Cleaner Politicians
By Vinod Varshney
Delhi needs to be cleaned of dirty politicians, who rake lies around, and also sycophant media. This can be understood in the context of Bharat Bandh organized yesterday.
“Bharat Band” was a political necessity for opposition parties and a matter of faith in democratic system for people of India. Definitely it was much needed in view of the arrogance of the Congress leaders and anti-people attitude they have continually adopted.
People truly have suffered un-imaginably from acute price rise especially in food items for over two years. People who have made money in bourses would not realize this; they wallow in wealth as sensex doubled in a year. Such people make out that Bandh was a huge national loss. The corporate houses may also say such things, who earned phenomenal profits despite global slow down due to low commodity prices, government incentives and by resorting to cost-cutting, many a time at the cost of rendering their employees jobless.
True Sufferers Don’s Get Headlines
The irony is the people who suffered most did not get headlines in print-media, which was bailed out amidst slowdown-led hardship, and the bail-out continues in spite of media houses reporting huge profits. Sufferers did not get bytes on TV either, as the fight for viewership would not allow them to bring out the inconvenient truth.
The fact of Indian economic miracle and wizardry of the economist prime minister Man Mohan Singh is that the number of people below poverty line have gone up to nearly 50 percent up from 30 percent during the last two years. He may boast of having faced successfully the global slow-down and keeping India immune from the disaster, but the reliable data tell that Venezuela, a darling country of Prakash Karat, General Secretary Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Jawahar Lal University students, is the only country among 43 major economies in the world where the consumer price rose more than India.
India Is Only Behind Communist Darling Venezuela
While India grew by 8.6 percent during the fourth quarter of the Indian financial year, the Consumer Prices grew 13.9 percent. Venezuela in the same period grew (-) 5.8 percent, and gave a stupendous price rise of 32 percent to its people.
Compared to this Britain grew by (-) 0.2, but gave Consumer Price Rise of only 3.4 %. Belgium grew by (-) 1 percent, but gave Consumer Price Rise of 2.5 %.The worst performing European country Greece grew (-) 2.5 %, but hurt Greeks by Consumer Price Rise of 5.4%.
India Is Infested With Such Intellectuals
Yet there is no dearth of intellectuals in India who will say if you need growth some price rise will have to be tolerated. Better see the record of countries showing better GDP growth rate than India.
Singapore grew 15.5%, Taiwan 13.3%, Thailand 12%, China 11.9 %, Turkey 11.7%, Malaysia 10.1% and our proud Man Mohan Singh’s India 8.6% between January- March, 2010.
The real issue is what kind of Consumer Price Rise these high growth countries gave to their public— Singapore 3.2%, Taiwan 0.7%, Thailand 3.2%, China 3.1%, Turkey 9.1%, Malaysia 1.6% and let me repeat what India gave to Indians -- Consumer Price Rise of 13.9%, the second highest in the world. Food Price Rise is almost 22 percent. Still there are people in India to say that the Bandh was unnecessary.
