So many points, so little time! : Sep.20-26

1. In this era of dynasty politics, here's one son completely damaging the intellect of his late father. It's ok to be stupid, but I wonder what kind of a person always wants to be seen as stupid in full public glare? And that too, if that person happens to be Pramod Mahajan's son. I was a big fan of the late Pramod Mahajan, and it irritates me to see this joker Rahul participate in non-descript reality shows and make a fool out of himself. His latest venture being a new Swayamvar show. And he is following the footsteps of another joker – Rakhi Sawant! Comon Rahul, we don't expect you to follow the footsteps of your father, but atleast stop creating this ruckus over reality shows. That is the least you can do.
   
2. Speaking of Dynasty politics, President Pratibha Patil's son was given a Congress ticket for the Maharashtra assembly elections. His contender was the present two-time MLA who is also a state minister. And then this guy tells us that his mother's position had nothing to do with the ticket, and it is his own "hard work" that earned him this ticket. Yeah right, we believe you dude. Recently, the son-in-law of the Chief Justice of India was given a ticket in Kerala elections, and now even the President's office has been dragged into these electoral politics. There is no other insitution still left to be damaged now. Great going, Congress!
   

3. This Santhanam guy doesn't show any signs of retiring from his rhetoric. He says in this article, that the yield of the Hydrogen bomb was 25kiloton and not 45 kiloton as we advertised and therefore the test is a failure. Also, he says that anyway we will need bombs that can give us yield of 150-350 kiloton, so we need to retest! So, his contention that we got it wrong even with our measuring instruments! This after, so many scientists have come up with point to point rebuttals of his stupid claims. On a lighter note, if the least we need is 150kiloton yield, how does it matter if the test yielded 25kt or 50kt? It is ridiculously difficult to believe that we would have misled the world in such drastic manner with regard to the yield. If he is saying, we lied, then he should also say where was the decision taken to lie too. It is not a small accusation he is making, and therefore he needs to substantiate a lot of his claims before bombarding us with his logic!
   

4. Cynicism seems to have become a way of our life now. NASA announces that its Image Mapper, aboard Chandrayan-1, found traces of water on the moon. Almost immediately, the cynics started to say that it the US instrument that found it, so we do not have anything to do with it! Well, how about this – our spacecraft took it up there! And then poor ISRO guys had to also explain that our devices also found traces much before the Image Mapper, but had to wait till confirmation had to come. It is indeed a matter of pride that space collaboration has increased so well amongst countries, and we are also in the forefront of such discoveries, so why not keep the cynicism aside for a bit, and enjoy the success?
   

5. The centre has launched a new ad-war against the Maoists! Interesting, isn't it? Right now, they placed full page ads in all major national dailies with photos of people who were tortured/killed by Maoists. And thent they realised that those who read these papers care the least about such ads! And so, the next step is to place ads in the local newspapers too. And then maybe they will realise that those actually affected by this violence probably don't read these newspapers too, and even if they do, they are not going to change their opinion. And so, we will be back to the strategy that has yielded best results in AP – eliminate them!
   

So many points, so little time! : Sep.13-19

1. From when has it become wrong to have a sense of humour in politics? How come, we are making such a big fuss about a remark that was just made in jest? Kanchan Gupta asks Sashi Tharoor if he will travel by "cattle class" the next time he goes to Kerala. Cattle class is another term used to describe economy class in our aircrafts for the manner in which all passengers are herded together in minimal space. Shashi Tharoor replies that he will surely travel in the cattle class in absolute solidarity with all the holy cows. Now, how can we miss the sense of humour in it? What is so insensitive about it? Those who actually travel "cattle class" are not offended, then why is Jayanti Natrajan, Ashok Gehlot et al. making such a big issue. Grow up people, a bit of wit doesn't do any damage to us, so save your diatribes for some other meaningful issue.

2. Speaking of humour, this whole austerity drive initiated by Congress is such a big joke. What are we achieving by saving peanuts? With whom does Madam want to express her solidarity by travelling economy class? The people who travel economy class do not want solidarity, but some action to reduce prices. The people who cannot afford to travel, your aam aadmi, never even bothers which class you travel, so what is this whole drama about? A voluntary donation of part of salary made a lot of sense, but then when you decide to strech this to comical levels, the whole purpose of "expressing solidarity" becomes nothing but a farce.

3. So, Pakistan arrested Hafiz Saeed. Do you people see a pattern here? Whenever the time nears for a dialogue, Pakistan takes some action, only to withdraw it later. Before Zardari met our PM, a similar farce was played out. Later, just before, Gilani met our PM, again the same - some dossier was given. And now when the forgiegn secretaries might meet in New York, this happens! Whom does Pak think it is fooling? The PM himself has said this week that infiltrations have increased from across the borders and the Home Minister, like all of us, is exasperated with Pak's claims that our dossiers dont contain enough evidence. From one confusion to another, this saga just keeps going on..

4. Speaking of inflitrations, the media hyped up so much about possible Chinese incurssions into our territory, as if a war is indeed going to take place next week! PM has clarified that ours is a long border and at times incursions happen. The ones that happened this year are similar to what happened last year and years before that too. However, our hyper media will neither apologize nor learn from this. It will continue to repeat this again and again for years to come. Reports are that the government might even file FIR's against the 2 TOI reporters for filing the intial reports. They are still figuring out under which IPC they should file the case under!

5. Now, the virus of corruption has spread even to the highest levels of Judiciary. The Chief Justice of Karnataka high court Justice Dinakaran is facing some charges of corruption that have now become the roadblock for him to be promoted to a Judge of the Supreme Court. Time for Judicial reforms people, if not now, then when?!

6. So, finally someone other than Nadal beat Federer in a grand slam final! Argentine Juan Del Potro conjured up some magical tennis to beat both Nadal and Federer to win this title. He just lived the dream of so many tennis players... men's tennis is sure bound to get more interesting now!

The Next Vajpayee for BJP ...

I will come straight to the answer. It has to be Sushma Swaraj. Let’s consider the second rung leaders in contention for the top posts in the BJP.

Rajnath Singh – We have clearly seen that he has failed as the President of BJP. Not just because of this loss, but because he was not able to lift his party in his home state, UP. On top of that, he doesn’t possess a pan-india appealing personality. There is a higher probability that the neutral voters will reject him instead of siding with him. He has a very hardliner image, and has practically overseen the disruptive opposition over the past few years. His presence as the BJP head might enthuse the cadre, but his presence as the Leader of Opposition will dampen the citizens. For sure.

Arun Jaitley – He is Urban, and that's what will hold against him. He cannot sway a gathering of rural people with his oratory. He is more of an organizational man than a people’s man. He hasn’t won too many elections till now. He has been incharge of some really succesfull party victories in Assembly elections, but his recent behaviour during 2009 polls doesn’t inspire any confidence about his performance at the national level. His choice for the post of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha did raise a few eye brows (justifiably so), but it's best he remains the stragetist because that's what he can do best.

Venkaih Naidu – He too has the image of a hard liner. I have heard him speak many times, and I must say he has a lot of clarity in his thought process. Unfortunately, he hasn’t seen an electoral success for fairly long time. His failure to build the party in the Southern states is a black mark, and it was under his presidency that the BJP lost the 2004 elections. Venkaih Naidu can be best used to articulate the policies of BJP, but it is difficult to envisage him in a role wherein he will decide on their implementation.

Narendra Modi – Arguably, one of the best administrators of this country, but his entire political life will be haunted only by the anti-Godhra violence. None of his developmental programmes will take a front seat while in campaign for an all India election. The Congress, the Left, the media will all focus only on one single issue, and that is what will become his bane. Outside Gujarat, it is extremely difficult for Modi to obtain votes based on developmental agenda.

The likes of Vijay Malhotra, Naqvi, Javedkar can never be serious contenders for this post. The “lost generation” of the BJP – Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Murli Manohar Joshi are automatically out of contention. That leaves us with Sushma Swaraj.

Sushma Swaraj has been Chief Minister of Delhi for a while. She was also a minister in the Vajpayee government. More importantly, she is now the most moderate face and the only strong woman in BJP. She has the capability of gaining an All India appeal. A case in point is when she gave Sonia Gandhi a very tough fight in Bellary, Karnataka. She learnt Kannada in no time, and started speaking fluently in no time! Her presence has a much stronger appeal than the combined presence of the other leaders mentioned above.

She cannot enthuse the cadre as much as Vajpayee did, or for that matter she might be the ideal person the cadre wants to see at the top. But, there are enough leaders to cater to the cadre. It is not the cadre that the BJP should fear of losing; it is the undecided voters that it should fear. Sushma Swaraj should be made the Leader of Opposition. There are rumours going around that Rajnath Singh might become the LOP if he has to step down from the post of BJP President. Nothing will be more suicidal than that.

After becoming leader of opposition, Sushma should start touring the entire country and start building an image for herself. The speeches should not be negative, but promising in content. Her approach in Parliament has to be co-operative, and at the same time should not be seen as mellowed down. Being a good orator, she can win many debates hands down, but the important thing is to carry that message outside of Parliament too.

BJP lost partly due to the bad image that was projected in the media too. The media managers did not draw up plans to counter attack the ruling party, once they were attacked. This cost the BJP a lot, especially with the urban voters. Sushma Swaraj is the only person in BJP who can bring back those votes, because she is the only person who can show a lot of promise. The rest of the lot cannot. The neutral voter is looking for a fresh face that can bring back the previous sense of decency to politics, and from BJP only Sushma Swaraj has that image.

What about the next Advani then? The answer to this question was lost along with Pramod Mahajan. Only time will tell now...