The world has changed, and it's payback time for British colonialists!

A column and a news story from the Economic Times have provided fuel for this article -- again on British aid to India.
First, Swapan Dasgupta writes about how British perception of Indians have changed over the decades as India's riches grew and Britian's declined. This is throwback to a few centuries earlier, or almost, when India's riches attracted the attention of the robbers in London.
Britain has, right from 1947 when it was forced to give India its freedom, tried to weaken this country and deny it its rightful place in the comity of world nations. That country's sole claim to fame is the wealth it plundered from the rest of the world, mostly India, and the way it brutally killed and pushed to poverty millions of people all over the world.
It has since then tried to keep India and the developing world weak through a variety of instruments, like the Commonwealth of Nations and British aid.
British aid in India has now become a joke, with India saying it does not want it and Britain says it won't stop giving it!
Clearly, there is something nefarious about the whole thing. British aid is going to cultivate Indian lobbyists, throgh non-profits and aid projects for the poor that actually line politicians' pockets.
But this time, with India opting for the French Rafale fighter, it is clear that British bribery is not working. India's decision to go for the Rafale is a sound one, and the Brits just cannot stomach it. As in the Mughal times, now they are hoping to overturn the Indian decision by greasing politicians' palms. The danger with India caving in is that buying British defense hardware will keep in place the unequal relationship that has existed between Britain and India. More importantly, it will help India's riches flow into Britain, again, setting off another round of financial exploitation.
The question that we Indians should be asking is why should we let these robbers get away with what they want. Any India politician who tries to scupper the Rafale decision and give the fighter contract to the Brits should be tried and imprisoned. The Brits' statements on tying aid to fighter contracts is enough evidence for that.
Britain should be let to die a slow, painful death, like the one it forced on many poor Indian artisans and farmers a couple of hundred years back. Those gruesome stories are equally horrible to the Nazi holocaust, just that the Brits were the winner of the World War II and were painted angels in history books.
If India wants to help any country in the West, it should be the United States. The steady stream of jobs that has come our way from the United States is responsible in a major way for our prosperity and economic rise. And we should try to reciprocate by giving the some arms contracts that will help them generate and keep jobs.
True, the United States has sided with the Paks several times but it was not with the aim of economic exploitation -- as was the case with Britain. The Americans were guided by their strategic calculus than economy in such decisions.
The second story is about how the Taliban has promised to capture and kill Prince Harry when he returns to Afghanistan. While we should not condone killing or threats of killing in any way, this statement from the Taliban shows how much the Brits have lost respect, and power, in the region.
They had kindled some of the world's worst, simmering conflicts during their colonial days and continued to stoke them by siding with one or the other party. Now is payback time!
This is called the wheel of Karma. For several generations of Indians who were pained to read about British atrocities and exploitation, with a feeling of helplessness, it is a time of joy. The Brits are getting it back!
With the power of the Internet the people of India can now make sure that our politicians cannot be swayed by British 'aid'. And we have nukes and long-range missiles now if the Brits every try any of their usual shenanigans.
Meanwhile, there is hope that it will not be easy for the Brits to swing the fighter contract their way -- read this article by Rajat Pandit in the economictimes.com.

Pakistan Hurtles Toward Failed State Status

The assassination of Pakistan’s Punjab government by his own guard over his opposition to that country’s draconian blasphemy laws show how much the rot has eaten into Pakistani society. And how near Pakistan is to being a failed state.

The killing muddies the options for United States which is trying to bring the Pakistanis around to its view on terrorism sponsored by militant Islamists.
The stranglehold that Islamists have on Pakistani society has been thrown into stark relief by the governor’s assassination, and makes it even more difficult for the Pakistani government to ignore their power.

The consequences of the murder in broad daylight are clear: the weak Pakistani government is not going to go after the Taliban. Any hopes the Americans have on this count are misplaced.

And that means all that money and armament the Americans are pumping into Pakistan is going to one day add to the military muscle of the Taliban. More dreadful, that day may not be far off when the Taliban actually will rule Pakistan or a truncated form of that country.

So where does all this leave India?

As a nation we should arm and ready for the day when the Americans will throw in the towel and beat a retreat out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

We may still get American armed support in such an eventuality, but the battle will be ours to fight.

The question is, are the netas and babus in New Delhi up to the task?

How We Measure Ourselves

For the last few days I have refrained from commenting upon Shilpa Shetty on the Big Brother Show in the UK. After all, I thought, it is a Bollywood actress doing it for money, and the racism is part of the occupational hazard.
But seems like the media thinks I was wrong. They have been falling over each other trying to get mileage from the event.
But let us stand back for a moment and think: is the greatness of this nation to be measured by how Shilpa Shetty or any other actress behaves or is behaved to? I firmly think 'No.'
That would be like measuring America's greatness with the number of pubic hairs you can count on Britney's love cheeks, which she exposes very happily to eager paparazzi.
But we measure America by its economic and miliatary power, the prowess of its statemen, scienteists, and workers, the culture of its people, and a host of other factors.
In the hype over Shilpa Shetty we seem to have forgotten that is how India's greatness should be measured too. When Shilpa Shetty shouts Chicken Curry, that is in no way going to increase India's image before the world. For that we need to show we can do a lot of things that our license-permit Raj governments prevented us from doing for five decades.
Let us not get our priorities wrong, or we risk being pushed to the fringes of a world community which is racing to create a new world order.