a hindu temple in Kerala!

  28. @Venkatesh, X, and other cowardly shitheads- contact me. I will come and see you personally at my own expense.
    Show your courage- if you have any.

  29. Sorry, it seems the link to my web is not working. Just email me here polypubs@gmail.com. I will fit you in for a ‘home visit’- cowardly rabble- you disgrace Hinduism.

  30. Loneranger seems ‘almost’ sane, in comparison to the windbag.

  31. Amit – Look who is talking. What about your “stupid assumptions” that I am a muslim , calling me a leftist when I had clearly said I prefer the middle path. What about some of your friends in this site addressing me as comrade when I had time and again denounced the dogma associated with marxism?

    Venkatesh – I am not suggesting anything like that. I am simply asking the commentators here who feel maoists are terrorists who need to be wiped out. Kindly read my earlier posts where I have categorically said violence of any kind by any one is wrong.

  32. Lonerangers, Maoists are terrorists. They are killing people everyday and many widows created because of them who are against maoists. See in C’ghad in bastar area patriotic organisation like VHP are doing good work. there was election in bastar some time back and again bjp got elected. maoists not even running for election because everybody knows they are for killing and church is using them.

  33. Windwheel, you sound almost funny and what exactly are you trying to say?

  34. Loneranger wrote:

    “Amit – Look who is talking. What about your “stupid assumptions” that I am a muslim , calling me a leftist when I had clearly said I prefer the middle path.

    Miyan Loneranger, I had written that your defense of the great Religion of Peace is more passionate than even that of a Muslim, or words to that effect. Only someone lacking the most basic ability to comprehend & critically analyze words would reach the conclusion that you reached. But based on your own words, and going by your stance and your misplaced and perverted sympathy for Muslims while showing zero sympathy for the victims of Islam, if someone reaches the conclusion that you are indeed a Momin, that wouldn’t be illogical.

    ” What about some of your friends in this site addressing me as comrade when I had time and again denounced the dogma associated with marxism? “

    What about it? How is it my concern that other commenters (with whom I have no contact) address you as a comrade or whatever else they feel like? It’s a free world and contrary to your beliefs, neither do other commenters consult with me before writing comments, and nor is there any politburo which decides after umpteen meetings as to who will write what comments when responding to you. Don’t you think asking me that question would qualify as pretty stupid? That’s what I meant by you making assumptions and indulging in group-think. Now that I had to explain this basic point which you didn’t grasp says a lot about you and your abilities. ;)

    BTW, if you had wanted to discuss the issue of Supreme Court’s judgment re: salwa judum, then you could have done so in a mature manner, instead of choosing to write that juvenile comment.

  35. middle path

    balancing is tough.
    yet to find a balance that needle stands in the middle and stationary.
    because nature being always change how do u maintain equilibrium.
    in order for the needle(arguements) to balance it tends to oscillate.
    no wonder the needle goes either way.
    happy needling

  36. Where it started…

    More of Nehru’s Folicies.

    Nehrus blunders

    In 1948 War with Pak: India defeated Pak, yet lost 33% of Kashmir(POK) to
    Pak. (Thanks to Sardar Patel’s pressure on Nehru, 67% of Kashmir remained
    with India). Nehru was impotent.

  37. @windwheel

    lazy ass..stop jumping like a primate and go work on giving names to that stupid 5 books u keep bragging about relentlessly. Also, stop begging random people to send their contacts over web. I was told by many Indians that iyers were known for their intellect and cogent thought…oh I get it..u must be a pseudo iyer ..like this pseudo-secular.

  38. The usual phenomenon of a debate descending into a cacophony — eternal deracinated India.

    If is extremely frustrating to get a thoroughly deracinated person to see how his deracination damages him deeply every day and in every facet of his life. It is like getting a moron to realize he is a moron — he will have to cease being a moron before he can see that he is a moron — logical impossibility!

    Here’s what a perceptive and honest Brit said (sorry for having to quote a Brit but no Indian of note has said this so eloquently) —

    “I dimly realised,” writes Malcolm Muggeridge, who worked in India as a teacher and journalist for long years, “that a people can be laid waste culturally, as well as physically, not only in their land but in their inner life as if it is sown with salt. That is what happened in India; an alien culture, itself exhausted, trivialised and shallow, was imposed on them. When we (British) went, we left behind… a spiritual wasteland. We had drained the country of its life and creativity, making it a place of echoes and mimicry.”

    read that last bit again — ”a place of echoes and mimicry”. by now I am sure it is easier to understand a lot of the weird stuff that happens in India.

    next connect it to #10 above — ”The One with a knack for getting repeatedly screwed and deluding itself that getting screwed is actually a good thing.” I would simply expand it to include not just the middle class but almost all Indians (minus a few exceptions, not more than a couple of million out of 1200 million).

    Now, let us get back to the unending tamasha with a throaty ”Jai ho!”.

  39. @Venkatesh, psecular and x-
    Yes, I believe in humour- rasabhasa is foundational to hasya rasa and, alone, contains all other rasas and bhavas.

    The reason I offered you my Email address and a home visit is because I like to see courageous people- even if they are witless and ignorant people like you.

    Essentially, I was complaining about a fall off in Shri Sandeep Ji’s commitment to this blog. My feeling is he has knowledge of Kannada and Sanskrit and can benefit us much more than by catering to you lowest common denominator bottom feeder types.

    You are welcome to read my books for free on Google books. But you are too stupid, ignorant, and spiritually empty to understand them. Still, you are welcome to abuse me on my own website- just click on my name

    @ Manish Maheshwari- At the risk of widening my range of enemies, I must take issue with your description of that all round fraud and humbug, Malcolm Muggeridge as a ‘ perceptive and honest Brit’. He was nothing of the sort. Read Christopher Hitchens. This is the shithead who foisted the great fraud of Mother Theresa and her little Sisters of Felony upon the World- are you fucking kidding me?
    Muggershite did not ‘work long years in India as a teacher and journalist’. He never worked but farted through his mouth.
    I suppose Maheshwari quotes him because of his fatuous remark that the last English Gentleman was alive and well and living in India. Really silly stuff.
    Read Muggeridge’s contemporaries- Justice Anantanarayanan’s (whose name inspired a poem by John Updike) wrote ‘the silver pilgrimage’ at the time Muggeridge was in India- it has an entirely Indic aesthetic. It is simply untrue that Indian intellectuals at that period were ‘mimic men’. On the contrary, in the case of Tamil, people of my grandfather’s generation had a BETTER and BROADER knowledge of Tamil literature than their ancestors in the Nineteenth Century. For example, Smarta Iyers did not know the Sillapadikaram till almost the end of the Century!
    How can Hindus ever become deracinated when they have Gita, Ramayana, or just one single loving look or embrace from Grandmother or any elder in their memory?
    If anyone should have been deracinated, it was Aurobindo- he was brought up without contact with Indian people. Yet his zeal to sacrifice his head for the Motherland was equal to his youngest brother who spent more years in Prison.
    Muggershite has been repudiated entirely by everybody- unless Richard Ingrams is still alive- I recall Alexander Chancellor dismissing him with pithy candour- yet there will always be Manish Maneshwaris with us to quote shitheads like him under the rubric of selfless servitors (rather than meretricious prigs on the make) who ‘worked in India as a teacher and journalist for long years’

    Anyroad, mustn’t mess with your petty little Babu brains any more. You are as you are- Speigelman monsters, degraded by an a dirigiste lack of predators and enforced absence of competition.

  40. >>>”a home visit is because I like to see courageous people”

    windbag, why would any sane person take the trouble to come and meet u in ur asylum ?

  41. Brilliant must-read article by Tavleen Singh in IE that goes to the core of the Nehruvian folly – continuing with the Soviet style planning when Soviet Union itself is dead

    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/why-india-is-a-poor-country/851284/0

    Why India is a Poor Country

    snippets

    - Last week, the Planning Commission proved that its smug, cloistered officials have never met a poor Indian. If they had they would have known that beggars and homeless people in Delhi and Mumbai need Rs 100 a day just to survive. All of it goes on food. By telling the Supreme Court that Indians living in cities could not be officially poor if they spent more than Rs 965 a month, and in villages if they spent more than Rs 781, the Planning Commission showed how insulated it has become.

    - We have invested in massive, unmanageable centralised schemes that spend more on administrative costs than on delivering benefits.

    - It is estimated that we spend seven rupees on a rupee’s worth of aid. So our poverty alleviation schemes have become as useless as the Planning Commission.

    - These statistics should shame our officials but they do not. Go to any Government of India website and you will be plied with boastful claims. It has been my experience that the worst of our poverty alleviation programmes is the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme.

    - What I saw in Orissa’s Kalahandi district was even more sickening. The drought was so bad in 1987 that in remote villages, people had eaten nothing but birdseed and mango kernels for months. The Congress government (in 1987) under the ICDS started a feeding programme for children, in towns many kilometres away, but even here only children under the age of five were fed.

    - These programmes should have been abolished long ago and replaced with more effective, decentralised ones. This may have happened if Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council had not come along to invent even more grandiose, centralised programmes like the employment guarantee scheme, MNREGA. State governments are forced to implement them and in doing so, lose all the money they may have been able to put into smaller, less leaky schemes.

  42. I happened to read the book ‘IMMORTALS OF MELUHA’…
    After reading the first chapter of that book, the first thing that came in my mind is point no. 9 of this article…

    I actually read the introduction of the book and decided not to buy it…
    But my friends suggested me the book, telling that the book talks about Mythology and History…
    I bought it and started reading it…

    And all I found in that book is a truck load of Sh*t…
    Seriously, the author is one real pervert… He’s mentally retarded…
    The author is also an IIM graduate…
    And he claims that he has ‘deep knowledge’ about Hindu mythologies…

    The sad part is seeing this book openly displayed, in the ‘Best selling’ sections…
    while books like ‘Breaking India’ were put somewhere far away in the corners…

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