MONKEY POLITICS AND 

MONKEY DEBATES! 

SUNNY THOMAS

A monkey gives amusement to his spectators. After Anna Hazare, the Charlie Chaplin of Indian politics, it’s the turn of Arvind Kejriwal to entertain his spectators. While Charlie Chaplin’s trademark was his ill-fitting dresses, Anna’s incongruity lies in the grotesque mismatch between the ground reality of thinning crowds (to a handful) and his pretensions to being the father of the nation!  After his honest friends deserted him, Kejriwal started a political party to cleanse the system of corruption, for which he has neither the caliber nor the character. 

If Kejriwal loses his deposit in the next election and Suresh Kalmadi of Commonwealth Games fame wins with a record margin, whom will you blame? The Indian Constitution, the Commonwealth, or his own dismal record? Diabolical games will always end in a fiasco, it might amuse some for a while, though.  

After losing its relevance in the national gladiator show, the all-India Mamata party has decided to have a conclave with the all-India Jayalalithaa party and the all-India Mulayam party and the all-India Naveen party to roadblock multinationals from entering retail trade that might end farmers’ committing suicide.   

The all-Sri Lanka Karuna party and the all-India cyber party of Chandu Babu, and even the Iceland party of Marxists are not invited, for they are unlikely to support a no-confidence motion against the Manmohan Singh government. Even if they do, there are reasons of animosity.  

Once bitten twice shy, BJP has become wiser. It knows that no-confidence motion only strengthens Congress – this time a no-confidence motion may even double the Congress majority! Just think of it, with all the coalmines under its thump, and the purchasing power of MPs almost at the same rate as last time, the astute floor managers of Congress will ensure its resounding victory. But it’s all right for all-India Mamata party to whine and moan!!   

And every time there is a monkey show, our television channels vie with each other to give a full coverage, followed by a monkey debate where the most intelligent is hardly given time to speak and the brainless buffoons dominate the show. In fact, these political shows are exclusively designed for the TV cameras, and will come to an end once the cameras shun the show.  

Can a government of liars, for liars and by liars do any good for a country of 1.2 billion? By constantly vituperating against a government that has taxed the people beyond the endurance level, the Opposition parties are creating UPA III indispensible!    

American democracy is tilting towards Plutocracy where the poor subsidise the rich! The rich invest and create jobs – at least, that’s what the Republicans believe. The Democrats tax the rich and bring the much needed social security and health care. But not all federal funds are wisely spent, creating discontent. The outcome of an American election much depends on the business cycle of boom and bust. That explains why some mediocre Presidents get two terms while some more deserving ones wilt after one term. Bill Clinton has managed the economy so well, and kept the unemployment rate so low that his Presidency is fondly remembered.  

After Abe Lincoln, Barak Obama is the only President to have risen from such humble origin.  Many White Americans felt during the last election that it was their duty to right the wrong by electing a Blackman in the White House. But the Obama magic has waned – notwithstanding his Nobel Prize and His prized trophy, Osama Bin Laden’s head. What is surprising is that a political lightweight like Mitt Romney is running neck and neck with the President who deserves a second term. Will the anger of the unemployed tip the scale of the verdict? Come November, things could change! 

    

VICTORY BEFORE BATTLE!

SUNNY THOMAS

The critics were busy writing his political obituary. Notwithstanding his office, he was the most inconsequential man in Indian politics, they said. The doctors diagnosed him as paralysed; not suffering from the common paralysis but policy paralysis that only Presidents and Prime Ministers are capable of. Stormy petrel Mamata Banerjee left him, expecting a red-carpet welcome back to UPA. But the learned Sardar just mumbled, Economic Reforms, and the whole world hailed him as the Winner, Leader and Messiah! Even a die-hard critic like Arun Shourie lauded him as a man who displayed leadership qualities!!

General Manmohan Singh won even before the battle, which could be the envy of even Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1969, driven to the wall, Mrs Indira Gandhi nationalized 14 private banks which her political opponents controlled, crippling their economic power and reducing them to mere noises and voices. She skillfully added a socialistic dimension to the political drama that the people thought milk and honey would flow on the streets thereafter. But it was the late Amul Kurien that flooded the markets with milk, which people call the White Revolution, and the enterprising bee hive keepers that flooded the markets with pure honey, for which socialism had no role to play.   

In the words of the former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, in 1991 when the politicians had no answer they turned to the economist who in 15 days turned a crisis into a grand opportunity. The foreign exchange crunch became a matter of history and India became a land of Opportunity. The learned Sardar has done it again! As soon as Mamata left UPA, the rupee stabilized, and the bulls of the stock market started jumping up; the foreign investors are packing their bags and baggage to stage a comeback while the Walmart-happy Indians are dancing on the streets!  

There is hope for farmers and consumers that farm products now rotting on the fields – 30% of farm good are rotting for want of refrigeration – will be available (in good condition) to consumers in the metropolis, bringing down their prices while farmers will get better prices, preventing mass suicides. But there is one problem that the middlemen who are the backbone of some of the regional parties are jittery. Their profit margin will come down because their profit comes from throttling the poor farmers and exploiting the consumers.  

Prices of farm goods will undoubtedly come down in the initial phase because otherwise global retail chains will not get a foothold on the market. What changed the mood of the nation dramatically was the Prime Minister’s address that turned the table on his critics. There was more intelligence in his words than in all the screeching and screaming of the Opposition. The husky voice of the PM had a ring of honesty that you seldom find in his detractors’ speeches.   

Yet the PM was not speaking the whole truth, though what he said was true. The economic mess that we find ourselves in is not the creation of America, China or Pakistan. It is UPA’s own creation, beginning with the profligacy of the Commonwealth Games, 2G Spectrum allocation and finally the Coalgate. Who can deny that coalmines auctioned would have generated enough funds and more to buffer wild fluctuations in international crude prices? That is prudent economic management, which the PM did not engage in.

Every time a housewife goes to the market, she is angry with Manmohan Singh because he has pinched whatever little money she had in her purse! It must not be wide of the mark to say Manmohan remains India’s most insensitive Prime Minister, insensitive to the needs of the common man. There is not a shred of evidence to prove the contrary.  (Of course, we are not including part-time Prime Ministers who have not completed even one term). In sheer cold blood, Narasimha Rao squandered all the goodwill Congress had enjoyed so far, by his pro-Rich policies, eternally mortgaging its safe vote bank – the backward class and the minorities.     

Every argument has a counter-argument: India invested in Commonwealth Games to create Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Vijay Kumar, Sushil Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt! And 2 G spectrum allocation afforded cheap mobiles even for the humble domestic servant. But what about coal scam? What scam? Today everyone is talking about Reforms, and no one is taking about coal scam, not even the Opposition. That’s, perhaps, because (as Ajit Ninan has brilliantly put it in his cartoon in The Times of India, (Friday, Sept 28: No, not a gay marriage . . .) It's a UPA scam in which NDA also has a tie - up. The bitter truth is elections need scams, because Congress and BJP, and all other political parties, need to cough up funds for 2014! And the television boxing (debate) goes on.  

At last, wisdom has dawned on L.K. Advani, who hinted that the party should have a secular image. The plain truth is the majority of the majority community are broadminded and would not fall into the ideological trap. Their upward mobility and frequent foreign travels have given them a global vision, not to be traded with a religious tag. Unless the party woos a section of the minorities, electoral arithmetic simply won’t work. But there is a deadly missile in Advani’s words: secularism instantly disqualifies the Most Eligible Narendra Modi, for whom India’s hundred million population are beauty-and-figure conscious and hence go hungry or are malnourished. Modi’s contribution to his party in 2014 would be to block a winnable Prime Ministerial candidate from BJP!  

With all the scams and high inflation, if Congress still emerges as the single largest party – no matter how slim the margin – it will be a sad commentary on BJP leadership!     

      

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA!

SUNNY THOMAS

My computer has joined Mamata, Mulayam, Jaya and the Big Wigs of BJP, all prime ministerial aspirants, much against my wishes. It has joined the nation-wide protest against the Prime Minister’s betrayal of the people, who have elected him to cushion them off against the turbulence of the global economy. Instead, he is protecting the looters and the hooters of our nation – the looters who plunder our natural resources and the hooters who spread the canard that the Indian economy is going to be downgraded unless FDI is granted entry permit that sent shivers down the spines of the economist Prime Minister.  

You don’t seem to understand my problem, which is personal. There is no way my computer will type the Prime Minister’s name correctly. Ever since the diesel price hike, my computer types Manmohan SIN instead. In panic, I called an expert who instantly diagnosed it as computer virus. On his recommendation, I bought a double anti-virus but my computer was defiant. I called another expert who recommended a double-double anti-virus, and, lo and behold, it totally blacks out our venerable coal minister’s name!  

 

A fifty per cent roll back might prompt my computer typing Manmohan SING instead of that horrendous surname. Any day, it sounds better than FDI SING. I am absolutely certain that my computer won’t budge till there is a total rollback, and in that case Mamata might roll back her protests, and the allies might become allies once again, as if there was no diesel price hike and no Mamata protests. And my computer might start working as though it never struck work.  

  

Shadow prime ministers already live in 2014, and Mamata’s outburst on television cameras was her address to the nation. Through her Pro-Poor Rhetoric, she was declaring herself leader of the fourth front that would take her to the PMO.  Mulayam, leader of the third front, has already declared that he is not a saint, or to speak the language of Barkis in David Copperfield, Malayam is willin’. Jaya, leader of the fifth front, is busy with Kudankulam nuclear plant, and will always welcome any event that would catapult her to the PMO. 

Modi’s diatribes make him fit for Gujarat, and totally unfit for outside Gujarat. Nitish Kumar, the most qualified man for the Prime Minister’s job, has proved his courage of conviction by daring Modi and Raj Thackeray.  

Think of the jam UPA got stuck in. If they (Cong men) accept all that Mamata demands (a complete roll back and FDI in cold storage), the Prime Minister would be reduced to a lame duck. UPA’s options are jettison the Reforms Agenda (with or without the Prime Minister) for a Pro-Poor Image and share the platform with Mamata, or boldly adopt a Pro-Reforms Agenda and face the consequences.

Congress is in a Catch 22 situation. In power, BJP would adopt the same reforms they are opposing now, of course, with some window-dressing, and take the credit for leading the country to the path of employment and prosperity.  If UPA adopts a Pro-Poor Platform with Mamata, the gains are instant but short term. Ruined if they don’t reform, and ruined if they do. 

After the television drama, things would settle down and the allies would be allies once again, with some give and take (or even if they support from outside because Trinamool Congress ministers were not contributing to good governance, any way). After the coal scam, Adarsh scam, 2G scam, and Commonwealth scam, there is no question of the PM losing his face. And in 2014, he would demit office as the happiest Prime Minister ever – because he doesn’t have to deal with Mamata any more!    

Like Santiago, in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the Prime Minister would realize that politics (life) is an empty shell. All that would remain in his grip would be the skeleton of the economic reforms as Santiago’s giant fish that he caught and fought to bring it to the shore.   

INDIA SCAMED!

SUNNY THOMAS

BJP wants to stall Parliament till the Prime Minister resigns, but Manmohan Singh will resign only in 2014! Should we conclude that BJP will continue its boycott till 2014? Mercifully, BJP was only launching its election campaign to 11 states, where its stakes are high. Is there a better place to launch an election campaign than Parliament – not by attending it but by boycotting it?  

BJP’s central leadership was threatened by the rising spectre of Narendra Modi, who could make them irrelevant. So to regain the central stage and to meet squarely the challenges of shadow prime ministers like Mamata, Mulayam, Naveen and Jaya, BJP’s top brass decided on a strategy to raise the decibel of their protests to the shrillest degree – not only annoying PMO but also Islamabad, Beijing and Colombo!   

`Empty vessels make the loudest noise’ is an adage long forgotten. By demonstrating the veracity of the adage, BJP is pitching its campaign slogan: Vote for Disruption.

Evidently, BJP is trying to hijack the anti-corruption platform, vacated by Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi. And coal that smear the blackest is Nature’s gift to the saffron party. The uproar in Parliament, specially designed for television cameras, will make some of its actors look like superstars on par with Sachin Tendukar, Shah Rukh Khan, Mary Kom or Saina Nehwal.  

Whatever Dr Manmohan Singh touches (even remotely) turns into a scam. And whatever King Midas touched turned into gold. Our television editors – Arnab Goswami, Rajdeep Sardesai, Prannoy Roy and Rahul Kanwal – are the alchemists who can turn a coalmine into a goldmine of investigative journalism!

Simply put, BJP is trying to shift its corruption capital from Bangalore to New Delhi, while Congress is trying to fortify its capital Delhi with scams without end. Good luck for both! 

Congress beats BJP in its own game of farce by introducing a Constitutional amendment bill when the House is in ruckus, and stage-manages – as is widely believed – a scuffle between two MPs for television cameras that stole the thunder from the boycott party.

The grapevine reports that Suresh Kalmadi is launching an organization called India Against Corruption, with Ashok Chavan and Spectrum Raja, to be ably assisted by Vijaya Kumar Malhotra (Kalmadi’s patron) and the BJP MP Ajay Sancheti who financed civilians for the Adarsh Co-oprative Society. Corruption hurts, and more than others them, and they want to root it out.  

Mulayam is looking for allies to float a third front, while Mamata is planning a fourth front, Jaya-Naveen combine a fifth front, and Pawar the loner a sixth front. Sangma is yet to decide whether he should start a seventh front; if he does, he will be the whole and soul of the front! Irrepressible prime ministerial ambition is giving sleepless nights to some of our leaders. 

Tell me what’s wrong with an honest Subodh Kant Sahay recommending his honest brother for an honest exploration of a coalmine? Tell me what’s wrong with a Vohra meeting a Singh, the Vohra in this case is Motilal Vohra and the Singh, Raman Singh, the perfect Congress-BJP hand-in-glove manoeuvre? You don’t believe it? Tell me who sent Anna Hazare packing and the Lokpal Bill sent into the deep freezer? Who placed Suresh Kalmadi at the apex sports body but the venerable BJP leader?

It’s not the hand anymore that’s ruling the country, but the hand-in-glove!

Punch line: Our scamsters will give a run for the money for the Somalian pirates who kidnap for petty ransom.

ASYLUM FOR ASSANGE

SUNNY THOMAS

Long at last, Julian Assange found a home! The celebrated Leak Journalist was hounded out of his own homeland and country after country slamming the door on him till Ecuador decided to grant him asylum. Some of his leaks were earth-shaking, contributing to transparency, while some were politically-motivated and suspect.

Assange is not a saint; nor is he considered for beatification. Driven by vain glory and self-aggrandizement, he became the self-appointed crusader on Mission Destruction – creative destruction if you may call so. The establishment of the capitalist world hated and feared him, and would have loved to get him fixed on charges fictitious or real. But the masses that have nothing to lose or nothing to hide look up to him as a messiah.

To believe or not to believe? This is the dilemma Wiki Leaks poses to its readers. Just because nine expose were found true, it does not logically follow that the tenth is true as well. Technology has not yet discovered a gadget to sift falsehood from truth – one of the original dilemmas of philosophers.

Just imagine all Assamese are given asylum in Bangalore and Mysore, after they are displaced from their homeland by the migrant Bangladeshis! Bangladesh has virtually annexed Assam by proxy, which is an eye-opener to the Chinese who failed to do so. The tide of sub-nationalism started in the late 1960s with Shiv Sena claimed that Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians! There was a sense of injury among Maharashtrians when they saw their girls were molested by immigrant youth in search of jobs. The cosmopolitan culture of Bombay (now Mumbai) bred Street Romeos, who are just freed from parental control. This led Marathi editor Atre suggesting a cultural organization to protect Maharashtrian girls from their predators. 

Balashib Thackeray, a brilliant cartoonist with political ambition, hijacked the idea. His musclemen intimidated the `outsiders’  by running riots in the early 1970s and finally settled down for what is rumoured as `protection money’ from hoteliers and business establishments of `outside’ origin. No one complained because the profit margins were still high in Bombay. It is well known that Bollywood actors have security network with connections to the underworld. But no one complained.

In Assam, with the emergence of ULFA, the story was repeated. 

`Outsiders’ (not just business establishments as in Maharashrta) paid protection money for the safety of their life and limbs. So there were parallel governments, one run by the duly elected, and the other run by the unduly elected mafia, both taxing the people.  

Mafia rule and fundamentalism thrive because they enjoy political patronage. The present Assam crisis is fundamentalist-engineered and hence one spectrum of politicians maintains an undignified silence. The same politicians will cry hoarse if the rival fundamentalist groups are fermenting trouble.  The net result is Bharat Mata is living in Refugee Camps!    

      

Jinnah died broken-hearted because Pakistan turned out to be the antithesis of what he had envisioned. What pierced Gandhiji’s soul was not Nathuram Godse’s bullet but India’s partition. No two men could empathise with each other better than Gandhi and Jinnah.

For a breed of brainless politicians, anybody who creates commotion is a leader. Look at the rousing reception that yoga guru Baba Ramdev got, as if they are pleading `Lead us kindly light!’ both Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev were enacting scripts written by others but with a political plot. A handful of corrupt people trying to eliminate corruption and people linked to black money wanting the Prime Minister to eliminate it are nothing more than television comedy shows! 

  

Either Advani is joking, or he is dead serious. A non-BJP PM to lead NDA, on the face value, is a cruel joke on Nitish Kumar, the most eligible bachelor to tie the knot. But when no party or alliance come anywhere near the stability mark, parliamentarians will have to look for a leader acceptable to both Congress and BJP, and UPA and NDA. Perhaps, the only one who qualifies the test is Nitish, who has the credential and credibility. 

Maybe Advani is playing the spoil sport, because Narendra Modi’s enemies are within the party more than without. The shrewd gamesman knows BJP’s chances are as bleak as that of Congress, at least for now. Maybe BJP would like to project Nitish as PM till the election and upset the apple cart later.    

In the ring are Nitish, however much he denies, and Modi who constantly attacks Manmohan Singh in the hope of turning it into an American model Presidential election. And of course Rahul Gandhi, because India is not UP. The outcome of a lawless state need not be a pointer to 2014. If C Chidambaram restores the confidence of the investors and take the economy to its buoyancy, there is no doubt that the voters will not look for an alternative.  

NOTE: Julian Paul Assange is an Australian editor, activist, political talk show host, computer programmer, publisher and journalist.

SAINA O SAINA!

SUNNY THOMAS

Hail Mary, full of strength! Famed are you among women. And famed is your Olympic bronze. Inspire us now and at all times. Amen! A short prayer for every Indian who watched the Summer Olympic 2012. Indeed Mary deserves the highest gallantry award for fighting for India against equally determined women but taller and stronger than her.

Gagan Narang won India’s first (bronze) medal for shooting (men’s 10 metres air rifles) and Vijay Kumar, the only silver the country has got, in shooting (men’s 25 m. rapid fire pistol). Saina Nehwal bagged bronze in badminton (women’s singles) and Mary Kom, bronze in wrestling (women’s flyweight). On the eve of Mary’s fight for silver, India’s most famous commentator, Boria Majumdar, commented that since she has not lost twice to the same opponent, Mary was all set to win silver, and even gold. In politics and sports, anything is possible. Millions of Indians shared the joy and the heartbreak that Mary went through.

But it was Saina, 22, who captured the nation’s imagination, like Boris Becker at 18 winning the Wimbledon Cup. She was the Young Sensation that Sachin Tendulkar was, playing against Pakistan at 18. Now she joins the rank of Kapil Dev, Sachin, Dravid and Dhoni, who have made the nation proud. And she shares pride of place in the nation’s Hall of Fame with the immortals like Father of the Nation, the First Prime Minister, the Iron Man of India, the Constitution Fathers, Prime Minister Durga Gandhi and others.  

Hats off to Vijay Kumar and Gagan Narang, who made Olympic history by their winning streaks. India sent 83 sports persons to compete in 13 events. What happened to Mahesh Bhupati and Rohan Bonnapa, who made headlines for the wrong reasons? What happened to the rest of the India Olympic entourage?  The government spent $48.1 million and $11 million came from private funding. Which means, over $14 million per medal ! indeed Bronze is Gold for India, considering the price at which our players fetched them.  

Look at the medal tally of some other nations:

United States      39      25     26     90

China                 37      24     19     80 

Great Britain       25      13     14     52 

Russia               12       21     23     56 

Korea                12         7      6     25 

Germany            10       16     11     37

To command the respect of the comity of nations, India must produce ace sports persons. America and China are global powers because they are more disciplined, more innovative and more goal-oriented. Generalizations could run into troubled waters but the obvious need not be overemphasized. As a nation, China is far ahead of us, in primary education, sports education, and in health care. Saying that it is the Blacks who win most of the medals has no merit as an argument because Blacks are Americans too!

Britain, of course, once ruled the world, and as a world power it has yielded place to other nations; yet it maintains a semblance of its past glory. The decline of Russia after the break up of the Soviet Union is understandable; but Korea’s leap ahead of Germany wins world admiration.

What are Summer Olympics and Winter Olympics? A quick glance at Olympic Games years will give us the answer:

Summer Olympics: 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 

Winter Olympics: 2002, 2006, 20010     

 

Faster, higher, stronger is the Olympic motto (Citius, Altius, Fortius). And you must be a schoolboy or a schoolgirl to remember that Olympic Games began in 776 B.C. The Olympic flag has five rings interconnected, to represent the five Continents, and one of the five colours – blue, yellow, black, green and red – is in every national flag. The flag was designed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1914.

Barbarians can never appreciate Olympics; they know only how to shoot and kill people who have done them no harm. In fact, Olympics and terrorism are the two faces of civilization – the noble and the hideous!

  

     

CRY MY BELOVED COUNTRY!

SUNNY THOMAS

The minister sat impudently as the inferno engulfed Tamil Nadu Express claiming over 30 lives. The same minister was smug when a girl was running desperately from compartment to compartment, fleeing from her rapist predators, while the whole train (Yeshwantpur-Mysore Express) watched the scene as if it were a live television show! The minister indeed deserves to be hanged but what about the spectators who feasted on the misfortunes of a fellow citizen? This is the tragedy of a civilization that once was a magnet of knowledge-seekers from across the world. (We are talking about the schools of Nalanda and Taxila where, according to the Chinese traveler Fa-Hien, thousands flocked seeking wisdom. 

What angers many Indians is the casual attitude of ministers to human tragedies, avoidable at all times but repeat themselves on the callousness of the powers that be. Who doesn’t know posting armed guards on trains – call them the Railway Protection Force though they protect none – prevents crime on trains? And who doesn’t know surprise safety checks alert the lethargic staff who are the main culprits behind most rail mishaps? Populism demands cheap rail travel which means not hiking the passenger fares, compromising on passenger safety. What follows is a tale of unmanned level crossing casualties, molestation and rape on running trains and sporadic infernos, besides superfast trains ramming into stationary locomotives. Garnering votes by opening new rail lines is another ploy of politicians who reduce a ministry into electoral calculus.

Last year, a girl who was the sole bread-winner of her ailing parents, was pushed out of a running train near Shornur (Kerala) by a gang of rapists. The failure of some employee to connect the iron plate between the two compartments caused the life of another girl who celebrated her birthday at home and was returning to her college hostel. The unsuspecting girl tread on the rubber cover of the iron plate that was not there while traversing from one compartment to the next and fell on the rail track below, her body cut into pieces by the running wheels. Railway horror stories abound but people, like the gleeful spectators of the train and the minister himself, have other things to worry about. So the exceptions become the general norm and the avoidable, the happening.   

     

The north and the northeast are groping in the dark. Let’s face it we consume more than we produce. Our upward moving middle class have tasted the goodies of lifestyle and now will stop short of nothing but total indulgence. Lifestyle multiplies power demand and our frustration; it has throttled our patience and to an extent our character, too. Lifestyle has turned all of us into demand machines, demanding all the time, demanding more and producing less. Soon we will demand more water, more food, more fuel, more housing, more parks, better infrastructure. What shall poor Manmohan Singh do? He must be waiting for 2014, to say good-buy to these ungrateful Indians!  

P Chidambaram must be the happy man of the Cabinet to get rid of Home for Finance, making him the key player for brightening the Congress chances for a hat-trick. Chidambaram did a good job in Home, notwithstanding the carnage of 75 BSF jawans. With lenient chief ministers who are Maoist sympathizers, no breakthrough can be made in fighting terrorists. Susheel Kumar Shinde must be thanking his stars for getting rid of his Power ministry at the hour of India’s worst power crisis. The PM knows nothing much can be expected of his Power minister and so wisely transferred him to Home. Shinde is basically a do-nothing man, who can don any portfolio and neatly fits into any ministry. But Veerappa Moily of all people has no reason to be grateful to his PM for shifting him to a crisis-ridden ministry. We all know the crisis will soon pass over and Power will be Moily’s forte.   

Olympic heartbreaks have started almost as soon as the games began. Olympics as they say is not everyone’s cup of tea. As a nation, we are not very sportive, but there are exceptionally good sportsmen and sportswomen in India, who have fought against all odds and babudom to reach there. Let’s us wish them good luck!