Poll Pranks

The recent poll by CNN-IBN, presented by The Hindu and conducted by CSDS, led by Yogendra Yadav, puts Rahul Gandhi as the most popular choice as Prime Minister at 19% vote by the population sample and 42% of the UPA sample. (If I missed out anyone involved in the exercise please remind me!) Hang on though, we’ll get to that poll in a few minutes.

First, let’s have some fun. In an episode from the 80s TV series ‘Yes Prime Minister’, Jim Hacker, PM, wants to announce a ‘grand design’ by cancelling introduction of the Trident nuclear missiles and reintroducing conscription (national service). Sir Humphrey, his permanent Dept. Secretary doesn’t want him to make such an announcement and has to turn the cabinet ministers’ opinion against the decision. What follows is an interesting poll exercise between Humphrey and the PM’s assistant, Bernard Woolley. Here are some random and edited excerpts (in blue):

Plot: Jim Hacker has just returned from his visit to the American President in Washington. While the PM is suffering from jet-lag (in other words: sleeping), Bernard Woolley is briefed by Sir Humphrey to stop the PM from announcing his Grand Design (canceling Trident and reintroducing conscription) in his first television broadcast. Jim Hacker sounds out General Howard about canceling Trident. The General is in favour because Britain does not need it. When the General later learns from Sir Humphrey that canceling Trident also would mean a reintroduction of conscription, his opinion about canceling Trident changes immediately.

Bernard goes to see Sir Humphrey and tells him that Hacker is planning to announce his Grand Design in the broadcast. The PM thinks it will be a vote-winner because a Party poll has shown that 64% of the population are in favour of reintroducing conscription. Sir Humphrey advises Bernard to issue another poll to show the majority of the population is against reintroducing conscription. Bernard wonders how this can be done and Sir Humphrey explains it. Sir Humphrey will make sure all the Permanent Secretaries will brief their Ministers to oppose the Grand Design.

After the Cabinet meeting where the Grand Design is discussed Jim Hacker is rather puzzled by the outcome. All his Cabinet colleagues who were previously in favour of it, now all seemed against it. The Foreign Secretary was talking about how it could look as appeasing the Soviets. The Defence Secretary was saying that Britain should have the best and Trident is the best. And the Employment Secretary was raving about how conscription will let an army of trained killers loose on the streets.

Sir Humphrey advises Hacker not to announce his Grand Design in the television broadcast. Bernard gives Hacker the results of the latest poll that shows that 73% of the population are against conscription. Hacker now thinks it is best not to refer to the Grand Design in the speech.

The discussion here between Humphrey and Bernard is a good example of how poll pranks are played out:

Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"

Bernard: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."

Humphrey: "Yes or no?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."

Bernard: "Is that really what they do?"

Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."

Bernard: "How?"

Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"

Bernard: "Yes"

Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."

So, you see, just as Sir Humphrey’s questions are motivated by his own policy beliefs most opinion polls in India have similar motivation. Now you will be explained the methodology and how scientific it was and all that. That doesn’t mean the questionnaire used for the ballot itself was scientific. Did you get to see the questionnaire? I did not and then there are direct discussions with respondents that can be safely left to your imagination.

Opinion polls not only need to provide options but also need to take into account realistic probabilities of someone being a real candidate for say, the prime-minister post. By what logic does the survey consider A.B. Vajpayee to be a candidate? The man has retired from politics, has decided not to contest elections again and yet he is an option. This is tom-foolery at its best. In a lesser way L.K. Advani also falls into the same category. I doubt he is considered  a PM candidate even by the BJP or NDA.  In contrast Nitish Kumar, after his great victory last year in Bihar was being touted as a PM candidate by CNN-IBN, is missing from the list. Was he there on the list and did he poll zero votes? If there is some stupid logic in Vajpayee being on the list then I am quite certain even Amitabh Bachchan or Rajnikanth would have polled some votes if they were included. So just like in real elections some candidates are put up just to divide votes, maybe ABV and LKA might be those candidates in this particular poll. Very clever. Now I wonder what the questionnaire actually contained.

Then, having concluded Rahul Gandhi is going to be the most popular choice for PM (whether by secret ballot or just verbal interaction is not clear now) there are other questions kept ready for the respondents. You will find them in pic 2 and 3. Is he trustworthy and pro-poor? What one thought of his Bhatta-Parsaul adventure and even if he is ready and should become PM straightaway. Okay, but when it comes to a poll for candidates from within the BJP itself there is no Advani. So now we should be convinced that LKA is not a preferred candidate within the BJP itself but according to the pollsters is good enough to be a candidate for popular vote by the general public respondents.

Now, if they had these questions about Rahul Gandhi ready for the respondents what about similar questions about other candidates? Nothing? It would be really interesting to see the pro-poor or trustworthy votes for at least one more candidate from the list. If not, I doubt the pollsters even measured all the candidates on the same parameters in the poll.

So all of us Bernards can now see how the perfect balanced population sample was used, with the best questionnaire and with the best and realistic options for PM candidate. Why go through all this painful trouble? CNN-IBN and CSDS should just listen to Digvijay Singh! He declares Rahul Gandhi PM almost every fortnight, doesn’t he? We could have been saved the pranks.

Raman Rage

There is a ‘I-hate- Sonia-Gandhi’ page on facebook. Actually, there might be more than one such page. In case you didn’t know there is also a funny ‘IhateObama’ website. There is a ‘I-hate-Amitabh-Bachchan’ page on facebook. There is a facebook group page ‘Take Barkha off the air’ and even one called ‘Barkha for worst senior journalist on planet’. There is a page that refers to an article by Sagarika Ghose as ‘Porn article…’ Somebody wants to police them all and send them to jail. These are usually the people who shout themselves hoarse against moral-policing and yet fail to see they indulge in the same activity. 

Okay, if you hunt for these pages and don’t find some, don’t blame me. Pages on the net have a strange habit of disappearing suddenly. As you can see, many public figures have hate pages somewhere and some of the content/comments on those pages are funny or even weird. Some hate pages also become redundant and just hang around until something new comes up about the person concerned.

So why exactly should these silly things rattle someone like B. Raman? (Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India )Especially when he calls this lot a minority? And of all the people who have been decorated with hate on the web why does he pick out Sonia Gandhi, Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose? Well, if you go through Raman’s blogs it’s no secret he is a big admirer of Barkha Dutt. I guess making it all about Barkha would have been silly, so throw in a Sagarika and a Sonia for keeping it sane.

This is what he wrote in an article titled ‘A venomous glee over the Internet’ at Rediff.com. He first posted this on his own blog and rediff then decorated it with some pics. He rattles of a rage against certain people in the same hateful manner that he accuses them of. Some excerpts (in blue) are being reproduced here for the extraordinarily silly logic and arguments that Raman employs:

One has reasons to be concerned over the ill-concealed irrationality of a small number of people, who have been exploiting the advantages of anonymity and wide dissemination for irrational and venomous thoughts provided by the Internet, to indulge in a vicious campaign against those with whom they are in disagreement….…which is seeking to distort and venomise the political debate by using language, arguments and tactics, which are not dissimilar from those used in the past by irrational elements such as the Nazis and  the Fascists.

Actually, what you won’t find now on the rediff article site are two pics of tweets that were originally featured and then removed to be replaced with pics of Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose. If one were to go by some of those tweets, you will find nothing hateful. Which is why it was so conveniently removed, I guess. Mind you, the pics and their removal is Rediff’s own doing and may not have anything to do with Raman. Among the names were Sandeepweb, Calamur, TweetingSourav, IndianUlu, Desh2014, Ssudhirkumar and Talmukund. Sudhir has responded to the mischief on his blog Serious-fun. You can also read the tweets from others. There sure is some ridicule but nothing that would qualify as ‘hate’. And ridicule, Raman should understand, is not such a bad way of dealing with those who concoct and colour news and discussions on television. That is true for politicians too.

You can see screen shots of the two original pics at the serious-fun blog I’ve mentioned above. There you go, Raman, people keep screen shots knowing well how media can manipulate reports within hours. That should tell you something.

Their language, arguments and tactics are also not dissimilar from those used by some of the contemporary irrationals such as the jihadi extremists and the right-wing extremists and the Neo-Nazis of Europe.

Jihadis, Right-wing extremists and Neo-Nazis? Raman is also an ex-Intelligence guy. It is one thing to defend Barkha or Sagarika or Sonia but to trash others as Nazis as an argument can only come from sick minds. In the entire article he does not provide a single example of such hate-writing. It is a tradition with those who cannot combat in a debate with others to trash them as Nazis and fascists. Repeat that lie over and over again and it might even gain currency.  

….The worrisome depth to which their campaign has sunk has become evident from the vicious comments and wishes being disseminated by these elements through the Internet following reports that Sonia has been taken by her family to the US for medical treatment. They do not conceal a certain venomous glee over the indisposition of Sonia.Their obnoxious campaign is directed not only against Sonia, but also against Barkha Dutt for favouring the right to privacy of Sonia Gandhi and her family in the matter of her indisposition.

Some might rationally disagree with Barkha on this point, but what one has been seeing is not a rational disagreement, but an irrational wave of attacks on her, including expression of wishes or curses that Barkha herself should develop the same illness as Sonia for defending the latter's right to privacy.

I am yet to see any viciousness in the tweets that Rediff had originally used as examples. I didn’t find any curse on Barkha either. In reality, it was the Congress itself who managed to ridicule a serious issue. First they mentioned viral fever as the reason for Sonia’s absence from parliament. Then she had cervical cancer, then surgery in the US, then no surgery, then skin cancer. Naturally, the illness of the Congress president who is also seen as the default head of the government cannot be a matter of privacy. Her treatment and recovery can surely be in privacy but not the news about her illness and progress of her recovery. No one has even remotely ridiculed Sonia’s situation.

If there are people who ridicule Barkha or Sagarika it’s because they have come to represent the worst of Indian news media. Barkha has not reached this stage of ridicule overnight. She was once very popular. But repeated drama in reporting events, terrorist attacks, Radiagate have all exposed her to be hollow. People are not going to forget the ‘shoddy journalism’ episode in a hurry and nor are they going to forget Radiagate. It is when tainted journalists continue their sermons on morals and ethics that they invite severe ridicule and rightly so. Any self-respecting news outlet would have fired Barkha Dutt long back. Defend her if you like but don’t become an extremist yourself by trashing people as Nazis.

As I had argued on many occasions in my past articles, history is replete with instances when irrational minorities prevailed over rational or moderate majorities because of the failure of the majority to confront the irrationals with determination and solidarity. We saw such instances in Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and Mao's China.

The antidote to this lies not in imposing curbs on the use of the Internet in order to prevent these elements from misusing the Internet, but in exposing the activities of these elements, in standing in solidarity with their targeted victims and in finding ways of using existing laws against hate-mongering through the conventional media against those indulging in hate-mongering through the new media of the Internet.

Yeah, you’re right! Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Mao’s China. There’s only person in the article with an Italian connection and not strangely the very party that usually parties with communists is the one to keep India a stable democracy? The Internet people are not the ones who famously got India the name ‘banana republic’. If a majority of our institutions have eroded and are in trouble it is not the making of internet people. Radiagate would have been buried by the entire media if not for the internet people. In the US a majority of people now rely on Jon Stewart’s comedy show (The Daily Show) for reliable news. In India the MSM has reached a point where reliability for facts and truth is at an all-time low. Guess who are the famous ones responsible for burying the credibility of the news media Mr. Raman?

It is usually the loser who runs out of sane and fair arguments who wants to prosecute people for imaginary hate-mongering. And in case Raman fails to see or understand, it’s the people he defends who hold more powerful public positions which they can and do misuse and not the people on the internet. By that token we would have to believe everything that is written on the internet, which fortunately most people don’t because they possess good judgement. If there is real hate-mongering that goes on secretly it is surely not on the internet but on some of our news channels.

The bias, the colour, the spin, the suppression of facts and truth that go on in news channels is what has spawned a host of writers on the net. If Raman were driving we would have called it ‘road-rage’! On the net it’s simply Raman-rage! If that is not enough, the comments in response to his article at his own blog site are a fair indication of what people think.

Get Swamy

Seema Mustafa, in response to Subramanian Swamy’s article in DNA wrote: “The language that the politician who heads the one-man Janata Party has used is reprehensible to say the least and I am sure there are laws in this country that can be invoked to take him to task for inflaming passions through complete falsehoods.” There you are, a veiled invitation to trigger happy secularists to drag Swamy into FIRs and court cases over what he has written. Did she manage to have the desired effect? You bet!

Now, if the statement Mustafa made had come from some ‘secular’ politician it would have been understandable. Unfortunately, it comes from a journalist. Journalists are usually the ones to shout themselves hoarse over freedom of speech and ironically it is a journalist who tries to invoke the law to prosecute someone who has expressed his views. This is not just true for Seema Mustafa, this is true for all the so called secular media which doesn’t hesitate to drag The Gita into concocted controversy but doesn’t have the balls to ever even mention the Koran. If the secularists will somehow and someday learn honesty then the likes of Swamy wouldn’t need to write provocative articles. Swamy also exposes how thin and flimsy the tolerance of these secularists are. I had the privilege of going to school but had to learn in later life that the moghuls that our school textbooks glorified were actually villains and enemies of Hindus. You can now expect all the self-righteous nonsense to flow from the minorities commission and other groups to follow.

Here’s the first one from a petition by constituents of Harvard University:

“Swamy proposes a truly shocking set of "strategies" for "deter[ring] terrorism" in an op-ed appearing in the July 16th edition of the Daily News & Analysis, an Indian newspaper. These include "declar[ing] India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus"; "[r]emov[ing] the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites"; "[e]nact[ing] a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion"; and "[p]ropagat[ing] the development of a Hindu mindset…..Writing in the wake of the July 13, 2011, bombings in Mumbai, Swamy has exploited this event not only to promote a vision of Indian society based on Hindu supremacy, but to disparage and cast suspicion on the entire Muslim community in India. "Muslims of India," he states, "are being programmed by a slow reactive process to become radical and thus slide into suicide against Hindus."

The muslims in modern day India are not responsible for any of the past. But those denying the past and wilfully ignoring the aspirations of some Islamic agenda are clearly living in denial. Some of these honourable men and women come from the stock of the JNU, the Congress and the Communist ideology which glorifies the Islamic atrocities as secular rule in India. It takes rare character and courage to be as outspoken and honest as Swamy is. Sure, tar him as a maverick, call him names as Seema Mustafa does, ignore his multi-religious family as the media does and peddle lies about the history of India as the JNU lot do and you have a concoction for a heady clash of religions sooner or later.

Rahul Kanwal of Headlines Today, a bright journalist who is a rising star had this to tweet:

Rahul Kanwal:

Strange Twitter logic. When we do story against Cong, we are hailed as patriots. When we expose BJP, we are called Cong agents & traitors.

August 3 – 22.30

Oh yeah? Who exactly called you agents and traitors? What Rahul forgets is that he tends to ridicule the BJP and Hindutva at every step of the way. Every political party has factions and each faction has their leader. That is why we have elections too. Is that logic lost on journalists? If Rahul Kanwal was sensible enough he would find an answer to his tweet in his own stupid tweet he made earlier:

Rahul Kanwal

How can hand picked nominee of tainted CM be expected to prosecute boss to whom he owes elevation & existence. #MoralHighGroundOnCorruption

August 3 – 16.26

There, that stone-throwing, calling someone a hand-picked nominee ignoring the fact that there was a secret ballot held to elect the leader of the Karnataka BJP is not the doing of the Twitterati but Kanwal’s own way of casting aspersions. The election by secret ballot of a CM is one of the finest things to have happened in Indian democracy and a practice that should become more frequent and common and yet media brokers like Kanwal ridicule that process and then wonder why the twitterati are against him or his channel. No, they aren’t against you but the severe bias with which you report events and colour news items.This same bias colours every aspect of the Hindu-Muslim reporting that the media indulges in. Hindus are fair game, muslims are victims. That's the media line.Those who die are the aggressors!

Forget temples that Swamy talks about, I am not even willing to accept all the crap about even the Taj Mahal. If you go through the writings and investigation by Stephen Knapp there are lies that have been peddled through the centuries. Would the secularists dare and be open to a detailed investigation of the Taj Mahal? When Swamy talks about temples being destroyed, let’s start with the Taj Mahal itself. The rest can wait. Knapp’s site has sufficient evidence and photographs to warrant a detailed investigation. You may want to go through his site and many others who claim it to be a Shiva temple.

One needs go through the roads less travelled across this country through Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and many other states to notice the many small Islamic townships that have come up. Many of them resplendent in their riches and well-built houses and shops. You have to wonder in amazement where all that money and wealth comes from to set up such mini Islamic colonies. The radicalisation of those willing muslims who may wish to overthrow democracy and our way of life is not unique to India. Take a look at this little poster and the related news item:

Daily Mail: "Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up. Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’

The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the ‘zone’ there should be ‘no gambling’, ‘no music or concerts’, ‘no porn or prostitution’, ‘no drugs or smoking’ and ‘no alcohol’. Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, saying he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and ‘put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term". The media in UK suggests it’s the work of sick minds but those living there have already wound up their shops and many others have exited the area and moved to other places where they aren’t threatened by these Islamists.

I have read news reports which mention Hindu homes were marked with yellow paint for slaughter in the erstwhile East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Swamy sort of warns you not to wait for such a day to arrive in India. Subramanian Swamy, I think, only alludes to the fact that there might be many stray muslims and muslim organisations in India who wish to emulate or secretly dream the dream that Anjem Choudary has. Are all muslims involved in that dream? Certainly not, but there are no muslim voices against those who nurture that dream. Their voices only come up when provoked by writers like Seema Mustafa to invoke stupid laws which should not exist in the first place.

For those petitioners in the US who want Harvard University to get rid of Swamy I have to say that they must constitute the greatest gathering of useful idiots who neither know the law nor the idea of freedom. The US supreme court once dismissed even a suit by religious leader Jerry Falwell who was featured in a silly ad by Larry Flynt (Of Hustler magazine) which was outrageous and even allowed a Nazi march through a predominantly Jewish area in Chicago. That is the kind of freedom of speech that democracies need.

The stupid hate speech laws should be removed. You don’t need freedom to say nice things. Real freedom of thought cannot be stopped by laws. You can stop speech but you CANNOT stop thought. And I wish our politicians would wake up and alter such laws. Whether you agree with Swamy or not, give him the space to utter whatever he wants. Let’s not forget that joker from Samajwadi party who announced a prize for the head of the Danish cartoonist who made the Mohammad cartoons. That man still roams free despite encouraging murder in public. Swamy hasn’t incited or encouraged any violence whatsoever. Those who can’t stand his writings are free to write against him. If not, they can shut themselves in their bathrooms and weep.

The best part of the whole drama is that Subramanian Swamy loves a court battle. Anyone dragging him to court would only be stupid enough to oblige him and when they do, there will be more worms crawling out of the secular can. These fools should realise that the ‘Get Swamy’ campaign will not work.

Skeleton Singh - The Closet Prime Minister

Sometime in June 2011 following frequent demands that the “PM break his silence” and speak up on various scams and issues confronting the nation Manmohan Singh held a press meet with five carefully handpicked print media editors. This was supported by the announcement that he would hold such a press meet every week. That done, there were no subsequent press meets. The weekly Malamal lottery of handpicking editors to meet ended with the first and only one. Our “friendly-fire” media is happy too, since the noise had died down on this promise of ‘weekly press-meets’ and the PM could go back to his closet.

Come the monsoon session of the parliament and suddenly MMS comes out all-guns blazing like Rambo (or should I lately say Singham?) and breaks his silence again by delivering one stupid sound bite. “There are skeletons in the Opposition’s cupboard too” he effectively said. Silence is not too great for a Prime Minister, but surely stupidity has to be even worse. I find it hard to believe MMS can come up with that line on his own so I wonder who tutored him. Perhaps Harish Khare or the ministers who manage the media keep feeding him these lines. I guess MMS finally got tired of being Caesar’s wife and now sees skeletons.

Ironically, the first new skeleton to tumble out as the parliament commenced a new session was directly from his own closet. A CAG report is cited as stating that the PMO overlooked a GOM decision to appoint Suresh Kalamadi as CWG-OC Chairman. That Singham video has since has been taken off following threats by Congress goons. But it’s unlikely the CWG and other scams are going to be shut down in a hurry. In an article, FirstPost, even questions the alteration of the minutes of meeting of the GOM that led to the appointment of Kalmadi.

While Ajay Maken, the current Sports Minister, is desperately trying to pin the blame for Kalmadi’s appointment to the previous NDA government there cannot be any doubt now that the PMO has been involved in not only this but was in full knowledge of many other scams too. A. Raja’s statements in court have clearly established the PM was in the know and had even approved the spectrum transactions.

People are now sick and tired of the media’s and the Congress’ attempt to continue to stick the “honesty and integrity” tag to this PM. It now appears that far from the imaginary honesty and integrity, he has wilfully allowed the scams to flourish. He has allowed and overseen the greatest loot of this nation ever in its history. For an economist he has also overseen the economic slide of India, the growth story is grounded and India’s international standing has corroded. The terrible lack of political leadership is starting to affect every sphere of endeavour in this nation.

None of the above is new. MMS has a history to it. Here are excerpts (in blue) from an article from April 2009 by Surajit Dasgupta titled ‘The Manmohan Singh Chronology’. I repeat, these are random excerpts from a very long article and I would strongly recommend that the full article be read:

There is a paradox in the thought process of onlookers. On the one hand, ask a loser why he couldn't make it big in life. Chances are high, he has an alibi of honesty. On the other, point out to him the illustrious growth of a known personality in society and he exclaims, "Wow!"

That the Indian Prime Minister is the epitome of honesty and integrity is a notion not even his biggest detractor in politics dares to challenge. ……. Also, if beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, it must be noted that most journalists in the country are either Bachelors of Arts (pass course) or hold MA in history, not embellished further by an MPhil, let alone a PhD. As for business scribes, a sizeable number of whom are postgraduates in economics and commerce, we know how they conduct their routine business. They pick up information from corporate communication heads of companies, published brochures, leaflets, pamphlets and uploaded website content of those firms, besides sound-bytes of the CEOs…… without ever trying to explore the darker alleys of the business houses by befriending executives from the purchase, sales, accounts and human resource departments.

In the evening of 5 February 2006, I edited an article by Ajoy Bose for The Pioneer, "Manmohan, doctor of politics"….. Bose wondered how Singh "managed to flourish so well under different political masters through the turbulent 1970s and '80s". Then, the silence of the Congress turned deafening when on 21 May 2006, The Statesman published an article by Subroto Roy with several facts that cast aspersions on the character of Manmohan Singh, the economist and bureaucrat. Titled "The politics of Dr Singh", the article presented a chronology of events in Singh's career since his days as a student in University of Cambridge. For systematic reading, let us look at the contents of Roy's article in a bulletised format:

As a student -
(England onwards)
Greatest influences among teachers: Joan Robinson & Nicholas Kaldor (both communists)
Mao Zedong's "Little Leap Forward" followed by "Great Leap Forward".
Curiously, Mao himself apologised to the Chinese people subsequently for both.

As a bureaucrat -
March 1971: Seeks 'blessings' of PN Haksar, who had followed his model of protectionism to help Indira Gandhi's regime nationalise banks, to join bureaucracy
Haksar's background:
• In London, protégé of R Palme Dutt and Krishna Menon
• IFS under Jawaharlal Nehru's regime
• May 1967 onwards, Indira Gandhi’s adviser

Haksar's feats:
• Nationalisation of India’s banks
• The Congress split and creation of the Congress(I)
• Politicisation of the bureaucracy including the intelligence services
• Highly placed civil servants became politically committed pro-USSR bureaucrats
• Beginning of courtier culture and durbar politics

As a politician (almost) -
22 March 1991: Rajiv Gandhi prepares documents for liberalisation. Singh had nothing to do with the origins of the 1991 reform and never interacted with Rajiv Gandhi in the last months of the latter's life…. It was Subroto Roy's encounter with Rajiv Gandhi that led to the Congress's change of economic thinking in 1990-1991.

Mission unaccomplished:
• Continuing deficit finance
• No measure to check corruption
• No enforcement of clean accounting
• No strict audits

Skipping 11 years…
May 2002: Congress passes a resolution saying the ideas of India’s liberalisation had originated with neither Manmohan Singh nor Narasimha Rao! The account was too damning and the newspaper that carried it too credible to be ignored. But ignore Singh's party did. Why? Was it out of the fear that any action, legal or otherwise, would turn the article or its writer more popular and more people might revisit and perhaps revise their opinion about the current prime minister?

As the "honesty" and "integrity" of our prime minister has turned almost into an electioneering slogan of the Congress, it's time to dig deeper….

After the Narasimha Rao era began, in August 1991, the rate of inflation rose to more than 17 %; the BoP crisis had already turned critical with India left with forex reserves just about enough to pay for three weeks’ imports. Under these circumstances, why did Rao summon Singh’s predecessor at RBI, IG Patel, and request him to accept the post of finance minister in his cabinet? Why was Singh the second preference?

Certain notions are so deeply set in the public psyche, even hindsight many years later cannot rectify the myths. That India embarked upon a path to a free market regime in the period 1991-96 is one such notion. Reforms should mean competitive prices for the consumer, but almost all infrastructure projects at that time were pursued without competition, Enron and Cogentrix being two prime examples. …..While to its credit, the Rao-Singh regime could boast of successively increasing growth rates – Corruption in all public-private partnership deals became the order of the day. And the Great Indian Securities Scam unfolded.

……When advised by admirers to leave the Congress in 1996 and concentrate again on propounding economic philosophies, he had dismissed the plea with his signature feeble voice, thus, "But I am in politics!" It seems somewhere in his subconscious he fancied his chances in a possible second innings in the future. Soon after the 1996 elections at a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party, he quoted the "Caesar's wife" proverb. the insinuation was clear; he was distancing himself from Narasimha Rao. But he knew his future would be in the Congress.

If it was not a bureaucrat being dictated by his political master(s) (1971-91), or a minister being given ideas by a prime minister (1991-96), or a prime minister being told what to do by his party's head, it is an ally telling him what to do, more importantly, what not to do (2004-2009). If nationalisation of wholesale trade in foodgrains was Indira Gandhi's idea, if increasing corporate taxes in 1979 was Charan Singh's or HM Patel's idea, if mortgaging the country's gold was Chandrashekhar's idea, if liberalisation and globalisation were ideas of the IMF-Narasimha Rao combine and, finally, reforms with a human face was Sonia Gandhi's idea with too much of facial massage (read NREGA) added by the left, what, for heaven's sake, is Manmohan Singh's idea?

To conclude, Manmohan Singh has but two words that sum up all his ideas: "Yes, boss!".

The Real CABINET Meeting

The mainstream media for a long time has been hounding lesser ministers and crooks. The root of the entire disaster that confronts India lies at the top of the pyramid and not at the bottom. It is the honourable Prime Minister with a great deal of skeletons to protect who must be held responsible. Not far behind is the UPA chairperson. If a Chief Minister can be forced to resign by leaked reports and an activist Lokayukta then the closet PM is guilty of far larger crimes. The honesty and integrity crap doesn’t wash anymore. It is time for a real leader to step in.  Skeleton Singh, the closet PM, must go.

Also Read:  "Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi Should Be Held Criminally Liable..."