Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Modi was in Kerala the other day. His speech was distressingly interspersed with the ominous phrase “Modi’s guarantee”. For example, he would say: “Every Indian will have a toilet, this is Modi’s guarantee” or “India will be a $5 trillion economy, this is Modi’s guarantee.” This morning, the latest edition of a Malayalam weekly, Sathyadeepam , reached me along with other subscribed publications. I was impressed by its editorial. Please allow me translate it and bring it to you because I think it deserves to be read by many more people than the limited subscribers of Sathyadeepam . Those who wish to read it in the original Malayalam can do so here . The translation is not literal, I have taken the liberty to edit it for the sake of better clarity to a non-Keralite reader. I hope the Sathyadeepam editor will forgive my transgressions. M odi is not the guarantee, the country's constitution is . Since the prime minister has the constitutional obligation to ensure development and se...

Half of the world’s population will go to the polls this year. Forty countries will be voting for a new government in 2024. That will be 3.2 billion people exercising their democratic privilege of choosing who will govern them. If we add the local body elections and county/state elections, then the number of countries going to the polls will rise to 76. Open Society Foundations of the USA conducted a survey a few months back to study the health of democracy in various countries. The survey covered 36,000 adults each (18 years and above) from 30 countries including India. That is a mammoth survey. Some of the findings may be a little disturbing for those who love democracy.  A large number of youngsters seem to be losing faith in democracy, according to the survey results. While among the people in the age group of 56 and above, 26% preferred a strong leader to democracy, the percentage of youngsters (18-35 years) who made the same choice was 35. Nearly half of this latter gr...

From today's Times of India Some villages in Uttar Pradesh have decided to form their own security forces for the protection of their women.  The Bulandshahr gang rapes are still fresh in India’s collective memory.  You can’t even travel on the national highways of the state without the fear of your women being pulled out of your car by bandits and raped.  The situation is not limited to Uttar Pradesh, however.  There is an increasing sense of insecurity all over the country.  Women are not safe in many parts of the country.  Property is not safe.  Even your money in the bank is not safe.  On the one hand, there are thieves and criminals gaining the confidence that they can attack people with impunity because the police forces are inefficient.  The police, the politician and the criminal seem to work together supporting one another.  Just to mention a few examples: last year an Additional Commissioner of Police of Bengalu...

Kerala does not have the tradition of re-electing a government.  So yesterday’s poll results would not have surprised anybody.  Moreover, the UDF government was steeped in corruption charges.  Kerala Results in a nutshell Yet the Pala constituency re-elected K. M. Mani who faced serious allegations related to the bar scam.  The people of Pala are neither ignorant politically nor blind in their allegiance to Mr Mani.  Mani has done much for the people of his constituency.  He has intimate relationships with the Catholic church which is a strong force in Pala.  People benefit one way or another if Mani is in power.  That is the secret of Mani’s success.  It has nothing to do with any ideology. P. C. George who rebelled furiously against Mani’s corruption and became an enemy of both the UDF and the LDF because of his undiplomatic forthrightness and bravado won as an independent candidate from Poonjar, Mani’s neighbouring consti...

Courtesy The Hindu I happened to stop by a wayside dhaba in the fringes of Delhi this evening.  While waiting for someone there, I watched the cooks prepare tandoori rotis and other tandoori items including chicken tikka and paneer puran.  If you actually watch how these dishes are prepared, especially in the summer heat of Delhi, you won’t ever eat it.  Human sweat mingles with the dusty dough and sliced paneer liberally.  One of the tandoor operators approached the cashier and asked for drinking water.  “Order a bottle of mineral water,” he demanded.  Obviously there was no good drinking water in the restaurant – at least not good enough for the insider!  The cashier fumed, “How can I buy water?”  He was not the proprietor, after all.  He was just another employee earning a pittance from the boss who would be riding the bullet train promised by the Prime Minister’s new rail budget. The tandoor operator went back to wo...

Europe was labouring under the weight of a socio-political system when Enlightenment dawned on it in the 17 th and 18 th centuries.  Most European countries had a hierarchical system with the King or the Queen occupying the top position claiming to have derived his/her power directly from none other than God.  Then there were the priests of the Church who not only brought God’s power to the King or the Queen but also enjoyed a lot of benefits of that power in their own royal ways.  Below the clergy reclined the aristocrats.  All these three together sucked the blood of the common people who did all the work and paid all the taxes. The philosophers who questioned this system usually belonged to the aristocratic classes.  But they possessed the sensitivity to feel the inhumanity of the system.  Thus Rousseau (1712-1778) lamented the chains that shackled man everywhere.  The encyclopaedists redefined ‘political authority’ and ‘natural liberty’....

Book Review Title     : Swaraj Author : Arvind Kejriwal Publisher         : Harper Collins India & India Today Group, 2012 Pages               : 151                            Rs. 150 Arvind Kejriwal is driven by his passion to sweep clean the Indian political system.  His book, Swaraj , is redolent of that passion from the first page to the last.  The book, claims Anna Hazare on the front cover, “is a manifesto for our times and for the anti-corruption movement...” In fact, the book may be seen as a manifesto of Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party whose election symbol is the broom. The book reads like a pamphlet written by a puritan mind seized with the zeal for political reformation.  The to...