Hate Narendra Modi journalism is good for him!

Ever since Gujarat elections are finished, I came across articles that were trying to discredit the victory of Shri Narendra Modi. One of those headlines that I came across read "Modi's re-election is black spot in Gujarat's history" and the author was supposedly a professor in Chicago universty! But, I never thought that professors are dumb enough to call a transparent democratic election process as a black spot in the history of that particular region. Would she call Obama's re-election as black spot if she doesn't support Obama? Another theory proposed was that Narendra Modi won as people of Gujarat are communal, come on now if they don't vote for your favorite party(in fact 40% of them did vote for congress), would they become communal. If you read some of the articles after the Gujarat election results, you would get the feeling that Modi haters collectively puked their hatred into articles. But, I was happy for all they did, in my opinion they are the biggest contributors to Modi's victory in Gujarat. In a way, hate Modi journalism balances rhetoric from congress debunking Gujarat's development. I think it makes people realize that congress & media are trying to fool them into believing that there is no development or growth. Typical articles on Modi start with a mention of 2002 riots as if that's the only riot that happened in India. In fact, I feel this is one of those genuine riots where both sides (Hindus & Muslims) lost lives. Apparently riots were started by Muslims burning down a railway coach with 59 people (including women & children). May be Modi committed a mistake by allowing parading of dead bodies in Ahmedabad, but I don't think he actively discouraged police from stopping rioters. On the other hand no one talks about why calls for help to other states to provide forces were unanswered. But the fact is in these riots about 800 muslims and about 300 Hindus lost lives, thousands were sheltered in camps on both sides. Contrast this to 1984 sikh riots orchestrated by Congress after Indira Gandhi's assasination. 3000 sikhs were massacred as per official numbers, not one person who is not sikh was harmed, not even one property was harmed if the person is not sikh. With this kind of history, congress wants to claim itself as torch bearer of secularism. How secular is the Congress party when the Prime Minister himself declares that first rights to country's resources belongs to minorities or that he tries to threaten muslims by telling them that you are unsafe in Gujarat unless you vote for Congress. And the leaders of congress, especially Jagadish Tytler against whom credible evidence was found walks around freely even today. Not one conviction happened in this case. Contrast that with Gujarat where scores of convictions happened, people on both sides (Hindus & Muslims) were convicted for their crimes. Even people from both parties (BJP & Congress) were convicted. Of course, media gives no coverage if a congress party person is convicted. But, it will make it to head lines if the convicted person is from BJP. All this disgusting campaign of Congress & media is driving more and more people towards Modi. But, it's clear that Modi is not banking just on this communal divide, he is actually delivering the goods and that's the reason why he is winning repeatedly. Congress & media are just insulting intelligence public by claiming that Narendra Modi is winning due to communal divide in Gujarat.

While the hate campaign of 2002 Gujarat riots are the favorite of media, before 2012 elections they ran a number of false claims with so-called experts. But, Narendra Modi was able to win with his development agenda. It is an emphatic victory, he is elected for the 3rd time consecutively. Shall I remind people here that Chandra Babu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh & S.M. Krishna in Karnataka were not able to win elections with development agenda, even with all their impressive work. The difference, they didn't really care for farmers, they focused on job creation through IT & ease of governance by using IT. By contrast Modi focused on agriculture & well being of farmers. Is it not a miracle if a predominantly arid region like Gujarat is showing 10% agricultural growth consistently while rest of India is not even able to manage 5%? How did this happen? well, by now everyone knows how Gujarat built over a lakh checkdams, that helped Gujarat. But more importantly Modi provided farmers with consistent electricity, quality seeds and access to technology to improve their productivity.

Another important area that Modi focused on was industries, he knows that jobs on large scale will only be created by big industries. He was successful in bringing in big industrial houses to Gujarat and they were more than willing due to the peaceful and conducive environment available in Gujarat. In no time, Gujarat became a significant player in automobile industry, that's certainly a credit to Narendra Modi.

I still remember how my friends used to tell me that "you know in Ahmedabad, wome roam with full jewellery at midnights during Navaratris". I will leave it to your imagination on how possible that sounds in a place like Delhi, yes no less than the capital city of India.

All this hate campaign actually works for Modi, coz by repeatedly lying to people they are actually making them to think and ask if this is true. They want to know more about Modi, so people started to ask any Gujaratis that they knew or their friends that might be working in Gujarat or someone that recently been to Gujarat. To their surprise they hear all things positive such as you know roads there are super smooth and they have power 24x7. If you are in any other state in India, then you know what that means and you immediately realize the progress in that state. So, my sincere suggestion to Modi haters is keep going, it's actually helping Shri Narendra Modi a lot. But, do take a break, we realize that you are burning up after Gujarat election results are declared.

Gun Control : How many more tragedies before we get no-Gun zones?

This Friday afternoon is not easy to forget and we all know why, certain Adam Lanza picked this day to go on rampage with a gun. The place he chose was a school with young kids. As President Obama rightly said "They had entire lives ahead of them". I had tears in my eyes when I saw the news on this shootout, as a father of a lively toddler, I can feel what this loss means to the Parents. My heartfelt prayers to god to give them courage to face this tough situation.

But sadly, this disastrous incident was not enough to move Obama to spell out what action he is going to take. I'm not going to ask for Gun control laws, yes, i'm not going to. What puzzles me is that it took just one 09/11 to get security agencies of USA on red alert. There were some harsh measures, but results are there for everyone to see, not one terrorism related incident after that. Don't this incident deserve that kind of response and action from the Govt. of USA. Forget Gun control laws, how about mandating metal detectors to screen people in public places such as movie theaters, shopping malls, schools & offices? Ever been to India, what's the most frequent thing you see? Yes, it's a metal detector, it's common thing in India where ever you go, a shopping mall, movie theater,  offices, almost everywhere. I must tell you it didn't make it to schools yet!

And so i'm surprised to see nobody is asking for no-gun zones just like no-smoking zones. For example you can ask people to leave their guns in a locker when entering shopping malls, schools, theaters. Isn't this basic preventive measure enough to stop lot of tragedies that happened in the recent past? Why is that nobody thinking in this direction, the moment a shootout happens everybody vociferously demands for a strict gun control laws, psychological evaluations, arming more people like teachers with guns (really?) for few days and then forget about it. I can't tell you how surprised i'm with the suggestion that you can control this menace by arming people like teachers with guns! How exactly are you going to make sure that one of them won't go rouge one fine day? There are other people who simply says you can't stop everything, well really? we all have the 09/11 incident and it's lessons before us. USA was able to stop that, why not these gun shoot out incidents. We just need will power & some meaningful discussion in congress and more importantly a President who can stand up to gun lobby and say enough is enough, we have lost enough lives, let's take these measures now to stop this nonsense.

Here is hoping for some action on this front, let's wish that we will not have to see a heart-wrenching tragedy like this again, never again, never again......