Rahul Gandhi should prove himself; And now is the time Everyone knows that Rahul Gandhi is the Gandhi family scion, out to reign the country sooner or later. For, the Congress clan can pull on only around a fulcrum which has pan-India recognition. Rival political outfits and certain other intellectuals would poohpooh the idea that only the Gandhi family clan can rule the country, simply because they otherwise would want the seemingly-safe cohesion of the Congress Party shattered. Take for example the BJP where a lot of leaders are clamouring after becoming the next Prime Minister, and there may not be consensus ad idem, a meeting of the minds. Here, in the Congress no one would challenge the Gandhi family scion. If someone challenges, it would be like the fate meted out to P.A.Sangma. Sharad Pawar being a Maratha 'king' himself, he has managed to remain afloat, but cannot aspire to become the Prime Minister, anyway. In the circumstances, the 41-year-old Rahul Gandhi cannot simply fancy himself to be ruling the country. For now is the time for him to come to the fore and prove himself. Let him be a Cabinet Minister, Deputy Prime Minister or Leader of the House in the Lok Sabha, or whatever it is. Let him prove his role as something that he can undertake with ease. There are limits to just imagining that things can be done. The challenge is to undertake the role and go through the drill of getting and giving bouqets and brickbats and perfecting himself to the role.

Karat does not concede an inch; What would VS do now? It would be interesting for observers of political developments in the state as to what rebellious V.S.Achuthanandan would do after the central leadership of the CPM has ruled out conceding any of his demands. The only concession was the last warning against any more violations of the basic norms of the party and thereby doing nothing to remove him from his positions. The central leadership has said Achuthanandan had acceded in self-criticism to having made mistakes. Calling Pinarayi Vijayan a Dange and making a visit to the residence of murdered T.P.Chandrasekharan on the day of polling of Neyyattinkara by-election were grave mistakes, according to Prakash Karat. More over, the central leadership has asked Achuthanandan to apologise in public. The central leadership has emphatically reiterated that there was no deviation by the official leadership from the party ideology. All these things have been published in the party mouthpiece, Desabhimani. Now Achuthanandan cannot give out the impression that the central leadership would heed to some of his requests. Also, now there is no point in his sending any more letters to the central leadership, as a final call has been taken by Prakash Karat. It may be naive to think that Achuthanandan has lost all his ammunition. Keralites are looking forward to his next move.

CPM trying to buttress VS as well as Pinarayi; who knows what happens next?

By O.J.George Thiruvananthapuram: The CPM leadership is trying to put a lid on the nagging problems arising from egoism between state's top leaders as also ideological differences between two groups led by Pinarayi Vijayan and V.S.Achuthanandan by taking certain steps that it believes should take care of everything. The state secretariat meeting held on Monday and the state committee meeting being held on Tuesday were slated to take steps like public censure of Achuthanandan and reporting to all the branches about corrective steps to be taken against the leaders holding the organisational set-up as demanded by Achuthanandan. Definitely, Achuthanandan's demand for restructuring the state secretariat and state committee won't be heeded to. For, the party congress had elected the state leadership for three years. The state leadership had reported to all branches below about the 'wrong-doings' of Achuthanandan about which VS had complained to the central leadership. But Achuthanandan had not been sitting idle. As he had no organisational set-up, he spoke everything in public. All bits and pieces were carried by the electronic media as well as the print media. Thus he had no need for reporting to the lower branches. Lately, close on the heels of CPM general secretary Prakash Karat announced the public censure for violating basis tenets of the party, Achuthanandan retorted by getting the complete contents of his letter to the central leaderhip published in a newspaper. That was his reply to the public reprimand. No one can reprimand him. In fact, in heart and mind, no doubt, one can perceive contempt for the junior boys of all sorts admonishing him, and that too against the basic ideological plank on which the party had stood.

Break-down of the value system is the culprit for evil practices, corruption The report about the Intelligence Bureau finding that a majority of the cops posted at the major airports in Kerala, that is Nedumbasserry, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode, are hands-in-glove with rackets of various sorts is alarming. There would be even national security issues involved. Some of the cops may not be even aware of the security implications involved. They may be simply covetous of the quick money they would receive. When we look at corrupt practices of all sorts, we can easily find that the craze for grabbing quick money and indulging in pleasures, carnal of course, is the main reason. They won't mind receiving slush money from the conduit of Dawood Ibrahim even. The fundamental issue is that a lot of the human beings have lost the fundamentals of human values. Value system has no takers. Even those who are supposed to uphold the value system and groom the next generation are culprits. If it goes on like this, there would be a break-down somewhere down the line.

Poodle, puppet, under-achiever: such terms being used by any foreigner is unacceptable What do these people think about India and its democracy? Some half-witted people in the journalistic fraternity in the US and the UK have been throwing verbal mud and slush against our Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, of late. This method-in-the madness started with Time magazine in the US calling Dr Manmohan Singh an under-achiever. One can say, it has been following some norms available in the West. Such norms may not be applicable and implementable in India, which is a curious and sluggish democracy. A foreigner cannot simply call the shots as to how to run our country. Let their democracy reign supreme in their country. India is a vast country with all sorts of diversity in incalculable ways. No one can issue a fiat and rule the economy like that. Innumerable constraints are there for executing an order. These Westerners do not understand a thing about India's diversity, particularly in the face of the fact that no party is able to cobble up a firm government. In such circumstances there would be a lot of wobbling and indecision. If one regional party agrees to do a thing, several other such regional outfits would go against it. The UK newspaper, Independent, has dubbed Dr Manmohan Singh as Sonia Gandhi's puppet and poodle. Do they think that they are still ruling our country? Dr Manmohan Singh may have been slow and sluggish in taking essential decisions. But then, there cannot be such decisions of far-reaching consequences in the face of political fragility. In the ensuing Parliament elections in 2014 or a little earlier, the people will have to decide whether the country should have a firm government. But these foreigners have no business to defile and damage the reputation of the Indian Prime Minister.

Pension matters: Kerala cannot pull on like this for long Kerala cannot go on for long with the present system of pension and service rules. When the Union Government and various other state governments have introduced the contributory pension scheme for new entrants in service, Kerala cannot remain otherwise for long. Earlier there were many thoughts about first benefit, second benefit, third benefit etc. First benefit is salary, second benefit is DA, and third benefit is pension. Bank employees also struggled hard to have pension as part of salary package as third benefit. But they could not succeed. Now it is participatory pension for them. If the pension funds are best managed there could be boosted pension for those who subscribe to the participatory pension. Youth organisations among political parties in Kerala would always oppose the move for hiking pension age. They fear that their prospects for employment would be lost. The thing is, the government should be able to offer good schemes for creation of jobs and other benefits for youth, like self-employment. Service sector jobs could be quadrupled if proper steps are taken. The latest thrust is on the manufacturing sector. We should be able to produce things like all sorts of things produced in China as part of small and medium enterprises. In the UK, the latest reports say 65 per cent of the population are above 65 years of age and are pension-earners. The government there is struggling hard to cope. Whatever it is, no government in Kerala would be able to pull on with the present scheme of things regarding pension age, participatory pension and the like.

Man has craze to play God and he would go on inventing anything to become God-like Now the greatest news is about the near-total finding of the Higgs Boson particle which might have provided mass to the universe in diverse ways. The finding was arrived at on completion of a series of experiments on the large Hadron collider. When man provided it a nomenclature in a figurative way as the God particle, the media caught on with it, maybe in an exaggerated way, and have given hope that man can one day become God-like. But what is the speciality of the God- nature. The Entity can create matter from non-matter. It can ask mountains to move, oceans to dry up and re-form it. The creation of matter from non-matter was the end-product of a Word command. The bible says, in the beginning there was the Word. God commanded, Let there be the Universe, the Sun, Moon, Air, Water and everything. The Vedas speak about OM, the word, which is a command. There is no mention about the God particle which is capable of creation. The creation of the particle is a product of the Command. Man cannot Command to create the God particle. Anyway man is going on inventing and expanding the horizons of science and wisdom, which is a great thing. God had said the creation was for the benefit of man. Let there be nothing that would go to the destruction of mankind. There is another factor, which is the Energy factor. The greatest thing could be the mental energy power. The Word command or the OM command could be the outcome of the mental energy. In this context, disaster could come into being on account of the humungous amount of evil mental power of the human beings. All machinations, that is the tremendous amount of evil energy released from the planning stage to the execution stage of all evil deeds, the energy involved in evil thoughts and evil actions, all dimensions of thoughts and action against the value system, the sum total of which all when released into the earth’s planet system would be able to reverse the direction of Earth’s rotation or to suddenly change its axis movement like side-to-side movement as in the case of Uranus, which would mean serious destruction of all living beings. Let us not wait for solar flares or hitting of comets, the evil energy comet could bring in cataclysmic changes. And at this stage, we are playing God’s role. Key word: Man's craze for playing God, God particle, Hadron collider, mental energy, evil energy capable of causing destruction. Other News in this category • Money for running corruption cases could be a bone of contention between VS and Pinarayi • It is cruelty non-pareil • Could she be such a loner in the UPA? • It is a gracious decision; a former President in unsure contest would have been most awkward • Mamata Banerjee stands isolated on her pranks regarding Presidential election • Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy et al speak out against policy paralysis, but what can the govt do when ruling allies do not allow it to move at snail’s pace? • VS had his say, but central committee put issues in the court of the state committee