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May 28, 1998
SPECIALS
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How Readers responded to T V R Shenoy's last column
Date sent: Sat, 23 May 1998 16:55:34 -0400 The World Series is the short-form of the New York World Series, the newspaper that started the baseball series. Please check your facts next time. Also, I can't understand the yearning for approval from the big guy aka the US of A for India's nuke tests. The US cares nothing about about our feelings. Every country has to follow its own agenda. This fundamental truth is compromised when a) a dictator rules the country b) when you are looking for approval from other countries. Building up support for one's action does not mean your actions have to be approved by others. You have to sell your point and not beg for acceptance. India has supposedly exploded five nuclear devices including a hydrogen bomb. Any country that is opposing this act will try not only to oppose it but also to turn the whole world against it. The US will or will not side with China and Pakistan, depending on its compulsions. The question Indian people and leaders should be asking themselves is not whether the US is fair in doing that; rather, it is what India should do about it. Did it forsee such a scenario? If so, what plans do we have to follow? What can we do now? Nobody wants a beggar to have an automatic weapon for his protection. And that is what India is now, a beggar with an automatic weapon. So what can India do now? It can give up the weapon or it can give up the begging bowl. Giving up the weapon is not a good option as the beggar thinks that hyenas will come in the night and take its children away. Valid point. Then the rich man comes in and says if you can have a weapon like I have then do not beg; instead, why don't you buy stuff from me instead of asking it for free? The rich man is a little bit irritated because the beggar also has a gun like him and is demanding to be treated as an equal. So he makes things a little bit harder than usual and asks the beggar to buy from him. The beggar has to make some hard decisions if he has to be free. If prostrating in front of the rich man is not an option, then it is purely a matter of rising your internal resources and cutting costs. For India the solutions are a lot more simpler than for the beggar. Sell your PSUs to the local private sector, remove restrictions and laws that makes bureaucracy redundant. Use NGOs to provide social welfare, make governance transparent so everybody knows what is happening to the public funds. This is the best time for politicians to bring about these reforms by stoking nationalistic feelings. If we get the govt out of everything except defence, social welfare and internal security, our tax revenues will be enough to see us through. These solutions are not new or radical. Everything has been analysed to death. All one has to do is to implement it with the propaganda machine in full swing. Will India do it? Or will it be meek and surrender itself to "international opinion" again because it does not have the guts to set its own house straight?
Date sent: Wed, 27 May 1998 10:19:53 -0000 It was a great article! Japan & UK are mere stooges of the USA. What's appalling is the division we see among our own people. Just shows the hollowness of our claim "unity in diversity". Harping has become a pastime for many back home, I believe!!
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 17:51:36 -0700 Way to go, TVRS! An article with a great insight into the dumb and simplistic ways of the US! That's telling 'em!
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 16:04:03 -0700 Excellent column. We all have to realise that the Americans are extremely diplomatic.
Venkat
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 10:52:17 -0700 From: Sameer <skuppaha@sedona.ch.intel.com> Subject: America is the world -- by T V R Shenoy The best analysis so far of the American superpower syndrome. Sameer Kuppahalli
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 11:57:40 -0700 I agree with T V R Shenoy's assessment that America thinks it's the world, very similar to the thinking of the Frog In The Well. Just a trivial correction, though: there are 30 teams in the Major League Baseball. New additions this season: from Arizona, the Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and from Canada, the Toronto BlueJays and Montreal Expos. Govinda Rao
Date sent: Fri, 22 May 1998 11:32:49 -0400 This is a very true analysis. The very reason the American government is fuming is because everybody cares two hoots for what they say. I am glad that India stood up to this big bully. Ajay
Date sent: Thu, 21 May 1998 21:06:29 -0700 I am sorry the USA, in its concern for self interest or in the interest of China and Pakistan, has lost touch with the truth. It time and again plays the part of the policeman of the world. Its providing arms service to Bosnia in Europe and in some places in Africa at the cost of American tax payers and American soldiers has been criticised by the Americans themselves. Now it has lost credibility again by insulting India. Even former president Carter has criticised the Clinton administration for lambasting India without understanding its compulsions. Speaker Newt Gingritch has questioned the Clinton administration's rights to blame India while supplying high tech missiles and other technologies to China. While the simpleminded print media continued with the Hindu nationalist chorus song, many responsible television stations (PBS, for example) had organised a fairly reasonable panel to discuss the atomic tests, where everyone blasted the hypocritical stand of Clinton. Shenoy's refreshing article has proved one most important fact: That Rediff is not lacking in the exposition of hypocrisy. Rasik Sanghvi |
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