posting in full from the Deccan Chronicle Aug 20 2007...
Left has a problem for every solution
By Suhel Seth
There has been excessive criticism about the Left parties with relevance to the Indo-US nuclear deal: the Prime Minister has been courageous, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been pragmatic and Prakash Karat has been stern. I have often heard industrialists crib about the Left, on how the Left is coming in the way of real progress. Ram Jethmalani, at a dinner in Mumbai last week, told me how he had written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing support on the nuclear deal and he too felt that the Left was barking up the wrong tree.
Much has been written on the nuclear deal. Frankly, I just don’t give a damn. While everyone is concerned about relations with the United States and the nuclear issue, my anger stems from the fact that even today, the Delhi-Gurgaon connector is a mess. T.R. Baalu, the minister, must be thrown out. This shameful act of delays and more delays cannot be tolerated, but more of that later, since, as I said, everyone is targeting the Left.
I believe India has a great need for the Left and their way of thinking.
We need the lunatic fringe amongst us, or else, what will the news channels cover? We need to see footage of some real old men determining the future of a really young country from their own impoverished ivory (or perhaps paper, in their case) castles, and telling us what we need to do.
The Left is the rightful naysayer that every country needs. I was born and raised in Bengal, and thus I know the DNA of the Left very well. They are classic bullies when they need to be. Essentially, they are cowards, and finally, Dr Manmohan Singh has understood that.
They always bark, but can never bite, because the leash is elsewhere — in some godforsaken province in China. And like most things that emerge from Bengal, the Left has a problem for every solution, which is why we need them.
We are a country which specialises in tabling why things cannot be done. Ask an Indian to do something and he will tell you why it cannot be done. This is the mantra of our bureaucracy as well. A bureaucrat is essentially a Leftist in the manner he thinks, and more importantly, the way he works. Which is why a bureaucrat never really works, he makes others work. He is there to stall, not solve, and that to my mind is an endearing quality for which we should thank, and not castigate, the Left.
The Left has every right to be angry. The States they run are run-down but the rest of the country is progressing very well without them. This irks them, because their primary belief of equality says that every Indian must be equally poor and not equally rich.
The Left parties hate progress because progress means money, and since they believe in being and behaving poor, riches find no place in their lives. Which is why they will wear linen shirts only when they are not on television. The Left cannot also tolerate any form of globalisation or economic integration. For them, globalisation is Cuba talking to India, and not India talking to the United States, which is why they are opposed to everything that emanates from the US.
They hate George Bush, but then they’ve hated everything that’s American. They hate David Mulford too (the US ambassador to India), but in this regard they are in a majority.
You have to empathise with the Left: they all come from simple backgrounds. The Left is also very honest. And this is for real. You will never see them involved in any scandal relating to money. Their party presidents will never be caught on camera accepting Rs 1 lakh and silly amounts like that.
The Left truly has greater integrity than any other political party, and that is perhaps another reason why we need them so desperately in India.
All said and done, living with the Left is a bit like living with your mother-in-law. You do it in order to maintain peace and harmony, but then it is a powder-keg waiting to explode, and who better to experience this than the sedate Dr Manmohan Singh? There was a time, during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s regime, when I said that the women in his alliance would give him sleepless nights: today the gender has been replaced by an ideology, and I pity Dr Singh’s plight.
Sleeping with the Left is a bit like sleeping with an elephant. Dangerous to say the least, because you never know when it might roll over.
8 comments:
was this posted on this blog, or where did i read this ?
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=punj%2Fpunj112.txt&writer=punj
-quote-
The LDF has been ruling the State for the last one year. And within this period, the CPI(M)-led coalition has been found involved in a plethora of scandals.The scandals have been exposed even before the so-called honeymoon period has expired. The latest in the series is the bribery exposé. The CPI(M)'s Malayalam daily, Desabhimani, has allegedly accepted a bribe of Rs 1 crore from the owner of a finance company that cheated thousands of its depositors, to help the fly-by-night operator evade the clutches of law. In the second instance, the same newspaper allegedly accepted Rs 2 crore from a lottery baron to bail him out - the man has been absconding.
-unquote-
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC_Lavalin_scandal
SNC-Lavalin power scandal is one of the important political scams that rocked Kerala politics . The Comptroller and Auditor General of India[1]report indicted a CPI(M)-led government of the mid-1990s for a Rs 374.50 crore loss to the exchequer.[2]
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True, their National leaders have no need to beg for lakhs.. when they have crores being made at the state level
CPI and honesty eh ??
May be in Bengal..
but how come "China's interest is CPI's interest" ?
http://www.saag.org/%5Cpapers24%5Cpaper2335.html
In his latest article, Arun Shourie said that the Indian 123 agreement with the USA should have been formulated on the lines of the Chinese 123, because in that it is clearly said that the USA cannot abrogate the treaty citing domestic US laws, which don’t apply to China.
Yesterday I was watching the Devil’s Advocate programme with Karan Thapar crossexamining Singhvi and Yashwant Sinha, in the context of the Nuclear Deal. Amit Mitra, the Secretary General of FICCI said that the Chinese 123 with the USA is far worse than that of the Indian 123. Which is the truth? Can somebody enlighten me?
India needs nuclear energy for its energy security and there is no doubt about it. However, India need not sell its soul for this. I can’t understand why the Nuclear deal could not have been done in a transparent manner, in which case Congress could have got the support of the NDA. The Left would have kept quiet, like it did on numerous occasions, when the Congress and the BJP together worked in unison for ushering in economic reforms. Where is the need to put the country’s future in the hands of the future US Presidents in the name of energy security? It beats me why this had to be a hush-hush affair?
If you had a chance to go through the readers’ comments on many of the Rediff’s articles on the issue of the Nuclear Deal, you would be convinced that many of the educated of this country support the Congress and the Deal. (It goes without saying that they are ignorant of the details of the Deal) That makes one wonder whether Congress would take a calculated risk and opt for a snap poll. The illiterate Indians can be taken for granted anyway, since they do not have any view on the Deal. If Congress wins, that would be the end of independent India for a long time to come.
While the Atlanticists have been very noisily against this nuclear deal, the Chinese have been curiously very quiet. But now we see the Indian communists stubbornly hollering against the deal. Clearly they are the means by which China hopes to scuttle the deal.
Those who argue that India is getting a better deal than China tend to forget that, China has a trump card up its sleeve, known as "veto" in UN security council. And that gives China a big leverage against pipsqueaks like Australia and other NSG members in case China breaks any rules. What leverage does India have?
This Congress govt has tied India in knots..
At this stage Damned if we agree to this deal.. more damned if we do not...
There is no easy way out..
we will have to endure the repercussions of this grave folly for a long time..
BJP's reactions have been pretty dissapointing to say the least.. It seems a lot of political posturing..and nuting more..
The less said about the Commies the better..
Their unabashed love for China bordering on insane is out in the full glare of the public..Its gonna take a lot of work for our wimpy ELM to negate this fact in the future...
China doesn't fund the UN like others do, that's for sure. So it's not clear how truly robust their foothold over others through the UN really is.
The reason why many of the readers of Rediff are for the deal is because deep down many of them feel that the Left guys are against the deal because they are anti-India!
Sometimes it is better to have this Vanara Sena around just because they cannot possibly be wrong 100% of the time! I think this time they are right in opposing the deal even if the Chinee Bhais are goading them. If this govt falls on account of the nuclear deal it would be an instance of Divine Providence working in favour of India. Manmoron Singh and Antonia Gandhi need to spend the rest of their days in peace, untrammeled by matters of statecraft because neither of them has the icranial wherewithal for grappling with the complexity of such deals.
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