Australian harassed in Bengaluru over tattoo

[gubbi]

Juvenile.

 

[Dragon4]

oh no worries! i prefer Miami Flag over India Flag anytime

ROFL supa powah wannabe India is something? really? when your country is a failed state?

India on track to becoming a failed state

INDIA ranks 78th in the Failed States Index 2012, which measures adversarial social, economic and political pressures faced by nations. Finland scores least risk at 177 and Somalia worst at 1.

India has fallen steeply from 110 in 2007.

Anecdotal evidence based on recent corruption and mal-governance-ridden domestic scams suggests it at 45-55 next year in company with the likes of Colombia, Angola and Kyrgyzstan.

India passes muster on just two of the 12 indicators that comprise the index -- intellectual capital and international behaviour.

It scores abysmally on other crucial indicators, including demographic pressures (malnutrition, water scarcity); group grievances (ethnic & communal tensions, powerlessness); state legitimacy (corruption, protests); public services (crime, social services); uneven economic development (income inequalities) and on political elite behaviour (factionalised and constantly in a gridlock over a quest for political power).

Is India on a slow track to a failing state? A pointer to what might be in store for India comes from the book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail.

After a comprehensive survey of the rise and fall of nations from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union to (new) African states, they contend that nation-states do not fail because of culture, weather, geography or ignorance of what policies are right. Nations collapse because "extractive" economic institutions fostered by local elites come to rule them.

Abetted by self-seeking functionaries, these institutions exist for the benefit of elites, who gain from extraction of valuable minerals, land, water, labour or from protected monopolies.

They conclude that the key to sustained progress is in "combining political centralisation with inclusive economic institutions". Absolutist states have strong centres, but power wielders fashion an economic framework to enrich themselves.

In democratic states, power rests with a plurality of groups and inclusive institutions arise.

But if there is no strong political centre to provide direction and to control or sanction, power accrues to the elite(s). Extractive institutions then arise. In both scenarios, internal contradictions pile up -- indicators for the Failed States Index provide a measure -- and the exploitative structure inevitably fails, bringing down the entire corrupt system with it.

The relevance of this analysis to India today is inescapable.

The centre is not holding. In the era of coalitions, power has been seeping from the Delhi sultanate to islands of political elites. And the relatively inclusive institutions midwifed by a superbly crafted constitution have been suborned by national and regional establishments into extractive tools for personal gain.

Indian legislatures are no longer forums for informed debate. Instead, under the guise of "seeking a consensus", they are now nodal points for crass political horse-trading. Or for obstructionist mobocracy.

Cutting across party affiliations, regional and social loyalties, the objective of the political class is to acquire power, not sound governance or advancing national interests. It has mauled the ideology of democracy into the sole objective of winning elections. Its parasitic behaviour is focused on extracting perks from public and private sectors; on status and symbols; competitive populism and casteism; dynasticitis; protecting each other from greater accountability; and on blatantly exercising discretion-based powers, which the Brits used for disbursing patronage to divide and rule, and which now serve as founts for extortion in cahoots with bureaucrats and crony capitalists.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's indecisive leadership relies largely on confetti of populist schemes for electoral advantage. His own personal integrity is unquestionable, but he's led the most corrupt federal government since independence, benignly neglecting massive sleaze in ministerial fiefdoms under his watch.

Meanwhile bureaucracy, the famed steel frame of yesteryears, is rusting. With officials appointed and removed at whims of elected kleptocrats, the anointed favourites' humiliating task is to extract swill from troughs of discretionary powers for political snouts to sip. As for the defence establishment, it is now mired in scandals from land grabbing, procurement frauds to generals expropriating a share of largesse meant for war widows.

Worse, the army chief dragging the government to the courts on a personal issue has opened a chink to armed forces' potential politicisation.

The Indian judiciary is doing its best to fill the vacuum in the wake of a somnolent executive and paralysed legislatures.

But this activism has a major downside.

Handing out pronouncements daily on relatively trivial subjects, its higher reaches are becoming part of the political process, compromising their role as chambers of dispassionate reflection on issues of constitutional significance. It is also tainted by corruption and dispensing too little justice, too late. The legal system can no longer cope with the demands of a litigious citizenry increasingly aware of its rights.

The concerted attempts by the three constitutional pillars to undermine the media's role as auditors of their accountability is another insidious trend. India is turning increasingly censorious on books, arts, cinema, the internet and reporting.

Freedom is lost in small steps. Calls for protests to the American government over an article critical of Singh in the Washington Post betrays a disturbing mindset; it implicitly assumes that a government should control media content.

The debilitating shenanigans of the unholy, well-knit trinity of politicians, bureaucrats and their private sector cronies are now eroding confidence at home.

The tarnished economy is treading towards a 4-5 per cent GDP growth rate.

This self-inflicted, reform-resistant decline is evident in India's ranking at 111 in the latest Economic Freedom of the World Index (2010 data). It gauges the extent to which the policies and institutions in a country support economic activity for poverty reduction, etc. India is closer to Burundi (144) than to Hong Kong (1). Notably, it was 76th in 2007. This BRIC "angel" can only fall further in 2012.

The international euphoria that lauded India's recent "rise" from stultified economic depths is fading. Pessimism about its capabilities on regional and geopolitical fronts is seeping. The fluffy souffle of arrogant pretensions to a superpower status has fallen flat. India is a half-baked power.

Arguably, India's very antecedents are partly responsible for the fast-diminishing political and administrative authority of the central government. Post-Independence India was always an artificial construct. Fashioning it from 550-odd distinct entities was a landmark achievement.

But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, it was only a bundle of countries. It began to unravel with linguistic divisions. Sixty-five years later, values and practices associated with a genuine democracy have still not coalesced into good governance for the common good in (purportedly) a one nation-state.

Instead, demands and counter-demands and protests on endless issues have accelerated. Impulses more in line with a confederation than with a federation are emerging.

Interestingly, the government's acknowledgement that some economic reforms need not apply nationwide because of local opposition suggests a subliminal acceptance of a co-federalist model.

And yet the Indian political class continues to smugly showcase the country as an example of "unity in diversity".

A million mutinies thus confront India today. But the cadaverous gerontocracy across its political board remains preoccupied with fiddling for power post-2014 elections, while relegating policies to meet the aspirations of an expanding cohort of new, upwardly mobile stakeholders to the back burner.

India has depreciated from a "functioning anarchy" to a dysfunctional democracy.

If the idea of India (secularism, democracy) is to survive, the good among the ugly will have to cross their political and social divides and forsake the "me" culture to renovate the constitution and abolish feudal powers of patronage before darkness falls at noon on one of the most misgoverned nations on the globe.


LOL proclaiming to know about currencies of 150 countries by googling? ROFL

They are 2012 ranks.
And in the same list where India is 78th, Indonesia is 63rd. And higher ranks means?
I pity on your fruitless trolling

Here, if you can read - Failed States Index 2012 | The Fund for Peace

 

[Iggy]

Clearly a much better understand than you .......... don't you agree ?

I know you are a christian based on your past posts ...... are you denying this ?

Then why this justification?Is it too hard for him to understand that threatening a foreigner was not with in the legal rights..

As I asked you show me my blind love for christians in my posts..

 

[SarthakGanguly]

No, it was the disenchangted urban youth who voted enmasse for the BJP. FYI BJP won only 31% of total votes, while congress won ~20%. So no, the Hindu vote bank is very fickle and consists mostly of independent people who can vote any which way. More of this BS Hindutvavadi dadagiri and see all those votes dry up!

The same 31% comment. NDA won around 38% of the votes. That is more than a third. And UPA won 20%, not just Congress. In the age of coalition politics that is a huuuuugeeeeeeeee. And this Hindu strong arm approach? It will increase it's base. We did not vote Narendra Modi as the PM for a reason. If development was the only demand, we could have done with any other leader. Modi is different. Not as much as I expected. But still, different. Just wait and watch. With some discomfort.

 

[Raj Guru]

What's your views on prophet(pbuh),s fake images in french magzine?

hell i supported Muslims on that Charlie Sega from the day 1.

 

[Bombermanx1]

No, it was the disenchangted urban youth who voted enmasse for the BJP. FYI BJP won only 31% of total votes, while congress won ~20%. So no, the Hindu vote bank is very fickle and consists mostly of independent people who can vote any which way. More of this BS Hindutvavadi dadagiri and see all those votes dry up!

Are you going to tell me urban youth voted BJP,because that would be a joke.The urban youth didnt even have time to go to poll booths on polling day,all that yap yap online is done by urban SECULAR youth, but they are too lazy to vote.That is the truth.
Hindu vote bank is just getting consolidated now, you saw what 31% of Hindu vote did to the opposition? What happens when Hindus stop shedding their Secularism.
BJP projected Secularism in 2009 and that made its supporters abandon it during 2009.Hindutva is the biggest vote bank and it will only grow,whatever you want to do won't stop it.

 

[Iggy]

How can this be true? u got something tattooed on your leg which u choosed from an entire album maam I dunno whats your experience with these things but I assure u tattoo artists do tell them what it is. I can understand that he didn't knew the name of the goddess or any other background , but he very well knew it's a goddess .

P.S I don't support the harassment but saying he was completely unaware what he has on his leg is not true.

Mate I have a tatoo on my hand which is a gothic sign.. I have no idea what it is but decided to put it anyway bcoz it looks cool to me at that time.. How many of those tatoo artists know about the pictures they are tattoing?

P.S. read Bangalore comments..seems like i was wrong about ignorant part

 

[Samudra Manthan]

Not the place, nor occasion nor method to educate.

He was a mature politician picking on a 21 year old foreign kid out with his girlfriend.

There are much better ways to educate a kid new to your culture, values and way of life. The BJP guy was not in the right either.

Both were in the wrong.

The crowd had already formed, the BJP guy was incidental to the matter. All they did was ask the guy to cover up. So I do not see where the BJP guy was in the wrong.

 

[Raj Guru]

I blame the Australians in this case. Why would they wear such a stupid tattoo in such an offensive place? They should know better than to play on people's sensitivities.

now they will creat one blog can start badmouthing us for their mistakes. we should never trust White man. you know why....

 

[gubbi]

The same 31% comment. NDA won around 38% of the votes. That is more than a third. And UPA won 20%, not just Congress. In the age of coalition politics that is a huuuuugeeeeeeeee. And this Hindu strong arm approach? It will increase it's base. We did not vote Narendra Modi as the PM for a reason. If development was the only demand, we could have done with any other leader. Modi is different. Not as much as I expected. But still, different. Just wait and watch. With some discomfort.

No my friend. It was the development platform which propelled Modi to such a victory! Now if with whatever development that's actually happening, in truth the legacy of long implemented policies bearing fruit now, came with the baggage of religious dadagiri, then no, we dont need such a government. And trust me, that will piss off people who will NOT vote for BJP. The progress or results that Modi govt is taking credit for, was actually put into place y previous governments. You, like the rest of hardcore fanbois are being taken for a ride.

 

[raktaka]

Then why this justification?Is it too hard for him to understand that threatening a foreigner was not with in the legal rights..

As I asked you show me my blind love for christians in my posts..

What justification ?

..... since when did politicians of ANY party act within legal rights ? ....an since when did India provide a working judiciary to Indians ?

Your defence of that Australian.

 

[Raj Guru]

@prima99
Oops album banned cuz of tattoo?
What can be disrespectful in it now?

Bieber’s album banned in Middle East due to his cross tattoo | The Financial Express

he's a confused/self hating Indo, you know. just don't drag Islam/Arabs here. we have friendly relations with Arabs.

 

[gau8av]

You know that he could easily have been killed and dissolved in acid, never to be found again? Or do you think Hindus are incapable of doing that?

I'd like to believe we're more than capable of that, and worse, but I still pray for the masses to have better judgement of when to unsheathe the blade and when to cock the hammer. I mean, where are we, saudi arabia ?

 

[gubbi]

Are you going to tell me urban youth voted BJP,because that would be a joke.The urban youth didnt even have time to go to poll booths on polling day,all that yap yap online is done by urban SECULAR youth, but they are too lazy to vote.That is the truth.
Hindu vote bank is just getting consolidated now, you saw what 31% of Hindu vote did to the opposition? What happens when Hindus stop shedding their Secularism.
BJP projected Secularism in 2009 and that made its supporters abandon it during 2009.Hindutva is the biggest vote bank and it will only grow,whatever you want to do won't stop it.

Stop being delusional. Thats what religious fundoos do. Its the economy which dictates who comes to power. Once you realize that, you have matured to understand the politics.

 

[Iggy]

In Kerala we call them as Adi Parashakti.
The people didnt hurt them but call the police .If this guy would be in GCC he would think twice before tattoo an Arab picture in his leg.
He thought he can do whatever he want in this nation .One of our biggest failure .

Got it.. But why we comparing us witg GCC.. Do we need to emulate them?