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An international law professor who was once a Bank Manager came up with a formula for Muslim Reservation in India which today has all politicla parties fightng over it.
The Nehaluddin Formula was born in Luckow in Uttar Pradesh in the mid 1990s and today like a new virus it has gripped the minds of all senior political leaders in India. This political ferver is leading to a political fever of another kind, the woo Muslim votes Political fever. From Salman Khurshid to Digvijaya Singh to Uma Bharati to Rahul Gandhi to Ayub Ansari to Rajnath Singh to Mulayam Singh Yadav to Akhilesh Yadav to Azam Khan the Nehaluddin Formula has everyone in thrall.
Even before the Sacchar Panel or the Ranganath Mishra Panel came the Nehaluddin formula for Muslims and their upliftment. It was not about reservation based on the basis of religion says Nehaluddin. Today Uma Bharati counters this and says that there should be no resesrvation based on religion, but then why should only one religious group get reservation (read Hindus) asks Nehaluddin.
Why did the BJP not seek abolishment of the Mandal Commission recommendations because that was for the first time that Muslims got the benefit of reservation, he asks?
The All India Muslim Forum President Nehaluddin Ahmad had proposed a package for reservation for Muslim Backward castes within the quota of the Mandal Commission. He had proposed to Ms Mayawati too and even Mulayam Singh Yadav to implement this formula in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Under the Mandal Commission certain backward castes of Muslims are entitled for reservation in government jobs.
Since backward Muslims are even more backward than backward Hindus in terms of education and economic status he proposed that the state government issue a GO freezing 8.44 per cent of the seats under the backward category for the most backward category under which would come several castes of backward Muslims. This would enable them to avail off this facility which otherwise was cornered by the more affluent backwards like Ahirs and Kurmis. This was merely enlarging the spirit and impact of the Mandal Commissions recommendations he adds.
This issue was first raised in Uttar Pradesh in 1994. For the first time the All India Muslim Forum staged a dharna in 1994 on June 19th. Thereafter Nehaluddin along with a delegation of leaders from the AIMF met Mulayam Singh Yadav who was the then Chief Minister of UP. At that stage he pressed for 7 per cent quota within quota for backward Muslims in UP. This was later raised to 8.44 per cent on the basis of the population of Muslim backwards in UP.
On October 17th 1994 the AIMF organized a Convention on this issue in Lucknow. Several prominent leaders like the West Bengal Minister Kalimuddin Shams, Mujahidul Islam Qasmi of the Personal Law Board and M R Khusro of the AMU and MP and journalist Kuldip Nayyar attended it. Surprisingly most of them opposed the idea.
The Mayawati government did not accept the idea also and Nehaluddin and his key team were arrested staging dharnas and protests against her government. Later, in 1997, however, this move found favour with Qasmi who accepted this at a convention held in Lucknow. Former Prime Minister V P Singh included it in his manifesto and the CPM led by Akhilendra Pratap Singh supported it in UP. But nothing happened till today. The all hell broke loose.
The Congress issued a Minority Quota Bill which Digvijaya Singh now wants reviewed. So does Salman Khurshid who wants to give 9 per cent reservation to Muslim OBCs and so does Rahul Gandhi. The reservation issue is a major component of the SP Manifesto and the only one silent on the Nehaluddin Formula is Maywati who had the chance to make hisotyr by being the first to implement it.
In 2012 we will observe or whatever we call it the 50th Anniversary of India’s most Himalayan Blunder a disastrous war with China where the Indian Army went into a police action against the Chinese in the most snowbound and treacherous regions of the world wearing khakhi shorts and PT shoes and carrying jammed Enfield Rifles. They died without firing a shot – not in the face of Chinese machinegun fire which would have been the right image for a bollywood movie – they simply froze and starved to death.
Has Indian planning in this changing world improved in any way since then? Are we equipped to face the future in case we survive doomsday on the 21st of December? Or will we go silently into the night without firing a shot and surrender our 5000 year old civilization and its values to the undeserving …who, unfortunately also are Indians, but lack the same sense of values and social mores. Let us take a look at the changes in the world around us in the last few years and see what faces us.
The most important changes that took place in Indian society to my mind were the movie by Amitabh Bacchan DON and the remake by Sharukh Khan DON. In the original movie there was a dialogue by Amitabh ….Don ko gyarah deshon ki police doondh rahi hai…(the police of 11 nations is searching for Don) .the same should have been Don ko 100 sey zada deshon ki police doond rahi hai…(Don is wanted in over a hundred nations), the breakup of the USSR (and consequently its police) into several small countries, the fragmentation of Yugoslavia and several other nations emerging was never reflected in the mindset of Indian movie makers.
Similarly after 1962 Indian boys in Mumbai were asked to perform the same task they performed in the Himalayas, the weather was the only consolation. The Mumbai Police on November 26th 2008, with a prayer on their lips and rusted world war vintage rifles in their hands, charged terrorists carrying lethal automatics. The first and last line of defense the nation’s business capital had to offer at this time of crisis. Needless to say dozens including senior police officials died where the matter could have been settled with far less bloodshed. For three days a group of terrorists held an entire nation, its tanks, its air force, its navy helpless as hundreds of civilians were butchered and thousands of commandos were pressed into action to flush them out.
The world had changed but India had remained locked in time. It was time to change the bullet proof vests and jackets and bring in better weapons for the security man everyone agreed.
For a while IPL and cricket gripped the imagination of the nation, finally everyone was winning and making money too, at last there was money in sports…how much however we came to know later when allegations of match fixing and scams came up.
With money comes respectability is the new Indian mantra, how this money is made no one asks. So money became the new God of Indian society. In such a scenario a new hero was needed ….. he walked, he talked and he behaved and even looked like Mahatma Gandhi. From a village in Maharashtra known as Ralegan Siddhi came Anna Hazare the hero of the NGO movement the Avtar of water harvesting and water shed Management. An army Hawaldar with nerves of steel and a constitution to match he wanted to change the Indian Constitution and end Corruption. He sat on a dharna in Delhi expecting 500 people to come but more than 5000 came and then came a lakh, an ocean of humanity forced the government to acknowledge his presence. He wants a Lokpal to send the corrupt to jail. There is nothing wrong with that so why do people not want such a law and such a system? Maybe because the corrupt now outnumber the honest ones?
The Republic of India needs more than a dharna and watershed management to solve its problems, Hazare may have turned a poverty stricken village into an economic success story in Maharashtra but his his Maha Dharna fizzled out after he entered into a war of attrition with the government. His friends and colleagues got into scrapes he did not imagine. This Mahabharat is still to end but the middle class which was Annas biggest supporter suddenly lost interest in him and got involved in the mundane act of making money.
Maybe Anna should come to Uttar Pradesh where more than a score ministers have been dismissed on grounds of corruption and development funds meant for rural health, mid days meals and what have you have simply disappeared. Where officials can perform magic and turn money meant for road building into SUVs for their pampered kids. The Economic miracle that is Uttar Pradesh is a state where there are no roads but the latest and most expensive cars drive on dirt. Where there is no industry but there are politicians richer than industrialists. Where the common man has no job but is always busy running around for roti kapda and makaan. Where the middle class lives without its children in their old age as there are no jobs for the white collared in the state and state government officials take home daily packages that would make an IIM Grad blush with shame if asked to compare his paltry earnings in Mumbai or Delhi or New York with them. Where the people are poor but the NGO activists read relatives of officials are millionaires and the officials are billionaires. Today Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls but only one party’s manifesto talks about the poor and the marginalized, and of cycles, cycles of poverty and cycles of hope. And let us not forget lakhs of stone elephants carved out of the funds for the poor to glorify their poverty.
It’s all a matter of mindset which does not change with the changing world where social websites like Facebook have become a political tool and a threat to India’s political masters. Congress Supremo Rajiv Gandhi’s computer has become the worst nightmare for the Congress party today.
Cheap bank finance has changed the face of India, there was a time when cycles were the main form of urban transport. Today Motorcycles and cars dot every Indian Household and choke its narrow streets, public transport however only exists in the metros in the form of MRTS or the Delhi Metro. Other wannabe cities are trying to follow suit but only corruption fuels development in some. Even Sewage treatment Plants are designed to gobble up money treatment of sewage is a secondary option. In little Singapore sewage is treated to an extent that it becomes a bottle of drinking water and is sold as Newwater. However in India treated sewage is allowed to flow back into the drain? What is the government trying to prove? Or they trying to hide the fact that after spending billions they can’t even produce one liter of drinking water?
On the Economic Front India has performed the magic rope trick. Without producing anything the nation is getting richer. Even as Indian factories close down trade in consumer goods expands. The productive economy has been replaced by the speculative economy. Major killings are being made in the share and real estate market so where is the money coming from? Well one thing is certain the bikes, the spares the sports goods, the shirts the shoes all are coming from across the borders. The only thing made in India –
Which you can be sure off today –
Is Coca Cola. Be Indian buy Indian, this slogan has suddenly acquired a new meaning again a question of mindset in a changing world. In 1947 this nation threw out the British or rather they left. How did the British come to India a school boy in Lucknow was once asked.
They came by sea he replied, he was asked to do twenty push ups despite a supreme court order that physical punishment will not be given to any child.
However in this case he deserved it because the British came as traders even if they came by sea. Now I wonder who is coming as traders to India? Again a mindset problem?
With the mindset refusing to change in our changing world do we imperil our economy today? If this was a military situation it would be like a foreign power bribing the sentry to gain access into the country. We have never bothered to ask each other if we do not earn a couple of crores in four to five years then why does a flat cost four to five crores in a big city? Who is responsible for this? In an ideal situation a car should cost a year’s salary, a house four years pay and food should be the cheapest and most pure commodity in the nation. But 70 per cent of the milk samples seized by the Lucknow Nagar Nigam were found to contain detergent? Stunned? So what is happening are terrorists and drug lords pumping money into India in real estate and shares? Are we basing our economic prosperity on a system that does not exist? India’s nationalized banks and lack of a institutionalized credit system saved many jobs, lives and fortunes in India when the depression hit the west. Are we in our blind race to embrace consumerism doing away with these safeguards?
Also what will we sell trade or do in case factories across the border refuse to supply us cheap imports? After all we have shut down the lock makers of Aligarh, the small units all over the country even torches and tyres from bycycles to cars are imported? So what is happening? The East India Company again?
WHAT do trade unions in the organized service sector and the Congress Party have in common in Uttar Pradesh? To the uninitiated – nothing – but to the politically savvy – the middle class. For long this middle class has given direction and political leadership to the state. Today it is at a crossroads. Thus when leaders of several Trade Unions including Bankers Associations, service sector employees; power workers and teachers associations joined the Congress Party in Lucknow on Saturday bringing with them an influence over a cadre of almost four to five lakh persons in the state, it was bound to raise eyebrows.
With the Assembly elections only months away the message being sent out by the service sector employee’s leaders is that the Congress is receiving the support of the middle class salaried employee in the forthcoming elections.
Comrade Y K Arora of the Bank of India Staff Union as he is fondly referred to by his colleagues who led the joining in the Congress Party and has been made its new Vice President of the Labour Cell for the organized sector, is upbeat when he says that this cadre shall provide grassroots support to the party in the state. It will play a great role in influencing the voting patterns in the coming Vidhan Sabha elections, he quips.
According to Arora the decision to join the Congress was based on several factors. It is a well thought out decision as we feel that there is no alternative to the Congress in the state. Today Uttar Pradesh is badly in need of development and unemployment has become rampant in the state.
Today the middle class stands at a cross roads, job security, financial security and social security are all endangered by corruption, communalism and parochialism in politics. Today there are several threats before the working class, instead of providing guidance to the polity and economy it is now sidelined and marginalized. Corporate majors now call the shots and price rise and instability threaten its existence, he said.
To provide stability to the middle class a stable government, which focuses on development, is the need of the hour. Today the working class has seen only the rise of mafia wad, communalism and casteism in UP politics, these sadly have not contributed to the development of the state in fact they have left it far behind other states. Today UP lags behind every state in terms of development. There are no power plants worth the name, no proper job opportunities and no proper business opportunities because the political parties the day do not see it fit to promote or protect the service sector. In their scheme of things the middle class does not exist.
Therefore what is being witnessed in Uttar Pradesh is a migration of the service sector to other states in search of jobs as these jobs do not exist in UP. We have not heard of any political party talking about providing jobs for persons in UP or talking about setting up factories or institutions to employ them. So Uttar Pradesh is being reduced to a sad state of affairs a state without a service sector or a middle class and its values.
The state is rocked by several scams, senior politicians of the ruling party are in jail for heinous offences like rape and kidnapping, there is rampant frustration in the bureaucracy and more scams are likely to hit the headlines as the elections draw near, says Arora.
However In the Congress Party we have seen some hope for the middle class and the service sector. We hope and feel that with development being the main agenda of the party there is hope for the masses of the state if this party comes to power in Uttar Pradesh and we feel that we need to strengthen the Congress. As such we have decided to join the Congress and bring the service sector employees closer to the party.
UPCC Chief Dr Rita Bahuguna Joshi who inducted the TU leaders into the party fold echoed the same sentiment. The values that the Congress stands for are the values the middle class stands for, she said.
What was unique about this joining was that it was organized by a Rita’s own brat pack of young party workers who had themselves joined the party only two years ago. A party founded by Nehaluddin Ahmad (a former trade union leader and Congressman) known as the Peoples Democratic Forum. Nehaluddin’s team led by Salahuddin, Ajit Chak and Naseem Khan orchestrated the entire event.
Rita Bahuguna was also quick to admit that this joining will have a state wide impact on the party’s future in the coming elections both in urban and rural areas.
Prominent among those who joined with Arora were M B Singh Gen Secy Dena Bank officers Association UP, J P Yadav Ex President State Bank Officers Association UP, Pratap Shukla Gen Secy Retirees Bank Employees Association UP, S D Mishra Gen Secy Union Bank Employees Union UP, D P Verma Gen Secy Punjab National Bank Employees Union, UP, Kamta Prasad Advocate Ex Office bearer of Bank of India Officers Association of SC/STs, M P Singh President Bank of India Employees Cooperative Credit Society UP Kanpur and several others.
We are in a position to influence and communicate with a cadre of at least 4 lakh personnel in the state both directly and indirectly and we hope we shall contribute to the success of the party in Uttar Pradesh, Arora added.
Utter Pradesh the Milk Producing centre of India is facing a grave crisis the Chairman of the Samajik Party Naram Singh Thakur has warned in a press release issued late last night at an impromptu press conference.
According to the Samajik Party supreme ever since the Park party has come to power thousands of acres in every city are being converted to stone parks with just one aim in mind. To stuff wads of printed paper into pillow cases, sofa sets, bed mattresses and Swiss Bank Accounts
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Today several attempts are being made to glorify Japan but I have a problem with this, these are the people who invented Kamikaze and Harakiri please do not glorify them there is no scope for the individual in their way of thinking. Our culture and theirs is too different to ever bridge the gap.
They were responsible for bloodshed and brutality in Andamans, their armies tortured and killed civilians all over Asia, their duplicity and deceit led to an unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour and they treated their prisoners as sub humans
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When it comes to the Master Plan 2021 the Lucknow Development Authority has literally taken the cake, in short LDA officials have gone plain nuts. There is no logic in the manner in which the Master Plan has been drawn up and for that matter no logic in How LDA functions.
For example Lda has designated certain activities that can be deemed commercial and can be carried out in residential areas. The two things are a contradiction in terms but there is where lies the catch. LDA has sought to blindly do favours to certain lobbies to keep them quiet. For one thing a personal office can be permitted in a residential area, this makes sense, but at the same time you cant set up the same business in another persons house. For example housewife A decides to set up her own unit manufacture papads she can do so, but if she takes the neighbours house on rent to do so she cant
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I have a facebook account now and so do hundreds of other Indians My friend Raj SIngh tells me it is like the electronic verion of the local paanwallah and the chauraha where we all used to collect for smoke or a cup of chai.
Is FB really that then it is doing us a disservice by keeping us apart
The first reported crime inside the Delhi metro has taken the authorities and the media fraternity by storm. It has not only exposed the weaknesses in the system created to provide protection for women but also showed how helpless and unprotected a woman can be when surrounded by other women.
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With Tees Maar Khan having joined the SP things are set for a media battle between SP and the BJP fire breathing Shiela. Khan announced his return to the SP fold through the media though a major maybe deliberate politically incorrect statement, but he made the point nevertheless. He raised the issue that not one Muslim from North India is a minister in the UPA cabinet.
But he did it in a manner that will gave a free runway to the BJP to launch an attack against the SP. How will this help?
In Uttar Pradesh where the Muslim masses are rudderless and leaderless, this has further stoked the opinion that there is no place for a north Indian Muslim in the UPA cabiner. This has further led to confusion in the minds of the Muslims and given space for the Hindustva brigade to use this opportunity to attack all other parties on the issue of Muslim appeasement
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