Wah !! Applause, applause, etc.

Varied sources hint at an eye on upcoming Bihar polls, etc etc, collecting sops before elections and so on. As also is being said about the Shiv Sena and MNS raking up the Marathi Manoos issue just before its poll time in Mah. These are to me all side issues. Each party gets darned vocal about a cause they perceive as “close to populace” to get brownie points and steamroll at least a few candidates to power. Election systems over the world see various parties try various stunts and gimmics to get noticed and close to their “junta” prior to elections. And close the day of poll, louder the hullaballoo, disruption and so on.

Peaceful. Don’t want to change this.

What attracts my attention in this entire issue, is that of Rahul Gandhi, “scion” of the Congress Party of India, Leader through birth into the party leadership family, etc, decides to come out and say Mumbai is for all Indians. Again, while I laud this thought, I actually wonder why this man displays such an apparent case of hunting with the hounds and running with the hare. What am I talking about here?

I’m talking about article 370 of the Indian Constitution wrt Jammu & Kashmir. Read THIS to get a feel of what its all about.

To draw your attention to all that matters behind these verbose and possibly confusing terms, we are looking at just one glaring point. That the residents of Jammu & Kashmir live under a separate set of laws, including those related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to other Indians.

Granted by the Congress Party, during Indira Gandhi’s regime in the period 1974-1975.

Frankly, I have absolutely no idea about why this entire thing is still in force. The Congress Party has assured us time and again, that Kashmir was, is and will always be a part of India, and not be handed over to Pakistan, at any cost. It has assured us that Kashmir is like all other states, on par with any state with India, and that Indians have freedom to be a Kashmiri with full rights, blah blah blah !!

Whither then were they when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out by Mullahs there? Where are they now, when not a single Hindu can setup biz, purchase property or land, or even stay on there?

With this behind them, why are they crowing from top of the posts about a simple issue of Mumbai for Maharashtrians?

I’ll call this 370 degrees of hypocrisy. And a fat slap on the faces of people who chose to invest their votes in them.

This is the second time that one of the best known figures that India looks up to and reveres, has come out in the open and said his bit regarding what he thinks about the MNS motto in life. The person who dumped MNS concepts before Mukesh Ambani was India’s God of Sport, Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin had also openly expressed his thoughts that he is an Indian first, then a Maharashtrian or Mumbaikar.

Raj Thackeray arguably, could not really do anything at that time. He was a friend to Tendulkar, was the funda loudly proclaimed and accepted at that time. However, wisdom in not responding or making a scene about it was the larger picture. Sachin, who India reveres as an Idol for generations to emulate and rise up to in terms of capability and cult levels, is placed far, far above the MNS. Leave alone for the nation, this holds true for Maharashtrians in general, and Mumbaikars specifically. A single slur or outcry against Sachin Tendular would have seen public favor go away from MNS, Marathi or not. Rank and file would have edged, stormed and walked their way outta the MNS into wider open spaces. For cricket is one area across the Indian Diaspora, that does NOT tolerate politicians interfering with their Gods.

And now comes Mukesh Ambani into the picture.

Ranked in the top notches as far as list of world’s richest people go. Head honcho of the largest org that India has ever seen. Owner of the Mumbai Indians franchise (Tendulkar is Captain here, too). Arguably, the largest employer that Mumbai and Maharashtra has today.

This is a good time for people to see whether the MNS is truly convinced in their cause, or wish to just rabble rouse.

Any cause that people hold to their hearts, cares not for status, popularity and other things. Causes are people. People are causes. One man may believe in something and take his belief to the skies in terms of acceptance and popularity cuz he believes in it hugely enough.

Will MNS actually dare take on the commercial and industrial might of an Ambani and the clout of a Tendular combined? They should, if they so seriously believe in their cause.

Instead of harassing and making life miserable for people who can’t even defend themselves, the MNS should actually take “panga” against people like this who with one word could turn their entire follower clan inside out. That will prove that they are actually concerned and serious about the cause that they propagate with so much vim, vigor and gusto.

Go Raj and MNS. And fight Ambani if you have the balls. Throw him and his industry out if you dare. Cuz when he says that he doesn’t care for your thoughts, the hundreds of thousands of people, Marathi or not, will stand by him. Entire environs that he buys and sells from will be with him. Obviously, he provides them the means to run their homes and businesses, not you. And believe you me, Ambani saying this is a far bigger threat for you than a poor taxi/auto driver not learning Marathi through the books you’ve thrown at them.

I’d like to actually see that you care, Raj and MNS. And I will believe you, if you go and whack an Ambani or a Tendulkar.

All subject of course, to you caring enough. You may of course, continue what you’re doing and keep whacking poor people who can’t defend themselves against you.

And by a whopping mandate it has declared the 100+ year old Congress party as capabale enough to manage this great country for the next 5 years. It has done so without ambiguity, and has left no room for shakiness at the centre in the form of volatile driven-by-need coaltions or by power hungry time serving politicians.

The country has also voted succinctly and clearly against the left and has left them stumbling and incapable, even in their own bastions of Kerala and West Bengal. Not to be left behind, the bourses, when they opened on Monday, lauded this decision by two successive upper circuit breakers as the index spiralled up to glory, leaving no one in doubt about their decision to vote.

For me however, this brings in a huge diaspora of mixed emotions. The happy ones have been listed above, as I shared people sentiments of a stable govt, and market sentiments of faith leading to rises in indices. The ones that really irk me as of now are:

1) I see that we are heading back towards a regime where ruling party reins are handed down in the family, irrespective of capability or qualifications. Takes me back to eras where maharajah’s were elected at birth.

2) I see a weak opposition now, a much needed facet of any democracy that prides itself on being driven by mandate. An opposition that risks the danger of standing leaderless, and probably missionless too.

I have also spent the past 3 days skimming over regions, people who won, margins they won by and so on, and I have these points that hit my face when I look at an inch below the surface of this victory.

1) That the Congress has won on a purely minority vote aggregation. Sounds ridiculous ? Check out their strong bastions as of now : Kerala, TN, Andhra, where Xtian conversion activities are gathering force daily, and plague the very fibre of a really ancient culture. Check out UP and other bastions, where the Muslims have voted en masse for the Congress.

How can I really call a party that has focused on pure divisive strategies to polarize communities and win, secular? Just because they keep their minority forces satisfied and leave the rest of the country to its own devices?

2) Hindu (the majority) votes have been divided and dispersed by regional parties, star power, etc, to the point of being absolutely miniscule and unaccountable.

The bastions that remain with the BJP today in the form of states are ones that firmly protect culture by keeping away minority appeasement policies and by keeping conversions at bay. Staunchly, firmly Hindu with no move or trend to garner those “minority votes” through appeasement. (Many may of course choose to view this as “communal.”) But this is the stark reality that stands out today.

That Varun Gandhi would win, I had no doubt of. That he would win by such a whopping margin surprises me, given especially that he made “communal” speeches.

While I welcome this Govt and the immediate sense of stability it brin’gs to the country, I am worried about the long run. Especially given the ruling party’s leanings towards minority appeasement in various forms. And by its approach to define leadership of both the party and country in terms of Family.

I think its time I joined the BJP. If of course, it changes its fence sitting stand and decides to go and proudly label itself a Hindu party without being communal.

I for one would love to live in an India thats HINDU. A country where all religions from time immemorial have been tolerated and encouraged in terms of practice (not in terms of rsions, mind you). A country where I can go to a temple with my head held high, and not be labeled “communal.” A country whose culture I protect by not permitting conversions or allowing appeasements that lead to nothing but polarization.

Sanjeev

I can’t resist blogging competition. Gives me another excuse to spout a ton of Gibberish in this, my own space.

So when I was invited by @peppysophia to write about this Online Social Shopping Experience, I was quite excited. The reasons for this are two fold

1) The Social Shopping space excites me. It’s very close to me, especially since I dabble in a concept called sCRM (Social CRM) and love mining a huge amount of feeds to trend and track conversations around a brand and a product.

2) This is a darned contest And I’ve not won one so far, and Sophia Amma promised me that chances are darned bright and whatever I fell for this.

Now for the crux. The contest involves blogging about the ShopCorn “Social Shopping Site”.

I went through the presentation here, and was frankly, not a weee bit excited by what they had to throw at me. Not that the site or concept is tacky, but that I am too steeped in dreams and aspirations of things “social” to see any value in what they bonked at me in the presentation.

They spoke about various things to do online together, like Live Reviews, Browsing Deals, etc etc that didn’t really appeal to me. For me, most good shopping sites already do these things.

I couldn’t see the “social” bit in this entire blasted exercise.

The site is done well. But then, that in itself ain’t Social. Social means much much more than what this site offers.

For me, I would say that it would make darned good sense for a site like this to start off as a simple FB or Twitter app, and then scale up to a full site.

Concept? Good. Implementation? Damp Squib

Sanjeev Sarma

Better than it could have in a Ludlum or a John LeCarre thriller.

The story was being read all these years, the characters and events were unfolding slowly, methodically, without apparent connections or relations to each other.

And once it happened, all  events / characters / thoughts / ideas fell into place with the rapidity of a digital jigsaw puzzle being solved in auto-mode, with pieces seen/remembered/thought of earlier sliding into their respective places and forming a complete picture.

The world, beyond all doubt, understood in the space of the last three days that Pakistan and Taliban are truly one, and that one is not different from the other.

These thoughts did cross the mind of many over so many years, through unexplainable sixth sense or predictability fundas. But there was always a link here or an event there, that was missing in the world terror map. These seemingly unrelated links and events erected a friend or foe maze, peppered with cleverly disguised, even hidden markers, a maze confounded by contradictions ranging across extremes, and of a face put forward that was not a face at all but a mask!

I personally saw inklings of this for the first time, when the Dictatorship, Army driven functioning, of Pakistan was replaced with a “civilian” one. This obviously happened “around” the time the favoured daughter of the Pakistani soil, Ms. Bhutto was assassinated.

It was then that I kind of understood that the true forces that puppeteered Pakistan were calling for a show of hands.

Mumbai 26/11 happened, a war like stance was assumed, belligerent Paki threats tried to draw a raring to go India to war, to mask this as a “this happened while we were away protecting our borders” thing, the Taliban publicly announced its support for the Paki army to fight any Jihad against Indian armed forces, and then, SWAT happened.

Times Now (a channel that I seem to have come to admire for lotsa reasons) made some pointed remarks yesterday in a newscast in the nite:

1. That a British media has gone ahead to say that Obama favoured a Pakistan – “Moderate” Taliban link to weed out “extremist” Taliban, this would apparently lead to a “compartmentalization” and easy “management of terror”
2. It was also drawn attention to the fact, that this “peace agreement” happened barely a day or two after Sentaor Richard Holbrooke met Pakistani “leaders”.
3. (Amazingly, its just around this time that) A UCLA professor has tracked Osama to a hideout, in the Kurram region of Pakistan, not more than a dozen Kms from the Pak Afghan border.

Today, the Taliban is just less than 500 kms away from Amritsar, India. Officially. Not counting all the infiltrations they may have made into India under various garbs, guises and so on. What is really scary is that the euphoria among people to welcome a Taliban there is high, and dissent against various extreme Talibal Sharia Laws are few and far between. After all, the US has allowed that Sharia law is permitted as per Pak constitution and norms. How extreme, is up to the People of Pakistan to agree to or be forced into.

What does SWAT mean to us, to India?

1. I find it mighty strange to believe that the Pakistan Army, that just recently promised to launch a HUGE offensive if India declared war, caved into a few hundred or even thousand hooligans called the Taliban. So there is much, much more that the Indian army will need to address rather than just the Pak army, if war (God forbid) is declared.
2. That a war may not be necessarily an Indian offensive, it may be declared by a “high on Jihad with Taliban” Pak too.
3. That the US might not step in to curb such events, given as per reports on media that it actually “favours a Pak-Taliban Truce”.
4. That a major amount of threat exists within India too from the Taliban, who may have penetrated and infiltrated various areas, sections of the country. And that WE, THE PEOPLE, must be ready and on alert to attend to and quell such inside worries.
5. And last but not the least, Pak’s Nuclear Facilities can easily be taken over by these forces. Pak doesn’t seem to have either the will or the verve to prevent this.

And herein, within point 5, lies the TRUE threat for not only India, but the World too, and this WORLD includes countries and agencies who at the moment, are funding/siding with Pakistan and Taliban for their overall immediate/near future geo-political gains.

Sanjeev Sarma

Wherever there is ADsense, there seems to be ADvani, promoting/projecting himself as the next PM. Whatever site I go to has Advani’s picts, messages, domain name plastered on it.

Advani / the BJP are the actually the first in India to cash in on a burgeoning media called the internet. Hate ‘em, Love ‘em, you have to see them at least once before you block ‘em. Sites ranging from the tacky to the pure click-through have recorded Advani’s footprints. Sites related, non related, contextual or not, are seeing the results of what is probably the BIGGEST keyword purchase from India for quite a while. Why, even Paki sites promote Advani as PM.

And why not? I remember reading someplace that Rs. 230 Cr. have been earmarked for the Advani as PM ad campaign. Safely assuming that 10% of this is spent on online advtg, its is a WHOPPING Rs 23 Cr campaign. Or roughly, $5M USD spend. And obviously, adsense is going berserk in deciding where you’re coming from, before showing you ads earmarked locationally for you.

All links lead to lkadvani.in, a cleverly designed joomla implementation. The team that has designed this and the content team thats handling regular updation and interactivity seems to be doing a pretty good job. Also the site is doing pretty well in terms of eyeballs, posts and so on. What’s more, the site reveals a well networked presence into YouTube, FB and Orkut and of course Advani’s own Blog.

The flip side is that the orkut interface is cartoonish, and shows a frog and a beetle. Also, The BJP’s site falls FLAT in terms of design, content and interactivity when compared to Advani’s site.

It seems to everyone, that this is just an aping of Obama’s online campaign, where he managed to garner HUGE funds and support. Sadly, I find that the campaign managers here, have not really looked at various aspects that Obama’s team did.

India Elections 2009, Future PM of India, Advani, and even Advani for PM refuse to throw up the site in Google. And terms like Prime Ministerial Candidate return not the site, but a sub-domain, thats Advani’s Blog.

The bottomlime

Advani is 81, as of last November. Come this Nov, he’ll be 82. And while his enthusiasm energy and ambition are laudable, one ponders whether one would want a Prime Minister so far advanced in years. And more importantly, when a mandatory retirement age is fixed at 60 for Govt Services, HOW can our constituion ever uphold anyone beyond that age becoming even a MINISTER, leave alone a Prime Minister?

The AD spends are fine, probably, “the wider seen is the more subscribed to” funda that drives adverts might work out in Advani’s favour. But I don’t think his age will. Its time for him to actually rest and mentor youth in the BJP, and not to push himself to the forefront. Its time for him to draft plans, policies, strategies that only he can in terms of the capability that his experience has gotten him.

Ad-vaani or no, I say NO to Advani as PM. I say YES to a Jetley or a Sushma Swaraj.