Viswanathan K's Thoughts

I thought that the Left had taken Bengal to rock bottom, that getting worse was not an option anymore: it was either up or sideways. But Mamata Bannerjee showed that down was still an option! She just got a Bengali professor arrested for forwarding a cartoon that made fun of her. Wow! The guy didn’t even draw the cartoon: he just did what most of us do, which is to forward something he liked or found interesting or amusing. And for that, it’s off to the dungeons in Mamata-land. The way the woman was getting in the way of every policy from the Center (the Teesta river pact with Bangaladesh, the Railway Budget, FDI in retail, the centralized counter terrorism proposal), I was beginning to think she had nothing in common with the UPA anymore. She just showed me what she shares with the UPA: she’s the same as Kapil Sibal and gang when it comes to censorship! I guess when Mamata saw Sibal’s attack on the Internet getting thrown out of the courts, one company at a time (first Microsoft, ...

When Mamata Banerjee started yelling against the petrol price hike, I thought, “God! Is this woman insane or what?!”. As a sort of challenge, I decided I’d try and find something positive to say about her by the end of the blog. Even though she’s part of the ruling coalition, she didn’t attend the EGoM meeting where it was decided to deregulate petrol prices. I am guessing her attendance record at EGoM meetings must be similar to most MPs’ attendance in Parliament! If she didn’t understand what the word “deregulation” means, she should have asked. She had plenty time to learn what the term meant: after all, the decision to deregulate petrol prices wasn’t made recently (it was made in June last year). Didi apparently decided that ignorance is bliss. Typical. I guess it’s too much to ask this genius CM of Bengal to look at some figures of the extent of losses on the still-regulated fuels like diesel, kerosene and LPG (she could ask the center or search the Internet, but I...