*Supreme Court Judgement on Transfer of Flat to Nominee.*

*Land Mark Judgement 

Nominee of Deceased Member is absolutely entitled for the Ownership by transfer, Co-op. Soc can't challenge the right of Nominee a settled Law of the land. No legal heirship, court order or succession certificate is required. Please circulate, important for society members and  office bearers.

Reference:

http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/FileServer/2016-04-19_1461073219.pdf                        

                       

M: After Nomination is registered by society  you don't need 

1 To prove legal heirship

2 No further court order required 

3 No succession Certification                        

Thus Transfer to registered  Nominee is Automatic

A Pragmatic Overview of Islamic Civil Wars

By

Daniel Greenfield

Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Centre

THIS IS NOT LOOKING GOOD FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN AND THEIR CHILDREN

A pragmatic overview of what appears to be an insoluble problem affecting much of the world as we know it today?

“Forget the Syrian Civil War for a moment. Even without the Sunnis and Shiites competing to give each other machete haircuts every sunny morning, there would still be a permanent Muslim refugee crisis.

The vast majority of civil wars over the last ten years have taken place in Muslim countries. Muslim countries are also some of the poorest in the world. And Muslim countries also have high birth rates.

Combine violence and poverty with a population boom and you get a permanent migration crisis. No matter what happens in Syria or Libya next year, that permanent migration crisis isn't going away.

The Muslim world is expanding unsustainably. In the Middle East and Asia, Muslims tend to underperform their non-Muslim neighbours both educationally and economically. Oil is the only asset that gave Muslims any advantage and in the age of fracking, its value is a lot shakier than it used to be.

The Muslim world had lost its old role as the intermediary between Asia and the West. And it has no economic function in the new world except to blackmail it by spreading violence and instability.

Muslim countries with lower literacy rates, especially for women, are never going to be economic winners at any trade that doesn't come gushing out of the ground. Nor will unstable dictatorships ever be able to provide social mobility or access to the good life. At best they'll hand out subsidies for bread.

The Muslim world has no prospects for getting any better. The Arab Spring was a Western delusion.

Growing populations divided along tribal and religious lines are competing for a limited amount of land, power and wealth. Countries without a future are set to double in size.

There are only two solutions; war or migration. Either you fight and take what you want at home. Or you go abroad and take what you want there.

Let's assume that the Iraq War had never happened. How would a religiously and ethnically divided Iraq have managed its growth from 13 million in the eighties to 30 million around the Iraq War to 76 million in 2050? The answer is a bloody civil war followed by genocide, ethnic cleansing and migration.

What's happening now would have happened anyway. It was already happening under Saddam Hussein.

Baghdad has one of the highest population densities in the world, and it has no future. The same is true across the region. The only real economic plan anyone here has is to get money from the West.

Plan A for getting money out of the West is creating a crisis that will force it to intervene. That can mean anything from starting a war to aiding terrorists that threaten the West. Muslim countries keep shooting themselves in the foot so that Westerners will rush over to kiss the booboo and make it better.

Plan B is to move to Europe. What's This? And Plan B is a great plan. It's the only real economic plan that works. At least until the West runs out of native and naïve Westerners who foot the bill for all the migrants, refugees and outright settlers.

For thousands of dollars, a Middle Eastern Muslim can pay to be smuggled into Europe. It's a small investment with a big payoff. Even the lowest tier welfare benefits in Sweden are higher than the average salary in a typical Muslim migrant nation. And Muslim migrants are extremely attuned to the payoffs. It's why they clamor to go to Germany or Sweden, not Greece or Slovakia. And it's why they insist on big cities with an existing Muslim social welfare infrastructure, not some rural village.

A Muslim migrant is an investment for an entire extended family. Once the young men get their papers, family reunification begins. That doesn't just mean every extended family member showing up and demanding their benefits. It also means that the family members will be selling access to Europe to anyone who can afford it. Don't hike or raft your way to Europe. Mohammed or Ahmed will claim that you're a family member. Or temporarily marry you so you can bring your whole extended family along.

Mohammed gets paid. So does Mo's extended family which brokers these transactions. Human trafficking doesn't just involve rafts. It's about having the right family connections. 

And all that is just the tip of a very big business iceberg.

Where do Muslim migrants come up with a smuggling fee that amounts to several years of salary for an average worker? Some come from wealthy families. Others are sponsored by crime networks and family groups that are out to move everything from drugs to weapons to large numbers of people into Europe.

Large loans will be repaid as the new migrants begin sending their new welfare benefits back home. Many will be officially unemployed even while unofficially making money through everything from slave labour to organized crime. European authorities will blame their failure to participate in the job market on racism rather than acknowledging that they exist within the confines of an alternate economy.

It's not only individuals or families who can pursue Plan B. Turkey wants to join the European Union. It's one solution for an Islamist populist economy built on piles of debt. The EU has a choice between dealing with the stream of migrants from Turkey moving to Europe. Or all of Turkey moving into Europe.

The West didn't create this problem. Its interventions, however misguided, attempted to manage it.

Islamic violence is not a response to Western colonialism. Not only does it predate it, but as many foreign policy experts are so fond of pointing out, its greatest number of casualties are Muslims. The West did not create Muslim dysfunction. And it is not responsible for it. Instead the dysfunction of the Muslim world keeps dragging the West in. Every Western attempt to ameliorate it, from humanitarian aid to peacekeeping operations, only opens up the West to take the blame for Islamic dysfunction.

The permanent refugee crisis is a structural problem caused by the conditions of the Muslim world.

The West can't solve the crisis at its source. Only Muslims can do that. And there are no easy answers. But the West can and should avoid being dragged down into the black hole of Muslim dysfunction.

Even Germany's Merkel learned that the number of refugees is not a finite quantity that can be relieved with a charitable gesture. It's the same escalating number of people that will show up if you start throwing bags of money out of an open window. And it's a number that no country can absorb.

Muslim civil wars will continue even if the West never intervenes in them because their part of the world is fundamentally unstable. These conflicts will lead to the displacement of millions of people. But even without violence, economic opportunism alone will drive millions to the West. And those millions carry with them the dysfunction of their culture that will make them a burden and a threat.

If Muslims can't reconcile their conflicts at home, what makes us think that they will reconcile them in Europe? Instead of resolving their problems through migration, they only export them to new shores. The same outbursts of Islamic violence, xenophobia, economic malaise and unsustainable growth follow them across seas and oceans, across continents and countries.

Distance is no answer. Travel is no cure. Solving Syria will solve nothing. The Muslim world is full of fault lines. It's growing and it's running out of room to grow. We can't save Muslims from themselves. We can only save ourselves from their violence.

The permanent Muslim refugee crisis will never stop being our crisis unless we close the door.”

A brilliant article that should be read by all in the western world.

This writer seems to have absolutely nailed what the real problems we in the Western World face & trying to teach them about democracy is not going to work because they don't want it!

WHY INDIA MUST KNOW NARENDRA MODI

Article by Ram Jethmalani Congress cannot stomach that Modi has kept Gujarat riot free for the past 12 years.

arendra Modi's opponents, in cahoots with a partisan media, during the last decade have achieved great success in distorting the persona of the real Modi before Indians. This trend seems to be finally reversing. This week, I had the privilege of releasing Madhu Kishwar's book, Modi, Muslims and Media. Kishwar has done great service by revealing to the public several facts that had been concealed from them deliberately, in a conspiracy between Modi's political opponents who fear him, but control the mechanisms of government, and sections of the media dedicated to divisive communal forces, blessed by certain external powers that seek to ensure that India remains the sick man of Asia forever. We have witnessed this conspiracy during British rule, and we are witnessing it today. The facts relate to the Godhra incident and its unfortunate aftermath, and the man, Narendra Modi, his political background before he became Chief Minister, his performance as Chief Minister, and his actual interventions after the unfortunate Godhra train burning and the riots that followed. These facts have been concealed from Indians by the media machinery of the Congress and its so called "secular", but actually communal allies, and snuffed out by influential sections of the public media who for reasons that became partners of the UPA in the demonisation of Modi. I have repeatedly stated in my articles during the last few years that one of the greatest successes of the UPA government has been its Goebbelsian demonisation of Modi. It lasted for a while, but it is clear that retribution is around the corner, and some of his greatest hired detractors, like Teesta Setalvad, are getting their just deserts. A large section of the public, especially the Muslim community have also realised that they have been taken for a ride by the Congress, which kept shoving false information down their throats, while they themselves were plundering the country, all the while perpetuating a schism between the Muslims and the majority community, to suit their political ends. Let the people know what really happened at Godhra. The carnage on the Sabarmati Express, which was carrying karsevaks from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad, took place on 27 February 2002 at 8.30 a.m., as it moved about 500 yards from Godhra station and was stopped at a signal, through repeated chain pulling by the conspirators. A crowd of around 2,000 Muslims started stoning the train mercilessly and setting fire to the coaches, having prepared the previous night with petroleum and acid bombs. Compartment doors were locked from outside, and the karsevaks were trapped in the fire and smoke. 59 persons, including women and children, in four coaches, were gruesomely burnt alive. The false defence put up by the criminals, aided and abetted by the Congress, when it came to power, was that it was an accidental fire, caused by a stove or an electrical short circuit. An intelligent fire, certainly, singling out only the karsevaks and their families. Do Indians know who defended the accused in the Godhra train burning incident? It was the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee, and the Congress proxy NGO Jan Sangharsh Manch. The criminal conspiracy between Godhra train attackers and the Congress, and their complete lack of sympathy for the Godhra victims, needs no further explanation. Does their being Hindu have something to do with it? Kishwar informs us of the troubled history of Godhra, and its long history of communal riots from 1925 till 1992, post Independence, all under the Congress government. The worst riots in post partition India happened in 1969 in Ahmedabad where 5,000 Muslims were killed with the Congress in power under Chief Minister Hitendrabhai Desai. Does anyone ask about what action was taken against the perpetrators, what charge sheets were filed? In 1985, under Congress Chief Minister Madhavji Solanki, again there was a major communal riot preceded by smaller ones, with curfew lasting over 200 days. 1987 and 1990 again saw communal riots in Gujarat, under Congress Chief Ministers Amar Singh Chowdhery and Chimanbhai Patel. Let the people judge for themselves who the real Maut ka Saudagar is. Kishwar extensively quotes Zafar Sareshwala, a respected Gujarati Muslim entrepreneur, who started by wanting to take Modi to the International Court of Justice, and ended up by becoming his friend, after he met him in London in August 2003, and was astonished by his sincerity, his openness, and his good intentions for the Muslim community. The people of India have never been informed regarding the circumstances under which Modi became Chief Minister of Gujarat. It was because of too much infighting within the Gujarat BJP; to revitalise the party, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee decided to send Modi as the CM. Modi, who was then the general secretary of the BJP working from Delhi, had never fought an election before, had never handled administration or governance, and had not visited Gujarat for the last six years. It was on 7 October 2001 that he became CM. A complete novice, his first great challenge was handling the rehabilitation of the devastating Kutch earthquake of 26 January 2001, to which he announced he was according highest priority. Modi threw all his energy into this, visiting almost every village, including those inhabited only by Muslims, mourning and wiping the tears of the bereaved. He swore that he would convert the disaster into an opportunity, a word that he kept. Through dedicated and honest rehabilitation, villages such as Chobari and Trambe were resurrected, there came modernisation and economic resurgence, urban reconstruction and tourism, and Gujarat became a global role model for disaster management. Modi's earliest statements after becoming Chief Minister are that of a statesman. They reveal his sagacity, patriotism and secularism, and not a trace of communalism is evident in them. He speaks of the common cause of Gujaratis, the power of oneness, combating corruption, farmers' concerns, border and maritime security, poverty reduction, rural uplift. His slogan was Sabka Saath, Sab ka Vikaas, and he used his leadership and the entire governance structures to translate this into action. Gujarat had 11 universities in 2001. Today, there are 44, including a Sanskrit university. What the Congress and its communal allies (who derive their political sustenance only by keeping Hindu Muslim division alive for ever) cannot stomach is that Modi has kept Gujarat riot free for the last 12 years, something that never happened from 1925 for 75 years, the worst and with the most bloody riots happening under the Congress rule. But even before that, the Congress felt severely jolted. They panicked at what Kishwar calls "whirlwind Muslim support" for Modi for his first election from Rajkot in February 2002. 28 Muslim organisations declared support for him, prominent Muslim leaders and Muslim women campaigned for him and in booths where there was more than 70% Muslim population he surged ahead. His subsequent election victories, despite BJP dissidents joining hands with Congress, confirm without doubt that Modi's government is completely inclusive, and Gujarat Muslims have not succumbed to Congress lies and hate campaign. The Congress had to sever the friendship between Muslims and the liberal face of the BJP, and it was willing to play with fire to engineer the same, including hobnobbing with the ISI, or participate in the riots, for which there is evidence from none other than Maulana Madni, of Jamiat Ulema e Hind. There is also enough evidence, corroborated by K.P.S. Gill, that Modi took every necessary step to ensure taking control of the situation — indefinite curfew, shoot at sight orders, putting the entire 70,000 police force on public duty, deployment of rapid action force and CISF, request to the Centre for 10 companies of CRPF. Army assistance was requested on the first day. Both the Nanavati Commission and the Supreme Court monitored SIT have found nothing against Modi, and have rubbished the canards spread by his enemies. I appeal to the Muslims of India not to become victims of the hate propaganda and falsehoods that are being tenaciously and relentlessly pursued by the Congress against Modi. Please understand that the Congress aims to permanently convert you as the "other", so that you will always be on the fringes, and will always have to depend upon them for support. I suggest that you enquire from your brothers in Gujarat, and find out for yourself regarding whatever Modi has done for the prosperity of the Muslim community. Give him a drop of affection and trust and judge for yourself the goodwill he has for your community. I have had access to most of the vital papers pertaining to the Godhra episode, and I can give a moral guarantee that I have not seen a single action or statement from Modi that suggests any communalism or divisiveness or hatred for the Muslims that the Congress has accused him of. And such a statement from me would carry some credibility, as one thing even my worst detractors cannot accuse me of is communalism. Many people may not be aware that my dear daughter Rani adopted from an orphanage a small Muslim boy of 6 months, and brought him up. My grandson uses my name, Ali Jethmalani, and even though he wanted to become Hindu, we counselled him to come of age and then choose. I need not say anymore.

SAFER INDIA

www.saferindia.com - This is a site of an NGO started by Ms Kiran Bedi. 

 You can go to this site and log your complaint regarding any crime if the police at your place is not accepting your complaint.  Then this NGO will mail your complaint to the DGP of your area.  You can also use this mail as the legal document in case of filing a case in the court of judgment. 

This is to be noted that this site is directly administered by Ms Kiran Bedi, so all your mails directly go to her.

IN SUPPORT OF NARENDRA MODI

         This is an excellent analysis of current political scenario of our country by Ajay Shukla, IAS . The author retired from the Indian Administrative Service in December 2010. He is a keen environmentalist and loves the mountains- he has made them his home.

Why I shall support Modi in 2014..?
By : Avay Shukla July 1, 2013 20:30

I have been getting more and more worried over the last year or so at the direction( or lack of it) in which our country is headed. It is
like a runaway plane falling from the skies and we are plummeting past one alarming indicator after another– inflation, economic slowdown, falling rupee, complete break-down of law and order, ever emboldened Naxalites, total internalization of corruption, an administration that answers to no one, complete lack of governance, cronyism on a scale never seen before, a brazen lack of accountability, public intimidation of constitutional authorities, a judicial system that has all but collapsed, environmental disasters that no one knows how to cope with, complete paraplegia of decision-making at all levels in government, appeasement of ” minorities” and Other sections that are reaching ridiculous and dangerous levels, dynastic politics at the Centre and the states reminiscent of the Mughal era…….

I could go on and on but after some time the mind becomes numb and registers only one emotion——-IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE. Another five years of this and we would be well on our way to becoming a failed state and joining the ranks of Pakistan, Haiti and Somalia.

The general elections of 2014 offer us one last chance to redeem ourselves. I have been on this mortal coil for 62 years and have never voted for the BJP but have, after much thought, decided to support MODI in 2014. This is considered a heresy in most neo-liberal circles in India today but we have to go beyond mere labelling and stereotyping to understand my decision.

But before I go on to Mr. Modi himself, let us review the context in which this decision has been taken. The state of the country is self evident in Para one above.

The next question then is: What are the alternatives or choices that we as voters have?

The Congress will only perpetuate the present mess-even more worrying and dangerous is the fact that, where the Congress to return to power, it would consider it to have a renewed mandate to carry on as before.

In any case, who in the country would lead the Congress- a reluctant dynastic or an ageing economist who has discovered his true skills lie in politics, or a backroom puppeteer? Or, God forbid, all three? ( Seriously, this is a possibility- after all not one of these three want to shoulder sole accountability, and they may reason that if a dual power center can ensure two terms, a triple may be good for even more!) No, to my mind the Congress is not an option.

Who else, then?

Well, if we scrape the bottom of the barrel assiduously we will come up with Mamta Banerjee [TMC], Mulayam Yadav [ SP], Nitish Kumar [JDU], Naveen Patnaik[ BJD], Jayalalitha[ AIADMK], Sharad Pawar[ NCP] and Mayawati ( BSP). There is no need to discuss their achievements or ideologies at a national level (incidentally, not even one of them has a remotely national outlook or ideology since they cannot see beyond pandering shamelessly to the vote banks in their respective states) because they are state( not even regional) leaders and none of them can hope to be Prime Minister on the strength of their own
Parties.

They all realize this, of course, hence the idea which periodically emerges like a skin rash, of a Third or Federal Front. This didn't work even when a Third Front could agree on a leader (as in the case of I.K. Gujral or Deve Gowda). How on earth will it work when every one of the state leaders mentioned above feels that he or she has been reincarnated precisely to become the Prime Minister of India?

The negotiations for choosing a PM( if the Front comes up with the numbers, that is) will resemble one of those WWF fights where about six hunks are put into the ring to beat the daylights out of each other till one of them is left standing to claim the crown. I cannot see all of them agreeing on even one policy issue, whether it is reservations, industrial stimulus, foreign policy, disinvestment, environmental protection, centre-state relations etc. If they come to power at the Centre, the paraplegia of today will become quadriplegia tomorrow.

Fortunately, in any case, they can never muster the 274 seats required-it will be difficult for them to reach even hundred even if they do very well in their states.

So a Third Front is a non-starter, and voting for any of these parties will only help the Congress by dividing the anti-congress vote. [ You will have noticed that I have not mentioned Mr. Karat of the CPM. That's because he's become like a flat bottle of Coca-Cola- earlier he was all fizz and no substance: now even the fizz has gone].

That leaves only the BJP, with its historical baggage of the RSS, Hindutva, Ramjanmbhoomi (by the way, this baggage also includes five years of exemplary governance under Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004)-perhaps enough baggage to dissuade me from voting for the party. Except that this time the BJP has an add-on: Narendra Modi. And that, to my mind, adds value to the party and makes the crucial difference.

Modi has been reviled ad-nausea m by the “secular” parties and sections of the elite media for many years for the 2002 riots in Gujarat, by the former not because of any love for the Muslims( as I hope to show later) but simply in order to appropriate the Muslim vote, and by the latter because they have to keep whipping somebody in order to get their TRPs- in India only extremes succeed. Modi has been tried and condemned by them not on the basis of facts but by an opportunistic mixture of innuendo, presumption, speculation, half-truths, hear say. Look at the facts. There was a horrendous orgy of killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 where about 2000 of them were massacred. Some of Modi’s ministers and many BJP/ VHP workers were involved: quite a few of them have also been convicted, the trials of many still go on.

The Supreme Court set up at least three SITs and is itself monitoring the investigations. Many PILs have been filed in the SC and the High Court accusing Modi of master-minding these massacres. In not a single case has either the Supreme Court, the High Court or the SITs found any evidence of Modi’s personal complicity.

Yes, they have held that he could have controlled the situation better- but nothing beyond that in-spite of ten years of frenetic drum beating and sustained vilification.

Now look at the other set of facts. Under Modi’s current watch, perhaps for the first time in India, people have been actually convicted for communal rioting and murder- more than 200 convictions, with about 130 of them sentenced to life imprisonment. All the communal massacres in India since Independence have not resulted in even one tenth of these convictions.

Modi’s government has to be given some credit for this: yes, the investigations were carried out by the SIT and not by Modi’s police; yet Modi could, if he was so inclined, have interfered covertly in the whole process by asking his officials not to cooperate, by intimidating witnesses, influencing judges, conveying hints to prosecutors- something which, as we all know too well, governments of all political hues in India have mastered.

Modi could have done what the Congress has done so successfully in Delhi in three other high-profile cases being monitored by the Supreme Court- the Commonwealth Games Scam, the 2G case, and Coalgate ( not to mention also the Sikh massacres of 1984): have these cases made any headway? has wrong-doing been proved in a single instance? has anyone been convicted?

No,sir, these investigations will drag on and on till they are lost in the mists of time. Supreme Court monitoring cannot ensure justice unless the govt. of the day allows its agencies to function- it is to Modi’s credit that he did so allow them.

Compare this with the manner in which the police in Delhi have been emasculated to protect some senior Congress leaders in the 1984 Sikh carnage- everyone in Delhi knows, even after 27 long years, that their hands are dipped in blood, but the evidence will never reach the courts; the recent acquittal of Sajjan Kumar only confirms this.

The biggest stigmata on Modi is the charge that he is ” communal” and not ” secular”.

All (non-NDA) political parties never tire of tom-tomming this from the roof-tops and consider this their trump card to ensure that he will never achieve his Grand-slam at the centre. But after eleven years this is beginning to wear thin and people are beginning to question the assumptions behind this charge and even the definition of what constitutes ” communal” and “secular.”

Nirad Choudhry had long ago given his opinion that India is the Continent of Circe where humans are turned into beasts-it is also the graveyard of the Oxford Dictionary where the meanings of words are turned on their heads to suit political exigencies! So ”communal” today means a Hindu who is not ashamed of saying he is a Hindu, and ”secular” means a Hindu who panders to other religions in order to get their votes at the next elections!


By this inverse definition Modi is considered communal- notwithstanding that not a single Hindu- Muslim riot has taken place in Gujarat under his watch since 2002, notwithstanding that the BJP got 17% of the Muslim vote in the Assembly elections in the state earlier this year, notwithstanding that the party won five of the eight seats which had a dominant Muslim voter base, notwithstanding that the average Muslim in Gujarat is much better off economically than his counterpart in Assam, UP or Bihar( headed by ” secular” parties).

Compare this with the record of the Samajwadi party in UP where more than a hundred communal riots have taken place in less than two years, with the Congress in Assam where hundreds of Muslims were butchered last year and at least three hundred thousand of them are still languishing in relief camps with no hope of ever returning to their villages, with the Congress ruled Maharashtra where hundreds of Muslims were killed with the active help of the police after the Bombay blasts. ( Needless to say there do not appear to have been any convictions in any of these pogromes). And MODI is communal?

I am a Hindu but I stopped going into any temple twenty years ago because I was sickened by the rapacious behavior of their pundits. I am no longer a practicing Hindu in a public, ritualistic sense and frankly I don’t know how many of the religious beliefs I retain, but I still consider myself a Hindu because Hinduism is more than just a religion- it is a culture, a civilisation, a way of life.


But in the Kafkaesque India of today if you were to proclaim that you are a Hindu ( even though you have equal respect and regard for all other religions) you would be branded ” communal”- this is what political discourse has been reduced to by our politicians. And being ” secular” no longer means treating all religions equally: it means splintering society into a myriad ” minorities” ( another perversion of the Oxford Dictionary) and then pandering to such of them as suit you in your naked pursuit of power.
In the process India has been converted into a complex jigsaw of minorities, castes, tribes, classes, sections and what have you. The British could have learnt plenty from us about Divide and Rule! But more and more right thinking people are beginning to question this recipe for disaster, and I am one of them.

India is 80% Hindu- why should one then have to be apologetic about proclaiming that one is a Hindu ? We have been ruled and exploited and vandalized for eight hundred years by Muslims and for another two hundred years by Christians, and yet we have accorded these two religions a special status as ” minorities” with privileges that the Hindus don’t have. Has any other country in the world ever displayed such a spirit of accommodation and egalitarianism? Is there a more secular civilisation in the world? And yet, a Hindu who says he is a Hindu is considered communal!

Does a Hindu have to prove his secular credentials time and again by greater levels( or depths) of appeasement of other religions simply so that they can continue to be vote bank fodder for political parties? Modi has had the courage to raise these questions and is therefore being reviled by those political parties whose apple carts he is threatening to upset. But people are beginning to pay attention. Modi is not considered secular because he is proud to be a Hindu and refuses to give doles or concessions to any religious group( including Hindus, but that is conveniently glossed over) beyond what is provided in the constitution and the laws of the land. He believes this weakens the social fabric of the country and that even handed development is the best guarantee for equitable prosperity for all.

He is not considered secular ( and instead is branded as communal) because he says publicly that he is proud to be a Hindu. And has he done anything blatantly or provocatively pro-Hindu in the last ten years? There is not a single instance of this and yet he is vilified as communal and anti-minorities by the same party that presided over more than two hundred anti-Muslim riots in the seventies and eighties in Gujarat, that massacred 6000 Sikhs in 1984, that lit the fuse in Ayodhya by installing an icon of Ram in the mosque there, that failed to take any action when the Babri masjid was being razed to the ground! Modi has carefully distanced himself from any public support of Hindutva, has kept the VHP and the Bajrang Dal on a tight leash in Gujarat ever since he came to power there, and has even incurred the wrath of the RSS for not toeing the line on their purely religious agenda. It takes time, and some mistakes, to attain maturity; the Modi of today is not the Modi of 2002: then he was still in the pracharak mould of the RSS, inexperienced in the exercise of power, lacking administrative experience. He has now developed into a politician with a vision, an administrator who has delivered to his people and caught the fancy of the entire corporate world in India and abroad. Rahul Gandhi has been around in politics for almost the same length of time but has still not progressed beyond his epiphanic perception that India is a bee-hive.

Pause a while to honestly compare Modi’s qualities with his peers in the political firmament. His integrity is impeccable, both personal and vicarious.Even Mr. Manish Tewari has not been able to charge him on this score, and that’s saying something! I am not aware of a single major scam unearthed during his term( compare this with the Congress either in Maharashtra or at the Centre: the Congress has more skeletons in its cupboard than a graveyard does).

Modi has no family to promote or to insure against inflation for the next hundred years( compare this with any other party leader, all of whom have given an entirely new meaning to the term ” joint family”- brothers, uncles, wives, sons, sons-in-law, nephews-all happily and jointly looting the nation’s resources). Modi has a vision and a road map for the future and he has demonstrated in Gujarat that he can implement his vision.

No other major leader of the parties that are vilifying him comes even close to comparing with him in this respect- Manmohan Singh once had a vision but his unique concept of ” coalition dharma” has ensured that he now cannot see, or hear, or talk; Rahul Gandhi cannot see beyond bee-hives and boats that rise with the tide, Sharad Pawar cannot see the woods for the sugar-cane stalks, Mulayam Singh has been fixated on the Prime Minister’s chair for so long that he has now started hallucinating; Nitish Kumar’s vision is a peculiar bi-focal which enables him to see only Muslims and OBCs; Navin Patnaik, being erudite and sophisticated must be having a vision but he has not deigned to share it with anyone yet; Mayawati cannot see beyond statues of herself and of elephants; and as for Mamta Banerjee, she is colour blind-she can only see red. Modi’s track record as an administrator inspires confidence in his ability to play a role at the national level.

He sets specific goals, provides the resources and then gives his bureaucrats a free hand to operate. He has ensured water availability to towns and to greater number of farmers, Gujarat now has 24X7 power and has even offered to sell power to other states.

Modi has realised long before his peers that future growth can only come from the manufacturing sector since the past stimulus provided by the service sector is now bottoming out, and has prepared his state to attract capital: perennial roadblocks which have bedeviled other states- land acquisition, labour issues, law and order, lack of decision making, cronyism- have all been sorted out. It is no surprise then that Gujarat has been receiving the second highest amount of investment funds after Maharashtra.

His opponents, looking for anything to denigrate his achievements, cavil that Gujarat has always been a progressive state and no credit goes to Modi for all this. True, Gujarat ( and Gujaratis) have always been entrepreneurial and progressive, but any economist can tell them that the higher you are on the performance scale, the more difficult it is to make incremental gains- and these gains Modi has been making year after year. Gujarat has consistently been among the top five states in just about all economic, social and human development indicators, and far above the national figures.

Here are some figures I picked up in the Hindustan Times of June 12, 2013:

[a]      Infant Mortality Rate
                                                                                       2005           2010
          Gujarat                                                                  54               44
          Haryana                                                                60               48
          Orissa                                                                   75               60
          INDIA                                                                    58               47

[b]      Access to Safe Drinking Water (in%)
                                                                                      2002           2011
          Gujarat                                                                 84.1            90.3
          Maharashtra                                                        79.8            83.4
          Andhra                                                                 80.1            90.5
         INDIA                                                                     77.9            85.5

[c]      Poverty Reduction (in%)
                                                                                     2004-5         2009-10
          Gujarat                                                                 31.6             23
          Karnataka                                                            33.3             23.6
          MP                                                                        48.6             36.7
          Orissa                                                                  57.2             37
          INDIA                                                                    37.2             29.8

[d]      Annual GDP Increase (in%) From 2005-6 to 2012-13
                  

          Gujarat                                                                10.3
          Uttarakhand                                                        12.36
          MP                                                                         8.82
          Maharashtra                                                         9.97
          Delhi                                                                    11.39

Modi is no paragon of virtue. He is arrogant, does not allow a second rung of leadership to emerge, brooks no opposition, is impatient and authoritative, is not a consensus builder. But then we are not seeking to canonize a saint but looking for a political leader who can get this country out of the morass that its present stock of politicians has got us into. We are looking for someone who can be decisive rather than justify inaction under the garb of seeking an elusive ”consensus”. We are looking for someone who has the courage to have a vision and the skills to translate it into reality. We are looking for someone who will work for the country and not for his ”joint family”.

We are looking for someone who can restore our identities as INDIANS and not merely as Brahmins or Scheduled castes or Muslims or Backward castes.


We are looking for someone who will not pander to religions and be truly secular. And we are looking for someone who will not be ashamed to say that he is a Hindu in the land that gave birth to the most tolerant and enlightened religion this world has seen.

Modi may fail- in fact, there are good chances that he will. But he at least promises change, whereas the others promise only more of the same. He offers us Hope. Shouldn't he be given a chance?