Comments on: COVID-19 Effects

By: Raj

Raj — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 16:10:53 +0000

@Kumar – You are dealing with the Nehru Fan club. They say they are more democratic, but the first voice of descent , they brand you as Bhakth. call you all kind of names, say you are dump, dont have brain cells and to drive you away from discussion. Yes, Modi is not perfect, but he cant be a demon as portrayed by these scoundrels! Can somebody remind them who created the Kashmir issue? Nehru had the media under his belt, good writer and could say anything without scrutiny! Modi, unlike his congress predecessors who is loved by the Nehru fan club, he is clean, Honest and does not have a son or a daughter to pass the PM ship ! and has no Swiss or Italian bank accounts to hoard the wealth. His only guilty is he is a Hindu nationalist! being a Hindu, he is hated by the western media, Having won against the Gandhi clan who were ‘Taking care’ of all the elite groups and the Press core, he is abused on a daily basis. Since they day he was elected, all these groups portray as though he STOLE the election by some UNFAIR means!! So, the voice of the majority does not matter! He is compared to HITLER! They yell all parliamentary abuses at him at the top of their lungs and say their freedom of expression is taken away! Isn’t it Ironic?
India has
1. The Most Watched Government
2. The Most Pathetic opposition
3. World’s worst Media
4. World’s most demanding Minority
5. World’s most complacent Majority
6. World’s most Venomous liberals
7. World’s most deceitful intellectuals
8.Most confused voters
9. and the Best PM that even enemy countries admire his integrity and character
Today UNHRC pulls India pulls India for CAA which is the internal matter for a sovereign nation, our opposition, these liberals and intellectual are cheering! They did not complain about emergency, Anti Sikh riots and massacre ,let by it! Doesn’t this show where these people stand? They want to destroy Modi at any cost, if it means destroying the nation and siding with the enemies!
Now, some of these people are trying even to do politics of religion using the Corona infected people!! They somehow want to Prove that Hindus are racists, Modi is criminal and the Chidambarm’s version of Hindu terrorism!!
Some of them are blaming Modi for requesting the people to light a lamp on April 5th!! Some even went to say, who followed Modi’s words were stupid!
They are going up to the point of saying, Rahul Gandhi could have handled Corona crisis much better!! 21 nations and including WHO admired and appreciated MODI’s handling of Corona crisis, But for Nehru fans, truth should not matter!!

By: Govind Pai

Govind Pai — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 03:15:09 +0000

Strangeworld and Jalandhara’s comments on Nehru’s passion for science, technology and the scientific method to lead us, as a country, out of antediluvian and superstitious thinking reminded me of my sister’s friend Damayanti Gupta (the mother of CNN chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta) in Florida. Damayanti Gupta’s family migrated from Sindh to Maharashtra during partition in 1947. As a young girl in the 1950s she attended a talk by Nehru where he told the young people that India needed engineers and scientists to take its people out of poverty and women should also take up the challenge. Inspired by this, Damayanti studied engineering (the only girl in her college). Later in the 1960s she emigrated to the US and applied for a job in Ford as an engineer. She was told they did not hire females as engineers. She told them she would like to be the first, persisted and became the first qualified female engineer in Ford!
On a different note, I would like your insights and comments (and also of “What a culture!”) on a letter to the editor here titled “The rediscovery of India” by Col (Retd) CP Muthanna (I don’t know Col Muthanna, but his sister, Dr. Kavery Nambisan, the surgeon and well known writer is a friend. Their father was CM Poonacha, the first Chief Minister of Coorg and later a railway minister at the centre and a governor). Post independence, there was probably a necessity for a strong centre and political and economic thought at the time leaned towards centralization and purely technical fixes. Since the 60s there has been more interest in the old Gandhian ideas of decentralization and village republics. Karnataka took the lead in fashioning panchayati raj institutions under Abdul Nazir Sab and Ramakrishna Hegde. Should there be a rethinking of economic models more in line with Gandhi’s ideas? Would love your thoughts.

By: Hey Ram!

Hey Ram! — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 01:19:43 +0000

One of the best articles I have read these days. We need a lot more of these. Mindless, cult-like sycophancy by Trump’s followers led to the current crisis in US, even though many state governors were doing their best. Now imagine India, Modi’s followers are just as cult-like sycophantic as that of Trump’s. But, the key difference is that US has pretty large number of Trump critics, they occupy more than half the space in the media. We don’t. The critics, especially at the regional level, are scared of openly criticising Modi. In addition, most of the state governments are BJP run, who are all again, Modi’s puppets (just like Florida in US). So India can get much worse than US (hope it does not, but just hope did not work in US). More and more people should begin to badger Modi and his administration with critical questions. It’s not the time for timidity, it’s a war, let’s ask the commander if he has got his priorities right.

I am glad somebody tried to educate people about Nehru. When he became a PM, there were just 36 engineering institutions, 17 universities, 636 colleges teaching about 2.4 lakh students!!! A famine could have killed lakhs, epidemics used to wipe out villages, roads, rail-lines were almost nonexistent except in main cities, and 80-90% of people were illiterates. We are doing much better than Pakistan and numerous other African/Asian countries who all got independent in the same time period, is due to the initiatives taken up by Nehru and his equally brilliant team.

By: Kumar

Kumar — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 18:06:31 +0000

Hi,
Have read Discovery of India and I am not sure why the author or the commenters are praising it. It is a Britishers/foreigners view of India and to call it History is a tragedy. Some of the comments eulogising Nehru and criticising MODI is foolishness. Praise is due where it is and comparing MODI to Nehru and others shows how shallow the education has been and what one has learnt and assimilated. On the point of taking Press Conference, what would someone get out of it, if some are thinking he is incapable of taking a press conference, there is a large section of the population like me who believe the press is not fit enough to ask questions or talk to him. It is this pessimistic and blind hatred by the press and the so called intellectual class that has failed India for the last many decades.
On the current pandemic what needs to be done is being done, why would someone need details? Are they capable of understanding the details? I guess people will use it more to criticise than to learn. If someone needs details they will get it on google, for the rest who need emotional support Modi is providing it to them.People who feel emotional atyachar are those who are emotionally bankrupt. On COVID govt is executing a well thought out plan and is being executed with sincerity.
On what a democracy is lot of folks talking about it here are learning it from communists and their understanding is causing problems for The True democracy.
The press is losing its credibility in a hurry and Ganapathy Sir’s talent is keeping SOM floating.A wise person told this to me long back….”Just because you know English, you need not be a Britisher”. Jai Hind.

By: Jalandhara

Jalandhara — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 12:09:26 +0000

I agree with the above posters, and congratulate Vikram for this superb article. He covered such important issues with such style!
About Nehru, the architect of modern India was shaping up when he was writing his book:” Discovery of India”, in Ahmednagar Fort,said by my English professor then, in a seminar on it, as we too did not have this book as one of our texts. We had a subject called Social Science in our PUC curriculum, where aspects of this book were covered. To the credit of Nehru, it was said , even during his busy days days, he never declined an audience with engineering students. Those were the days, all engineering degree students, at least from S. Indian universities, had compulsory study tour of N.India visiting places of engineering interests.
@ Govind Pai. Every leader here in the West,PM or President, gives daily press conferences, and takes questions from the press. That is the facet of a democracy. Modi does not like questions or scrutiny, loving instead a large congregation and receiving the chants of his name. His ” friend” Trump, is scared of the impending election, is uncomfortably poised to receive uncomfortable questions. Modi,who you correctly identify as an one dimensional man, is sitting safely in his disinfected bunker and dishing out words of wisdom, He thinks he is secure in his position for the next few years, as the main opposition party is in disarray and has no credible leader. That is the curse of Indian democracy today.
I am sure, all the three of us-the posters here, can look forward to get showers of abuses from Modi admirers.!

By: Strangeworld

Strangeworld — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:21:45 +0000

Hi Govind Pai
Glad that you too is appreciative of the excellent editorial by Vikram Muthanna, arguably the best editorial that I have read among English-dailies in India. My message to Vikram is keep many such editorials coming, which should give food for thoughts for the readers.
About Nehru’s “b Discovery of India” book. When there was intermediate course in Indian universities, this book was repeatedly , one of the texts in English subject. With the advent of the pre-university course, where the English as a subject was somewhat downgraded, there was no place for
a detailed text of that calibre.
Nehru met us: a group of budding electrical, mechanical and civil engineers, in his Teen Murti Bhavan lawn, and spoke to each ofus. We were 60 final year engineering degree students. His passion about building a modern India excelleing in science and technology pursuits was impressive.
After his death, 3 years later, I wityh my colleagues led a group pf similar students to Teen Murti Bhavan, then a Nehru Museum. We could through the glass door of his study, read the Frost’s famous poem ( which was also the favourite of JFK), the four lines:””The wood are lovely dark and deep, but I have promises to keep..”, and the guide who served Nehru, explained that those were last words he wrote before going to bed, and he did not wake up there after.
Nehru believed that India’s tryst with destiny was through the route of science and technology. Homi Bhabha, would have stayed at Cambridge University, had Nehru did not persuade him to return to India to develop research in nuclear physics that had practical constructive peaceful implications. Let us not forget that a more vilified person, VKK Menon, to whom every mistake in foreign and defence policies were attributed unjustly in my opinion, was responsible for developing defence research organisations-many of them dotted around India, and in one of them an young aeronautical engineer called Abdul Kalam was emerging as a bright star in rocket research.
Nehru as well as Menon had to grapple with the geopolitical flux with strange groups of friend and foe nations that Soviet Union and US were carving out, in the aftermath of WWII. India was caught in this vortex as a newly independent nation. People judge these two great men with the benefits of hind sight. Steering a new nation in those turbulent years was an impossible task. Israel,which emerge d as a nation , just one year later was also in a similar situation. Its political leaders then were mainly from the Soviet Bloc , who migrated to the country of their own.
I let readers to mull over these excellent lines you posted:
“Our current PM does not even give a press conference or give unscripted interviews or take questions. Only monologues on TV or radio from the great one that no one should dare question. Arrogance (or is it the insecurity of a one-dimensional cardboard man?) of the worst kind. Why doesn’t he have daily open press conferences where he gives updates and takes questions? Is he afraid of being knocked off his pedestal? Even his oily buddy Trump gives press conferences”
I just add this: Andrew Cuomo is an example, that PM Modi is worth emulating.

By: Govind Pai

Govind Pai — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 05:31:47 +0000

I concur wholeheartedly with Strangeworld on his comments on Vikram Muthanna’s thoughtful article. I remember reading Nehru’s ” Discovery of India” in my late teens and being captivated by the breadth and depth and scholarship of the book. We were fortunate to have had visionaries like him and Mahatma Gandhi and Patel to guide us in those early years. We have done the right thing now by calling for a lockdown (my daughter is on the front line in a public hospital in Mumbai and I have a very personal stake in hoping our health care system can cope and am worried about my daughter) but we and the Government at the centre need to do much much more to give succour to the people at the margins who are in dire straits because of it. These PR stunts like banging pots and lighting lamps may be harmless, may even be useful, but the PM needs to do much more and tell us exactly what he is doing to solve the medical and human problems and then give us updates on what the progress in, rather than think we are all performing seals banging pots and lighting lamps at his say so.
Strange world talking about his meeting with Nehru in 1961 reminds me of my mother-in-law telling us about how she and her college mates (from Calicut) met Nehru and Radhakrishnan (separately) in the late 1950s and how those luminaries showed them round their homes and chatted with them. Our current PM does not even give a press conference or give unscripted interviews or take questions. Only monologues on TV or radio from the great one that no one should dare question. Arrogance (or is it the insecurity of a one-dimensional cardboard man?) of the worst kind. Why doesn’t he have daily open press conferences where he gives updates and takes questions? Is he afraid of being knocked off his pedestal? Even his oily buddy Trump gives press conferences.
Nice article, Vikram Muthanna. You ticked all the boxes.

By: Strangeworld

Strangeworld — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 18:15:57 +0000

Correction: Should read: “Every Indian should read this book. By far, the best article from you todate and congratulation for producing such a timely article.

By: Strangeworld

Strangeworld — Sat, 04 Apr 2020 17:58:41 +0000

Well written article. Just a small correction: Professor Stephen Hawking was not a Noble Laureate. The Nobel Committee missed a good opportunity.
Aside from your legitimate questions on healthcare and the healthcare workers, the suffering of the poor : there are tens of millions of them in India and their angst must be recognised. Not only religious fanatics, bur Modi fanatics abuse by posting vile and shameful posts from any one who questions Modi’s effective management in this crisis. The editor of this publication, which you are should put an end to them by blocking such vile people. These posts from so called readers, should not be allowed to tarnish the reputation of this publication, which is read by thousands of Mysoreans across the globe.
“The first Prime Minister, who today is mocked by every other half-wit, ill-informed, WhatsApp-educated, self-proclaimed patriot, who ignores the fact that this country today stands on the educational and industrial structure put in place by this man from IITs to ISRO”
You are spot on when discussing the first Prime Minister, who was such a towering personality and visionary in ensuring that India develops anchored on science and technology. It was my privilege to have met him along with my engineering college mates in 1961. You have quoted further from his book:”Discovery of India”, which is apt and timely. This book is largely forgotten today. Every Indian should read this book, which
By far, the best article from you todate and congratulation for producing such a timely article.