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The MEA that “great” institution whom the god-like(for shashi tharoor and Veer Sanghvi) Neru created to take upon its own frail shoulders the overwhelming burden of bringing about world peace and harmony is at it again.

Following in that hallowed tradition of that first Indian Ambassador in Beijing K.M. Panicker who became more of a China pointman for India than the other way round, another former ambassador to the world’s largest police state and now foreign secretary is doing everything to whitewash China’s bellicosity and pretend that everything is hunky-dory with the relations with China when it is clearly NOT. 

• India is “comfortable” with its China relationship, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said on Friday when asked if New Delhi was worried that Beijing could now speedily move troops into Tibet.
• In reply to another question about Chinese “incursions” into Indian territory the foreign secretary stated that the two countries had “worked together” to maintain peace and stability in the border areas. “We don’t see a change in that,” Menon told presspersons.
• “I don’t have that sense,” Menon shot back when asked at the press conference whether China was moving away from an April 2005 agreement on guiding principles and parameters to resolve the border dispute. 

And his political boss of the moment does not seem to be any better.

 ”Sometimes the incursions take place. Every incursion is taken care of. It’s being addressed through the established mechanism,” External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told a private news channel.

He said there was nothing to worry about the incursions as the mechanisms established by India and China to deal with such issues “are doing well”[link].

They may delude themselves by sticking their head in the sand as much they want. But the reality is China doesn’t care a fig leaf for their precious Border talks which it has stretched for the last 25 years without agreeing to agree on anything. China’s ambassador on the eve of Hu Jintao’s visit back in Nov 2006 had reasserted illogical Chinese claims on an entire Indian state which is  based on nothing but tentative eccelestial links to occupied Tibet. A very strange thing to do for an officially atheist regime. But anything to get their way will do. And now with the Qinghai-Tibet rail link being extended to India’s vulnerable chicken neck area near the Sikkim-Bhutan-Nepal junction and incessant reports of intrusions into Bhutan and elsewhere along the LAC. This is not a time to mouth platitudes in the face of clearly determined foe and hope the problem will go away. It didn’t work for god-like Neru in 1962 and it won’t work now.

Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants and the first non-white and youngest governor of an US state and now the face of the growing “clout” of Indian Americans in the US cried the Indian media.

This strange phenomenon where India’s largely retarded media embarassingly tries to play up any achievement by anyone who is remotely connected to India in some way or the other is something that the savvy politician who has been plotting his rise to power since he was only five years old by promptly changing his religion and name, and positioning himself as more conservative than 99.9999998% of the loony American religious right didn’t fail to take advantage of. He ran circles around the gullible Indian community and managed to wring out enough greenbacks to finance his way to the top. And now that he is there he has suddenly no use for them. His Indian origin for him is now a mere “accident”. something he conveniently overloked while passing the hat around.

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Once again as if to remind us that all is not hunky dory with the great Indian diaspora. The Ethnic Indian community in Malaysia, took to the streets to protest against their continued institutionalized persecution by the ethnic Malay dominated Malaysian government. The Malaysian government since the 1970s has followed a kind of apartheid policy against their non-Malay citizens called the “Bumiputra” policy by which they seek to give first preference in most of the jobs, government contracts, college seats etc… to the ethnic Malays.

This has led to the marginalisation of the nearly two million people of Indian descent whose forefathers were taken there as indentured labourers by the British. According to this source if a certain Malaysian Indian tycoon Ananda Krishnan is taken out of the equation the entire ethnic Indian community in Malaysia has less than 0.2% of the national income! Alarming stats indeed and desperate people do desperate things.One of them is an attempt by an Malaysian Indian lawyer to draw attention to the plight of his people by suing the British government in a British court for a huge sum of money.

The Indian government’s response as usual has been woeful. At the very center of this policy rigor mortis is the Indian Foreign policy designed by “geniuses” like Nehru and his ignorant lackeys like K.N. Panikker and the custodian of this crown family jewel today is what goes by the moniker, the MEA, perhaps the only foreign ministry in the world which has a whole country at its disposal to further its own Utopian, dyed in the wool agenda as opposed to all other countries which have a foreign ministry at their disposal to further their national interests.

So we have the sorry spectacle of Indian diplomats and ministers hugging dictators and mass murderers across the world in the name of third world solidarity, crying over the cause of the far away Palestinians and black south Africans, losing sleep over the legal problems of assorted terrorists, giving clean chits to neighbourhood thugs, and so on and so forth while the welfare and well being of the Indian citizens living and working abroad and that of the People of Indian Origin which should be one of the top items in their list of priorities is neglected.

Even a Saudi blogger calling himself the Muttawa had highlighted this issue in his blog and specifically chastised the Indian embassy by name for its uncaring attitude towards the concerns of its own citizens. B. Raman in his recent book “The kaoboys of R&AW” has enumerated how Nero and his diplomatic cronies refusal to intervene inspite of the repeated requests of Indian migrants in places like UK and Canada during the 50s and 60s led to increasing embitterment on their part leading to disastrous consequences later on.

Not very surprising again. Considering that when the supposedly secular Indian state which is composed of people of so many different religions, ethnicities, languages etc… neglects to perform its duty of protecting the interests of its citizens and diaspora abroad, and these people are continued to be illtreated by their own host governments the next logical step for these desperate people, is to huddle together and organise themselves along sectarian lines and experience shows that is exactly what they have done. Whether it is the Sikhs, the Srilankan tamils before and now the Malaysian Indians, who have organised themselves as the Hindu Righs Action Forum and are also not neglecting to mention that they are mostly of tamil origin.

And if the Indian state continues its benign neglect then this issue is just going to morph into a Tamil and Hindu issue. With those who feel strongly about Hindu or Tamil issues recognizing themselves strongly with the woes of their Hindu and Tamil brethren across the Bay of Bengal(CNN-IBN please take note it is NOT across the Malacca straits, that would be Indonesia ).

And how long it is before more and more people both within India and abroad begin to connect the dots and start realising that the Indian state simply doesn’t protect their interests the way it should, and start looking towards their own narrow sectarian groups for support when in distress? how would that affect the feeling of Indianness among them? Not very positively for sure.And we all know the end result when the Foreign agencies start fishing in all these troubled waters. Hope we have learnt some lessons from the example of the Khalistani movement.

It is therefore absolutely necessary for the Indian state to take an active role in protecting the interests of both its citizens and diaspora abroad. It simply isn’t enough to merely hold annual “Pravasi Bharatiya” diwas to celebrate the successes of Indians abroad. It is also incumbent on the Indian state to help them in times of need. This is very much in the national interest of such a diverse country, The people of the country should have the confidence that wherever in the world they are their own country will come to their aid in whatever possible way in their hour of need.The same confidence should be instilled among the People of Indian Origin abroad that though they might not be technically Indian citizens and citizens of their own respective countries, India will definitely give them the necessary moral and diplomatic support and take up their case in the appropriate international fora during their hour of need. Every other civilized country in the world does this and so should this one.

Once again the Judicial system in India has proved that when it comes to punishing the Rich and the powerful their famed blindfold does come off for a little while.

While the sessions court sentenced the owners of the Cinema hall and some civic officials to a mere two years and even readily set them free on bail they sentenced a mere gatekeeper, the lowest person in the chain and hence not in a position to hire the best lawyers to defend him to seven years rigorous imprisonment and promptly sent him to prison.

Now in what way is a mere Gatekeeper more culpable than the owner of the building who built the hall flouting all norms, bribed civic officials to look the other way, maintained the building in a poor shape and finally hired him, a thoroughly incompetent gatekeeper, and others, the managers and supervisors to run the whole place?

The buck in this case clearly stops at the very top. And the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy are clearly right in expressing their dismay at the verdict and seeking to approach the High court.

The poor quality of the infrastructure and public facilities and the woeful safety record in the country is a direct result of the people in charge the builders, the civic officials etc… not being held to accountable for their actions and unless the justice system starts taking stringent action against the powers that be such tragedies will continue to happen on a regular basis.

The sobriquet that Tata’s pet one lakh Rupee car could soon be earning by the time it hits the roads in a year’s time.

Increasingly a lot of people both in India and abroad are concerned that this car could bring about the realisation of a much feared doomsday scenario.

A car very affordable to the masses in their opinion could mean that more and more people would abandon their bikes and scooters for this car leading to more gridlocks on already overburdened Indian roads,more pollution, greater demand for fossil fuels meaning further escalation of already record high oil prices, more demand for parking spaces and not to speak of the demand for raw materials to make those cars.

Mr Thomas Friedman in an recent column in NYTimes has joined this chorus and appealed to the Indians to figure out more innovative solutions to their transportation problems rather than churning out cheap versions of the west’s greatest mistakes. He gave an example of how innovation on the mobile phone in countries like India making it cheaper has finally benefitted even western consumers and hopes Indians will do something similar on the transportation problem.

All very well but one main piece missed by most is that India has for the past two decades had such a car- Maruti 800. And rising prosperity in the recent years means that the basic version of that car is now within reach of a lot more people. And what’s more even Ratan Tata has gone on record saying that when the Tata car finally comes out it would retail for near about the same price. It is quite difficult to go below that.

But while its already low price and very low maintainance costs was never enough for Maruti to make the two wheelers obsolete why would it be any different for the Tata car? The ground reality is that even at the lower price point of one lakh rupees the car costs nearly 10 months income for an average middle class Indian family while a bike or scooter on the other hand costs only about 3-4 months income. And added to that the fuel and maintainance costs which is very low or negligible for a bike or scooter on the other hand the fuel efficiency of a small car like Maruti 800 or the to be released Tata car though impressive is still only about less than one fourth of a two wheeler which means it costs four times more to commute using a four wheeler. and with soaring fuel prices it makes owning a four wheeler that much less attractive.

This reality is not going to change anytime soon. Whichever way one looks at it this car like any other car comes with a hefty monthly bill.And that could easily kill this car. so the key for the success of this product will be to bring down the monthly costs.So it is inevitable that the innovation will happen in this direction. That could mean that within a few iterations the market is going to figure out the best processes and materials to make the cars at the cheapest possible cost, improve the fuel efficiency, bring down the cost of the spare parts, servicing and maintainance costs. which means that this product line will be most open to experimenting with alternate fuels and power sources. Which is already happening, a lot of people have converted their Marutis and Tata Indicas to run on LPG and CNG.

And the very fear that more of the cheap cars will lead to escalating oil prices is based on the wrong assumption that the Indian consumers will be willing to pay premium prices for their fuel.They won’t and that is going to force most automobile manufacturers wanting to sell more and more cars to Indian consumers to speed up the research on cars that run on alternate fuels.

To return to Friedman’s example of the Mobile phones, the Indian consumers not only made the Phone companies to manufacture and sell them phones at the lowest possible cost but they also demanded that they sell them phones with longer battery backup, greater talktime, usage of a single charger across their entire product line, sturdy build, more intuitive user interface, crystal clear voice clarity even with very weak network signal, more memory, a colour screen, camera, bluetooth and a host of other great features at the lowest possible cost. Those companies that responded to this demand are now the dominant players in the market. Now it is the turn of the Automobile industry and hopefully they will rise to the challenge.Because the one who wins here could go on to become the Ford or GM of the 21st century.

Update: Tata-ISRO team up to build Fuel Cell powered Bus prototype

At the end of the 17th Chinese Communist party Congress Hu Jintao the current president has according to most observers secured his position and also managed to get most of what he wanted including the possibility of either of his favourite proteges Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping succeeding him when he steps down in 2012. something which his predecessor Jiang Zemin couldn’t manage partly because Hu was Deng Xiaoping’s pointman and destined to become President after Jiang. Hu gained favour with Deng because of his successful suppression of the Tibetan uprising in 1988-89 when he was the party chief in the Tibet.

This act of his impressed Deng so much that he immediately put Hu on the path to power by promptly including him as a member in the seven member politburo during the 14th party congresss held during 1992. The original plan was to elect a politburo to manage the transition from the so called second generation of party leadership led by Deng to the third generation of party leadership around Jiang zemin.But then Hu Jintao, the new blue eyed boy of Deng was included as the nucleus of a future fourth generation of party leadership. Effectively creating two factions within the Party. The Jiang and the Hu factions.

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I had reservations about this deal from the beginning and had expressed it often on this blog and other fora. I favoured that this deal be kept on hold till some kinks in it were ironed out and that we don’t rush into it without properly thinking it through. But that is a tall order to ask in India especially with the current ruling clique. And it is political expediency of the worst kind rather than concerns regarding national interest which has led to the stalling of this treaty.

Can’t go through with the deal right now: Manmohan Singh to Bush

The prime minister explained to Bush that certain difficulties have arisen with respect to the operationalisation of the agreement.

This statement by the prime minister almost officially puts the deal on the backburner, which has become a bitter bone of contention between India ’s United Progressive Alliance government and its ally, the Left. Just before setting off for a state-visit to Nigeria and South Africa, the prime minister had hinted at such a development by mentioning at a summit, “If the nuclear deal does not come through, it won’t be the end of the life.”

The riots that followed a Radio Jockey’s comment about recently crowned Indian Idol Prashant Tamang has lessons for everyone involved.

First it is time(it is 60 years since independence for heavens sake) that we Indians from all over the country start addressing each other by their own respective names and stop using slang to describe each other. that means no more talk of madrasis, bhayyas, chinkies, banias etc… full stop to that.period.

Second, learn to take it easy. going on a rampage because someone said something that you do not like is so futile in this day and age. It is a globalised world with 6 billion people around and not everyone is your fan.

Third, The Indian state should seriously start pursuing and convicting Rioters/vandals/lynch mobs etc… At this point the impression has become widespread that the long arm of the law will not catch up if the crime is committed during public disturbances such as Riots, strikes and hartals etc…That impression should be changed forthwith and the authorities should start by throwing as many rioters as one can identify by means of eyewitness accounts, camera recordings etc… behind the bars for good. That should put the fear of the Gods in the sub-continental mobs for all time to come.

If there is one trait that sets apart a Briton from the rest of the human species then it must definitely be an head still frozen in the permafrost of that last ice age that might somehow explain their chilling insensitivity to appreciate and respect the point of view and sensibilities of others.

One hundred and fifty years after the Indian soldiers in their employ in the armies of the East India Company along with a large part of the Indian population revolted against them for precisely that reason the Brits seem to have not yet learnt their lesson and now their descendants have arrived in India to “commemorate” the “bravery” of their ancestors by being exactly just as haughty and insensitive as their forefathers had been.

That rebellion happened exactly one hundred years after the Battle of Plassey gave the British East India Company a foothold in the eastern region of India in what is now the country of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.From there over a period of several decades they steadily expanded their hold over the rest of the country on the backs of mostly Indian soldiers led by an exclusively White class of officers.

Denied promotions and avenues of career growth, routinely discriminated against, humiliated daily and forced to fight against and commit atrocities against their own people by the British over a period of a hundred years finally got too much to bear for the Indian soldiers and finally they had had enough. They raised the banner of revolt in the summer of 1857 when they felt that the Brits had gone too far this time and for six months fought valiantly and nearly brought an end to the British rule in India.

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Reading the Hyde Act after the 123 Agreement has been “signed and sealed” in the words of our unelected PM gives one an insight in retrospect that would not be possible back in the late of last year when it was passed.

Among them one striking feature of the Act that stands out is that it is steeped in the language of Non-proliferation from start to finish. The Hyde Act begins, drones on and ends with the incantations, praises and tributes to that jealous god of Non-proliferation policy-the very same Non-proliferation orthodoxy that believes that it is Ok for the Communist thugs of China who butcher their own people on the streets like dogs and then sell their body parts on the Black Market to have nuclear weapons. But it is somehow NOT ok for the world’s largest democracy to have them for its own self-defense.

The entire act is full of stuff like seeking India’s full adherence to all the alphabet soup regimes like NPT, MTCR, IAEA, Australia group, the watz-that-shit-ennar arrangement, NSG, FMCT etc… the Works!

In its own make believe world the NPA lobby in Washington is under the self inflicted delusion that the NPT has been a “great success” and that only those countries outside the NPT pose a challenge to the prevention of the spread of “dangerous” nuclear technologies.

Someone should make them read their own CIA’s periodic reports about blatant violation of the NPT by the Chinese who armed both Pakistan and North Korea(and recently trying to do so with Iran) with nuclear weapons and the resultant domino effect when the Pakistanis then subsequently sold it to everyone with a traveller’s cheque, credit card or a bhai ki sifarish in the black market. While at the same time the North Koreans (party to the NPT) were doing the same with Chinese supplied long range missiles violating another of their pet peeves the MTCR.

I mean the amount of cognitive dissonance that the US Congress or more particularly the left-wing NPA lobby within it suffers from can be perceived by two contradicting sections in their own law manual- Section 2(4) of what they have passed says that in their opinion only those countries that remain outside the NPT are a cause of concern to realize the objectives of non-proliferation. While at the section 3(4) they seek India’s, i.e., a non-NPT signatory’s co-operation to censure Iran, a fellow NPT member for trying to acquire nuclear weapons in violation of the NPT. Perhaps Michael Moore was right these guys never read what they themselves pass! Perhaps someone should hire another ice cream truck and go around Capitol Hill actually reading to them what they have passed.

The Bush administration might have realized this new reality of the world and is trying to adjust policy to it accordingly but the US Congress is still stuck in the old cold war mentality. And the one that passed the Hyde act was actually dominated by Republicans! Right now with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha calling the shorts there things can only be worse.

And this is the Congress dominated by some of the worst left wing nut cases in America which is going to be taking up the 123 Agreement!

That means the whole process that was followed to pass the Hyde Act will have to be gone through again and this time with the NPA lobby on a stronger wicket than last time with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and the Democrats themselves under the control of the extreme loony left.

Our rude and ignorant PM who termed the 123 Agreement as “signed and sealed” when asked to run it through the Indian Parliament is in for the shock of his life when the US Congress finally takes it up. The US Congress is going to take his precious “signed and sealed” thing and run it through the nearest paper shredder and then they will churn the remains in their cafeteria grinder and make him drink the resulting bitter concoction.

That is the way the US congress is designed. Every lawmaker there is free to vote on his own and often does. There is no concept of Party whip and every member is free to introduce his or her own amendments to any Bill under consideration and get it voted upon and they often do. Each member needs to be lobbied. Only the Gods know how much more money will be going down the drain to make sure that the 123 makes it through in atleast somewhat recognizable shape to the one that it will go in.

And that brings us to another interesting aspect; the Indian lobby must be the only one in Washington which spends money to get laws passed against its own interests while the US lawmakers laugh all the way to the bank