Praveen Patil's blog

Circa 2009: Making sense of India Part 2: Perpetual continuity

Posted Thu, 08/06/2009 - 00:15 by Praveen Patil

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the weakest leader to have led India since Bahadur Shah Zafar. He is a fantastic human being no doubt about that may be a great economist too and undoubtedly India is indebted to his original economic liberalization policies in his stint as the finance minister in early 90’s. Unfortunately that is where his list of achievement ends. Zafar, the last Mughal king was also a great human being and a 1st grade poet but history only remembers him as a weakling. History, despite being a mere account of victors over the vanquished, has never been kind to cowards for it can never accommodate capitulation even in the most gloriously rationalized form. Mr. Singh will always be remembered as an accident that happened to India after a certain fair skinned lady relinquished the throne in an act of political master stroke of 2004.

Circa 2009: Making sense of India Part 1: Status quo

Posted Mon, 08/03/2009 - 02:14 by Praveen Patil

Verdict 2009 has been out since almost a month now and the “new-old” establishment is well entrenched in New Delhi, Pakistan is swinging from Taliban style anarchy to US sponsored democracy, Nepal is stuck between Maoist “rock” and theocratic “hard” place, Sri Lanka has emerged from its war on terrorism and is contemplating quasi-ethnic-cleansing, Bangladesh is stuck in a geopolitical void and is hypnotically jaywalking backward in time, global economy is either tethering on the verge of collapse or is playing hide and seek with capital markets, amidst all this calm chaos monsoon has decided to give a go by, but New Delhi is calm...