Tamil Pride it should matter to every Indian ...

                     Legality is a matter of power, not justice this uncomfortable thought is gaining credence in the state of Tamil Nadu as each day is passing and this worries me, On the day when India was celebrating the Republic day Tamil Nadu was tense, because Tamil pride had been hurt and was left to lick its wounds with the kind of humiliation that it had only experienced at the hands of fascistic, religious and ethnic forces that did not share the Indian identity, this humiliation that was meted out to the Tamil pride was not by some fringe group but by the state itself which is what makes this incident a significant event in the history of Indian and Tamil Nadu politics. What happened during the last one week in the way of Lakhs of Tamils congregating at the historic Marina beach, before the dreadful violence that was unleashed by the police on the people protesting peacefully on 23rd was a celebration of the Tamil identity, an unanimous cry to the powers that be to do away with the malice's that very much stands in the way of the progress of our country as a whole, the protest wasn’t just about jallikattu it was also about much larger issues that we Indians have failed repeatedly to address with a firm stance, like doing away with corrupt political parties which have ceased to speak for the common man, that have ceased to represent the Tamil Pride, about the mindless exploitation of our environment by crony capitalists  for profit. “Tamil Pride”  do those words make you uncomfortable, I know it might make many who don’t speak the Tamil language, the problem lies in that uncomfortable feeling not in the people exhibiting their Tamil pride, Tamil pride is an aspect of the diverse India out of which arises our spirit to be united, and isn't that what which binds us all together as a nation and allows us to exude the exuberance of unity in diversity, in which we all take so much pride in ?, 

                   I have always wondered why people in Kashmir behave the way they do, why Kashmir is always on the boil?, I think as a person born and brought up here in Tamil Nadu, and having spoken the Tamil language all my life I understand their psyche now, because I have had a glimpse of what might be going through the minds of every kashmiri youth when Indian Policemen barge into their houses with guns in their hands and with a ferocious appetite to terrorize the living will out of their nimble and naive hearts. The Tamil Nadu police on 23rd went on a rampage and terrorized people who were seeking answers for questions which was in the interest of every Indian, those innocent harmless people did that as Tamil’s who take immense pride in the language they speak and the Tamil culture that they revere, the state has humiliated that feeling by employing a kind of unimaginable brutal force on those people calling them intolerant and anti-nationals, this unpardonable action by the state has left its mark on the pages of Indian political history. People who congregated at marina were being argumentative not intolerant, and we Indians have always celebrated that argumentative spirit that we all carry in us. This disrespect that has been meted out to the Tamil Pride has come as a shock not just to Tamilians living in the state of Tamil Nadu but to every Tamil speaking Indian living across the world.

                       A few in the media like to argue that anti-nationals had hijacked the protest conducted by students, well to me an anti national element is someone who doesn't care about the lives of people around him, someone who would cause harm to others knowingly, someone who would get into peoples houses to terrorize them by breaking things which forms the basis for their livelihood, someone who would set fire to public property, an auto a hut (You would know what i mean if you had seen those videos showing police men and women turning into arsonists ), to me an anti-national is not someone who raises slogans against Modi, Panee'selvam or Sasikala, or for that matter against Pepsi & coke, or peta.

                   Nothing can be as respectful an act towards democracy as showing ones dissent in the most peaceful way, if one argues that there were Anti-Modi slogans my question is SO WHAT ?, Modi is not INDIA, if one argues that there were Anti-India slogans then my response to that would have been to ask him or her whoever was raising such slogan's to do so in their homes, i wouldn't go around beating them nor should the police, all that the police should have done is to arrest such people and should have argued their case in the court, Why did the state employ such brutal force against honest harmless argumentative Indian's  who take immense pride in the language they speak and the culture they revere?.

                   Tamil Pride has been hurt, if the Government of India doesn't take steps to assuage the situation by taking strict action against those police men and others and whoever ordered those police men to behave the way they did on 23rd January 2017 things might become rather unruly for the state to handle and will give rise to the idea of democracy languishing at the feet of power, which is not what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would have wanted to happen after having given all his life to make an highly principled  Indian way of democracy a reality for every ordinary human being .....
                                                                                   

                                                       - An Argumentative Indian 

























Prasanna Kumar 

Stillness that alone count's

The sagaciousness in the sun shine
streaming through the waltzing willows
leaves the meandering percipience
dwell in the surreality of the cast shadows,

As the glistening leaves twirl and flit
painting the azure halcyon sky
with their gushing fluttery thrill's,
as one that is made of pellucid joy
and one that is all about
not being mellow and coy,
I walk in commune with the trunks
in silence
that's closer to the roots
that's closer to the soil,
I walk on the carpet of sward
in exalted awe
over the suffused glitz,
as presented by the play of
the swooning breeze ,
as presented by the play of
the swooning breeze,
the light's, the shadows and the leaves
which is of an unknown ease.

An ease that is even beyond the summons
of the tranquil will
favors only everything about the mind that is in raptures
like the wind playing with quill
caressing enduing and aligning it
with the far corner's that's moored
to the deep sweltering innate esurience
only to make them all pronounce
their vevre to flow as lucid
as the sounds in waffling rhythm
that make's a beautiful music,

lilting away the ignorance
of that not as yet knows to see the "monde"
as new as that it is,
in the stillness that's abound
and in the stillness that which alone counts.



-- 











Prasanna Kumar 
Cogito ergo sum ......

February 10th the day when good sense prevailed

A man who needs so many advertisements to be in the limelight is not a leader, he is just a commodity. 

 

and what a picture this is, an ultimate tribute to the "common man"

Prasanna Kumar

Unauthorized views - 100 Days of Chicanery ....

                    There is a Joke going around in the virtual social spaces that if it comes to allowing the PR machinery that catapulted Mr.Modi to be the 15th Prime Minister of this country it would have very much liked to ascribe the winning of the US open by a Japanese to the unambiguous effect of  Mr. Modi visiting that players island nation, though it seems like the Japanese weren't much impressed by our Prime Ministers effort to be a crowd pleaser which is very much underscored by the very little that Mr. Modi has been able to achieve through his recent visit to Japan and also by the very little that Japanese media had to say about Mr. Modis first ever visit to japan as Prime minister of the worlds largest democracy. But, the media over here wasted no time in placating an expansion in the industrial output in the month of June as the result of Mr. Modi becoming the prime minister giving way to a new economic theory called the "Modis effect" which defies all the logic behind the science that has formulated many postulations which remain till today as the guiding principles for all and any kind of transaction that involves the consumer, the seller and the market, and its quite interesting to note that the very same media just dint know how to react to a drop of 0.5% in the industrial output in the month after, even while the stock market's were reaching for the skies. While its no secret that it took nearly 4 months for the previous government to reign in the gold imports which was weighing heavily on its current account, one obviously would like to see people of some repute in the financial media industry to recognize this aspect of time that separates two nodes one being the policy implementation and the other being its outcome before providing their blunt views related to economic affairs.
                       In the years after 2010 that led to the showdown in which BJP emerged with a thumping majority it has to be noted that our country was running current account deficit month after month and year after year even while it sporadically managed to run balance of payment surpluses Clearly indicative of the fact that we were running capital account surplus during those periods. Recently Global financial integrity came out with a report stating that in the year 2011-12 alone around $ 85 billion of black money has moved out of the country, if one were to take this little piece of information and put it in the context of trying to understand our huge current account deficit in the same period one can safely attribute it for the most part to the over invoicing of the imports. The kind of policies that this government is spearheading is no different from the previous governments, and so will have no particular effect on the real economy so to say if substantial efforts are not made to create real jobs that are the results of capital expansion and capacity expansion leading to an increase in the over all median wages (not the average wages) across all sectors, Government has to take active interest in maintaining a balance between the farm subsidies and subsidies that are given to industries which provide the farm inputs in a way that it doesn't become detrimental to the profits that the farmers can make, Governments inability to address this issue which affects over 60 % of our population has been one of the main reasons why we have so much of farmers getting trapped themselves in debt. And one very important question that every citizen in this country needs to ask is why has this government not taken any steps to become the trustee of all the offshore Bank accounts held by Indian passport holders in the tax havens by nationalizing them, if Mr. Modi can do that he wont have to go around the world seeking economic corporation from other countries for the rest of his tenure. Government cannot keep depending on giving up its stake in public sector units to fund its deficits year after year, killing the public sector in its entirety would be detrimental to the free market economy itself which is a topic in itself to discuss about, and its a view that i have contrary to the present larger understanding which the neoliberal free market economists have been able to establish. The immediate responsibility of this government  has to be to check the rate at which the indian finacial sector has been adding bad loans to their balance sheets, and more importantly India cannot afford to be a pushover anymore, it has to protect its interest at all cost if it wants to become a vibrant manufacturing hub. 


















































Prasanna Kumar  

Mobster.. Fraudster... Bankster.

Would i hedge against

the towers that are crumbling

in which i dwelled for years,

which sort of destroyed

the old mighty Kremlin

along with its spires,

the towers that once stood

mighty and tall

on the street named wall ,

even while it

threatens to wipe the meek

earnings of the young joes and all,

 knowing well that, to do that

 would mean to be

 being meaner

 than to maul,

Oh ! why would i care,

was i not the one who led

this entire thing to be here,

Well, i care not to guess and

i am sure you know me

by now to the bare,

that i am just not your ordinary banker,

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

Profits is what I would die to make

even while things seem huge

that are at stake,

like the pensions that people hold dear,

i treat them like they are already mine dear

Pocketing them as my  huge bonuses

even while i keep inducing

my books

quarter after quarter, year after year,

only with losses,

since the great debacle of 2008

which sure did matter,

and that’s why i decided not to create assets

as it dint pay much than to sneak my hands

into the ordinary blokes pockets,

and that's how i still get to keep

the porches and my private jets,

and that’s why

I am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

I securitize your mortgages,

calling them as debt obligations

knowing well that,

they would all end up as

collateral’s causing more damages,

and that's why i hedge against them

for well i know they would

end up as i expect them,

and that's how i wipe all the taint

off me,

by not wanting to be a saint

which is not for me,

and dying  to make profits for sure

which exactly is just me.

and that’s why

I am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

while wells fargo is busy lending

sub-prime auto loans,

i am hoping to see it soon load and get blown

for i see there a chance for me to hedge,

the chance that i created for myself

by bringing it to that edge,

and that's why i am not your ordinary banker

i am what they call

the wall street banker.

I kick the LIBOR rates around,

even as Barclay's and banks of all the royals

in Scotland and England

would swear by on all accounts,

that this game is being played fair,

though they might give in a bit
when forced to confront the court's
and other such affairs,

that at times it involves

the twisting of the arms

of the meager players around,

and the bending of the rules

to wrestle everyone to the ground,

and yet they would maintain,

what's being played is nothing but a fair game

a stance that the likes of meagre joes cannot but only acclaim,

as the bail-outs have become cliched,

in comes the bail-ins in a sleigh

to hot things a bit in the game,

where no one gets to hide

under their own shade,

because this should be the game

where i always should be winning,

and the ordinary Joe, which is you,

should always be losing,

and that's the only reason
i ever chose to be a banker,

and to make the likes of you 
call me

The wall street banker...
































Prasanna Kumar

Seriously Speaking - It feels like a Deja vu

                  How would you describe a government which after having promised the moon crash lands the dreams of millions into the pit where it becomes even harder to get paid to own the basic needs leave alone owning the inflation?, Capricious, inept, deceptive, Incompetent, whatever be the word that one may choose to use it would be right in describing this new government which is on a spree to fix the fiscal fallacies at the expense of the gullible ordinary people of this country who are being made to believe that spending more would result in the betterment of the services provided by the government, while the fact remains that its just an effort on the part of the government to make the people acknowledge that the money that they have will buy less than what it used to yesterday. In a slew of measures adopted to make the balance sheet of The Indian Railways look good the newly elected government instead of showing proclivities towards choosing to do away with inefficiencies chose to raise the fares by 14 %, inefficiencies that have been plaguing for a long time at every level, starting with nonexistent efficient traffic flow analysis that could be translated into efficient resource management to not doing away with the outdated factious three tire structure on departmental lines which have been weighing heavily on the performance of the state owned enterprise, the government should have looked into the real issues to arrive at real solution's. But Nope, it had promised the moon so it had to come up with a brilliant idea to make people get used to the fares it will be charging while it really starts sending them to the moon. This 14 % hike in the fares might end up adding more or less 8,000 crore rupees to the state enterprises kitty which on the whole generates an annual revenue of 1,20,000 crore rupees, this meager addition to its kitty will have no impact on its entire outlook if it chooses to ignore the anomalies or inefficiencies and sticks to the established huge bureaucratic structure.                                            Governments across the world which have been elected democratically when forced to confront the realities of the after math of major financial crisis's, whether it be the 70's secondary banking crisis or the mid 90's Asian crisis or the recent sub prime crisis which resulted in the undoing of the hegemony of major financial institutions have all adopted a common stance of fiscal prudence initially only to indulge in fiscal profligacy during the latter part of their tenure's. And so now while this Newly elected government keeps itself busy by raising import duty on sugar, and prices of diesel, petrol, LPG cylinders and of various other essential commodities adding to the burden of all ready thinly stretched finances of ordinary house holds in this country, one wonders why this government has not been proactive in taking any kind of concrete measure to recover the illegal wrongful and irregular expenditure made by Reliance industries limited to the tune of 1.8 billion $ ( more or less 9,000 crore rupees ) when it went about drilling for gas in the KG basin. Further more Reliance industries limited has been very adamant in not furnishing the records for these expenditures to the Comptroller of Auditor General, in a country where an NGO could face cancellation of its FCRA registration and could have its bank accounts frozen for not furnishing records for a mere 2 lakh Rupees, this government seems to be dillydallying with a huge smile on its face about what it should be doing with a company that has openly flouted the Norms and the laws of the land, even while being aware that Reliance industries limited is sitting on a huge cash pile of 80,000 crore Rupees. How should one construe this?, Should this be construed as the rap on the head of that ordinary citizen who voted for this government in response to the democratic right he was called to exercise, and as a mean conviviality to oblige him in return with a government that has the kleptocratic and oligarchic signature all over it which sure seems like would only aim to legitimize the ill ways of crony capitalism.

                       Though the BSE index has been gaining new ground since April and has almost soared 14 % the Real inflation figures for the same period have been hovering dangerously at around 10 %, clearly indicative of the fact that cheap money is being herded into the speculative market's not based on the underlying strong economic developments but rather based on the need to boost the prices of certain assets as a way to hedge against the risky ones that firms and companies hold in their books, and that's quite the reason why Despite the euphoria in the financial markets there have been very little investments made to add new productive capacity, almost all the major firms are preferring to buy back their shares and are engaging in mergers and acquisitions and continue to increase their debt in spite of  the lackluster short term prospects. This and the recent fiscal deficit figure of 45.6 % of the budget only points in the direction where there is going to be no respite from the inflation anytime soon even though the government has been making it clear about the step's that are being taken to cull the spiraling inflation. A lower inflation figure would mean higher servicing cost of government debt, and the other privately held debt, which in other words mean that government might be proactive in trying to keep the prices of a basket of food items a few notches down but wouldn't be as proactive as it should be in curtailing the cost of commodities, industrial raw materials and farm inputs, which goes on to say that people will eventually realize who will be footing that bill ultimately and when they do they will curse their moon and stars. Dreams and promises can be sold like a product but once they have been bought they don't behave like one, for ideas and promises to become realities it would take more than the efforts put in by the multi crore propaganda machinery to broadcast those ideas and promises through every available medium, it would take more than the effort of using politics of resentment to further ones own political agenda, it would take more than a mere effort of carpet bombing marketing exercise of an unprecedented scale, it would take an enormous will to generate profits not at the cost of the gullible people but by being at the mercy of expanding economic activity, increased savings rate and median wage. 

Dance of Democracy - When good sense failed to Prevail.

                       16th May 2014 will go down in the history of Indian elections as the day when Propaganda won over good sense, 2014 Lok Sabha elections no doubt is India's first intensively televised election, which leaves many uneasy question's that needs to be answered by the media first and then the parties who have funded this entire grandiose exercise using questionable resources. All that one can expect now from the newly elected government is to see it exhibit right intentions and vigor in taking forward this nation of 1.25 billion into the future it has been promised.