by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Asaduddin Owaisi
Hyderabad : MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday said the Sangh Parivar wants to use Ram temple issue to save Narendra Modi in the 2019 general elections as he has failed on all fronts.
He said the RSS, VHP and BJP should not be allowed to polarize the voters on temple issue and justified the stand taken by Sunni Wakf Board’s lawyer Kapil Sibal in Supreme Court that the hearing of the title suit be deferred till the elections.
Talking to reporters here, he said a leader of VHP has announced that the temple construction will begin in October 2018 while RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has stated that only a temple can come up in Ayodhya.
“These statements are all aimed at influencing and threatening Muslims and raking up the issue before the elections to save Mr Modi, who has failed to provide jobs, check farmers’ suicides and his actions like demonetization and GST have destroyed business in the informal sector. The elections should be held on these real issues,” he said.
“When you don’t allow release of a film in Gujarat on the ground that it will influence the elections, how can you ignore the impact the temple issue may have?” he asked.
The MP also dismissed criticism of Sibal in a section of media and said he was representing Sunni Wakf Board in the apex court and not the Congress.
He reiterated that Sunni Wakf Board need at least six months to present its arguments before the court as a voluminous record of 17,000 documents need to be translated.
Replying to a query, the Hyderabad MP sad Parliament can’t legislate on the temple till the matter is in the Supreme Court.
“We have separation of powers. The judiciary, executive and legislature are independent. If somebody wants to become a dictator, then people will decide,” he said.
Owaisi said the issue of Babri Masjid was not an issue of Muslims but a matter of justice.
“Even after 25 years of the demolition of Babri Masjid, the case against the accused who instigated people through their provocative speeches and which led to the demolition has not been heard,” he said.
He reiterated his support to the suggestion by Justice M.S. Liberhan (retd.), who had headed the commission probing the conspiracy behind the razing of the disputed structure, that the hearing of title suit be deferred till the criminal case was disposed of.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Derek O’Brien
By Prashant Sood & Sidhartha Dutta,
New Delhi : The opposition should not pitch the next Lok Sabha polls as a presidential-style contest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, says Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien who feels a “collective leadership” would bring parties together against the BJP in each state.
He also says that Bengal will play a very important role in the collective leadership of opposition parties, an obvious reference to his party supremo Mamata Banerjee.
“In 2019, the opposition has to work out a strategy which will be to play to its strength in all 29 states. I am saying this as student of politics. For example, when we are fighting the election in Bengal, obviously it is going to be Mamata di who is the prime mover there,” O’Brien, Trinamool Congress leader in the Rajya Sabha, told IANS in an interview.
He also said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee can play a role in bringing opposition parties together in crucial states such as Uttar Pradesh.
“In Uttar Pradesh, there is Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress. Who is the most credible person to make this thing happen? Congress is a player, SP is a player, BSP is a player. Mamata di is the good one to do this job in UP. They will have to listen eventually,” O’Brien said.
He said Mamata Banerjee has won a second term and has credibility of four decades.
“She has got a track record of people’s movement, struggles. They are not some five-six year phenomenon, this is an old track record. Those are the people who will take the important roles but it will be a collective leadership,” he said.
Asked if Mamata Banerjee could be prime ministerial candidate, O’Brien said: “I told you it is collective leadership. Bengal will play a very important role. Don’t ask me about personalities,” he said.
He said Trinamool Congress can play the role of a bridge between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi and, in the same way, the Congress can play the role of a bridge between the Trinamool Congress and the Left in West Bengal.
Answering another query, the chief national spokesperson of Trinamool Congress said the Prime Ministerial candidate is chosen from the party with largest seats in parliamentary democracy.
“This is not a Presidential election. Why should the Lok Sabha election be pitched as a Presidential election. This is not Trump versus Clinton,” he said.
On the likelihood of the Congress projecting party Vice President Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate, O’Brien said: “At this stage, it looks (like)… it’s easier to take on Modi with a strong face in each state.”
He said Rahul Gandhi will be president of his party and Trinamool Congress wishes him well.
Asked if he was suggesting there should not be a single candidate against Modi, O’Brien said he was not a spokesperson for 18 parties which have been coordinating their actions against the government.
He said opposition should play to its strengths in all the 29 states.
“Who says opposition does not have a face? Doesn’t Karnataka stand a better chance if Mr. Siddaramaiah is the face to take on whoever in the BJP?”
He said Rahul Gandhi’s imminent elevation this month was “Congress’ internal decision”.
“What I can tell you from what I have seen, again as a student of politics, is that there has been a lot of momentum after his US townhall style meetings. There has been some momentum in the Gujarat campaign… Obviously, if he keeps this momentum going, it’s good for the opposition. A strong Congress is good for the opposition,” he said.
Asked about leaders like Mamata Banerjee having a certain comfort level with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, O’Brien said: “Please give Rahul Gandhi some time as president of the Congress.”
He said Trinamool Congress will do what it takes to make the opposition stronger to defeat the BJP.
The party’s target, he said, is to win all 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal. “For two reasons people will vote for us — one is development, the other is communal harmony.”
O’Brien’s first political book, “Inside Parliament: Views From the Front Row”, was released last week. It has a chapter “BJP is beatable in 2019”.
The Trinamool Congress national spokesperson also said opposition parties have been coordinating inside and outside parliament and had made a statement by fielding good candidates for the presidential and vice-presidential polls.
Referring to 18 parties’ observing the first anniversary of demonetisation on November 8 as Black Day, O’Brien said: “We came to the conclusion that let us allow every party to interpret that protest in the local language and idiom, in the local situation and then make it a success.”
He said the opposition strategy to oust the BJP government was not a negative strategy. “It is a positive strategy. Strengthen federalism to run; that’s the positive strategy.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Corporate Governance, Interviews
Sam Pitroda
By V.S. Chandrasekar,
New Delhi : Debunking the “Gujarat model of development” propagated by the BJP, Sam Pitroda, who was instrumental in launching India’s telecom revolution in the mid-1980s under then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has said the state needs a bottom-up approach discarding the top-down method that favours only big corporates at the cost of poor and marginalised sections.
“Gujarat needs a Gandhian model of development bottom-up. Development should not be assessed in terms of how many lakhs or crores of rupees you can bring in as investment at global investors’ conferences. It doesn’t mean you dislike big corporates. But what will transform Gujarat is what do you do for the poor,” Pitroda, who played a leading role in drafting the Congress manifesto for the Gujarat assembly elections, told IANS in an email interview from Illinois, US, where he lives.
The growth figures in terms of GDP look good, but what does it translate into for the ordinary Gujarati? asked Pitroda who is known to be close to the Gandhi family and played a pivotal role in organising Rahul Gandhi’s recent visit and engagements in the US.
The former Telecom Commission Chairman, who extensively toured Gujarat last month and talked to various groups, said the state needs a new design of development as the gap between the haves and the have-nots has increased.
He said in the alternative narrative of governance in Gujarat, if the Congress comes to power, would be the creation of a Gujarat Advisory Council on the lines of the National Advisory Council which was initially formed during the time of the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA-I) government in 2004 and continued during UPA -II (2009-14) to properly guide the government for an egalitarian development model.
After interacting with farmers, Dalits, women, fishermen, traders and NGOs in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Rajkot, Surat and Jamnagar, 75-year-old Pitroda, who also served as Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission (2005-09), a high-level body to advise the Prime Minister, said there is a tremendous discontent among the people of Gujarat.
After this exercise, he found “too much” privatisation of education, he said. Education, particularly in the engineering and medical streams, has become very expensive, adding that medical education can cost up to Rs 80 lakh.
The health sector is the most affected because there are no government doctors available in rural areas. Of the 4,500 doctors that pass out every year, only about 500 go to rural areas. The remaining pay a penalty of over Rs 10 crore to escape such stints.
“We need to make medical education affordable. We need doctors in rural areas so that the health system does not collapse,” he said.
Referring to the plight of women, Pitroda said that they cannot file an FIR for any atrocity on them, though, on paper, they enjoy all rights. In rural areas, they walk four or five km to fetch water. There are four million single working women in the state and they don’t have proper places to stay, he said.
Traders and small and medium entrepreneurs were groaning under the adverse impact of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said. Banks are not giving them loans. They are ready to give loans to big corporates but not to small entrepreneurs. The focus is on big projects like that of Tata Motors.
“The farmers’ complaints are that fertile lands are taken away from them with some compensation given. But after that no industry comes up on those lands. There is no economic profit for the local society,” Pitroda said and cited the case of GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City), “which has huge area of land but just a couple of office buildings”.
“Overall I found youth, women, farmers, Dalits and Muslims dissatisfied,” Pitroda said, adding his interaction with these sections was an eye-opener on the flawed Gujarat model of development.
He also rebutted the BJP’s criticism of the Congress for courting leaders of caste formations like Patidars, OBCs and Dalits, saying there is nothing wrong with this as each group is a constituency in a democracy which has a right to be heard and its grievances addressed. “They deserve attention. What is wrong in aligning with Patidars or other groups?” he asked.
He also attacked the tenor of the BJP campaign against the Congress, especially the attacks on Rahul Gandhi for his temple visits and about Indira Gandhi going to Morbi decades ago with her nose covered to avoid the stench of human bodies and animal carcasses in the wake of a dam disaster.
“These are not issues. These guys are focusing on non-issues,” Pitroda maintained.
(V.S. Chandrasekar can be contacted at chandru.vs@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
The rise in the growth rate to the moderately satisfactory 6.3 per cent from the depressingly low 5.7 per cent is good news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at a time when the Prime Minister reminded the audience at a function organised by a media house about former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s observation about the negativism which generally marked newspapers and magazines.
Narendra Modi’s case for a more positive outlook in the media and the country will seem more credible in the context of the latest growth figures if only because they highlight the mistake of those like former Finance Minister Yashwant Singh of the BJP, who have been lamenting (perhaps with a touch of schadenfreude) about the economy’s free fall.
As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said, the country’s emergence from the recent slump means that it has got over the twin blows of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which were expected by Modi’s critics to spell his doom.
The turn for the better in the economy has come at the right time for the BJP when its frenetic campaigning in Gujarat with Modi addressing 30 meetings in a fortnight and with as many as 40 cabinet ministers camping in the state, pointed to a measure of uneasiness in the party about its prospects in what is widely regarded as its bailiwick.
However, considering that the BJP’s success in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh is almost a foregone conclusion, one can say that the rise in the growth rate will not make much of a difference to the outcome. All that it can do is to dampen some of the ardour of the ruling party’s opponents.
Even then, the point remains that the BJP will face its real challenge not in Gujarat or Himachal Pradesh this month, but in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh next year. It is in those elections, where the BJP will encounter the anti-incumbency factor, that it will become clear whether the rise in the growth rate has helped the party or is of little consequence.
The reason for the doubts is that it is not clear to what extent the unemployment problem will be mitigated by the climbing growth rate in these days of automation and artificial intelligence.
Equally uncertain is the quantum of the impact on the BJP’s hopes as a result of the prevailing tension and uncertainty caused by the crime rate — and especially the safety of women and even children.
The effect of the rampaging Hindutva hardliners declaring bounties on the heads of actors and directors is another unknown factor whose effect will be known only after the votes are counted.
Up till now the BJP has been sitting pretty because its “vikas” (development) plank still has many takers even if it hasn’t made a perceptible dent on the unemployment scene. In addition, Modi’s personal popularity remains high because of his oratorical skills and the impression he conveys about the seriousness of his intent to take the country forward.
In contrast, his opponents lack an agenda which can have an inspiring effect and are bereft of leaders capable of drawing enthusiastic crowds although Rahul Gandhi is showing signs of the old Nehruvian appeal.
The opposition depends therefore on, first, the economy continuing to be sluggish and, secondly, on the Hindutva hotheads creating a ruckus. But such an approach is obviously a negative one, as is also banking on the anti-incumbency factor to undermine the BJP-run state governments. There is little hope, therefore, for the opposition if it cannot adopt a positive attitude with a clear projection of the kind of India which it envisages.
For the BJP, on the other hand, it is a tug-of-war between vikas and the hotheads. As long as the economy shows signs of buoyancy, it can expect to be home and dry. It is of the utmost importance for it, therefore, to ensure that the recovery doesn’t flag and that the country regains its status as the fastest-growing economy in the world.
At the same time, the party cannot allow the loonies in its ranks, who include ministers, to run amok. It does not reflect well on a government when the apex court has to direct the states to check cow vigilantes or tell senior politicians in the ruling dispensation to keep their mouths shut on yet-to-be released films lest they influence the censor board.
As it is, the impression persists that the government is not too comfortable with the autonomy of established institutions as could be seen from the official directive to the University Grants Commission (UGC) to ensure that students and teachers did not miss Modi’s “life changing” speech on the occasion of Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s centenary celebrations and Swami Vivekananda’s 125th birth anniversary last September.
If the government does not want the UGC, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and other autonomous bodies to become “caged parrots”, as the Supreme Court once called the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), then it has to desist from enforcing regimentation and stopping the saffron extremists from targeting artistes and all those who are not with the BJP. Otherwise, growth rate alone will not prevent the erosion of its popularity.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com )
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Manish Sisodia
New Delhi : Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday challenged the state governments led by BJP and Congress to compete with his state’s education “revolution”.
He also challenged the BJP-ruled MCDs for a comparison with the schools of the Delhi government.
“Compete with the work done in education sector by our government. Let’s start today and then compare after a year or two. This competition will ultimately benefit the students of the country providing them with good schools,” Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolio, told media here.
His remarks come in the wake of criticism that his government received from the opposition on its performance in the field of education among others.
State BJP chief Manoj Tiwari on November 24 said that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal failed to deliver on his poll promises that he would improve education, while Congress’ Delhi unit President Ajay Maken also slammed the Delhi government, saying the number of students and its results have gone drastically down in last three years.
Sisodia hit back on Wednesday claiming that government schools are being shut down and private schools are increasing in states led by BJP and Congress.
“I appreciate that the important matter of education is being discussed by the politicians who keep discussing issues of ‘shamshan’ and ‘kabristaan’,” he said.
He further said that both BJP and Congress “did nothing in the education sector” and rather played in the hands of the private school lobby.
Referring to the data of the Education Department, he said that the transition loss from Class 10 to Class 12 came down in the two years of AAP’s rule in Delhi.
“While the transition loss in 2013-14 was 6,2,158, it has come down 2016-17 to 1,8,405.”
He also pointed towards the increase in expenditure on school infrastructure, which, he said, has gone up to Rs 1,229 crore in 2016-17 from Rs 210 crore in 2012-13.
“We changed the way education sector worked in Delhi. The schools which were dilapidated and were not maintained, get whitewashed every year now, and drinking water and sanitation has been taken care of.
“Four-five years back when we started talking on wide-spread corruption, the political discourse shifted from caste, religion to issues like corruption. I am sure education will become a topic in national politics in the coming years,” he added.
—IANS
