O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Balloony of another kind
State assemblies are going haywire
Our state legislators have put on display exceptionally outrageous behaviour over the years, and yet “aaj ke MLAs” can still manage to take their actions to ever-new lows. They committed another assault on parliamentary norms in Uttar Pradesh last week when they flew and burst black balloons in the hallowed precincts.

Status quo prevails
India and China are far from border settlement
China’s pointless protest over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh has once again brought into sharp focus the India-China boundary dispute. China has, however, lodged its protest at a “junior level”, describing Arunachal as a “disputed” territory. This is different from the way the Chinese had been protesting in the past --- summoning a senior diplomat in Beijing to express their concern.

Where is second revolution?
Agriculture is nobody’s baby
On January 3, 2006, addressing the Indian Science Congress at Hyderabad, Dr Manmohan Singh called for a “second Green Revolution”. Two years down the line the Centre and the states have done little to make that goal a reality. In fact, speaking at a seminar to mark the birth centenary of Babu Jagjivan Ram last Friday, the Prime Minister indirectly admitted the lack of quality leadership required “to chart out a new course for agricultural renovation and revival”.

• Thought for the day

ARTICLE

A Tribune Debate
Judges vs Judges
Lay down limits of judicial overreach
by Dipankar P. Gupta
THE Supreme Court in the Aravali Golf Club case has expressed a bold view on the question of judicial activism not normally found in judicial pronouncements. This has given rise to a perception that the judgement deprecates the PIL jurisdiction itself. This is not entirely the case, as a brief analysis of the judgement will bear it out.

MIDDLE

English is a funny language
by Sanjeev Singh Bariana
English is not our mother-tongue. We have to teach gymnastics to our tongue in getting the correct sounds, said Jaswant Singh, English teacher, during his farewell function recently, at Pahauri village in Hoshiarpur district.

OPED

Strategic challenges in the boundary issue
by Maj Gen (retd) Himmat Singh Gill
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recently concluded visit to Arunachal Pradesh would have somewhat surprised Arunachal Pradesh-watchers, as to its very timing and purpose.

Republicans and the happiness quotient
by Eric Weiner
After virtually ignoring happiness for more than 100 years, social scientists are making up for lost time. They’re churning out hundreds of research papers on the subject each year. There are happiness conferences, a Journal of Happiness Studies, a World Database of Happiness. Happy, you might say, is the new sad.

Chatterati
Raj on the rampage
by Devi Cherian
Raj Thackrey has always been known to be the Junior Bal Thackrey. Ever since he was a kid he tried to imitate his uncle – whether it was to become a cartoonist or to join student politics. Bal Thackrey became a hero in Maharashtra politics by playing the Maratha card. Raj is trying to do just that.

• Delhi’s echo

• Family wealth

EDITORIALS

Balloony of another kind
State assemblies are going haywire

Our state legislators have put on display exceptionally outrageous behaviour over the years, and yet “aaj ke MLAs” can still manage to take their actions to ever-new lows. They committed another assault on parliamentary norms in Uttar Pradesh last week when they flew and burst black balloons in the hallowed precincts. All this happened during the Governor’s address to the joint sitting of both Houses of the state legislature. Samjwadi Party MLAs indulged in the farce without any sense of shame or guilt. Why should they? Such remorse can be expected only from those who have some respect for public decency. If their predecessors could use mikes and paperweights as missiles, what was there to stop them from smuggling in balloons and black banners into the House?

The pity is that such misbehaviour is not confined to Uttar Pradesh alone. There are many others who can match it. Just a week prior to the antics of the UP opposition, those of the Jammu and Kashmir shouted continuously and even exchanged fists and blows with marshals of the House. Such scenes are a stigma on the democratic culture.

Much of this can be attributed to the wanton criminalisation of politics. Those who think nothing of using their muscle power outside the Houses cannot be expected to do any better inside. The pity is that such ignominies have also been committed in Parliament. The Vice-President himself was constrained the other day to lament the erosion of values. Now that we have plumbed greater depths, it is time for the few sensible politicians that we are still left with to put their heads together and stop this madness before the hoodlums take over the legislative assemblies.

Status quo prevails
India and China are far from border settlement

China’s pointless protest over Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Arunachal Pradesh has once again brought into sharp focus the India-China boundary dispute. China has, however, lodged its protest at a “junior level”, describing Arunachal as a “disputed” territory. This is different from the way the Chinese had been protesting in the past --- summoning a senior diplomat in Beijing to express their concern. Thus, it would be better not to read much into it. Possibly, the Chinese are keeping the Arunachal issue alive as a bargaining chip for settling the border problem with India. Though it is difficult to say anything conclusively, India and China seem to be prepared to live with the status quo so far as their long boundary is concerned, whatever the nature of public utterances.

Chinese claims over parts of Arunachal Pradesh as being their territory did not come in the way of a lecturer at Rajiv Gandhi University in Itanagar, a resident of the state, getting a Chinese visa to visit that country as part of a delegation recently. This was contrary to what happened before this development when a group of IAS officers had to abandon their plan for a China visit when one of them belonging to Arunachal Pradesh was denied a visa by Beijing because of his residential address. More significantly, the two countries have consciously prevented their boundary dispute from coming in the way of their trade relations. While the talks on the boundary question have been on, India and China have been improving their relations in other areas as responsible Asian powers. Greater interaction between the two sides at various levels, including increased people-to-people contacts, is bound to create an atmosphere conducive to settling the boundary dispute to the satisfaction of both.

China must understand that “any elected government of India is not permitted by the provisions of the Constitution to part with our land”, as External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee beautifully described India’s position some time ago. Therefore, Arunachal Pradesh is “our land of the rising sun”, and India has to ensure that the state “rises from the east as a new star and becomes one of the best regions of our country.” One hopes these sentiments of Dr Manmohan Singh, expressed at Itanagar on January 31, become a reality soon.

Where is second revolution?
Agriculture is nobody’s baby

On January 3, 2006, addressing the Indian Science Congress at Hyderabad, Dr Manmohan Singh called for a “second Green Revolution”. Two years down the line the Centre and the states have done little to make that goal a reality. In fact, speaking at a seminar to mark the birth centenary of Babu Jagjivan Ram last Friday, the Prime Minister indirectly admitted the lack of quality leadership required “to chart out a new course for agricultural renovation and revival”. Nobody in the government seems clear about what the second Green Revolution means and how to go about it. The Agriculture Minister is more interested in cricket than agriculture.

Meanwhile, the farm crisis has gone from bad to worse. Countrywide reports of farmers’ suicides have evoked only a Central package, that too for select districts, and even that has not worked. Such fire-fighting measures are no substitute for a sound policy to rejuvenate agriculture. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is concerned about keeping the growth rate at “close to 9 per cent”. He does not seem to realise the social catastrophe that is building up due to the wide gap between the industrial and agricultural growth, between the urban rich and the rural poor. In fact, a mere 4 per cent farm growth is seen as an achievement. As food prices are on the rise globally, foodgrain production and buffer stocks are dwindling and the public distribution system is in tatters, the poor are in for serious trouble.

To revitalise agriculture, the Centre and the states have to launch a vigorous joint drive of the kind that made the first Green Revolution possible. The requirements are the same: cheaper institutional credit, soil health enhancement, efficient water management, application of science and biotechnology to seeds and livestock and reliable rural infrastructure. A large part of the rural population needs to be shifted from agriculture to industry and services. The M.S. Swaminathan report has outlined the farm agenda in detail, but who will implement it?

Thought for the day

Any nose / May ravage with impunity a rose. — Robert Browning

ARTICLE

A Tribune Debate
Judges vs Judges
Lay down limits of judicial overreach
by Dipankar P. Gupta

THE Supreme Court in the Aravali Golf Club case has expressed a bold view on the question of judicial activism not normally found in judicial pronouncements. This has given rise to a perception that the judgement deprecates the PIL jurisdiction itself. This is not entirely the case, as a brief analysis of the judgement will bear it out. However, the judgement does take the bull by the horn. But the question is: does it go far enough?

The judgement notes that there is a broad separation of powers under the Constitution and one wing must not encroach into the other’s domain. This principle has been often stated in various judicial pronouncements and is well established. The judgement then goes on to enumerate some instances of transgression.

It is, perhaps, easy to identify cases where there is apparent conflict between the judiciary and the legislature. The judgement notes the case of Jagadambika Pal, where the Supreme Court directed a special session of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly to be summoned and went on to specify the agenda item (only one) for the session. On a subsequent day, after the special session had been held, the Supreme Court closed the case and observed: “Keeping any attendant issues alive in the form of the writ petition before the High Court would now be not conducive to political peace and tranquillity, as also overall harmony.” In my view, there is a grave doubt whether there is any legal basis for interference of this kind. The court did not indicate any.

Next, some instances where the judiciary has intervened in matters perceived to be within the domain of the executive have been given in the judgement under discussion. Notable among them, quoted in the judgement, are cases of allotment of a particular bungalow to a judge, forcing the railway authorities to give reservation in a train, age and other criteria for nursery admissions, the number of free beds in hospitals on public land, the nature of buses we board, the size of speedbreakers on Delhi roads, autorickshaw overcharging and so on.

Here is one more recent example. In a case involving the recruitment of drivers by the Delhi Transport Corporation, the Delhi High Court apparently fixed the educational qualifications for appointment and on a review application later sought to modify these qualifications.

There are numerous such examples; and it is impossible to explain them away by describing them as occasional aberrations. But the judgement under discussion is not emphatic enough to describe these instances as clear cases of judicial overreach. One can say this because while giving the examples, the judgement carefully observes: “The courts have apparently, if not clearly, strayed into the executive domain or in matters of policy.”

Where then is the dividing line? Is there a clear dividing line at all? One thing is clear though — any judicial order that the court passes must have a legal basis. It is not enough to say that a particular order will be beneficial to the public and, therefore, I shall pass it. As very rightly pointed out in the judgement, “if there is a law, judges can certainly enforce it, but judges cannot create a law and seek to enforce it.”

But that still does not answer the question as to where the dividing line should be drawn. Can it be drawn with sufficient clarity for any court to judge whether a particular case falls on one side of it or the other? Even if the dividing line is indistinct or blurred, can guidelines still be laid down for determining where courts will be free to interfere and where not? In the ultimate analysis, the quest has to be to find a legal basis, if any, underlying numerous judicial orders which apparently trench upon the area of the executive.

It is a well-accepted proposition that courts have been constituted as the protector and guarantor of fundamental rights. If there is a breach of fundamental rights or there is any action or inaction on the part of the executive authority which breaches any fundamental right or any law, that surely will be a legitimate ground for interference.

The real difficulty, perhaps, lies in the fact that with the expansive interpretation given to Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, can we trace the rights asserted in a particular public interest litigation to these Articles? This is not a simple issue but it needs an answer. Aravali Golf Club raises the issue but does not seek to solve it. It does offer sound advice but does not discuss the parameters of the legal demarcations, if any. It states:

“We hasten to add that it is not our opinion that judges should never be activists. Sometimes judicial activism is a useful adjunct to democracy. This, however, should be resorted to only in exceptional circumstances when the situation forcefully demands it in the interest of the nation or the poorer and weaker sections of society, but always keeping in mind that ordinarily the task of legislation or administrative decisions is for the legislature and the executive and not the judiciary.”

Obviously, the judgement does not castigate the PIL jurisdiction as such, as popularly believed, but reaffirms it with a note of warning in its exercise. Is this sufficient to guide the courts?

In the numerous instances where there are apparent transgressions, the judiciary has not, while passing the orders, taken the trouble of indicating the legal basis for interference. It is suggested that, as a first step, and in order to focus attention on the issue, whenever an order is made in the PIL jurisdiction courts should make it a point to indicate the legal basis for interference on which the order is based. This will be an exercise in self-discipline so sorely needed. It would alert the courts to be within legitimate bounds and not to stray outside it. Legal principles would surely crystallise from such an exercise over a period of time. Transparency in the evolution of the law of public interest litigation and judicial activism will result from such an exercise.

This is why it has been stated in the beginning that the judgement ventures out far, but not far enough. What is now needed is a pronouncement from the Supreme Court, laying down a set of rules or guidelines, firstly, as to what falls outside the dividing line between the judicial and the executive fields; and, secondly, what will be the test for determining whether the particular situation of the case forcefully demands judicial intervention.

The limits of judicial interference — the dividing line, if you will — should be laid down with sufficient clarity and with sufficient guidelines for the judiciary to follow. Else, the debate will continue.

The writer is a senior advocate, Supreme Court of India, and a former Solicitor- General of India.. The article is in continuation of The Tribune Debate, “Judges vs Judges”, in which a number of legal luminaries participated with their articles, carried on this page on December 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 25, 2007, January 17 and 30, 2008.

MIDDLE

English is a funny language
by Sanjeev Singh Bariana

English is not our mother-tongue. We have to teach gymnastics to our tongue in getting the correct sounds, said Jaswant Singh, English teacher, during his farewell function recently, at Pahauri village in Hoshiarpur district.

Jaswant Singh had taught at our village school for more than two decades, fascinated with the sound of the words. His students were largely left as confused as him. A simpleton, he was always lost trying sounds of words like dictionary, Massachusetts, deputy, athletics and the list was endless. “They all sound different in rural Punjab”, he would say.

Asking his students to be a braveheart in learning English, he spoke at length about the “eccentricities” in the ‘phoren’ language. “There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger and neither pine nor apple in pineapple”. He added: “Quicksand takes you down, slowly. Boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig”.

Jaswant Singh, when free, would go out for a stroll in the fields adjoining the school. During one such visit, he heard a voice in English from the rear: “Good morning, sir” . He turned back and saw a young lad riding his bullock cart. “Sorry son, I did not recognise you”, he said. The boy replied: “Sir, I am Natha Ram, your student, I failed in English of Class X, three years back. Sirji, not just me, more than half my class has failed and this happens every year. Sirji, sorry, could not master English. My father said I should avoid wasting time over a language which will not give villagers any food for the family”.

One day an angry father of a Class X student walked up to Jaswant Singh and said: “My boy has complained that you are very rough with him. You scold him in front of the whole class and even pull his ears.” Phinda was the biggest trouble maker in the class. Jaswant Singh replied coolly: “Phinda tells me a lot of things about his home”. He paused for a moment and quipped: “I don’t believe them all”. The father left almost immediately.

Once a class ruffian Billa took his paper to Jaswant and said: “I have written three pages and you have given me a zero? Jaswant replied: “That is the least I could have given for your absolutely pitiable effort in your play with words, tenses, propositions, punctuation, exclamations. The crossword marvel is impossible for me to comprehend.”

One day, Phinda learnt a tough word from a distant cousin to embarrass his teacher. He stood and asked: “Sir, what is the meaning of kleptomaniac”. Phinda was smiling while Jaswant straightened his turban from different angles pronouncing the word in myriad diction. After a brief spell of thoughtful silence, he said : “Sit down, you Englishman. When I could do my MA and become a teacher without knowing the meaning of the word, you can definitely pass your matriculation”.

OPED

Strategic challenges in the boundary issue
by Maj Gen (retd) Himmat Singh Gill

The Prime Minister in Arunachal Pradesh. — PTI

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recently concluded visit to Arunachal Pradesh would have somewhat surprised Arunachal Pradesh-watchers, as to its very timing and purpose.

Coming close on the heels of his visit to China, where the hierarchy is very touchy over the question of Tawang, and the rather deliberate miss given to this region by the PM, does raise some doubts in one’s mind as to what was actually achieved and whether in reality it has not turned out to be a diplomatic concession gifted to the Chinese in return for nothing.

The question that needs to be resolved first is whether we have firmed up our foreign policy options with regard to China, and whether we have at last decided to find a solution to the vexed boundary question on our eastern and western fronts with that country.

Is one to infer that there could be something in the offing where for a formal Chinese recognition of the McMahon Line, the government is considering a de jure handover of Aksai Chin in the west to China?

If this is not the case and China is to continue to lay claim to Arunachal Pradesh as also to keep exercising its de facto control over Aksai Chin, then the visit at this time makes little sense, as the PM only seems to have given in to the Chinese claims over Tawang which it considers to be its territory.

The rain of developmental projects announced by the PM to AP not withstanding, a game plan for the resolution of the border issue would need to be debated at length in Parliament and with leaders of the Opposition, as along with the other members of the UPA and also the J&K government, which certainly would be interested in any solution being contemplated in the Aksai Chin region.

Has this been done is the next question. With the ongoing Chinese incursions in the northeast and their clear claim on Tawang, it seems highly improbable that they are about to make any ready concessions to India in the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh. If this be so and with the Chinese fully entrenched in Aksai Chin, it would have been better for the PM to wait a while to visit up this state, and at a time when he is armed with a comprehensive, final proposal on resolving the boundary issue.

Alternatively, if his mind was made up and India did have a game plan, then he should have put Tawang on his itinerary and gone ahead with the visit so as to send out a clear message.

Announcements like infrastructural improvements in the surface road sector, more power projects and greenfield airports can also be announced by the Cabinet Ministers, if development of the region was the main concern.

There are a few strategic issues also involved in any solution in the northeast which Governor J.J. Singh, who has served in the area, would need to ponder over; though it is a different matter how firmly he would be able to put across his point of view to the government on security related issues.

Having been a Chief of the Army Staff does not mean that he cannot render as a Governor some sound military advice to the government and the bureaucrats that run it. First is the question as to where does the boundary lie and does the watershed run along the Thagla Ridge in the Tawang region as is our case, or does it run to the south of the Thagla Ridge along mountain features that overlook the Tawang Valley.

The second question is whether be have, in Joint Working Groups and border talks at select locations, ever had a commitment from the Chinese that they would adhere to the Watershed Principle which most nations accept in any boundary issue in the mountains?

If the answer is in the negative, then we are going to have serious problems in the demarcation and boundary pillar marking, as and when we get to that stage. Third, do we need a 1840 km trans AP highway echeloned in depth running all the way through the state (will pose certain security problems), and not a reliable all weather road network running along the Mc Mahon Line, so essential for the maintenance and logistics of out troops? We will need to defend the McMahon Line.

And finally, do we have an agreement with the Chinese on the question of the displacement of the populated areas where such centres would not be disturbed or uprooted when border lines are eventually being drawn? These are some of the questions that will need answers that military minds could well provide, if only someone was listening.

Republicans and the happiness quotient
by Eric Weiner

After virtually ignoring happiness for more than 100 years, social scientists are making up for lost time. They’re churning out hundreds of research papers on the subject each year. There are happiness conferences, a Journal of Happiness Studies, a World Database of Happiness. Happy, you might say, is the new sad.

All of this cogitating about contentment has revealed much about who’s supposedly happy and who isn’t. Most studies show that wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones. People with pets or children are no happier than those without. People with active sex lives are – surprise! – happier than those without.

No single morsel of happiness data, though, is more intriguing than this: Republicans are happier than
Democrats.

A 2006 Pew Research poll found that 45 percent of Republicans describe themselves as “very happy,” compared with only 30 percent of Democrats (and 29 percent of independents). This is a sizable gap and a remarkably consistent one, too. Republicans have been happier than Democrats every year since the General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, began asking about happiness in 1972.

What to make of this finding? Is there something about being a card-carrying member of the GOP that induces a warm, fuzzy feeling, a sort of political Prozac? Or does the river of causality flow in the other direction: Are happy people more likely to become Republicans than Democrats? Or maybe neither explanation holds water and it only appears as if Republicans are happier than Democrats.

The most obvious place to look for an explanation is, of course, with money. Wealthy people are marginally happier than poor ones, and Republicans, according to some surveys, tend to be wealthier than Democrats, so that must be why they’re happier, right? Nice try, but no dice. Even after adjusting for differences in income, the Pew researchers still found a marked happiness gap: Poor Republicans are, on average, happier than poor Democrats, and wealthy Republicans are happier than wealthy Democrats.

Maybe the answer is power. Republicans have controlled the White House for most of the past 35 years, and nothing spells happiness like p-o-w-e-r. Wrong again. Republican bliss persists even if a Democrat – be it Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton – resides in the White House.

You can practically hear the researchers at Pew scratching their liberal heads. They put the findings through a rigorous process called multiple-regression analysis to isolate the relevant variables. But try as they might, they could not wash that Republican happiness out of their hair.

Basically, Republicans have in abundance all the things that combine to make us happy. Church attendance is particularly crucial. People who attend religious services regularly are more likely to report being “very happy” than those who don’t – 43 percent vs. 26 percent (a happiness boost, by the way, that cuts across all the major religious denominations). In addition, Republicans are more likely to be married than Democrats, and married people are happier than singles.

When I tell my liberal friends about Republican happiness, they usually reply angrily – angry not being a happy trait. “They’re just not paying attention,” one friend snapped. “Ignorance is bliss,” said another. Or perhaps it’s what Ralph Waldo Emerson said, putting it more eloquently and less angrily: “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please – you can never have both.”

I don’t know whether Democrats follow world events more closely than Republicans, but they are, on average, better educated, and that might explain their glumness. People with advanced degrees report being less happy than those with only a bachelor’s.

There is something to be said for the under-examined life. Psychologists have found that when it comes to maximising contentment, a little bit of self-deception goes a long way. Happy people remember events more rosily than they actually happened, while the morose remember the past accurately.

If this isn’t depressing enough for liberals, it turns out that some of their own pet policies are to blame for their unhappiness. Once in power, Democrats tend to focus on issues that, according to the science of happiness, have little effect on our contentment – income equality, for instance, and racial diversity.

Neither is linked to greater happiness. Countries with large disparities between rich and poor are no less happy than more egalitarian ones, studies have found. And the happiest countries in the world tend to be homogenous ones, such as Denmark and Iceland, not the ethnic melting pots that liberals celebrate.

In any event, Republicans are happy, and that, of course, is a very American thing to be, or at least to strive to be. We Americans have a complex relationship with happiness. Yes, it’s in our founding document, but it is perennially elusive, just out of our grasp - a sad fact that Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the 1830s, when he noted that the United States was populated by “so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance.” For us, happiness is not a blessing but an expectation.

And we expect it from our politicians. The more optimistic candidate won nine of the 10 elections from 1948 to 1984, according to Martin Seligman, the pooh-bah of the positive-psychology movement. More recent elections have been spottier, but the pattern holds: All things being equal, voters choose the more optimistic candidate.

This may explain why Republicans have dominated presidential elections in the past 40 or so years. They, of course, have as their happy standard-bearer Ronald Reagan, who smilingly urged us to ask ourselves if we were better off (read: happier) than we’d been four years earlier.

On the Democrats’ side, John F. Kennedy knew how to play the happiness card, but most of his would-be followers haven’t. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry (Jimmy Carter, too, even though he managed to win an election): Happiness does not come to mind when you think of these people. Only Bill Clinton managed to break through the happiness barrier.

So while you might think that the 2008 presidential election hinges on Iraq or the economy or change vs. experience, it doesn’t. The real issue – the meta issue – is, as usual, happiness. Which candidate can best convince voters that if elected, he or she will increase their happiness? Which candidate actually seems the happiest, or at least the most optimistic? Psychologists have found that we tend to like more positive people – no surprise there – so that might explain why we vote for the more optimistic candidate.

There is, though, an exception to the Happy Republicans trend. More Democrats than Republicans say they’re excited about the current election, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News survey conducted in November, and Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the election season leaves them frustrated and bored. Might Democrats be on the verge of transforming themselves into the party of happiness? If so, that would be the ultimate flip-flop.

The writer is the author of “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.”

By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Chatterati
Raj on the rampage
by Devi Cherian

Raj Thackrey has always been known to be the Junior Bal Thackrey. Ever since he was a kid he tried to imitate his uncle – whether it was to become a cartoonist or to join student politics. Bal Thackrey became a hero in Maharashtra politics by playing the Maratha card. Raj is trying to do just that.

Raj was Bal’s blue eyed boy till his own son Udhav decided to join politics. So, obviously, nephew was sidelined for son. Udhav’s insecurities with Raj gaining popularity led to the breaking up of Shiv Sena and Raj forming his MNS. Udhav hogged the lime light in the last Maharastra assembly poll by getting more seats than the BJP while Raj did make a dent, but not enough to be noticed.

Raj is now a builder too and has more than enough funds to run a political party. Raj has once again played with the sentiments of the Marathas by trying to instigate the younger generation against North Indians. But does anyone in Mumbai have the guts to arrest Raj? The reaction of violence will be too much to handle, perhaps.

Delhi’s echo

But almost echoing Raj’s sentiments comes Delhi’s Lt. Governor Tejinder Sinha. He first makes an un-governor like partisan remark about North Indians being proud to break the law. He has barely recovered from his earlier faux pas about identity cards for citizens.

Clearly he too has it in for North Indians. Both Mayawati and Lalu had naturally bayed for his blood the last time. With the heat on in Mumbai, the Lt Governor is clearly fishing in troubled waters at the same time. Raj, of course, is only following the predictable pattern of regional politicians, but it’s clear that North Indians are the butt of negative emotions all around.

Family wealth

“Aishwarya” is the name of Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh’s bungalow in Lucknow. The bungalow has been named after Aishwarya Rai, the daughter-in-law of superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who is a close family friend of the Samajwadi MP. The Bachchan family last week arrived in Lucknow and stayed at Mr Amar Singh’s plush residence.

They were on their way to Barabanki to lay the foundation-stone of a school named after Aishwarya Rai and to usher in Mr Amar Singh’s birthday at his residence. Mr Amar Singh’s explanation to this is that “Abhishek is like a son to me and Aishwarya is like my daughter-in-law. So what if I have named my house after her and what if I decide to even gift this house to her? Aishwarya is also another name for Goddess Lakshmi”.

Well, if nothing else, the Bachchans and their faithful friends do surely know how to treat their daughter-in-law. Amar Singh has two twin daughters of his own who were named by Jaya Bachchan. Their names were used as the names of Abhishek and Aishwarya’s daughter in the film ‘Guru,’ so close are the daughters and daughter-in-laws. One big, happy family.