Say 'no' to UK aid; it's a tool to dictate to India

It seems the UK is still in colonial-master mode if the controversy over that country's aid to India is anything to go by. Britain gives India about $280 million in aid, puny by India's standards and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said as much.
The latest round of controversy is about how India spurned the Eurofighter Typhoon for the French Rafale, despite receiving British aid.
This has been a typical British tactic -- give India aid and use that leverage to make us buy their arms. Think of the Sea King helicopter deal. India bought those for our armed forces from the UK, and soon enough that country stopped the supply of spares over India's nuclear program. The fleet was grounded, hobbling the Indian Navy's anti-submarine and fleet air arm capabilities.
The current statement from British politicians, and I am sure behind the scenes maneuvers by the UK government, to tie that country's aid to India's fighter purchases rekindles memories of that humiliating episode. We should never ever buy British weapons; that country has a history of siding with Pakistan and trying to dictate our foreign policy. They just want Indian money to keep flowing into their coffers.
And I am surprised by all this outcry in Britain over 'aid' to India: after all that country's riches are a result of centuries of plunder of the East, especially India. Now that the cash-flow channels are slowly getting blocked, they want to open up new ones to keep the money flowing.
New Delhi should ask London to keep its aid, or better still, give it to the Pakistanis. Those guys are faster when it comes to payback, just they they prefer to pay back in kind -- in the form of terrorist bombs!

Hazare is 'unelected tyrant'; so does the Congress want to go back to the elected tyranny of Indira Gandhi?

Congress has called Anna Hazare, who is leading a completely legitimate protest against corruption, an unelected tyrant! So what does the Congress want? An elected tyrant like Indira Gandhi?
People like Pranab Mukherjee have flourished under the tyrannical regime of Indira Gandhi and it is understandable they want back such regimes.
However, they forget that India of 2011 is not the India of the 1970s. The youth today have access to disruptive technologies that have the entire Middle East in upheaval, they want change, and they want accountability.
Political fossils like Pranab Mukherjee may not understand that but people like Rahul Gandhi may.
If the political class, which everyone knows is corrupt and is in cahoots with the corrupt in plundering India, does not want change, they have lost grip of reality.
The desire for change in India's middle class and youth just needs a spark and playing people like Baba Ramdev against these aspirations will only work for so long.
If India's political rulers, with the arrogance that they have been elected by the people -- a people we know care the least about the principles of democracy when the cast their votes -- think they can suppress the genuine aspirations of the Indian people, God save them!
Anna Hazare and his cause will win, whatever political detritus like Pranab Mukherjee or Digvijay Singh think.