LOL Your Smileys Show You Have Lost Your Mental Balance.Abe Oh
Temple Indoctrinated ************************************
Pakistan Ko Failed State Kehne Se Pehle Apne Desh Ki Khabar Lo
India on track to becoming a failed state
- RAKESH AHUJA
- THE AUSTRALIAN
- NOVEMBER 15, 2012 12:00AM
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.
Rakesh Ahuja heads Axessindia Consultancy Group, Canberra, and was the former Australian Deputy High Commissioner to India.
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India’s never had it so bad
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The German press has savaged India’s misgovernance.
The Brussels-based European Commission Standing Committee on Global Foreign Direct Investments last week listed the top 20 destinations the EU 27 will target for the next five years. Sadly, but for well-known reasons, India does not figure in the list. Stocks of European Union direct investments to the rest of the world amounted to €5.6 trillion at the end of 2012 and the EU continues to have a fixation with China. As for India, senior EU officials noted with quite a bit of scepticism: “India is probably getting there, but not quite arrived”.
An editorial in the highly circulated German national newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemeinescreamed: “India has never had it so bad. Stealing in government has never been this brazen. Government officials are now so audacious in their corrupt practices that they do not give a damn about who is watching”.
“Supreme Court directives are routinely flouted. Crime rates are up and security of life including women’s safety, which is the first responsibility of every government, is at its lowest ebb. India must then be more than qualified to be called a failed state.” In the
Manager magazine, one of Germany’s leading glossy business journals, an article said: “Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a natural inclination to be a follower, not a leader. ”
DESPAIR AND HOPELESSNESS
The article states, “India is a country where merit and integrity have no value and the country continues to sink beneath the suffocating weight of mediocrity and unrestrained, rampant greed. The majority of citizens feel excluded and disrespected at all levels of their daily lives. The youth of the country that make majority of the populace clearly feel helpless and many are pushed to take to misdemeanour and crime.”
FAILURE OF GOVERNANCE
Der Spiegel wrote in an edit article recently: “While the main functions of the parliament are to make laws and hold the executive accountable through oversight, Indian lawmakers make very few laws, pass incompetent motions and engage in rampant disruption of the proceedings.” The German business newspaper
Handelsblatt wrote: “For India, it seems clear that the hope of becoming one of the best twenty economies in the world will only remain a daydream. Corruption is the bane of the society. The Government knows this and the crusade against corruption is being handled with kid gloves.”
India’s never had it so bad | Business Line
BTW Is This What Temples Teach You That It Is OK If Police Get Killed In Chattisgarh But Bad If They Kiled In Mumbai.If This Is Your Level Of Thinking I Can Only Sympthise
It Is Comic How Indians Take Credit For A Victory That Was Handed To Them On A Plate By Our Own Former Countrymen.1971 Set The Precedent For "Cross Border Terror".If You Do It On Behalf Of Bangladeshi Then Do Not Complain If We Do It On Behalf Of Kashmiris
Do You Honestly Think 2014 Is Like 1971.Our Army Is Far Better Than It Was Then and Plus We Now Do Not Have The Liability To Defend A Portion Of Our Country Separated By Thousands of Miles Of Indian Territory.I Am Not An Advocate Of War But The Next Time If You Or Any Indian Actually Thinks It Is Going To Be A Repeat Of 1971 They Seriously Need To See A Psychiatrist.