Any crackdown on illegal immigrants abroad or restricting quotas to Indians are a major concern to India’s politicians. The latest statistics from US Department of Homeland Security shows that the numbers of Indian illegal migrants jumped 125% since 2000! Ever wondered why Indians migrate to another countries but no one comes to India for a living? Here are some Indian facts:
Poverty Graph
According to WFP, India accounts around 50% of the world’s hungry. (more than in the whole of Africa) and its fiscal deficit is one of the highest in the world. India’s Global Hunger Index (GHI) score is 23.7, a rank of 66th out of 88 countries. India’s rating is slightly above Bangladesh but below all other South Asian nations and listed under “ALARMING” category. Ref: IFPRI Country Report on India
Around six out of 10 Indians live in the countryside, where abject poverty is widespread. 34.7 % of the Indian population lives with an income below $ 1 a day and 79.9 % below $ 2 a day. According to the India’s planning commission report 26.1 % of the population live below the poverty line. [World Bank’s poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day].
The Current Account Balance of India
“A major area of vulnerability for us is the high consolidated public-debt to GDP ratio of over 70 percent … (and) consolidated fiscal deficit,” says the Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Mr. Yaga Venugopal Reddy.
According to CIA world fact book, the Current account balance of India is -37,510,000,000 (minus) while China is the wealthiest country in the world with $ 426,100,000,000 (Plus) . India listed as 182 and China as no.1 [CIA: The world fact book]
Human Development vs GDP growth
The Human Development Report for 2009 released by the UNDP ranked India 134 out of 182 countries, working it out through measures of life expectancy, education and income. India has an emigration rate of 0.8%. The major continent of destination for migrants from India is Asia with 72.0% of emigrants living there. The report found that India’s GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is $2,753, far below Malaysia’s $13,518. China listed as 92 with PPP of $5383. Read the statistics from UNDP website.
Population:
According to the Indian census of 2001, the total population was 1.028 billion. Hindus numbered 827 million or 80.5 %. About 25 per cent (24 million) of those Hindus are belonging to Scheduled Castes and Tribes. About 40 per cent (400 million) are “Other Backward Castes”.
15 per cent Hindu upper castes inherited majority of India’s civil service, economy and active politics from British colonial masters. And thus the caste system virtually leaves lower caste Hindus in to an oppressed majority in India’s power structure. Going by figures quoted by the Backward Classes Commission, Brahmins alone account for 37.17 per cent of the bureaucracy. [Who is Really Ruling India?]
The 2004 World Development Report mentions that more than 25% of India’s primary school teachers and 43% of primary health care workers are absent on any given day!
Living conditions of Indians
89 percent of rural households do not own telephones; 52 percent do not have any domestic power connection. There are daily power cuts even in the nation’s capital. The average brownout in India is three hours per day during non-monsoon months, 17 hours daily during the monsoon. The average village is 2 kilometers away from an all-weather road, and 20 percent of rural habitations have partial or no access to a safe drinking-water supply. [Tarun Khanna, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization]
According to the National Family Health Survey data (2005-06), only 45 per cent of households in the country had access to improved sanitation.
Education
India has over 35 per cent of the world’s total illiterate population. [UNESCO Education for All Report 2008] Only 66 per cent people are literate in India (76 per cent men and 54 per cent women)
About 40 million primary school-age children in India are not in school. More than 92 % children cannot progress beyond secondary school. According to reports, 35 per cent schools don’t have infrastructure such as blackboards and furniture. And close to 90 per cent have no functional toilets. Half of India’s schools still have leaking roofs or no water supply.
Japan has 4,000 universities for its 127 million people and the US has 3,650 universities for its 301 million, India has only 348 universities for its 1.2 billion people. In the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities by Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong, only two Indian Universities are included. Even those two IITs in India found only a lower slot (203-304) in 2007 report. Although Indian universities churn out three million graduates a year, only 15% of them are suitable employees for blue-chip companies. Only 1 million among them are IT professionals.
Health
India today allocates lower than one per cent gross domestic product (GDP) to health. According to United Nations calculations, India’s spending on public health as a share of GDP is the 18th lowest in the world. 150 million Indians are blind. 2.13 per cent of the total population (21.9 million) live with disabilities in India. Yet, only 34 per cent of the disabled are employed [Census 2001] India has the single highest share of neonatal deaths in the world, 2.1 million.
107,000 Leprosy patients live in India. 15.3 % of the population do not survive to the age of forty. Serpent attacks kill as many as 50,000 Indians while the cobra occupies a hallowed place in the Hindu religion. Heart disease, strokes and diabetes cost India an estimated $9 billion in lost productivity in 2005. The losses could grow to a staggering $200 billion over the next 10 years if corrective action is not taken quickly, says a study by the New Delhi-based Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
There are only 585 rural hospitals compared to 985 urban hospitals in the country. Out of the 6,39,729 doctors registered in India, only 67,576 are in the public sector and the rest either in private sectors or abroad, pointing towards the severity of the problem. According to a survey by NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation), 40 per cent of the people hospitalised have either had to borrow money or sell assets to cover their medical expenses. Over 85 per cent of the Indian population does not have any form of health coverage.
Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in India. India accounts for one-fifth of the global TB incident cases. Each year about 1.8 million people in India develop TB, of which 0.8 million are infectious cases. It is estimated that annually around 330,000 Indians die due to TB. [WHO India]
Economy under the siege of Elite Hindus
In India, wealth of 36 families amounts to $ 191 billion, which is one-fourth of India’s GDP. In other words, 35 elite Hindu families own quarter of India’s GDP by leaving 85 % ordinary Hindus as poor!
The dominant group of Hindu nationalists come from the three upper castes ( Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas ) that constitute only 10 per cent of the total Indian population. But, they claim perhaps 80 % of the jobs in the new economy, in sectors such as software, biotechnology, and hotel management.
India is also one of the most under-banked major markets in the world with only 6 bank branches per 1,000 sq kms, according to the World Bank, and less than 31% of the population has access to a bank account. According to India’s national agency, (NABARD), around 60 per cent people are not having access to financial institutions in India. This figure is less than 15 per cent in developed countries.
Corruption
According to TI, 25 % of Indians paid bribe to obtain a service. 68 % believe that governmental efforts to stop the corruption as ineffective. More than 90 % consider police and political parties as the worst corrupt institutions. 90 % of Indians believe that corruption will increase within the next 3 years. “Corruption is a large tax on Indian growth, It delays execution, raises costs and destroys the moral fiber.” says Prof. Rama Murthi. Transparency International estimates that Indian truckers pay something in the neighborhood of $5 billion annually in bribes to keep freight flowing. According to Rahul Gandhi, only 5 per cent of development funds reached their intended recipients due to hierarchical corruption in the country! [Financial Times]
Discrimination against Dalits
Crime against Dalits occur every 20 minutes in India. Every day 3 Dalit women are raped, 2 Dalits are murdered and 2 Dalit houses are burnt down! These figures represent only a fraction of actual incidents since many Dalits do not register cases for fear of retaliation by the police and upper-caste Hindu individuals. Official figures show that there are still 0.343 million manual scavengers in India from Dalit community. More than 165 million Dalits in India are simply abused by their Hindu upper castes for their birth! . [HRW Report2007]
Human Rights
When it comes to Human Rights issues in India, it is not ratified the UN Convention against Torture, its citizens do not have the opportunity to find recourse in remedies that are available under international law. The victims are trapped with the local Hindu caste system, which in every aspect militates against their rights.
India has a very poor record of protecting the privacy of its citizens, according to the latest report from Privacy International (PI). India scored 1.9 points, which makes it an ‘extensive surveillance society’. A score between 4.1 and 5.0 (the highest score) would mean a country “consistently upholds human rights standards”. PI is a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations. [Fake encounter killings are rampant in India. This extra judicial killings are inspired by theological texts of Brahmins like Artha Shastra and Manusmriti which teaches espionage and torture methods. Every such killing of an innocent person, branded a terrorist, has encouraged the killer cops to target socially excluded communities like dalits, tribals and minorities.
According to the National Human Rights Commission, as on 30th June 2004, there were 3,32,112 prisoners in Indian jails out of which 2,39,146 were under trial prisoners. That’s more than 70 %. India’s jails hold a disproportionate number of the country’s minority Muslims, a sign of discrimination and alienation from the Hindu majority. The bar association in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, has refused to represent 13 Muslim suspects accused bombing courthouses in 2005 . A large part of police officers, Indian attorneys and judges appear regularly on the events organized by notorious Hindu militant groups. Prison statistics of Indian Jails can be seen from National Crime Record Bureau, here
India is a parliamentary democracy, but rather less than a fully free society. The human rights group Freedom House ranks India as a 2 (on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 the highest) for political rights and 3 for civil liberties. Elections are generally free but, notes Freedom House, “Government effectiveness and accountability are also undermined by pervasive criminality in politics, decrepit state institutions, and widespread corruption.” The State Department observes: “There were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals and insurgents, or staged encounter deaths.” Read Freedom House Report from here.
Minorities
About 20 %, or 200 million, are religious minorities. Muslims constitutes 138 million or 13.4 5, Christians 24 million or 2.3 %, Sikhs 19 million or 2 %, Buddhists 8 million or 0.8 % and Jains 4 million or 0.4 %. “Others” numbered 6.6 million or 0.6 %. According to Mr. Tahir Mahmood, an Indian Muslim journalist, “The 2.3 % Christians in the Indian population cater to 20 % of all primary education in India, 10 % of all the literacy and community health care, 25 % of all existing care of destitute and orphans, 30 % of all the handicapped, lepers and AIDS patients etc”.
Discrimination against Minority Muslims
Recently, Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee report admitted that 138 Million Muslims across India are severely under-represented in government employment, including Public Sector Units. Ironically, West Bengal, a communist ruled state reported 0 (zero) percent of Muslims in higher positions in its PSUs! It has found that the share of Muslims in government jobs and in the lower judiciary in any state simply does not come anywhere close to their population share. The only place where Muslims can claim a share in proportion to their population is in prison! (Muslims convicts in India is 19.1%, while the number of under trials is 22.5%, which exceed their population ratio) . A note sent on January 9 by the army to the defence ministry in 2004 says that only 29,093 Muslims among a total of 1.1 million personnel — a ratio of 2.6 %, which compares poorly with the Muslims’ 13.8 % share in the Indian population. Officially, Indian Army don’t allow head count based on religion.
A Muslim child attends school for three years and four months, compared to the national average of four years. Less than two percent of the students at the elite Indian Institutes of Technology comprise of the Muslim community. According to the National Knowledge Commission member Jayathi Ghosh, ‘there is a need to re-orient official strategies for ensuring better access of Muslim children to schooling outside the madrasas which cater to only four per cent of children from the community.’
Discrimination in Media
Hindu upper caste men, who constitute just eight per cent of the total population of India, hold over 70 % of the key posts across newsrooms in the country. The so-called twice-born Hindu castes dominate 85 % key posts despite constituting just 16 % of the total population, while the intermediary castes represent a meager 3%.
The Hindu Other Backward Class groups, who are 34 % of the total population, have a share of just 4% in the Indian newsrooms. Muslims, who constitute about 13 % of the population, control just 4 % top posts while Christians and Sikhs have a slightly better representation. But the worst scenario emerges in the case of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes /Aborgines (STs): Based on CSDS study, 2006. Ref: The Hindu, June 05, 2006
Discrimination in Judiciary
India’s subordinate courts have a backlog of over 22 million cases while the 21 high courts and the Supreme Court have 3.5 million and 32,000 pending cases (2006). In subordinate courts, over 15 million cases are filed and an equal number disposed of annually by about 14,000 judges! Every year a million or more cases are added to the arrears. At the current speed, the lower courts may take 124 years for clearing the backlog. There were only 13 judges for every million people.
Recently a parliamentary committee blamed the judiciary for keeping out competent persons of downtrodden communities from “through a shrewd process of manipulation”. Between 1950 to 2000, 47% of Chief Justices and 40% of Judges were of Brahmin origin!. Dalits and Indian aborigines are lesser than 20 out of 610 judges working in Supreme Court and state high Courts. “This nexus and manipulative judicial appointments have to be broken, it urged”. [Parliamentary standing committee report on Constitutional Review, Sudarshan Nachiappan]. Among 12 states with high-Muslim population, Muslim representation in judicial sector is limited to 7.8%. (Justice Sachar Report).
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, only 31 per cent criminal trials are completed in less than a year. Some take even more than 10 years. According to its study, Crime in India 2002, nearly 220,000 cases took more than 3 years to reach court, and about 25,600 exhausted 10 years before they were completed. The term of the Liberhan Commission, formed 14 years ago to probe the demolition of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and originally given a mandate of three months, has been extended again!
Discrimination against Children
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, India has the highest number of street children in the world. There are no exact numbers, but conservative estimates suggest that about 18 million children live and labor in the streets of India’s urban centers. Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta each have an estimated street-children population of over 100,000. The total number of Child labor in India is estimated to be 60 million.
The level of child malnutrition in India is among the highest in the world, higher even than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, says the report ‘Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India’ by the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food. While around 25 percent children globally were underweight, in India the number was 43 percent. A quarter of all neo-natal deaths in the world, (2.1 million) occurred in India, says UNICEF Report 2007 . More than one in five children who die within four weeks of birth is an Indian. Nearly fifty percent of Indian children who die before the age of five do not survive beyond the first 28 days.
Discrimination against Women
According to the 2001 census, female literacy in India is 54.16 % against male literacy of 75.85 %. Most of the working women remain outside the organized sector: A mere 2.3 % women are administrators and managers, and 20.5 % professional and technical workers.
There are an estimated 40 million Hindu widows in India, the least fortunate of them shunned and stripped of the life they lived when they were married. It’s believed that 15,000 widows live on the streets of Vrindavan, a Hindu holy city of about 55,000 population in northern India. Many widows – at least 40per cent are said to be under 50 – are dumped by their relatives in religious towns and left to live off charity or beg on the streets. Their plight was highlighted in Deepa Mehta’s award-winning film Water, which had to be shot mainly outside India because of Hindu extremist opposition to the production.
Nearly 9 out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and about half of all children (47%) under-five suffer from underweight and 21 % of the populations are undernourished. India alone has more undernourished people (204 million) than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. Nearly 20 % of women dying in childbirth around the globe are Indians. Six out of every 10 births take place at home and untrained people attend more than half of them. 44 % of the Indian girls were married before they reached the age of 18. It added, 16 % of girls in the age group 15-19 years were already mothers or expecting their first child and that pregnancy is the leading cause of mortality in this age group.
On an average one Indian woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. During Indian marriage, women should bring jewellery, cash and even consumer durables as part of dowry to the in-laws. If they fail, the victims are burnt to death – they are doused in kerosene and set fire to. Routinely the in-laws claim that the death happened simply due to an accident.
Rape is the fastest growing crime in India. Every hour Indian women face two rapes, two kidnappings, four molestations and seven incidents of cruelty from husbands and relatives [National Crime Records Bureau Report 2006]
Fetus Killing
Women to men ratio were feared to reach 20:80 by the year 2020 as female fetus killing is rampant. Ten million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before they were born or immediately after, told Indian Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury to Reuters. According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys. The availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests leads to such mass killings in India.
Around 11 million abortions are carried out in India every year and nearly 80,000 women die during the process, says a report from Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecological Societies of India (FOGSI)
Human Trafficking
Out of the 593 districts in India, 378 or 62.5 % are affected by human trafficking. In 2006, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sponsored study conducted by Shakti Vahini, found that domestic violence, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty; unsafe migration and child marriage are the major reasons for the increasing rate of illegal human trafficking.
95 % of the women in Madhya Pradesh in commercial sex are due to family traditions. So are 51.79 % in Bihar,’ said the study. While 43 % of the total women trafficked are minors, 44 percent of the women are into flesh trade due to poverty. Of the total women who are into sex work in the country, 60 % are from the lower and backward class, which indicates the pathetic living condition of the communities. In Madhya Pradesh, a political bastion of Hindu right wing party, 96.7 % of the women sex workers are from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
India has 4 million prostitutes nationwide and 60% of the prostitutes are from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes or other backward caste. UNAIDS says over 38% of those living with HIV in India are women.
High Crime Rate and Communal Riots
India reported 32,481 murders, 19,348 rapes, 7,618 dowry deaths and 36,617 molestation cases in 2006. As far as states are concerned, NCRB has found that Madhya Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes (1,94,711) followed by Maharashtra (1,91,788), Andhra Pradesh (1,73,909), Tamil Nadu (1,48,972) and Rajasthan (1,41,992) during 2006. According to National Crime Records Bureau, there was 1822602 riots in 2005 alone. [ Incidence Of Cognizable Crimes (IPC) Under Different Crime Heads, concluded, Page 2] NCRB website
On average there are more than 2000 cases of kidnappings per year in India. Under India’s notorious caste system, upper caste Hindus inherited key positions and controls all the governmental branches. Violence against victims largely goes unpunished due to the support of upper caste crooks.
Economic Crimes
Economic Crime continues to be pervasive threat for Indian Companies, with 35 % of the organizations reporting having experienced fraud in the past two years according to PwC Global Economic Crime Survey 2007. Many incidents of fraud are going unreported. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ India findings:
* Corruption and Bribery continues to be the most common type of fraud reported by 20 % of the respondents;
* The average direct financial loss to companies was INR 60 Million (US $ 1.5 million) during the two year period. In addition the average cost to manage economic crime in India was INR 40 Million (US $ 1 Million) which is close to double that of the global and Asia Pacific average;
* In 36% of cases companies took no action against the perpetrators of fraud;
* In 50% of the cases frauds were detected by chance. [PWC Report 2007]
Armed Conflicts in India
Almost every state has separatist movements, many of them armed. A large number of Muslims were killed in the past few years across the country and the numbers are on a steady rise. On top of that India has become a paraya for its neighbours. None of its neighbours appreciate their closeness to India and they all blame it for meddling in their affairs.
63 per cent of India’s new budget will go to the military, police, administration and debt service (2008-09). The military might of centric Hindu elites in Delhi isolated people of Jammu & Kashmir and the northeastern states. It is difficult for any community to feel part of a larger country when the armed forces of the country are deployed to silence them.
According to an Indian official report , 165 of India’s 602 districts — mostly in states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh — are “badly affected” by tribal and dalit violence, which government termed as “Maoist terror”. India’s military spending was recorded at US $21.7 billion in 2006 and it planned to spend $26.5 billion during 2008/09 financial year. 85 percent of the Army’s budget is spent on the enormous manpower of 1,316,000, which is the fourth largest in the world.
In 2005, Business Week reported that India became Israel’s largest importer of weapons, accounting for about half of the $3.6 billion worth of weapons exported by the Jewish state.
“Do remember that 34 years ago, NSG was created by Americans. Hence it has been their onus to convince the group to grant the waiver to India to carry out the multi-billion dollar business as India is a large market,” says former Atomic Energy Commission chairman, Mr P K Iyengar.
Booming industry of Terrorism Experts and Security Research Institutes in India
With the emergence of Hindutva fascist forces and their alliance with Neo cons and Zionists, India witnessed a sharp increase in the number of research institutes, media houses and lobbying groups. According to a study by Think Tanks & Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, India has 422 think tanks, second only to the US, which has over 2,000 such institutions.
Out of 422 recognized Indian think tanks, around 63 are engaged in security research and foreign policy matters, which are heavily funded by global weapon industry. India’s Retired spies, Police officers, Military personals, Diplomats and Journalists are hired by such national security & foreign policy research institutes which gets enormous fund from global weapon industry. These dreaded institutions are in fact has a hidden agenda. Behind the veil, they work as the public relations arm of weapon industry. They create fake terror stories with the help of media and intelligence wing, manipulate explosions through criminals in areas of tribals, dalits or minorities in order to get public acceptance for weapon contracts.
By creating conflicts in this poor country, Brahmin spin masters get huge commission from the sale of weapons to government forces. To this corrupt bureaucrats, India’s ‘National Interest‘ simply means ‘their self Interest’. Their lobbying power bring more wealth to their families as lucrative jobs, citizenship of rich countries and educational opportunities abroad.
Mentionable that India is one of the world’s largest weapons importers. Between 2000 and 2007 India ranked world’s second largest arms importer accounting for 7.5 % of all major weapons transfers. It stood fourth among the largest military spender in terms of purchasing power in 2007 followed by US, China and Russia.
Over 1,130 companies in 98 countries manufacture arms, ammunitions and components. 90 % of Conventional arms exports in the world are from the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council namely USA, UK, Russia, China & France. The countries of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East hold 51 per cent of the world’s heavy weapons.
The Defence Offset Facilitation Agency estimating the expenditure on the sector at USD 100 billion for next five years. At least 38 court cases relating to arms agreements are still pending against bureaucrats and military officers. Hindu fascist forces currently enjoy upper hand in media, civil service, judiciary, defence and educational streams of Indian society. Sooner or later, 25,000 strong democratic institutions in India will be collapsed and the country will be transformed to a limited democracy under the rule of security regime like Turkey or Israel. Hindutva’s security centric nationalism never was capable of bringing peace and protection to the life of our ordinary citizens.
According to Global Peace Index, India currently ranked on bottom, (122 with 2.422 score). Interestingly, our favourite arms supplier, Israel is among the worst performer when it comes to peace ranking. (141). It reminds a simple fact that the peace cannot be attained by sophisticated security apparatus.
Further more, India topped on Asian Risk Prospects -2009, with the highest political and social risk, scoring 6.87, mainly because of internal and external instability (PERC)
Suicides of Farmers and collapse of Agricultural sector
In the last two years, more than 218,000 people across India committed suicide mainly due to poverty, family feud, strained relationship with loved ones, dowry harassment and health problems. In a research by the Indian National Crime Records Bureau, it was noted that suicide cases in the country were registered at 118,112 and over 100,000, in 2005 and 2006, respectively.
Most of those who committed suicide were farmers, and the victims took their lives either by hanging or consuming poison. Aside from farmers, women also topped the list of people in India with suicidal tendencies. Since 1998 about 25 000 Indian farmers have committed suicide because they could not repay their debts. These debts, however, have largely accumulated because these farmers were severely overcharged by their money-lenders asking for up to 32% of interest.
76 per cent of the nation’s land is belonging to 23 per cent of population. More than 15 million rural households in India are landless. Another 45 million rural families own some land, less than 0.10 acre each, which is hardly enough to make them self- sufficient, let alone generate a profit. 340 million people in India are dependent largely on agricultural wage labour, $1 or less a day.[Rural Development Institute (RDI), Washington]
70 per cent of the Indian population still directly depends on agriculture, but growth in this sector declined from a lackluster 3.8 per cent to an even more anaemic 2.6 per cent last year.
Unemployment
Recently, a national report on the employment situation in India has warned that nearly 30 percent of the country’s 716 million-strong workforce will be without jobs by 2020. Government of India doesn’t have the resources or political will to find jobs for such a large population.
Retail trade employs 8 percent of India’s population, the largest employer after agriculture. There are more than 12 million small retailers in India, 96 percent of whom are small mom-and-pop stores, each occupying less than 500 square feet, creating the highest retail-outlet density per capita in the world. [Tarun Khanna, Yale]
Call centers and other outsourced businesses — such as software writing, medical transcription and back-office tasks — employ more than 1.6 million people in India, mostly in their 20s and 30s. Heart disease is projected to account for 35% of deaths among India’s working-age population between 2000 and 2030 says World Health Organization study. That number is about 12% for the United States, 22% for China and 25% for Russia.
Internal Migration and influx to the cities
Mumbai, the commercial capital of India is projected to grow into a city of about 21.9 million by the year 2015 and currently is plagued by vast poverty due to influx from villages. There are 5 million living on the street every night, covered only in newspaper, ” says Dr. Werner Fornos, president of the Global Population Education think tank and the former head of the Population Institute in Washington, D.C.
India is spending more than $400 million (£200m) to polish Delhi’s image as a first-rate capital, a difficult task for a city that seems to exist between the first and third worlds. A third of the capital’s 14 million-plus people live in teeming slums. According to crime statistics of 2006, Delhi continues to be the undisputed ‘crime capital’ of the country for the past 5 years in a row. 35 mega cities in India collectively reported a total of 3,26,363 cognizable crimes in 2006, an increase of 3.7% over 2005. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore together accounted for more than one-third of all crimes reported in Indian cities having a population of over a million people, for the second year in a row.
India, a closed country
India’s share in world tourism map, was hovering between 0.38% to 0.39% for number of years. Irrespective of its huge area and beautiful nature, the foreign exchange earned from tourism was merely $2.61 billion (2006). India, scored only 4.14 out of seven in The WEF’s recently released Travel and Tourism Competitive Index (TTCI2007). Among 124 countries listed, Switzerland ranked highest while India was placed at 65th rank, which is far below of Malaysia (ranked 31). India was also listed at the bottom of ‘developing and threshold countries’, which listed Tunisia at 34th place.
Indian immigration doesn’t welcome foreigners to visit India . [VISA requirements, T&T index, India ranked 106, while Malaysia ranked 15 . VOA facilities are not available to anyone. The easier entry to India virtually limited to countries with considerable Hindu population like Mauritius or Nepal. The Hindu elite leaders of the country always concerned about India's physical boundaries and its holy cows rather than the life of its 85 % poor people. To them, the national interest means their own economical or political interests.
Indian Embassies are rated as the worst service providers around the globe. They are notorious for ‘red tapes‘ and ‘ corruption friendly service‘ a complaint repeatedly quoted by Non Resident Indians itself. 90 % of Indian businessman believes that India has yet to emerge as a “hospitable country”. ASSOCHAM
Global Warming effects in India
Water tables are dropping where farmers are lucky enough to have wells, and rainfall has become increasingly unpredictable. Economic loss due to global warming in India is estimated between 9-25%. GDP loss may be to the tune of 0.67%. Prediction of loss of wheat is more. Rabi crops will be worse hit which threatens food security. Drought and flood intensity will increase.100-cm sea level rise can lead to welfare loss of $1259 million in India equivalent to 0.36% of GNP. Frequencies and intensities of tropical cyclones in Bay of Bengal will increase. Malaria will be accelerated to an endemic in many more sates. 20% rise in summer monsoon rainfall. Extreme temperatures and precipitations are expected to increase. [Sir Nicholas Stern Report] India got the most foreign aid for natural disaster relief in two decades obtaining 43 such loans of $8,257 million from World Bank alone beating down even Bangladesh and has the 2nd highest loan in the world.
Transportation
Despite the much touted economic boom, only 0.8 percent of Indians own a car most are on foot, motorbikes, or carts. And of all the vehicles sold in India from April to November of last year, 77 percent were two-wheelers – motorcycles, mopeds, or scooters. China has built over 34,000 km of expressways, compared to less than 8,000 km in India. According to Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM), nearly 42o million man hours are lost every month by the 7 million -odd working population of Delhi and NCR who take the public transport to travel to work because of traffic congestion during the peak morning and evening hours. India is having only less than 1% of the world’s vehicle population.
Road Safety
India accounts for about 10 percent of road accident fatalities worldwide and the figures are the highest in the world. Indian roads are poorly constructed, traffic signals, pedestrian pavements and proper signage almost nonexistent. The other reasons are encroachments, lack of parking facility and ill-equipped and untrained traffic police, corruption and poor traffic culture. An estimated 1,275,000 persons are grievously injured on the road every year. Social cost of annual accidents in India has been estimated at $ 11,000. The Government of India’s Planning Commission has estimated there to be 15 hospitalised injuries and 70 minor injuries for every road death.
According to NATPAC, The number of accidents for 1000 vehicles in India is as high as 35 while the figure ranges from 4 to 10 in developed countries. An estimated 270 people die each day from road accidents, and specialists predict that will increase by roughly 5 percent a year. Accidents also cause an estimated loss of Rs 8000 million to the country’s economy. About 80 per cent of the fatal and severe injury occurred due to driving faults. According to World Bank forecasts India’s death rate is expected to rise until 2042 if no remedial action being taken. The number of road accidents in China dropped by an annual average 10.8 per cent for four consecutive years from 2003, despite continuous growth in the number of privately owned cars.
Doing Business in India
It takes 50 days to register a property as compared to less than 30 days in China, and less than 10 days in the United States and Thailand. Average cost of a business start-up is over 60 percent of per capita income, much higher than any of the comparator countries.
India has the highest cost of electricity among major industrialised and emerging economies ($0.8 per kwh for industry as against $0.1 kwh in China), result of the highest transmission and distribution losses in the world, or in other words a quarter of the gross electricity output. Transport costs are very high in India. It accounts for 25% of total import costs as against only 10% in comparator countries. [World Bank Report on India]
Foreign remittance from Non Resident Indians
In 2006, India received the highest amount of remittance globally from migrants, 27 $Billion. Around 20$ billion of this came from the Gulf expatriate workforce. Together, GCC countries are the largest trading partner of India and home of 5 million of Indian workforce. Indian government expects overseas Indians to pump in about US$500 billion into the FOREX reserves of the country in the next 10 years, making them the single largest source of foreign receipts.
Nearly three million people in Africa are of Indian ancestry, and the top three countries having the largest population of Indians are South Africa, Mauritius and the Reunion islands. They also have sizeable presence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania in the east and Nigeria in the west.
Foreigners Living in India
Historically, about 72 % of the current Indian population is originated from Aryan race. Prominent historians and Dravidians consider Aryans as foreign invaders to India. The Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was postulated by eminent Oxford scholar Max Muller in 1882 and later advanced by several western and Indian historans.
Under the current scenario, potential migrants or ‘invaders’ to India include few ‘hired or weird’ Pakistani bombers, villagers around India’s border with Bangladesh, Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka and Indian import of Nepali prostitutes. 92 year old, Indian Painter Maqbool Fida Hussain lives in Dubai after death threats from Hindu militants. According to Hindu extremists Bangladeshi story teller Taslima Nasrin passed all the tests for an Indian citizenship. Italian born Sonia Gandhi , the Christian widow of Rajiv Gandhi is still considered as a foreigner by Hindu elites while Pakistan born Hindu, Lal Krishna Advani is ‘legally and morally fit’ to become India’s next Prime Minister.
Quit India!
Sixty years ago Indians asked the British to quit India. Now they are doing it themselves. To live with dignity and enjoy relative freedom, one has to quit India! With this massive exodus, what will be left behind will be a violently charged and polarized society.
Hindutva’s fake National Pride on India
A 2006 opinion poll by Outlook—AC Nielsen shows that 46 % of India’s urban class wants to settle down in US. Interestingly, in the Hindutva heart land of Gujarat, 54 % of people want to move to US.
Even Parliament members of the Hindutva party are involved in human trafficking from India. Recently police arrested, Babubhai Katara, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, who was part of such a racket. He received 20,000 US $ per person for US migration from victims.
When Indians are fleeing around the world to find a job, how can this hindutva idiots can claim on “National Pride of India”?
India is the World Bank’s largest borrower, In June 2007 it provided $3.7bn in new loans to India. Due to the fake ‘India Shining’ propaganda launched by Hindutva idiots, foreign donors are reluctant to help the poor people in this country. According to figures provided by Britain’s aid agency, the total aid to India, from all sources, is only $1.50 a head, compared with an average of $17 per head for low-income countries. [Financial Times]
Gridlocked in corruption, greed, inhumanity and absolute inequality – of class, caste, wealth, religion – this is the Real INDIA. Hindutva Idiots, Your false pride and actions make our life miserable.
Watch
Videos
Migration
Outsourced (Josh Hamilton, Ayesha Dharker
Mr. Bean talk about Immigration
Corruption
India’s Defense budget versus social spending
Poverty
People dying on hunger in India
Slaughter in the womb of girl child
Child Labour and Hindu religious dances
Ancient Slavery in Modern India
Shocking India, Poverty and Sadhus
Hindu Caste System
Hindu Naga baba sadhu’s naked parade
Untouchables, 57 min documentrary
The day of an untouchable sweeper
Minorities and Hindutva Terrorism
The Making of a Muslim Terrorist
Alienated Muslims in Emerging India
1984 Hindu Riots against Sikhs
Tehelka TV Expose on Gujarat Communal Riots
The Final Solution by Rakesh Sharma
Muslims
CNN IBN Debate on Sachar Report
Media
Police in India
How Indian Police deal with cyclists
Public Infrastructure
Detailed Data about India : INDIA FACTS
Indian-Americans in US, lobby for more visas for Indians. They do not give a darned about the Americans being displaced. They also lobby for the outsourcing of more jobs to India.
They see this country nothing more than a job bank for them and their fellow Indians.
Go volunteer for a day – anywhere and tell me how many Indian-Americans are helping out. They have one of the highest incomes in the country and yet I have never heard of them donating. I don’t see their names on any museums, hospitals, schools, child welfare organizations.
Your blog is a good effort to point out the disparities in the behavior of this ethnic group.
Dear Cyber Gandhi,
I have gone through your blog. Very thoughtful. Keep it up.
The title of your blog is very bold, I like it very much.
Keep Blogging!!
Cheers,
Ramesh Natarajan
Global Indian
Fusions.. Views and Thoughts of a Global Indian
What would be the quality of citizens left in India in the next decade? Are we thinking about this?
Sexual abuse of children in India is among the most urgent crimes which our society must address. Nearly 95% of the abused are girls and more than 95 % percent abusers are males.
RAHI’s survey reports says that 70.5 % girls experience incest abuse or sexual abuse in one or the other form in India. Till now majority of the Indians avoid it or deny it and ignore it. We have been an ostrich society.
India Super Power?
India’s ghost fair draws thousands
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4294249.stm
Indians(including me) must be taught immediately the very definition of humanity.
India may produce a few billionaires and post good economic growth, but must also frame policies to include its over 836 million people who live in poverty with just Rs 20 a day.
In the last ten years, more than eight million people quit farming in the country because of lack of viability. We are driving people out of agriculture but with no options.
More than 40 per cent of the poor are landless agriculture labourers in this country.
Excellent article.
Every Indian must read this , and avoid giving themselves delusions that they are a super power !!
Dominic Fernandes
Since the 10th Lok Sabha in 1991, Indian MPs have wasted nearly 700 working hours and an unbelievable 63 crore rupees.
Each minute of a session costs whopping 25,000 rupees. This is the precious money that taxpayers eke out of meager earnings, in order to help maintain the procedural flow of governmental functioning.
hey bringing out the facts is cool…..but come on it comes off like a hate campaign against the brahmins…..
“Echoing an ordinary dream of 85 million poor people of India, who are ruled by 15 million corrupt, impotent, sick, feudal, brahmin and caste maniacs.”
people will be people…but blatant name calling doesn’t help the cause.
i bet if the dalits are given a chance to be in the position of the brahmins…they would have done no better.
Its a world-wide thing….look at what bush and conservative white people…
so just tone it down….everybody understands injustice has been done….and building bridges is a better way to do things than raise huge walls between us
P.S:Love the banner picture
E.H, thank you for dropping in.
The failure of our civil service proves that Brahminism and corruption are born twins. Among Brahmins, you may find few liberals like Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru. Even such intellectuals failed to build a liberal society in India. At least to me, the IQ is not a patented product of Brahmins, but the corruption is.
To Brahmin dominated Indian media, Lallu Prasad Yadav is still a village idiot, because he comes from a lower caste. As a ruler, Lallu Yadav out performed all those brahmin baniya alliance within a short time. Surprisingly he generated profit and efficiency to Indian Railways even by offering lower fare to ordinary Indians!
Dalits or lower castes are not building walls against brahmins. But Brahminism is built upon a solid foundation of religious division which helping them to exploit lower class. Brahminism speaks and acts beyond political barriers with the theological support of Hindutva fascism. This self centered mafia rule India with their proximity in civil service, judiciary and security apparatus.
Who rules India? http://escapefromindia.wordpress.com/indias-brahmin-rule-data/
if you are an son of one father, plz give me your address. I promise i”ll kill you……..plz
Hostname City Latitude Longitude ISP
123.237.191.134 Chandigarh 30.7372 76.7872 RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS
Cyber Gandhi,
I have been reading your blog with great interest over the last couple of days. And, it is shocking and eye-opening to see the true state of things in my beloved India.
I believe I am among a large number of Indians who see themselves as ‘Indians’ above anything else, and would like this great nation to develop and ‘progress’ in the true sense of the word.
It is obvious that one of the main reasons for the nation’s problems seems to be corruption brought on by illiteracy and the caste system. I have faced curroption in many different ways in my lifetime and the culprits have been from all different caste and relegious groups; which is probably anyone who is in a position, and with the desire to do so.
Also, there has been a lot of changes in the last few years, for eg. the ‘upper classes’ have less than 10% of seats allocated in the top government colleges, which means the majority will have to get into the very expensive private colleges no matter what their score.
What I’m trying to say is that Indians need to unite and take pride in the diversity of our country and help each other. There are very few countries with the sort of diversity that we do; so many different languages, religions, beliefs, traditions! It is hard for such a varied mix of people to live peacefully if we keep going on about the caste-system and finger-pointing. We should aim towards creating a more equal and fair society.
No caste or religion can be generalised to be all bad! At the same time, extremism of any form can only be detrimental. Placing blame I feel will only create more internal conflicts, and we will again become vulnerable to our enemies, as the saying goes more susceptible to ‘divide and rule’. We have to make sure we don’t create a “violently charged and polarised nation”. Which ultimately holds back the progress of our country as a whole.
Cyber Gandhi, this is just my humble opinion, as I feel that this noble cause of yours to change things for India, and more specifically for its down-trodden will have more supporters if it didnt alienate any sect.
Incredible.
I want to thank you for all of this documented information.
It was really painful to read, but I thank you for it. It explains a lot.
mourning…………………..
India is no different then Mexico, who are you related to is the same caste system through out Mexico. Few families in Mexico control most of the $ that flow into the system. Why do Mexicans leave there country in the millions? Work and work that almost pays a decent living wage.
Well-done with the stats. I was looking for something similar and I stumbled upon your blog!
To add to your stats – even scientific research is dying. In a recent article in the Times of India, it was mentioned that our share of world research is only 2%.
Also check : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1784139.cms
where PM’s scientific advisor C N R Rao mentions that Science is on its deathbed in India.
This is really unfortunate and something should be done about it.
Thanks!
Thank you cyber Gandhi.
First time I see that someone is trying to give near correct picture of India in the state it is!
There may be lots of good things about India but we have to look at our short comings to be a better society.
I am a brahmin but I am ready to take a lot of blame for suffering of many poor indian for not finding their legitimate place in persuite of a better life.
There are endless issues to be discussed about India and indians, I see a very genuine and serious approch in your blog to bring the truth out and making us open our eyes.
Kamal Gaur
@ CG
What you have said is true.
Sad State of things….
hope things improve….
I’ll do my part….
and all the indians i meet claim that their country is a hot-shot country, lolllll
i’ll be sure to spread the word to everyone not to visit that country.
Here in Bahrain, we see indians ALL over the place. İn all of the Gulf there is indian workers coming. Sometimes they create problems for us, but they work to make money for their families. Dubai especially. They should stay in their country and fix their problems -because only they can fix them.
İ also think they should solve their problem with their neighbour Pakistan. İ have heard many bad things about Kashmir -especially treatment of Muslim brothers.
So indians –please fix these things in your country. Then there wont be 1 million indians leaving. good luck..
Thank you. Salaam.
Regards,
Marwan Al-Ghamdi
Very interesting article and good eye-opener especially to those oversea Indians who thought India is the best country in the world.
This includes Malaysians of Indian origin, in particular the HINDRAF group and its supporters, who are very ungrateful and thought that the government is marginalising them from having a good life in Malayia They should be grateful to their forefathers who decided to settle in Malaysia and the full opportunities presented to them by the goverment to improve themselves. Just imagine if they are still in India especially those that come from the Dalit group.
Think and be grateful to God.
namaste cyber-g
Impressed with the blog.
Just want to mention how we Indians create “little India” even when we go out and settle abroad. Each “little India” is a complete package with casteism, regionalism, urbanism….man…….you-name-it-ism! Central thread among all citizens of “little India” – the deep-rooted, all-too-common “I am better than you no matter what” mindset.
As for me, my reason for exit was to look for greener pastures, I am not ashamed to say. However, meeting the expat Indian community was a shock! I thought they would be a happier and a tad open-minded, given the better living standards. In fact the unhappiness and insecurities seem to magnify here! And hence the more distilled form of “I am better….” mindset!
God help us desis…wherever we are…des or pardes……
bhare dil se udaan bhari
lambi aahen bharte pardes pahunche
des khi khushboo kho chuke ab
par des ki badboo se peecha na chhoota
If I had grown up in India, I would probably be doing what my grandfather and my father did – driving cabs – not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, my whole family and I moved to Chicago in 1998; I’m presently a physician.
My point being, I fully support this blog; good work!
Very good article. India needs a springclean. Unfortunately the majority of people who escape from India are from the upper caste Brahmin, Banias and Kshatriyas. They even try to dominate the NRI lobbies.
very interesting articles.
i hope as indians we can be proud-to-be-humble.
“World Super Power in the comings days will mean the country who can feed the world with food & not with any damn thing else….” Now doesn’t that sound good for our farming class who comprise of about what….40% ??
http://www.croptrust.org/documents/newsletter/newsletter_croptrust_v14_final.htm
Future of the world is not with the guys who is having guns and gold and iron….It with the people who is having some food to spare.
More and more people are moving away from farming and becoming “Urbanised”. As a result the world is already facing a food crisis. Very soon food is going to become costilier than gold. Countries in the middle east depend entirely on imported food. So people, try to start farming in India like the old days.
Really like your analysis and point of view- very thorough.
I am curious however why the blog doesn’t have Sikh subject or search categories considering the colonialisation Sikhs also find themselves under in India. You could also include categories for the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms.
Keep up the good work.
Who will immigrate from India? The brahmins & khatriyas. These two people have no vested interests in that country which is probably going to be comprised of vaishyas, obc, SC/STs. Vaishyas can’t leave because they control almost every business. The brahmins & khatriyas are recognized as an important component of indoeuropean brotherhood in the west. These two communities belong to R (caucasian) & J (mediterranean) haplotypes. Why should they waste their time in India full of aborigines belonging to ant intelligence? The water that upper caste drinks is full of aborigine shit. It is time for brahmins & khatriyas to dismantle their gods from temples and take them elsewhere to create new civilizations around the world. These two people should not get blindsided by the pseudo patriotism and end up paying for keeping aboriginies’ children healthy.
Well thought one. There are in fact more than zillion reasons for India not to be so, let me add one more, it has not produced as much patriotic people as the developed nations have.
When you have some problems in your house, you dont find countless other reasons to leave the house in someone’s hands. You try to fix it. May be some poor people who cannot afford to fix it escape and call it the so called brilliance and presence of mind. Kudos to such.
Had there been people like you and other who had given positive comments above in America, I bet you would not have been alive to read my response. This is one more reason to leave “Mera Bharat MAhan”!
Once again kudos for such wonderful thoughts.. WHat a blog!
Instead of simply reading this article ,we atleast should do any of the helps to the poor people who live around you.
Thanks
T.Thiru
Hi cyber-gandhi et all
While I understand and empathize with your cause, and agree that the caste-system must disappear from the face of the earth, I have three large, vehement issues with your view:
1. The idea of India being a super-power is not wedded to the idea that India is a rich country, and especially that all Indians are by any means prosperous. The idea is based on the fact that as a political entity with regards to other political entities, even with all the statistics you have mentioned, India has a whole is becoming more influential than say – Italy. No one is claiming that Indians are as well-cared for as Italians. However, in geo-political strategy, and even in corporate strategy, this change has to be taken into account and will be.
2. Your presentation of the statistics is no more or less misleading that what you consider the deceit of the government. In fact, you need not refer to Indian govt reports to find successes – these are recognized by several international authorities including the World Bank – and that is why the World Bank doesn’t mind lending to India.
What essentially has to be considered is that while the statistics seem dismal, the statistics were dismal from before. Your presentation makes it seem like the politicians have made things worse. Admittedly, progress has been slow, but there has been huge progress and you can see these in the very areas you have given statistics on if you see trends – statistics over time, and not momentary figures. For eg, poverty at independence was 50%, instead of 26% now. The population bomb that India suffers from at the moment had already been created out of an unfortunate confluence of circumstances before Independence. The govt’s resources at that point were incapable of stopping it any better than it has.
3. While the caste system must absolutely be destroyed, you seem to confuse caste with class. The reason 3% of indians control 50% of the resources and so on, has nothing to do with caste and everything to do with the fact that money inevitably tends to concentrate. This situation can be found in almost every large country. This is regrettable, and should be opposed, but it is also natural, and so combating it is difficult. Humanity’s greatest attempt to combat this was communism and yet all communist govts have been dismal failures. Most independant, international reports agree that the major reason for India’s continuing poverty was the communist tendencies of the govt. It is not being like USA that has made India poor but being like USSR till 1990. In fact, while the gap between the richest and the poorest may have widened because of the richest being much richer, the overall statistic has hardly varied (according to World Bank reports). The growth that other countries have achieved, including Malaysia, is what has started to happen in India because of the same reforms as the majority of them did.
As for social ills, there is no easy solution. Thankfully, there are many people like you who seem ready to take up the challenge. I only fear that those people, like you, may be more concerned with vengeance than welfare.
Very truth article. But we should work hard to develop our nation to No: 1 in the world atleast before 2050…and our contribution is must….
heights of truth man…! I dont know if the figures are very exact but yeah one thing is for sure… its true….. these things are actually very much part of this article…!WAKE UP INDIANS ….. MAKE OUR COUNTRY PROUD…. PLEASE A REQUEST FROM AN INDIAN ….. TREAT YOUR HOME AND YOUR COUNTRY EQUAL …AND LETS MAKE THINGS BETTER…!
JOIN TO MAKE INDIA A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE…!
PEACE
cool .but u need to tell us what exactly has made you do all this .truely i want the blogger to open his state of mind also .something about his past and background.
What Nanavati Did Not See
The fire was described as an accident. Chargesheet by chargesheet, it became a conspiracy
TEESTA SETALVAD
Editor, Communalism Combat
THE ALLEGED deliberate torching alive of 59 persons in coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express, returning from Faizabad (Ayodhya) to Ahmedabad at the Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002, became the sordid justification for unleashing the post-Godhra carnage across Gujarat. The incident was first described by the district collector, Jayanti Ravi, as an accident. But from 7.30 pm onwards the same evening, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, started portraying it as a conspiracy inspired by Pakistan’s ISI.
On the afternoon of February 27, in Parliament, the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also described the incident as an accident. Weeks later, at the BJP’s national meet in Goa, he too fell in line, justifying the post-Godhra carnage with his famous “agar Godhra na hota to Gujarat na hota” (If Godhra had not happened Gujarat, too, would not have happened). The Sangh Parivar’s Goebbelsian propaganda machine relayed this message of ‘Muslim aggression’ and ‘Hindu retaliation’ throughout the country and abroad. Modi, worried that an independent investigation into Godhra and post-Godhra (directed by the Supreme Court) may indict him for conspiracy and mass murder, pushed the compliant Justices Nanavati and Mehta to release part one of their report, on Godhra.
The judges have swallowed the Gujarat Government’s untested but widely-publicised theory of a preplanned conspiracy in toto. They have not been so meticulous in contextualising Godhra and the post-Godhra genocide.
VHP’S ‘CHALO AYODHYA’
It had all begun with the VHP’s mobilisation for a programme in Ayodhya, which they called ‘Purnahuti Maha Yagna’. Three groups from Gujarat, consisting of about 2,000 Ram bhakts (devotees) each, were to go to Ayodhya for karseva. The first group of about 2,200 Ram sevaks was to leave Ahmedabad on February 22, 2002. They left for Ayodhya, as planned, on February 22 and began their return journey to Ahmedabad by the Sabarmati Express on February 25, 2002.
There is no clear evidence that any person in Gujarat (except, perhaps, members of the VHP) knew of the specific date on which the karsevaks would travel from Ayodhya to Gujarat i.e., on February 25. Central, state and local intelligence agencies have, in fact, deposed before the Nanavati-Shah Commission stating that they did not have any information about the karsevaks’ travel plans. State IB officials, including former ADGP RB Sreekumar, have produced detailed records to reveal that while Gujarat intelligence had recorded the unruly and provocative behaviour of karsevaks, the Central IB had issued no information or directives on their movements. Neither had the UP state intelligence. The only letter that arrived from Central intelligence about the karsevaks’ return was received by the Gujarat SIB a day after the Godhra tragedy i.e., on February 28, 2002. In the absence of specific information about the karsevaks’ return journey, there is little likelihood of a conspiracy hatched to burn coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27.
CHIEF MINISTER SETS THE AGENDA
Yet, on February 27, the chief minister made the following press statement which was widely publicised all over Gujarat: ‘The abominable event that has occurred in Godhra does not befit any civilised society…it is not a communal event but is a one-sided collective terrorist attack by one community…’ He further said that this was not a simple incident of violence or a communal event but a ‘pre-planned incident’. Who could fit the ‘international terrorist’ label?
They found a maulana — Maulana Umarji — and booked him a whole year after the incident had occurred. Who was this ‘terrorist’? An old, semi-invalid, respected Muslim figure from the Ghanchi community in Godhra who ran a riot relief camp at the Iqbal Primary School from March 2002 until August 2002. The maulana was a senior and respected member of his community who had consistently galvanised resources for national tragedies, including the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, from Godhra’s citizenry. Bilkees Bano and hundreds of other victims and survivors from the minority community, humiliated and attacked in the Panchmahals and Dahod districts, had found succour in this relief camp. Justice JS Verma of the NHRC also visited this camp.
A SUDDEN ABOUT TURN FROM KEROSENE TO PETROL
It is in the second chargesheet, filed on September 20, 2002, that (i) the burning from inside story evolves into a conspiracy carried out by a core group; (ii) the spontaneous collection of a mob on hearing that a girl was pulled into the train is alleged; (iii) Chain-pulling is said to have been done by Anwar Kalandar, who is not made an accused because it is tacitly accepted that he did this to protect the girl. The first chargesheet, which details the altercations between the karsevaks and the vendors, has no mention of a conspiracy.
The fourth chargesheet, filed by a willing Noel Parmar (an officer who has been given four extensions just for this case after his retirement) added the terrorist conspiracy angle. Thereafter, up to the present 16th supplementary chargesheet, the police version has not changed qualitatively. The case made out in the second and third chargesheets was ‘refined’ by adding a ‘conspiracy’ story. According to the police, the conspiracy was hatched by Razzak Kurkur, Salim Paanwala, Haji Bilal and a few others in room no. 8 of the Aman Guest House (owned by Razzak Kurkur) at around 9 pm on February 26, 2002.
The alleged conspiracy included the plan to set fire to the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002. For that purpose, 140 litres of petrol was allegedly bought from Kalabhai’s petrol pump the previous night and kept in Kurkur’s house. It is alleged that at around 9.30-10 pm on February 26, 2002, Maulana Umarji had directed that coach S-6 should be set on fire.
The entire charge by the prosecution (Gujarat Government) that coach S-6 was burnt down in pursuance of a pre-planned conspiracy rests on a forensic science laboratory report, which mentions that some residual hydrocarbons were found in samples collected from the site and that petrol was found in two carboys.
The reliability of the FSL report on samples collected from the site is highly doubtful. Hundreds of onlookers and visitors, including the chief minister and other ministers, had visited the site and also entered coach S-6 before the samples were collected. Suspect material could easily have been removed from inside the coach. Equally, what the FSL found inside the coach could well have been planted from outside.
The FSL report dated March 20, 2002, was accessible to the investigation officer (IO), KC Bawa, before he filed the first chargesheet on May 5, 2002. Yet, the chargesheet made no specific allegation about the use of petrol in torching coach S-6. Bawa’s first chargesheet was quite vague: ‘At that time the accused armed with deadly weapons and highly inflammable fluids filled in cans and shouting slogans, ‘Pakistan Zindabad’, ‘Hindustan Murdabad’, burnt down the coach S-6’.
The big question is, why did the IO refuse to specify the fluid that was allegedly used by the ‘conspirators’? It appears therefore, that initially the investigation began in right earnest. The two petrol pumps near Godhra station were sealed off by the police on February 27, 2002. The first petrol pump, on Vejalpur road, was owned by MH & A Patel, while the other was owned by Asgarali Qurban Hussein (Kalabhai). On April 9, 2002, seven samples of petrol and diesel were collected from these petrol pumps and panchnamas were made. These samples, four samples of diesel marked A, B, E and F, and three samples of petrol marked C, D (from Kalabhai’s pump) and H (from MH & A Patel’s pump), were sent for forensic examination to find out whether the petrol or diesel from these pumps had been used to burn coach S-6.
In his report dated April 26, 2002, DB Talati, assistant director, FSL, said that samples A, B, E and F contained diesel while C, D and H contained petrol. He added, however, that he could not give a clear opinion on whether the petrol detected in some samples in and around coach S-6 as per the FSL report dated March 20, 2002, and the petrol detected in samples C, D and H came from the same source.
The fatal blow to the prosecution’s ‘petrol theory’ was delivered by two employees of Kalabhai’s petrol pump, Prabhatsinh G Patel and Ranjitsinh J Patel. In their statements recorded on April 10, 2002, the two men flatly denied having sold loose petrol to anybody, adding that they did not sell loose petrol from their pump. (Ranjitsinh told the TEHELKA undercover reporter that the police had paid him Rs 50,000 to change his statement).
The chargesheet filed by KC Bawa on May 22, 2002, therefore, ‘created’ evidence to establish that coach S-6 was burnt from outside using some inflammable liquid. Bawa ‘recorded’ the statements of nine important eyewitnesses between February 27 and March 15, 2002, namely, Janaklal K Dave, Rajeshbhai V Darji, Nitinkumar Harprasad Pathak, Dilipbhai U. Dasadiya, Muralidhar R Mulchandani (reportedly, the current vice-president of Godhra Nagarpalika), Dipakbhai M Soni, Harsukhlal T Advani, Chandrashekhar N Sonaiya and Manoj H Advani.
All nine of these eyewitnesses, who declared themselves to be active members of the VHP, made identical statements to the effect that they had gone to Godhra station on the morning of February 27 to meet the karsevaks who were returning from Ayodhya and offer them tea and breakfast (The judges do not mention their political antecedents).
After making out a case that coach S-6 was burnt from outside, Bawa started discovering any number of carboys containing traces of kerosene from around the A cabin. Between March 29 and April 5, three carboys were allegedly recovered from three of the accused, Haji Bilal, Abdul Majid Dhantiya and Kasim Biryani.
Since Bilal was considered to be the main conspirator at the time, along with Kalota, the kerosene theory was accepted. In his report dated April 26, 2002, DB Talati said he had found traces of kerosene in the three carboys that were sent to him for examination! The kerosene theory prevailed until the beginning of July 2002. From then on the new investigation officer, Noel Parmar, had more refined ideas and fuel in mind.
THE FOURTH CHARGESHEET
It is the fourth chargesheet that outlines the Gujarat Government’s theory in full.
The primary motivation to introduce ‘petrol’ as the ostensible fuel used by the alleged conspirators along with the theory that coach S- 6 had been set alight from inside was the May 2002 report by Dr MS Dahiya, director of the FSL, Ahmedabad. Dahiya said that coach S-6 could not have been burnt from outside. His report also said that it would take 60 litres of petrol poured inside the coach to burn the same. Dahiya’s report apparently did not reach Bawa in time for him to realise that his theory that the coach was burnt from outside using kerosene would contradict a report based on scientific analysis.
So one year after the incident, the kerosene theory was suddenly abandoned in favour of petrol as the inflammatory fuel used. But the problem lies precisely in this double switchover: from kerosene to petrol, and from the earlier claim that the coach was burnt from outside, to the new theory that the coach was set afire from inside! The contradictions are so glaring they make the investigation a complete charade. Truth, of course, is the biggest victim.
Another significant point is that the carboys containing traces of petrol were not found near coach S-6 but some distance away. They were found at a distant location adjacent to a Muslim-owned garage that was burnt down by karsevaks at around 11 am on the same day (February 27, 2002) as a reaction to the burning of coach S-6.
WHOSE CONSPIRACY?
Modi had obviously decided on the motives and identity of those who had set coach S-6 on fire by the evening of February 27, 2002 itself. The conspiracy theory has been developed without the slightest application of mind. By using torture, coercion and the draconian provisions of the POTA law, absurd confessions have been extracted whereby a person ends up confessing to having done something that it was impossible to do. As pointed out earlier, it was impossible to stop the train by rotating the alarm disc from outside because of the modifications in design. Yet the investigators forced such a ‘confession’ to support their claim that Salim Paanwala had instigated Muslim hawkers to stop the train near the A cabin as part of a ‘pre-planned conspiracy’!
The most glaring omission in the prosecution’s tale is, however, in its silence about what the conspirators’ original plan was, had the train not been delayed by several hours. The VHP has alleged that if the train had arrived at the correct time, the plan was to set fire to the entire train at Chanchelav, a village about 12 km to 14 km from Godhra (towards Dahod) around midnight. But the Sabarmati Express has no scheduled halt there. The VHP has so far not disclosed how, in its view, the conspirators planned to stop the train at midnight when its activists had not allowed anyone to even board the train from Lucknow onwards!
The fact is that if the karsevaks had not pulled the chain to pick up their colleagues who had been left behind at Godhra station, the Sabarmati Express would have passed through Godhra without a hitch and saved the nation one of its greatest tragedies.
While the prosecution’s entire theory revolves around the allegation that several Muslims, including Jabir Binyamin Behra, had cut through the vestibule canvas of coach S-7 to get onto the train, there is absolutely no proof of such a claim.
It is evident from their statements that the nine active members of the VHP who were standing next to the A cabin right from the beginning did not see or make any allegations about anyone climbing onto coach S-7 and cutting through the vestibule canvas. The ASM, Rajendra Mina, who was in the A cabin at the time, also does not make such an allegation. In fact, his deposition stated that he had not seen anyone climbing onto the train. If the slashed canvas was the most vital piece of evidence in their case, why didn’t the police preserve it? Why was it allowed to be sold as scrap for a few rupees?
How does the prosecution explain the statement it recorded from the parcel office clerk on March 1, 2002, to the effect that after the first chain-pulling at the Godhra station, passengers in the train were pelting stones at the people behind the parcel office?
Where are the black plastic 20-litre carboys that were supposedly filled with petrol and brought on a tempo to a spot behind the A cabin and from which petrol was allegedly poured into the coach? The FSL has found three carboys containing traces of kerosene and three small carboys containing traces of petrol. Why didn’t the police find a single one of these 20-litre carboys? The FSL report clearly stated that the burnt residue of materials inside the coach did not contain any residue of a ‘plastic container’.
How will the prosecution explain the fact that the two small plastic containers that were found to have petrol in them were found not near the coach but across the tracks near the Mallas Auto garage which was burnt down by passengers and kar sevaks on the Sabarmati Express around 11 am on February 27, 2002? Two trucks outside the garage were burnt using petrol. From where did the passengers get the petrol?
Why did police inspector Barot from the police control room, Gandhinagar, inform the DGP’s office at 9.35 am on February 27, 2002, that karsevaks had set fire to three coaches of the Sabarmati Express train at Godhra and that the number of injured was not yet known? Barot, therefore, asks the police to be vigilant.
It is no one’s case that Godhra is not communally sensitive, that Godhra’s Ghanchi Muslims, as Hindus and Muslims unfortunately in many parts of the country are quick to react, assemble, even commit acts of violence. The moot question is whether here in this case on February 27, 2002, the act of burning alive 59 persons was a preplanned act designed and executed meticulously? While the state of Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sangh Parivar has booked the guilty without trial, fair or unfair, better sense was expected from retired members of the higher judiciary. If meticulous judicial examination and judgement thus fall prey to ambitious political design, where will the victim turn, for justice?
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 40, Dated Oct 11, 2008
hey u have given a clear picture of my country. i am happy i have decided to move abroad after reading ur blog i take oath not to return to this country our country will never get devloped like china usa or britan please send a copy of ur blog to all the top politicainas offcial let them know what is happending to our country. let them realize and do the need i alway wonderd why my country is like this main reason is corruption at all levels and problems with all religeons
Very thoughtfull.
I blame people of our country not politicians or system. we make our system, we elect people for office, we are responsible for our population problem, we are the most racist and divided people in the world. This is very sad.
I think that whoever wrote this article shouldn’t degrade other countries. I’m not saying what they siad isn’t true, but they still have no right to degrade another country. It’s violating other’s property. I think that thw author wouldn’t like it if someone created a whole WEBSITE dealing with why they want to escape from the country that the author is living in. I’m am stating what I feel and I have no prejudice against the author.
Jai Hind
I think this is suitable salutation… here or elsewhere
I would like to ask “How many of us are willing to devote at least 5 years of our professional life for our very own country?”
I guess each one here has a little knowledge which can be used to correct/ improve at least a bit of all the things Mr. Cyber Gandhi has quoted…
Shouldn’t it be out fundamental duty?
Give it a second thought…
well what i think is that people bringing facts out is good it’s not just facts thats making us realize that we all should do something that won’t make the country though its justified that they bring out the truth no matter what country that is.
Bringing out all these facts is pretty good but what are you trying to prove. You are asking people to get out of India itself. That would be the most foolish thing to do. The country my friends is made up of its citizens and if all the good educated one’s go away from india in fear that the same causes will lead to there death then nothing can be improved. How many of you people are actually working or doing anything to bring about change in the country. If you want change then you must also do something about it. Its very easy to blabber in a blog but very difficult to actually devote time to bring change. Has anyone of you ever even given 5 bucks extra to a rikshaw puller just because you felt he was too poor. Sir, the country changes and progresses with you and not with some aliens.
Gandhi left South Africa and came to India to fight for its independence.
Cyber Gandhi should emulate the original and instead of telling people to leave the country, should come to the country and lead the people to change the country.
In 1974 when I published my novel ‘The Have-nots’, I somehow suggested that India should resort to a form of strict communism for some ten years, at least, if it wanted to shrug shoulders with the strongest powers. By that time I had not visited India. But when I did so by the nineties, I was shocked and regretted that somebody of the caliber of S. Gandhi had met with an accident or was…..or else he could have accomplished what I had in mind when I expressed my wish for India. After several visits, I still feel there is a crying need for somebody to come up and bring some light and solace to the millions of poor. If democracy is what India reflects, the I would prefer to be born in a communist country that feeds its people and provides them with the bare necessities that a human being needs to lead a decent life. I think I will have to take birth in India to bring those drastic changes, perhaps with the help of some patriots now dead.
Although some informations are quite funny…I must say we must learn from this.
The principal reason for India’s poor condition is coz we are selfish. Yes that’s exactly what we are.
We see corruption…officials asking for bribes, we pay, get the job done and don’t care to stop it.
We have no sense of hygiene. The entire railway track from Kashmir to Kanyakumari is the biggest toilet bowl in the world. Railways had huge profits they say….where’s the physical manifestation to that? Trains stink like hell.
Indians love India by heart…but we don’t work to change India… This means we are lazy as well.
Finally… ever since India got independence…..not a single effective govt has done good for this country. They are more concerned about the well being of immigrants from neighbouring countries. Now the illegal immigrants have voter ids but many Indians don’t. I don’t have it either.
India might be the world’s largest democracy but we suck. India might respect religion…but it’s the very reason why we kill each other. Indians don’t have respect in India. We have to work and change things ourselves. For that we need to stay here no matter what and fight.
India is doomed already beyond any point of return by corrupt, short sighted, impotent, sick, feudal, greedy, psycho brahmin and caste maniacs. The RAW is full of these maniacs who control the central government who only looks after these psycho path minority who control the power and have no vision for India other than to protect these ignorant idiots welfare.
China on the other hand made sure India never become their threat economically or militarily by check mating India by collaborating with surrounding Countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Maldives.
80% of Indians are so innocent to understand this gospel truth
and they are been fooled by these greedy psycho paths.
I hope that India would split along the lines of States like in USSR did so that these problems will be easily manageable.
Bollywood movie = 10 % of Indian.
Slumdog millionare = 90% of Indian.
Sad but true.
Mahatma Ghandi would turning in his grave.
Nice article. But you may also wanna add a few articles related to developments in India. It will be so incorrect to say India doesn’t have anything good to talk about. Just portray the right picture – a mixture of good and bad.
Many of the statics appear to be true.. But, many are not.. India is a poor country,true,but it has a lot of things going for it.. India’s economy is growing leaps and bounds.. the opposite is happening in pakistan..
India has a secular,democratic govt.. and unlike pakistan is does not goes around begging money.. civilian supremacy is found in India but in Pakistan we all know who has real power- the Army..
Summary: after 60 yrs, India is seen as promising and as a future superpower, whereas pakistan is considered a failing state which cedes territory to non-state actors and whose economy is in shambles and is constantly begging for Aid from countries it professes to hate,like america, and unlike India which is an aid giver..
This is one of the most amazing Websites I ever seen, I am Hindu myself, and I feel this Website speaks the truth, and if we can learn from it and understand what to change and correct, then truly, we have become enlightened.
Kudos to the author of this site, and for the TRUTH it conveys and speaks, I am getting sick of nationalistic garbage being spewed day in and day out, while our own Indian brothers and sisters are dying day in and day out.
More sites like this must be created, and shown to the world, it will bring in a reality check and break this whole nutcase theory of India being a superpower.
Start by empowering the people, and individuals in this country, that is the true SUPER power.
The simple fact is that India is too socialistic a nation.ALL these problems mentioned are because there is no real liberty in India.
Indeed all the leaders looked up to are absolutley the wrong people;and yes,that includes Gandhi and Nehru.
You should be enouraging those who seek to liberalize the economy;those who encourage free enterprise;those who do not rely on Government;those who do not play identity politics;those who do not seek mandates and reservations; those who do not use religion to steer the masses;those who do not brag about idiotic things like culture and caste.
India has beautiful geography,flora,fauna,natural resources,but the politics have made this the biggest failed nation there is today.Such a contrast that in the land of Gods,the devils rule.
You have done some amazing research….it is amazing how powerful the impact of the media is on people, its like magic. most peolple believe india to be advanced but the truth is the opposite. I do not know if you have mentioned this but India spends $30 bil on defence , pakistan spends 6 bil, bangladesh spends 700 mil and sri lanka spends around the same as pakistan, china spends 60 billion on its defence. So what is india up 2 exactly?
you should research the impact of monsanto and genetically modified foods and pesticides on indian agriculture and farming. this is big contributer to indian suicides.
Bah, dont make this blog famous
Now all these sandbags will double their efforts to immigrate to Canada, Australia
What a stunningly beautiful piece of work. Kudos to your writing, analyis and idea. In fact, I have been considering developing something similar to this and that research lead me to this page. Excellent work. I am sick and tired of the pseudo development dream propagated by the media and political parties of India. After living and working around the world, I am convinced that India is the most difficult place to live on earth. I am wondering if we can convert this work of yours into a mass movement. Atleast, that will expose the veiled media analysis. I have just added this site as a favorite and will closely follow it in the months to come. Keep writing !
The replies suggest that many Indians want to take up your piece as a challenge and improve India’s condition.. Thank you for that. I thought your piece twisted some of the facts(well many facts) but I’ve gotta take it as a positive that many Indians are actually concerned that this might be true!
Imagine that.. India grows at 9% per year and is second only to China despite the fact that most of its masses are poor and Govt is so inefficient.. What if the Govt gets its acts right like it is doing now.. Dr.Manmohan Singh is the most qualified head of country in the world and he brought about the economic revolution in India.. He will make sure the economy is headed in the right direction!
Thank you for your criticisms it’ll definitely make me more concerned about the state of other less privileged Indians.
You are definitely wrong on one account.. I never want to leave India.. It has given me so much I wanna pay taxes here,not anywhere else!
Anoop – Growing at 9% is no big deal, it is just a nice number to play with for the media. There are several smaller economies in the world growing at that pace. Does that mean people wish to move there for work and settlement ? No. At the end of the day, the ONLY thing of good consequence to humanity is good governance. For example, Africa has , without doubt, the greatest natural resources of any other place in the world. But do people migrate en masse to settle there ? Hell, No. On the other hand, Singapore has Zero natural resources, yet people from around the world long to go there. So, if the government is made up of a bunch of retards , no one with a sane mind will wish to raise a family there.
Vivek,
You are grossly mistaken. China is the fastest growing economy in the world among all economies of all kind. India is 2nd fastest. Dont be so pessimistic. I agree before 1991 we didnt grow that fast and we are average at best. But, after reforms we have really grown. I can see the growth happening around me. I agree that there are millions of poor India but there is no shortcut to eradicating poverty. China has realized this sooner than us and that is why they are ahead. We have an edge against China and that is our democracy. Dont blame the politicians because we elect them and we alone are responsible for our miseries and happiness. Be a good citizen and enjoy the ride. We will be on the growth path for a long time to come.
I read what some readers expressed and some of my friends had concluded that hate and witing killing statements are symbols of being a patriot. Some feels that a biased scope is required to prove nationalism.
I do not think so- and I am of the view that PAK or INDIA both have lost precious time in manipulating and doing petty politics. Instead of going in past and blaming someone- I think we have entered in a era which is conclusive. This is time when India and Pakistan will learn lot of lessons. Both countries are pitched against China and USA. China which has money, technology and thus power. And USA which has means but no money.
I am sure coming time is going to be tough for everyone- and remember it is you and me who will suffer. Politicians will be sitting in some other country under political asylum.
India no doubt is not that much safe and secure to live because law is in hands of crowds, in hands of powerful but still manages to sail through. I do not know how long this will go but no doubt very soon some system has to come in….
Boss, Husbands in urbans have lost peace of mind, for fake dowry cases by wifes!!!
Anoop – I respect your optimistic outlook but I am afraid the real numbers do not indicate too much optimism. You are factually wrong when you say – “China is the fastest growing economy in the world among all economies of all kind. India is 2nd fastest” . It is only among the G-20 countries. For example, last year Bhutan grew at 21 %, Ethiopia grew at 12% , Rwanda grew at 11 % . China and India grew at 9% and 7 % respectively last year . Does that mean everyone desires to go and find opportunities in Bhutan, Ethiopia or Rwanda? India’s growth is of any consequence only to those who employ capital and look for a good ROI. In other words, investors who put in their own money. That is why most silicon valley VC partners now have their pooled money invested in India but do not and will not live in India. For the average person in the street , GDP growth means NOTHING. For the average person, the only thing that matters is PER CAPITA income i.e the money that person makes every year and not the sum total of all goods and services produced. And in this measure, India fares better than only a handful of very poor countries in the world . So, you can do the math. We have to raise our per capita income from $2700 to $10,500 to match today’s South Africa and to $47 – $50,000 tomatch today’s USA or Singapore . In other words, we have to raise an average person’s income by 20 times to match the standard of living that an average person has in USA or Singapore TODAY. If you believe this is possible for India to do in the foresseable future, you are the most insanely optimistic person ever.
Interesting- you have a point. I do not see very bright future for India- agriculture, which will and is feeding this country is in bad shape- farmers are committing suicides.
Concrete and concrete is coming up- I think we are going US way, all focus on industry and production. What we will eat ? Some committee will decide in coming 10 years…
Vivek,
I know India’s present situation is not the best right now. There are lots of things left to do. We are still a 60 year old country. Things are getting better but we need to ensure that the pace is picked up.
What else do you suggest us to do?? look at the bright side of things and let those things motivate us,right? Thats what I do.. We are no where near a developed nation but we are getting there.. We have our systems in place and now we’ve to pull up our socks and concentrate on our economy which WILL have a direct impact on the poor of India. High growth is the only way out,Vivek. We are on our way of achieving that. We still have some way to go to catch up with China.
Look at South Korea. They were worse than us. Look at how developed they are now. I know being a small country with a small population this is easier compared to India but they have adopted the Capitalist model and that has borne results for them. We should do that too but on a grand scale..
India percapita income is low but that can only be tackled by high growth,man. Earlier, we used to grow at a very low pace and it was dubbed as the “hindu growth rate”. We should dump socialistic policies and embrace the free market policies.
Adopting socialism to please USSR is the worst thing we have done to our people and nation. One of the wrong policy decisions of Jawarlal Nehru.
———–We should dump socialistic policies and embrace the free market policies.——–
This is tricky..this also gives other people to kick us out from the hold and I am sure with international financial terrorism- any country can be bought or sold like this.
It is not as easy as it looks- see USA assures that it is happy with India’s decision of 2 nuclear plants for US, US will help IAF and today we saw lot of statments from Depaak Kapoor about fighting with Taliban, China bla bla…
This is not coincidence – this is called USA calling shots !!
hindblogger,
Dont be so naive,man. China is adopting,rather has already adopted free market policies. Is USA bullying China around?
The very concept of free market and globalisation means that nobody is boss.. Your strength depends on your ability to grow and your economy.. After 1991 we have become stronger and confidant in this world because we dumped old policies and began reforms and started our journey towards free market economy.. We have grown faster than we had in for all those years before 1991.. Look at China,South Korea,Japan(which was ravaged by WW2). How well they have done.. Lets stop this socialistic crap and move towards capitalism..
The cultural factor is important in becoming developed. All Confucian states, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and HK are developed. China, well I don’t have to explain her. Indic cultural values are negative towards development, it’s too religious and less humanistic. People worship everything, hence a closed mind, they talk and argue a lot and do little.
Confucian cultures are hardworking, argue less, discplined and ovey laws. And best of all Confucianism is not a religion, it’s a philosophy.
There are others who share your view. Read this if you find time
http://anshudutta.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-fing-joke.html