Skip to main content

Point, Counterpoint


Today’s Hindu newspaper carries a number of articles on the one year of Mr Modi as Prime Minister. Except the one BJP supporter, none of the other writers has anything good to say about the year that India passed through.  I found it an interesting exercise to take the major arguments of the BJP spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and rebut them with the arguments given by the other writers.  Here’s a discussion I fabricated out of the views expressed by the four writers.
 
Ravi Shankar Prasad
R S Prasad: In just a span of 12 months, the NDA government has succeeded in restoring India’s image as a fast-growing economy.

Sitaram Yechuri: The statistical base year for national income accounts has been changed in order to project the GDP growth rate in better light.  Despite this, it is clear that the manufacturing and industrial growth are just not taking off.

Prasad: The government’s priority is the poor and the marginalised.
Sitaram Yechuri

Yechuri: The share of wages as a proportion of GDP now stands a little over 10 percent compared to over 25 percent in 1990-91.... The rich have become richer.  As per the Forbes list 2014, the 100 richest people in India are all U.S.$billionaires, i.e., 45 more than the figure of 55 in 2011.  The combined worth of these 100 billionaires comes to $346 billion. 

Prasad: The NDA government has restored governance and transparency in decision-making.

Pankaj Mishra
Pankaj Mishra: I think one has to think of Mr Modi along with Suharto, Lee Kwan Yew, and the CCP provincial bosses... These are all control freaks supported by the corporate and technocratic classes who prefer top-down solutions and rapid decision-making, and have contempt for anything that doesn’t directly advance their interests.  So the rise of the middle class in Asia has assisted the growth of authoritarian populism rather than democracy.

Prasad: Under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, India has become a country of hope.  There is no gloom and despair, no apprehension...


Kapil Sibal
Kapil Sibal: Agriculture is in distress.  The growth rate in agriculture has come down to 1.1 percent from 3.7 percent in 2014.  More farmers are committing suicide than ever before. The average debt of 52 percent of all agricultural households is Rs 47,000 of which 26 percent is owed to private moneylenders – the root cause of farmer suicides.... The average price of select items consumed daily by people is higher than today than a year ago.... The promise to put Rs15 lakh in every citizen’s bank account from the recovered black money was an unethical and dishonest attempt to garner votes.... The Prime Minister appears to have forgotten about the issue of corruption and the Lokpal...

I would like to give the final words to:

Pankaj Mishra: Modi should learn from the Chinese their deliberate rejection of self-promotion. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. Vinay NagarajuMay 28, 2015 at 4:25 PM

    It is interesting to see the varied reactions to the completion of 1 year. I subscribe to the thought that results in the government sector take time and I am kinda happy with the way the country is shaping itself. Yday it was all over the news that AAP was protesting 1 year completion of Modi govt and wondered where are we headed to? A place where we keep blaming each other and finally no work is done at all? Or should it make sense to focus on what is more important than just fighting over the details?! Politics sure is a messy field!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 29, 2015 at 5:57 PM

      Today politics is all about power and nothing to do with service. For every party. That's why we are left with claims and counter-claims.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 comments
Read more

Maveli in the Pothole Republic

Illustration by Copilot Designer I was trying to navigate the moonscape they call a ‘national highway’ when my shoe vanished into a crater big enough to host the G20 summit. Out of it rose a tall figure, crowned and regal, though with a slight limp. “Maveli!” I exclaimed. “Yes,” he said grimly. “Your roads are terrible. I thought the netherworld was bad, but this—this is hell on asphalt.” I helped him up. “Don’t worry, Maveli, our leaders say we’re heading toward becoming a global economic superpower. See, even Donald Trump is impotent before our might.”   Maveli frowned. “Yes, yes. I saw your leader guffawing in the company of Putin and Xi Jinping. When he’s in the company of world leaders, he behaves like a little boy who’s got his coveted toy.” “Are you a little jealous of him, Maveli?” I asked. “I have reasons to be, but I’m not. Let him enjoy his limelight. A day will come when history will put its merciless foot on his head and send him to his own Patala.” Tha...
8 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

I'll Take These With Me

  Annanya Gulia Annanya Gulia is a grade 12 student of Army Public School, Noida. A former colleague of mine in Delhi, who is now Annanya’s English teacher, drew my attention to the remarkable poetic gift of the young girl. I would like to present one of the poems here. Coming from a teenager who lives in the heartless National Capital Region of India, this poem deserves a deep look. The central theme is the value of lived experience over conventional success. The young poet emphasises that marks and certificates, often seen as measures of achievement, are not what endure. Instead, intangible qualities such as kindness, resilience, curiosity, patience, courage, and the lessons from scars, form the true wealth that she will carry forward. Superficial recognition is not what she hankers after but a celebration of inner growth. What struck me particularly is the rich and vivid imagery employed in the poem. “No rolled-up mark sheets like battle flags” underscores the exaggerated im...
7 comments
Read more