My Letter to Hon'ble CM-designate HD Kumaraswamy

Appreciation of an article by Ms. Tavleen Singh in the Indian Express

Having been busy with the political development which fortunately ended the way I wanted them to. I must congratulate Tavleen in the last paragraph of her latest product. Tavleen has correctly understood that the people of India have clearly and rightly concluded that the democracy is doomed if Modi remains in power.

I am sorry that I have not been able to make a detailed comment on Tavleen’s piece which the readers will no doubt read with interest.

I must apologies that I have been busy dealing with the court proceedings as an individual citizen in my own right. I almost a wrong impression in the congress party that I was weakening their legal stand in court. they rested only when I made it clear that I am extending a kind of help to their stand in Court which no other person is doing. What the Supreme Court has done has fully justified my role in Supreme Court and of course the final result that the congress and JD(S) having the chief minister of their own choice.

I must say that I am feeling extremely proud of my contribution to this result. With my advance age and restricted movements I may not fully participate in the celebrations.

Link of the Tavleen’s Article published on the Website of Indian Express: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-endangered-democracy-5183624/

MY RESPONSE TO THE CURRENT EVENT

The Sunday gone by has brought me happiness as no other day in recent times. It was the news of my friend Yashwant Sinha resigning from the BJP. If his goal is the removal of Modi then it is essential for him to quit BJP.

Stars have changed and our main political objective shall soon be achieved; Insha Allah!

This Sunday’s weekly piece by Tavleen Singh in the Express may not be her best but it deserves to be carefully read; Congratulations Tavleen!

For quite some time I have been trying to find how Modi acquired the financial means of sustaining his covetable life style. I was convinced that he dishonestly cheated the nation by his criminal joke (jumla) in the matter of getting at the Liechtenstein wealth of Indian criminals out of which he campaigned everyday that he would put 15 lacs in the pocket of every poor citizen of India. If I had suspected that it was only a ‘jumla’ I would not have accepted him as my partner in my mission of recovering the unaccounted money stashed away in foreign banks with the help of the German Government.

It was only when he had been sworn as Prime Minister that he confessed that he had not been serious all along! I was most despondent to learn of this deception; Modi meantime made it clear that he did not even want me to get near him. For a time, I wanted to throw in the towel and felt culpable for having helped him to cheat the nation in such a shameless fashion. But the lawyer in me compelled me to get to the bottom of this huge fraud. I am now wiser about what had actually happened! I will disclose it soon to the unfortunate Indian nation.

Yashwant bhai and his friends are now convinced of how the nation was cheated. I will write about this after I have tied up the loose ends.

I am convinced of the huge raud against the nation and I will soon share my findings with you.

Dear Readers: Wait for a while!!

Saving democracy, really?

Written by Tavleen Singh | Published: April 22, 2018 12:07:29 am

Is last week’s move by the Congress to impeach the Chief Justice of India part of a crusade that began even before Narendra Modi became Prime Minister? Is it of a piece with making Parliament dysfunctional so that Modi can be blamed for weakening the institutions of democracy? Of a piece with the charge that the BJP wins elections because of EVMs being tampered with? Disappointed though I personally am with Modi’s many failures, I have to say that I believe it is.

Congress leaders announcing their decision to impeach the Chief Justice said grandiloquently that they were doing this because if the judiciary is weakened then democracy will not survive. In their exalted realms, they seem not to have noticed that the judiciary is already very, very weak. Most Indians cannot afford the cost of going to court, and if they can, they know that it takes decades to get justice. Instead of squabbling among themselves, this is what Supreme Court judges should be trying to fix.

Something else is going on here, and it’s time to spell it out. When you have been ruling India as long as the Congress has, with an imperial family at the helm, it is not easy to be an opposition party. So ever since the uppity chaiwallah from Gujarat usurped the role that the Congress believes is Rahul Gandhi’s birthright, there have been efforts at every level to undermine Narendra Modi and his government. Since he foolishly allowed Hindutva fanatics in his team to start lynching Muslims and Dalits on the pretext of saving cows, he helped the Congress make the case that he was unfit to be Prime Minister. But, attempts to paint him ‘communal’ began earlier than the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq.

Within days of his coming to office, a student was killed in Pune by a Hindutva mob. He was blamed. Rationalists were killed before he became Prime Minister. He was blamed. When that awful Shiv Sena MP tried to shove food down a Muslim waiter’s throat during Ramzan, Modi was blamed. When Mohammed Akhlaq was dragged out of his home and beaten to death, and his son nearly killed, on the suspicion that they ate beef, the Prime Minister made the mistake of remaining absolutely silent. So he was justly blamed. And writers, poets and intellectuals launched the award-wapsi movement. A fine gesture till you remember that these were people who lived through hundreds of equally hideous acts of violence without saying a word, without returning an award.

We in the media noticed the hypocrisy and whispered about it privately. But few wrote against the award-wapsi movement because we are mostly ‘secular’ and most of us despise Modi. It was because of being blinded by our secular glasses that most of us failed to gauge the groundswell of popular support Modi aroused in 2014. But, recent by-election results from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh indicate a waning in his popularity and the Congress believes it is now months away from returning to power, and so thinks it is time to go for the jugular.

Last week a group of retired bureaucrats wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister that they claim they felt compelled to write because of what happened in Kathua and Unnao. “We have had enough,” they wrote “of these belated remonstrances and promises to bring justice when the communal cauldron is forever kept boiling by forces nested with the Sangh Parivar”. Fine words.

Hard to disagree until you read the names of the bureaucrats and notice that all of them held high office in Congress times and failed to speak ever before. Not when the Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of the Valley for entirely ‘communal’ reasons. Not when thousands of Sikhs were massacred in Delhi. Not when Muslims arrested from Hashimpura in Meerut were gunned down by the police. Not when Nirbhaya was brutally raped in Delhi. And not when hundreds of little girls suffer the same way as the little girl did in Kathua.

The ‘institutions of democracy’ are made up of bureaucrats, judges, journalists and elected representatives. When it comes to this last category, the Congress has been pushed to marginal status from losing badly in the Lok Sabha and doing almost as badly in state elections since 2014. What has not changed is the loyalty they have cultivated over many decades in power, in the media, the judiciary and the bureaucracy.

These are powerful tools and they are being deployed very effectively against Modi because despite his impressive chat show in London last week, he is clearly no longer as invincible as he seemed mere months ago. He has been weakened by his Hindutva supporters and his failure to lead when leadership was urgently needed. But, this does not mean we should ignore the Congress party’s hypocrisy in the name of ‘saving’ democracy.

I am putting this Article on my blog so that more people get access to this Article who don't have access to Indian Express

What a child’s death tells us

Written

by Tavleen Singh | Published: April 15, 2018 1:05:49 am

The little girl was defiled twice. When she lived, by the monsters who gangraped, tortured and killed her, and after her death, by our political class, whose cynicism has been truly astounding. You would have to be sub-human to see those two pictures of her and not feel the terror this baby girl would have lived through in the last days of her sadly short life. The whole country felt the pain and the shame of her rape and murder except our ‘leaders’.

They behaved as if it were perfectly normal for a little girl to have been imprisoned, drugged and raped for days in a temple. With the collusion of the police. So unmoved were they by what happened to the child that ‘leaders’ of our two biggest national parties took turns to go on hunger strike to try and blame each other for Parliament having become dysfunctional. It was only when the media started to reflect the outrage, horror and shame ordinary Indians were feeling, that they began to respond with their standard, empty statements.

Personally, when I hear a political leader say that ‘the law will take its own course’, I know it will not. And if it does, it will be decades for that course to reach its end. The child’s family had the courage (despite policemen colluding in what happened to her) to register a case, but Jammu’s lawyers blocked the law from moving an inch forward because Hindutva hyper-nationalism blinded them to anything other than that the victim was Muslim and the rapists Hindu. They should have been arrested for blocking the course of the law, but the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir proved ineffectual as always.

One other group of Indians remained unmoved by what happened to the little girl. Hindutva hyper-nationalists. Their voice has got louder, angrier and uglier in the past three years, and especially on social media. Every time I tweeted about the girl, I was deluged with tweets from enraged Hindutva types demanding to know why I was not speaking for Hindu girls raped in Assam and West Bengal. I will tell you why. When a child is raped and brutally murdered I do not ask what her religion was. But hyper-nationalists do, and although they think they are great Indian patriots, they could be India’s biggest enemies. In my book, their nationalism is so venomous and deranged that it harms India in a very dangerous way.

Their nationalism is not the kind of nationalism that defined the movement that brought India freedom from colonial rule. That kind of nationalism I saw in the spirit of the young men and women I met in Champaran last week. More than 20,000 ‘Swachhagrahis’ gathered to hear the Prime Minister praise them for helping create a social and sanitation revolution in their villages. These young people were motivated only by their passion to make India a better country. They slept together in huge tented dormitories without asking the caste or religion of the person who slept in the next bed. They were not motivated by hatred, venom or a sense of grievance against Muslims. Their eyes look to the future.

The hyper-nationalists, for their part, wallow and seethe in a stew of memories of what Muslim invaders did to India centuries ago. They believe that Narendra Modiis the first real Hindu ruler in more than a thousand years, and that now is their time to take revenge against all Muslims. As the girl’s father told The Indian Express, she was too young to know what it meant to be Muslim or Hindu. “She couldn’t tell which hand was right and which left,” he said through his tears. But to hyper-nationalists, she was a Muslim girl, so what happened to her was revenge for what was done to Hindu women by Muslim invaders. I am not making this up. Trawl through the tweets of Hindutva hyper-nationalists and you will see.

What is worrying is the seeming inablity of our ‘leaders’ to see the damage that is being done to the fabric of Indian society by hyper-nationalism. Real nationalism is a good thing. It creates heroes and patriots who have the courage to give their lives and the lives of their sons to defend India. Hyper-nationalism creates cowards, not heroes. The young men we have seen too many times in vigilante mobs in the past three years are never likely to join the Army and fight to defend India’s borders. Cowards need the safety of mobs to show their ‘valour’. Cowards need little girls to rape and kill. Cowards need to wrap themselves in the national flag and prevent justice from being done as Jammu’s lawyers showed us last week.

The awful death of this little child has held up a mirror to India’s face and it looks so ugly that our leaders could be too frightened to speak.

A NOBODY KNOWS GOVERNMENT !!

Nobody Knows Anything in New India and Nobody can be held accountable for anything going wrong.




Nobody knows who suggested and planned Demonetization ?




Nobody knows how much Old Currency was Deposited in the Banks ?




Nobody knows how much Black Money was Recovered post Demonetization ?




Nobody knows how many Indians went Cashless after Demonetization ?




Nobody knows what the exact GDP figures are ?




Nobody knows how Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi all escaped ?




Nobody knows how Nirav Modi accompanied the PM to Davos?




Nobody knows how Rs.58,000 Crore extra payment was made in Rafael deal ?




Nobody knows how judge Loya died ?




Nobody knows where Mahesh Shah disappeared from TV Studios after alleging that he had Rs.14,000 Crores of some prominent Gujarati politicians.




Nobody knows how Jay Shah converts Rs. 50,000 to Rs.80,00,00,000 crores and then closes his business just days before demonetization ?




Nobody knows how Adhaar data leaked and the privacy was compromised ?




Nobody knows how SSC and CBSE exam papers leaked for the very 1st time ?




Nobody knows who drank 18, 591 cups of tea daily in Mumbai sectariate ?




Nobody knows who counted 3.19 lakh rats in 7 days ?




Nobody knows who purchased chikkis for Rs 206 crores and ate them all up ?




Nobody knows who ordered and ate ayurvedic biscuits for 5 crores?




Nobody knows who ordered to lathicharge protesting students ?




Nobody knows where is Najeeb ?




Nobody knows who killed Akhlaq, Pehlu, Junaid, Afrazul and many others ?




Nobody knows who killed Gauri Lankesh, Dabholkar, Pansare and Kalburgi ?




Nobody know how Media Freedom has been scuttled and 2017 was the most violent year for India’s journalists with 11 murdered journalists, 46 cases of attacks and 27 cases of police action including arrest and cases filed.




Now Nobody knows WHO FIRED ON THE PROTESTING FARMERS ?




#NobodyKnowsAnything




Is this the government we elected or nobody knows who elected this government too.

MAMTA’S CHALLENGE TO CORRUPTION AND CORRUPT POLITICIANS

                                                                                                                                       06.03.2018

In my blog I have promised that I will introduce you to one very inspiring and helpful speech of Mamta ji and I have promised to obtain a copy for your reading and entertainment.

During the waiting period our luck has improved and this morning the Indian Express has published a much fuller and inspiring statement of her which instead of the earlier one I would request you to read even with greater care and affection.

I assure you that it is a very inspiring statement and creates conviction of healthy change in our political set up including the eviction of corrupt people in positions of power and creating a rule of persons of tremendous character and honesty and guarantors of public happiness.

The web link to the Article is as under:

http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/andhra-pradesh/2018/mar/06/third-fronts-target-is-delhis-red-fort-says-mamata-1782601.html

Ram Jethmalani

                                                                                                                                              27.02.2018

It was not more than a few weeks ago that I had with my foresight and intuition concluded that Modi’s rule must end for the only qualified person, Mamta Banerjee, Hon’ble Chief Minister of West Bengal. I approached her and found her willing. I had requested her to publicly declare her plan to the anxious people of India.

She soon complied and her written Article appeared in the Indian Express as well. It gladdened my heart. I have misplaced this Article and will post it on my blog as soon as I find it. All people must celebrate with joy and pride.

I hope and trust that no one with any understanding of the needs of the nation will fail to make his/her full contribution for ensuring this result.

In your Service

Broken Promises : First publish by Indian Express on Sunday 4th February, 2018

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-broken-promises-rajasthan-bye-election-result5050517/

Mr Prime Minister, why don’t you spend some time with the people incognito?

In olden days, wise kings across the globe would take some time off, travel incognito, and speak with ordinary people to know for themselves how their subjects were faring - their standard of living, their hardships, their levels of satisfaction or disaffection with the government, and their general state of well being. Such surprise visits also kept the official advisors and intelligence agencies on their toes, knowing that the ruler could go off on a midnight tour anytime without anyone knowing, and see the truth for himself.

My sincere and unsolicited advice to our Prime Minister is that he must restart this ancient tradition of incognito visits. Clearly, the affairs of state and of the global order, and now the dicey Gujarat election, are placing an excessively heavy burden on him, and he is not able to keep track of the real state of the land and the people who elected him to govern for Achhe Din. Needless to say, it is precisely in such situations that advisors and intelligence agencies play truant, and start feeding false information and misleading the ruler by reporting not the truth, but what the ruler wants to hear. Judging from what has been going on in the country, particularly during the last one year, it is highly recommended that the Prime Minister could stop placing sole dependence on his advisors for information, (who are misleading him so completely) and re-start the practice of incognito visits. And with his excellent theatrical skills, this should not be a problem. And this might also give him a unique position in the global pecking order, and may well improve our rankings in the Ease of doing Business Index or the Transparency Index.

Of course, he does not even need to go incognito to see that the air we breathe has changed to a toxic gas in many cities in India, one of the worst being New Delhi, our capital city. It is un-breathable, causing great suffering to children, the sick, the elderly. And who knows what the long term effects will be on the future generation and the work force - our demographic dividend, on whom we are depending so heavily for future economic growth. The people of India are not able to understand why the Prime Minister has not spoken or initiated any action to address this mega pollution emergency. He appears as if it is none of his business.

Has he been informed by his Ministers or advisors, that schools are being shut down, lung cancer is increasing, children and adults are developing bronchial problems, people are moving around with their mouths and noses masked, cricket matches are threatened with foreign players getting ill, and expatriates have started leaving Delhi? As an experienced administrator, does he not know that a problem as complex as this can only be solved through cooperation of several State Governments, several Ministries and Tribunals, scientific institutions, ecologists and experts? Does he not know that only he as Prime Minister can play the role of master coordinator of so many scattered agencies and State Governments? Does he not know that the situation requires a time bound set of actions to gradually reduce the poison in the choking air, with stringent self regulation and external regulation in several anarchic sectors, such as motor vehicles, carbon emissions, crop burning, construction activities, etc.? But he has chosen to remain silent, and a pathetic and disgraceful blame game between State Governments and agencies is going on in full public view. And there seem to be no signs of any concerted action plan by his Government to address the pollution emergency, nor a single new idea out of the box or the think tank.

The country is now well acquainted with the Modi model of governance - only what the Prime Minister articulates becomes political priority, whether it is sanitation, or skills or digitalization, and the entire implementation machinery focuses on only that or makes great motions to that effect. All these are very necessary and good, but the Government should not be allowed to relegate every other issue to the background. So Mr Prime Minister, it’s high time you coin another slogan and declare it aloud as a priority– Nirmal Vayu or anything else your communication agency suggests which catches your fancy. Set up a think tank with the best experts to draw up an action plan, set the targets, and your cloned administrative machinery will immediately get cracking, and hopefully produce results. London did it in the early 50s.

Coming back to doing an incognito reality check with the people of our land, the Prime Minister should see for himself the havoc that has been created in the lives of poor, honest daily wagers who earned their living through daily cash wages, through the whimsical demonetization, followed by a poorly conceptualized and hastily rolled out GST. Enough statistics have been reeled out about jobs lost, small businesses closing down, labourers returning home to their villages, unemployed. But the Prime Minister has not done any reality check, incognito or otherwise, and he and his Finance Minister continue to live in their fantasy world of denial, and have started doling out extended dreams of Achhe Din for the next decade. But the people of India have seen through the bluff; sadly, they are a disillusioned lot, and the great faith they had reposed in Modi has slowly but surely eroded.

Or look at the middle classes, struggling to connect their Aadhar Cards and PAN numbers to every activity of their lives, legitimate money transactions, mobile phones, bank accounts. Queuing up day after day, losing wages, wasting their productivity and incomes, all in the name of curbing black money. Only to be told that the computers are not working and the servers are down, and they must return the next day. Mr Prime Minister, do an incognito visit and you will see the people’s trauma.

A valid question being asked by many is that in their great enthusiasm to curb black money, how is it that the Government forgot to issue orders that all political donations must also be linked to Aadhar Cards? The world knows that Indian politics and elections are a carnival of black money. And this deliberate lacuna can only give rise to the most unsavoury speculation about the real intent of the Government.

The Government continues to distract the people with illusions of digitalization and cashless economy, knowing fully well that there is neither adequate digital infrastructure, nor the required connectivity, especially in the backward regions of our country, to support this bluff. Please do an incognito check, Mr Prime Minister, and you will find that what the poor need are jobs, food, health, education, and not the Brave New Digital World that you are peddling.

This, Mr Prime Minister is the last time I am addressing you as such. The people of this country expect me to inform them of the reality of you and your government, now with the media so completely gagged, and I cannot let them down.

CBI’s forgiveness requires a complete disclosure of how the offence occurred. A serious offence described below cannot be forgiven below without a full disclosure of how it happened

It’s been raining brickbats on the CBI, what is popularly known as the nation’s premier investigation agency of the country, also popularly known as the ‘caged parrot’, the criminal bureau of investigation, and a host of other unflattering sobriquets.



First, there was this terrible case which made national headlines, of the CBI team in Bhubaneswar, all set to execute a search warrant on a sitting Judge of the Odisha High Court, when in fact the warrant was meant for another person. This was a scandal in itself, which showed the scant care and attention the CBI officials were taking, even when barging into the house of a sitting High Court Judge. This incident came to light only because the person involved had the status of a High Court Judge and it caught the nation’s attention. Had this happened to a member of the common public, it would have just gone unnoticed.



We do not know till this day who were the CBI officers who abused their authority so recklessly, and what action has been taken on them for their abuse of power. Why is this being kept as a state secret? All we could gather from the newspapers of 14-10-2017 is that, “The CBI on Friday told the Supreme Court that it is ready to apologize to Odisha High Court judge CR Dash for trying to raid his house last month by mistake. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted before a bench led by Justice AK Sikri that the CBI wanted to give a closure to this incident by unconditionally apologizing to the High Court judge.”



I wonder why the CBI have not informed the public of what action it has taken against the errant CBI officers who abused their authority in such a cavalier manner. Perhaps, they couldn’t care less, as it is quite becoming clearer each day that the present Government is relying heavily on the CBI to maintain itself in power, and using it as a state weapon to attack its political opponents or keep them in check. The CBI knows this, and therefore believes it can get away with murder under the present regime. How else does one explain such utter carelessness, callousness and abuse of power, in the performance of its duties, as they have done in the case of the Odisha High Court Judge?



Finally, I think it was the Allahabad High Court judgment on the Arushi murder case that exposed them with a judgment which they richly deserved, which informed the people of India conclusively, of the kind of illegal methods they use for investigation, after falsification of evidence and distortion of truth. This judgment clearly lists out the CBI’s criminal offences of tampering with forensic evidence, tutoring of witnesses, planting witnesses, and suppressing evidence critical to the case.

The CBI should hang their head in shame over this indictment. Can anything be more damaging to the credentials of our country’s premier investigation agency?



But here again, it’s a win win situation for the CBI. The CBI fights its case, straight or false, using the tax payers money, unlike the accused. Its potential to harass and conceal information is legend, again all at the expense of the tax payer. Its capacity to appeal any order of the trial or High Court, to protect its errant investigating officers from defamation is unlimited, with all legal and logistical support provided by the tax payer’s money.



I have already written in my blog of 25-2 17, “Bringing Accountability in the Caged Parrot”, that a performance audit of the CBI should be made available to the public – the cases filed by it, the convictions secured, and the acquittals. I request my readers to go through it at http://www.ramjethmalanimp.in/blog/bringing-accountability-in-the-caged-parrot.



The CBI now is so well set in its ways as a political outfit, and the senior officers have left all investigations and charge sheeting to its lower subordinates. The senior IPS officers have acquired for themselves the role of supervisory officers, thereby ensuring that they are never in the direct line of fire, should any strictures be passed by a Court for faulty investigation or charge sheet as in the Arushi murder case. And in the event of a case failing in the Court, the senior officers use their influence to go in appeal at the tax payers’ money, so that their subordinates are protected. And the government in power has a vested interest in doing so. If they do not do so, the next time they ask the CBI to target their political opponents, the CBI subordinate officers may well refuse to do so and merely advise their seniors, (generally government’s hand picked IPS officers) to use their powers under Section 36 Cr.PC and file the charge sheets under their signature. Misuse of power requires protection, which the ruling government happily and illegally provides, at the taxpayer's expense.



There is no doubt that the CBI is the darling of every Government in power. It is their own personal police outfit, which they directly control by staffing it with their cronies, and then using it to target their political opponents, according to their own timing and advantage. The CBI can close the Bofors case in 2005, according to political direction, and then want to reopen it again in 2017, again according to political direction. The CBI has now become so arrogant about its indispensability to any political government in power that it has ceased to perform its normal duties with any sense of accountability or responsibility, and has acquired a licence for abuse of power with absolute impunity.



Let me end by quoting something I had written in my previous blog on the CBI: “The popular perception of the Central Bureau of Investigation is that it is a superior investigation agency, that its investigations are thorough, meticulous and fair, and that it is above political interference. When people or the Opposition in the States are disgusted at the investigations and behavior of the State Police which comes directly under the political masters, there is always a shrill cry to refer the matter to the CBI, as if it’s integrity and investigation expertise is of a divine order. If only the people knew that the one thing the CBI has remained true to is the date of its founding, that is April 1, 1963. They have, as they have grown, perfected the art of fooling the people all the time.”



I know the CBI has sought forgiveness for what is obviously a gross crime. The least that they should have done was to have more courage to announce what made them commit this heinous wrong against law and justice and why did it happen at all ?

India’s greatest Con Man

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” So said Abraham Lincoln. And the time has come for our Prime Minister to take heed of Lincoln’s sage advice. Or if not him, then at least his fabled think tanks to whom he has outsourced his day to day PR, that is, if they have the guts to speak truth to him and the nation. For like with all autocrats, a stage is reached when advisors dare not speak the truth to their master, for fear of severe retribution. But regardless, and most importantly, the people of India have finally started discovering the truth of the great con game that was played upon them. 

Three years have passed since the dream of achey din was sold to the people of India, which they fell for completely. And I must admit to all my readers that I too fell for it, despite my age and experience. Perhaps it was because of my utter disgust at the brazen, shameless and unprecedented corruption and anti-national behaviour of the previous government. I had full faith that Narendra Modi would fulfil his promises to the nation when he spoke of bringing India’s black money back to the country, ending institutionalized corruption, and giving the nation good governance. How wrong I was. Mea Culpa, is all that I can say.

Winds of change have again started blowing in the country, as bluff after bluff of the Prime Minister is being discovered by the people of India. And the dreams of achay din are now blowing in the wind, as the people of India are getting disillusioned yet again, with the government that had promised so much and delivered so little perhaps nothing at all. 

The black money which Modi promised to get back will never come back. He and his Finance Minister merely carried forward the fraud of the previous government and linked it wrongly with the Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty. So no black money stashed away in off shore accounts will ever come back to India, and the whole bluff, in a moment of unguarded candour was dismissed as an ‘election jumla’ by the Prime Minister’s able alter ego, Amit Shah, for which no explanation came from the Prime Minister. This was the first time the people of India saw the bluff of Narendra Modi.

I must recall the salient facts of this great fraud on the unfortunate people of India. It is a tragic fact of history that India had every reason to pursue the search of Black Money stolen from India by Indian criminals and concealed in foregin tax havens that provided welcome shelter and protection to the dacoits who impoverished the nation and fully enjoyed the proceeds of their dirty crimes. 

The United Nations worked hard for four years and produced its Convention Against Corruption which came into force in December 2005, a most worthy and difficult task. The document mainly deals with the subject of black money, which was rapidly becoming a global problem. 

The Congress Government in power in early 2005 put its signature on the document and made great prop0ganda about how seriously it was about getting back India’s stolen wealth, and punishing the culprits. But they concealed from the people the most important fact that a UN Convention does not become binding on a nation unless it has lodged the Document of Ratification in the U.N Office. This the Congress Government never did.

Now let us see the further huge fraud perpetrated on the people of India by the Congress Government in power. When the Supreme Court was about to deliver its judgement in my famous Black Money petition in early July 2011, the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited the Swiss Finance Minister a couple of months earlier and entered into a Secret Protocol amending the Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty. Its main but fatal provisions were only two: First, India will seek no information about the past but only about the future; and second, it will seek information only under the Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty (DTAT) and not the UN Convention Against Corruption. Every one knows that the DTAT has nothing to do with black money laundering criminals but only honest tax payers who pay income tax in more than one country on the same income. After this secret protocol whose terms were kept a secret the DTAT got the name Amended Double Taxation Avoidance Treaty. Congress Finance Minister Chidambaram knew of this fraud and so did the BJP Finance Minister under Modi. These two amendments were kept a complete secret from the unfortunate people of India.

In answer to a Rajya Sabha question put to Finance Minster Arun Jaitley about what steps he was taking to recover black money, his answer was “ I am entering into amended DTATs with various countries.” Chidambaram and Jaitley, Modi and Manmohan Singh, Congress and BJP have all been in conspiracy to defraud the people of India, and deserve the worst punishment under the criminal law of our country.

Minimum Government, maximum governance has become an underworld of minimum government and minimum governance, with extra constitutional and ideological despots doing maximum governance, be it lynching people to death on mere suspicion of eating beef or transporting cattle, directing enforcement agencies, such as the CBI and ED to maul political opponents, even as maximum corruption persists in the minimum governance mode. A pall of fear has descended upon the legitimate governance agents, political or bureaucratic. Everyone speaks in whispers, as Big Brother is always watching, and any disobedience or dissenting opinion, especially of the honest or ethical kind, will be smothered, and if it still persists, severely punished – this is Modi’s Minimum Government, Maximum Governance. 

Many other bluffs are now being perceived by the people of India who voted Modi to power. Where are the ten million jobs per year that he promised our youth? It is reported that only 2.3 lakh jobs were added in eight key non-farm sectors last year. Where is the economic growth he promised the people of India? Despite the financial fudging that is well known and documented in reports, projections for GDP growth are falling. Industrial growth has plummeted, and NPAs have risen, including in his own home state Gujarat, where small and medium industries are turning sick, and artisans are losing livelihoods. The fate of the artisans remains the same in his adopted constituency of Varanasi. Demonetization has ruined the legitimate cash economy that ran the informal employment sectors across the country. The East India Company is reported to have ruined the artisans and weavers of Bengal by cutting off their thumbs, to sustain the Lancashire textile mills. Modi cut off their livelihoods to sustain electoral victory in UP. Livelihoods have been ruined and families are in dire straits, and the hasty GST is further hitting the informal sector to which the poor of our country belong. All this is reflected in the downward trends in the GDP forecasts. To counter this, minimum governance has resorted to expropriating from the citizens vast bonanzas by way of taxes, on purchase of diesel and petrol, without any transparency or rationality, and purely on the basis of its whims, just to fill its coffers, and conceal the demonetization disaster.

There are less than two years left for the next election, and it is now the time for all patriotic, good people who care for the future prosperity of our country and its people to shed their fears and feeling of helplessness and come together to get the ruling megalomaniacs out. Let them be from any party or ideology. Every day, I receive appeals from scores of people, from all sections of society and religious faiths, to do something to change the disastrous political course that has descended upon our country. We need a government which cares for all the people of India, which can give each section what they need, and take our country forward with respect, dignity and prosperity; where law and order returns, and people cannot be lynched to death by vigilantes who have the confidence of being protected by the Conspirator State of India.

At this point I applaud the great loyalty that the Muslims in our country have demonstrated. The IS has made no impact upon them, and they continue a life of peace and harmony. They are an irreversible part of our historical inheritance, and it is up to us, the majority community, to carry them with us, not in a spirit of appeasement, but in a spirit of brotherhood and patriotism. They have not and will not fail us.

It was said some time ago, that as long as Rahul Gandhi continues with a leadership role in the Congress Party, the BJP has nothing to fear. I think the tables have turned. One thing Modi’s minimum governance has certainly done is to give Rahul Gandhi a terrific opportunity to become relevant again, and talk sense. Which is what he has started doing. His speech at Berkeley University was excellent, and most appropriate and opportune. As long as Modi remains, Rahul will continue to grow.

Before I end, an important message to the Prime Minster comes to my mind - from Kautilya’s Arthashastra.

“When good people are snubbed, and evil people are embraced, distress increases. Wherever officials or people initiate unprecedented violence in acts or words, wherever there are unrighteous acts of violence, disaffection grows. When the king rejects the Dharma, that is ‘does what ought not to be done, does not do what ought to be done, does not give what ought to be given, and gives what ought not to be given’, the king causes people to worry and dislike him.

“Where people are fined or punished or harassed when they ought not to be harassed, where those that should be punished are not punished, where those people are apprehended when they ought not be, where those who are not apprehended when they ought to, the king and his officials cause distress and disaffection.

“A state, where courageous activity is denigrated, quality of accomplishments are disparaged, pioneers are harmed, honorable men are dishonored, where deserving people are not rewarded but instead favoritism and falsehood is, that is where people lack motivation, are distressed, become upset and disloyal.”

Take note, Mr Prime Minister.

A CRUELLY UNFAIR INSULT TO FAIR SEX

In an otherwise hated period of emergency of 1976 the glorious attribute of secularism became the basic feature of the Indian Constitution meant to be a great gift to religious minorities which together were a very large size of the population of India.

I have no doubt that it certainly did neutralize their hostility to the evil that the emergency in fact was. It is recognized by a very important nine Judges-decision of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India reported in (1994) 3 SCC 1, that this is now basic non-repealable feature of the Constitution of India. It made every Indian an equal citizen of India no longer to be identical by his religion caste or language.

The above said Supreme Court Judgment contains following passage:

“25. India can rightly be described as the world's most heterogeneous society. It is a country with a rich heritage. Several races have converged in this sub- continent. They brought with them their own cultures, languages, religions and customs. These diversities threw up their own problems but the early leadership showed wisdom and sagacity in tackling them by preaching the philosophy of accommodation and tolerance. This is the message which saints and sufis spread in olden days and which Mahatma Gandhi and other leaders of modem times advocated to maintain national unity and integrity. The British policy of divide and rule, aggravated by separate electorates based on religion, had added a new dimension of mixing religion with politics which had to be countered and which could be countered only if the people realised the need for national unity and integrity. It was with the weapons of secularism and non-violence that Mahatma Gandhi fought the battle for independence against the mighty colonial rulers.

………… Gandhiji when in 1946 he wrote in Harijan "I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The State has nothing to do with it. The State will look after your secular welfare, health, communication, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not my religion. That is everybody's personal concern."

It is the duty of every citizen and politician to preserve this Great feature of the Indian polity; it makes India respected in the comity of nations.

India can remain a great nation only with loyal and absolute adherence to this great achievement. I am all appreciation for the majority Judgment which ruled out as unconstitutional the Islamic rule of Triple Talaq. I have great admiration for the depth and extent of their knowledge of constitution and laws of India but I may be pardoned for suggesting that if I was a judge which I never have been all my life. I would have reached the same conclusion in in a short paragraph of a few lines only. Let me share it with my readers. It would read like this:- Every religion has a core and essence but lot of disposable stuff perhaps useful for a time and under different circumstances. As an admirer of the Islam of the Holy Prophet I have often written that essence of Islam is in two lines of the Holy Quran; first: When you walk in search of knowledge you walk in the path of God and the second: the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr. Triple Talaq is certainly not, this stuff.

Secularism now a basic feature of our legal system is nothing but religion being subject to the rule of reason. This Triple Talaq is the most unfair insult to the fair sex. It must not disgrace our legal system to please some intolerant fanatics. However, much I do not admire Prime Minister Modi’s policies and character I am in all appreciation of a charming lady being made the Hon’ble Minister of Defence ofr our vast country. She is a conclusive argument for terminating the disgrace of Triple Talaq. Politicians in India must be careful. Secularism is not safe with most BJP leaders though there are many who are intensely secular but they are either afraid to speak up or sacrifice their convictions for temporary political rewards. They need to be woken up by appeals to their somewhat dormant conscience.



Ram Jethmalani

My letter to the Prime Minister

India’s Mysterious Economy

The state of our economy as officially reported by the government not only defies sound economic logic or forecast, but appears to be becoming more and more of a national mystery, especially to experienced economists and analysts. Nothing adds up, and the data on hand from several respected and reliable sources just doesn’t lead to the information on our economy being given by the Government. And as for our projected GDP growth for the next financial year, 2017-18, it seems to have become more and more like the card game of bluff, with several forecasting agencies, both national and international giving completely different figures. 

The Economist, May 13th to 19th, labels India’s economy - State of Disrepair – and warns of a fiscal crisis if the financial profligacy and budget deficits of the States are not brought under check. A short passage is worth quoting : ‘The Central Budget deficit may have been reduced from 5% four years ago to 3% now But its parsimony has been matched by the profligacy of India’s 29 states. They have spent nearly all the money saved, leaving the country’s public finances no better off. The central government has only itself to blame. By implicitly guaranteeing bonds issued by states, and forcing banks to invest their depositors’ money in them, it has unwittingly created the conditions for a future fiscal debacle…ndia should act now to prevent a future crash by imposing more discipline on state borrowing, and by pressing markets to discriminate between states with sustainable finances and those on the path to bankruptcy.’

Does anyone know what our GDP growth last year really was? It has been officially stated that our economy grew at 7.1% during 2016-17, as against 7.6% last year, the .5% reduction being the result of the Tuglaqian and insensitive manner in which the demonitzation was carried out. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave India a growth forecast of 6.6%, against its original forecast of 7.6%, “primarily due to the temporary negative consumption shock induced by cash shortages and payment disruptions associated with the recent currency note withdrawal and exchange initiative.”

Economists and analysts have been puzzled at the 7.1% GDP rate announced by the Central Statistical Organization, after demonetization sucked out 86% of hard cash from the Indian economy, causing greatest hardship to the rural and informal sectors. Even the infrastructure structure slowed down, as per the official CSO report, with job losses and layoffs. There appears to be a great deal of sleight of hand, if not actual fudging of data going on, something being openly discussed in all informed quarters. And there is a great deal of data to show reduction of private investment, of gross capital formation, of falling exports, and that the industrial sector, construction, manufacturing and retail sectors, job creation, the agricultural sector and informal sectors that work on a cash economy, (the informal sector providing 45% of GDP and 80% of employment) have all been badly hit by demonetization. And yet the Government gives a GDP figure of 7.1%. Perhaps the CSO forgot to factor the above data in their GDP calculations. Instead, they show a whopping 10% consumption growth for the same quarter when demonetization sucked the currency out of the system, and people became cash starved!

Does the government think the people are fools. And has it sunk to such an abysmal low that it must resort to unethical and brazen fudging of figures and ‘statistical illusions’ for the citizens of India. For how long do they think these illusions of fudged data can stick?

Most economists are of the view that the CSO figures are indeed mysterious, if not magical, when correlated with the data regarding the growth in various sectors that make up the GDP. Economist Vivek Kaul says that ‘an increase in government expenditure has been responsible for a greater proportion of the increase in GDP - for every Rs 100 increase in GDP, increase in government expenditure made up for Rs 26.64 on an average.” Games governments play to hoodwink citizens.

We have still not been informed by the Government as to how much black money in the country has been integrated into the banking system after demonetization. Well, it has been reported that of the Rs 15.4 lakh crore worth of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that were scrapped, as much as Rs 14 lakh crore has been deposited in banks. And how much of this is black money is not known.

Is this going to be the next ruse to fix our GDP for the next year?

And what the effect of the GST will be, introduced through the needless midnight fanfare, no economist, leave alone the common man can predict. Analysts say that it relies heavily on digital connectivity, something that is neither reliable, nor universally spread in our country. And though it might make the tax structure easier for the big business, its impact on the unorganized, vulnerable production sector, such as weavers, artisans, small cash run businesses is yet to be seen. The triple system of Central, State and Interstate GST and revenue sharing between Centre and States would certainly demand innovative monitoring. And as for enforcement, we wait to see what lies there and what’s in it for whom. 

                                                                                                                   Ram Jethmalani