2004-05-14

Make Laloo Prasad Yadav As Prime Minister Of Italy

Are Italians racists?

Here is a joke that all Indians except those from Bihar find as funny.

The Japanese Prime Minister comes to Bihar and meets Laloo Prasad Yadav (Jab Tak Samosa Mein Aaloo Hain, Tab Tak Bihar Mein Laloo Hain). The Premier says, If you give me Bihar for one year, I will make it look like Japan. To this, Laloo replies, If you give me Japan for one month, I will make it look like Bihar.

Isn’t Laloo a great guy? I am sure he is. Which is why we should give him to Italy. So that he can be the Prime Minister of that country. I mean, if Italy gives us one of their own, shouldn’t we step up and give one of our best in return? And who better than Laloo?

Despite the fact that Congress has been routed in many states and that it has not even achieved a simple majority on its own, by virtue of being the single largest party, it is going to claim that the people of India have given their seal of approval for Sonia’s candidacy. Anti-incumbency factor had played against the BJP in states ruled by them or their allies.

Even though I did not like what the BJP did for the last 4-1/2 years, I was resigned to voting for it because I did not want a foreigner to become the Indian Prime Minister. But, for the majority of the two-fifths of voters, they simply wanted to bring down the BJP government at any cost. Also, Muslims and other minorities came out in large numbers to vote against the NDA.

My main concern was and is that Indian military and security-related secrets and decions will be handled by a foreigner. I could not compromise on that issue. But for the bulk of Indians who live in rural areas, such worries have little relevance to their day-to-day existence. In the 4-1/2 years, their lives has at best changed little. The India Shining campaign however highlighted the fact that certain sections of the society were making money and they had been left out.

A few months ago, Congress lost state elections in three out of four states due to anti-incumbency factor. Vajpayee misread this and decided to conduct parliamentary elections six months ahead. If he had not made that mistake, he would have still be in power and completed his 5-year term.

Things are not all bad though. According to Left parties, disinvestment in profit-making public sector units (PSU) like HPCL, BPCL, IOC, etc., will come to an end. Private companies in India are not big enough to buy the huge PSUs. The BJP government had been selling these companies at throwaway prices to cronies of the BJP leaders. Many people I have met in Bombay tell me that wife of former Communications Minister Pramod Mahajan had became suddenly very rich thanks to largesse provided by the Ambanis.

Interestingly, Anil Ambani is reported to have had a meeting with Sonia Gandhi at her residence on the day before results started coming out. The Ambanis were the ones whom the BJP government had gone to great lengths to protect. When Delhi Police recovered secret minutes of a cabinet meeting dealing with disinvestment from the office of a Reliance official, the BJP government told the court that since the documents did not deal with national security, the charges against Reliance be dropped.

In Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu shut his laptop and went home. I had been telling anyone who would listen that this guy was a failure. But, everytime I was reminded how Naidu had made Hyderabad a great destination for software companies and how he leveraged the Internet to help farmers. Few people know that Chandrababu made huge amounts from the real estate deals with the land that was developed for software companies. And to my best knowledge, the Internet has no way of providing irrigation to crops or food for people. I am happy that he lost.

Now that the results are out, everyone’s having a laugh at the expense of channels like NDTV, Aaj Tak, and Star News, which mixed with political news with wildly inaccurate opinion and exit polls. Actually, it is their owners like Prannoy Roy who are really laughing (all the way to bank) because they received plenty of advertising revenue for their election news.