First, Sunil Mukhi: Time to Gloat:
I'm savouring every moment. In a few days India will go back to being the mess that I love to complain about, but today it is a country where democracy has triumphed and stability is more or less assured. Moreover, some people have got what they richly deserved and I wish to gloat about their forthcoming political demise.
His list of 'some people' who "have got what they richly deserved" is pretty interesting; it includes, in addition to Advani and Karat, a couple of minor journalists.
Rahul Basu: The Indian Elections 2009:
Having said that though, I believe that the left has a very constructive role to play, not just in secular matters, but also indeed in economics, if it could only get more pragmatic and less dogmatic and ideological. The tendency to follow a laissez-faire capitalist model with no regulations, allowing the markets to correct itself is a view propagated by many of our business houses and right wing economists, with results that are now there for all to see. Relaxing labour laws, in a country with no safety net, allowing private banks to play with people's hard earned pension funds are actions that are ill-suited even to the US, let alone India and it helps to have a gentle restraining hand to curb some of these excesses. The Montek Singh Ahluwalias of this world, (tipped now to become the Finance Minister) trained in some of the discredited policies of the IMF and World Bank need this control and now with the left having, well, left, we hope that Mr Ahluwalia has learnt some lessons from the disastrous actions of his Wall Street friends to not try and emulate that environment.
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