Friday, May 15, 2020

Gibberish Arguments pertaining to Economic Stimulus Package don “The Hindu” newspaper


The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

A trio and a duo shared many enlightening thoughts over the past two days in “India’s National newspaper”, The Hindu.  The trio- Jayati Ghosh (from JNU), Prabhat Patnaik(from JNU) along with Harsh Mander (who was a member of Sonia Gandhi’s NAC) have penned “A plan to revive a broken economy” in The Hindu. The NAC was the super-cabinet during the UPA’s rule. All policies were credited to “suggestions” from the NAC. Two days after the massive announcement of a 20 lakh crore package by the Prime Minister of India, the trio write in The Hindu and tells us that “….but this includes already allocated money of Rs. 6-lakh crore and monetary policy directives to banks and non-banking financial companies
The Prime Minister was very explicit in his announcement. The 20-lakh crore package to revive the economy includes amounts from the announcements already made by FM & RBI and will include the new announcements by the Finance Minister. Why does the trio find the need to write an obnoxious sentence like “but this includes”?  “But this includes” clearly implies that this 6-lakh crore is not of any use to help the economy. Do they make that argument in his article? No. Instead what is it that he proposes?
Food and cash transfers first”. They propose transfer of INR 7000 per month for three months per household and 10kgs of free grains for 6 months. I have always wondered why Sonia Gandhi, her family, her party and her NAC have this love towards direct transfer of money? And the only plausible explanation that comes to mind is that this is one of the ways to perpetrate a scam and fill the coffers.
You may want to ask me then – but this is Modi government so why would a scam happen. Here’s where the trio come up with a brilliant solution. They want, wait for it, the central government to borrow from the RBI and transfer the money to the state governments who will then decide whom to give the money to! Am not kidding, here are their own words – “The required cash and food have to be handed over to State governments to make the actual transfers”. Do you feel like standing up and do a slow-clap for this unparalleled brilliance? Do remember – the Congress is in power in considerable number of states.
And then they arrive at their favorite topic – the MNREGA program. They want the government to take away the limit of 100 days and make the program applicable to all through the year. So now they want governments to give 21,000 per family and also daily work for the whole of the next year? Not content with this idea, they moot another mind-boggling idea – “introduce an Urban Employment Guarantee Program”. How should this be done? “Urban local bodies must take charge of this program and would need to be revamped for this purpose.”
Oh! why not, that’s just so easy to do! Let’s wake up one day and “revamp urban local bodies”! I wonder why the government can’t think of such easy solutions like “revamp” of our urban local bodies. Why isn’t such sagely advice adhered to by the Modi government?
Who should be giving the jobs? Not just the government. They now want “work in the MSMEs” to also be included in this program. Don’t scratch your head to understand how this will even work. It will work because these eminences have said so. Otherwise the economy is doomed!
Not content with the ideas they have unleashed, they go full throttle, lose total control and bombard us with more mind-boggling ideas - print more money, increase public revenues (Oh, where would we be if they didn’t tell us this!), 2% tax on top 1% of population, and do something with IMF.
While these eminences focus on plan to revive economy after a large part of the plan is actually unveiled, we had two other eminences – Prashant Bhushan and Shyam Agarwal – tell us in another article that “Guidelines issued by the Centre to the States under the Disaster Management Act are unconstitutional”. What bothers me most is the utter lack of creativity amongst this elite batch of eminent intellectuals. Can’t they come up with more original thoughts than just “unconstitutional”? Just a couple of weeks back, Owaisi came up with this argument that was discussed here. And now since it doesn’t seem to have gained enough traction, other members of the group want to propagate it. They make no new argument so there is no need for us to write the same rebuttal again. Suffice it to say that the entire country has been witness to how the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers have closely coordinated, interacted and helped the country fight an unprecedented crisis. While they were busy doing actual work, the eminences found space in The Hindu to vent out their ill-gotten ideas and ill-conceived musings.
Meanwhile, the fortnightly magazine, Frontline (from the family of The Hindu itself), has a cover story ready for print in their edition for May 22. The story is titled “Dystopian Pipe Dream”.
Their byline is extremely powerful – “The reluctance of the Narendra Modi regime to extend fiscal support to those in real need of help during a prolonged lockdown suggests that it is promoting further concentration of capital. Dire consequences await the economy and the polity.
It is with profound sadness that we have to inform the editor of the Frontline that this article and the byline, though powerful, will now become extremely irrelevant when it goes to print on the 22nd of May. Since you folks anyways look for a way to blame Prime Minister Modi, you must now write an article blaming him for making your cover story irrelevant! 

Ansari and Owaisi peddle lies and politicize the lockdown


The following article was written for MyInd Makers. Pasting it here for reference:

Former Vice President Hamid Ansari wrote in The Hindu on “Rollback the distrust, remember the core values”. The headline and the content of the article are fully in-line with the lies and perception the English media ecosystem has been trying to create since the past 6 years. Hamid Ansari tries to keep the article generic but makes a minor slip that gives us a peek into his thoughts. He tells us that the situation “is alarming enough to induce a group of 100 of our most eminent former civil servants to appeal, recently, to State Chief Ministers
What did these former civil servants write about? In their opinion the NPR and CAA are wasteful exercises. They propagate the same lie that Muslims will feel insecure because CAA excludes Muslims! They happily fail to tell us that CAA does not affect a single Indian citizen (irrespective of religion). They peddle a lie in January; the media amplifies it for a whole week; the former Vice President of India makes a reference to this letter in April! This begs a question – what is the agenda of the former Vice President of India here?
We are in the midst of a severe pandemic. Thousands of participants of the Tablighi Jamaat and their contacts were tested Corona positive. We have seen how health workers have been attacked (physically attacked and not mere social media trolling) when they went to help or save these people. The health workers again went back the next day to carry out tests. What more should be done to “rollback the distrust”, Mr. Hamid Ansari? On whom is the burden to “rollback the distrust”? On the attacker? Or on the victim? While writing so eloquently about citizenry, constitution, morality etc, couldn’t you really write one sentence condemning the violence on health workers by our own citizens? What stopped you from appealing to them to stop the violence?
Or are you still stuck in a time-warp and want to exclusively focus on NPR and CAA? If so, as a former occupant of a constitutional position, isn’t it your responsibility to dispel the fears of the citizens of India? Isn’t it your responsibility to tell the citizens that the CAA will not snatch the citizenship of a single Indian? Isn’t it your responsibility to kill the fake news factory and come out with facts? Instead of amplifying the lies being spread, you could have chosen to write an article on NPR and CAA at least two months earlier and attempted to assuage the agitators.
It is sad that you chose to use the Corona pandemic to further refer to NPR and CAA. It is further distressing to note that you had no words of advice to all those citizens who were attacking the health workers carrying their duties. It was incumbent upon you to “rollback the distrust”. Instead you chose to simply pass it on to the hapless citizens!
On April 27th, we had the MIM Chief, Asaduddin Owaisi write strongly on “Unconstitutional nationwide lockdown”. Looks like “unconstitutional” is the buzz word in the WhatsApp group of the English media and their friends! Why does he call it unconstitutional? Because “So far, the Union government has not provided any factual basis for why Covid-19 was beyond the “coping capacity” of any area of the country.
This makes me wonder - Does Owaisi live in the same world that we all live in? Does he really not know that if Corona explodes, India doesn’t have the “coping capacity” and the only way to get ready for that is a lockdown? I bet he does know, but if he accepts that, how can he still be a darling of the “intellectuals”?
Owaisi further lists out articles of the constitution and sections of different acts as a show-off. His rant includes amusing statements such as “The Union government is in no position to assess the specific context of a particular State, let alone the circumstances in which migrant workers are living or what is best for them”.
Owaisi conveniently avoided telling us that many states were already in lockdown when the Prime Minister announced a nation-wide lockdown. Not a single state government came out and said what the PM did was unconstitutional. MIM’s best friend, the TRS, has welcomed the announcement of the Prime Minister. Except for 1 or 2 states, all state governments have strongly recommended a further extension of the nationwide lockdown. If this was “unconstitutional”, why would all our state governments enforce this lockdown to the best of their capabilities? Why does this simple logic elude the intellectual brain of Asaduddin Owaisi?
Furthering his agenda Owaisi blatantly lies that India is spending 20,000 crores on Central Vista project in Delhi. This lie has been dissected in article here, so no need to dig further on it. While the first half of this article was focused on how the Union is doing nothing, Owaisi suddenly shifts tact and tells us that the Union government is “micromanaging”! Owaisi should have first decided what is it that he wanted to criticize – the central government is doing nothing, or the central government is doing everything! The article is confusing at so many levels that it makes us wonder why Owaisi couldn’t find a single meaningful criticism of either the state or the central government.
The only solution that Owaisi offers for the problem is creation of Inter-state council. That’s it – apparently that will solve all problems. PM has been in touch with all the CMs of the country on a regular basis to ensure the best implementation of the lockdown. But it is immaterial to him.
Both Hamid Ansari and Asaduddin Owaisi could have chosen to be more forthcoming on the real issues faced by the country in these turbulent times. Instead they chose to fall back on the same old trite that the English media is keen on promoting. Apparently, that doesn't resonate a bit with the citizens of India. I wonder how they would want to respond to this lost opportunity.

Monday, May 11, 2020

Lockdown and the English media in India


While the English media is busy peddling lies and their agenda- we lost sight of some remarkable success stories of how different state govts in India have effectively implemented the lock-down.This gang will continue to write that lock-down failed. Numbers wouldn't lie though

As of today (May 11th), nearly 33% of total cases in India are just from ONE state. Nearly 70% of cases are from the top 5 states - Mah, Guj, TN, Delhi and Rajasthan. Remarkable containment by the remaining 23 states. But we only hear of Kerala model and "Best CM".
They never told us why Karnataka had such remarkably low numbers. But today (May 11), they tell us that K'taka had the highest number so far -54. 54 cases in a day, nearly 50 days after lock-down. Why isn't this model being studied in the media?
Andhra Pradesh, despite the onslaught of "single source" cases, is consistently reporting 50-70 cases a day. For a population of >5 crores, why aren't we hearing more about how this containment was done?
For all the -ve press Haryana and Bihar get, their numbers have been remarkably low. What did they do right? Perhaps we will never get to know.
How does Odisha have such low numbers? What did they do right? How did the people and the government make this possible? We'll perhaps never know. Uttarakhand, Puducherry, the entire North-east - every single one of them did an awesome job with the lock-down and containment. Yet no stories about them.
The cynicism and agenda of the English media gang is simply very nauseating. We deserve a better media that disseminates the right information.