We are not going to "defend" Modi by blaming some or many of his colleagues. It has become fashionable to scorn Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani. Personally, we too disapprove of Jaitley (we will return to it later), and are neutral about Irani. However, for the purpose of this article, we view them as parts of Modi's government, so the buck finally stops at Modi.
Now, we also describe our understanding of the categories of reviewers we mentioned. This might give you, our dear readers, some more "hints". Ha ha. But before that we would like to share a story. Imagine an upper middle class family whose son is driven around in an expensive car by a driver. The son is attending FIIT-JEE and such reputed coaching centers. The driver too has a son, and he is preparing on his own. He is NOT interested in the free super-30 and all. He wants to fight it out in his life on his own. The exams happen, and lo and behold, the upper middle class son flunks badly while the driver's son gets in to JEE top 100. How do you, dear reader, think will the upper middle class family take it? Well, in real life, upper middle class families are not as bad as we imagine, still for the illustrative purposes of this story we assume otherwise. The members, well wishers, those who are patronized by the family, all view this result with utter shock. If you compound it with an imaginary constraint that such entrance exams are conducted only once every five years, then the reactions would be further amplified. The long and short of it is that they find it nearly impossible to come to terms with the outcome. They can't imagine that while their talented son will only be attempting another shot at the exams, the driver's son could be graduating with flying colors. So they want the driver's son to fail, fail at any cost. But then, they are also apprehensive that the driver's son might succeed further, and the talented son might flunk further. They are torn between opposing feelings. Dear readers, do you get the drift of it? Good.
While the Modi-bashers are torn between conflicting emotions; those belonging to his "side" are so full of themselves that they think that the only way to answer any criticism is to point out what Congress used to do. While Congress indeed did horrible things, but then merely comparing with Congress puts such reviewers into those gloating about "-300 getting to -200" camp.
Now we come to the 4 percent folks who were in the third category. We found them mostly concerned about "only" economics, or Jaitley/Irani criticism in disguise.
Thus before we present our review, we wish to clarify our position vis a vis Jaitely and Irani. As far as we know, Arun Jaitley was one of the D-4 (Jaitely, Swaraj, Ravishankar Prasad, Anant Kumar) during Advani era. Then he was in good books of Hajpeyi too, at least till Hajpeyi was in power. And now Modi. Now, we believe, that anyone who always manages to remain on the right side of the fence is, more often than not, a man of suspicious and dubious character. And like it is often said regarding justice, that justice should not only be done, but that justice should be seen to have been done; we wish that it is important for Modi to not only remain clean, but to also be seen as clean. (We will mention our recommendation for Modi re' Jaitley later)
In the case of Smriti Irani, we believe it to be more a case of people being jealous of her rapid rise, rather than her (in)competence. We don't value her for her Yale certificate, nor do we denigrate her for her lack of "Doctorate" or whatever. Most of the high academics who have been criticizing Irani have been the ones with fat bottoms drawing fat pay-cheques at government expense for decades and have deep vested interest in the continuation of what we call as the Lutyens-Delhi-of-Academics. However, Irani can do no worse than getting swayed by the bureaucrats in her ministry. If she does that in her bid to protect herself from the wrath of high-academicians, she will be doing a great disservice to herself, and much worse disservice to her job. We believe that she is talented, and we believe that she knows that she is talented. If she asks herself some very elementary questions like: Does our educational system spot talent, nurture talent, and then put them to best use? If not (is there any doubt? haha) how should that be done? What measures does our education system take regarding those who are not "very intelligent"? How does it enable them to utilize whatever intelligence they have to achieve a reasonably happy and prospperous life (say, by being somewhat hard working and all)? - If Irani asks herself such questions and pushes for answers to such questions and their implementations, she would fare much better.
In the case of Jaitley, our advice is based on the premise that he is slimy. Even if he isn't, our suggestion should not make much difference to him. We would like that Modi makes Jaitley a minister without portfolio (he could even be a deputy-deputy-PM or whatever), but he must remain without portfolio. However, as "minister" he could advise (not mandate his advice though) any/all other ministers regarding negotiating the labyrithine pathways of India's babudom. If Modi has nothing to hide from public, he loses nothing even if Jaitley is able to know all that goes on in any department (which he anyway knows now). At the same time, all departments are protected from Jaitely's intrigues should he desire them. In this manner, even if Jaitley is slimy, the government is protected from his machinations, while his capabilities are utilized nearly fully. And, if Jaitley is clean, he should gladly do this "sacrifice" for the good of his "friend's" government. We must recall that other members of the D-4 have been doing far better already.
There is a certain skill in Congress kind of people, that they specialize in making themselves indispensable even though they do nearly nothing. And we believe that Jaitley does have, and most likely practices, such a skill. He would do a great service to the nation if he can use his skills in rooting out other "Jaitleys" from the government, and device means so that in future newer Jaitleys can not gain entry, then he would have fulfilled more than a fair share of his obligation.
Now that we have meandered round and about, we can return to presenting our review, in the concluding part.
Now, we also describe our understanding of the categories of reviewers we mentioned. This might give you, our dear readers, some more "hints". Ha ha. But before that we would like to share a story. Imagine an upper middle class family whose son is driven around in an expensive car by a driver. The son is attending FIIT-JEE and such reputed coaching centers. The driver too has a son, and he is preparing on his own. He is NOT interested in the free super-30 and all. He wants to fight it out in his life on his own. The exams happen, and lo and behold, the upper middle class son flunks badly while the driver's son gets in to JEE top 100. How do you, dear reader, think will the upper middle class family take it? Well, in real life, upper middle class families are not as bad as we imagine, still for the illustrative purposes of this story we assume otherwise. The members, well wishers, those who are patronized by the family, all view this result with utter shock. If you compound it with an imaginary constraint that such entrance exams are conducted only once every five years, then the reactions would be further amplified. The long and short of it is that they find it nearly impossible to come to terms with the outcome. They can't imagine that while their talented son will only be attempting another shot at the exams, the driver's son could be graduating with flying colors. So they want the driver's son to fail, fail at any cost. But then, they are also apprehensive that the driver's son might succeed further, and the talented son might flunk further. They are torn between opposing feelings. Dear readers, do you get the drift of it? Good.
While the Modi-bashers are torn between conflicting emotions; those belonging to his "side" are so full of themselves that they think that the only way to answer any criticism is to point out what Congress used to do. While Congress indeed did horrible things, but then merely comparing with Congress puts such reviewers into those gloating about "-300 getting to -200" camp.
Now we come to the 4 percent folks who were in the third category. We found them mostly concerned about "only" economics, or Jaitley/Irani criticism in disguise.
Thus before we present our review, we wish to clarify our position vis a vis Jaitely and Irani. As far as we know, Arun Jaitley was one of the D-4 (Jaitely, Swaraj, Ravishankar Prasad, Anant Kumar) during Advani era. Then he was in good books of Hajpeyi too, at least till Hajpeyi was in power. And now Modi. Now, we believe, that anyone who always manages to remain on the right side of the fence is, more often than not, a man of suspicious and dubious character. And like it is often said regarding justice, that justice should not only be done, but that justice should be seen to have been done; we wish that it is important for Modi to not only remain clean, but to also be seen as clean. (We will mention our recommendation for Modi re' Jaitley later)
In the case of Smriti Irani, we believe it to be more a case of people being jealous of her rapid rise, rather than her (in)competence. We don't value her for her Yale certificate, nor do we denigrate her for her lack of "Doctorate" or whatever. Most of the high academics who have been criticizing Irani have been the ones with fat bottoms drawing fat pay-cheques at government expense for decades and have deep vested interest in the continuation of what we call as the Lutyens-Delhi-of-Academics. However, Irani can do no worse than getting swayed by the bureaucrats in her ministry. If she does that in her bid to protect herself from the wrath of high-academicians, she will be doing a great disservice to herself, and much worse disservice to her job. We believe that she is talented, and we believe that she knows that she is talented. If she asks herself some very elementary questions like: Does our educational system spot talent, nurture talent, and then put them to best use? If not (is there any doubt? haha) how should that be done? What measures does our education system take regarding those who are not "very intelligent"? How does it enable them to utilize whatever intelligence they have to achieve a reasonably happy and prospperous life (say, by being somewhat hard working and all)? - If Irani asks herself such questions and pushes for answers to such questions and their implementations, she would fare much better.
In the case of Jaitley, our advice is based on the premise that he is slimy. Even if he isn't, our suggestion should not make much difference to him. We would like that Modi makes Jaitley a minister without portfolio (he could even be a deputy-deputy-PM or whatever), but he must remain without portfolio. However, as "minister" he could advise (not mandate his advice though) any/all other ministers regarding negotiating the labyrithine pathways of India's babudom. If Modi has nothing to hide from public, he loses nothing even if Jaitley is able to know all that goes on in any department (which he anyway knows now). At the same time, all departments are protected from Jaitely's intrigues should he desire them. In this manner, even if Jaitley is slimy, the government is protected from his machinations, while his capabilities are utilized nearly fully. And, if Jaitley is clean, he should gladly do this "sacrifice" for the good of his "friend's" government. We must recall that other members of the D-4 have been doing far better already.
There is a certain skill in Congress kind of people, that they specialize in making themselves indispensable even though they do nearly nothing. And we believe that Jaitley does have, and most likely practices, such a skill. He would do a great service to the nation if he can use his skills in rooting out other "Jaitleys" from the government, and device means so that in future newer Jaitleys can not gain entry, then he would have fulfilled more than a fair share of his obligation.
Now that we have meandered round and about, we can return to presenting our review, in the concluding part.
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