The Great Indian Political Drama - 3 (Oct 2018 - )

[Supratik]

I think he may mean they are unable to pay even the price of subsidized gas. So the gas connection is of no use. Similarly electricity connection is of no use if they can't pay for it.

[Supratik]

They need to come to a price figure that BPL families can pay for gas and electricity instead of arbitrarily fixing a price.

[chetak]

I thought there was gas and electricity subsidy. Given as DBT - direct benefit transfer.. sent to their bank account. I can confirm that in KA it's paid.

You pay full price first and only after that, the subsidy is deposited in your account.

Sometimes it takes weeks and months to get the subsidy credit.

!000 Rs is a big amount for the rural poor to fork out at one go, especially for something like cooking gas cylinders. It is a non-essential thing and they will make do with traditional solutions like twigs, firewood or sometimes even dried cow dung to fire up the choolahs.

[chetak]

They need to come to a price figure that BPL families can pay for gas and electricity instead of arbitrarily fixing a price.

The minute cooking gas is subsidized or dual priced, it gets diverted to cooking gas operated cars, hotels which pay quite a bit more for their cooking gas cylinders and other non cooking uses.

Best not to touch the set pricing.

[Supratik]

Doesn't make sense. It is already subsidized. DBT to bank account. Maybe the process of payment is not smooth. All I am saying is to reduce the price for BPL further so that they can have regular refill.

[Supratik]

Google shows it is priced at around 800 non-subsidized. Subsidized about 500. They need to kick the butt of petroleum companies if they are not transferring money on time. Subsidized gas price can be reduced by 100-200. Also they should have something for electricity. Maybe DBT to bank account.

[Primus]

I will elaborate more now which I thought people will understand from my post.
I maintain Indians are not corrupt basically . In India the amount of lawlessness slow judiciary, rich and famous escape from crimes. woefully inadequate govt services etc makes a person become corrupt which is what I meant. Despite these shortcomings, we have one of the lowest crime rate in all fields wrt population. we have low police/lawyer/banker/doctor/... you name it compared to our population. It is amazing that a country of over 1 billion runs on a pathetic short supply of govt services. It is almost certain that there will be a civil war amongst its citizens due to its weakness inherent in the above set up. But miraculously India is surviving and kicking all odds. Probabaly the only country in the world having democracy fucntioning and kicking well. Many developing independent countries post WW2 have had tumultous times with military coups civil wars etc etc.

As an test or experiment check all countries with low ratio of professionals/police/lawyers etc etc to population and see their crime rates. Many have civil wars or govt control their areas inefficiently. surpriisngly also check wrt relgions-- No kidding here also with comparable sizes of population ratio.

If the same occurs in western countries ex usa it will be doldrums as they have high crime rates despite well oiled law and order with judiciary.

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ex- India has over 66% as undertrials in prisons due to judiciary failure-- unthinkable in western countries. In usa there are convicted persons charged with crime in prison. Still usa has huge prisoner population upto 25% of the world. and nearly 50% of female prisoners. If Indian juidicary becomes efficient and undertrials comes down like in usa- imagine the effect.


All countries in the world have issues with non reporting of crimes including usa. So one cannot single out India alone on this.

It is foolish of some posters here to think Indians are corrupt and magically become less corrupt due to better policing in western countries.(No doubt important but not enough overall)

Heck even in non western countries Indians are better as in some african countries and islands in pacific Indian Atlantic oceans etc. These countries have law and order comparable to India or slightly better or worse depending on the country involved.



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Unfortunately with India becoming poor due to britshits etc. we have to fend for ourselves with huge population with hungry mouths to feed. Our earlier govts used the commanding heights of govt powers to help people. No proper use of local solutions to solve some key problems of food security infrastructure law and order and security. we went from bad to worse with our gdp dropping from <4% to <3 in 1980s. Later in 1990s economic reforms started which helped us rise in spectacular way(relative to anemic times for 4o years).


Because of lopsided priorities and inefficient governance, corruption took main seat to ensure survival of families. Huge ques in fair price shops, kerosenes, water, elctricity--- you name them. I as a child/youth have been thru all of them with no electricity, no water, wake up at midnight for 1 hour of water,use of tankers etc etc. poor quality of grains (with insects inside), adulteratedkerosene at fair price shops and many more.

Hence to ensure adequate food security , a common Indian is forced to become corrupt otherwise things will not move. Given this state for a couple of generations-- corruption becomes a national malady. Even tom dick and henry will shout Indians are corrupt and are born corrupt.

Hope posters look thru the whole issue.

The single biggest difference between India and other nations with comparable population ratios is Hinduism. A fact that most people overlook. It is our ethos, our culture, our resilience that has allowed us to weather all kinds of storms through our history. There is no other nation or ethnic group that has withstood a thousand year onslaught from Islamic iconoclasm and survived.

And I too have lived abroad for over 30 years, in different parts of the UK and the USA. Human beings are the same everywhere. Indians (Hindus) are largely benign and law-abiding. The problem in India is poor enforcement of existing laws as a result of cronyism and corruption. It is incorrect to say that Indians are corrupt everywhere they go. Nobody is as corrupt or vicious as the Europeans - you only have to look at their history. Compare that with the Indians who spread around the world. No country outside of India was overtaken and the native population enslaved by Indians.

One has to look at the Indian democratic system, the biggest in the world, perhaps chaotic and yet it works, even super powerful politicians like IG can be voted out despite all the control they exerted over the judiciary and media. if the entire country is dishonest, this would never happen.

Enough self-flagellation.

[Primus]

I think there is unanimity that nothing is Modi fault & everything should be blamed on corrupt trader & professional class. Bloody banias who supported Sangh for Three generations are all chors while gora MNCs are new devtaas.

Cool, let's wait for 2019 now. I wonder if Imran Khan also has a mother and who will be anointed to fall down on her feet.

Uncalled for.

Nobody is perfect and nobody is prescient. At least Modi has tried, in his own way to do what is best for the nation. The opposition has tried, and succeeded, over the past half a century to do what is best for their own pockets and that of their kith and kin. That is the difference.

A simple question to a Modi-hating professional (assuming everyone here is self-employed or salaried) would be: What is it that Modi did that changed YOUR life for the worse? An honest answer would be quite illuminating. And if you are not living in India then why spout all the venom, because you are not affected in any way, are you?

[Supratik]

Getting info from Kanchan Gupta's twitterline that farm loan waiver in RJ alone is going to cost 99000 crore. Let us see where Cong gets the money from.

[SSundar]

A simple question to a Modi-hating professional (assuming everyone here is self-employed or salaried) would be: What is it that Modi did that changed YOUR life for the worse? An honest answer would be quite illuminating. And if you are not living in India then why spout all the venom, because you are not affected in any way, are you?

I don't fit this demographic but my anecdotal evidence from a number of Modi haters boils down to monetary entitlement. I am merely channeling some thoughts of the middle class NOTA warriors.

1. You took our small collections of black money away through DeMo while big hoarders escaped smartly. We voted you to go after the big hoarders and ignore us. But the opposite has happened.

2. You have forced us to pay our taxes, not given enough breaks to the salaried and have added more cess and surcharges.

3. You have taken away our middle class subsidies and sent them to the poor. We cannot openly blame you for this but will punch our resentment via NOT A.

4. "I" don't understand what you are looking to achieve long term by squeezing the moneybags through NPA reclamation and IBC but "I" DO understand that the moneybags are no longer creating corporate jobs for me as fast as they used to under UPA. This affects me very badly. If this is "Achche Din", I am voting Congis to roll this back.

[srikumar]

^^^All of the above sounds plausible and not unreasonable. One can expect every group to look out for themselves, especially if the income is earned honestly and taxes are paid honestly.
I dont know what the answer is to why the big hoarders and evaders got away (if indeed they did). Asking for another term to catch the big hoarders and evaders in 2020....I dont know how practical that is. It is surprising that NOTA votes are actually making the different between forming the govt and being out of power (in KA earlier, and now in MP, and maybe RJ). NOTA cannot be ignored. Those guys are taking the trouble to come to the polling station. (National security has been stronger. That's not been getting prominence. NGO rollbacks...prolly no one cares).

The calculation would have been that the poor who are availing of the benefits should have voted in droves, and they are many more of them. But that did not happen.

[Vriksh]

<snip>

please avoid extrapolating the whole issue. Indians are not corrupt basically. A huge amount of honesty present in Indians. We have the lowest in all bad things in a society. the reason is our relatively better moral fiber/compass despite very poor law and judicial support. I wont go into details of these. not relevant here. Same Indians have the best honesty and law-abiding persons in foreign countries. This can not magically come just by migration.

The corrupt issue is propagandu to berate Indians and put them down. 1)Some are corrupt- nothing can be done as in any society. 2)many are made to become corrupt because of scamgress ecosystem.we can get things done only if we grease the system because scamgress during its long periods have made Indians into this issue

.

Absolutely disagree.

Indians are one of the most corrupt lot. When I was studying abroad, I had a classmate who stole bank forms so that he could use as a "rough paper". Sorry but the dishonesty gene is strong among Indians, whether you want to accept it or not. In London Indians are known for "selling half used train tickets"... I helped catch one idiot.

Indians by their very nature want an easy way out everything, easy way to make money, easy way to finish the job etc. That's why Indians never pay attention to detail or have pride in their work, because they'd rather finish it off

Please read my post fully posted here.

It looks silly to generalise few incidents and extrapolate it to whole Indians. pretty awful isnt it.

consider this as an example quoting your own post-- britons are one of the most corrupt lot. I saw a classmate who robbed another one. They cheated in local tube train. they robbed a phone from an old man. etc etc etc . Get the drift.

Then extrapolate it to the community.


It only explains the person not the community. The data/facts are out there with logic to make sense of it.

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As an aside animla experiments have been done which shows innovation(good and bad) does occur to the best of situations. As an Indian also an animal- with the prevailing disparities, obvioulsy some Indians do corruption ( bad innovation).


A corrupt nation will not rise to the top and stay for long. Corrupt societies are ripe for disasters prime being civil wars internal disturances etc. India has its share but not to the extent which occurs in nations of comparable population ratios.

Of course the famous being prediction till 1960s that India is an artificial country, robbers thieves will rule - will split along many fault lines and wars will occur with detruction and famines all over. Now no one thinks like it except ourselves being mentally slaved to varying extent.
Hope people think over it and see the big picture avoiding self flaggellation.

What you guys are missing is that social engineering has been conducted at a mass level on the indian populace:

1. Some groups are more privileged and cannot be touched, specific minorities f.e.
2. Some caste groups likewise, historically oppressed per convenient conjecture. See the recent protests over an innocuous comment over Lord Hanuman being akin to a tribal or dalit, vicious & over the top.
3. Rampant corruption in IAS, IPS and Political class and state AS, Police, Political class. When they oppress openly & loot openly, asking the folks to follow laws is a bit over the top.
4. The left. The most toxic group in India which has literally ruined the country's moral fiber, by insisting that the books of dharma which insisted on lawful behavior need not be followed, and second, just because anyone is belonging to groups 1&2, they can do anything they wish. Laws are all created by brahminical evil oppressors so why follow the rules of the oppressor.

With points 1-4, Indians as a society have become corrupt and lack moral fiber across huge swathes of society. We have to admit it and have to fix it.

[crams]

Guys, let me play a managerial role by delegating to those with more patience to read the entire SC judgement on Rafale and tell me if that typo or whatever it was that since been clarified by govt of India, was critical to the overall judgement? The court asked the petitioners to shove their bogus complaints deep in their rectums where they belong, and hence no wonder that scum bag Arun Shourie is crying like a stuffed bull dog, but was that typo critical in the final analysis? Assuming the court will correct that typo, will anything change.

[hanumadu]

2. You have forced us to pay our taxes, not given enough breaks to the salaried and have added more cess and surcharges.

This is patently false. GST taxes are lower than the previous tax regime. What cess and surcharges have been added? If they have been, they are for incomes about 10 lakh I think which is offset by changes in tax bracket. How many people in India are earning 10 lakh/year?

3. You have taken away our middle class subsidies and sent them to the poor. We cannot openly blame you for this but will punch our resentment via NOT A.

What subsidies he has taken? The giving up gas subsidy was voluntary. If people are complaining after VOLUNTARILY giving it up, or asking for something else in return, then what is the point in giving it up. You give up 200 Rs/month or 2500/year but ask for 25,000/year in return.

4. "I" don't understand what you are looking to achieve long term by squeezing the moneybags through NPA reclamation and IBC but "I" DO understand that the moneybags are no longer creating corporate jobs for me as fast as they used to under UPA. This affects me very badly. If this is "Achche Din", I am voting Congis to roll this back.

If congress was creating jobs, then why were they voted out of power? They were voted out of power with so few seats precisely they did not create any jobs. How will NPAs create jobs? If they were creating jobs, why will they be NPAs? IBC enforcement didn't start until 2017. So how many jobs did the NPAs create until then?
Won't the recovered money be used some where more productive? Isn't it better to recover and reinvest the money than let them be trapped in non productive assets?

UPA was not voted out because of corruption or terrorism or lack of development. They were voted out because there were no jobs.

[Primus]

Some of the angst felt by the salaried/self-employed professional middle-class people has been due to DeMo and the general tightening of the screws against accepting bribes. Some in my own family though employed had a cushy job with little to do and lots of money-making opportunities. Many others had sizable chunks of money hoarded away in private lockers - eg. people who had lucrative private practices as physicians, with 'nursing homes', ultrasound clinics etc. Then there are those who live abroad but parents had tons of money squirreled away that these expatriates were able to access during visits back home. I have some friends like that who hate Modi because his policies have led to an overall decline in the family fortune. I also know people who blame Modi for not passing the retirement age bill soon enough so they could continue in their government jobs for a few more years.

In the end it is all about what hits the pocket-book as they say.

[SSundar]

UPA was not voted out because of corruption or terrorism or lack of development. They were voted out because there were no jobs.

As I disclaimed earlier, these are not my personal opinions but those of the Modi haters in my circle. However, on the jobs front, we may disagree.

When an Ambani or Mallya gets billions in loans with a wink and nod that they don't ever have to repay them, they invest that money in risky ventures. Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines was one such example. Tens of thousands of jobs such as ground crew, flight crew, flight attendants, etc. were created purely on the basis of the phone-a-bank funny money that Mallya was given. The endless profligacy of lending money from PSU banks did cause at least a perception of job creation across the spectrum. This is not true only of UPA India, but also the high boom of China all those years.

Squeezing someone like Mallya for every penny means those enterprises are shutdown and he may even have to run his other companies more frugally in order to pay his dues back. That's a double whammy. I know someone who lost their job at one such company and blames Modi in every other SM post, even though that company was slowly going down the drain on its accord anyway.

[JohnTitor]

Folks here don't seem to get it.

It's not about facts and reality. It's about perception and change in circumstances.

If the latter is worse under Modi then your facts can be binned because only you are to believe them. This is what I've been saying for the past several years.

You need to get off your high horse, turn off your brain and be an idiot, then it'll make sense to you. The freebie population has only increased under Modi, and with every new freebie, he needs to provide more to get them to vote.. but the smarter than thou people here told me that middle class can go press NOTA because the poor benefited and will vote Modi and only Modi.

[JohnTitor]

Here's a simple example for those smarter than they think.

https://m.timesofindia.com/business/ind ... 120238.cms

Now an educated person has no difficulty in understanding what all of that means .. it's essentially antitrust

But your voter isn't an educated person, when I say educated, I don't mean having an alphabet soup in your business card, but actually educated - ability to think and logically formulate a hypothesis and proceed to prove/disprove it.

So when that person sees the above, he says WTF Modi is even taking away discounts at my local shop. I will vote NOTA or scangress... Modi is evil. For a sample of the iq of the average voter, read the comments section.. yeah, believe it or not, that's the voter

Still don't get it? What makes this all worse is that Modi didn't create an ecosystem in his 4 years of rule. He should have created I've, bought out the media etc, but he thought his silly radio show can impart his thoughts perfectly.

[Chandragupta]

While certainly a reason, it would more affect the hand to mouth class who can be bought off with money power, their daily lives being a constant struggle. But it doesn't explain the sudden willingness of middle class to vote bjp. They all knew that bjp was in support of gst, constantly heard modi say - na khaunga, na khane dunga. They all knew what they were voting into power

They thought na khaunga, na khane dunga. meant Govt scams. Not their low level tax evasion.

Maybe but that's Also the problem.

They should have focussed on stopping the bigger scams and corruption. While the average Joe stood in line for hours in the sun and got his 50k exchanged, the rich simply phoned their branch manager and converted their crores to the new notes in minutes. All state and private banks were involved in the game.

Then when you harass the local trader over 1000 rupee evasion but he sees bigger players get away with crores of evasion, of course he'll be pissed off. And rightly so.

All laws in India apply to the poor and powerless. At least with scangress everyone could be corrupt. So goes the logic.

Absolutely right. Many small business owners & traders lost a few lakhs in DeMo while they see Mallya, Nirav Modi etc fly off with thousands of crores with no punishment (yet). The IT department has no balls to trouble builders (who are mafia) and corporates who employ top lawyers, but they have time to go after a small trader who might have evaded a few lakhs of tax. On top of that, DeMo was carried out during wedding season in the north, leaving many people helpless.

Is it okay to evade a few lakhs of taxes? Absolutely not, but there are thousands of such small business owners all across India who have traditionally been BJP supporters, why halal them? Does INC ever trouble Muslims & Christians, no matter whatever they do? They do not. Why can't BJP keep their hands off their own core base? In DeMo & GST, BJP carried out surgical strikes at their own core voter base & what did they get? Nobody knows. We have all heard stories about big bad builders and corporates having exchanged hundreds of crores by mere phone calls to their friends in banks, while no one of them have been touched till now.

All the people who are calling Indians corrupt must remember that upto 1 year post DeMo, it was viewed favorably by people, even those who lost money because they thought something good will come out of it. But Modi ji doubled down on GST & gave no respite to the people who have funded & supported BJP to power. No other party treats their own core base like the BJP does.

[JohnTitor]

Here's a another example:

https://m.timesofindia.com/city/bengalu ... 119742.cms

See the comments, I quote:
"Ease of doing business" .. now does this have anything to do with Modi, BJP or the centre? What does Modi have to do with a scamgress KA govt canceling a tender? Nothing, but does it matter?

These are the people who vote.

Facts are for people behind desks, feelings are for voters and smart politicians.

[Prasan]

Google shows it is priced at around 800 non-subsidized. Subsidized about 500. They need to kick the butt of petroleum companies if they are not transferring money on time. Subsidized gas price can be reduced by 100-200. Also they should have something for electricity. Maybe DBT to bank account.

It costs 1000 rupees now and bank transfer of 200 rupees is intermittent. No one knows when they send it.

[Aditya_V]

Justice Delayed, Justice denied but then

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 123074.cms

[Sachin]

Looks like all parties have started planning for Lok Sabha elections 2019. At least on the money hoarding part. I see small business owners now offering discounts, if their charges are paid by cash. A school which I know have demanded that their fees for "Annual Day celeberations" have to be done by cash (not even bank transfer) only. Car dealers requesting new vehicle owners to take some funds (as "return of advance paid") and reroute it as liquid cash back to them. Wine shops charging 5% extra on credit card/debit card transactions have been happening for quite some time now.

Getting info from Kanchan Gupta's twitterline that farm loan waiver in RJ alone is going to cost 99000 crore. Let us see where Cong gets the money from.

It will be pretty much similar to how the JD(S)-Congress combine in Karnataka gave crores as farm loan waivers to 800 "humble farmers" . And we don't even know who they are.

1. You took our small collections of black money away through DeMo while big hoarders escaped smartly. We voted you to go after the big hoarders and ignore us. But the opposite has happened.
...
2. You have forced us to pay our taxes, not given enough breaks to the salaried and have added more cess and surcharges.

The "Do A to group 1, and then do B to me" type fantasies are very common in India. Every body expects some one else to do things right, or take extra work load. I am sure every police man in India would have stories of the same middle class expecting the police to do an activity A (go after theifs) and then go after the middle class when they do activity B (most likely drunken driving).

Absolutely right. Many small business owners & traders lost a few lakhs in DeMo while they see Mallya, Nirav Modi etc fly off with thousands of crores with no punishment (yet).

Mallya & Nirav Modi could swindle funds mainly because of their relationship with the senior officials of PSU banks. And it is not because of Modi or BJP helping them. These big businessmen naturally play at a higher level, and for higher stakes. The group you mentioned has exactly the same mentality I mentioned above "Do A to group 1, and then do B to me". That is their few lakhs of illgotten wealth can only be touched if Mallya & Nirav Modi etc. are bought to justice.

Why can't BJP keep their hands off their own core base?

So are you saying that this "core base" was just wanting the BJP to be a street level goonda whose help is only required when the core base gets threatened by RoL or RoP? And how has this "core base" been of any benefit to the Hindu society in general? They fudge taxes, but do they help the Hindu clientele of theirs in any way?

It costs 1000 rupees now and bank transfer of 200 rupees is intermittent. No one knows when they send it.

I feel that the banking system in India also needs a major over-haul before major reforms on the economic front can be done in India. For an average India, the PSU bank procedures are complex and the staff are waiting to reject/deny a service which they offer. Many of the PSU bank branches now have locks put in their systems so that they cannot issue loans (mainly housing and vehicle). This is because those branches have high NPIs. But even when the regular customer is sent away giving some excuse, the big business groups still have their higher level networks to help them out.

[Sunny]

Justice Delayed, Justice denied but then

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 123074.cms

Excellent news.

[Chandragupta]

Absolutely right. Many small business owners & traders lost a few lakhs in DeMo while they see Mallya, Nirav Modi etc fly off with thousands of crores with no punishment (yet).

Mallya & Nirav Modi could swindle funds mainly because of their relationship with the senior officials of PSU banks. And it is not because of Modi or BJP helping them. These big businessmen naturally play at a higher level, and for higher stakes. The group you mentioned has exactly the same mentality I mentioned above "Do A to group 1, and then do B to me". That is their few lakhs of illgotten wealth can only be touched if Mallya & Nirav Modi etc. are bought to justice.

Why can't BJP keep their hands off their own core base?

So are you saying that this "core base" was just wanting the BJP to be a street level goonda whose help is only required when the core base gets threatened by RoL or RoP? And how has this "core base" been of any benefit to the Hindu society in general? They fudge taxes, but do they help the Hindu clientele of theirs in any way?

That's how it is in India, if BJP wants to win. The only way India can be disciplined in 5 years is via military rule and that too is doubtable. If you want to do it via democracy, then people need to be given sugary syrup while giving bitter medicine to them in small doses.

We are making the mistake of believing all are like us - virat Hindus who will vote only for BJP and for us, taxes & cesses don't matter, a hit on our pocket also does not matter - only Ideology, Hindutva (where again this Government has not really lit up the sky) and National interest, security matters. Such people are not more than 5-10% of the electorate, rest everybody is up for grabs at the right price (Except Muslims & Xtians who will never vote for BJP come what may).