ROLLING PRIME MINISTERS!

SUNNY THOMAS

I am not Anna Hazare (as teenagers’ T-shirts declare); I am not Arun Kejriwal; I am not even Kiran Bedi! Nor am I one of those gullible Indians who believed a handful of fellow-countrymen could end corruption by a road show near Jantar Mantar. I know one gentleman who tried to eliminate corruption from this country single-handedly. He happened to be the home minister in Lal Bahadhur Shastri’s Cabinet, and his name Gulzarilal Nanda. And two years later, he disappeared without a trace from the political scenario.

I vehemently disagree with everything Kejriwal says or does, but his reply to members of Parliament regarding his dishonouring Parliament merits our time:    

 The present Lok Sabha has 162 parliamentarians on whom 522 criminal issues are lodged. Out of these, 76 are heinous crimes. Murder cases on 14, attempt to murder cases on 20, fraud charges on 11, kidnapping charges on 13. In addition to these, there are many parliamentarians on whom corruption charges are lodged.

In 2009, Congress gave tickets to 117 people with criminal background, out of which 44 got elected. BJP gave tickets to 116 people with criminal background, out of which 44 got elected. Other parties too have proactively given tickets to the tainted. The court has charge sheeted a good many of them with heinous crimes.

In 2004 elections, 128 people in Lok Sabha were with criminal backgrounds. In 2009 elections their number went up to 162. By this progression, the day is not far when the majority of the parliament will consist of people with criminal background…

Think of 2014, notwithstanding the bravado of some political parties that they want a general election right now. The greatest danger the country faces is a pack of regional parties bereft of a national vision or goal coming to power. A whimsical Mamata Banerjee, a capricious Jayalalithaa, and a Navin Pet-naik (Maoists are his pets) coming to Delhi to rule the country could be the catastrophe of the century. Mamata could turn Bengal into a Bihar by driving away all industry and sealing the job prospects of the youth. Jaya’s understanding of the world ends within the borders of Tamil Nadu, and her `by Tamils, of Tamils and for Tamils policy’, however laudable, may open the Pandora’s Box. Navin’s dilly-dallying with terrorists is tantamount to riding the tiger.  

A practical solution to the impending disaster is – however impractical it might look today – for Congress and BJP to forge a Reforms Agenda to make India the second greatest economic superpower. (Politicians are the bane of this country but we can’t do without politics or politicians). In BJP we have leaders like Arun Jaitley, a prime ministerial material, and Sushma Swaraj, the ideal compromise candidate; in Congress the promising Rahul Gandhi and the man of all seasons, Pranab Mukherjee, who should not be allowed to retire before he is a hundred years young. Draft Nitish Kumar for good governance and Mulayam for stability. The Prime Minister’s office should be a rolling one, one year per person, and be treated as the office of a chairperson rather than the omnipotent one.        

It could be experimentally proved in India that rolling Prime Ministers make better prime ministers than the non-rolling ones because each has to deliver the goodies in just one year. And the time for Rahul Gandhi to meet Akhilesh Yadav, notwithstanding the acrimony, is not after 2014 but now. Good personal relationship fosters good policies quintessential for the country’s progress. But have you heard of Digvijay Singh’s ambitious political plans? After losing his home state to BJP and helping and advising Rahul Gandhi to lose UP, Digy is setting up a political consultancy, cutting across party lines, on how to win state elections: he has all the case studies live

The year 2014 will be here even before we realize it. What is impossible in 2012 will be possible in 2014, the East meeting the West!

PRESIDENT OBAMA

 `ARRESTED’!  

By SUNNY THOMAS

Will someone tell her she is the Chief Minister of Bengal? For one, the Governor actually forgot to tell her that when she takes the oath as Chief Minister, she in fact becomes the Chief Minister. The coterie around her is keeping it a closely guarded secret for reasons better known for them. Not even our honest Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have communicated it to her.

 

The rumour mills have it that all foreign dignitaries from President Barack Obama to President Asif Ali Zardari, from Russian Prime Minister (and President-elect) Vladimir Putin to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and from Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadineja to Maldives President Mohammed Waheed are avoiding destination Kolkata for fear of getting arrested by Mamata Banerjee.  Just imagine, American newspapers coming out with the banner headline: PRESIDENT OBAMA ARRESTED IN KOLKATA! Cartoonists the world over have stopped cartooning Mamata for fear of Trinamul Fatwa!   

Strangely, she still blames instead of taking the blame on herself as a responsible leader! By the time she understands the Chief Minister’s role is different from that of the Opposition leader, she would actually be sitting in the opposition. And Brinda Karat, her successor, would be unveiling a statue of Mamata in the Writers’ Building for helping the Marxists to come back to power so soon.   

In Bengal, the police are the final arbiter of the freedom of the Press, and Jayalalithaa and Navin Patnaik, too, would like to strengthen the democracy by adopting this commendable policy in their respective states. When Jaya and Navin are at it, can Modi be far behind? 

  

What bedevils his critics is that Narendra Modi emerges cleaner and cleaner after every inquiry commission report, as if he is a model for the best detergent soap advertisement that claims to wash the toughest stains in a matter of minutes. Short of declaring nothing happened in Gujarat in 2002, commission after commission has upheld the exemplary conduct of Modi. At this rate, by 2014 Modi will be India’s cleanest political leader ever after the Father of the Nation.

Politics always has its comedy of errors. Tiger Raj Thackeray roared at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar daring him enter his den, Mumbai. Pat came the retort that he needs no visa (read, Raj’s courtesy) to visit any part of India. In effect, Nitish caught the tiger by its tail that fortunately did not come off!

Count Akhilesh Yadav among the sensible leaders (forget for a moment Raja Bayya and his party goon’s). Like Nitish, he keeps away from vendetta politics and engages himself with the development of his state.

Where is the Indian democracy heading for? Will it be hijacked by a pack of predators whose rapacious capacity for bloodshed rivals Pol Pot’s and Hitler’s? Will the House of Adam Smith that Manmohan Singh built be demolished overnight? Will India, the most favoured country after China to attract foreign capital, witness a drought, dashing the hope of millions for better standards of living – more jobs and upward mobility?    

PRESIDENT SAM PITRODA!

SUNNY THOMAS

If this time, Pranab Mukherjee is overlooked for Presidency, he must be awarded the Bharat Ratna! His only fault is he has become indispensable for UPA. Cutting across party lines, he would be triumphant should he contest because he has a personal equation with all MPs, especially those who matter. But let’s not cause a political tremor epicentred around 10 Janpath.   

With his eloquence and dignity, Dr Karan Singh would have made a Princely President ten years ago, and he still retains a considerable amount of his charm. But he was seen politically incorrect at crucial times when the country was looking for a President. Proximity to one politician is anathema to others, and Dr Singh has not cultivated a fine blend of political balance that instinctively recommends him to all political parties.    

Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari is the rightful choice and an ideal candidate for Rastrapathi Bhavan, and his studied neutrality is much admired in the political circles. But in politics, decisions are seldom taken on merit, and it is emotions and a flicker of excitement built around a person or an ideology that wins the day. And equally relevant is paranoia that Jinnah exploited and got away with, carving out a slice of the country, and that the exponents of Hindutva adroitly played to get a slice of power. But paranoia often burns out leaving a trail of disillusionment.

Rest assured the next President is not going to be a gadfly. When endangered, Congress is the best political party on earth, but in comfortable majority, the Congressmen have a propensity to be the worst! The man behind the mobile phone revolution, Sam Pitroda has no enemies but all admirers! Every political party would like to have a slice of Sam on their side. As though envisioning the political scenario of 2012, the man born as Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda is renamed Sam Pitroda!   

Just think of it, Virginia Wolf is not a wolf but a woman named Virginia Stephen, Marilyn Monroe is Norma Jean Mortenson(Baker), Woody Allen is Allen Stewart Konigsberg, Tom Cruise is Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, Mother Teresa is Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Che Guevara is Ernesto Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh is Nguyen Tat Thanh. The games that names play are indeed intriguing. 

Symbolically, the India democracy is far ahead of its American counterpart. Almost quarter of a century before Hillary Clinton was launched into the Presidential race orbit, we had Indira Gandhi adding a new nation in 1971 to the comity of world nations! A decade ahead of a Black man in White House, India had a meritorious President from the Backward Class. It seems India is the testing lab for America, because it does precisely what America is going to do next.      

What President Bill Gates could do to America is what President Sam Pitroda could do to India. He could inspire a generation of technocrats to be innovative, inventive and entrepreneurial, turning Bangalore, Hyderabad and satellite Delhi into Silicon Valleys.  This in turn could raise nation’s competitive edge on the global market.

Looking back, Dr Rajendra Prasad remains the ideal President, who could act as a counterweight to the all-powerful Prime Minister. In fact, if there was one President who could match the authority of the Prime Minister, it was Dr Prasad; but he could never match the popularity and hero-worship that Nehru commanded, which was an envy of monarchs and Presidents and Prime Ministers the world over.

Dr S Radhakrishnan was the tallest of all Presidents, not only by virtue of his physical height but also by virtue of his erudition and intellectual status. He was of the class of George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill; and if all the Presidents were of his stature, India would have enjoyed greater respect in the global scenario.  

Dr Zakir Hussain and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed died in office; one was a scholar, the other the quintessential gentleman who could never say `no’. So Ahmed could not say `no’ to the Declaration of Emergency, for which he was criticized. Because of his unwavering loyalty to Mrs Gandhi, the President had to endure the nickname `the rubber stamp’, which R K Laxman’s genius capitalized in a cartoon showing a peon bringing the President when he was asked to bring the rubber stamp, and the caption: You brought him here, I only asked you to bring the rubber stamp!  

As Presidents R Venkataraman and K R Narayanan showed maturity and steered clear of all controversies. Abdul Kalam was an eternal mentor and youth icon, whose book The Ignited Minds remained a bestseller even after his demitting the office.  

The only contemporary politician who could make a difference to Rashtrapathi Bhavan is Menaka Gandhi, who would turn the palatial mansion and the Mogul Gardens into a pet sanctuary, especially for dogs and cats!        

   

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S SILENCE

SUNNY THOMAS

Short of demanding a statue for himself in the Army Headquarters, so that posterity in search of inspiration can come beneath it and salute him, the general did everything to extol himself. Yet the Supreme Court did not recognize the flame of his eternal youth; and the defence ministry thought he was not so indispensable; and, worst of all, parliament did not rise to a man in giving him a standing ovation which he surely deserved.  

His critics say If honour was his primary concern, he would have resigned the day the Supreme Court gave the verdict on his date of birth, but he did not. If probity was his primary concern, he would have got the man who offered him the bribe arrested, ordered an enquiry, and blacklisted the firm, which he did not, suggesting he was willing to go along with the system which we all know is corrupt. If national security was his primary concern, why wait till the fag end of his tenure? He should have written the letter that he wrote to the PM in the first week of his assuming the office.  

President Harry Truman sacked General McArthur, the hero of the Second World War, for reporting late at the Oval Office. The American Senators did not raise a hue and cry, nor the nation outraged. The President meant business and the Armed Forces got the message. Truman was also the President who ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the Japanese won’t surrender (which was the most disgraceful thing for Japanese to do) and the casualties went on mounting on both sides. There was one more reason for dropping the atom bomb: it was just made and not tested, and war was the best time to test it! And the rest is history.

George Washington’s silence was far more eloquent than all the speeches made at the Philadelphia Conference, wrote his biographer. The dignity and decorum with which our own Rahul Dravid retired and made his farewell speech at Mumbai should set stands for our generals, parliamentarians and bureaucrats. The Greatest After the Berlin Wall, Rahul Dravid has a beautiful mind, which empowered him to do everything he did with a touch of Greco-Roman style! He is eloquence and dignity personified with or without his bat.   

Cheap behaviour from the occupant of an exalted office lowers the dignity and prestige of not only his office but also the institution he represents. If decision making has become synonymous with indecision making, that’s how the ministry of Defence responded in its murky hour. But the beauty of Indian democracy is that the members of Parliament, notorious for their unruly, irrepressible, even irresponsible behavior, showed exemplary conduct while the issue was debated.  

  

But it must be said in fairness to the General that he found support from retired men in uniform, which means everything is not all right at the top brass of the Armed Forces. The synchronization of the three forces at the apex level needs review and restructuring so that one chief does not step into the toes of the other two.

It is known to everyone that defence procurement and election funding are inextricably linked, with middle men and middle-middle men and middle-middle-middle men making hay while the `son’ shines! All parties that have tasted power know the nitty-gritty’s that outsiders will never understand. Men like George Fernandez were seasoned politicians and masters of the craft while novices like Rajiv Gandhi got stuck and did not know how to come out. The young visionary who introduced computer brain power that took India to new frontiers and the leader who envisioned economic liberalization which his successors implemented is today remembered for the wrong reason, the right ones erased from the memory.  

The problem with defence procurement is that transparency is not always possible. The level of technical competence needed is pretty high that even experts might find it difficult to arrive at the right decision. Throwing open such matters to the public would mean emotions and ideologies taking precedence over competencies – not to speak of demagogues conducting street shows in favour of their brand. Expert matters should be left to experts while some political scrutiny should be done by MPs rising above party lines.  

Nuclear deterrence is the key to future wars, and stockpiling conventional weapons beyond a point is wasting precious national resources. Which does not mean we should be caught awkwardly. Substandard ammunitions not reaching even half the target is often the buried truth. Greed and defence do make bad bedfellows.

Should our Generals be encouraged to meet the press every week and give interviews as many times a month as they wish? Should Air Force chief and Naval chief be encouraged to do the same? Television channels would surely love it! But shouldn’t there be a code of conduct for Generals and the Chief of staff? India Today’s cover stories (Self Before Service, and General Singh’s War on India) indeed display a rare political insight. Just come to think of it, Field Marshals S H F J Manekshaw and K N Cariappa and Gen Thimayya and Gen J N Choudhuri have sat on the same seat belittled by Singh!  

READ RAHUL, READ!

SUNNY THOMAS

I have a dream, said Martin Luther King, at a historic moment. Now, Mulayam has a dream that all the Opposition parties can join him and peacefully co-exist under his prime ministership!

For Mulayam Singh and L K Advani, it’s now or never. How long can one be in politics and not be the prime minister? Even career diplomats and bureaucrats like I K Gujral and Manmohan Singh have become prime ministers. And even farmers like Charan Singh and fumble harmer (read humble farmer) Deve Gowda made it to the PMO. Why, even Reservationists like V P Singh and Young Turks like Chandrashekhar had their fill. The Indian political system is patently skewed against seasoned politicians!  

By each passing day, the number of leaders throwing their hats in the ring is bourgeoning. It was Mamata who first offered her services to the nation as prime minister, discreetly though, through the Trinamool double-speak asking for a mid-term poll and later denying it. If there is a stalemate after a mid-term poll and the major regional players are check-mated, as it often happens, Trinamool could serve the nation by occupying the PMO and garnering a couple of major portfolios.

But the most qualified man among the like-minded (mid-term poll-minded) is, of course, Navin Patnaik. Every inch an Anglophile, and more English than Englishmen, Navin is the ideal choice. His name suggests he is a Renaissance man! But outside Odisha, he is still a gadfly.   

Nitish Kumar (whom Rahul Gandhi wanted to draft in his Vision India) is the most mature politician of all. His radical, people-friendly image would be decisive in the selection of a prime minister, and would be a counter-balance against Narendra Modi. It is no small measure of success that he liberated Bihar from the vice-grip of lawlessness and caste vendetta. 

Once the wags called BJP the Bharatiya Jayalalithaa Party because under the 13-month dispensation of Atal Behari  Vajpayee’s prime ministership, Jayalalithaa was the second-most important person, who could shake the dog by its tail. She even claimed at a press conference in Delhi soon after the fall of NDA government that she could be the next prime minister. She is ardently wooed by Narendra Modi, but the moment of truth has passed by her.    

      

We now come to the most formidable player, Narendra Modi whose very name would send shivers down the spines of a section of the people. He could be projected as the icon of development and the darling of the business community, or diabolically with a skull and two bones as you see near the electricity poles. A blown-up photo of Qutubuddin Ansari pleading for his life with a caption `Vote for Modi’ would nail Modi’s prime ministerial ambition. But there is no denying that Modi has the potential to re-define the Indian republic, should BJP get an absolute majority.   

If the nation wants a statue-maker (not a statute-maker), Maya will be ready and be willing to serve the nation. And if there is a mid-term poll every year (ideally, every six months), more and more people could be prime ministers. But one thing is certain: three of the most unlikely people to become prime ministers are Sharad Pawar, Advani and Mulayam, in that order. Ambition alone does not make anyone prime minister! And the most winnable prime ministerial candidate from the Opposition galaxy is Nitish Kumar.  

If Congress does not wish to eat the humble pie in 2014, the mandarins must learn to be humble! Make Mulayam the Deputy Prime Minister and offer a financial package for UP; give a major role for Trinamool and placate Mamata’s ego. Jaya’s mind, nobody can forecast, not even Jaya. If Congress wins over Mulayam and Mamata, Jaya would like to be with the winners. Forget about the present predicament of Congress; four states do not make India. And whoever makes a winning alliance, will win Election 2014. 

Congress must look back and learn from Jawaharlal Nehru, who was a superb political artist. He kept a lynx-eye on emerging regional leaders and inducted them in his Cabinet. When Praja Socialist Party was winning elections, he adopted socialism as Congress ideology and offered political office to its leaders, thus taking the wind out of its sail. He did not tolerate opposition; rather he destroyed opposition with consummate political skill.

Those who wish to rule the country must learn to win hearts, not enemies. A hundred years ago, Dale Carnegie wrote a book, as if exclusively for Rahul Gandhi: How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you haven’t read the book, Read Rahul, Read!        

GOOD BUDGET FOR BAD TIMES

SUNNY THOMAS

Peeling the budget onion live, three things emerge: numbers, survival, and nation! All budgets are about numbers, but Pranab Dada’s numbers strike a different stroke. They are about the number of numbers rather than the numbers per se. (In a democracy, the number of votes in Parliament matters more than the numbers un the budget). So without politics, the budget makes no sense; and, in fact, what gives economics its pre-eminence is the politics (popularity) behind it. After nuclear science, economics has emerged as the most sought-after discipline, and good economists are sought after by presidents and prime ministers the world over. Dada’s numbers in reality reflect the political composition of the Indian parliament.  

Homo sapiens display their elements when threatened as a species, or even as a political party or as individuals. The budget has something for each of its allies, in hope or in reality, that the general mood among them is one of optimism. After all, national politics is all about dividing the cake among the stakeholders.  

Thinking about the nation, the first thing that comes to our mind is the bravado of the one and only Dinesh Trivedi, ex-Railway minister: The nation comes first, the family second, and the party third. The statement has a ring of greatness, as Caesar’s `I went, I saw, I conquered!’ or Napoleon’s `The word impossible is found only in the dictionary of fools’ or Kennedy’s `Therefore my countrymen, Do not ask what the country can do for you, but always ask, what you can do for the country’. 

Notwithstanding his greatness, the man just disappeared like a ticketless traveller as the ticket examiner appeared in the compartment. The ticket examiner was, of course, Mamata Banerjee in Delhi! (Seeing what happened, a friend suggested that the National School of Drama should be shifted from Delhi to Kolkota since all the actors of this drama, Dada, Didi and Vedi, hail from the same state).    

The wisdom of this Grand Old Man, Pranab Mukherjee, is reflected in his budget because he found time to think of the nation and the economy even while sitting in an uneasy chair. But the budget would always be anti-people for CPM and directionless for BJP because the only person who can give a sense of direction is Narendra Modi! Every TV channel has budget prophets who ``sitting in the same studio last year forecast the budget deficit’’ proving the finance minister wrong all the time!  

The one criterion to judge any budget is the question, `Are the numbers credible?’ Dada’s numbers are mostly credible and where they tend to err is on the window-dressing side, which is the prerogative of every finance minister to project optimism rather than the ground reality. The finance minister’s optimism is as much important to the economy as that of the investors on the stock market.      

Perhaps the best analysis of the budget came from two outstanding citizens, Chanda Kochhar, CEO, ICICI Bank, and Kumara Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group. They indeed merit our time and enlighten us on the intricacies of the craft.

Kochhar: The budget is a pragmatic exercise aimed at growth and stability in the backdrop of the challenging year gone by and the broad consensus needed for various policy measures. Given the fiscal imperatives, it goes further to set a direction for fiscal consolidation to ensure long-term stability and sustainability of the growth momentum in the economy.

Fiscal 2012 has been a challenging year for the Indian economy. Both global and domestic factors resulted in a moderation of economic activity, led to persistent inflationary pressures and contributed to a deterioration in the current account and fiscal position.        

Birla: The finance minister has presented a credible and prudent budget. This is commendable, considering the multiple headwinds, by way of anaemic global recovery, persistent high oil prices, lower than budget tax revenues, sharp movements in rupee exchange rate and stubborn inflation during much of the year, resulting in high interest rates. The compulsion of managing a coalition government, no doubt, has narrowed policy option.    

Despite these negatives, the budget ends up as being pragmatic. It aims to rev up GDP growth from 6.9% in 2011-12 to 7.6% in 2012-13. This would be lower than the 8.4% GDP growth in the preceding two years. The budget also seeks to contain the fiscal deficit at 5.1% of GDP, down from 5.9% last year.  Clearly, a fine balance is sought to be struck between the twin imperatives of growth and fiscal soundness.

After reading Kochhar and Birla, both practitioners and high achievers, you tend to discount tons and tons of trivia aired or printed as expert comments. God save our experts! But don’t forget the Indian economy was the first to come out of the global meltdown and India, along with China, holds the key to hedge a second global meltdown!    

THE MAFIA WANTS MIDTERM POLLS

SUNNY THOMAS

Overexposed, the mafia wants a midterm poll. And a patronizing government that allows plundering the nation’s natural resources. Money and muzzle power, the mafia has, as the killing of honest (police) officers demonstrate. To sync with the mafia, some of our political parties clothed in the ideological fig leaf to cover their naked ambition, too, demand a mid-term poll. In the name of patriotism, they want to loot the country!

Dancing behind the move is a fickle-minded chief minister, known for her trail of misery wherever she goes and the Group of Five scheming ahead for vain glory. That frequent elections are a drain on the Exchequer that stoke inflationary pressure on the economy that will rob people of their hard-earned incomes are of little concern for the Gang of Five in their horse race of aggrandizement.     

The alluring thing about a mafia democracy is that it can eliminate political rivals who are difficult to match in a battle of the ballot. No judiciary can touch the mafia because it leaves little tangible evidence, and even if there could be witnesses by accident, chilling fear down their spines silences them.

The intelligence mafia in America got John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinated in the 1960s, inaugurating an era of trigger-happy Presidents who sent American troops abroad at the slightest of provocation, and turning America from the most admired nation to the most disliked nation of the world! 

In the Canadian equivalent of Watergate – perhaps, too mild a comparison – nine sitting judges suddenly died, presumably silenced by the mafia for their knowledge and involvement. In a media bombshell, lawyer John Frederick Carten revealed that some politicians hand in glove with the water mafia were planning to redirect the flow of certain north Canadian rivers to benefit some private interests.

Williston Lake sits at an elevation of 2200 feet above sea level (671 m). A properly constructed aqueduct would permit water to flow down hill to California without the aid of expensive energy consuming pumping stations. Ten feet of water, taken from the surface, every year, would provide approximately 4 million acre feet, annually. If a fraction of the outflow of Williston Lake, 4 million acre feet, were diverted and sold in southern California for $1,000 per acre foot the annual revenue would be $4 billion. BEHIND EVERY GREAT CRIME IS A GREAT MOTIVE. 

In Italy, politicians often court mafia who can obtain votes during elections. An influential mafia can bring in thousands of votes for a candidate. The Italian Parliament has 945 seats and a large number of political parties vying for them. So the candidate wins by a few thousand votes and mafia support is decisive for success.

There are between 1,500 and 2,000 men of honor (mafia members) in Palermo province. Multiply that by 50 and you get a nice package of 75,000 to 100,000 votes to go to friendly parties and candidates.

It is the transition from feudalism to capitalism that witnessed the birth of mafia in Sicily in the mid-19th century. In India, it is the transition from command economy to free market economy that makes the home soil fertile for mafia. In Sicily, rising food prices made many law-abiding citizens bandits; in India, the rising petroleum prices (Dr Manmohan Singh’s favourite dose) would tempt many law-abiding citizens into mafia-dom.  

Long live the mafia, the porn mafia, the drug mafia, the sand mafia, the mine mafia, the realtor mafia, the b’rat (short for bureaucrat) mafia and the T-mafia (T for Trinamool)! Let us make Indian democracy safe for mafia!!