Dude Please, Speak for yourself. It has nothing to do with standard of life, as a matter of fact living a western lifestyle has taken away my regular fitness. India was far stronger, more disciplined, dedicated and a confident nation then compared to now. Mid to late 80's, there was strong leadership, that was moving this country at a steady pace in right direction. Today, courtesy of leadership, media we are constantly seeking a nod of approval from US and Britain. When I was living in India, my Prime Minister didn't go to British University and said, "Oxonian's have gone out to conquer the world". When I was in India my Armychief carried out Military Exercise called Operation Brass Tacks that scared the living day light out of Gen Zia ul Haq, he thought IA is going to cut Pakistan in two pieces going through sukkur barage. We provided High End-High Value software engineering at that time compared to today where working in a call center for an American Company became a matter of pride and prestige.
Survival of a nation is not defined by Geographical Integrity, it is defined by safety and security of women and children. Women were not afraid of going out in 3-wheeler in 80's, even at late evening hours,today Rape has become Nom du jour. If you are an insecure man afraid of talking to women, get together with some loser friends and commit rape. Hell even the Presidential Guards have participated in this gore and don't even get me started on police.
[QUOTE}India is no Pakistan or even Somalia. In the normal course of events, there is no significant threat to India's survival. The tail events (nuclear wars, climate change, alien invasion) threaten India almost as much as anyone else. Whether it thrives or not is an entirely different issue.
Easy for you to say dude, there is no significant threat to India's survival. It has always amazed me that people who are not in the know of things always take a holistic approach and then there are people like me, who see things in a way-- that we are at a crossroad of our survival here. America and Nato is losing their war in Afghanistan, 40% of territory is controlled by Taliban aka Pakistan. If these western powers fail, this will be a shot in arm of these lunatics that they have defeated every known western power with the use of their mujhaideens. Pakistan is firmly in control of these hardened fighters, once they gain their strategic depth back, they can unleash this beast with greater ferocity that India has not seen yet. Forget about kashmir it may lead to balkanization of India. All the while china is knocking on our back door, they are following same tactics as pakistanis have been doing from last 60 years.
I will give you an example that may install some strategic sense in you, After Bombay 26/11 incidence we had the great opportunity to fine tune our Nuke Deterrent and America and UN Security council would have just winked at us, what did the great leader of this nation do, he comes on TV and said, "if this happens again there will be a cost..." WTF is that, happens again, loss of innocent life once due to terrorism demands a swift military action against the perpetrators and all India can come up with was--if it happens again.
Sir,
I think you took my comment in a rather personal way. I know a fair share of NRIs and my views are based on my observations of a set of people and not just you. And I don't even find anything wrong with someone who wants to live a comfortable lifestyle- I'd personally want to be as comfortable as possible.
"It has nothing to do with standard of life" is a rather strong statement that you may change if you revisit this in a more rational mood. Nevertheless, sorry if you felt it was some sort of personal attack, which it was not.
I consider your current position as more absurd, as India's situation in 1980s was a much worse place. Right direction, strong leaders? Look at any "logical" parameter of human/economic/social development and India was totally in dumps. Mrs. Gandhi was indeed a strong leader, the only problem was that her strength went in all the wrong directions. So we had "Garibi Hatao" which was more like "Garib Hatao". We had Operation Blue Star, for which she only sowed the seeds by creating Bhindranwale. What followed was a decade of insurgency in Punjab. Strong indeed. She also showed great "strategic" vision in funding/training LTTE, that continued to pain India for several years. Sanjay Gandhi openly demanded money from industrialists to give them licenses. The entire industrial/economic policy was openly manipulated to suit the industrial houses who paid money to the strong leadership to make them stronger.
It took 7 years to get a phone line back then. You needed to have connections to get a Maruti 800 or a gas cylinder. Better place, indeed! I can keep ranting about this, but there is so much to rant that I can't decide what to say.
Then we had Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, who didn't even want to be in politics. The good part was that he acknowledged his mother's and brother's failings and tried to make a different start by getting rid of people like Pranab Mukherjee, RK Dhawan, etc. He started opening the economy, tried to take on industrial houses like Reliance; but as soon as the heat turned on him on Bofors and other scandas, he did a volte face. He was well known to be lacking guts to go the full distance and getting paranoid about his own position.
You are using some current sensational headlines like those on presidential guards, etc. to compare India of 1980s with current India. Ten years down the line, people are not going to remember these specific incidents. Doesn't mean that they won't have happened. Who is going to come here and tell about the specific cases of 1980s? If you don't see a logical fallacy there, I won't be able to show it. Another thing- how many women used to go out and work in 1980s? It would have been a fraction of the number now. That would automatically mean much lower incidents. And please note I am not trying to justify crimes against women. The state should ensure security of each citizen and it is clearly failing to do it now. But there is nothing to suggest that the state was doing a much better job earlier (3000 sikhs were burnt alive in daylight in the national capital if you are looking for examples).
And let's be clear. The current Indian state has much more to do and achieve. It is not my argument that India has become a developed country. Our record in most basic economic/social parameters is nothing to be proud of. But to say that India has regressed from 1980s would be laughable.
When I say there is no significant threat to India's survival, I don't mean that there is no threat to India's security. There are a no. of threats, Naxals being the biggest one, much bigger than Taliban. Talibanization of Pakistan is potentially a very serious threat. But I totally reject the sort of fear mongering that keeps doing the rounds in certain circles time and again (have seen it for more than 10 years that I have followed current affairs) about the impending balkanization of India. Taliban's threat potential is not in that it can break India, its threat potential is with respect to the terrorist attacks and human costs associated with that. Acknowledging threat from terrorism is not same as making an illogical argument that India is going to break because of it.
I found most of your arguments to be quite similar to the knee jerk reactions one can find in Indian media over Chinese incursions/Taliban's advances/nuclear tests. For example, somewhere you had mentioned "nuclear dud", apparently referring to our lack of nuclear deterrence because of the alleged failure of India's fusion device during Pokhran tests. I think it is quite possible that the fusion device actually failed to give the desired yield. But leading strategic thinkers (like C Raja Mohan) have argued that nuclear deterrence is not so much about the strength of your explosion, as it is about having second-strike capacity, clearly defined hierarchy of command and control, and multiple delivery systems (land, air, water). It doesn't really matter if you have a 40KT bomb or a 10 KT bomb. 10KT is good enough for deterrent value as it can cause unacceptable damage to the enemy. If you want a bigger bang, you can deliver more bombs. What you need is the ability to strike back after you have been struck, and have lots of delivery systems of doing that, so that unexpected failure of one system doesn't take away the deterrence.
I have a decent interest in strategic issues and would love to get some strategic sense from you. But with due respects, what you have said so far doesn't make much sense to me, apart from the bit on India's reaction to the Mumbai attacks, to which I agree.
) and feel pity for this city/ state. This city stinks like anything but nobody is bothered, farmers are commiting suicides but people are busy hooting Karan Johar. I would call it Mumbai hazaaaaaar times if they Raj can improve the infrastructure here. It is only in a democratic setup when a rogue is allowed to hold a city on ransom. 
. If I am critical of some of the actions that Bose had taken, does it mean I am going to supportive of everything that Gandhi did?