India has highest contribution to the Swiss Banks ... the article says
Black money in Swiss banks -- Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of following countries:
Top five
India---- $1456 billion
Russia---$ 470 billion
UK-------$390 billion
Ukraine- $100 billion
China-----$ 96 billion
How much is $1456 billion ? ... the article says
1. India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined.
2. With this amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each
3. The amount is 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt. Once this huge amount of black money and property comes back to India, the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours.
4. If this surplus amount (12 times remaining) is invested in earning interest, the amount of interest will be more than the annual
budget of the Central government. So even if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central government will be able to maintain
the country very comfortably.
Read on ...
http://www.merinews.com/
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Who says India is poor ?
Thursday, September 18, 2008
When cowards run the State ...
Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/17tarun.htm
Excerpts:-
When cowards run the State, the nation bleeds.
A will to eliminate the weeds and face the wrath of malevolent elements with the confidence of a victor is the prerequisite to be a ruler and, yes, to be a citizen. If it's there, you build a nation. If not, civilisations vanish.
It's useless to blame this party or that organisation. See what we have done and to what level the state of affairs have been brought to. Everything boils down to personal wars and wins, and homemade potboilers rule the top echelons of organisations.
And look how Jammu rose to see the tricolour win against the Pakistani flag-wallahs. No one had ever imagined a people can create an upsurge unknown in regional history and win too. Great things happen nimble-footed. The British never had ay inkling of the 1857 uprising till Mangal Pandey shot the British officer in Barrackpore. Jayaprakash Narayn's too was a movement whose expanse and impact no one had anticipated, and so was the Ram Janambhoomi movement that changed the contours of the Indian polity.
If people will, they can.
Indians will have to decide how many more will have to die before they feel compelled to rise in revolt. India needs a rebellion of Indian people who would merge all their other identities under one banner -- the tricolour. Forget temples, churches and mosques. The first to protect the church should be a Hindu like the first to protect a swami should be a Christian. That's where the nation gets life.
When the nation is in peril, gods must be discovered in national unity and not within concrete structures.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
How an Intelligent Indian Muslim thinks ?
After the recent blasts in Delhi, I tried to look around for any comments or reactions from the Indian muslim community. So, I came across this interesting website: http://indianmuslims.in/
First, see the funniest part of it, in the “About Us” section, this is what they say …
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mission Statement:
A platform that engages all Indians in a constructive dialog on issues concerning Indian Muslims
If you are an Indian Muslim and interested in writing for this blog, please drop us a mail at editor[at]indianmuslims.in.
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Quite evidently, on one hand they want to engage all Indians BUT only allow Indian Muslim to blog on their site !
Now, some of the excerpts (italized) one of the leading blogs on “terrorism” written in the aftermath of Delhi blasts.:-
Blog Name:- It’s the Intelligence, Stupid!
First, blog blames the Intelligence agencies ...
"The latest terrorist act in Delhi killing more than 20 people and claimed by ‘Indian Mujahideen’ just reinforces and reminds that the whole way in which these investigations have been pursued till now are completely ineffective."
Second, as far as strong anti-terror law is concerned, blog says they are NOT needed ...
"Narendra Modi and Sheila Dixit have called for more stringent anti-terrorist laws. It is a useless demand and any such law will end up subjugating innocents more as we have seen under POTA and TADA than stopping the terrorists. Innumerable detentions throughout India after each blast has shown most of those apprehended have nothing to do with the blasts."
Third, blog suggest some measures to improve working of Intelligence agencies ...
"The Indian intelligence system needs to build contacts with the local Muslim communities, with the imams of mosques and community leaders with honour and respect. They need to bring them on-board and give a sense to the community that we are all in it together. They also need to ensure that the focus is on stopping unlawful activities rather than making the whole community suspect."
My comments are as below one each of the above :-
First,
If we don't listen to WHAT Intelligence agencies need, then how can we blame them ! NSA says that anti-terror law is needed. Remember these were his views before the Delhi blasts.
Second,
You are politicizing the “war against terrorism”, Why do you associate politicians to it ? DO NOT POLITICIZE THE MATTER …. I say don’t hear what the elected representatives say! But go ahead and ask from the law enforcement agencies and if they say that anti-terror law isn’t needed then so be it.
As far as efficiency of these laws goes, I must remind here that 100 of the 129 finally accused were found to be guilty and were convicted by the specially designated TADA court. Read here . I was listening to the then Police Commissioner of Mumbai during ’93 Bomb Blasts during one of the discussion after the '93 Blasts verdict was announced in 2006 and he was strongly advocating the need for stringent laws and said that 100 out of 129 means that TADA had one of best conviction rates, without which the terrorist would have easily escaped .
Third,“Unlawful activities” … it is not some petty crimes which we are discussing here my friend, it is the anti-national terrorist activities which are being discussed.
Is the above suggestion practical? You want the Intelligence to build publically visible contacts with the Muslim leaders … They do make contacts within the muslim community covertly and you want to steal away the stealthiest weapon of covertness from Intelligence agencies. Which side are you standing ? I am sorry to say that you don't sound naïve but certainly foolish …
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Stupid Common Man ...
Hearing the same story again being repeated ...
In the series of serial bomb blasts ripping one after the other, through various cities of India ... the latest one is New Delhi. Terror strike at the heart of the national capital.
Is this first time capital is attacked ? No
We have witnessed attack on the temple of democracy (which we call 'Parliament') and then again around Diwali in 2005.
We are told that modus operandi of terrorists remains same here as was in Ahmedabad and Bangalore (in a sense that so called "low intensity blasts" being used); but the modus operandi of our elected Governments also remains same asking for people to maintain calm, peace and harmony, not to forget the ex gratia announcements. At most, some make rhetoric statements like "Aar Paar Ki Ladaii" (Do or Die Fight) but then waste crores of rupees to deploy forces around the border and do nothing.
Time is running out ... if the Governments don't do their duty ... then time is not far when somewhere a stupid common man will rise which won't be a pleasing experience for the so called "civilized society" in which we supposedly live today.
Finally a message for the Governments:-
Source:- http://www.bhagavad-gita.org/Gita/verse-02-03.html
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Indian Economics and Family System
"With the result economics stands on its head in the West, with private families being nationalized and public functions being privatized. This is the fundamental of market economics in the West. This promotes individuals at the cost of families, consumption at the cost of savings and finally the present at the cost of future. "
Why ? ... Because their consumption rate is higher than their production rate.
The rate at which the rich west consumes natural resources is much much higher than what nature can offer them. So they have to fall on others' resources.
They loot one country, then another, then another. They need man power, natural resources from all over the world. Malign and attack them directly and loot them for their natural resources. For human resources, create an inferiority among them and make them feel that following or serving the rich west is the only way they can ever "develop". Muslim countries are in the first category, we are in the second. In fact our insituitions that ask for a conservative life, offer the possibility of longer social life instead of plundering nature and then going bankrupt ourselves.
We see that the west is trying to loot every country, we also see that they are rich. But the crucial link that puts all this in a logic is that their apparent richness and flamboyance is not because of hard work but rather because of a high rate of consuming natural resources. The societies that do not look so flamboyant and are conservative, are not poor - they know what life is and can think over milennia, unlike the west that cannot think of hundred years hence. That is the reason India has long life and that is the reason we are not going to see the western civilization in its present form a hundred years hence. But material pull being very strong, they can attract others with their riches to further loot them.
Even after realizing that the solutions to all their maladies lies in the east, material bound ego does not allow the west to learn. And our leadership is anyway half-white, so there is not much to expect from it.
Families "are not just the basic unit of society"; they are "the best" and "the ultimate source of our society's strengths and weaknesses". "As almost every social problem that we face comes down to family instability, " the families "matter" and are thus "the most important institution" .
This is how three weeks ago, David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader in Britain, lamented about his country whose children are increasingly becoming dad-less and even mom-less. Cameron had asked Iain Duncan Smith, who heads Centre for Social Justice, a think tank, to study the social security policies of the British Government.
Duncan's gave an interim report to the Tory Party a month ago, detailed how British families are breaking and how cohabitation without marriages is becoming commonplace and how that is turning into a social security burden on the government. The report is suitably titled as `Breakdown Britain'.
In Britain the cost of `dad-left' families and of `dad-less' and `mom-less' children _ $20 billions, (in rupee terms Rs 9 lakh crore every year!) _ is met by the State. This is twice Indian Government's gross income!
Duncan says that more than half of the cohabiting couples separate before their child sees its fifth birthday, but the rate of separation before the fifth birthday of the child in a wedlock is one in twelve marriages. Despite being mocked as outdated by more and more living without wedlock, tradition still offers hope.
On the quality of children coming out of broken, single parent families, Duncan says that if a child is not brought up in a two-parent families it is 70 per cent more likely to be addicted to drugs, 50 per cent more likely to have alchohol problems, 40 per cent more likely to have bad debts, and 35 per cent more likely to be unemployed.
He says "there is a fundamental lack of honesty in political debate". The political class has "recognised the problem", but he says "refused to discuss its cause _ the family breakdown". Duncan goes on, "if we are serious about tackling the causes of poverty and social burden, then we must look at the ways of supporting families and also supporting marriages so that couples are encouraged to get together and stay together".
Duncan says that the simple test for each and every policy is: "Does it help families?" He sees a direct link between traditional family values and sustainable economics. It is an economic issue that torments politics, but politics has no remedy for this. Duncan and Cameron tacitly plead for building traditional families, but they are afraid of saying so openly. Such families existed everywhere for hundreds of centuries, but collapsed in Britain and in the West generally, only in the last few decades. How did this happen? Because excessive individual rights-centric life is glorified as `modernity'. Here the man has his rights, the woman has hers, the elders have theirs, the children have theirs. But collectively, the family that represents all has none. Nor has the society any.
In modern western constitutionalism, man and woman exist as individuals, but the family and society do not. But when the State grants rights, few realize that that grant is at the cost of the family and the community. As the families get de-legitimized and therefore weak, the State is forced to take over the private functions of families. Thus families which are a private affair, are nationalized and their functions are turned into government departmental affair.
Ironically, the same State in the West is privatising all its public functions, namely water supply, roads, municipal services and other public utilities and urging others must follow. With the result economics stands on its head in the West, with private families being nationalised and public functions being privatised. This is the fundamental of market economics in the West. This promotes individuals at the cost of families, consumption at the cost of savings and finally the present at the cost of future.
This perverse economics of the West that is integral to globalisation is being sold here in India where families undertake and keep privatised much of the burden which the western states assume under their social security schemes! Will our economists, intellectuals and media rethink their position so that like Britain and the rest of the West, India is not driven to the wall?
Lotus ... no longer a symbol of national ethos
It seems that Lotus flower (National Flower of India), no longer symbolizes the national ethos.
All the Kendriya Vidyalaya will use a new emblem in which globe has replaced the lotus, thanks to the Central Government (read UPA Govt. or more specifically HRD minister Shri. Arjun Singh)
Read the explanation for the change:-
In order to give a broader reflection of national ethos and ought to be inclusive of challenges, opportunities, rationalistic, scientific & global thinking,. advances in science & technology and social changes taking place in the society, the Board of Governors of KVS in its 79th meeting decided to modify the existing emblem
Monday, September 1, 2008
SIMI's Secular Admirers ...
I happen to tumble across the article by S.Gurumurthy. I sometimes wonder if this is the same Congress party of Gandhi and Nehru which led the freedom movement and claims to have given us freedom ?
Source:- http://www.newindpress.com/newsitems.asp?ID=IEM20080821003817
Here are some of the excerpts (in Italics):-
August 5, a court in Delhi annulled the ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), faulting the UPA Govt. for providing “no fresh evidence” to continue the ban.
Intentionally, you (UPA Govt.) don't provide any evidence against SIMI in the court of Law to support the extension of ban against anti-national outfit and eventually the honorable court has no option but to lift the ban.
How did the “seculars” react to the court lifting the ban on SIMI? Mulayam Singh and Lalu Yadav said that the ban was wrong in the first place! Congress party spokesperson Shakeel Ahmed said the order was “no setback.”
This vindicates the conclusion drawn above. UPA Govt. didn't want to extend the ban on SIMI and they don't see Court's verdict as a setback, in fact they are feel happy about it.
When the secularists were handing out negative certificate of good conduct to SIMI, thanks to the court order, a study by the Institute of Conflict Management headed by KPS Gill, the terror of the Punjab terrorists, had already catalogued over 100 incidents from 2000 to July this year, that characterised SIMI as a terror outfit. Its cadre had been charged as motivators and perpetrators in major attacks from 2002 to 2008.
Super Cop KPS Gill is apolitical person and his analysis as an expert MUST have been taken into consideration by UPA Govt., but they did not !
How did SIMI grow to these menacing proportions? The plain answer is that it was receiving open and clandestine political patronage from the seculars. The NDA government first banned SIMI in September 2001 and extended the ban in 2003,which continued till September 2005. The UPA government, which came to power in 2004, did not extend the ban when it expired in September 2005, helping to revive a disintegrating SIMI.
But why did the UPA not continue the ban? Because Sonia Gandhi and her party opposed the first ban on SIMI in 2001. They were not only admirers of SIMI, but also its advocates – yes, really, advocates as Salman Khurshid, president of the Uttar Pradesh Congress committee, was the counsel defending SIMI in the high court and in the Supreme Court against the ban.
While speaking against the introduction of POTA in the special Parliament session in 2002 Sonia censured the government for banning the SIMI, which was not involved in terrorist activities!
The government of the same party had to re-impose ban in 2006 after its own Maharashtra government found SIMI involved in the Mumbai train blasts in 2006.
Even now, Sonia has not uttered one word against SIMI. Does it mean that she admires it still? Or she is so saintly that, like one of the three noble monkeys of Mahatma Gandhi, she sees no evil whether it is SIMI or LTTE or Nalini or Afzal — the RSS and its allies being the only exceptions!
