Even though the “Congress won lot of seats”:https://varnam.org/archives/000385.html at the National level, in my home state of “Kerala”:http://www.keralatourism.org/, it was exactly the opposite. While the _Dynasty_ was bought back into power in Delhi, the dynasty was send packing home in Kerala.
* Karunakaran’s both children lost the election. His son Muraleedharan was the electricity minister in Kerala and had to win the by-election to retain his seat. His daughter, first time candidate, lost by a huge margin.
* K M Mani’s son, Jose K Mani was also defeated
* Muslim League which always won Manjeri seat, lost the seat, first time in 14 general elections.
* Congress did not win even one of the 20 seats.
In an analysis in “newindpress.com”:http://www.newindpress.com/election/2004/results/News.asp?Topic=302&Title=Kerala+Reports&ID=IEU20040514034352&nDate=5/14/2004&Sub=81&Cat=&
bq. If ever there was a revulsion vote in Kerala, it has just been delivered. Revulsion at a well-heeled and self-serving family?s outrageous political blackmail. Revulsion at a weak-kneed and self- absorbed leader of an elected government who succumbed to the blackmail.
bq. Revulsion at the puny turncoat Congress politicos who paraded their hiccups daily on prime time TV and in print, mistaking the cynical laughter of their audience for approbation. Finally and painfully, there was revulsion at also the ruling front as a whole for their squandering of an unambiguous electoral mandate for good governance.
bq. The rickety coalition of caste-community interests that had coasted the UDF to power only three years ago cracked and crashed as never before. Many Muslim Leaguers did not vote the way the League leaders proposed. In Manjeri, they voted a Communist of all people to victory. The Church could not hector their sheep. In Ernakulam, their chosen missionary lost.
Now to pay for the school drama played by Congress in Kerala, Chief Minister, “Antony is thinking of resigning”:http://us.rediff.com/election/2004/may/15bs3.htm.
On The New Indian Govt
The Washington Post in it’s editorial on the “election verdict”:https://varnam.org/archives/000385.html in India writes
bq. The sharpest discontinuity is likely to come in relations with the United States and possibly with U.S. allies such as Israel. India has become a leading customer for Israeli weapons technology. With Mr. Vajpayee in office, the Bush administration hoped that India might be persuaded to send peacekeepers to Iraq — a remarkable shift from the Cold War, when India proudly led the Non-Aligned Movement and seized every opportunity to tweak American leadership. The Congress Party-led coalition is expected to swing back to traditional anti-Americanism, sounding off against the United States at the United Nations and perhaps challenging U.S. influence in the Middle East by launching its own peace initiative. All of which would test the Bush administration’s reserves of forbearance and tact. But then again, who knows? India’s democracy excels at defying expert predictions.
The “article in L.A Times”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-india14may14,1,2026196.story?coll=la-headlines-world had a quote on the alliance between Congress and Communists.
bq. “I don’t think that this honeymoon between the Congress and the Left Front Alliance is going to last for a long time,” political scientist Amal Mukherjee said in Calcutta, where Communists continue to govern after winning elections for decades. “The reason is very simple: In West Bengal, the Left Front ? which has been opposing the Congress ? has always held the Congress responsible for all the ills of the state.”
The Economist also remarked about the “alliance with the Communists”:http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2676962
bq. Congress, for its part, traditionally too proud for grubby coalition politics, had this time assembled an impressive haul of allies. But parliament is hung and, besides needing the support of the Left, it may also need to rely on one or two other uncommitted parties, of which the biggest are Samajwadi and the Bahujan Samaj, two lower-caste-based parties with their strength in India?s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. An unstable coalition government, relying on the support of the Communists, is unlikely to prove radical, and may be short-lived.
It was the Congress party which started the liberalization of the economy in 1991 and it was when Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister that India established formal relations with Israel. But now with the Communists having a major say and already “disagreeing on policy”:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/676566.cms, it will be interesting to watch the balancing act of the new Prime Minister.
Boom Time ?
The good news is that “Cisco is hiring”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20328-2004May12.html. WaPo’s Cynthia L. Webb is thinks that this coupled with Google’s IPO will bring back the boom in Silicon Valley. So far California has “not been doing great”:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-051404caljobs_lat,1,5086506.story?coll=la-home-business.
bq. California’s economy added a modest 16,300 net jobs in April, a disappointing gain that shows the state continuing to lag the recent surge in hiring nationally, according to an employment report released today. Economists were expecting double that number of new jobs, given that payrolls nationwide expanded by 288,000 last month. California accounts for 11% of the U.S. workforce, yet the state has produced only about half of its share in the last two months. And over the last six months, California has generated just 3% of the nation’s job gains.
Most companies are hiring now and I interview atleast 2 candidates per week for openings in my company. But then during boom time the motto as “Trespassers will be recruited”. Now the companies are lot more careful and prefer to get the candidates who match the profile as closely as possible.
The Oldest University ?
The BBC Reports on the finding of the “Library of Alexandria”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3707641.stm
bq. Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world’s first major seat of learning. A Polish-Egyptian team has excavated parts of the Bruchion region of the Mediterranean city and discovered what look like lecture halls or auditoria.
bq. Announcing their discovery at a conference being held at the University of California, Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the 13 lecture halls uncovered could house as many as 5,000 students in total. A conspicuous feature of the rooms, he said, was a central elevated podium for the lecturer to stand on. “It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area,” he added.
bq. “It is perhaps the oldest university in the world.”
The Library of Alexandria was sanctioned by Ptolemy I Soter, the successor of Alexander of Macedonia. But by then “Takshashila”:https://varnam.org/archives/000281.html had established itself as a place of learning. Too bad, Dr David Whitehouse, the BBC News Online science editor does not know about Takshashila.
NDA too booted out
Andhra Pradesh gave us an “indication of things to come”:https://varnam.org/archives/000382.html. Vajpayee has given “his resignation”:http://us.rediff.com/election/2004/may/13bjp1.htm and decided to be the Leader of Opposition. As “Harkishen Singh Surjeet”:http://us.rediff.com/election/2004/may/06einter1.htm said
bq. My own political calculations say the BJP’s seats will come down considerably in this election. The BJP will not get as many seats as it got during the 1999 election. That means the BJP will not come back to power. Atal Bihari Vajpayee will not be prime minister again.
I did not expect this. Neither did the “opinion polls held a month back”:https://varnam.org/archives/000343.html. I hope that there is stability at the center and whatever administration comes into power, rules for the entire duration.
The Pakistani Connection
“B Raman”:http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/may/12raman.htm, has more details on the “animals who murdered Nick Berg”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003895.php. He thinks that the denunciation of Pakistan’s military dictator Musharraf indicates the involvement of Pakistani Jihadis. He also has “more details on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi”:http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/may/12raman.htm, the man in the video.
bq. The video-recording of the beheading as displayed on the jihadi web site linked with Al Qaeda was titled ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American.’ But reliable sources in Karachi, who had seen the video, say the murder has the clear fingerprints of the three organisations which kidnapped and killed Pearl.
bq. Pearl was murdered by a group of Pakistani jihadi terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen-Al Alami and Jaish-e-Mohammad. All are members Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front, whose worldwide activities are now being co-ordinated by Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Tayiba.
bq. If Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was indeed the person who did the beheading, it proves that these three Pakistani organisations are working in tandem with Abu Musab’s outfit.
I agree with Jivha when he says, “Words Fail Me”:http://www.jivha.com/blog/. While all religions preach peace and asks us to love our neighbor, if you look around, you will find that “religion is used to butcher people”:https://varnam.org/archives/000377.html left and right.
Troy: Did the war really happen ?
Coming soon on the big screen is the “movie Troy”:http://troymovie.warnerbros.com/, starring Brad Pitt as Achilles and his heel. But “was there a Trojan war”:http://www.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html ?
bq. According to the archaeological and historical findings of the past decade especially, it is now more likely than not that there were several armed conflicts in and around Troy at the end of the Late Bronze Age. At present we do not know whether all or some of these conflicts were distilled in later memory into the “Trojan War” or whether among them there was an especially memorable, single “Trojan War.” However, everything currently suggests that Homer should be taken seriously, that his story of a military conflict between Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy is based on a memory of historical events–whatever these may have been. If someone came up to me at the excavation one day and expressed his or her belief that the Trojan War did indeed happen here, my response as an archaeologist working at Troy would be: Why not?
The CEO gets booted
Everyone remembers Chandrababu Naidu as the CEO of Andhra Pradesh, the techno savy CM. According to one analysis, the two reasons he lost was “Telengana and Economics”:http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=46783.
bq. What else explains the anti-incumbency? No one can realistically claim that AP is worse off today than a decade ago. Even rural AP has progressed. Literacy rates have improved, demographic indicators have improved and so has rural infrastructure. It is wrong to suggest that Naidu was only about IT and bio-tech, only about Hyderabad and Cyberabad.
bq. Yes, there was a lot of hype and he was far too much of a CEO and not enough of a political leader. He was more committed to being at Davos than visiting a drought-stricken hamlet. He saw the Telangana issue only in terms of economic indicators and demand for water, not as a political and cultural alienation of a region that had a weak voice in successive TDP governments. He became, as I once titled my column on him, the Nizam Of Hyperabad!
bq. That, however, is not why he lost. He lost because he promised a ??Vision for 2020?? and just assumed the voter would remain invested in him in 2004, to be able to get there. Elections in democracies are about the here and now, Naidu spoke of only the distant and beyond.
If “this is a pre-game show”:http://www.madhoo.com/archives/003065.php#003065, then the NDA will be in serious trouble. The next Govt. formation might require some serious horse trading. Already the President is consulting “experts on a hung Parliament”:http://us.rediff.com/election/2004/may/11kalam.htm.
Sex Education
In United States, if any state takes any money from the Federal Government for sex-education in schools, then they are supposed to teach only sexual abstinence (due to Catholic beliefs ?) and should *not* provide any information on contraception. California, the state everyone hates, refused to take federal money and “started teaching about contraception”:http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/9207762p-10133041c.html.
bq. In briefings Thursday for House offices and today for Senate staffers, the California Wellness Foundation, which runs a statewide teen pregnancy initiative, said the state’s teen birth rate had dropped from 11th highest in the country in 1991 to 21st place in 2002.
bq. Brindis, citing figures from the state Department of Health Services, said the teen birth rate fell from 73 to 41.1 per 1,000 youths between the ages of 15 and 19. That drop exceeded the 30 percent decline in the national rate between 1991 and 2002, and put the state slightly below the national teen birth rate of 43 per 1,000.
And interestingly, the shift to this comprehensive plan was started under the Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.
A "U" Turn
The former First Lady Nancy Reagan has come out in “support of Stem Cell Research”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12862-2004May9.html. This must be shocking to the Republican party.
bq. Former first lady Nancy Reagan endorsed stem cell research Saturday night and made an impassioned call for taking the controversial procedure out of the political arena, saying it could help cure illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts her husband. Such research is generally opposed by political conservatives and many antiabortion groups, because it involves the destruction of days-old human embryos. President Bush signed an executive order in 2001 limiting research to existing embryonic stem cell lines.
When it affects someone you love so much, your ideology can take a “U” turn.
Scientists in United States are falling behind researchers in other countries as they cannot use Federal money to study certain stem cells. But states like California and New Jersey have passed laws encouraging stem-cell research.