A few firsts would be crop up when Manmohan Singh takes oath as the Prime Minister. The one that fascinated me was a phrase that emanated from India Inc. "With that India will have its first professional Prime Minister."

That sentence summed up the nations expectation. As Manmohan gingerly steps into South block, he will know that the coming months could make or break the way India fondly remembers him. While in early 1990's, as the Finance Minister sitting in the North block he ushered in reforms, steered the country away from impending bankruptcy and set the economy on a steady jog, this time around, his job promises to be doubly tiring.

Not only has he to contend with the Vajpayee legacy, but with the perils of an ambivalent coalition, demands of the insipid left, wishy-washy thaw with neighbours, compulsions to cut populist measures and shove in further reforms... the list is endless.

Here's is wishing Mr clean and the thoroughbred professional all the best.

Down but not out

Vajpayee in his poetic self

What Road Should I Go Down?
Honour lost at busy crossroads,
Knights defeated by pawns:
Do I make my final move, or do I withdraw from battle?
What road should I go down?
A dream was born, and died,
The garden dried up in the season of spring:
Do I gather these scattered leaves, or do I fashion a new universe?
What road should I go down?
Two days, on loan, is all I’ve earned
In a bargain already lost:
Do I take stock of each moment, or do I squander what little remains?
What road should I go down?

The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for people who break them. The GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It Grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads.
And if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It dos not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials- Robert Kennedy

Sonia Gandhi paid heed to her inner voice and did a Gandhi. She preferred to remain a chanakya, a strategist rather than lead the country.

While her fans said, that was a master stroke, her inexperience came to the fore. She appeared unsure on what she wanted to do.

A headline in one of the UK based dailies read, Sonia bows out in tears. While that headline was purely sensational with nothing in it to prove that, it could very well have been true.

However it remains, though she did not win a clear mandate she was not rejected by the voters as well. That leaves her with all the room to head the government.

But the three day drama had the rumour mill going. Here are a few samples

1) Her children especially Rahul prevailed over her and told her to stay away from a post that had fatally consumed his father and grandma.

2) Kalam had quoted a few articles in the constitution, which could have gone against her. These mainly pertained to 'adherence to a foreign nation'.

3) Sonia felt that as the mandate was not for the congress and their allies, but only against the NDA, she did not have the legitimacy to rule

4) The armed forces had expressed their dissent

5) The malicious campaign against her by the BJP!

Another point that could have influenced her, was market sentiments. The day she was touted to be PM, the stock market lost 789 points, an all time high. And when Manmohan was proposed the markets actually gained 120 points.

Just a line to sympathise with her, Maybe we should have given her a bit more time and an opportunity.

Still on elections

A though provoking write up in Hindu, but from P Sainath, aptly titled Mass media vs mass reality But should add, I don't go with everything he voices.

Excerpts from the passage

Will beging with his closing lines

As for the media, there is a great and urgent need for introspection. The failure of journalism was far more predictable than the poll results. For years now, the media have stopped talking to ordinary people. The labour and agriculture beats in newspapers are almost extinct. The media have decided that 70 per cent of the population does not make news. The electorate has decided otherwise.

The first thing the election results drive home is the sheer disconnect between the Indian elite and the Indian people. Here was a leadership that thought the `India Shining' campaign would bring it success. A part of the elite — even those with the Congress party — went further than that. They believed the claims of `India Shining' itself were valid and true. The dispute was over the patent rights on the shine. Did those belong to the Bharatiya Janata Party or to the Congress?

Also rubbed in yet again was, of course, that second huge disconnect. That between mass media and mass reality. Little in the media output of these past five years had prepared audiences for anything like this outcome. The polls succeeded where journalism failed. They brought back to the agenda the issues of ordinary Indians. Deeper analysis must await more data. However, some broad contours seem clear.

It took some time to sink in. but here I'am keyboarding but yet to recover from the reversal.

Before the Indian general election, few people thought they would be analysing the legacy of prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. Yet on Thursday, the man many were sure of a fourth term in office, appeared on TV screens to deliver details of his resignation and, for one last time as premier, list his achievements.

While the bottomline is Vajpayee is no longer India's Prime Minister the only consolation is he is better leading a strong opposition than a week government. The baton to hold the vague coalition is with Congress and it is now the test begins for them.

Here are words that could mirror the nation's mindset now. One from rediff.com
Today, let us not forget Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the statesman who governed this country for six years may have bowed out after the National Democratic Alliance's defeat in the Lok Sabha election, but his legacy will linger on for many years.

Vir Sanghvi writing in Hindustan Times says,

The premier's exit was not the one he expected and not the one he deserved. "Regardless of the circumstances of the Bharatiya Janata Party's shock defeat on Thursday, history will remember Atal Behari Vajpayee as one of India's finest prime ministers."

As for me, i'll repeat what i deliberated with my pals, most of whom nodded in assent. If there is anybody you can sympathise with, it is Vajpayee and the outgoing Karnataka Chief Minister SM Krishna. These two were men who valued ethics more than politics.

A point to ponder

The lunatic you work for
If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath

The Economist commenting on award-winning documentary film, “The Corporation”, says, “Unlike much of the soggy thinking peddled by too many anti-globalisers, “The Corporation” is a surprisingly rational and coherent attack on capitalism's most important institution.”

The documentary attempting a balancing act, has some room for the business empires, referred to as The Corporation here. It states the problem does not lie with the people who run the companies. For instance it sympathises with Mark Moody-Stuart, a former boss of Shell, Sam Gibara, boss of Goodyear and Ray Anderson, boss of Interface carpets.

Although the doucumentary claim ownership of the company-as-psychopath idea, it predates them by a century. It evinces that bureaucracies have flourished because of their efficient and rational division and application of labour. However as cogs in any powerful machine, here people in pursuit of the collective organisational goal—profits— parcel out their soul or alienate themselves from human.

Yet, the greater potential tyranny comes out as not the bureaucracies of capitalism, but the state bureaucracies of socialism, according to documentary. The Economists quotes, “The psychopathic national socialism of Nazi Germany, communism of Stalinist Soviet and fascism of imperial Japan (whose oppressive bureaucratic machinery has survived well into the modern era) surely bear out. Infinitely more powerful than firms and far less accountable for its actions, the modern state has the capacity to behave even in evolved western democracies as a more dangerous psychopath than any corporation can ever hope to become.”