PM's "Crisis Of Confidence" Speech At Iftar Party

On the evening of August 13 at an Iftar party hosted by Ram Vilas Paswan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the diners on the eve of our Independence Day. This is the full text of the speech to members of Congress and other secular parties who attended the dinner.

MMS: "Crisis of confidence"

Namaskar on the eve of the 66 th Independence day of this great country! This is a special night for me. Exactly eight years ago, in May 2005, I accepted my appointment as Prime Minister by Smt. Sonia Gandhi. I promised you a PM who is not isolated from the people, who feels your pain, and who shares your dreams and who draws his strength and his wisdom from you.

During the past eight years I've spoken to you on many occasions about national concerns, the energy crisis, reorganizing the government, our nation's economy, and issues of terrorism and especially black money. But over those years the subjects of the speeches, the talks, and the press conferences have become increasingly narrow, focused more and more on what the isolated world of Delhi thinks is important. Gradually, you've heard more and more about what the government thinks or what the government should be doing and less and less about our nation's hopes, our dreams, and our vision of the future.

Few days ago I had planned to speak to you about very important subjects – energy, terrorism, illegal immigration, black money, corruption, scams, quotas, unemployment, farmer suicides, rail accidents, airline crisis, Assam violence and Azad Maidan violence. For the fiftieth time, I had described the urgency of these problems and laid out a series of legislative recommendations to my High Command. But as I was preparing to speak, I began to ask myself the same question that I now know has been troubling many of you. Why have we not been able to get together as a nation to resolve any of these problems?

It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper -- deeper than kerosene lines or power shortages, deeper even than secularism or recession. And I realize more than ever that as PM I need your help. So I decided to reach out and listen to the voices of India. I invited to the PMO people from almost every segment of our society -- business and labour, teachers and preachers, governors, mayors, and private citizens, all represented by five eminent media personalities. And then I left 7RCR to listen to other Indians, men and women like you.

It has been an extraordinary five days, and I want to share with you what I've heard. First of all, I got a lot of personal advice. Let me quote a few of the typical comments that I wrote down.

This from the Kerala Governor: "Mr. PM, you are not leading this nation -- you're just managing the government. Some of your Cabinet members don't seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples. Don't talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good. Mr.PM, we're in trouble. Talk to us about blood and sweat and tears. If you lead, Mr.PM we will follow."

Many people talked about themselves and about the condition of our nation.

This from a young woman in Panchkula: "I feel so far from government. I feel like ordinary people are excluded from political power”. And this from a young man from Chinchpokli: "Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives. Some people have wasted energy, but others haven't had anything to waste." And this from religious leader of the Church: "No material shortage can touch the important things like God's love for us or our love for one another."

And I like this one particularly from a woman who happens to be the mayor of a small oil rich Assam town: "The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can't sell anything on Dalal Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first."

This kind of summarized a lot of other statements: "Mr. PM, we are confronted with a moral and a spiritual crisis."

Several of our discussions were on energy, and I have a notebook full of comments and advice. I'll read just a few. "We can't go on consuming 40% more energy than we produce. When we import oil we are also importing inflation plus unemployment. We've got to use what we have. The Middle East has only 5% of the world's energy, but Reliance has 24% of India’s oil." And this is one of the most vivid statements: "Our neck is stretched over the fence and Bangla Desh has a knife."

And the last that I'll read: "When we enter the moral equivalent of war, Mr. PM, don't issue us mobile phones."

These few days confirmed my belief in the decency and the strength and the wisdom of the Indian people, but it also bore out some of my long-standing concerns about our nation's underlying problems. After listening to the Indian people I have been reminded again that all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with India. So, I want to speak to you first about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to Indian democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. And I do not refer to the outward strength of India, a nation that is at peace this morning everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might.

The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of India. The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the 15th of August.

It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of India. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in Gandhi, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the Indian spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next two years of UPA will be worse than the past eight years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of Indian workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Indians to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the African world. As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for ministers and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.

We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Phoolan Devi. We were taught that our armies were always invincible and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of China. We respected the PMO as a place of honour until the shock of Coalgate.

We remember when the phrase "16 anna sach" was an expression of absolute dependability, until five years of inflation began to shrink our rupee and our savings. We believed that our nation's onions were limitless until 2008, when we had to face a growing dependence on Pakistani aid. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.

What you see too often in New Delhi and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress party twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don't like it, and neither do I. What can we do?  First of all, we must face the truth, and then we can change our course. We simply must have faith in each other, faith in our ability to govern ourselves, and faith in the future of this nation. Restoring that faith and that confidence to India is now the most important task we face. It is a true challenge of this generation of Indians.

We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from 10 Janpath, but from every house in India. We ourselves are the same Indians who just this year won our best Olympic medal haul. In little more than seven years we've gone from a position of billion dollar reserves to one in which almost half the dollars we use comes from Dubai, at prices that are going through the roof.

What I have to say to you now about terrorism, illegal immigrants and energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am today setting a clear goal for the terrorism policy of the India. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more commandos for VIPs than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our VIP security will be met by the VIPs themselves.

Point two: To ensure that we meet legal immigration targets, I will use my authority to set quotas. I'm announcing now that for 2012-13 and 2013-14, I will forbid the entry into this country of one single illegal immigrant more than my party’s goals allow.

Point three: To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop India's own alternative sources of fuel -- from rocks, from water, from dead trees, from unconventional gas, from the moon.

Point four: To make absolutely certain that nothing stands in the way of achieving these goals, I will urge Congress to create a high-powered board which, like the Waqf Board, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key projects.

Our nation must be fair to the poorest among us, so we will increase aid to needy Indians to cope with rising energy prices. We often think of conservation only in terms of sacrifice. In fact, it is the most painless and immediate way of rebuilding our nation's strength. Every watt of power each one of us saves is a new form of production. It gives us more freedom, more confidence, that much more control over our own lives.

You know we can do it. We have the natural resources. We have more money in Swiss Banks alone than several Pakistans. We have more coal than any nation on Earth. We have the world's highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this war.

I do not promise you that this struggle for freedom will be easy. I do not promise a quick way out of our nation's problems, when the truth is that the only way out is an all-out effort. What I do promise you is that I will lead our fight, and I will enforce fairness in our struggle, and I will ensure honesty. And above all, I will act and I will speak more often.

I will continue to travel this country, to hear the people of India. You can help me to develop a national agenda for the 2020s. I will listen and I will act. We will act together. These were the promises I made three years ago, and I intend to keep them. Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources -- India's mines and spectrum, India's secular values, and India's confidence. I have seen the strength of India in the inexhaustible resources of our people. In the days to come, let us renew that strength in the struggle for a secure nation.

In closing, let me say this: I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our neighbours. With Soniaji’s help and for the sake of our nation, it is time for us to join hands in India. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the Indian spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

Thank you and wish you a Happy Independence Day in advance.

Note: This is a work of fiction and imagination. The speech is rephrased/parodied from the 'Crisis of Confidence' speech by former US president Jimmy Carter which can be read here.

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Sagarika's 'Miss India' Solutions To Illegal Migrants

On April 20, 1968 British Conservative party member Enoch Powell made the fieriest of speeches against mass immigration. The media titled it the “Rivers of blood” speech. He had then warned of immigrants swamping Britain and marginalising its original population. Mind you, it wasn’t even a great deal of “illegal” migrants he talked about. He started with the line: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature”. For two decades now Britain is coming to grip with reality and paying the price of failing to heed Powell’s warning. Rivers of blood haven’t flown in Britain but they certainly have in India, especially in Assam this month.

Lately, some in India have been talking about illegal migrants and how to deal with them. The problems India is facing on account of illegal migrants are outcomes of seeds sown and nurtured by the left-liberal-votebank mafia and their sympathisers in the “communist” media. Many also make the terrible mistake of tagging a predominantly communist Indian media as “liberal”. Typically, it’s the bimbos in this very media who tend to make absurdly loose statements about illegal migrants in the wake of the Assam communal violence; the Bodo-Muslim riots. Cleverly, the media and the Congress won’t even call them Illegal Bangladeshis but Bengali-Muslims.

Many may be aware, many not but Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, campaigned in 1979 to bring in immigration reforms. Till the early 80s Indians visiting UK didn’t need Visas. We could go to any port of entry in UK and get an entry permit. Same applied for Britons visiting India. All that changed in 1984 when Thatcher introduced Visas for even short visits to UK. Till then, many Indians went on a visit to UK, got married or contracted a marriage and got settlement rights. All that changed when Thatcher introduced the British Citizenship Act in 1981. New rules meant that your ‘Visitor visa’ for UK couldn’t be converted to a residential permit. Also, UK now has a Border Control Agency, US has a Homeland Security along with Border & Customs Protection agency. All these were measures to check illegal immigration and other illegal activities at their borders. However, the eminent Social Genius (SG) in our media will tout some liberal nonsense without the slightest thought or reflection on what changes have been brought about by many democracies to curb illegal immigration. She is like that famous MissTeen SouthCarolina who explained why Americans weren’t good at reading maps. Doesn’t ring a bell? Never mind! We will get to that soon. Our eminent SG likes to cook ‘2 Minute Noodles’ with the most serious of problems with absurd comments.
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Don’t look at me! I didn’t think of that 2-minute noodles thing. I’m not that original. This is none other than Barkha Dutt admitting with unusual candour that media folks tend to cook 2-minute judgements. I like the honesty in that tweet. The only problem is that these cooks don’t seem to show any intention of learning. If you read articles by Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghose or Rajdeep Sardesai you will hardly find much research, no depth, no painstaking digging for facts. Lately, you will only find such serious work in the Social Media. Take this article on Right To Education by @ssudhirkumar or this one on Kingfisher by @TheKaipullai. Both have depth, filled with details and meticulously compiled. And these are just two of them. There are hundreds of such writers who aren’t regular journalists or media celebs. These aren’t 2-minute noodles! But the media celebs have found something even better to cook their 2-minute journalism with – Twitter!

Again, I’m not the one saying it but just rephrasing the eminent SG: “When it comes to understanding and judging Twitter, Rajdeep Sardesai is “Numero Uno”! And true to his enormous reputation Rajdeep concludes, after being nagged by tweets over Assam, that he will now see Twitter as just ‘amusement’. Yeah! He wants to get back to some ‘real work’ like concocting some amusement like ‘TheGreatestIndian’! I guess Mr. Yogendra Yadav must be on vacation or else Rajdeep could have conducted another national poll to reach the same conclusion: ‘Twitter is amusement’ and then conducted a panel discussion on the amusing topic. Alas, we missed some amusement ourselves! But only for a while! For before too long his deputy, Sagarika Ghose (SG), the eminent Social Genius backs up Rajdeep’s conclusion with some mind-numbing and amusing tweets. 

Damn! I was almost starting to forget what I started with: Illegal Immigration. But I trust SG to bring my focus back with her tweets. So in the midst of all the violence and discussions on illegal immigration SG quotes someone and concludes migration from the rest of the country that has led to ‘ethnic multiplicity’. So now all the ethnic migrants in Mumbai should shut up and live to together. Raj Thackeray should learn from SG. Oh wait! She wasn’t talking about Mumbai but Assam is it? It’s always such a thrill to misunderstand SG! After Jerusalem, Assam, particularly Bodoland, has to be the best ‘promised land’ around the country. Not surprisingly migrants from places like Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and other states have been rushing to Assam for many years. Then these people learn Assamese or Bengali, convert to Muslims or Christians or to Bodo Tribals and create havoc in the area. We would have heard such reasoning and answers from many past Miss India winners. And yet this nation of 1.2 billion (minus 1) can’t see it as clearly as SG does. And here’s a warning for those who rant about illegal immigration (I’m already heeding..):
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Stupid USA! They should have shut their borders in the 18^th century itself. For a country that was built by immigrants they should have listened to SG long back. The tough measures that USA frequently takes against illegal immigrants, especially in their southern border with Mexico and with their legal framework have to be researched by some social media writer. Such silly tasks are not for our 2-minute cooks you see. And even Rajdeep will find it amusing that SG says ‘whites attacking browns’ without mentioning what kind of attack that is. Well, let’s just assume its racist more out of colour and ancestry rather than stupid illegal immigration. What SG forgot to tell you though is that India, Bangladesh, Pakistan are all ‘whole wheat bread’. They are all brown! There may be some differences in physical features but comparing an illegal immigrant or migrant issue to a racist issue is what an absolute moron can manage, without any assistance. I am no expert to firmly conclude the Assam tragedy is only of illegal immigration. But SG, given her 10 years of journalistic work in the Bodoland area, can most certainly conclude it’s not.

So you see, it’s quite hard to understand or interpret the amusing tweets of SG. Maybe we need expert comedians like Raju Shrivastava, Johny Lever or that guy (Pehchan Kaun) to really understand the genius of SG. I say that because late night comedian, Jimmy Kimmel, a few years ago, did a splendid job of interpreting a Miss Teen USA contestant’s answer to the question: “A 5^th of Americans can’t locate USA on the map, why is that?” (Do watch the video of 3.53 mins):

So you get it now, don’t you? The similarity between MissTeenUSA and Sagarika Ghose when it comes to offering solutions to issues is striking. Isn’t it? Fortunately MissTeenUSA is not grappling with some nuclear-bomb issue. I can't say the same for our Social Genius! But hey, they are both still very young and will learn as they go.

On a serious note, illegal migrants from Bangladesh have been a problem for decades. And yes, as I said in the beginning they find support in our Vote-bank mafia who will sacrifice national interests to remain in power. The communist media too will do all they can to support this mafia. Assam may have a strong contingent of these illegals but they aren’t all permanent residents of Assam alone. They are in Bengal too. Many have melted into smaller towns in India. Many have melted into the vast ghettos of Mumbai and other suburbs.

I quote from the post: ‘MakeMumbai a separate state’ (And also recommend you read it if you haven’t already) - (Rediff): “In terms of illegal immigrants in Mumbai, Bangladeshis alone account for between 3.5 lakhs according to a minister and 16.0 lakhs according to Kirit Somaya, a former MP.  What would you say about a government that can’t even get its numbers right on such matters? This is in no way to suggest that any of this population is involved in crimes but the possibilities that some may be cannot be discounted. But it sure is a matter of serious concern”.

Illegal immigration from Bangladesh and also Pakistan is a truly serious problem. When have you even heard the current govt talk about any population control measures? It is not just a social problem but a serious national threat as well. The threat of ‘Rivers of blood’ is far more pertinent for India than Britain. The tragedy, apart from the terrible votebank mafia, is that bimbos from the media seem to think this is a simple “Miss India” contest question and answer it that way. 

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Excuses For Assam

For a change conflict-heroes like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai weren’t reporting from the ground on the Assam situation. Hardly any great incentive there for anyone, not even one of bringing down a govt or tarring a Chief Minister. As the violence in Assam flared, even on July 25, all our channels were running programmes on Pranab Mukherjee as president right through the day. Sure, they had to repeatedly show Pranab taking the oath, given it’s the first time ever an oath was administered to a president-elect. When they managed to remember Assam they had to hunt for titles for the violence. Communal violence, ethnic violence, Bodo-Bengal Muslim clashes and so on! They didn’t seem to be sure what to call it but soon every one settled for “Ethnic violence”. Ethnic sounds a lot more moderate and fashionable than ‘communal’. Doesn’t it? Much has since been written and aired about Assam but very few seemed to deal with proper facts and sequence of events. It’s also not what they didn’t or couldn’t report but the reasons or excuses they brought up that should make interesting reading.

And what could be a better reflection of journalistic ethics than that practiced by Rajdeep as his tweet shows. More died in Gujarat than Assam he says as reason for media coverage. Well, you can’t fault RS for vision and foresight. When he landed in Ahmedabad to report the 2002 riots he was pretty sure the toll would cross 1000. Just a minute! When did he come to this lousy figure of 1000 though? For years NDTV and CNN-IBN, both homes for Rajdeep, had thrown up any number for Gujarat; from over 2000 killed to over 3000 killed. They also made you believe it was ‘genocide’ or it was a ‘pogrom’ in which Muslims alone were butchered. At the time here’s a bit of what Rajdeep wrote on Gujarat: 

“…And now in Gujarat, the accusation is of (media) ‘inflaming communal passions’ when the fact is that the flames of communal hatred have been stoked by a mob, a section of which at least has been patronised by the ruling establishment in Gandhinagar”. The numbers Rajdeep reported and even concocting without any solid evidence that the mob was patronised by the govt could have very well come from Digvijay Singh or any Congress member. Umm.. it must be hard to find such intelligence on clashes in Assam. Later, on the same day of July 24 Rajdeep tweeted an apology for his insensitive tweet. (He says tweet of previous night although it was on the same morning of July 24.) Typically, after his apology RS asked if other tweeters would apologise for questioning his integrity. Integrity? That’s laughable. The lies through Rajdeep’s tweets and reports and of his channel are all too many to qualify him a liar, integrity is too far a bridge.

If Rajdeep’s apology was a lightning bolt of conscience the deputy editor of CNN-IBN couldn’t be left behind. In her true bumbling style Sagarika Ghose tweeted about the violence and a majority of those in relief camps being Muslims. Here we go! So I read both the pieces by Samudra Gupta from the relevant dates, here and here. Nowhere do his articles corroborate her statement. 

The first article of his (July 25) even contradicts her statement as does The Hindu, a clip of which someone has pasted with her tweet. That Sagarika feels motivated enough to take on Internet Hindus is one thing but the content of her tweet, like many before, is the kind of integrity that viewers are questioning. Rajdeep doesn’t seem to get it. Does she or Rajdeep ever wonder if they only report to Internet Hindus or to a larger audience who deserve the facts? After all that and after tagging Assam incidents as “Ethnic violence”, accusing IHs as wanting a religions narrative and describing the state as a complex cauldron what does SG’s channel run as headline? “Clashes between Bodos & Muslims have killed 44 people dead so far”. That is since 8am on July 27. Religious narrative? That’s integrity of these characters who parade as journalists.

It is one thing for the Indian TV channels not to have been quick enough to be on the scene to report but to make excuses, compare degree or deaths in riots all indicate the degradation of journalistic thought and ethics. Capturing images of violence or damage is not merely for airing those for vicarious pleasure of anyone. Videos and images have also often helped in rendering justice to the victims and during times of trouble get help faster. Most channels do not even have regular reporters in the NE states. Not even in the state capitals. Each time there is an incident someone rushes from Kolkatta or from Delhi, after much heartburn I suppose. Instead of admitting that the NE is off their radar, not politically or financially very attractive some media celebs indulge in a slanging match on twitter.

Ironically, the best report I have read so far in MSM on the Assam situation, clearly sequencing the various incidents that led to the larger flame, is on a foreign journal. Samrat, the Asian Age editor and from NE himself, wrote the report on NewYork Times’ India Ink page. (Violence in Assam has deep roots). His report, sans drama or literary flair, narrates the story of events since May 29 which is hard to find in an Indian news report.

Oh well! If you wanted drama and thrills in a report about Assam, the best place has to be NDTV. As the Congress organised a 10-member panel for Assam NDTV came up with their usual “TOP10” on Assam. The hits just keep on coming. I am surprised they don’t do a countdown of the top 10. The only recent occasion NDTV itself found a good deal of time for Assam and sent some reporter to the state was for their entertainment programme “Will Travel for Food”. As for Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose, what can one say anymore? They couldn’t even find their usual best reporters in Assam – the Citizen journalists. Whether for riots or for other issues will the TV channels at least now alter their approach to NE states and care? One has to remain sceptical or wait for more creative excuses next time instead of scale and degree of riots and deaths.
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