Rumi Nations

So what's making the news around the middle of August 2013? Here's a random summary. The staggering corruption being committed by the Gandhi family in general and Robert Vadra in particular is back in the news as Mr. Khemka's official response to the Haryana government has turned up in the media. Here's a news round-up of all articles related to Robert Vadra . Clearly, officers like Mr. Khemka deserve much appreciation from the Government for his extraordinary career of exceptional uprightness. What about a National Award such as a Padma Sri or Padma Bhusan? Clearly, if cricketers and other worthies can be so awarded, it'd not be out of place to confer honest officers with such awards.

Let's take a 'pulse' on the many news items of today. Why today? No reason really. The heroic Edward Snowden continues to look for a 'safe' place and a safe country to live in as the U.S. government — I don't know whether to describe the Obama administration as Fascist or Soviet-style — continues to try and arrest him and put him in jail for life. Mr. Snowden left Hong Kong and we know now that the U.S. government got a 'secret' arrest warrant from a court in Virginia and tried to get the Hong Kong government to arrest him. He has landed in Moscow and his future destination remains unknown although the speculation is that he will leave Moscow and go to Cuba en route to Ecuador which is considering giving him asylum. The Snowden saga is of course one-of-a-kind. Here are the other events that the news media is tracking.

The historical record which clearly shows that presidents don't get re-elected when the unemployment rate is high doesn't much reflect the demographic reality of today. There are not that many white, young, unemployed people who buy into Romney's vision of the free-market creating umpteen millionaires and hence removing poverty and making Social Security, Medicare and other safety nets unnecessary. May be Obama will win because of these factors even if he comes across as wonky or lackluster or not-aggressive-enough in the debates as the media and all the pundits have been harping on. It's tough to believe that Americans can be so forgetful about recent economic history when W. came into office with a surplus and there was debate between Gore and W about what to do with that surplus. Bush explicitly cut taxes for the rich as he had promised to do (at a cost of a trillion dollars) and ran up a trillion dollar bill for an unnecessary war in Mesopotamia. The TARP des...

People halfway around the world were rooting for Mr. Obama in 2008. Including me. What did Mr. Obama accomplish? No closing of Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps incumbent presidents become privy to intelligence documents detailing the crazy lengths that terrorists go or can go to try and harm America. And that changes the mind of the President. But what about Wall St? He kid gloved the hedge fund industry, and the billionaires and the tend-headed monster that is the banking industry. On healthcare, he has tried to carry the baton forward from the Great Society platform created in the '60s. Not much in terms of campaign finance reform or the lobbying industry. Perhaps courageous attempts to curb the spiraling costs of healthcare for retirees and also curb the military industrial complex by cutting the defense budget.

        When it comes to human affairs such as love, romance … or politics, things do not change much over the centuries. Which is why history repeats itself. Surely we can find parallels in history for events occurring in contemporary Indian politics. Much is different about the electorate here. In spite of extravagant dreams and hopeful claims about the orgasmic imminence of India becoming a superpower, the dumb data points to the brutal reality. While averages may not always reveal the truth, the per capita GDP of India doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Whereas India barely makes it to the $2,000 club, wayward Russia is sitting pretty at more than $10,000. Is Russia’s average inflated because of its billionaires? Well, India has minted many billionaires in recent years too. The people of Egypt and Libya enjoy a better per capita GDP figure than India… although how much of the wealth (oil and otherwise) of those nations benefited the people as opposed to benefit...

I think Mayawati is in many ways the likeliest person to become India's next Prime Minister. I see a fractious mandate being provided by the electorate in the next general election. I expect the regional leaders such as Jayalalitha and Mamta (not to mention Nitish Kumar, Naveen Patnaik, and Omar Farooq) to do well. I am sure the ladies would love to support a female from the grassroots for the post of Prime Minster. It will be up to the big parties such as Congress and BJP to recognize people's mandate for what it is and perhaps choose to support a coalition of smaller parties at the center from outside. This will of course reflect the reality of India's diversity where each state will have an individual voice in the running of the entire nation: a truly federal structure. Mayawati has successfully Uttar Pradesh, one of the most complex Indian states. With this experience, she has shown that she is capable of engaging in the kind of deal-making that is essential to...

Manmohan Singh is hardly Hosni Mubarak. Although most Indian prime ministers occupy the office only in the seventh or eight decade of their life — that's about the only similarity. Be that as it may. At the end of the day, I do not like to paint all politicians with the same brush. I also do not believe in blaming politicians for all that ails India. Indian voters choose who they wish to represent them. Indians are a nation of believers. Hinduism has a range of gods across the whole spectrum of possibility. Some gods are male while others are female. Some are neither male nor female. Some gods like vegetarian dishes while others prefer non-vegetarian dishes. Some gods are benevolent while others are ferocious as well as capricious. Indians love their gods. They not only love them, they like to anoint ordinary humans with godly qualities too. So, we have a plentiful supply of demi-gods too. The office of the prime minister has been elevated to that level as well where t...

Theodore Roosevelt's lasting legacy as a President is perhaps what he did to preserve and protect the extraordinary wilderness of America for posterity. The role he played in bringing to an end the war between Russia and Japan is open to interpreations. It may have indirectly led to Pearl Harbor. Woodrow Wilson's exertions in forming the League of Nations are known. However, the eventual outcome of that endeavor might have been war rather than peace. Nobody can argue with the true greatness of some of the other winners: King or Mandela. Gandhi of course remains a jarring omission from that roster of winners. But overall, if one thinks of all the winners over more than one hundred years, does the list comprise of mostly great men and women with a few ordinary folks, or is the list mostly populated by ordinary people and even some very controversial winners such as Henry Kissinger? In a hundred years from now, Obama would become a footnote in the story of human civilization and w...

Well, not quite. But the opinion piece columns in the New York Times as well as the Wall Street Journal were analyzing the results of the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia and a few Congressional elections and it was interesting to see the contrasting conclusions that they drew from the same results. While Obama supporters like Gail Collins and Maurren Dowd described the results as being not connected to Obama's presidency and local in nature and therefore having no bearing at all on Obama's performance or lack of it, WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan describes these results as a wake up call for the Obama White House. It seems to me that the results might be described using that rather ungainly phrase: "anti-incumbency" factor. That's a very popular phrase during elections in India when the voters find an outlet to show their anger at the government and throw out whoever is in power. I think it might be the same in the U.S. as well where lobbyists have ...