The Prez game....!!

"Manmohan Singh" will be PM till 2014 - that's what Congress or in fact Sonia says. So, does this mean we will have 2 Prez and no PM till 2014? That's indeed a distorted form of democracy :) unless Manmohan Singh gives up public life, as he had declared a few days back, if any of the accusations are proved against him! But how can ignorance be proved? How do you quantify it? At the same time, isn't ignorance to corruption is same or at least as grave a crime as being involved in corruption? And specially if the ignorance has been done by the supreme PMO!

Anyway, now the world is seeing how a coalition government of the largest democracy can fight over a president candidature. Wish this power of filling the rashtrapati bhavan was given to the facebook users. How much fun we would have had!! Just imagine - our FB homes flooded with so many likes and dislikes, cascading shares and postings! One click on the like and dislike could change the future of the candidate :) There could have been a mobile game too - where we could have various hurdles like Mamta, MS, Sonia, Advani to be crossed to finally fill the Prez chair :) It would have been fun with background rabindra sangeet or italian music at appropriate points. I would say it would have been more interesting and unpredictable that farmville(simply because farmville is the only FB game am aware of :))...And when finally if A P J Kalam(I wish!!) was the winner - we could then jump on to another game to decide how the UPA govt would be disintegrated and what combinations could make the next coalition :)...while the world would watch the largest democracy again fighting over another chair!

We, the silent middle class?

Petrol price touching beyond 80 in Bangalore - didn't really come as a surprise, it was the need of the hour. The fuel prices cannot be left subsidized. The UPA govt had shouted this and justified the rise. As a responsible tax paying citizen we concurred. Diesel is not affected and though I don't own a diesel vehicle, am happy the price of diesel didn't increase - for the fear that it may have caused a similar increase in my monthly budget. I can still manage traveling by whatever limited and shoddy public transport the govt has provided, but I need to eat and buy groceries, milk, basic stuff to run a household. So, the middle class adjusted - may be also because we are so much exasperated by our day to day lives that it is very difficult to analyse and act on the political and economic situation in India. So, 10 days we cribbed, flooding FB with our posts or chit-chatting over social interactions - criticizing the move and then finally getting back to our weekend and weekday activities.

A news item which has failed to leave the business section for a past couple of months - Rupee has been falling because of global and internal effects. But it may be temporary as is being read by the middle class  in the newspapers. Gold (and of course dollars!) are the safest investment bets, with the sensex sliding smoothly with each passing day. But, we the middle class are patient, we will wait and watch, patience is a virtue which has been ingrained quite deep especially in situations like these...

Then a few days back, the FM expressed worry on the non-existing industrial growth that was reported for the month of April - investments declining etc. Newspapers were full of that resulting in creases on our foreheads too -- declining investment especially from the foreign land, uncertain policies, delays in approvals and the list goes on. India Inc is criticizing - and newspaper/media is getting its daily bread by showing how the prices of bread has increased in the past two years! We, the middle class, are re-organizing our budgets to fit the new situation - some are even thinking of getting better or more jobs for their finances to work - after all we accept and have been accepting for the past 60 years that govt process is slow with loopholes as big as hundreds of crore sometimes.

But not everything is slow. A few quick policies are being rolled out - for eg IITs and other engg institutes will have a common entrance with Class XII board marks to be taken into consideration -- what a suggestion - it was surely the need of the hour!! This is not the first time Sibal has tried to inflict something nonsensical. But, anyway, we, the middle class, will wait till it is enforced(may be followed by increased quota and sub-quota!). Not everyone needs to bother also, only those people whose children or who themselves might have IITs as their dream institutes to get in. Everybody else can relax - we, the middle class, have our homes to take care of. "My country" is to be studied only in social sciences!

And now the latest piece of news: the S&P de-rating India from the list of investment destinations or whatever we call it. Our FM doesn't give a damn - he may not till the investments come to a halt to zero may be (anyway he has to handle the situation only till he becomes the Prez or latest till 2014). We, the middle class, are waiting for the surprise package from the govt which will suddenly lift all the fears and let us continue with our daily grind, otherwise life still goes on.

I don't know what the middle class can do, but certainly more than treat the current events as mere news articles, that keep on changing daily.

A spark is the trigger to a fire - we have to fuel it to engulf our nation...but are we, the middle class, ready to burn our hands?