Friday 2 January 2015

The New Janus


In Ancient Rome there was a god called Janus, who had two heads, one looking forward towards the future, and the other looking backward towards the past.

 The new Indian deity is similar. He has two heads, one looking forward in the name of 'vikaas ' ( whatever that may mean ), and the other looking backward towards restoring Ramrajya.

 The problem is that these are contradictory tendencies, they cannot go together. One can either move forwards, or move backwards, but how can one simultaneously move in both directions, as our ' modern'  Janus is trying to do  ?

 During the Lok Sabha elections only the forward looking face was revealed, and the backward looking face was effectively veiled. The constant refrain of the great man in his all his speeches could be encapsulated in just one word : 'Vikaas '. Like children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin, our gullible youth, cutting through caste and community lines, en masse voted for him, in the belief that vikaas meant that millions of jobs would be created, and ultimately what the youth want is jobs.

 The problem is that this was just selling of a dream : there are few jobs, and even these are dwindling.  The GDP growth of 5.7% in the quarter April to June 2014, has dropped to 5.3% in the quarter July to September 2014. Manufacturing growth is almost stagnant ( see my article ' Vikas ' on facebook and on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in ). About 1 crore new youth are pouring into the job market every year, but only about 5 lac new jobs are created annually in the organized sector of the economy ( see my article ' Unemployment in India ' on my blog ).

 As mentioned in my article ' The Dream has Evaporated ' ( see on my blog ), the dream sold by our new Janus , through his aggressive, well oiled team of social media experts ( who would launch a barrage of abuses and invective against anyone daring to speak a word against him ), of vikas, or development which would provide millions of jobs, has gone with the wind, leaving behind millions of youth in the lurch, wondering what has happened to the jobs they were getting, and how much longer must they have to wait for them, instead of getting doses of swatchata, ghar wapasi, good governance day, etc ?

  The truth is now slowly dawning : in fact our new Janus never had two faces at all. There was only 
one real face, the one looking backward. The one looking forward was not a real face at all but only a mask, a pretence, for doing gimmicks..

 So due to non delivery on his promises, our single faced Janus is bound to become increasingly unpopular day by day. Of course his party still keeps winning elections, but that is not so much because of him, but because the principal opposition party has given a walk over, by keeping a thoroughly immature and unfit person as its leader, simply because he belongs to the dynasty, and by perpetrating scam after scam when they were in power.

  So now that the forward looking mask has been stripped, and all that remains is the backward looking real face, what can be expected. ? What can be expected is more communal tension, communal riots and attacks on minorities. What else does his party have ?
 Hari Om

13 comments:

  1. Exactly sir , this is just the beginning , only temple of Nathuram Godse is being constructed now in meerut , many new Godse will be given birth now . The current government is proving detrimental to the secular spirit of India oneof the basic feature of constitution . Only waiting to what comes next in the gimmicks of this bluff master government .

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  2. wow It's great post.Thanks for shearing it.

    BJP | BJP PURVANCHAL

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  3. India's developmental challenges are much bigger than any other country in the history because of three major reasons:
    1)2% land and 17% population.
    2)Developing from a piss poor low base (American gnp per capita at 2009 price in 1870 was around $4600, India's current gnp per capita is around $1500) while having the laws ). Just think about that, discounting PPP, today we are 1/3rd of
    what the U.S was about 150 years ago.
    3)We have the toughest fight in the history of humanity, and we have to fight it with one hand tied behind our back because we are a liberal democracy(which I am completely in support of,I love my freedoms).We cannot do what is necessary for economic development of a larger set of people eve when it tramples on the rights of a smaller set.
    We are one of the poorest countries in the history of humanity even at this current stage. No country, I repeat no country, which is this poor and this densely populated has any hope of being a tranquil society.U.S was not very tranquil in the 1920's when it was growing at break neck speed, just ask the people of the color. Forget Modi, maybe he is even a bigot, but has any government been able to provide social harmony?It's a miracle that we haven't gone to civil war.
    Now on to Mr. Katju, Sir, why are you such a cynic and a pessimist ?? Are our challenges so small that things will get sorted out in less than a year. When someone is making a concerted effort, then why berate that fellow without even giving that person a chance?In that sense you and Mr. Kejriwal are the same. A better approach is to be indulge in constructive criticism. Give some policy prescriptions on economics using your "scientific methods" .This arm char punditry is useless.

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  4. SUBJECT : Pythagoras theorem actually an Indian discovery: Harsh Vardhan . ################

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pythagorass-theorem-actually-an-Indian-discovery-Harsh-Vardhan/articleshow/45746060.cms

    THE WHITE MAN STOLE ALL KNOWDEGE FROM INDIA .

    Both Pythagoras and Plato had NOTHING original to offer to this planet , other than what they stole from India and patented in their own names . . .

    Pythagoras was NOT even a mathematician . He came to Kerala by ship all the way from Greece 2500 years ago, to cure his debilitating epilepsy with cannabis extract.

    He hung around in the Kerala School of Math , without understanding a dang thing-- - but he had some notes with him and went back as the planets No 1 mathematician , thinker and a vegetarian to boot . .

    100 years later Plato would come to Kerala by ship and learn for a few years . And then he went back as a greater cat than Pythagoras , he was now the planets No 1 THINKER !

    Greek Plato ( 427BC-347 BC ) also went back from Kerala as a Mathematician ( he was smarter than Pythogoras ) and a philosopher. . He shared his spoils with his mentor Socrates, and fellow homosexual side kick Aristotle ( 384 BC- 322 BC ) and got himself immortalized as the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

    Socrates and Plato were hardcore homosexuals . Aristotle initiated Alexander the great into homosexuality. Thus this gruesome HOMOSEXUAL TRIO of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science with stolen ( from India ) and patented knowledge .

    Pythagoras gave his stolen Ayurveda ( excerpts from treatises of Susruta and Charaka ) to the grandfather of Hippocrates. Greeks knew NOTHING of human anatomy because of the strict Greek taboo forbidding the dissection of human cadavers.

    INDIAN seer Orpheus was , a master musician who brought Pythagoras to Kerala by ship . Orpheus gave astrology and magic ( mantravadam ), vedic metaphysics ( magna grecia ) from Kerala to the west. Orpheus was a master in astrology, and all Greek astrology is though Orpheus. .

    European Gods Thor/ Zeus is Maharishi Brihaspati . Thursday Brihaspativar is holy ASCENSION day .

    Middle East pagan god was Maharishi Shukrachara . This is why Shukravar (Friday ) is a holiday.

    Crusades were ancient PAGAN enmity between the followers of bitter rivals Brihaspati and Shukracharya.

    Mayan calendar was made by Maya Danava the asura God of the Americas.

    Punch into Google search -

    . . .ISAAC NEWTON , THE CALCULUS THIEF VADAKAYIL . . .

    and

    . . . .WE ARE HINDUS, WE ARE INDIANS, WE ARE THE PROUDEST PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET VADAKAYIL . . . .

    Capt ajit vadakayil .

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  5. "India is a Nation of Unfulfilled Greatness"- Lee Kuan Yew

    ndia has wasted decades in state planning and controls that have bogged it down in bureaucracy and corruption. A decentralised system would have allowed more centres like Bangalore and Bombay to grow and prosper. . . The caste system has been the enemy of meritocracy. . . India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, underused. There are limitations in the Indian constitutional system and the Indian political system that prevent it from going at high speed. . . Whatever the political leadership may want to do, it must go through a very complex system at the centre, and then even a more complex system in the various states. . . . Indians will go at a tempo which is decided by their constitution, by their ethnic mix, by their voting patterns, and the resulting coalition governments, which makes for very difficult decision-making. India's political leaders are determined to reform, but the Indian bureaucracy has been slower and resistant to change. Regional jostling and corruption do not help. Furthermore, populist democracy makes Indian policies less consistent, with regular changes in ruling parties. . . . India has poor infrastructure, high administrative and regulatory barriers to business, and large fiscal deficits, especially at the state level, that are a drag on investment and job creation.


    ndia is not a real country. Instead, it is 32 separate nations that happen to be arrayed along the British rail line. The British came, conquered, established the Raj, incorporated under their rule an amalgam of 175 princely states, and ruled them with 1, 000 Englishmen and several tens of thousands of Indians brought up to behave like English.

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    Replies
    1. I am against a society which has no sense of nurturing its best to rise to the top. I am against a feudal society where your birth decides where you stay in the pecking order. The example of that, par excellence, is India's caste system.
      India is an established civilisation. Nehru and Gandhi had a chance to do for India what I did for Singapore because of their enormous prestige, but they could not break the caste system. They could not break the habits.

      Look at the construction industries in India and China, and you will know the difference between one that gets things done and another that does not get things done, but talks about things. . . . It is partly because India is such a diverse country - it is not one nation, but 32 different nations speaking 330 different dialects. . . . In China, it is 90 per cent Han Chinese all speaking the same language, with different accents, but reading the same script. If you stand up in Delhi and speak in English, out of 1. 2 billion people, maybe 200 million will understand you. If you speak in Hindi, maybe 250 million will understand you. If you speak in Tamil, 80 million people will understand you. So there is an enormous difference between the two countries . . . . We are comparing oranges and apples. . Let me not be misunderstood. The upper class in India is equal to any in the world but they face the same hurdles.

      The average Indian civil servant still sees himself primarily as a regulator and not as a facilitator. The average Indian bureaucrat has not yet accepted that it is not a sin to make profits and become rich. The average Indian bureaucrat has little trust in India's business community. They view Indian businesspeople as money-grabbing opportunists who do not have the welfare of the country at heart, and all the more so if they are foreign.

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    2. Why has China's peaceful rise, however, raised apprehensions? Is it because India is a democracy in which numerous political forces are constantly at work, making for an internal system of checks and balances ? Most probably, yes - especially as India's governments have tended to be made up of large coalitions of 10 to 20 parties. . . . India can project power across its borders farther and better than China can, yet there is no fear that India has aggressive intentions . . . . India does not pose such a challenge to international order as China - and will not until it gets its social infrastructure up to First World standards and further liberalises its economy. Indeed, the US, the European Union, and Japan root for India because they want a better-balanced world, in which India approximates China's weight.

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    3. He starts off with quoting from Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny” speech of 14th Aug 1947 which he heard as a young student at Cambridge. I suppose it is de rigueur to quote those lines about

      “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

      I must hand it to Nehru -— he did make pretty speeches. The problem was not lack of flowery language; it was all form and no substance. All talk about stepping out of the old into the new is meaningless if the same structure of bureaucratic control and a meddlesome government is imposed with a vengeance that even the British could not match.

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    4. After liberalisation, China and India have followed different models of development, maximising their respective strengths. China adopted the standard East Asian model, emphasising export-oriented manufacturing. China has been immensely more successful in attracting FDI. India has focused on IT and knowledge-based services. Job creation is much slower in India and will continue to remain so until India’s infrastructure is brought up to date to attract the many manufacturers who will come to use India’s low cost workers and efficient services.

      But India cannot grow into a major economy on services alone . Since the industrial revolution, no country has become a major economy without becoming an industrial power.

      India’s relatively young population can be an asset if they are universally well educated. UN forecasts that India’s population will outstrip China’s by 2030. Job creation through faster GDP growth is therefore an urgent necessity. Growth in IT and other services will not create enough jobs. IT-related jobs make up only one quarter of one percent of India’s labour force.

      To create jobs the main thrust of reforms must be in manufacturing. That requires a change in labour laws to allow employers to retrench workers when business demand is down , streamlining the judicial processes, reducing the fiscal deficit, loosening up the bureaucracy, and most of all improving infrastructure. Let me focus on the last two as I believe they are crucial and inter-connected.

      Industrialisation cannot take off without adequate infrastructure: better roads, and a reliable supply of power and clean water, better ports and airports. By one estimate, economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as US$4 to 6 billion a year. Another estimate is that the cost of most infrastructure services in India is about 50% to 100% higher than in China. The average cost of electricity for manufacturing in India is about double that in China; railway transport costs in India are three times those in China. China has spent over eight times as much as India on its infrastructure. Three years ago, China’s total capital spending on electricity, construction, transportation, telecommunications and real estate was US$260 billion or more than 20 percent of its GDP as compared to US$31 billion or 8 percent of India’s GDP.

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  6. If there are budgetary constraints , the answer is to privatise these infrastructure projects. There are well established construction companies, Japanese, Korean and others, that have done many such infrastructure projects on franchise terms.

    The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) based in Hong Kong, recently surveyed expatriate businessmen on bureaucracy and red tape in Asia. India was rated worst out of the 12 countries covered. PERC’s conclusion was that:

    The World Bank has also done its own study. It found that in India it can take a decade to close a business through insolvency proceedings. It also found, among other things, that official fees amount to almost 13 percent of a property transaction in India as against just over 3 percent in China.

    My secretaries asked Singapore businessmen with investments in India what, apart from infrastructure, they found as major constraints. To a man, they replied it was the bureaucracy.

    India needs reform in various areas. The most critical area is the bureaucracy. Why India got saddled with a dysfunctional bureaucracy is easy to understand: the British were in India to exploit and extract wealth and created the bureaucracy with that objective. When the British left, the bureaucratic infrastructure was not jettisoned because it was the perfect tool for the “command control license permit quota” Raj which began with Nehru and still impedes India’s progress.

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  7. The license quota permit control regime was instituted with the express purpose of making sure that essential goods and services were affordable and available to the people and thus was the sole prerogative of the government. An admirable socialist goal of reaching the commanding heights of the economy. The outcome should not come as a surprise: shoddy goods and services, affordable and available to only those who had the clout and could bribe the officials. Bajaj scooters had a waiting time of 7 to 10 years! They were prized as dowry; want your homely daughter married soon, promise a scooter to sweeten the deal.

    But democracy should not be made an alibi for inertia. There are many examples of authoritarian governments whose economies have failed. There are as many examples of democratic governments who have achieved superior economic performance. The real issue is whether any country’s political system, irrespective of whether it is democratic or authoritarian, can forge a consensus on the policies needed for the economy to grow and create jobs for all, and can ensure that these basic policies are implemented consistently without large leakage. India’s elite in politics, the media, the academia and think tanks can re-define the issues and recast the political debate. They should, for instance, insist on the provision of a much higher standard of municipal services.

    He concludes this part of his talk with a wonderful example of the mendacity of the communists. West Bengal, once upon a time the most valuable jewel in the Crown, is a basket case, now more known around the world as the “Gutter” (thanks to the tireless working of the “Saint of the Gutters” who enriched her own organization by show-casing the poverty of Bengal). How did this remarkably sorry transformation take place, you may ask. The secret sauce: communists.

    India’s reform has been halting and hesitant. India’s heterogeneous society has been riddled with conflicts, but the system has by and large managed these. There are many severe pitfalls and roadblocks which India and China have to overcome.”

    Both India and China are huge countries with vast populations and long histories. They have to evolve standards of governance that is consonant with their cultures and the spirit of their civilisations.

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  8. SUBJECT : Shashi Tharoor supports Vardhan, says don't debunk ancient science .

    #################################

    THE ENTIRE PHYSICS FOR WHICH ALBERT EINSTEIN GOT THE NOBEL PRIZE WAS LIFTED FROM ANCIENT HINDU SANSKRIT SCRIPTURES PENNED DOWN 7000 YEARS AGO .

    punch into Google search -
    . . .ALBERT EINSTEIN SHAMELESS PLAGIARIST VADAKAYIL . . .

    the entire math and science for which Isaac Newton received received fame was stolen from Kerala Math and science .

    punch into Google search -
    . . .ISAAC NEWTON CALCULUS THIEF VADAKAYIL . . .

    THE WHITE MAN HAS NIL INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN HIS NAME TILL HE INVADED INDIA . .. WHATEVER HE KNEW BEFORE INVADING INDIA WAS LEARNT IN OUR ANCIENT INDIAN UNIVERSITIES . . . SOME OF THE KNOWLEDGE THE WHITE MAN GOT FROM ARABS WAS TRANSLATED TO ARABIC KNOWLEDGE SOLD BY THE CALICUT KING FOR GOLD .

    punch into Google search -
    . . . .MANSA MUSA KING OF MALI AND SRI PADMANABHASWAMY TEMPLE GOLD VADAKAYIL . . .

    capt ajit vadakayil
    ..

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