DROUGHT AND STRIKE AND BJP

I will repeat here what the students had written in their answers to questions on mundane astrology again.

Strikes

The first was about strikes. We have witnessed a two day strike of bank employees which inconvenienced so many us and strangely, even me, because it was during this period that I wanted to withdraw some amount from my otherwise negligible bank account.

Then the strikes of auto drivers in Delhi and their hooliganism was shown on the television channels again and again.

Now comes the news of the strike of

Strike’ at IITs, IIMs from today

Age Correspondents New Delhi/Chennai Aug. 20:

Faculty members of all Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management have threatened to stop taking classes from Friday and go on mass casual leave indefinitely in protest against the human resources development ministry’s move to curtail enhanced "incentives" proposed by a Central pay panel.

DROUGHT

It is the drought situation what is most worrisome. A drought leads to price spiral. A married man now retired with three children to support one of them earning a poor wage told me about his problems today like so many others who talk about day in and day out.

There are stories of suicides of farmers and the greater fear of uncontrolled crime.

The countrywise position of the abysmal monsoon is (with only a month left for the monsoon to withdraw and the summer agricultural crop (we call it kharif) ruined) is as follows:

As on 19 August

Excess only one sub division

Normal only ten sub divisions

Deficient as many as twenty five

Scanty only one The Indian Meteorological Department sticks to its outdated method of classifying it with only one month left.

Many of the sub divisions in the category of deficient should actually be called scanty now, like 1)Jharkhand, 2)East Uttar Pradesh 3)West Uttar Pradesh, 4)Haryana, Chandigarh and Delhi, 5) Himachal, 6) Marathwada and 7)Telengana

District-wise position, which is more realistic, shows thirteen percent as scanty and fifty two percent as deficient.

The truth is that even astrologically such an abysmal situation could not have been predicted though deficient rain was so clearly visible and was pointed out by so many students in the answer.

BJP

Then the Jaswant Singh expulsion story from the BJP shows how deeply this BJP finds itself in the throes of a crisis. The Jinnah story has two phases---the first when he, a nationalist had his overweening ambition to emerge out as a topmost leader of the country but felt thwarted when Gandhiji eclipsed him with his truest grassroot mass approach through Hindi, salt satyagraha and of course the Khilafat movement which Jinnah (rightly) saw and warned would ultimately divide Hindus and Muslims. Yet it did, and it was Jinnah who took advantage of it after 1938---the transformed, mean and opportunist Jinnah whose Direct Action  in 1946  was a dreadful memory for us the teenagers of my generation.

I have not read the book of Jaswant except the excerpts which appeared in the newspapers and so will not comment about it. But for our generation of teenagers on the eve of Indian Independence it was an inerasible pain. Jinnah, Suhrawardy and Mujib-urRahman, now eulogised as a friend of India during the Indira era, shows how fickle are historical memories and the truth, which  is never fully told.

Someone should have told the story of the terrible ego clash between Nehru and Jinnah in the story of partition. Two ambitious men had become so petty and the advantage Lord Mountbatten took of this.

Someone should have told us of the story of blunders of Nehru first in 1938 which Gopinath Srivastava revealed in his now forgotten book “When Congress Ruled UP’ and later, Maulana Azad who wrote in “India Wins Freedom”  that he wished that he has supported Patel and not Nehru to prevent the partition of the country. Why is Jaswant Singh blaming Patel ?

Astrological explanations

The astrological explanations are straight and simple: The Hindu New Year Horoscope shows concentration of planets in the sixth house with the lagna lord also. We have seven more painful months to go for this year to be over.

Hindu New Year Horoscope 2009

BJP

It is the dasha of Venus-Mercury which had to be tragic, if one know some finer elements of astrology. Let astrologers work it out. It is the story of a disease which had to erupt and at this time.

Horoscope of BJP and Congress

Then remember that Saturn is in Simha , never a happy period for India. Late Hardeo Sharma Trivedi always quoted the Hindi couplet of Ghag

Jo Shani Simha Karasi Vasa To garh Dilli hosi nasa.

Saturn in Simha causes problems for Delhi where we have the capital of India where sits the agriculture minister, Sharad Pawar passing through a lean phase in his own horoscope.

And the Chinese, if the television channels are to be believed, has its sinister design on Maldives to embarass India on its eastern border.

 (21 August 2009)