Over to people, then to fixers

Manish Anand

So, the nation goes to the polls to elect a new government. Poll hysteria will pick up in few days. The issues for the electorates are nowhere to be seen. The Lok Sabha elections this year are likely to be issue less. The edge for either of the two leading coalitions, UPA led by Congress and NDA led by BJP, is to be decided by the kind of "equations" that they forge. Even after 62 years of Indian independence, democracy here is all about castes, hence the pre-poll caste equations hold the key to the formation of the next government.

Regional parties, who have now mastered the art to milk the leading coalitions after they form the Central government, have sensed the ground realities. They know that none of the leading coalitions are showing signs of securing a clear mandate from the electorates. They have positioned accordingly and could swing either ways to milk them the maximum.

BJP's poster boy Varun Gandhi hogged the limelight for few days with his histrionics. He exhibited signs of desperation to come close to his cousin Rahul Gandhi, with his party allowing him to try his tricks. Five years back when I had met him at his mom's residence, he was the same restless teenager, as he is today. Then he had been badmouthing none other then the tallest leader of the BJP, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, in the impression that the BJP should hand over the leadership to young politicians like him. He has not changed any better.

The UPA is showing signs of losing the momentum which it had been claiming after the Assembly wins in Delhi and Rajsthan. The Congress just seems to have got a little more ambitious then its partners in the UPA could have allowed.

Sooner or later the Congress could get into the desperation mode in the run up to the polls. The desperation is interpreted by political observers in Delhi as prelude to something unexpected.

The NDA on the other hand is far from having filled the vacuum created by the exit of Vajpayee from politics. LK Advani remains a leader of faction within the BJP. He has not grown up enough to set into the shoes of Vajpayee. This leaves the NDA much crippled. Even after the UPA left the nations to grapple with too many issues, Advani led NDA is far from capitalising on them.

The people could just leave the political mavericks to interpret their mandate according to their conveniences to cobble up a majority in the Lok Sabha to form a new government. It could just be that people might say in their mandate -- "over to the Amar Singhs, Mayawatis and Jayalalitas" -- to the coalition attempting to form a new government.

Great gambling bazaar

By Manish Anand

Are the stock markets places for big gamblers to swindle novice investors' hard earned money? The answer will be clearly yeas, if the turn of events of the past two years are deeply looked into.


The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his one of foreign visit last year had called the US economy a "casino economy". With his vast experience of managing the economy, he had hit the bull's eye with his statement.


The economy, whose barometer happens to be the stock market and which plays into the hands of big manipulators who could keep the market swinging into a range, has to be dubious and fallacious. With the stock market tanking from January 2008, the countries worldwide have reached stage where they are witnessing largescale lay-offs. Were the fatly paid top management of the corporates taken unaware that a cyclical slowdown could be in the offing. If they can not forsee the future challenges, they better need to find an alternative employment.


Hedging and pledging in equities and foreign currencies became the major tools of the corporates in the recent times. The corporates have been hedging their shares against financial loans in place of the traditional method of mortgaging the real assets. The banks and financial institutions are taking deep cuts thanks to the shares quoting at unbelievable prices. What kind of business model is this on their part, which resulted in the money eventually being sucked out from the economy?


The Udayan Mukherjees and Mitalis of the CNBCs take the command of this great gambling bazaar along with their associated who call themselves an expert but are always proved wrong on their predictions. Listen to them and follow their advices, you will have no better ways to put your hard earned money on fire. Also, the people around see you miser day by day and find you diseased.


What is the logic behind a particular share swinging from Rs 88 to Rs 138 and then back to its level in a span of two weeks, while continuing to do so consistently. Be a good gambler and then come to this world of great casino, else no one helps as even the government and the market regulators are seen just to be the accomplices of the great gamblers.

"Don't steal. Govt.hates competition"

By Manish Anand

In a parking lot, a sticker on the back screen of a Maruti Omni just stunned, as it made a too hard-hitting statement in just one sentence. It read "Dont steal; govt hates competition". Though born out of one fertile cynical mind, it captures the agony of the millions who have by now turned apathetic to the crass loot that government directly or indirectly indulges in.

The media has been maddened with the Satyam fraud for the last one month as if something alien happened to the country. The tainted Ramalinga Raju, erstwhile chairman of Satyam, is now every body's whipping boy. What did he do, by the way? Prima faci, Raju diverted Satyam's fund to lay down another empire in the real-estate sector, whose growth story had been only dizzying and mind boggling, making all other sector Pygmies in comparison to their exponential growth.

Now, the realty is busting, thanks to its illogical business model. But the real bolt from the blue is the stimulus package that the government is said to be bringing in soon to give a booster to this sector, which has largely been unregulated and had never been accountable to any.

Rajus and the realty sharks are the gifts that the governments of this country, and nonsense politicians who lead them, have handed over to the people of the country. The government is as good as the people and the politicians are as good as the mass have been the famous alibi that the textbook political scientists have dished out to the people to keep them brain-dead over the decades.

Raju diverted the fund of Ssatyam and is in jail now, though it's better to call him a state guest in the prison, otherwise he would have been twisting his nerves in one of the US jails. But the Central government too diverted Rs 60,000 crore of the tax-payers' money to waive off the farmers' loan, for which it had no mandate. What was this diversion for and who accounts for the money? Does the government tell the tax-payers that you timely pay your tax dues so that we can waive off farmers' loan? If the Congress was so peeved at the status of the farmers, it could have compensated for the farmers' bad loans from its party fund, which must be running into billions though unaccounted.

In the last decade or so billions of rupees have flown into land acquisition deals that the front companies of many individuals, including largely the politicians, have carried out across the country. The political class has been privy to the critical information which part of the country along with their precise location would thrive in the future due to the government initiatives. And they are all black money, mind you. Would there be any leader worth his salt who could get a result oriented and time bound investigation by an impartial agency, which unfortunately the country does not have, to tell the people that while 30 per cent of the people still do not meet their food needs but the money has been flowing in the country like the Ganges.

But the seething anger in the millions of the people die down over the period, as the system is so well organised in its murky deals that it could hardly be moved. Rajus are just tiny offshoots of the political class of the country, they come and go, while the system runs as usual despite the fact that the thousands of acrs of land that the former chairman of Satyam acquired in Andhra Pradesh could not have possible with mutual benefit of him and his political masters in the state.

Horrendous 2008!

By Manish Anand

Finally, horrendous 2008 is few hours away from coming to an end. The year turned out to be a thriller straight out to be from a page turner fiction. The year bids adieu to all with strong warning not to be callous with their fundamentals. It will take a minimum four years to undo the damage done by the year 2008. The only silver lining is the new man in the US, Barrack Hussain Obama, who will take charge of the world's sole superpower, after managing a mandate for change.

The world started shaking with the world wide stock market beginning to tank, while it ended with the world glueing to the television sets to watch the horrendous dance of murderous designs of Pakistan with posh hotels in Mumbai becoming the stage. In between, Bihar saw itself drawning in the mother of all floods with millions turning refugees.



All the crises caught the world with its pants down. The US led to the world economic crisis with its sub-prime crisis, which landed all the economies into the trap of a financial tsunami. Obama holds the promise to bring the world out of the hole that the arrogant financial management of his predecessor led to, though nothing short of a magic will ensure that in a short span of time.



Pakistan had been a blot on the world map, and it continues to be so. The lenient world has been tolerating it for one pretext or the other though its misdemeanour warranted out to smashed out much earlier. Pakistan, the rough baby of the US, is now out to destroy all the advances made by the world thanks to the sanctuary of the bearded and ugly monsters, so called jihadists, that it has nurtured over the decades.



Indian leaders proved to be the shame for the people. Though none to be spineless, the politicians of the country are threatening to drown the country into the Bay of Bengal, if a new breed does not replace them at an earliest time.



Worst had been the electronic channels of the country, who have proved through their deeds that they had been trained at best to play the monkey sports, as they continue with their monkey business with no remorse.

Hope that 2009 does not turn out to be another year of monkey dance.