Must See, Must Read

There are two must see videos I have for you today: the first is a snippet from a town hall meeting in America. Now, this is what I call a Real American. We need many Indians like this. The attitude is of this marine veteran is simply incredible.

The second video I have is of the dance group of day labourers I had earlier blogged about – this is a video of their final performance, which won them the prize. (Thanks to Mint: read their report here.)

India does have talent. Indians need Liberty, not education.

And talking about education, here is a must read news of the corrupt activities of the vice-chancellor of a prestigious south Indian university. There have been many such reports before, but this one is truly disgraceful. We must wind up all higher education from our The State.

In the meantime, while the Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi State worries over our intellectual development, here is an interview from the ToI today of a human rights activist that is titled “Manipur has become a lawless state.” Do read the entire interview. He also talks of other states like Kashmir and Chattisgarh as “lawless.”

There is another report of lawlessness, this time from the Indian Express, with a headline that says it all: “Maoists blow up railway station in Orissa, mobile tower in Jharkhand.” Do read the full report here.

What is our The State doing? From what I recall of what I just read, scanning many newspapers, they are dealing in hydrocarbons, they are worrying about climate change, they are worrying about Jinnah and Gandhi, they are not allowing FDI into domestic civil aviation or retail, they are worrying about the drought, they want to protect farmers, and yes – the food subsidy is gonna go up a lot because they are raising the procurement prices of various crops: that is, The State is dealing in food.

On climate change, do read Deepak Lal's column in today's Business Standard. He "spikes the road to Copenhagen," saying that the West's obsession with carbon emissions is both "wicked" as well as "economically foolish." (Thanks to Chandra.)

This socialist and democratic idea of the "Role of The State" doesn’t make much sense to me.

It is as senseless as the State-owned booze shop from which I picked up some cases of beer yesterday.

It seems our The State is doing all the wrong things.

As the Hindi proverb goes: Bandar ke haath mein talwar. (The sword is in the hands of a monkey.)

And please, let us not raise the flag of democracy. As I have said right at the outset of this post, you MUST watch the town hall meeting video to know what democracy should mean.

Our democracy – if you factor in the rampant “lawlessness” – is not very different from Afghanistan. Manipur, in fact, must be even worse. As in Afghanistan, so in Manipur, so in Kashmir, foreign mercenary soldiers rule the roost.

And there is an excellent article on LRC today that outlines what needs to be done to restore trade and peace in Afghanistan. Topping the list of what should be done is the assertion that US and NATO must completely withdraw. Do read this great article, here.

And THINK!

How do we restore "civil government" to Manipur, Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Orissa, and Lalgarh?

I leave you today with that important question to ponder over.