Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Why I would vote YES in Scottish referendum

You would have heard lot of promises from the Yes camp and the No Camp.  What you would not have heard from both camps is that ‘if there is Independence then like many other counties we will have an additional public holiday called ‘Independence day ‘that we don’t have currently.  :-)

I would vote 'Yes' for a simple reason that Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has very clearly stated that an Independent Scotland would welcome immigrants.  This has been clearly declared in SNP's blue print 'Scotland's Future'. The document is available online. Libraries carry it. Irrespective of the outcome or your decision on referendum, i would recommend reading it. If not at least get a copy of it. It’s a historic document.  The same immigration friendly attitude has been reinforced by speeches of Scottish parliament ministers as well.
This reason is close my heart. As majority of us are first generation immigrants, we need to think what will be favorable to us. This is the reason close to my heart.  That is good enough for me to vote 'Yes'.
If you would like to understand other reasons (for the head) for voting 'Yes' then continue to read. :-) 

The first time I came to know about Scotland (long before migrating) was through the movie ‘Brave Heart’. So I don’t have any difficultly in seeing Scotland a nation.   It has been an independent nation for a long time. Even under the Roman rule about 2000 years ago, Scotland was not under Roman Empire.  Until 300 years ago, (act of union in 1707) Scotland has been independent.   There is nothing wrong in getting back to that Independent state.
People of Indian Origin, generally don’t like to get stigmatized with being called a Nationalist.  I don’t have that problem with that because even in India, I have always been a Hindu Nationalist. It is a natural choice for me here.  If I had to take another passport than my current Indian passport, I would prefer a Scottish passport than British. It is about personal comfort with identity.

Some general questions / concerns people rise
Would independent Scotland be economically viable? Or Can Scotland survive after Independence.
Yes.  Scotland will not only survive after Independence, but flourish.  
As per today’s revenues, an Independent Scotland will be one of the 20 richest countries in the world.  Moody’s rating agency acknowledges it by saying ‘All possible outcomes point to Scotland being among wealthiest nations’.
Another global rating agency Standard and Poor says ‘Even after excluding North sea output, Scotland will qualify for the highest economic assessment.

What will happen to Currency?
Even after Independence, there is a time frame of about 18 months time to negotiate the terms of Independence.  The currency will be decided at that period.  It is good to keep the options open. The most likely choice will be the keeping pound Sterling with a currency union.
Everyone in Yes denies that possibility because accepting it will only support the ‘Yes’ Camp.
Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has already indicated that they will be less willing to take a share of the national debt if there is no currency union.  As of Q1 2013 UK government debt amounted to £1,377 billion, or 88.1% of total GDP. Westminster will not let Scotland walk away without a slice of it.  So currency union most likely thing to happen.   In my humble experience 'You get the best deal, only (i repeat) only if you are ready to walk away from it.'

As an Indian Immigrant, what is beneficial to me?
Scotland has little more than 5 million (i.e. about 50 lacs) population i.e. only half of Chennai.  The vast majority of the population (about 80%) lives in the central belt with about 50 miles wide between Glasgow and Edinburgh.  Scotland needs people. The immigration policies are hurting Scotland.
SNP has very clearly stated that an Independent Scotland would welcome immigrants. This is the single most important reason for me.

Majority of Indians in Edinburgh have a stigma towards the Scottish Independence
This mainly stems from India’s own difficult experience on Partition and other later separatist movements in India.  You need to understand that India’s partition was driven by an intolerant religion that wanted its own identity whereas Scottish independence is driven by Governance and Economics.

 What will happen to Jobs? Will large businesses leave?
Corporations/Businesses do not care about politics.  Businesses will operate in a place where it makes business sense i.e. profitable.   Scotland already has reputed Universities that produce talent.  If Scotland has necessary financial incentives  ( e.g a lower corporation tax  than rest of UK ) then businesses will not only leave but even relocate their business to Scotland.  For your information:  Apple corporation had a subsidiary in Ireland with huge cash reserves because it was tax efficient.

Larger risk: If you vote ‘No’ then after 2 years if UK leaves EU (as the current tories are talking about leaving EU ) Scotland will be at the higher risk.  If UK leaves EU, it will lose its largest trading partner. Scotland will have less deciding power in that referendum (like many things now) because England is more heavily populated compared to Scotland.   If Scotland is independent then it can make a decision on its own about EU.

In simple words ‘A country’s political future will drive its Economics' not the other way around. What kind of future do you want for Scotland? Independent or Dependent?


Posted by at 1 comment:

Friday, June 20, 2014

Is Winston Churchill a racist?

Today, I got a interesting Facebook forward on the role of British in the infamous 'Bengal Famine'. It had some quotes of Winston Churchill.

Some of his quotes on India  in the article are :
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
- In conversation to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India. This quotation is widely cited as written in "a letter to Leo Amery"
Indians 'Breed like Rabbits'.
The above comments were disturbing to me and that made me to wonder whether 'Winston Churchill is a racist’? 

 I was trying hard to not judge  him by the above quotes alone, because  politicians are often mis-quoted. I continued to read bit more over the Internet about Churchill, I came across the following quotes:
It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King.
-          Commenting on Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931

I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place.
-          Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

The above 2 comments clearly shows his 'superiority' attitude.  

 My initial views on Churchill were too naive. All I knew was that he was British prime minister of the UK during the troubled period  is called 'Second World War'. I have seen few the old video and audio clippings of his speeches. What I did not know is that he is prolific writer and was awarded noble prize for his writing, especially, for his work on Second World War.

If you want to read Winston Churchill online (www.winstonchurchill.org ) is a good place to start. It’s interesting to see that he above centre is based in the U.S.

Here is my summary of his speech 'Our Duty in India':
Churchill views the Indian National Freedom movement as 'Brahmin oligarchy'. [I have heard similar views in communist writings in India (what many refer as 'vomiting' of western views in India), maybe this is their source]  He disapproves Gandhi's leadership. 
He ridicules Nehru as a benefactor of British Empire with the following quote
'Already Nehru, his young rival in the Indian Congress, is preparing to supersede him the moment that he has squeezed his last drop from the British lemon.'
For many of you,  who are already aware that Nehru was more British by his upbringing than Indian, the above comment will not be a surprise. 
 In his Churchill's own words India was easier to administer.
'Do not be disquieted by exaggerations of the difficulty of maintaining order in India which are spread about for interested motives by the Socialist ministers and their allies. In the whole of the disturbances of the last year - except on the frontier - scarcely a British soldier has been required. Very few people have been killed or severely wounded in the rioting'.
He clearly supports the Christian Evangelisation in India  and it will be impacted if the British leaves India.
'There are also nearly five million Indian Christians in India, a large proportion of whom can read and write, and some of whom have shown themselves exceptionally gifted. It will be a sorry day when the arm of Britain can no longer offer them the protection of an equal law.'

Here are my favorite quotes from his speech on 'Our Duty in India':
'The Hindus do not possess among their many virtues that of being a fighting race. The whole south of India is peopled with races deserving all earnest solicitude and regard, but incapable of self-defence. It is in the north alone that the fighting races dwell. '

'there dwell in India seventy millions of Moslems, a race of far greater physical vigour and fierceness, armed with a religion which lends itself only too readily to war and conquest. While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword. '

The  question may still linger in your mind that 'Is Winston Churchill a racist'? The following incidents and statement from Leo Amery might throw some light.
During the infamous Bengal Famine, Leo Amery then Secretary of State for India and Burma and Viceroy of India, Wavell, tries had to convince Winston Churchill to get some food supply to India.  Churchill responded with a telegram to Wavell asking, "if food was so scarce, why Gandhi hadn't died yet."   The fact that about 4 million people died in the Bengal Famine will show how insensitive Churchill had been on the food supply to India at critical juncture. 


"Naturally I lost patience," Amery records, "and couldn't help telling him that I didn't see much difference between his outlook and Hitler's, which annoyed him no little."

References:
1. The facebook forward that i received on Bengal Famine
2. Article with similar view on the Bengal famine in the Telegraph:
3. Churchill's Empire - book critical of Churchill
4. There is a book review of the 'Churchill Empire' defending the Churchill.


Posted by at 1 comment:

Monday, April 14, 2014

AAP – The party is not revolutionary not even a new experiment.

As an active social worker (a swayamsevak) and a social observer for more than half of my life now, I have been part of election campaigns before.  My views here are not the views of a political commentator / an academic, but it’s the view of a normal social worker from the normal middle class background who has experience in working in the streets.
After the Delhi elections, some of my friends from Bharat, were surprised with of AAP winning so many seats and were wondering whether it’s a beginning of a new type of Indian politics. My humble response to them was the path taken by AAP is nothing new (or revolutionary) and it will not work in the long term, even if AAP managed to form a government in Delhi. (Nothing has changed in the last few months that will force me to change the above view.  AAP is progressing ! exactly as i anticipated. )

The following reasons for making the above statement.

1.       Political change will not bring about social reform.
Corruption is not a problem only at the government level.  It has pervaded all walks of national life.  Unfortunately the common man is also corrupt.  There was a similar view resonated in a Tamil weekly magazine by a retired IAS officer, who said people who are running AAP does not know how corrupt and selfish the common man has become now-a-days.  
Let me give a small example to drive home this point. Many of us would have stood in a queue in railway stations for getting tickets, have we not seen people who walk to the front of the  line asking people in the front of the line to get tickets for them as they don’t want to stand in the queue.  These are common people too. I am proud to say that I have fought with some of them in railway stations for their unfair selfish behaviour; unfortunately there is large number of them.   The point that I am trying to make here is ‘common man’ is not a qualification.
Coming from political family is not a qualification. Similarly being a common man is not a qualification for working for society.  Doing work for the society means we need people with some basic qualities (Love for the our samaj - i.e community, integrity in Character, a heart that can cry for others, a humble head, good team building skills and most importantly the ability to put organization above oneself - all the time).  People with those attributes don’t jump from sky and they are made in our neighborhoods and they rise up to become our leaders. The social movements that the produce such leaders bring about social change and not just a mere change in government. 

2.       Political change without adequate social reform will not be sustainable even if the political change happens.

We the people of Tamil Nadu over throw the Congress party in 1967. Mr Karunanidhi as per his own biography ( Nenjukku Nedhi – in Tamil meaning Justice for the heart) started his public life without another pair of cloths to change.  (Unlike Mr Arvind  Kejriwal whose family holidays in Singapore). Mr Karunanidhi started the political carrier from such humble background and we the people of Tamil Nadu elected such a common man and his party  to power (many of them were college students when winning elections).
Today his family(s) J  is one of the richest families in Asia or even may be in the world. (The additional s family is not a mistake as Mr Karunanidhi is known to be married 3 times with 2 wives still alive). After about 50 years of Dravidian party rule, Tamil Nadu is one of the backward states today (when compared to Gujarat) with poor roads, poor water supply and poor state of electricity supply just like many other part of Bharat.
Something similar happened in Assam. The students there decided to replace the government and succeeded (Assam Gana Parishad - AGP in short). The AGP contested the State Assembly elections held in December 1985 and swept the polls by winning 67 of the 126 seats apart from capturing seven of the 14 Lok Sabha (Parliament) seats, and formed the Government of Assam.  Unfortunately it did not result in any major development of the state of Assam nor did the infiltration from Bangladeshis into Assam stopped (one of the key points that AGP fought for – i.e. to end Bangladeshi Muslim infiltration)



3.   Particularly in the case of AAP that was born out of the India against Corruption movement
·        Most of the people who were part of the Anti corruption movement are not supporting AAP. (People like Sri Anna Hazare, Sri Baba Ramdev and  Smt. Kiran Bedi )
Some of them are even against AAP. Smt Kiran Bedi has openly come forwarded and conveyed her support for Sri Narendra Modi in the National election.
·        AAP missed the golden opportunity: They were given chance to form the Delhi government but resigned on their own in less than 2 months.
·         A party with only a negative campaign that every other political party is bad will be become another bad political party. I can already see it in their behaviour
o   their anti-India Statements on Kashmir,
o   Muslim appeasement  by appealing to their community separately asking them to vote from them
o     Only Muslim AAP candidates contesting  in Muslim majority constituencies. (i.e. they are also playing the communal card like Congress)


·        AAP is another communist party with a new name. This is no secret about it and you can see it evidently in their calls to ask Maoists to join their party, we have communists in different flavours CPI (alphabets A to Z in brackets). Since there is a communist party almost on every capital letter after CPI, (instead of trying out CPI with lower case alphabet extensions) they might have wanted to try out a new name.  As Sri Subramanian Swamy quoted ‘AAP will become a text book study for many of our communist comrades’ on how to launch a communist party into main stream politics.

·         AAP- A party hyped by the media.  Lot of journalists have been part of the AAP (typically from the English press- many of them left  leaning). Some of them have been rewarded with seats in the National elections.  They can write whatever they want in their own respective media spear of influence  but winning elections needs different set of skills.

·         Most importantly, the following is the demography the supports AAP:
o   Smaller section of the educated middle class that still carry the ‘secular’ luggage.      These ‘secular luggage’ carriers are afraid to support BJP due to the so-called ‘unsecular’ stigma associated with it. (I used to carry that luggage too, then I decided to drop it and move on after understanding the social fabric of the nation –i.e.  India is secular only because it’s a Hindu nation. )
o     Minorities – who have been always tactical voters- generally voting for alternatives to BJP. Especially for Muslims  -supporting AAP willl makes them appear less communal! than Muslims supporting Akbaruddin Owaisi [from All India Majlis-e Ittihad al-Muslimin party].   Please don't feel bad, if you can’t pronounce that party name  J

The above constituents will not dent the BJP vote share, what you will see in the election results in 2014  is the erosion of vote share of congress and the ‘secular’ members of the ‘imaginary’ third front.

This will be the last election that AAP will be talked about in this large scale. In the next election they will be part of the long list of losers. 





Posted by at 1 comment:

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Response to Financial Times article title 'Investors put too much faith on Modi turn around'

hi David,

This letter is in response to the Financial Times article title 'Investors put too much faith on Modi turn around' on Financial Times dated January 30th 2014.
Obviously, you seemed to get your view from news from typical English medium of press.  Usually that news is tilted towards the left (you can read communist).
They try to judge Modi by the worst apprehensions of Critics,  Kejriwal (AAP leader &  Delhi chief minister) by his intensions and Rahul ( the congress hopeful) by the looks'. They don’t judge none of them by their deeds.
You need to understand that this English medium press does not reflect the view of the mainstream electorate.
Here are some of the myths that you have carried in your article. 
You are mentioning about the 'alleged development of Gujarat'.  It’s not alleged. It’s real. Out of the many achievements of Modi, two are outstanding: they are uninterrupted electricity and water supply in Gujarat.  When rest of India was growing at 9%, Gujarat was growing on separeate faster track with 13% GDP.
There have been studies by university academics who have conducted the human resource index measurements also (grudgingly - because of leftist  orientation) accept the overall improvement in the living conditions of the people. 
BJP is not a one man ( or one woman) controlled party, it has its own think tank, that will guide the economic policies.  Modi will provide the necessary leadership.
The hype about AAP is unjustified. BJP is a national party with pan-India presence. In the state elections held less than 2 months ago, BJP won 5 out of 6 states. Even in Delhi BJP was the single largest party. 
The English medium press still keeps praising the number 2 party i.e AAP as if it’s a big show stopper. It would be very surprising if AAP wins more than 10 parliamentary seats. 

I do agree with the tile of your article 'Investors put too much faith on Modi turn around'. Its because BJP is business friendly in its policies. 
Posted by at 1 comment:

Response to the Financial Times Editorial column on 10th January, 2014 titled 'Modern India and Medieval values'


This letter is in response to the Financial Times Editorial column on 10th  January, 2014 titled 'Modern India and Medieval values'.  The article merely mentions the heavy handed behaviour of the U.S treatment of an Indian diplomat, where as it sees the reciprocation of India in poor light. 

You need to understand that the Indian public opinion, not just in India but even Indians abroad are delighted to see such strong response from India. 
Let me tell how U.S and the West (in general) behaves when their citizens violate the law when they are abroad.  Few months ago 2 Italian marines killed 2 Indian fisherman in the Indian waters ( they were contracted for security of an oil tanker). They got arrested lawfully on Indian soil for their crime . The accused had fully access to Italian council officials.  They were released on bail with assurance from Italian Embassy.  
The 2 accused Italian marines fled the country saying that they had out-of-court settlement with the victim's family. The high-court of Kerala got furious.  Indian government had to summon Italian Ambassador and warn them of this shameful behaviour.
Last year when a American citizen killed 2 people in Pakistan. The U.S government paid money and brought it back home without any court proceedings. If U.S respects law so much, why cant it let the U.S national face the court proceedings in Pakistan. Its all hipocracy. This a consistent behaviour of the west. It belittles the judiciary system in the east. 
It does not matter even if the Indian Diplomat was wrong. Its a petty offence, compared to the 2 other offences that I mentioned earlier, where people got killed and their western government stood for their citizens.

I was laughing out loud when I read the line 'India does not minimum wage' in the article.  Yes. India does not have minimum wage because Indians don't middle with markets.  My setting minimum wage, the west actually determines how much the haircut should cost.  In reality that's what it translates to. 
Living conditions of people of relative to the overall living conditions in a society.  If you stop the benefit system here then  the living conditions of those people live on them also will be different.  So stop prescribing your problems as solutions to others. 

We Indians are delighted to see India throwing 'the books of rules' on U.S face.  
Diplomacy  is a two way process. You will be treated the way you treat others.

(letter for sent via email on 30th Jan 2014: still response awaited. )
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)