Mumbai banker campaigns in dusty Delhi villages for Kejriwal's party

By its own admission, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) support and cadre chiefly come from resettlement colonies, slum clusters and lower-middle class neighbourhoods. And yet, some of the country’s highly successful professionals are flying to the Capital to “help it out”.
A photo of Mumbai based Meera Sanyal, who was heading the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in India but flew to the Capital to garner support for Aam Aadmi Party.

Most of these people harbour dreams of “a citizens’ group” succeeding in Delhi, which can help similar experiments to challenge the political leadership in their own backyards.    

Only a few months ago, Meera Sanyal was a highly successful career woman. Based in Mumbai, she was heading the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in India. Today, she is holding a door-to-door campaign, trying to garner support for AAP in dusty villages of Delhi.

“I am meeting people in areas such as East of Kailash and Chirag Dilli. Some people identify with my ideas, some don’t. But that’s okay,” she said.

Just last week, media entrepreneur and former CEO of Star TV, Sameer Nair, joined the party and shot several short films for the party’s campaign. “For now, my role is limited to publicity. As we go along, the party will decide what more to do. I will definitely be spending more time in Delhi,” he said.

Sanyal, who will be ending a 30-year career in banking by giving up all her RBS commitments by December, will contest the 2014 general elections from south Mumbai. “I hope all these people (whom I am supporting) will support me. But it’s not conditional,” she says.

But what’s her takeaway? “I needed to know the realities of this country because wrong assumptions mean wrong interventions. And I didn’t want that to happen in my case,” she said.

“My support for AAP is irrespective of their performance in Delhi. We will take it forward to the 2014 general elections and beyond. We want to work together and make a difference in my city, too,” says Nair, whose family and businesses are based in Mumbai.

But why AAP? “In the 2009 general elections, I fought as an independent candidate from south Mumbai. Though I lost, I polled more than 10,000 votes. I lot of people supported me. I realised the value of selfless volunteers. I promised to myself that I will return the favour,” said Sanyal, who was accompanied by her husband who runs a consultancy firm in Mumbai.

For Nair, it’s all about the simple things that AAP talks of. “What I like in Arvind is that he and his colleagues talk of clean candidates and zero-tolerance to corruption. Such commitments make a big difference. Thanks to our political class, such people have become rare,” he said. 

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Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee, 11 other CMs skip NIC meet

 The National Integration Council (NIC) met late in the evening on Monday in the shadows of the recent Muzaffarnagar riots. Prime minister Manmohan Singh was present. So were 16 chief ministers, most of them of Congress ruled states. But the 13 notable absentees sent the message that there’s a lack of integration in the thinking of the UPA, and that of the combined opposition.

Singh, of course, told political parties to refrain from taking advantage of communal tensions. He also asked the states to crack down on elements fanning such violence. Forget their political affiliations, he added, for good measure.

But the fact that such an important meet saw only 16 chief ministers turning up stood out like a sore thumb. The 13 chose to send their representatives. Among the ones who did not turn up was Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who is also the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, her Tamil Nadu counterpart J Jayalalithaa, Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah and Rajasthan’s Ashok Gehlot.

Taking a dig at Modi for his absence, Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said it was essential for a leader of Modi’s stature to have come to the meeting. “I feel as a chief minister it was his first duty to attend this meeting. The NIC meet happened after two years and was very significant in the present context. I do not know why he did not come,” Shinde said.

Expressing concern on the recent increase in incidents of communal violence, particularly those that happened in UP, the PM said effective steps should be taken by the administration to ensure that small issues don’t snowball into a big controversies.

“The state government should lose no time to control communal violence. It should use all means at its disposal to punish those guilty of fanning communal violence and must ensure a speedy crackdown on such elements irrespective of their political affiliations or influence,” the PM said, urging the political parties and the media to refrain from giving any political colour to the incidents.

The meeting saw some sparks with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav blaming the BJP for trying to convert UP into a Gujarat. “Meetings are being conducted past midnight to carry out activities against one particular community,” Yadav said prompting a quick rebuttal from BJP leaders.

Rejecting the argument that communal incidents could benefit or harm the prospects of certain political parties, Singh said: “This argument is unfortunate. In reality, communal enmity does not benefit anyone but could threaten our identity as a civilised society.”

The PM also broached reining in anti-social elements misusing the social media to promote communal hatred. In Muzaffarnagar, social media was used to distribute a morphed video clip of an incident in Sialkot, Pakistan, to terrorise people.
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BJP central panel to decide from which seat Narendra Modi will fight Lok Sabha polls

 BJP's central election committee will decide from which seat its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, BJP chief Rajnath Singh said today.

"These things are decided by party's Central Election Committee and any individual cannot say whether he can fight from a place A or B," Singh said at a press conference here.

He was replying to a question on possibility of Modi fighting the next Lok Sabha polls from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, a state where the party is eyeing electoral gains.

To another question on the Gujarat Chief Minister, he said, "The fact cannot be denied that if there is most popular leader at this time in the country, it is Narendra Modi." When asked that BJP had lost allies after Modi's elevation in the party, he indicated that there will be pre-poll and post-poll alliances.

Singh asserted that senior party leader L K Advani had no problem with Modi's elevation.

"He is our senior most leader, our guardian and our everything. He has every right to point it out to me (referring to Advani's recent letter)...he has no grudge against Modi. You must have seen that after Modi's name was declared, he expressed happiness, during a visit to Chhattisgarh," Singh said.

He sought to downplay the absence of Modi and some other Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled states from the National Integration Council meeting in Delhi today.

"Leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj was there...whatever our top leaders say, for us that is the party's line," he said.

To another question, he said the party will soon make its vision document public, under which it will spell out how it intends to take the country forward, among other issues.

When asked if Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal would be made the NDA convenor after JDU chief Sharad Yadav's party parted ways with BJP and the post fell vacant, he said Advani, who is NDA chairman, can give answer this question.
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Teachers' Day being Celebrated across the Country Today

 Teachers’ Day is being celebrated across the nation today to commemorate the birth anniversary of former President and eminent scholar Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakhrishnan.

President Pranab Mukherjee will present the National Awards to meritorious teachers from across the country at a function here today.

The awards were instituted in 1958 to give public recognition to outstanding teachers working in primary, middle and secondary schools.

It is the day that Indians honour the teachers for their immense contribution to the country and the community.

Dr. Radhakrishnan, who was an Indian philosopher and statesman, was the first Vice President of India (1952–1962) and the second President of India from 1962 to 1967.

Dr Radhakhrishnan believed that ‘teachers should be the best minds in the country’. Since 1962, his birthday is celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September.

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India named a Former International Monetary Fund chief economist to head the Reserve Bank of India

Raghuram Rajan, who predicted the global financial crisis in 2005, will take over at the RBI from Duvvuri Subbarao, whose turbulent five-year tenure ends September 4.

Rajan is viewed as a pragmatist on monetary policy likely to stick fairly closely to Subbarao's line on managing inflation. The outgoing governor fought an uphill battle against price pressures for much of his term in an economy plagued by supply-side bottlenecks and legislative and bureaucratic paralysis.

"(Rajan) has the intellectual pedigree and policy experience, but my worry is people will think a smart guy coming in will fix all of India's problems," said Bhanu Baweja, head of emerging markets strategy at UBS in London.

"The problem in India is political consensus and execution. By itself, the appointment doesn't change my view on the market. I am underweight the rupee and Indian equities," Baweja said.

India's record current account gap of 4.8 percent of GDP makes it highly exposed to global flows away from emerging markets in anticipation of tighter U.S. monetary policy. Reforms are especially challenging for a weak ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that faces elections by next May.

The rupee is down nearly 11 percent in 2013, making it the worst-performing currency in emerging Asia,. Emergency steps by the RBI in July to drain liquidity and raise short-term interest rates have failed to halt its decline.

It fell to a record low of 61.80 to the dollar on Tuesday before buying by the RBI helped the rupee post a gain. Meanwhile, economists have been cutting their growth forecasts for an economy that expanded by just 5 percent in the last fiscal year, its weakest in a decade.

"These are challenging times for the Indian economy, though no one can have any doubt about the country's promise," Rajan said in brief remarks late on Tuesday.

"The government and the Reserve Bank are working together to address these challenges. We do not have a magic wand to make the problems disappear instantaneously. But I have absolutely no doubt that we will deal with them," he said.

In a March interview with Reuters, Rajan said he believed inflation around 5 percent in a developing economy is "reasonable," putting him on the same page as Subbarao, who set 5 percent as medium-term goal and 3 percent as a long-term target.

In recent months, Rajan has tended to speak in favor of pro-growth policies, as well as talking up the need to address the current account deficit.

"In the last two months, he has been taking a key role on rupee-related steps, and his appointment as the governor will lift expectations of constructive and positive steps to lift the rupee," said Siddhartha Sanyal, an economist at Barclays in Mumbai.

GLOBAL STATURE

Informal and outspoken, Rajan brings global stature to a post that in recent years has been held by career bureaucrats. At 50, he is also young by Indian central bank chief standards.

The former University of Chicago professor gained fame with a 2005 paper at a U.S. meeting of central bankers, warning that financial sector developments could trigger an economic crisis. The argument, later spelled out in his book "Fault Lines," was dismissed by many as alarmist.

Lawrence Summers, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary seen as a frontrunner to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, said at the time the paper's premise was "slightly Luddite," and "largely misguided."

Summers later apologized for the remark, said Douglas W. Diamond, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor who has written several papers with Rajan on monetary policy and financial stability.

"Raghu's soft voice willing to speak against accepted doctrine" will likely help raise the profile of India's central bank, Diamond said.

"He's going to have a big impact on other central banks. He'll be widely listened to in the community of central banks," Diamond predicted, saying Rajan comes in as an "incredibly well-known academic," just as Bernanke was when he took over as Fed Chairman.

In a Reuters poll, 13 of 15 respondents said Rajan was the best-suited to the RBI job. Other candidates were said by government insiders to include Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram and Planning Commission member Saumitra Chaudhuri. Subbarao ruled himself out of a term extension.

Rajan had been considered the most likely candidate to be the next governor when he returned to India last year to accept the top advisory post at the Finance Ministry in New Delhi, although some in government had said his relative outsider status might count against him.

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