The cricket series was indeed a master stroke by Vajpayee
Malaysia, New Strait Times
POINT BLANK: The kaleidoscope that is India
Johan Jaaffar
April 24:
IT is election time again in India. The first stage of the parliamentary elections began early this week and will end on May 10. The balloting is to elect 140 of the Parliament’s 543 seats. There will be five rounds of balloting.
India is the most world’s populous democracy. There are 660 million eligible voters from a population of 1.1 billion.
Naturally, the world is watching India for another political showdown between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party. Indian elections are dramatic, chaotic, and sometimes bloody. So far, 18 people have died in election-related incidents. The last time Indians went to the polls, 100 people were killed. But the truth is, more Indians die of hunger, snake bites and heatwave than during elections. Many more also die of religious bigotry.
But what do you expect from a country as diverse as India? It is a nation that claims to have 17 major languages and 20,000 dialects. There are 35 languages in India spoken by more than a million people. Its population is 51 per cent illiterate, yet it has the second largest number of scientists and engineers in the world. Its coastlines is 5,653km in length and the land frontiers with its neighbours extend more than 15,000km.
India’s railway system is a manifestation of one of the country’s logistical nightmares. It has more than a million kilometres of tracks and 7,000 stations servicing more than 11,000 trains carrying about a million passengers a day. Indian Railway employs the most number of people: 1.6 million workers.
Look at one segment of the vibrant Indian cinema — Bollywood. It produces more than 700 films a year. More than 13 million people watch them in India a day. Film is India’s six largest export.
It has lush tropical jungles; yet, at least nine per cent of its surface is desert (Thar Desert of Rajasthan). India has the largest land area covered in snow and ice outside the polar regions.
The paradoxes are to say the least, mind-boggling. For instance, the Muslims are considered a “minority” in India since they make up of only 12 per cent of the population. Yet, there are 130 million of them, more than the entire population of Pakistan, five times the population of Malaysia and more than 10 times the entire Muslim population of our country. There are 22 million Christians, 19 million Sikhs, 11 million Buddhists and Jains, yet, they are all “minorities”. Every year, the population of India increases by 13 million.
The party led by the incumbent Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP, is a Hindu nationalist one. Yet, Muslims are more likely to support BJP than the more secular Congress Party. The President of India is A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim, who is largely responsible for the development of India’s nuclear arsenal— dubbed ironically “the Hindu Bomb” vis-á-vis “the Muslim Bomb” developed by Pakistan.
Muslims being the majority in only one state, still hold the post of chief minister in many other states. They are more visible in the cities than in the rural areas. Muslim film stars are big names in Indian cinema — the Khans, if you have heard of them, work alongside the Bachans, the Aishwarya Rais and the Roshans. When an Indian TV station aired the hugely popular 52-episode Mahabaharata, the script was by a Muslim poet, Dr Rahi Masoom Raza.
India is used to these things. The most famous Tamil actor is not even Tamil. Marudur G. Ramachandran or popularly known as MGR was a Malayalee from Kerala. He later became one of the most colourful chief ministers in the history of Tamil Nadu. Another Tamil cinema heart-throb, Rajnikanth, is a Marathi. One of the architects of the Indian Constitution was an untouchable (Dalit), Dr B.R. Ambedkar.
Of course, there are problems. The religious riots in Gujarat and the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri Mosque, had pitted Hindus against Muslims. Tolerance of the Other has reached a critical point. However, the underlying uneasiness is more pronounced in the northern states than the south.
Dr Shashi Tharoor in India: From Midnight To the Millennium, notes that India is not just a country but an adventure. The Indian mind, he believes, has been shaped by incredibly diverse forces: ancient Hindu tradition, myth, and scripture, the impact of Islam and Christianity, and 200 years of British colonialism.
Tharoor himself is a NRI (non-resident Indian), born in London to Malayalee parents, brought up in Bombay, went to school and college in Calcutta and Delhi and got his doctorate in the US. He’s an occasional contributor to Time magazine and is currently an executive-secretary to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. India can be maddeningly chaotic as one can observe every time it holds an election. But that is the dynamism which is uniquely India. Like the movies it produce, it may be a world of make-believe. The political landscape may be eerily unpredictable. Yet, India is looking bravely at an Indian century. And more importantly, like us, India is also eyeing 2020 to be a fully developed country.
It is a Sisyphean task nonetheless, but never underestimate its people.
- wobbly knee's doesn't deserve another term in office or should i say his posh residency in lucknow! since coming to power bjp has not fulfilled 1 single promise made to the indian public!
*
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*Originally posted by #let uz chat#: *
* wobbly knee's doesn't deserve another term in office or should i say his posh residency in lucknow! since coming to power bjp has not fulfilled 1 single promise made to the indian public!
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You dont know what you are talking about.
This is a cutting from today’s Times of India
Mumbai Muslim clerics respond to PM’s call for support
TIMES NEWS NETWORK SUNDAY, APRIL 25, 2004 02:11:39 AM ]
MUMBAI: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s appeal on Friday to the Muslim community to join hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party received an instant response on Saturday from a group of Muslim clerics who gathered at BJP headquarters here and exhorted their community to back the party.
The Congress, meanwhile, dubbed the response a stage-managed exercise on the eve of the polls. The clerics blamed the Congress and other parties touting secularism for putting the minority community in a sorry state. “We have been taught to hate the BJP. The Congress and others used us for 50 years as a vote-bank. We will no longer tolerate it,” Maulana Sayyad Ali Zahir Hussaini and Muhammad Ahmed Nisar told reporters.
They were flanked by a Shia leader, Professor Jaffar Sadiq of Arabic College in Navi Mumbai, Maulana Sayyed Ali Abbas Rizvi, Maulana Yusuf Hussain and Imam Sadiq, among others. The half dozen clerics showered praise on the Prime Minister, calling him a leader “who has ensured communal harmony, made a Muslim, APJ Abdul Kalam, the President, and worked for peace with Pakistan”.
The clerics also had ready answers to tricky questions. On the BJP’s demand for a common civil code, Maulana Hussaini said, “We will react only when the draft code is before us.”
About the Gujarat riots and the Babri masjid demolition, he said, “Fights and quarrels have taken place within families.” While there had been more than 3,500 communal riots in the past, the Gujarat riots were the only blot on the Vajpayee government and it had expressed regret for the same, the maulana said, adding that one had to look forward all the time.
“In any case, what is the harm in trusting the BJP in this election? Our fingers have been burnt somany times by supporting other parties in the past,” Maulana Hussaini said.
Nisar quoted from a list of names of prominent Muslim religious leaders who, he said, were supporting the BJP. He expressed confidence that others would follow the example of such respected icons of the community. Shahi ImamBukhari of Delhi, Sayyad Janul Abdul of Bareli, former Aligarh Muslim University vice-chancellor Mehamudur Rehman and Khwaja Ifhtekar Ahmed, national convenor of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Himayat Committee, were some of the names he mentioned to bolster his claim.
It was owing to Vajpayee that the Shia and Sunni sects in Lucknow had buried their traditional enmity and united, he said. Vajpayee was the first PM to announce a grant for the modernisation of madrassas, he added. “If a political party approaches us as human beings and not just as voters, we will respond in like manner,” Nisar said.
All the clerics on the dais also claimed that Muslims enjoyed much more religious freedom in India than in many Islamic countries. Moreover, neither the BJP nor the NDA manifesto mentioned Hindu religious bigotry, they said.
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*Originally posted by Surya: *
You dont know what you are talking about.
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- ofcourse some 1 who worships the ground vajpayee walks on would defend him. no surpres there. *
BJP has shown an elegant portrait of president Mussharraf with Vajpei’s in an election poster. May be the party wants to focus on international relations, and indirectly gives a massage to Muslims that BJP favors them. On the other hand it seems as if Mussharraf is a candidate from BJP in election.
BJP has fall down to normal cheapness in order to appease the Muslim voter.
A Samajwadi Party poster says Muslims not to vote for a party which has demolished the house of Allah, and vote for the person who has sacrifices for the house of Allah. Another poster of the same party says that Mullayam Yadav’ sacrifices are equivalent to the sacrifices of Hazarat Imam Hussain.
Let us stop deciding the BJP PM candidate. BJP/NDA may not reach the majority point.
Let us decide who may become next PM of India from congress or third front.
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*Originally posted by #let uz chat#: *
- ofcourse some 1 who worships the ground vajpayee walks on would defend him. no surpres there. * [/QUOTE]
Instead of mouthig out sound bites, can you please defend your previous statement by telling us what promises Vajpayee made and did not fulfill.
Prodigious India
By Arnold Beichman
Who would have believed a half-century ago that India, the world’s largest democracy with 675 million electors eligible to vote in the current ongoing national elections, would today be one of the miracle states of the 21st century?
Here is a country (population more than 1 billion) with 14 major linguistic clusters; three distinct geographical regions, each one of which has its own unique history; a large minority (13 percent) of Muslims in an ocean of Hindus; 3,000 castes, one of which, comprising some 20 percent of the population, is called "untouchable," plus different religious sects of Buddhists, Parsees, Jains, Christians and Sikhs. And not included in this census are scores of autonomous tribal communities.
Despite powerful fissiparous currents, they're all going to the polls as a routine form of political behavior. I think India, successfully operating a stable parliamentary government, deserves at least two cheers. And another two cheers for that once imperialist power, Great Britain, and the parliamentary heritage it left behind.
The big achievement of any polity is the peaceful transfer of power from an incumbent government to a victorious opposition party as the result of a popular election. The Congress Party had ruled India for almost a half-century after achieving its independence from Britain in 1947.
Jawaharlal Nehru, a socialist and a key lieutenant to Mahatma Gandhi, became India's first prime minister. Nehru admired the Soviet Union even at its Bolshevik worst during the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Nehru and his spokesmen at the United Nations supported by their eloquent silence.
Had Nehru scuttled his Marxist socialism, India would have had its takeoff a lot sooner. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, who became prime minister in 1966, was not much of an improvement. She even tried and failed to impose a dictatorship over India. It was during the Congress Party reign that Pakistan and India fought three wars, 1947-48, 1965 and 1971. Now it seems some kind of peace or at least enforceable armistice will be possible between the two nuclear powers.
The great change came in 1996: the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's party) ousted the Congress Party and repudiated India's disastrous socialist past. No fuss, no muss. Today India is the world's fourth-largest economy behind the U.S., China and Japan, enjoys 8 percent GDP growth. Its high-tech centers like Bangalore (where a Dell techie by trans-Pacific phone has just restored my computer to life) are on an outsourcing roll.
Next door is Pakistan, with a population of almost 150 million, which also achieved its independence from Britain at the same time as India. 'Nuff said.
Arnold Beichman is a Hoover Institution research fellow and author of "Anti-American Myths: Their Causes and Consequences."
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040506-085118-6731r.htm
Knives out as India election campaign ends](http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040508/325/et3oq.html)
By Simon Denyer
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s mammoth election campaign has ended with both main parties trading insults as exit and opinion polls showed a close race to the finish line.
Much is at stake in a campaign that began with the ruling party of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, buoyed by a booming economy, confident of victory but now finding the main opposition Congress party doing better than expected.
Monday’s last round of the three-week poll, the world’s largest democratic exercise, is the toughest for Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the ruling coalition.
Opinion polls predict the BJP and its allies will struggle to win more than a third of the seats being contested on Monday and could leave his coalition short of a majority.
The campaign has become nastier as the race has narrowed, leaving investors nervous about the poll’s outcome.
“Today, the BJP is anxious. Their coalition is unravelling and they are looking for new partners,” Gandhi, dressed in a maroon and cream sari, told thousands of flag-waving supporters in sweltering heat in the capital on Saturday.
Gandhi, in her final rally for the campaign, accused the BJP of targeting religious minorities, rampant corruption during its five-year rule and throwing thousands out of work by privatising state companies.
Leading BJP campaigner Narendra Modi has used every opportunity to attack the foreign origin of Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Speaking at a rally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, Gandhi responded by saying she was ready to suffer the same fate as her husband and her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, who was also assassinated.
“As I stand on this soil with which the blood of my husband has mingled, I say I will not hesitate to share this honour,” she said.
INDIA SHINING MAY HAVE BACKFIRED
The latest by NDTV and the Indian Express newspaper predicted the BJP and its allies would pick up just 67 of the 182 seats at stake in the final round of voting in 16 states on Monday.
That would leave them with between 240 and 260 seats overall in the 545-member lower house of parliament, short of a majority, the poll said, and well down on the number of seats in the last parliament.
Vajpayee called the election six months early to capitalise on a strong economy, a good monsoon and improving ties with old foe Pakistan.
But his party’s campaign motto, “India shining”, appears to have backfired among the country’s impoverished rural masses, who feel excluded from an economic resurgence that has mainly benefited the urban middle class.
Gandhi said “India Shining” meant nothing more than higher prices for the poor and was benefiting a select few.
The BJP has now shifted tack, concentrating instead on promoting itself as the only party capable of forming a coalition in the fractious world of Indian politics.
“The BJP changed track mid-way and has since been campaigning on a platform of stability. Whether this is enough to salvage the election for the alliance is another matter,” C. Rammanohar Reddy wrote in the Hindu newspaper.
India’s financial markets have been spooked by the prospect of a hung parliament, worried that Vajpayee might have to scramble for the support of smaller parties to form a government and as a result soft-pedal on much-needed economic reforms.
A win for the Congress party and its allies would probably be greeted even more negatively by the financial markets, with Congress likely to depend on left-wing parties for support in what could be an unstable coalition, analysts say.
Monday’s round is concentrated in Tamil Nadu and the communist bastion of West Bengal, both large states where the BJP has little presence and is dependent on regional partners.
On Saturday, hundreds of communist activists rode bicycles around the streets of West Bengal’s capital, Calcutta, flying the red hammer and sickle-flag of their party.
Vajpayee addressed rallies in the northern states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, while his deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, campaigned in Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Kerala.
Under election rules, campaigning must end by 5 p.m. (1130 GMT) on Saturday. Counting of all votes will take place on May 13 with a result expected the same day.
It's just refreshing to see democracy work in India, even if its results are far from perfect sometimes. How India has mainted demcoracy despite all it's diversity and internal issues is something to be proud of.
yes, mr imbad, one pak politician was shown on ptv praising indian elections, saying that in India elections have legality.
for the first time in 50 years pak people have guts to praise indian democracy.
:bhangra: 
Cong+ is getting landslide victory in Southern State of Andhra pardesh. Guy who invented Internet in India, Naidu is thrashed.
If this is any indication of people’s mood then NDA+ may not even get projected seat of 260-270.
AP Leads: Cong+ 187, TDP+ 66, Oth 36
Total seat 294
Muslims played a major role in throwing Naidu out of power.
This is democracy at it’s best. Since 1998, in 25 out of 29 state elections the incumbent government has been voted out of power. The poor and the rural people whose lives did not change with the Cyberabad miracle, put Chandrababu out of office. Muslims voted against Naidu for not taking action against the Gujarat state govt. It showed people are smart enough not to be fooled by “India Shining” campaign. Another reason for Naidu’s defeat was the lack of domestic and overseas investments in the state in areas like agro-processing and chemicals. Naidy concentrated too much on IT which made Hyderabad rich and other parts of the state suffer.
Andhra Pradesh would get a Christian Chief Minister with a Sikh governer (Surjit Singh Barnala). Hopefully, the new Congress party government will be in a better position to attract investments in manufacturing
Let’s see whether Hyderabad would lose it’s IT status after Naidu’s fall.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/05/11/HNitjittery_1.html
smart boy, u got it!:k:
well, well. the indian electorate is famous for voting against the poll. looks like BJP will be hard pressed to get 250 seats. In that case they have said they will not form a govt. But the congress doesn't look like getting a majority either. so what next? a hung parliament? re-elections after a year?
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*Originally posted by imran dhanji: *
Muslims played a major role in throwing Naidu out of power.
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I am not sure if that is what did the trick. But I would like to think that this is how it happened.Naidu really played dirty game during Gujrat riots to get some money from central government for his government.
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Define what constitutes a working democracy. Gujrat massacre? Babri mosque incident?
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Every democracy his its bad moments, while for Islamic states like taliban and saudi arabia, they have no good moments to speak off.
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*Originally posted by karina: *
well, well. the indian electorate is famous for voting against the poll. looks like BJP will be hard pressed to get 250 seats. In that case they have said they will not form a govt. But the congress doesn't look like getting a majority either. so what next? a hung parliament? re-elections after a year?
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If I am not mistaken has Mr Vajpayee not told his party that he will likely not contiune as Prime Minister, if the NDA alliance fail to win at least 250 seats in the Lok Sabha?
In simple words... pls tell me... who won? Which party will have the next Prime Minister of India?