Obama Spring Knocks Ambushed US Destiny Door!
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
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Obama Spring is knocking Ambushed US destiny doors! Hope that US is not going to do an Indian Experiment fixing Ruling Hegemony equations while deciding on top posts! Racially Obama represents Africa, Asia and american subcontinents. it is unique , unprecedented. We may hope that all bloody doctrines of Wars, Civil wars, Interests, Dominance, Defence, Space, Weapons,Economy and agressive Americanism wil wither away like Winter!
Anti Imperialist movement and anticapitalist movement in Asia have lost the momntum with China joing the Open Market economy. Moreover, the hypocrite zionist Brahmin Communists of India have doctored Marxism and Maoism accordingly to boost capitalist development.
Since, it is genetically proved as well as anthropologically that Pan african origin unites the enslaved Black Untouchable masses worldwide, rise of Barack Obama may boost the bondage of frternity to make a strong ground for Resistance against Post Modern Galaxy manusmriti Order. Since, US economy suffers all the strains of War against terrorism and worldwide US interests the Next President is bound to review the BUSH Brand Foreign policies of Unipolar Corporate Imperialism. Thus, the first ever Black President of United states of america would have enough scope for Changes as he is promising althroughout his election campaign.
The Dynesties should be thrown out into Pacific sea.
Let us hope, it is not going to be a Clinton to take over from BUSH Dynasty!
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were jostling for the lead going into Tuesday's coast-to-coast presidential primary contests, while Republican frontrunner John McCain aimed to lock down his party's nomination by squeezing main rival Mitt Romney out of the race. McCain had a substantial lead in polls on the Republican side, but the Democratic race was far from clear.
One national poll shows senators Clinton and Obama, locked in a historic race for the party's nomination, tied going into Democrats' 22 contests on Super Tuesday, while another shows Clinton with a slight lead. A poll released Monday even showed Obama with a slight lead in California and Missouri. Weekend polls confirmed the trend that Obama is closing the gap. A Washington Post-ABC news poll on Sunday showed Clinton on 47 per cent to Obama's 43 per cent. MSNBC-McClatchy, polling in key battleground states, also had Obama gaining on Clinton. He was ahead in Georgia, which has a large African-American population, by 47 per cent to 41per cent. The poll even showed him catching up with Clinton in her own backyard, with a gap of only 7 per cent in New Jersey. In Arizona, which had been thought to be for Clinton because of its large Latino population, she was on 43 per cent and Obama on 41 per cent. The Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press said in its poll that Obama had made important inroads among white male voters, especially middle-aged and middle-income voters who had previously been solidly behind Clinton. It said he had picked up a significant share of John Edwards's support following his exit from the race last week. The poll put Clinton on 46 per cent of the vote nationally, against 38 per cent. In addition, the poll detected growing unease among Democratic voters at the idea of having Bill Clinton back in the White House, with 41 per cent expressing concern, up from 34 per cent in October. Both camps were using the final hours of the campaign to appeal to core constituencies - although there was an agreed pause for last night's Superbowl. On the Republican side, Romney managed to chalk up a victory on Saturday in the caucuses in Maine but polls suggest McCain will be hard to stop on Tuesday. Pew gave McCain a formidable lead nationally, with 42 per cent of the vote against 22 per cent for Romney. McCain now dominates all segments of the Republican electorate, except for evangelical voters, where he is level with Mike Huckabee, the poll said.
Calling upon private sector to play a major role in providing higher education, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said that as long as regulatory bodies are in place, it did not matter whether institutions were run by government or private bodies. Chidambaram said this in Thiruvananthapuram while inaugurating the 'Professorship' instituted by State Bank of Travancore for Kerala University's Institute of Management on Sunday.
Stating that the UPA government was committed to carry out the decision to provide 54 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes in higher education, he said achieving this needed capacity expansion of the existing institutions.
Another key area where private agencies could make significant contribution is skill training to help children who did not move beyond primary education, to come up in life, he said.
I have been writing about the Bengali brahmins leading the Ruling Hegemony in India! Here you are! The de facto Prime Minister, Keernahar Elite zionist Brahmin Pranab Mukherjee had on Sunday said in Kolkata that "if the agreement is not through, we could have to face isolation and possibly isolation in sanction too." Mukherjee had said the agreements on civil nuclear cooperation with various countries after securing safeguards pact with IAEA and changes in NSG guidelines would in particular "help in increasing the share of civil nuclear power in our energy mix" and ensure energy security. Deprecating External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement that India would be "isolated" if the Indo-US nuclear agreement is not through, former minister K Natwar Singh on Monday said going ahead with the "spectacularly divisive deal" would be tantamount to disregarding Parliament.
The Congress on Monday sought to ignore Natwar Singh's criticism of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's statement on the Indo-US nuclear deal and said whatever he has said was within the framework of the agreement between the UPA and the Left in the matter.
"He (Mukherjee) is already the chairman of the coordinating mechanism between the Left and the UPA. He has expressed his views in a lecture. There is no occasion for me to comment on his views," AICC spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters.
"Obviously, whatever he has said is along the lines of the agreement between the Left and the UPA under which negotiations are going on at an advanced stage with the IAEA," he said.
He added that the exact status quo, as per the agreement between the Left and the UPA, remains.
Singhvi said this when asked to comment on Mukherjee's statement that India would be isolated if the Indo-US nuclear agreement does not go through. He refused to react to former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh's criticism of Mukherjee.
Singh said going ahead with the "spectacularly divisive deal" would tantamount to disregarding Parliament.
However, a senior party leader reminded that Singh's Rajya Sabha tenure was scheduled to end in April this year.
Hillary Clinton tried on Sunday to bring Barack Obama's aspirational candidacy back to earth, repeatedly accusing him of misleading voters in an attempt to halt his poll momentum ahead of Tuesday's "Super Tuesday" contest. With opinion polls showing Obama making significant gains ahead of the contest in 22 states, Clinton tried to undermine Obama's central appeal of being a politician who operated above the fray.
In an appearance on ABC television, she repeatedly accused Obama of being "misleading" or making statements that were "untrue" on issues from diplomacy to healthcare. "I really hope Senator Obama will quit deliberately mis-stating what I have said," she complained.
Obama, on the morning chat shows, was just as combative. In an interview on ABC, he suggested Clinton's history made her a polarising figure and that he was more electable. "I think I can get votes that Senator Clinton can't get," he said.
The two contenders for the Democratic nomination are now in a virtual dead-heat for the party nomination ahead of Super Tuesday. The two are spending $19m on ads in the final hours of the contest. Obama is advertising in 21 of the 22 states, while Clinton is targeting 19, having apparently given up on Alaska, Colorado, Kansas and Missouri. Neither is running television ads in Obama's home state of Illinois.
In the Republican race, John McCain could barely disguise his confidence that he would emerge on Tuesday as the winner. "I assume that I will get the nomination of the party," McCain told reporters.
Clinton, asked about the erosion of her poll lead on early-morning television interviews, said: "This was always going to be a close election."
She used the talkshows to claim that Obama's healthcare plan represented a surrender to the health industry lobbyists who oppose universal coverage. "It looks like it was written by the health insurance companies," she said. "He is playing right into all the arguments against this core issue of the Democratic party."
She stressed that as a battle-scarred vete
"It is the UPA that is isolated on the nuclear deal. The UPA government was isolated in both houses of Parliament," Singh, suspended Congress leader, said in a joint statement with another former minister and JD(U) leader Digvijay Singh.
"To go ahead with this spectacularly divisive deal will be tantamount to disregarding Parliament," they said. Natwar Singh is a former External Affairs minister. The statement said India was not isolated when it did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. "We were not isolated when we exploded a nuclear device in 1974.
"We were not isolated when we did not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, not too long ago. We were not isolated in 1998 when we exploded a number of nuclear bombs," they contended.
External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday said the non-operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear agreement could lead to India facing ‘international isolation’. Mr Mukherjee, the government’s chief interlocutor in the negotiations with the Leftists, said in Kolkata that the deal alone can bring India out of nuclear isolation.
The external affairs minister’s wholesome backing for the deal coincides with voices of caution within the government. Mr Sharad Pawar had told a TV channel on Saturday that the “agreement should not be thrust on anyone”. He had said that the government should put “stability” and “development” of the nation over deal. “We should try our level best to convince our colleagues (in the Left), but if we are not in a position to convince... not getting total support... majority in Parliament, then we have to take a rational approach,” he said.
But Mukherjee attempted to suggest that all is not lost on the deal. He said India and IAEA were yet to find a common ground on the draft safeguards agreement necessary to operationalise the deal. The government’s attempts to get fuel supply guarantees in the safeguards agreement is yet to meet with any success. The external affairs minister said the government would place the draft safeguards agreement before the UPA-Left panel to get a political go ahead for the deal. The Left, however, is in no mood to give its consent for taking the next step on the agreement.
On the other side, the US government has warned that time is running out for the nuclear deal. The race for the US presidential election is already dominating American politics and the focus has shifted away from US president George W Bush and his initiatives. The Bush administration had wanted IAEA and NSG steps to be completed by January so that they would take the 123 agreement to the US Congress for approval.
US ambassador to India Davic C Mulford had said that that ``time is of the essence’’ and warned that a failure to complete the process now would mean that the nuclear deal would be put in cold storage at least for two years. As far as negotiations with the IAEA are concerned, India and IAEA have, so far, failed to finalise a draft of the IAEA safeguards agreement. With India unable to conclude the safeguards agreement, the US has not been able to approach the NSG for a waiver.
The NSG countries want to study the India-specific safeguards agreement before taking a stand in the NSG. At this point there no clarity on whether some of the NSG countries would settle for a frozen text of the safeguards agreement or will demand that India sign the agreement.
New Delhi has said that it will not put its reactors An Indian team is expected to go back for negotiations to sort out the issue of including assurances on uninterrupted fuel supply and corrective measures in the event of a disruption of fuel supplies.
The BJP on Monday said the statement of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that India would face global isolation if the country did not sign the Indo-US nuclear deal was at variance with that of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that it would not be the end of the world if India was not to sign the deal.Reacting to Mukherjee's statement in Kolkata, BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad said the Foreign Minister feels that India's image will suffer if it did not sign the deal and would face global isolation whereas the Prime Minister had stated that it would not be the end of the world if the deal were not to be completed.
Mukherjee's statement seems to be addressed at the Communists and Left parties who had opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal because they did not want nuclear ties with the US. The BJP, on the other hand, was not opposed to India having good relationship with the US but opposed the deal as it was against national interests.The signing or not signing of the deal should not be a yardstick for the relationship but it should be beyond that, he said.
U.S. presidential elections are closely watched by foreign governments and media for the obvious reason that the change of top leadership in the world's number one power has global implications.Next to World Cup soccer finals and the Miss Universe pageant, the result of the U.S. presidential election may be the event most anticipated by an international audience. Here's how some governments, foreign media and journalists line up. Despite 50 years of hostility North and South Korea agree on one thing--they would like to see is a Democratic U.S. president. While the the South Korean government, which has close ties with both American parties, is not commenting on the election, the North does not hesitate to state its choice.After the GOP Convention in Philadelphia, the Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang, North Korea blasted George Bush as a threat to peace in South East Asia. The North likes that Democratic leaders, during their convention, credited both Koreas for their peace efforts and indicated that talks between North Korea and the U.S. would resume.
Joongang Ilbo, another Seoul daily, says the North clearly does not want to deal with the Republican Party's foreign policy, which might stop the talks once again. A Democratic victory is also important to the South Korean government because the only positive thing it has going is improved relations with the North. Critical of Kim Dae-Jung's administration, South Korean newspapers are filled with predictions of another financial crisis, increased taxes, the downsizing of giant corporations.
Under the Clinton administration the U.S. has tilted closer to India than to Pakistan and its military rulers. Despite assumptions that Indian leaders would lean towards Gore as a natural extension of Clinton's stance, editorials and opinions from some of India's leading papers suggest otherwise. The key issues for India--nuclear arms and China.
The Hindustani Times, which is sympathetic to the ruling BJP, says Bush is closer to India's position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The paper's Pramit Pal Chaudhuri wrote on Nov. 2 on why "New Delhi's foreign policy wonks" think George Bush's world view will be easier on India than Al Gore's: "Bush publicly and loudly opposes the CTBT. Gore praises the treaty, calling it 'the tide of history.' Bush says it is 'not the answer" to proliferation'."
New Delhi has avoided signing the CTBT, "and believes missile control regimes are baloney. All top the Gore foreign policy agenda and could slow progress in Indo-U.S. relations if the Democrat wins next week."
"Indo-US relations tend to run aground on small rocks, minor disputes that cause disproportionate acrimony," Chauduri continued. "CTBT is a very noisy small rock. And under a President Gore, the racket would be tremendous...Generally on nukes, Bush should be India's choice--by a neck. "
Aziz Haniffa of India Abroad News echoed this analysis. "Bush has said he would favor the immediate lifting of all U.S. sanctions against New Delhi [imposed on India after its May 1998 Pokharan nuclear tests] while Gore has remained circumspent on this score.
On China, which India views as a huge threat, Haniffa wrote: "While Bush has strongly repudiated the Clinton administration's policy of seeing China as a 'strategic partner' and said Beijing is nothing but a 'strategic competitor,' Gore and his party platform have spoken of the imperative of engaging China--'a nation with 1.3 billion people, a nuclear arsenal and a role to play in the 21st century that is destined to be one of the basic facts of international life'."
In Mexico, meanwhile, Carlos Salazar, international director of President-elect Vicente Fox's political party PAN, claimed the party does not endorse either Al Gore or George W. Bush. But the PAN's leanings might be gleaned from the interaction and comments between Fox and the candidates.
Before Fox won the elections in July, Bush had openly admitted to a friendship with Fox's opponent, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, and responded to Fox's victory by simply remarking that it signified an important. Gore, on the other hand, stated his eagerness to work with Fox and congratulated Mexico on his success and the election process overall.
Fox's proposal last August for an open U.S.-Mexican border drew an "open" reaction from Gore and a rejection from Bush. Bush said he would continue to protect the border, while Gore said he would consider Fox's idea at length if he wins the presidency.
The Mexican weekly newsmagazine Proceso expressed boredom and indifference toward the U.S. presidential election, saying it doesn't much matter anyway (the subtitle of Oct. 29 editiorial is "Bush and Gore: the same core [El mismo fondo])." There are no major issues, both come from privileged backgrounds, and both represent the interests of American corporate elites.
Will the US Presidential elections impact India's future?
Source: Chillibreeze
India and the United States have always shared a blow hot, blow cold relationship. The United States wants to forge a new relationship with India because India has nuclear weapons, is a fellow democracy, is the fastest growing economy, and in the next 25 years will be the world’s fourth largest economy beating France and Germany. So what happens now that the US is headed to get a new President?
Many US Presidents have visited India in hopes of establishing an amicable nuclear relationship. They have all gone back unsuccessful. The main reason why India is visible on the world map nowadays is because it is a nuclear power. Why would the Indians want to give that away?
So, with Presidential elections round the corner, will India be affected? Possibly not. The reasons are:
India is an important world entity, to which both the Congress and the Democrats agree.
If the Democrats were to be elected, they would support the nuclear deal because it is a question of national security for the United States.
The Indo-US relationship has become stronger because of the proposed civil nuclear deal.
Clinton re-opened the India-United States relationship in 2000 by visiting India. Bush has taken the relationship ahead by visiting India and renewing connections. Clinton is a Democrat and Bush is Republican. India has benefited from both.
India, China and Pakistan are all competing to become a powerful world economy. United States will be giving India a new development faucet to derive its energy while safeguarding its own interest. Whether it be trade, investment or agriculture, India and the United States are working eye to eye.
For the first time ever, the relationship between the United States and India is being formed on an equal ground. The reason is that India’s economy is growing at an amazing rate, and India’s economy is very important from a global perspective.
Once elected, could any of the Presidential candidates change the dynamic relationship between the United States and India? What are your thoughts?
http://www.window2india.com/cms/content/article11092007.jsp?aid=5608
For a country famous for its short attention span, America has shown a rare patience with India’s tortuous foreign policy debate. Washington is prepared to wait as the big ship of the Indian state turns.The Democratic Party may revise the much-touted Indo-US civil nuclear deal if it comes into power in America, according to a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations of USA. Speaking at a session on After Bush: The Collapse of Bipartisanship and the Implications for US Foreign Policy organized by The Aspen Institute India in New delhi , Senior Fellow Charles Kupchan felt that the Democrats may go ahead with the deal, but may link it to Indias support on issues such as Iran.The next US President will be presiding over a deeply divided country, said Kupchan, adding that the President will take office with the most inauspicious set of geopolitical circumstances.He felt that the US foreign policy would be erratic during this period, as the US will be going through an inward looking phase. It will look towards other countries such as Europe and India to fill the void that the US will leave behind in many parts of the world, Kupchan added.Former Ambassador of India to Japan Kuldip Sahdev chaired the meeting.
Mr Bush’s decision to sink so much political capital in the nuclear venture with India was based on a desire to recast ties with a nation that has revelled in its opposition to the west during the past six decades.Assisting the rise of a democratic India, Mr Bush believed, would foster a new global balance of power in favour of freedom.For Mr Singh, however, building a new partnership with the US meant overcoming a deep-seated distrust of Washington. Much of the initial resistance to nuclear co-operation with the US came from the security establishment, which for nearly two generations had seen nothing but high-technology sanctions and hostility from Washington.After he painstakingly got the atomic scientists on board for a new relationship with the US, Mr Singh found himself ambushed by the Communist partners of his ruling coalition.
The polls may vary, but they showed how Obama, who would be the U.S. first black president, has closed in on Clinton's once strong lead.
On Sunday, Obama and Clinton were courting each other's core constituencies _ black voters and women, respectively _ as they rallied for an edge.
Meanwhile, McCain was looking to beat Romney on his home turf. On Monday he was taking his campaign to Massachusetts, a state where Romney served as governor, as he looked to knock out the millionaire former businessman on Super Tuesday when Republican contests are held in 21 states.
The Arizona senator looks to do well among moderate northeastern Republicans after his victory in Florida's primary last Tuesday led former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to quit the race and endorse McCain. He also has backing from Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of the key state of California.
Gone from McCain's recent campaign stops was a mention of Romney, who McCain recently has lumped in with the Democrats on the question of when U.S. troops should leave Iraq.
``The first thing we've got to do after Tuesday is unite this party,'' McCain says repeatedly these days _ as if the 21 states holding caucuses and primaries this week are simply a formality.
Romney continued to hammer away at his assertion that McCain is weak on economic issues and is too much of a maverick for the conservative party. ``If we want a party that is indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton on an issue like illegal immigration, we're going to have John McCain as a nominee. That's the wrong way to go,'' Romney said.
McCain said on a news talk show Sunday that he is ``far more conservative'' than Romney.
The Democrats on Sunday were relying on their highest profile surrogates to woo voters in California _ the big Super Tuesday prize with its 370 delegates. In that state, a survey of California Democrats showed Clinton had 36 percent, Obama 34 percent, with 18 percent undecided. The Field Research Corp. poll, conducted Jan. 25-Feb. 1 had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
A Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Monday showed Obama leading with 46 percent to Clinton's 40 percent in California, and ahead with 47 percent to Clinton's 42 percent in Missouri, Reuters reported Monday. The polls had margins of error of 3.2 percentage points in California and 3.4 percentage points in Missouri.
Obama's wife, Michelle, TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, led a rally in Los Angeles on Sunday. Their joint appearance targeted female Democrats who tend to favor Clinton, who is seeking to become the first woman U.S. president.
Former President Bill Clinton also spent the day in Los Angeles visiting four churches in mostly black neighborhoods. The trip was widely seen as a bid to smooth over perceptions that he had injected race into last month's Democratic primary in South Carolina, which Obama won handily.
The former president never mentioned Obama by name when he spoke for about 20 minutes at the City of Refuge church in Gardena. But he struck a conciliatory tone in describing this year's Democratic contest as ``an embarrassment of riches.''
Hillary Clinton spoke at the Greater Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, saying it ``was a great moment'' for the party and America when a woman and a black man emerged as the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination.
With McCain emerging as the likely Republican nominee, Obama and Clinton argued in Sunday television interviews over who would have the best chance of defeating him in the November election.
Obama, speaking on CBS's ``Face The Nation,'' said Republicans and independents would be more inclined to support him than Clinton in the November general election: ``I don't think there's any doubt that the Republicans consider her a polarizing figure,'' he said.
But Clinton suggested that Obama, who was elected to the Senate in 2004, would be more susceptible because he has not been scrutinized for years as she has. ``I've been through the Republican attacks over and over again,'' she said on ABC's ``This Week.''
Among Democrats, a new nationwide poll by the Pew Research Center showed Clinton at 46 percent and Obama at 38 percent, with the number of undecided voters increasing to 15 percent. Clinton had led by 15 percentage points in mid-January. Former Sen. John Edwards quit the race on Wednesday.
The same poll showed McCain leading among Republicans with 42 percent, while Romney trailed with 22 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had 20 percent. McCain is up 13 percentage points since mid-January.
The poll was conducted from Jan. 30-Feb. 2, with a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points for Democrats and 5 percentage points for Republicans.
McCain is now favored to win Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware, which award all their convention delegates to the top vote-getter. That would give him 198 delegates toward the 1,191 needed to secure the nomination at the party's national convention this summer.
McCain is also leading in polls of several southern states because Romney and Huckabee are splitting the votes of conservatives opposed to McCain.
McCain could emerge as the party's presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday because nine of the 21 Republican contests award delegates on a winner-take-all basis to the top vote-getter.
The Republicans have 1,023 delegates at stake on Tuesday. McCain leads with 93 delegates, followed by Romney (77), Huckabee (40) and Texas Rep. Ron Paul (4), according to the latest AP tally.
A total of 1,681 delegates are at stake for Obama and Clinton in the 22 Democratic races on Tuesday, but the Democrats award their delegates proportionally. In all, 2,025 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination, and the two campaigns have said they do not expect either candidate to lock in the nomination that day. The AP puts Clinton's delegate tally at 261 while Obama has 190.
In the Nov. 1 edition of the Colombian weekly newsmagazine Semana, columnist Antonio Caballero says U.S. elections have become like television news--infotainment. Issues are taking a back seat to questions like whether Gore can kiss his wife for a full minute without breathing, or whether Bush can properly enunciate "subliminal."
That may be fine for U.S. citizens, Caballero says, because U.S. presidents have little domestic power, which is diluted by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, city councils, the Federal Reserve, and numerous other institutions. U.S. presidents have great powers only abroad where, deciding "to bomb a city here, impose sanctions on a country over there, overthrow a president somewhere else, and sustain a dictator in yet another place."
What an irony, he says, that the U.S. presidential election is decided by those over whom the president has little power but excludes those over whom he has a lot of power. Not even Puerto Ricans get to vote! "President Kennedy once said 'I'm a Berliner!'" writes Caballero. "Maybe he was--all the rest of us are Puerto Ricans."
After nearly three-and-a-half years of Mr Singh’s tenure – which saw more progress in Indo-US relations than in the previous five decades – the Indian Communists suddenly discovered the deal was less about nuclear energy than a political alliance.
Terming India a country of "extreme paradoxes" with 48 "dollar billionaires" on the one hand and 260 million below poverty line people on the other, former top UN official Shashi Tharoor has said a great distance still remains to be covered before the country's emerging status as superpower percolates down to all levels.
While India boasts of its nuclear strength, 600 million people are still living in darkness, 150 million do not have access to health clinics and farmers' suicides make it to the pages of newspapers now and then, Tharoor said at a 'Face To Face' programme organised by Bengal Initiative, a conclave of front-runners in different fields of the state, on Sunday night.
On the cellphone revolution in the country, the former UN Under Secretary General said it signified the emblematic transformation of the lumbering Indian elephant to that of an agile tiger. The number of cellphone users in India, he noted, had reached a staggering 8.3 million.
On this front, the country occupied the number one slot outpacing China, but the villagers have to still fetch water trudging kilometres in the countryside, he said.
Cellphone had worked as a kind of an empowerment tool for the common man, he said but added that while it displayed the enterprising zeal of the country, "for real empowerment the government will have to undertake some drastic measures."
The government should de-regulate PSUs and open them for free enterprise and take control of rural healthcare, power, water supply, he said and spoke about the "poor" infrastructure in vast areas of the country with bullock carts still ferrying people in some rural belts when automobile giants turn up at the national capital.
As political momentum on the nuclear deal comes down in New Delhi and Washington, key players are leaving post and adding to the sense of pessimism. The latest announcement came from India's ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen, who said he wanted to return in March and be a private citizen. Since August 2004, when Sen was appointed by the UPA government, Indo-US relations have matured and broadened but t
