Climatic Division

As the UN climate summit opens on Monday in Durban, some contours of the fight ahead can be discerned.

For many, the Kyoto vs anti-Kyoto Protocol line appears to be getting shaky. Small countries, including threatened islands and the European Union (EU), want to get to a climate deal quickly, in fact as early as 2015.

India, along with Brazil, Japan, Russia and Canada, has argued against haste. These divisions became apparent during the 12th meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in the US earlier this month.

This coming together of climate change adversaries, so to speak, promises to create friction at Durban. While it's too early to speculate, it is possible that Durban may see no deal on the subject. Mutual lack of trust--always healthy in multilateral settings, where rivals can undercut each other--is ensuring a glacial pace of climate negotiations.

Why government Should not bail out Kingfisher ?

In last 2-3 days the Government of India is giving signals and are issuing statements in media and newspapers to provide financial assistance of Kingfisher Airlines Limited controlled primarily by Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman of this Airlines. Here are some reasons why govt shouldn’t bailout kingfisher:

Firstly because it is a purely private enterprise with the sole motivating factor of profit, secondly because both the Kingfisher Airlines and its Chairman Dr Mallya have reputation of extreme consumerism, vulgar flamboyancy and personification of a luxurious life, with least public concern (Thanks to billion dollars F-1 and IPL). Many of the officials including Mr.Sanjay Aggarwal (CEO) of Kingfisher have blamed high Aircraft turbine fuel (ATF) pricing and state govt's sales tax and so called "irrational" airport duties for the losses of the airlines, but these norms are same for other players and some are making decent profits. Thus it seems to be a classical case of mismanagement.

In the recent past, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd had informed the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) about a Debt Recast Package (DRP) with lending banks, following a one-time relaxation in restructuring guidelines sanctioned by the Reserve Bank of India. I would also like to give reference about the McDowell Krest (an NBFC) under the umbrella of UB Group, where Dr Mallya has been alleged to have siphoned public money and later changed the name of company to Krest Finlease, and declared it Bankrupt.

Now coming to govt's part...why should it influence or try to influence the lending policies of banks (for this bailout) , which would be a gross violation of bank's sovereignty, under the circumstances when it says petrol price rise is not under its jurisdiction and is driven by OMCs.

Based on all these background information, I think Government of India shouldn't provide any financial package to Kingfisher Airlines which results in loss of public exchequer.

New weapon in Beijing’s armoury!

Disclaimer: Let me start off by posting a disclaimer!!

The below written thoughts on recent Indo-China International relations are based on my personal analysis of recent developments of both nations and have nothing to do with Delhi-Beijing bilateral talks and strategic and economics dialogues. [Disclaimer ends]

China, the geographical hub of Asia, is the source of transboundary-river flows to the largest number of countries in the world — from Russia to India, and from Kazakhstan to the Indochina Peninsula. Recently china has strongly objected the Indian oil exploration campaign (By ONGC-videsh ltd) in south china sea , saying that it would be treated as stepping in the sovereignty of china. This has been answered by India’s external affair minister in his recent tour to Vietnam , by clearing the fact that ONGC would continue its oil exploration project in those blocks.

If we look back, we can find that block no. 127 &128 are under the jurisdiction of Vietnam by 1982 UN agreement and hence there is no need to seek permission for the exploration in them from anyone, except Hanoi.

In the month of July, China had captured Indian water jet craft –INS-Aeravat, which was patrolling in the international sea boundary near South China Sea. Unfortunately the biggest impediment before such an important task is the attitude and self-deception of the Indian ruling class. Although George Fernandes, the Defence Minister during the NDA regime, always voiced concern about Chinese intentions, he did not get sufficient support from other members of the Vajpaiyee Cabinet. Manmohan Singh, the present Prime Minister, is also advising restraint with respect to the attitude towards China. Obviously he is trying to sweep every uncomfortable information beneath the carpet. Manmohan Singh has reasons to do so as he is in the best position to know how unprepared his government is to match with inside scams !

From the above few examples what I want to convey is- China is not only trying to capture the mammoth oil and gas deposits by muscular power in that part of the globe but also trying to get a despotic control over the sea route which is considered as the backbone of trade and commerce in far-east. If India’s presence in the south china sea is hurting so much to Beijing , then by the same analogy China should stay away from the activities in PoK.

For the expansion of the India’s regime in south-china sea, Vietnam would be key for New-Delhi. Delhi-Hanoi defence pact could be a milestone in this direction. Now India is in the position to use Taraang port of Vietnam. In the decade of 70-80s China maintained good relations with the neighbours (especially Pakistan) of India to keep New-Delhi on its toes, now its time for India to establish pragmatic relations with the countries like Vietnam to pressurize china. Basically, its ‘Message-giving Strategy’ is that the relevance of Chinese communism and despotism is not over. To counter the Chinese strategy India has option to spread the message all over the world and indirectly all democratic authorities.

Now, the Chinese response is not very enthusiastic. We could not find out the answers; this is an unsolved question paper. Recently Montek Singh Ahluwalia went to China; took many issues with them in 1^st ever SED, but he returned to India almost empty-handed. What does it signify? To get the answer to the query we have to understand the basic perception of China towards India!

All about Telangana

Telangana issue has been generating a lot of news for the past couple of years. It’s an issue about which many people have been very passionate and has led to the loss of many lives.Infact the Telangana issue has been around for over many years now.
Here is a look at what has happened over the years and why the Telangana issue still stands unsolved as it does today.
What is Telagana?
Telangana is a region in Andhra Pradesh and was originally a princely state, ruled by the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad. Andhra Pradesh today as it stands, can be divided into three regions‘ Telangana, Rayalaseema
and Coastal Andhra.The Telangana region comprises of districts in Western and Central Andhra Pradesh (Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Medak, Warangal, Khammam, Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Nalgonda, and Mahaboobnagar) It comprises 10 of Andhra Pradesh’s 23 districts. It accounts for 119 seats out of the 294 seats in Assembly.

Telegana at the time of Independence
After Independence, the Nizam of Hyderabad wanted to retain his hold over the state. But the Government of India had other plans and amalgamated his state on 17th September 1948 by force.On a historic note, Rayalseema and Coastal Andhra were part of the Madras Province under the British Empire. However post independence Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra were separated from the Madras State in 1953 and were merged with the Telangana region of Hyderabad in 1956 to form the state of Andhra Pradesh.
The remaining parts of the Telangana region were merged with Karnataka and Maharashtra. This was the first state that was carved out on linguistic lines in the country.
Demands for a separate Telangana State
Demands for carving out a separate Telangana State became more buoyant during 1969. There are quite a few reasons for this:-
There were distinct differences between Telangana and Andhra Regions.
Andhra that was initially a part of Madras presidency had much better standards of development and education. Telangana on the other hand was more feudal in its approach and much less developed.
The Telangana people had reservations also because they feared they would lose out on many jobs with the merger.
The cultural differences too were apparent. Under the rule of the Nizam the Telangana region bore influences of Northern India. The kind of festivals being celebrated too was different.
The 1969 Agitation
This was primarily a student protest which erupted in the regions of Telangana with Osmania Univeristy proving to be the hot bed of it all. The protests became massive with huge numbers of people taking part in the agitation.Over 350 people lost their lives in lathi charge and police firing. Former Congress leader Channa Reddy who defected to form his own party the ‘Telangana Praja Samithi’ later diluted the impact of the agitation as he
merged with the Congress.Channa Reddy was also the same person responsible for raising slogans like ‘Jai -Telangana’. The Prime Minister Indira Gandhi later went on to make him the Chief Minister after which the movement collapsed.After this P.V Narasimha Rao was also made the Chief Minister in 1971. He was also from the Telangana region.
The role of K Chandrasekhar Rao

K Chandrasekhar Rao was a member of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) during the 1990’s. While hoping for a ministerial berth, he only got that of a deputy speaker following the 1999 elections.KCR quit TDP in 2001 and set about to form the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) which he announced would fight for the formation of a separate Telangana State. The timing could not have been more perfect for KCR considering the fact the people of Telangana were already feeling looted.There was already a strong feeling gaining ground that the surplus produced by them was being rerouted to the finance body so that it could be used to develop the rest of the state.In the elections of 2004 YS Rajashekara Reddy and KCR decided to join hands after YSR promised him the formation of a separate Telangana State. But later YSR backtracked and sent a report to the Congress against the formation of the Telangana State.TRS withdrew support from the Congress led coalition government on the grounds of alleged indecision by the government over the delivery of its electoral promise to create a separate Telangana state.
Soon the Telangana also ended up being a deeply political issue. Parties could often be seen flip flopping on their stand on the Telangana issue.The Congress and TDP are a divided house while Praja Rajyam and CPM are for a united Andhra. On the other hand the BJP and CPI are supporting the formation of s separate Telangana.
On November 29, 2009, KCR took a fast until death demanding that the Congress Government introduce the Telangana bill in the parliament.
Student’s rallies and people from various organizations took part in the demands and there were massive protests in many regions of Telangana. With KCR’s health fast failing the centre was forced to look into issue and finally gave into his request of a separate state making KCR end his 11 day fast.
Srikrishna committee headed by Justice BN Srikrishna was then set up to look into whether a separate state should be carved out or a united Andhra must remain.The committee was constituted by the Government of India in 3 February 2010 and expected to submit its report on 30 December 2010 to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
As part of the committee they invited people from all sections of the society and also toured the entire state where they got the opinions of a lot of people on what they felt about the issue. The SriKrishna Report was released on the internet to the public on 6 January 2011.
The issue is still being contemplated in the political circles.

Anna Hazare’s Crusade!

India has mainly two types of Corruption. One type of Corruption is seen in the 2G Scam,CWG,Antrix,Adarsh scams and the other is bribing the official or politician in power to get a legitimate thing done where he fulfils all the conditions for the service but still has to pay the bribe for the legitimate thing to be done like getting your ration card,licence etc.99% of all Indians have been forced to suffer the second corruption which is basically financial extortion. The former is the most dangerous Corruption like to get undue favour by wrong means by paying a bribe or if got caught having done something wrong then paying a bribe and your record becomes clean. The dangerous corruption is where most of the black money is transacted and goes via hawala etc and is deposited in Tax havens like Switzerland etc or is invested heavily in real estate,jewellery,gold etc(black money) and this is what has to be fought very seriously and this is what Shri Anna Hazare is fighting. Whatever maybe the result his intentions and his fast are respeected,admired and supported and the UPA government since 2004 is worried and shivering in it's spine and will do everything possible to make it effectively toothless and if any elected politician and government bureaucrat is prosecuted ,they will ensure he does not spill out the all the beans and will get the most lenient punishment.

“Setting up a citizen's ombudsman will not be the end of corruption. There's much more to do.”

Of course there is tremendous work to be done. No sensible person will underestimate the gigantic task. The track record of all legislators who are entrusted with this task is poor and they have betrayed the trust reposed in them by the electorate. Anna Hazare is convinced that left to themselves the law-makers will continue to deceive the public through their tokenism in the struggle against corruption — a criticism that is based on the weak anti corruption bill that the government has framed. Anna’s proposed modified bill has vastly improved upon the official bill, offering hope for drastic action being taken against bribe-takers and will cover bureaucrats and judges also, in addition to the Prime Minister, Ministers and Members of Parliament. It will not be a hollow, toothless recommendatory body as the one that is envisaged by the official bill.

India, reeling under series of corruption, its image internationally taking unprecedented beating, undoubtedly need a truly powerful Ombudsman of the kind Anna is agitating for. This is working fine in many countries and no reason to be pessimistic at all. Indian intelligentsia need to draw inspiration from Anna Hazare’s anti corruption crusade and bring about a change for the sake of future generation.

Anna, a 72 year old school drop-out from a labour family of Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district, has fearlessly taken on the formidable might of entrenched corrupt Indian establishment . He certainly "want world sympathy in this battle of right against might.” to quote Gandhi during Danti anti salt agitation.

Nevertheless I support Shri Anna Hazare's fast and the Jan Lok Pal Bill !