Rahul Gandhi disqualification

[Saffron Lenin]

Rahul Gandhi is disqualified from his parliamentary seat and barred from election for 6 years!!!!

[Saffron Lenin]

Could it lead to revival of Congress as they can play victim card?

[Saffron Lenin]

I think this decision has already increased congress tally in 2024 to 100+ seats

[prasen9]

Nothing new. Fascists will do what fascists do. Disassemble democracy.

Having said that, I hope the INC does not get sympathy votes. Voting emotionally and irrationally is not that great.

[Saffron Lenin]

VICTIM CARD of INC

1978 Indira Gandhi was jailed and later she played the victim card and won hands down

1984 Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Rajiv Gandhi played the victim card and won hands down

1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Sonia Gandhi played the Abla Nari victim card and won hands down in a lost election

[Saffron Lenin]

I think BJP is trapped by Congress.....
This is the second time they got trapped in few months. First they ban BBC documentary which led to its even more popularity. And now, Inc will use it to fullest!

[Saffron Lenin]

It seems like a masterstoke.....Rahul Gandhi was already a liability for congress. With one decision, Rahul Gandhi is out and they can blame Modi for this. Priyanka Gandhi or other congress leader will replace him and will accuse Modi for destroying democracy!!!
Win-win for congress

[prasen9]

Congress is not going to win anything. They do not have the organization. They do not have the PR machinery. They do not have a way to connect and rouse people. They do not have any merit-based system of promoting capable people. They are a dynastic cesspool and deserve to rot. The opposition is fractured. Maybe if we use Instant Runoff Voting, the BJP may be given a run for its money. But, otherwise, the opposition just gets votes from each other and fractures itself. Before the BJP came to power, we were #130 in the Human Development Index, if I recall correctly. Now, we are #132. So, we have developed at about the pace of our neighbors so that we moved backward only slightly. I am sure the government PR machine here and otherwise will rattle off a bunch of things but at the end of the day, the plight of the people has remained about the same or has improved at about the rate of what our neighbors in the HDI ranking have done so that we have about kept pace or only moved back a couple of places. Bangladesh is #129. Hasina is a full-fledged autocrat but has done some good things I presume.

[Saffron Lenin]

Sri Lanka has better human development index but bankrupt.....It's not a good indicator for a developing country. We should focus at economy, foreign exchange and military power for measuring progress.

[prasen9]

Why? Who cares how much money they have in the bank? I would rather have a higher HDI and bankrupt than not if and that is a big if that bankruptcy does not bring their HDI down.

Economy, foreign exchange, and military power are useless indicators. The real indicator is whether people are happy. The other one would be HDI. We only need a minimal military power that prevents us from being taken over. Just strong enough. Any more is waste of money for a country which does not really have good schools, hospitals, roads, etc.

Again, I think Sri Lanka's HDI will go down if they do not have money, etc. If it does not, give me bankruptcy and their standard of living, per capita income, HDI, etc.

[jayakris]

Yeah, nothing changes substantially in India. A lot of the increase in per capita GDP (or PPP) is all mostly going to the top 2 or 10 percent and not getting reflected in improvements in our HDI which remains low. And that can be seen everywhere in India too. Just get on a train for a 2 hour trip from anywhere to anywhere in India, and you will see enough to know that the HDI is hardly better than in African countries. There are really only our couple of neighbors and some countries in Africa which look like India, and have as low a HDI as ours. The congress talked about 8% growth rate and all that for 10 years, and BJP now talks about a lot of handpicked infrastructure and other success stories, but vast stretches of our economy and social life remain pretty much where it is in relation to the rest of the world - in the bottom quartile in HDI.

But there are some indicators that look very good over the past 20 years, in things like school education - both parties have done quite well in improving that quite a bit. I am rather optimistic that it will reflect in some real changes in the coming decade or two.

This whole Rahul Gandhi thing is just terrible. First of all, what he said does not deserve 2 year jail term. Even if it can be argued that "Modi" refers to a backward community (which I don't think he intended), India needs to allow more freedom of speech than this. Laws that allow people to be so "hurt" by anything and everything, must go. We have some archaic laws and procedures which are quite anti-democratic.

And the BJP government is really cut-throat in how they do things. If there is a procedure available to "stick it to" somebody, they will use it. They don't care about the precedent it would set and how they themselves may pay for it in the future. BJP and PM Modi are Trump-esq in that. There is no attempt ever from them to "look nice and kind". That may be because they know their vote base don't want that too. (But then again, Rahul Gandhi is paying for opposing a change in the procedures once, when the Prof Lilly Thomas case was going on. That allowed BJP to do this in the parliament. I am sure he wishes he hadn't done that)

[prasen9]

Rahul Gandhi is an idiot.

There should be laws that prevent inciting riots, etc. If there is no tangible harm to anyone that can be proved beyond reasonable doubt or that harm is made using untruths, then we should allow political speech.

[jayakris]

^^^ Yeah but in India, "religious sentiment" "inciting religious passions" and other similar bullcrap is cited as causing tangible harm of the kind you say... "Hurting people's feelings". Give me a break. People don't have enough food to eat and Indian people have so much other hardship; they are not hurt from these things (only richer people have time to think of feeling hurt for religious reasons). Then these are all used to file cases on people and very often the courts go along with it too. No sense of humor or anything is allowed. "Commander in thief" is the title of a song released by a music group referring to Trump in the US. But there is court case going on Rahul Gandhi on that too. Why should there be a case for him saying that about our PM. And it is not even uniformly applied. Heck, he and the whole Congress party was saying "chaukidar chor hai" last time, after all (though that got them no votes!). But "commander in thief" is not allowed? This kind of silliness in filing cases against people should end.

[Atithee]

One question—most of us in the US could go live in a Scandinavian country— the center of the “happiest people.” How many of you would go there? You can’t pay me enough to go to those frigid temps and absurdly high tax rate countries.

Second, the silliness where it’s illegal to call leaders names is absurd. It also extends to “respecting” the flag. Another useless pretentious feel good law.

[suresh]

Given how slowly things move in India, I am impressed at the speed at which Rahul Gandhi was disqualified. We need to get rid of a whole bunch of antiquated laws from the Briitsh times -- these were used to suppress dissent of any kind. All governments, irrespective of their party affiliation, love them for the same reason.