The Villians In Society

  

 Recent losses incurred by JP Morgan , supposedly due to lax risk management ,has again raised the controversy about bankers.Almost all articles mentioned that the Head of the Department was paid  fourteen million dollars as compensation last year. This has once more  raised the noise pitch of  the media and the social chatter about these wicked greedy bankers.But are bankers any different than most other professionals or business men ? Lets look at the different strata of society and he who is without sin can cast the first stone.

The Indian Medical Infrastructure has been coming apart at the seams. When we were growing up, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences was recognized and still is  probably the best post graduate institute for medicine with a attached  hospital. They have among the best doctors in the country. Unfortunately like everything else in India , the government has not invested in replicating this center of excellence across the country ( except in a few limited locations),  as they are doing for the Indian Institute of Technology.

With the growing population and the increase in income level, this has left a void and private institutions have rightly jumped in .They have built five star facilities with the state of  the art medical devices. India does not produce as many doctors as required. We  have among the lowest doctor per population ratio in the world.

The owners and administrators of these hospitals have been head hunting the best doctors from the government and armed forces hospitals and offering salaries on par with bankers. However the  catch is, like bankers they have to bring in the revenue to be able to make the big bucks. Thus when you go there you will be required to go through a battery of tests ( some of which might be of marginal use and of which I am led to believe that they get a percentage of the fee charges - reminds you of these evil bankers ?) and often be told that you require surgery which might not be necessary. I have been at the receiving end of one of these.

 

Having said that you do occasionally come across  doctors who stick to their Hippocratic oath as I had the experience recently. I had gone to a private hospital  fully expecting to have to go in for  a minor but important surgery, but the doctor  was extremely firm and insistent that it was not necessary and stuck to his guns. This was confirmed by a second opinion I got from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Regretfully these are few and far between. This gets worse for the low income workers, the working classes and in the rural ares,  who regularly get gypped by the doctors to take unnecessary tests. In the villages, they seem to think the panacea for all illness is either getting an injection or being put on a inter venous drip, with the latest being asked to go for a scan.These are the people you rely for your well being and in some of these cases, could be a matter of life or death.

Lets now switch to sports.Cricketers in India are adulated by the masses and the media. The stars are rewarded handsomely when they perform well .  The God of Indian cricket has recently been nominated to the Upper House of the Parliament. But are they all clean? Ever so often there are stories in the media about matches being fixed. Recently one of the television channels conducted a sting on some of the Indian Professional League players where they were filmed talking about how some of the matches were fixed. I do not know whether that is true, but viewing some of the matches of late, I have always had my doubts, when a bowler who does brilliantly in the first three overs suddenly performs miserably in the  second or last over which makes them loose a match. There have been too many of them of late.Perhaps this is just a coincidence and the bowler is tired towards the end. Also there have been allegations of match fixing in other sports as well and what about athletes taking drugs to enhance their performance  The cricket sting accusations also allege that the owners who are among the top business houses in India  are aware of the match fixing

Some of the top business houses are also linked with the numerous scams which involve paying off politicians whether is it for band width or access to iron ore or to coal mines or defence contracts.  Allegations have been made also against the multinational drug companies for not conducting the appropriate drug trials before marketing. On a smaller scale, staff of multinationals find ways to skim on premises for staff or supplies.You hear stories of buyers for stores or retail outlets from the developed world demanding either entertainment or other means of pay offs. Suppliers whether they are garment exporters or other goods suppliers have to do so if they want to get the large volume orders to which these buyers hold the key.

 Tomes could be written about  bureaucrats and politicians.Daily there are news stories about these two being involved in some scam or scandal. From the most junior to the most senior persons in both the category. When you talk to real estate brokers in Delhi or Gurgaon  as to why the market has not adjusted, considering the state of the economy and the high interest rates, the answer promptly is " money from the Commonwealth Games and other  scams is being recycled". Believe it if you want, but I am sure there is some element of truth in it.The politicians and bureaucrats are regularly accused of siphoning off the equivalent of hundreds of millions from programmes meant for the poor and needy as a result of which they starve and in some cases commit suicide. 

I could continue ad infinitum  about movie stars, management consultants, lawyers, policemen, the armed forces, the media and others.You could sift through all layers of society and professions and you will find that each of them have their shares of bad apples. Bankers are no better or worse.

The Church vs Mammon

It is now official. Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an article in the Financial Times of April 4th, says that it is now just as easy for the rich man to pass through the eye of the needle as a camel. There is no contradiction between faith and mammon. You no longer have to live a life of austerity to prove your faith. The Russian oligarchs, the Arab rulers, the hedge fund managers, Donald Trump  and our very own Vijay Mallya, I am sure, will be greatly relived.

I have to confess that I have never seen the contradiction, since the Church ( or the Temple, Synagogue, Mosque, Pagoda or the Gurdwara or other places of worship ) never had any issue accepting donations from the rich. In many religions the tithe or its equivalent is compulsory. You could be a robber baron or just a plain robber, and  still be a man or  a woman of faith  if you donated to the Church. Over the centuries the Church has grown rich through donations from kings and nobles, who were responsible for terrible massacres and rape and pillage as a result of their  conquests.There has always been a nexus between  the rulers ( whether they are kings or politicians ) and the priests ,  who work out an arrangement of back scratching to suit their purposes.

It is not my intention to discredit religion, since it does play a very important role in setting some ground rules for civilized behavior, even if most of them are not carved in stone or  in a golden book . It is also  something  you turn to when you are desperate and have no where else to go.

However over the centuries religion has been hi-jacked by its guardians or interpreters who insist that religion is too complicated for it to be understood by the layman.They become the  enforcers and have  over a period of time enjoyed  the power and privilege that they refuse to let go. There are stories from every religion whether it is the Popes who had mistresses or the Brahmin priests who took advantage of the temple maidens or the Mullahs who extort their flock that jihadism is the only way to salvation , where they will have  unlimited earthly delights in the form of vestal virgins.The priests have created heaven and hell and they have become the gate keepers.

Every religion has parables as to how the various prophets always favored the poor against the rich. I remember my grandmother telling me one about the founder of the Sikh religion Guru Nanak. In one of his frequent travels he was invited to have a meal and to rest  at the house one of the richest man in the province, yet he chose to spend the night  in a poor man's hovel and share his meal. When one his followers questioned him, he is supposed to have picked up the food offered by the rich man in one hand and the poor mans offering in the other. He then squeezed both. Out of one flowed blood and out of the other milk.

Just as the the kings and emperors built huge palaces, the priest have encouraged  their believers to contribute to building larger and larger edifices to glorify God. Look at the holiest of holy places of all religions and you will see the amount of money which has been lavished over the centuries.The religious institutions are among the worlds wealthiest institutions.  And yes while some of them use  part of  the wealth  to benefit society such as  building  hospitals, schools and other institutions, but at the same time large amounts are siphoned off by the minders or in the case of the Catholic Church to defend misdeeds by the priests. A lot more could be done in using the daily collections by these places of worship for the betterment of the society or prohibit the people from making financial or other rich offerings. Raise money only for a specific cause instead of building ever grander edifices.

While the paths might be different, one thing all religions seem to agree on is that God is within you.  If so why do we need to have such ostentatious places to  worship ? I quote below from Kabir one of the mystic poets  who preached the universality of religion.

Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.”

Corruption

Recently we were with some friends and their two sons who are in their mid-twenties. As always the conversation drifted to India and to the moral decay. This is similar to the conversation  we have when our two children come home for holidays as well. It is difficult not to talk about corruption in India when it hits you in your face every day, when you open the news paper, when you switch on the television set, when you drive your car and the policeman pulls you to the side for a make believe traffic violation. It is difficult to have hope when you see daily the politicians and bureaucrats get away with ripping off the country with the equivalent of million of dollars through Common Wealth Games scam, telecom scam, coal auction scam, defense contracts scams and so on. The media highlights these for a period but ultimately they get brushed under the carpet. After all how “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” ?How many scams and scandals can you fit on a page or a television screen every night ?

From the young people's perspective who want things to change, it is hard to convince them that things will get better and the fact  that these are even being talked about is a good sign. It is difficult to explain to them that all countries go through this phase during economic development. The United Kingdom went through this. You have to read  Charles Dickens  to get an appreciation of the  rampant state of corruption including the judiciary. It was similar in the United States in Chicago, New York and other American cities in the early nineteen hundreds and into the thirties and the forties. It was not all Brideshead Revisited or The Great Gatsby.

However that was then.  It is hard for them to understand that even with modern technologies why is it so difficult to clean up the system. However with a population of one point two billion people and still growing, it is going to be a while for the society to cleanse itself.

In fairness, the government's intention has been well meaning and the funds allocated to meet  the basic requirements has been increasing substantially . However there is a vast difference between what gets allocated and what is actually spent. The development economists euphemistically refer to this as “leakages ". This is a polite way of saying that the money is being siphoned off to the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and others who are involved in the implementation of these programmes. It is difficult to quote any precise figures but based on anecdotal evidence, the actual number which is actually spent cannot be more twenty five percent , probably  less. It varies from state to state .Some states do a much better job than the others. Even with that I am not sure there is any state which comes anywhere to achieving over seventy five percent implementation.

The question then arises as to what and how is to be done?

First and foremost accept that the fact that you will never bee able to eliminate corruption totally. No country has and no country will be able to regardless of what the government says. Let me give you a few examples of countries which are often quoted and who hold themselves to have high standards of governance.

The United States
The Economist March 15^th,2012
"Rod  Blagojevich, a former governor of Illinois….. was convicted last year of bribery, wire fraud and trying to sell a Senate seat. He is the fourth governor of Illinois out of the last seven to be convicted, and adds to the 1,828 public corruption convictions the state saw between 1976 and 2010. A report by the University of Illinois at Chicago estimates that corruption costs the state more than $500m ( small change by Indian standards )  a year. Two states had even higher numbers of appointees, government employees (and a few private individuals) convicted of public corruption: New York, with 2,522 convictions and California with 2,345 convictions. Of the largest states though, Illinois had the highest per person conviction rate, at 1.4 per 10,000 population. With little over 600,000 residents, the District of Columbia had a rate of nearly 17."

The United Kingdom 
The Mirror News April 2^nd 2012 
“Access on a plate: PM's secret lavish dinners with party donors
DAVID Cameron had a string of secret lavish dinners with party donors in the mansions of rich backers, it was revealed yesterday.The PM was under mounting pressure last night to come clean about ALL his private meetings with donors following fresh sleaze allegations.Labour said he had "incredibly serious" questions to answer after he was accused of covering up a series of meetings with disgraced former party treasurer Peter Cruddas and donors - including an event at the PM's country retreat, Chequers.

Former standards commissioner Sir Alistair Graham said Mr Cameron was "in danger of falling into the sleaze category" by not being straight about his links to big money donors”

Ever so often you have news items about British Parliamentarians raising questions in Parliament if you paid them a few hundred pounds. About Parliamentarians and government officials  fudging  expense accounts. Even the extend royal family has been dragged into scandals about money for access.Of late you had the Parliamentary committee investigating the close ties between the senior executives of News Corp and the Police.

France
In France allegations have been made against  the former IMF chief and who had been considered a potential candidate for Presidential elections for being involved with a prostitution racket.

Hong Kong

Closer to home ( at least for me, since I spent a greater part of my life there) in Hong Kong, the former Chief Executive Donald Tsang was accused of having accepted favors from business tycoons. Also the Independent Commission Against Corruption has initiated investigations against the former Chief Secretary ( effectively the number two after the Chief Executive ) and two of richest real estate tycoons in the world - the Kwok brothers. As an aside when I first reached Hong Kong the clean up process had just started by the then Governor Murray Maclehose, so I am disappointed to see that the clock is being reversed.

China

In China, I think I can sum it up  by quoting a line from a book review in the Financial Times  by Chris Patten, the last British Governor of  Hong Kong " the remark of the old Maoist, Deng Liqun in the 1990s that if the party bosses did not eradicate graft, they would lose the support of the people; but if they did, they would lose party members."  Sounds familiar does it not ? The present leadership is still struggling with it as was evident with the fall from grace of Bo Xilai a princeling in  Chongqing.

I could go on and on, but it is obvious that corruption prevails in every single country. However it is not as invasive as it is  in India. How do we resolve this and how do we minimize it ?

While some amount of corruption is explainable (not condoned) as money  needed to fight elections, lets legalize it as the United States has done, including using the Public Action Committee which is  nothing more than a vehicle used to target a component without the candidate actually spending money.

In India, the reason given to justify corruption among the bureaucrats is that their salaries are low, which is not true , either in absolute terms or the equivalent on a "cost to company" basis. Pay them the equivalent of the  private sector , as they do in Singapore and let them find their own accommodation, pay for their own health care, pay for their own clubs, their own transportation and so on.. Let them commute for hours as the private sector does, but pay them cash up front. If they then don't perform or are caught red-handed, nail them to the wall.

The issue here is not that the laws do not exist. The issue here is that of implementation . Ever so often the stars align, as they are presently and  you have a Chief Justice, a Comptroller And Auditor General Of India, and The Election Commissioner ,  supported by  their peers who take it upon themselves  to do the job of the government. Also you have an increasing number of  individuals who file Public Interest Litigation cases to highlight scandal after scandal.What is needed is to increase the number of courts and also track the performance of the judiciary at the lower courts. Also have a time bound schedule for all cases.

It is difficult to expect  the political parties to take the lead ,because almost every single party is tainted. If the young princelings are serious about making a difference they should set an example and bar any one  with a criminal case pending against them from being given a legislative assembly  or parliament  ticket or making him or her a minister at the state or central level.

None of the above ideas are new and I am sure that there are a lot more out of the box ideas as to how corruption can be minimized. As Gurcharan Das said in one of his presentations, you will see major changes start to happen when the middle class reaches approximately fifty percent. In my opinion it will take a couple more decades where corruption will decrease and will reduce the impact on a day to day basis. Lets look forward to that day. I am not sure it will happen during my life, but I am confident that it will in my children's life time.

Go To Daddy

The Prime Ministers Office has issued a diktat to the Board of Coal India Ltd , a public limited company with domestic and foreign  shareholders to sign long term  feedstock contracts with power generators to provide coal regardless of whether it is able to mine it or not. If they cannot mine domestically they will be forced to buy overseas and if necessary to bear the losses. ( Upfront declaration - I own a few hundred shares of Coal India Limited). The power generators are among the top names in the industry. This is the height of absurdity.

Most of these companies bid very aggressively for setting up large power generating plants, based on power supply contracts. Some of them were also allocated captive coal mines. In addition some of them bought coal mines in Australia and Indonesia. Now they find that they cannot produce domestically for political or environmental reasons. Also countries such as Indonesia have insisted that the coal prices be priced at international prices and not be transfer priced. Accordingly these power companies find them selves in a financial tangle since they priced their supply contracts at a low price to get the green light.  So what do they do now ?They  go running to Daddy.

Daddy then tells Coal India Limited, the largest coal company in the world , whose staff keeps asking for more wages, and which is facing the same problem as the private sector in terms of increasing production to sign this contract..The independent directors of Coal India Limited refused to support it. Now with the orders coming directly from the President of India,Coal India  will effectively be subsidizing the the private sector power generators. Damn the shareholders.

A more effective way would be for the government  to give tax breaks or subsidize the power generators for the price difference between  domestic and international prices  and allow  them to  import the directly.. As Coal India's largest shareholder, it will also be foregoing dividends which will not be paid because of potential losses. Subsidize the companies  directly and let Coal India operate like a normal commercial organization, After all with all the subsidies which the government hands out every year, whats a few more thousand crores?

On Indians

The Times of India of March 31st had a column on opinions about Indians from both Indians and non-Indians. I thought it was interesting and am repeating the quotes in italics.

Mumbai  High Court
"Spitting is an inherit character of our people"

In six months in 2011 Mumbaikars had paid the equivalent of Dollars Four Hundred and Fifty thousand in fines. I am surprised that the High Court did not say that  urinating by the road side is also an inherit character of the Indian male. Imagine the revenue which the cities in India would generate if it imposed fines on this activity. However it would also be another source of  revenue for the enforcers.

Markandey Katju
Chairman -Press Council of India

According the Times , Katju has been coming out with gems since he was appointed to this post. His latest "90% of people in India are fools. Their minds are full of superstitions, communalism,and casteism."  .. "people say that the media must provide the customer what it wants. Unfortunately most people in India are of a very low intellectual level,steeped in casteism, communalism,superstitions, and all kinds of feudal and backward ideas"

Ah - the arrogance of self confidence at the extreme. Must have something to do from being from Nehru's hometown of Allahabad !!

Greg Chappell
Australian Cricketer and former Indian coach
"The (Indian) culture is very different. They lack leaders because they are not trained to be leaders. From an early age, their parents make all the decisions. They learn not to take any responsibility"

In effect they are all Mama's boys. No wonder we have more than our proportionate share of women leaders such as  Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Mamta Banerjee, Mayawati, Sheila Dixit, Jayalalitha  and so on. The real successful war which we won hands down was the war for Bangladesh under Indra Gandhi. Perhaps we should have an all women's cricket team against the Australian men. Could teach them a lesson or two.



Gulam Nabi Azad
Union Health Minister and Senior Congress Leader
" If there is electricity in every village, people will watch TV till late night and then fall asleep. They won't get a chance to produce children. When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do to produce babies" .

Of course people in cities do not produce children. Perhaps the next list of  freebies for the Indian  politicians should include  I phones and I pads which do not require electricity ( except for charging where they can now use solar lights with phone charging extensions). However there is some truth to Azad's comments. A couple of decades ago when New York had a black out for a day or two, the birth rate that year actually shot up.

Shahid Afridi
Pakistani Cricketer
"Indians will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don't think they have the large and clean hearts that Allah has given us. It is a very difficult thing for us to live with them or to have a long term relationship with them"
 
Unless being born in Pakistan gives Afridi or the Pakistani a special  heart cleansing gene, he is perhaps not aware that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. So on a numerical basis we beat Afridi's country men  in terms of the number of people with cleaner hearts . In terms of long term  relationships , perhaps the Americans might have some thing to say about that.

President Nixon
Indians are "a slippery treacherous people"

Henry Kissinger
"Indians are bastards anyway.They're the most aggressive goddam people around "

This coming from tricky Dick and his key lieutenant was a bit rich. No wonder many of his aides ended up on the wrong side of the law, defending their patron. If you haven't I suggest you read Philip Roth's " Our Gang" about President Nixon and his team.

Maureen Chao
US Vice Consul while talking to students in Chennai
" I was on a 24 hour train trip from Delhi to Orrisa.But after 72 hours, the train still did not reach its destination ... and my skin became dark and dirty like the Tamilians"

I believe that Hillary Clinton chose her for  " The diplomat of the year " award and she is now being considered as a possible candidate  to become the next  Dean of The  Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University. I think she boned up on India by reading the matrimonial advertisements where all males are looking for wives with wheatish  or fair complexion.Also by  watching the television advertisements where every second advertisement is for a fairness cream for making not just women " fair and lovely" but also men " fair and handsome" . One even goes to the extreme of assuring you that it will make your under arms fair. I can see Biphasa Basu doing a item number from a  Bollywood version of  Maria from the West Side Story with her arms raised and the spotlight shining on her arm pits and singing "I feel pretty, white and witty  "

The Dalai Lama
"I feel sometimes people in India are lazy .... look at the Chinese,they work hard.  ..Wherever they go, they make China towns.However, nowhere in the world there are any India towns. "

Having seen and read many of his interviews, it is obvious that he has a sense of humor and his remarks are tongue in cheek. But nevertheless maybe his Holiness should ask  his minders to take him to  "Little India"in Singapore, Southall in London, Canal Street in New York and similar such places in Chicago, Toronto and other major cities around the world. 

Pratyush Sinha
India's Outgoing Chief  Vigilance Commissioner
"One third of Indians are corrupt, half are borderline, and that is job was a thankless one".

Reading the newspapers and watching the television , where there is a new corruption or a scam story  every day, all one can say to his comment is  "Amen".

The Battle of the Inheritors

 In a recent book , India - A Portrait by  Patrick French, the author   estimated that almost forty five percent of the candidates for elections are from dynastic political families.Unlike Pakistan and the Philippines were the seats are held by families who are from the land owning classes, in India it is from families whose main business is politics - or as they say in Hindi  "Netagiri". To quote  Shakespeare completely out of context , in India the inheritors are "born great ,( instead ) of achieving greatness or having greatness thrust upon them".

A few weeks ago , we were glued to the television following the state legislature elections in five of the states in India. In order of importance they are Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Manipur and Goa. The national ruling party  Congress  was in power Manipur and Goa. The main opposition party The Bhartiya Janata Party ruled Uttrakhand and played a supporting role in Punjab. In Uttar Pradesh the ruling party was a lower caste dominated party Bhaujan Samaj Party. The main media focus was on Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. 

In Uttar Pradesh you had Rahul Gandhi -  Rajiv Gandhi's son and Indra Gandhi's grandson , on one side and Akhilesh Yadav , son of  Maulayam Singh Yadav - head of the  Samajwadi Party and a former Chief Minister of the state on the other. In Punjab you had Sukhbir Singh  Badal,son of the Prakash Singh Badal head of the Shiromani Akali Dal, the reigning party, leading the campaign  against the Congress leader Amarinder Singh, the former Maharaja of Patialia, who was the previous  Chief Minister of Punjab.Interestingly Rahul, Akhilesh and Sukhbir received part of their education overseas.

The Samajwadi Pary won in Uttar Pradesh and the Akali Pary in Punjab. Congress had used its big guns in Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest states in India with a population of two hundred million people, but had little to show for it. It retained Manipur and managed to dislodge the BJP in Uttarkhand. It lost in Goa,and Punjab.

In my opinion what won the election for the Yadavs and the Badals , was that they had a better sense of how to capture the votes. Also what was interesting in the campaign in both  Uttar Pradesh and Punjab was the difference in styles of campaigning of the privileged inheritors and the message they put out. 

For the last two years the media was fed images of Rahul Gandhi visiting the lower caste families and sharing their meals in Uttar Pradesh. In the last few months, he appeared increasingly comfortable in giving speeches in Hindi. However he came across as a strident , angry young man with his main target being Mayawati and occasionally the Yadavs. He was ably  supported by his sister Priyanka, who appeared much more at ease mingling with crowds than he was. His brother in law Robert Vadra also joined in the campaign with his group of easy riders. 

Akhilesh on the other hand criss-crossed the state, occasionally seen on a  bicycle ( which was the party's election symbol) or on top of a van, wearing his easily identified  crimson red Gandhi cap. He appeared more of a people's man and appeared more relaxed in his dealings with the common man , compared to Rahul Gandhi who was constantly surrounded by his group of minders. Gandhi focused on the misdeeds of the previous rulers while the Yadavs promised a basket full of goodies, ranging from free laptops to free electricity for farmers.

In Punjab the Badals and the former  Maharaja both  come from extremely privileged backgrounds, but at the end of the day the Badals prevailed, as they had a better sense of how to win the votes. Like the Yadavs, the promise of goodies got them the votes. Where the money is going to come from considering the perilous conditions of both  the states finances, appeared to be of least concern while making the promises.

Historically it is the incumbent party which gets voted out . Here again Amarinder Singh  focused mainly  on the mis-deeds of the ruling party instead of laying out an agenda for the Congress Party.  While generally the media tends to view the rural electorate as being unsophisticated,  what was interesting this time around in Punjab  compared to the previous elections was that the incumbents ( although in Uttar Pradesh , the Yadavs were not,they were in power prior to that ) were not voted out. The rural electorate decided that in terms of mis governance there was not much of a difference  between the Congress or the Akali Dal. So they opted to stay with the Badals and take the freebies. 

What the Congress party strategists  seemed to have overlooked by focusing on the mis-deeds of the opposition, was that almost every day the news papers and the television channels  were headlining some scams, scandals or the other involving the the Congress Party or their coalition parties. While you have many Congress party big wigs who appear regularly on the television debates showing how erudite they are by quoting Yeats and other English poets and Churchill, they seemed to have forgotten that votes of the viewers of the English speaking middle class  in the metropolitan cities do not determine who comes to power.  India now has multiple news channels in almost every language which can now be viewed in most rural areas.In addition they also forgot  the simple rule which applies to good governance as well as to being a good neighbor - people in glass houses should not throw stones .

Election Promises

Over the next couple of years we will be going into election mode, at the city , state and country level, not just in India but also in the United States, and other places . It will be good to maintain  a sense of humor . I am just posting some of the quotes which are going around. These were  passed on by an old friend from Hong Kong , who like me has nothing better to do. I do not know if they are real or not, but then who cares ?  They sound pretty good.

* The problem with political jokes is they get elected.    ~ Henry Cate, VII * We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.    ~ Aesop * If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven.    ~ Will Rogers * Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.    ~ Plato * Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.      ~ Nikita Khrushchev * When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.     ~ Clarence Darrow * Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.    ~ Author Unknown * If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.    ~ Jay Leno * Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.    ~ John Quinton * Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.    ~ Oscar Ameringer * The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.    ~ P. J. O'Rourke * I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.    ~ Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952 * A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.    ~ Texas Guinan * Any American who is prepared to run for President should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.    ~ Gore Vidal * I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.    ~ Charles de Gaulle * Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.    ~ Doug Larson * Don't vote, it only encourages them.    ~ Author Unknown * There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.    ~ Will Rogers   Thanks old buddy.