Random Thoughts - Pattabhi Sitaraman

One more set of by-elections have been done and dusted in which the ruling party in the center and the state of UP had lost both the crucial elections to the LS.  The constituency that was won by a comfortable majority of over 300,000 votes by the then BJP candidate and the present CM of the state of UP, Yogi Adityanath, has been lost to the combined SP-BSP candidate by a little over 20000 votes. In the 2014 elections to the LS, all the parties were fighting for all the seats independently and now the coming together of the major political parties in the state of UP against the ruling BJP has spelt troubles for the BJP.  In the neighboring state of Bihar the ruling JDU could win only one seat and the other seat had gone to its arch-rival RJD.   In the process the BJP had lost a comfortable majority of 282 seats in the Lok Sabha. Now the majority is tottering on a slim one or two seats, though the alliance partners have not yet withdrawn their support. What coul...

The invading marauders from the central Asian plateau and from the north west wastelands left an indelible mark on the country over the centuries they ruled the country. The armies that crossed the Bolan and Khyber mountain passes in the western Himalayas, landed on the plains of Sindhu and Ganga and were enamored by the rich tapestry of the place and the lifestyle of the people inhabiting it. They had never seen such richness in their lives. Their lives had been only in killing each other, eking out a living facing the harsh elements of nature, be it the biting cold of winter or the searing heat of the summer. They had mostly been nomads fearing their lives were permanently in danger. Very few settled down in places and these settlements gave way to cities over a period of time. These marauding armies when they defeated the local kings in the Sindhu and Ganga plains,  set up their own rules over the north and north western part of undivided country. They started calling this...

Atal Behari Vajpayee was the prime minister and his close friend and co-founder of BJP Lal Krishna Advani was the president of the party in 2004.  The government under the ABV leadership had done tremendously well and the pet scheme of the Prime Minister was the linking of the four corners of the country with national high ways of international standards and criss-crossing the diagonal highways to the four corners.  He even quoted John F Kennedy to remind people that better roads are mandatory for any development to take place and India to take its rightful place in the comity of nations.  On seeing the electoral victories in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh and the wonderful results favoring the ruling party BJP, ABV thought the same could be replicated and called for early elections to the national parliament in 2004, albeit only by a few months in advance.  The results were disastrous for the ruling party and the congress was able to stitch a coali...

We have been reading and hearing in the TV news channels the build up of artillery and other fire power along the border on the eastern front and in Doklam plateau by China.  China had been trying to boss around in the Indian Ocean and in the immediate neighbourhood of India for some time now.  The Chinese game plan has been to go to the help of the nations surrounding India and liberally lend for development.  The OROB and CPEC are two of the actions of the Chinese government in getting the government of the day in those countries to agree for development with the loan assistance from China.  In Srilanka they tried to get the Trincomalee port development, in Pakistan they took up Gawdar port and in Maldives they had taken up another port development.  In all these countries, the Chinese government had extensively invested through its development bank by way to G2G agreements.  These agreements provide for the Chinese government to use these facilities fo...