I AND MY WORDS

Reading the comments given by the interlocutors on how to deal with the issue of Jammu and Kashmir (sometimes it feels like a cottage industry enterprise of a handful of people), I am forced to question the 'breakthrough' Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari really achieved by churning out lassi from the yakhni (yoghurt) that was all over in the first place. Many mistakes have been committed, but the biggest mistake is being committed right now by the Indian media by not discussing the report of the interlocutors threadbare. Keeping the state united in my opinion is not an option now. The regions of Ladakh and Jammu are financially supporting the Kashmir valley, but there is a lot of anger and hatred in these areas for the Kashmiri separatist sentiment, which goes beyond the religious divide. Go to places like Bhadervah in Doda, and you realize just how fed up the Muslims there are of the incessant calls for bandh issued by the Hurriyat, and the unrelenting hatred

No, I am not merely recalling Bill Clinton's unofficial slogan for his presidential re-election bid of 1996. This is what I want to tell a host of mandarins (elected and unelected ones, ruling and opposing ones) sitting in South and North Block who have decided to bury their heads like ostriches into the sand. If I do not see the hunter, he is not there. Similarly, they can wish all that they want to, but any complaints about the more than 7 rupee hike in petrol prices is just a signal of the financial mess that we have created for ourselves right now, thanks to myopic work done by the ruling dispensation. Add to that the oversell of Manmohan Singh, Kaushik Basu and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. three 'progressive' economists who just seem to be warming chairs, and outsiders fail to understand where we went so horribly wrong. If one wants to put the economy on track, we need economic reforms. That does not stand only for FDI in retail (which by the way does NOT need