Listen to the new India, hear success ring in your ears

Listen to the new India, hear success ring in your ears Dated August 15, 2003The Indian ExpressTwenty to twenty-five years ago, even 10 years ago, few of us had heard of Information Technology. Today, exports from this industry are worth $10 billion - that is, over Rs. 45,000

The Indian Liberal Group, Chennai, had organized a meeting on 13 July 2007, where Arun Shourie and Cho Ramaswamy participated and talked about the Congress Presidential nominee Mrs. Pratibha Patil.To listen:Arun Shourie (English, 32.16 min)To download: Arun Shourie | Cho RamaswamyCourtesy:http://bseshadri.blogspot.com/

Quota is not the way: Arun Shourie

Quota is not the way: Arun Shourie CNN-IBN Published on Sun, Jun 25, 2006Karan Thapar: Hello and Welcome to Devil’s Advocate. My guest today is one of the sharpest critics of India’s reservation policy. In a book published this month Falling Over Backward, he exposes its intellectual hollowness and its moral two-facedness. But is he against reservation

Arun Shourie on the Mitrokhin Archives OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Part-IStandard Operating ProcedureThe weekly organ of the CPI(M), People's Democracy, September 2005, declaims, ''The Mitrokhin balloon of lies has been well burst recently. The statement of the secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M), Anil Biswas on September 21 may well perhaps be the last nail on the coffin of the 'archival misdemeanour'. Anil Biswas told the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad

Shilpa Shetty trumps Arunachal again

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 Every time China advances a claim, watch how our government — and media — react in feeble, confused, and contradictory ways, writes Arun Shourie November 21, 2007: We were all at the weekly meeting of the BJP members of Parliament. L.K. Advani was presiding. Two of our colleagues represent Arunachal in the Lok Sabha — Tapir Gao and Kiren Rijiju. They drew

“The Left distorts” (Interview with Arun Shourie)Author: Swapan DasguptaPublication: India TodayDate: November 23, 1998 Controversy and Arun Shourie are inseparable. He, has taken ongovernments, politicians and corporate houses, championedcontentious causes and assumed the role of India's permanentgadfly. After questioning the mythology centred on BabasahebAmbedkar and

The vital difference

Arun Shourie: Monday, December 31, 2007 In the Indic traditions — as opposed to the Middle Eastern traditions — reality is multilayered. Hence no description of it is final: tolerance follows as an article of faith. So, the first lesson to bear in mind is that every tradition has in it the potential to become extremist. In this sense, our traditions are indeed similar to the Middle Eastern

What more is needed to stoke reaction?

Arun Shourie: Saturday, December 29, 2007 The Task Force on Border Management, one of the four that were set up in the wake of the Kargil War, reported with alarm about the way madrassas had mushroomed along India’s borders. On the basis of information it received from intelligence agencies, it expressed grave concern at the amount of money these madrassas were receiving from foreign sources.

Arun Shourie Interview: Rediff.com

'There is not one instance, not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country'Arun Shourie's book 'Woshipping False Gods' The recent furore following the desecration of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar's statue in Bombay has largely been interpreted as the resurgence of the dalit movement in India. A phenomenon which first saw

The 'main hun na' school of budgeting

Arun Shourie: Saturday, March 29, 2008 Arun Shourie puts the Budget to the aam aadmi test and argues why the UPA fails miserably In the Budget for 1990/91, the VP Singh Government announced a loan waiver of Rs. 10,000 crore. The Government was soon out. I am not on the precedent, but on the accounting! The waiver had been

The new remedies

Arun Shourie: Friday, March 28, 2008 Arun Shourie puts the Budget to the aam aadmi test and argues why the UPA fails miserably What the CAG’s Performance Audit has revealed about the ‘flagships’ – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission – is the pattern. NC Saxena draws

On their own yardstick

Arun Shourie: Thursday, March 27, 2008 Arun Shourie puts the Budget to the aam aadmi test and argues why the UPA fails miserably One problem is that while the Government committed itself in that new scripture – The National Common Minimum Programme – to doubling the proportion of GDP that is devoted to social sectors like health and education, in fact, as NC Saxena, member of the UPA’s

'Action completed'!

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Arun Shourie puts the Budget to the aam aadmi test and argues why the UPA fails miserably The document is Implementation of Budget 2007-2008, and is one of the important documents that have been distributed with this year’s Budget. ‘In keeping with the endeavour of the Government of India to promote transparency and accountability,’ writes the Finance

Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet

Arun Shourie: Friday, December 28, 2007 Every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. The tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, that has been going on for 200 years, is being underestimated Your Hindutva is no different from Islamic fundamentalism’ — a fashionable statement these days, one that immediately establishes the person’s secular credentials. It is,

The fabrications of government

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, December 12, 2007If energy security is what we are after, shifting to power dependency on imported technology, reactors, components, uranium, each of which is controlled by an even tighter cartel than oil, is hardly the answer Explaining his assessment about the cost at which nuclear power would be available, the prime minister told the Rajya Sabha on August 17, 2006, “

Necessity is the mother of fabrication too

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Cut through the hype on the Indo-US nuclear deal, and all you have is the possibility of a marginal contribution to our nuclear energy generation. For this, our strategic interest is being mortgaged in perpetuity India’s uranium deposits are limited and of low grade,” Hindustan Times declared on December 12, 2006, in a large, prominently displayed, boxed

But who has that distant a horizon? III

Arun Shourie: Thursday, November 15, 2007 There is every likelihood that pseudo-reforms will be pushed, and little possibility of the fundamental reforms that are required in Pakistan, writes ARUN SHOURIE It really is ‘crunch time’ for Pakistan, says a keen observer: the mere installation of a civilian government will not change the character of Pakistan. In a sense, even under Musharraf, a

Pakistan beyond Musharraf II

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, November 14, 2007Half of Pakistan’s territory is slipping out of the writ of Islamabad.Pakistan has lost control over half its territory. In all probability it will regain that control at some time in the future. But the fact that half of the country’s territory is today outside the writ of the Pakistani state shows how far things have been allowed to fall. Information

Where have all the general’s cheerleaders gone? I

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, November 13, 2007Ulti ho gayin sab tadbirein, kuchch na dawa ne kaam kiya — every stratagem has boomeranged, no potion works. That’s Pervez Musharraf’s predicament today, writes Arun Shourie in a three-part series on Pakistan beginning today The only persons who could have been surprised by what Musharraf has done are the Americans - who had invested everything in him, and

‘Strategic partnership’ without a strategy

Arun Shourie: Sunday, August 19, 2007123 PACT:a It is not the way to energy security; the way to that is to develop our own hydroelectric resources, to redouble our uranium mining, to redouble our work on fast-breeder reactors, on thorium The one point on which there seems to be an advance is in regard to reprocessing spent fuel—alas, that too comes with caveats. The US has given us consent to

Forward-looking farce

Arun Shourie: Saturday, August 18, 2007 123 Pact: Deal binds India to Hyde Act whose main objective is to ‘halt, roll back and eventually eliminate’ India’s nuclear capability On March 7, 2007, while introducing the Separation Plan, the prime minister told Parliament that the US had assured India that we would have access to uninterrupted supplies of fuel throughout the lifetime of the reactors

A word dropped, a word inserted and the assurances are fulfilled!

Arun Shourie: Friday, August 17, 2007123 Agreement: Mind the gap between the PM’s assurances and the text of the dealI had taken up with President Bush our concerns regarding provisions in the two bills,’ the prime minister’s website records Dr Manmohan Singh telling the nuclear scientists. ‘It is clear that if the final product is in its current form, India will have grave difficulties in

Reflection in the jigsaw

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 In the concluding extracts from his new book, Arun Shourie makes a case for a strengthened judiciary, compulsory voting and a reformed legislatureThe judiciary Just as the authority of Parliament vis a vis the Executive must be lessened, that of the Judiciary must be assiduously preserved... the methods of selecting judges, of transferring them, for

All the president’s persons

Arun shourie: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 Is the political class ready for reform? In his new book, The Parliamentary System: What we have made of it, what we can make of it, Arun Shourie makes a strong case for empowering the executive. Restructuring the system so that the president is elected by the electorate and is empowered to select his/her own ministers, he argues, will improve governance.

The way out

Arun Shourie: Saturday, December 23, 2006 Looking at atomic power as the major component of our electricity supplies in the future has been India’s basic strategic flaw. As far as nuclear reactors are concerned, look to them principally for our weapons programme, not for electricity — for we do have other ways of securing electricity But the Vajpayee government itself started the discussions

Facts versus the government’s fiction

Arun Shourie: Friday, December 22, 2006 A section by section analysis of the Act passed by the US Congress reveals stipulations that tie India down. Yet the fiction has been purveyed by the government through the media that these provisions have been dropped. The prime minister’s assurances to Parliament may not mean anything Everyone who has studied the Act that the US Congress has passed

The ‘non-binding’ myth

Arun Shourie: Thursday, December 21, 2006 In the Act, there is no categorisation of sections into binding and non-binding. We are left with assurances proffered in private by US officials that some provisions will be ‘non-binding’. Will we rest our country’s security on these? And if we do, what is the guarantee that the next Administration will also disregard the clear enunciations of the Act

‘But you must wait for the 123 Agreement’

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 Even as the people and Parliament are being fed routine platitudes on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government has swallowed whole all the conditions that the US Congress has set out in the final Act. There is going to be nothing in the 123 Agreement which is not already known At each step, we have been told, “But this is just a step on a long journey.

Lifting the veil over Pratibha Patil

Thursday June 28 2007 06:56 IST Arun Shourie ‘A big step for women – This shows India has a lot of respect for women– My nomination will inspire other women and help their empowerment.’ That is how Pratibha Patil described her selection as the UPA candidate for being our President. Loyalists, of course, went one better. ‘A firm believer in women’s causes and a tireless champion of

Time to deal with the aftermath

Time to deal with the aftermath Arun Shourie Then came the point on which the prime minister received much applause. Members like me had drawn attention to the very comprehensive and intrusive inspections that were being accepted. Government spokesmen insisted that we had, in fact, been recognised as a Nuclear Weapon State, and that the IAEA would devise “India-specific safeguards”. These, we

Not one concern has registered

Arun Shourie : Wednesday, November 29, 2006Every single element that the prime minister had listed as unacceptable in the Indo-US nuclear deal is still there. Is the deal acceptable in spite of these provisions that are ‘not acceptable to us’? After assuring the Rajya Sabha that no law that seeks to bind our foreign policy would be accepted; after spelling out in detail that “full” must mean “

Now let the PM square this circle

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 What had the prime minister drawn as the contours beyond which India would not budge on the Indo-US nuclear deal? Do the provisions of the bill as finally passed by the Senate fall within those contours? If they do not, how can the country now be made to swallow the deal?The prime minister’s website records some of the responses he gave to the nuclear

China’s economic growth is not just ‘economic growth’

Arun Shourie: Wednesday, November 08, 2006 It is a grave error to be mesmerised by China’s economic growth as if it were just ‘economic growth’. To begin with, much of ‘economic growth’ consists of things that add military muscle. When China produces modern weapons-systems — apart from many other systems, it has made major advances in cruise and ballistic missiles, space technologies

To race China, first let’s get our feet off the brakes

Arun Shourie, Tuesday, November 07, 2006India’s growth story must generate confidence, not complacence. We must learn from China the ability to move on from momentary success or failure, keep the focus on reforms, take a decision and execute it China’s banking sector has been notorious for its non-recoverable loans — till a few years ago, some estimates had placed these at almost half the total

Learning to shield our academic excellence

Arun Shourie, Thursday, September 14, 2006 The number of students who come to India to study is going down. Meanwhile, the amount of money spent on Indian students studying abroad is sufficient to set up 30-40 IIMs or 15-20 IITs every year. The threat is that we may lose our best minds at a rate faster than ever before. The opportunity is that we can be educators to the world About 8,000

We need the best for the brightest

Arun Shourie, Wednesday, September 13, 2006 An inverse snobbery is afoot. We are lectured every other day: “What is needed is universal, free, primary education.” From this comes the unstated inference: “Institutes of higher learning - the IITs, IIMs - are institutions of, and for the elite. They must be bent to serve the poor, suffering, excluded backwards.”No one can deny that we

In this tech-driven world, we can’t be asleep at the wheel

Arun Shourie, Tuesday, September 12, 2006The cost of squandering resources on populist schemes will be paid not just in missed advantages but also in the resulting social unrest. First in a three-part series Among the propellers that are driving the world, technology is one of the most forceful. Six features about its advance have far-reaching consequences for India: • To start with, what has

‘Parity’, did you say?

Arun Shourie, Thursday, August 24, 2006While India fantasises about “parity”, the US aims to acquire, in the form of an “ally”, an instrument that will do its bidding because it is dependent on the US, says Arun Shourie in the final part of his series on the nuclear deal In the wake of the 18 July joint statement, five

Rescued from the abyss

Rescued from the abyss Arun Shourie, Tuesday, August 22, 2006In the first of a three-part analysis of the Indo-US nuclear deal, Arun Shourie argues that credibility has passed from the political class to professionals and entrepreneurs. And that the prime minister was wise to engage with the scientists’ misgivings The prime

TRACKING TERROR: Ceding Kashmir

TRACKING TERROR PART-2: Ceding Kashmir Third-class governance can’t give first-class response to terrorism Arun ShourieWednesday, August 02, 2006In the concluding part of his analysis, Arun Shourie details how a weak-kneed government response, in terms of both administration and diplomacy, has cost India the momentum and the edge in the Kashmir issue