A Bold Agenda for United Progressive Alliance (UPA)

re:#117 by niranjan
Now, what makes u think Pak will stop needling India once India hands over Kashmir to them?
You should have realized by now that Pak is a terrorist nation headed by a dictator Mushy. He may GUBO (Grease UP and Bend Over) for Uncle Sam but he has no love for the Indoos across the border. So, whether u give him Kashmir or not, he will continue to harm India.
Now, we have another Paki heading the J and K assembly. This woman Mehbooba Mufti did not criticise the militants when they recently killed BSF jawans and instead wants Kashmir problem to be solved. One thing India can do is to ship this woman and the likes of her to Pakistan.
Sridhar

re: BJP`s agenda
Do people in Chowk realize that BJP carefully hid a broader agenda? If only BJP were a truly secular party, it would have replaced Congress by now. If only BJP were truly concerned about the plight of the poor, and not just cared about the middle class and the NRIs, we would have seen BJP romp home with a majority. I am disappointed in BJP.
ABV is a good man. That is all i can say about him. If he were a statesman, he would have dismissed Modi and then all talks about secularism would have made sense.
BJP sounded pathetic when it started suddenly wooing the muslims midway through the elections and even got Imam Bukhari to speak in its favor! BJP and Sangh Parivar are concerned when some Dalit gets converted to christianity or Islam but do little to uplift the conditionof the dalits.
Where does BJP go from here?
If it wants to be a truly national party, it needs to shed its anti-muslim and anti minority agenda and embrace everybody. This is very difficult for RSS Chaddiwalas but this is the only way to be acceptable to all. Otherwise, BJP will always fall behind Congress in every election. And people will have no choice but to elect some goons and good-for-nothing politicians. That is how electoral politics in India is. Nobody said India is an enlightened democracy. It is just a democracy. That is all.
Sridhar
Sridhar

re:#113 by dost-mittar
The big question is: why is Lalloo Yadav so popular? Is it just among the Yadavs?
I think we have not seen any significant investment in Bihar during the BJP rule. I am aware of lawlessness in Bihar but let us not forget that even Chicago in the 30s was ruled by the Mafia. There is a cure to every problem and Bihar is no exception. May be, the man who knows Bihar best can also help cure its problems.
Sridhar

harimou:
Did I ever promise a rose garden with the Congress victory? All I said was that the defeat of the BJP would heal the communal divide; I didn`t even say that it will end communal riots.

In other areas, I expect the well-established traditions to continue. So, key cabinet posts have been given to unelected members. What`s new in that? Weren`t Jaswant Singh and Pramod Mahajan given key cabinet portfolios by Vajpayee after losing elections in 1998?

More bad news for Uncle Dost-Mittar. This is what the Common Minimum Program of the UPA has come to. From Rediff:

Besmirching Manmohan`s name

May 26, 2004

Well begun is half done. So what happens when the beginning is anything but auspicious? That is a question the new prime minister must answer.

Nobody in Delhi pretends that the Union Cabinet is controlled by Dr Manmohan Singh. (Or indeed that he is prime minister in anything but name!) But he came to office with the reputation of being a clean man, someone who would quit rather than compromise on principle. This is belied by the ministry that bears his name.

It is bad enough that the prime minister himself is not a member of the Lok Sabha. (Indeed, he is a man who lost his only bid for direct election to Parliament.) But what is worse is that his colleagues are men who have been rejected by the people mere weeks ago.

The Union home ministry has traditionally been recognised as one of the major offices of state, from Sardar Patel down to L K Advani. Why then has it been given to Shivraj Patil, a man who comes to Delhi fresh from his drubbing at the hands of his voters in Latur? The former MP is a very decent human being, but it is unethical to raise him to Sardar Patel`s chair at this point in time.

Sadly, this is not the only such instance. The Union power minister is an old friend, P M Sayeed. He has won, incredible though it sounds, 10 successive elections to the Lok Sabha from Lakshadweep. (He entered Parliament in 1967, 37 years ago; to put that into perspective, remember that Milind Deora, one of the younger MPs in this Lok Sabha, is a stripling of twenty-seven!) But the fact remains that P M Sayeed has lost in 2004. Rewarding him with a seat in the Union Cabinet is an insult to the voters.

That also goes for Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel who lost the election from Bhandara, Maharashtra. What exactly was the urgency that required Shivraj Patil, Praful Patel, and P M Sayeed to be sworn in just now?

Of course, merely winning an election does not suffice to qualify a man as minister. Look no farther than Laloo Prasad Yadav, Taslimuddin, and their fellows for proof. In 1996, the CPI-M protested vociferously when Taslimuddin was made minister of state in the home ministry by H D Deve Gowda. Why are the Communists silent today?

Third, there is the drama enacted by the DMK under Karunanidhi`s direction. I do not blame the DMK leader. He and his party never wanted to be in the Union Cabinet in the first instance; they were persuaded after the Congress offered a written guarantee that the DMK ministers would be given certain portfolios, including revenue and shipping. (Why the latter was offered to the leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti is beyond me, given that the proposed Telangana will be landlocked!)

The drama also gave away the worst-kept secret in Delhi, namely that the portfolios were being decided by Sonia Gandhi rather than the nominal prime minister. It was ultimately she who broke the deadlock by giving the DMK ministers their due.

Speculation is rife that Karunanidhi wanted the revenue department under his thumb to give Jayalalithaa something to remember. That is possible, but I suspect he also wanted to cut down the high-flying Union finance minister. The DMK supremo certainly didn`t like the fact that P Chidambaram is the highest ranking minister from Tamil Nadu.

Fourth, there is the curious Santosh Mohan Deb affair. He had been given independent charge of heavy industries and public enterprises with the rank of minister of state. Curiously, the aforementioned Taslimuddin was also pencilled into the same ministry, also with the rank of minister of state (albeit not with independent charge). Who was responsible for this stupidity?

Fifth, why didn`t anyone protest when several major states were not given their due? Having committed the sin of giving most of its seats to the Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance, Orissa is completely unrepresented. Nor is there any minister of Cabinet rank from Karnataka. And what was the Sonia Gandhi coterie thinking when it could only find the Muslim League`s E Ahamed to represent Kerala in the Cabinet?

It is true that no Congress candidate was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kerala. But there are three veterans from Kerala cooling their heels in the Rajya Sabha -- K Karunakaran, Vayalar Ravi and T Balakrishna Pillai. Karunakaran is both a former chief minister and former Union Cabinet minister. Ravi was home minister of Kerala. Pillai is a former chief of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee. Couldn`t at least one of them have served?

Given the Congress party`s horrible performance in Kerala in the general election, none of them will risk bringing down the Antony government by way of revenge. But they will be brooding over the `insult` (as one supporter told me), and there will be long-term repercussions.

Nobody is giving anything more than lip service to the notion that poor Dr Manmohan Singh is anything but a figurehead. (Least of all the president of Pakistan, who has cheekily offered to hold talks with Sonia Gandhi directly!) But this ministry will go down in the record books as the Manmohan Singh government. Doesn`t Mr Clean care anything for his image?

Letter to Daily Times:

Sir,

In the wake of the AQ Khan scandal, with it becoming clear that Dr. Khan sold
nuclear technology to Iran, the Pakistani government should seriously consider
re-examining its stance on Iran`s nuclear program. The Iranians, like every
country that has ambitions to become a nuclear power, have stated that their
program is for civilian use, an argument that the Pakistanis also used in the
nascent stages of their program. The real purpose, however, is clear; to make
weapons of mass destruction.

Pakistan must work with the International community to ensure that Iran`s
nuclear program does not translate into a full-fledged weapons program. We
already have a strong neighbor on our East in India, and with relations being
strained with Afghanistan, a nuclear-armed Iran can pose serious challenges to
Pakistan`s interests. We must remember that Pakistan and Iran were essentially
fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, so the notion that a
`brotherly` Muslim country would not challenge Pakistan`s interests is untrue,
as is also evident from Pakistan`s troubled relations with Afghanistan.

Pakistan has good relations with Iran and must continue further improving this
relationship, but must oppose any further nuclearization of a neighborhood that
is heavily armed. Our Iran policy (especially in relation to its nuclear
program) should be based on the realities of realpolitik, not the myths of an
Islamic Ummah.

Regards,

Taimur M. Khan
USA

A party with 16 seats in the Parliament, the DMK, is wagging the dog Congress.

And Dost-Mittar is proposing an agenda for the so-called UPA government? Thanks for the laughs.

DMK bargains hard, makes a killing

NEW DELHI: Karunanidhi`s tough posturing has yielded results. The Congress has agreed to give one of the DMK ministers charge of the revenue department. TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao has also offered to give up shipping ministry to pave way for a compromise.

DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran, after a meeting with Manmohan Singh, said the Prime Minister had already communicated to President A P J Abdul Kalam that T R Baalu will be in charge of surface transport including road, highways and shipping and Palanimanickam will be minister of state for finance.

Maran said the crisis over the portfolios had been resolved with the timely intervention of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

#124 by Maharana
///....God knows what has happened to saner voices in the media too. Everyone is comparing sonia to mahatma or jesus or vedantic ideals...//

The ``Intellectuals`` in India have always been a quixotic - tilting at wind mills and blind to reason and logic. As usual they are looking at wrong directions, drawing wrong conclusion and wistfully basking in false glory. They have declared India as the greatest democracy on earth - secular and enlightened , because a catholic foreign woman got 2% extra votes.

Never mind the crooks and cons murderers and incompetent jerks have captured the the power. One look at the cabinet - you will see clearly where India is headed.

These folks have let India loose its way through out its independent history - now they are back again. The same old cliches are being repeated ad nauseam - pro-poor, socialism, non-alignement ... blah, blah.

Harimau , Ankit,

Its the same old Congress culture coming to fore. Have thugs and murderers join as ministers and never appreciate or work towards a coalition.
When has congress ever understood coalition culture, when their own party is headed by a dictator.
This government has the most brilliant cabinet of all. Laloo, Tytler, Taslimuddin holding portfolios and claim to be secular, corruption free and efficient government.

God knows what has happened to saner voices in the media too. Everyone is comparing sonia to mahatma or jesus or vedantic ideals.

Adios

#121 by harimau

Yep - When the entire world has thrown out the worthless commies into dustbin of the history - loosers in India have pumped steroid into these morons and have lifted them on to the predestal - to serve the poor.

Never mind what their track record is - that they have achieved nothing over decades.

But why blame the unwashed masses - the educated buffoons on this board are going ga ga over commies and laloos. They will serve the poor - put focus on ariculture and bring in the revolution.

ANother five years down the drain.

The appointment of Tytler to the cabinet is a hideous, gruesome joke. It is a faecal stain on the face of this government.

Seems this describes the situation to a T!

Statesman News Service

KOLKATA, May 24. — The Congress has urged Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to speak “as little as possible on national issues” and not to make “irresponsible statements” that might affect the interests of the Congress-led coalition government at the Centre.

At a rally at Shahid Minar yesterday, the chief minister had said without mincing words that the Left was the driving force behind the UPA government. “If we tell them to sit, they’ll sit. If we tell them to stand, they’ll stand,” he said.

144 dm

``
I am, however, willing to be more understanding of Manmohan Singh than of ABV`s posture.

``

of course I am not surprised. and that is because you are ``secular``. so if laloo yadav implicated in various hues of scams becomes a minister, it is okay coz he is secular. of course we cannot even talk about taslimuddin who is implicated in murder, dacoity and rape because he is not only secular, he also represents the minorities.

not to speak of the murdered tytler. although his inclusion is ``unnecessary and stupid`` (thanks for that), but then killing sikhs is a secular act and so it is not condemnable and we should try to be accomodative of secular murderers.

right dm?

i strongly believe india should ``hand over`` kashmir to pakistan...maximum one year and india will be left holding the kitty again over that worthless piece of land, beautiful though it is....a land-locked paradise infested by worthless individuals hell bent on destroying themselves over dogma and religion...pakistan cannot afford the upkeep of all kashmir.By india retaining kashmir as a part of the union , it only gives pakistan an easy ride.pakistan is hell bent on needling india any which way it can and will use any ploy, people or plan to gain its` nefarious purpose.thank god for the americans placing a heavy hand on the pakis or else things would have gotten progressively worse...which brings me to muse...whose side is god on???..hmmmm...as an indian i must say `allah-o-akbar`..i am grateful.

harimou #111
`` it should be okay for Congress thugs to target Indian Muslims and Sikhs while simultaneously cheating the Hindus for personal enrichment and continuation of dynastic policies. ``

Yup, you personally prefer that the BJP does this instead.

harimou #111
`` it should be okay for Congress thugs to target Indian Muslims and Sikhs while simultaneously cheating the Hindus for personal enrichment and continuation of dynastic policies. ``

Yup, you personally prefer that the BJP does this instead.