So the fiery and often unpredictable “Didi” of Indian politics, Mamata Banerjee is all set to do what many felt was inevitable. Even as I write this, I honestly don’t know if the Trinamool Congress will actually walk out of the UPA or not. Nor do I know how Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and Karunanidhi will act. Some friends tell me that the countdown to the end of this UPA regime has begun and that it is a matter of time before the Manmohan Singh government falls without completing its full term. Some other friends tell me that the Congress has legendary “management” skills in this field and will ride out of the storm. They point out to how a minority Manmohan Singh government won the trust vote in 2008 and how a minority P.V. Narashima Rao government won the trust vote in 1992. I really don’t believe that the survival-or-not of the UPA government is the most significant problem confronting India at this time. I think the real problem and the real challenge is the direction that economic policy making is taking in the country. Let us look at the grievances publicly aired by Mamata Banerjee. She has slammed the UPA government as being anti-people and is convinced that the diesel price hike, the rationing of LPG cylinders and allowing FDI in multi-brand retail will harm the common man of India. If they are actually harmful for common Indians, then I am all for the stance taken by Didi. The thing is, I have repeatedly said that India is awash with unnecessary and unsustainable subsidies. I have repeatedly said that we have to both reduce and eliminate subsidies that often end up being gobbled up by the rich instead of the poor for which they are meant. So in principle, I would tend to agree with a reduction of subsidies for both diesel and LPG. But the problem is the manner in which this UPA government has been behaving since 2009. It has been so brazenly practising crony capitalism that nobody believes it when it talks about good intentions. Let me just give one example of how the common Indian views this latest LPG controversy. The latest decision stipulates that a family will be entitled to just one subsidized LPG cylinder every two months. Any cylinders required beyond this limit need to be purchased at market prices. The government claims that an average family uses one cylinder every two months. That is absolute nonsense. An average family almost always uses one LPG cylinder every month. Worse, this arbitrary decision – given the famed ability of Indians to indulge in corruption – will lead to massive black marketing. Already, when people are calling for booking an LPG refill, dealers are claiming that they have no stock. Of course, the stock is there if you want to buy at black market rates. This is taking India back to the notorious days of rationing where rice, sugar, cooking oil, cement, phone connections and Bajaj scooters were always out of stock but available to those who had enough money to pay black market rates. This is not reforms or a forward moving decision. It is downright regressive. Why can’t the government find a way to ensure that those who can afford will pay market prices for LPG? We have had the UIAD project going on since 2009. Of what use is so much expense on it if we can’t solve even the simple problem of targeting subsidies to those who really deserve them? Read More....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012 Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs) Ranked 6th OverallZee Business Best B-School Survey 2012 Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA IndoreIIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 yearIIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman ConsultingProfessor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and ManagementIIPM makes business education truly globalManagement Guru Arindam ChaudhuriRajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman IIPM B-School Facebook Page IIPM Global Exposure IIPM Best B School India IIPM B-School Detail IIPM LinksIIPM : The B-School with a Human Face----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you ever wondered why a Mulayam or a Mayawati is ready to extend the olive branch to UPA from time to time? Or why Karunanidhi, despite going through utter humiliation, ends up standing behind the UPA? Or how the UPA manages everyone so smoothly, except Mamata Banerjee? Well, the answer is in the central government’s massive manipulative control over the CBI, which can in turn then be used to blackmail anyone with any kind of shady dealing and existing CBI investigation; and given that most of our political leaders are corrupt, they can all be easily manipulated, minus rare exceptions like Mamata. Let’s look into some cases. Let’s start with UPA’s biggest problem, YSRC President Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy. He accused the Congress of using the CBI as a tool to harass its political opponents. Sakshi TV channel owned by Y. S. Bharati, wife of Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy, aired an hour-long program defaming Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. Following that, the CBI accused Jaganmohan Reddy of having disproportionate assets and arged him under multiple sections. All government advertisements and notifications that Sakshi TV and newspaper used to get, were stopped. Similar was the case with UP’s ex CM, Mayawati. After getting a clean chit in the Taj Heritage Corridor case in 2007, Mayawati accused the UPA government of using the CBI to drag her unnecessarily in the disproportionate asset case as a revenge for her act of withdrawing support to UPA. Similarly, the Sohrabuddin case came under CBI investigation too, but it was found that the UPA government used the bureau as a tool to harass the incumbent government in Gujarat, in spite of the case having no political connections – this fact was evident from the series of sting operations conducted by various news channels. Even IPS of- ficer Geeta Joshi alleged in August 2010 that CBI, during the investigation of the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, pressurized her to falsely implicate former Gujarat Minister Amit Shah in the case to harass the BJP government. It’s not that the mini scandal was not in the knowledge of the Centre, but it is alleged that the government used the CBI to put the Reddy brothers behind bars due to their closeness with BJP. On the other hand, CBI is regularly manipulated to ease the cases filed on the government. CBI, in its charge-sheet, claimed that Jasbir Singh, who is supposed to have heard Tytler inciting a mob to kill Sikhs, could not be examined as he had settled in America and his whereabouts couldn’t be traced. The CBI’s claim got falsified when media telephonically located Jasbir Singh in no time. After the case was ordered to be re- investigated by the court, CBI reportedly submitted that Jasbir Singh’s testimony cannot be relied upon and asked the court to close the case. The entire incident happened to save Tytler, who has had close ties with the ruling government. Similarly, the CBI tried to save Sajjan Singh; he again has had close ties to UPA. Similarly and interestingly, despite the fact that the High Court or- dered CBI to probe the Rs 5,700 crore NRHM scam, nothing much was done by the CBI until just a few months before the UP polls. All charges however were suddenly dropped and all cases against Mayawati buried, aft er she lost the UP polls. CBI said that it made a “grave error” while calculating assets of Mayawati. In return, the erstwhile harassed Mayawati supported UPA in Uttarakhand and also backed UPA’s presidential nominee. Read More....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012 Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs) Ranked 6th OverallZee Business Best B-School Survey 2012 Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA IndoreIIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 yearIIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman ConsultingProfessor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and ManagementIIPM makes business education truly globalManagement Guru Arindam ChaudhuriRajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman IIPM B-School Facebook Page IIPM Global Exposure IIPM Best B School India IIPM B-School Detail IIPM LinksIIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
Yes, she has been in the news in the recent past for all the wrong reasons. It’s outright insecure and almost suicidal for a national leader of an intellectual and free-thinking state like West Bengal to target a professor for forwarding a cartoon! There are no two ways of looking at it. Leaders are supposed to let their work do the speaking and not their might. We aren’t living in the Hitlerian era. It’s also ridiculous to talk of turning Calcutta into London by painting the trees blue. London is about its democracy (freedom of forwarding cartoons), equality in access to health, education and justice, its high life expectancy, negligible infant mortality and a far more equitable society apart from its astounding standard of safety and cleanliness in comparison with Calcutta. In all these respects, West Bengal and Calcutta are at least 25 years away, assuming we get a government led by a sincere leader who works genuinely day and night for its people. Apart from arguably destroying the future of Indian Railways by compromising on possible safety upgradations by not increasing railway fares again and again at a Central level, Mamata has also not announced a budget for West Bengal and kept all finances at her whim and fancy; she has hardly done anything worthwhile for the state’s education, health or employment situation while continuing to work in a very autocratic highhanded manner. Thus, many would argue she indeed has rightly won the ire of intellectuals of Bengal who supported her so wholeheartedly, and are now deserting her one by one. But in the middle of all this, one must not forget her achievements, which in a country of scamster & criminal politicians is reason enough for the nation to wait for at least another two years before passing a judgment on her. Her biggest achievement – for which alone she should be given a five-year free run – has been to rid Bengal of the dictatorial CPM. mamata banerhjeeThe communists desperately needed to sit in the opposition to realize that good ideals simply on pen and paper are not good enough. Power corrupted their ideals beyond recognition and they had become a party of goons, riggers and fascists. And if removing them was not good enough, doing it without any bloodshed is Mamata’s biggest achievement. But it doesn’t end there. She has also done what Nitish in Bihar and Raman Singh in Chattisgarh have failed to do. She is the first and only leader in the country to have tamed the menace of the Maoists in the Junglemahal area of Bengal by genuinely giving access to food to the poor there. And she could do it all due to one reason – her determined will to do good for the poor in the Junglemahal area. And finally, she tamed the Gorkha problem in the hills of Bengal immediately after taking power. None of these two issues could be resolved by the CPM in their years of power. And these three things are landmark and historical. While the mainstream media focussed only on the CPM issue, that too without really highlighting the immense value of it, it completely has ignored her other two very, very crucial achievements. Read More....An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri ( Renowned Management Guru and Economist). For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles 2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012 Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs) Ranked 6th OverallZee Business Best B-School Survey 2012 Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA IndoreIIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 yearIIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman ConsultingProfessor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and ManagementIIPM makes business education truly globalManagement Guru Arindam ChaudhuriRajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman IIPM B-School Facebook Page IIPM Global Exposure IIPM Best B School India IIPM B-School Detail IIPM LinksIIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
ARINDAM CHAUDHURIANALYSES HOW CPM MIGHT JUST ABOUT DO THE TRICK AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME ON THE BASIS OF A COMBINATION OF WELL PLANNED STRATEGIES AND PRO-POOR PROMISES!Lack of development, apathy towards the poor, scientifically implemented mass rigging, muscle power, murders, guns and goons... These have been the things that made the Leftist people of Bengal angry and furious, and made them think seriously of an alternative after decades. These are the things that made the people to come out and vote against CPM in the elections that have been happening of late, including the Parliamentary elections last year. Of course, that can’t take away the credit from Mamata Banerjee, who has been fearlessly taking the CPM head on! She felt the pulse of Bengal, had the courage and gave the alternative that Bengal was looking for. And it was only after the setback that the otherwise arrogant CPM leaders of Bengal received due to their loss in the general elections last year, that they really started taking her threat seriously and introspecting within. Initially, with every passing day, Mamata’s popularity only seemed to surge and it seemed that in the upcoming state elections, the results would be a sure victory for the Trinamool Congress – unless she herself did something suicidal like showing her temper and breaking off her relations with the Congress, something that The Sunday Indian had cautioned about earlier too. TSI had also said that the CPM had enough means and relations to influence the Congress to break up with Trinamool and it would require great diplomacy on Mamata’s part to maintain her relations with the Congress. After all, CPM had only got five lakh votes less in the last elections. At the same time, theCongress has its own committed vote bank; and without them, Mamata’s possibility of winning is very less, given that there still remains an unshakeable mass which will vote only for CPM (even though there’s no doubt that CPM's vote bank has shrunk). The fact that breaking the Trinamool-Congress tie-up was a possible way for CPM to again win the next elections was an issue known to us and many others. What no one expected was the possibility of CPM winning on its own merit! That, along with Trinamool’s breakup with the Congress, could be a double blow that Mamata’s party may find too difficult to overturn! Unfortunately for Trinamool, going by one after the other recent policy announcements by CPM in Bengal, it seems that Trinamool wouldn’t just have to tackle the problem of the breakdown of their ‘mahajot’ (grand alliance) but also the growing popularity of CPM! One of CPM’s voter bases that got eroded due to the Nandigram tussle – the Muslim voters – seems to be slowly shifting its affections back, with the CPM declaring that Muslims will get huge scholarships and a ten percent job quota too! This, coupled with the fact that a lot of slum dwellers and hawkers on the streets are Muslims, suggests that there is more in store for them.Recently, CPM also declared that slum dwellers will get the land where their slums currently are, for a paltry one rupee!!! The CPM has promised rice at two rupees per kilogram for not only those below the poverty line, but even for the bottom twenty percent of the people above the poverty line! The same CPM, which took the hawkers head-on by removing them from the streets for the sake of votes, under the huge threat of losing power has now decided that pavement hawkers would get 1/3rd of the pavement to do their business! Read More....For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
IIPM B-School Detail IIPM makes business education truly global IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm - Planman Consulting Arindam Chaudhuri (IIPM Dean) – ‘Every human being is a diamond’ Arindam Chaudhuri – Everything is not in our hands Planman Technologies – IT Solutions at your finger tips Planman Consulting Arindam Chaudhuri's Portfolio - he is at his candid best by Society Magazine
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