Random Thoughts - Pattabhi Sitaraman

The elections are over, done and dusted and the BJP had come out victorious bagging more than 300 seats and the NDA clocking over 350 seats. The two southern states Kerala and Tamilnadu defied the national trend and did not elect a single member of the BJP to the parliament. Even the sitting member and union minister from Kanyakumary constituency was defeated. Let us take a loot at post poll issues because of this peculiar position of these two states. The BJP and its allies will elect the prime minister as the leader of the party and Sri Modi will be sworn in as the next Prime Minister after the new Lok Sabha is formed.  He will form a new government. His oft repeated slogan Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas is going to drive the government policies and plans in the next five years.  His speech to the newly elected members of the parliament of the alliance is a pointer towards this. The under performance of the party in a few states is not going to deter the government in taking ...

The basic mistake of the BJP, in the two southern states where it lost heavily, is the over dependence on a few issues which it was trying to encash for political victory in the hustings.  However, the party failed to read the ground realities correctly.  The choice of candidates for the constituencies also created a flutter among local people who felt that the candidate was being foisted on them.  The famed approach of the national president of the BJP had failed in these two states.  In Kerala the party was rooting for the Sabarimala issue which brought the voters in drove to vote for the UDF and not to the BJP.  Likewise, the corruption as an issue in Tamilnadu steeped in corruption for over five decades did not cut much ice with the voters.  The main opposition party in the state successfully used the shooting incident in the town where the missionaries backed protesters were fighting for closure of the private industrial unit to target the ruling p...

The main two parties had been projecting themselves as Dravidian and atheists.  When the former Chief Minister was alive, her open support to temples under the care of the government and frequent visit to temples tilted the scales of the AIADMK in favour of the Hindus and temples. However, the main opposition party DMK had been continuing its tirade against the Hindus and their religious practices, while keeping mum about similar practices in other religions throwing to the winds the secular aspect of governance whenever they were ruling the state.  Added to this, the fringe elements who were totally not seen nor heard during the former Chief Minister’s life time, started appearing like mushrooms after a summer rain. These fringe elements and parties had been actively canvassing against the Hindu religion and practices with an eye on the money received from various other religious bodies from abroad through the various NGOs and the places of worship.  The nascent party ...

The biggest democratic exercise in the world had been completed successfully, though marred by a few law & order problems, otherwise the conduct of elections had been generally peaceful.   Kudos the Election Commission of India.   There had been attempts to rile the Election Commission and create confusion and suspicion in the minds of the public during and immediately after the last phase of elections was over. First there was doubt raised about the reliability of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) and the votes polled in there; later the safety and security of the machines under the care of the different district level electoral officers.   Some allegations were raised about the EVM being transported in private vehicles.   The opposition parties who never questioned the EVM or the ECI while the state elections were conducted and won by them, started casting aspersions on the Commission itself about its neutrality. This was compounded by one of the commissio...

I happened to read the article titled "Modi - The divider in Chief" in Times magazine which set me thinking.  The country was divided, you want a better word - use partitioned instead, on religious lines in 1947 and the persons responsible for the same were M A Jinnah who wanted nothing but a Muslim dominant Pakistan, J Nehru who at any cost wanted to be the prime minister of India, his mentor in chief M K Gandhi and the last viceroy of British India who oversaw the partition Louis Mountbatten, the first Earl Mountbatten of Burma.  The country went through the birth pangs and was through a lot of agony in the initial years.  The failed concept of socialism was experimented by the governments headed by different persons from the very first prime minister, though most of the times the persons from his family were the prime ministers. Nehru was abhorrent to the idea of communism and for a brief period of time in independent India the communist party was banned which dr...

There is a lot of difference between the old age homes that are run by some of the NGOs or the government and the retirement homes run on no profit basis by the residents themselves or the promoters as a commercial venture.  The high court of Madras had accepted the arguments put forth by the residents of Tapovan, a retirement community home in Coimbatore and modified its earlier order in respect of the old age homes which included all the homes in which senior citizens reside.  However, this blog is not about the difference between these two or the judgement relating to this.   Brahmins, from time immemorial had been known to travel a lot for learning and for earning their daily bread. It was one of the most important duties of the Brahmin to learn and teach.  In search of knowledge the Brahmins used to travel from one place to other to learn from knowledgeable persons from both other Brahmins and people in other vocations. There are stories in Upanishads o...