Comments by "M Shastri" (@libshastra) on "Sonia Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee’s friendship faces the test of conflicting interests" video.

  1. Ugh. Sonia and Mamta again? Both of them have serious baggage of corruption and scams. They don't offer anything new or an alternative vision of India. Nobody in their right mind wants to go back to the 90s or 2000s, people want to move forward. Modi came to power by selling a dream of New India (he is definitely delivering that dream when it comes to Infrastructure), where's the oppositions vision of a New India? The opposition needs new faces and new thinking.
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  2. Regional gamand. They seriously underestimate the amount of groundgame required to play at the National level. The only folks who have that kind of ground game is BJP and Congress. The Congress will be a spent force as long as the Gandhis are at the helm.
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  3. He should also have his segment in The Print podcast.
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  4.  @jayantjolly  if you lived outside Delhi, you'll realize the how bad UPA was with Infrastructure development. The scale and pace makes UPAs infrastructure development look like child's play. Additionally, the entire process has become pretty transparent (tenders and designs are available to download, progress reports can be queried, land acquisition status is available on Bhoomirashi) You can rightfully criticize him about the economy. Infrastructure and inclusive development is an undeniable bright spot.
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  5.  @dpsharma2852  here's another tidbit. Folks are underestimating AAP. AAP knows they won't make it in 2024 but they definitely have their eyes on the election after. Uttarakhand assembly elections are the one to watch. If they win there then they'll definitely become the next Congress. BJP is going to be in a good shock of they ignore AAP.
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  6.  @vikramsaini5061  Infrastructure development has definitely picked up under Modi. Even the BBC acknowledges. Modi a major factor for his win in 2019 was two scheme Swacch Bharat - ODF toilets and rural electrification. He's definitely put in the groundwork for 2024 with Nal se Jal (which should address the gaps with ODF - why wasn't this done with Swacch Bharat is a PhD thesis on it's own but here is a hint - Jal Shakti and CPWD don't talk to each other) and Ujwala. These schemes don't cover the urban middle class but they bring in a massive quality of life improvement for a significant semi urban and rural crowd. Jan Dhan 2 is starting to make good inroads as well and has been pretty successfully bringing a lot of folks into the formal banking system.
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  7.  @vikramsaini5061  sure UPA conceptualized it. But they didn't implement it or funded it or built good policies and procedures to ensure it's success. Giving the credit to UPA for it is like giving you credit for just dreaming up ideas. Perhaps in Congress, All talk, no work is how they define success but the real world sees success as execution not just mere ideation. I think you overestimate the impact of gas prices. Ujwala provides free/subsidized cylinder in exchange for signing for a bank account. It's either that or nothing.
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  8.  @vikramsaini5061  yawn. Please entertain me with more ill informed perspectives. It's like in your world GMR doesn't exists. Neither does GVK. You care about privacy about a bunch of Princelings but forgot about how they keep intruding in your life through NAT-GRID and CMS - both had Shri Rahulji's blessings. Pegasus is legal because of the numerous vague British colonial laws like Telegraph act that Congress refused to strike down. Watch how generations of Congress leaders squirm to justify the existence of Sedition Act. The same laws that Congress CMs, regional CMs like Yogi, Uddhav 'Penguin' Thackeray use to squash criticism against them. (In case of Uddhav just calling him kombdi is enough to get arrested). Any other goal post you want to shift? At least put some effort to get a well rounded perspective. I can't keep spoon feeding you to keep you properly informed.
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  9.  @vikramsaini5061  when you can't prove your point move the goal post. Nice job demonstrating that.
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  10.  @vikramsaini5061  again tunnel vision thinking blinds you from the real issue. You can't fix healthcare in a single term. It needs decades of investment. India has historically and chronically under invested in healthcare. Blaming BJP alone neither improves the situation nor does it bring any solutions forward. Let's talk the second wave, we can agree on the deaths, we can agree on oxygen shortage. But that only scratches the surface. Logistics in India is horrible, average freight speeds are abysmally low at around 25 kmph. Indian Railways chronically never invested in smoother freight operations until recently (and mostly through DFCCIL) which is why oxygen express could only transport 5-6 trucks rather than 12-15. Plants where oxygen is produced barely have a rail connection and until recently road connection was considered to a blessing rather than necessary infrastructure. These are deep structural issues that have been left to rot for decades. Unfortunately, the recent infrastructure investments weren't completed in time (bloody hell, DFCCIL was initiated by UPA-1 and land acquisition didn't begin until 2015, similarly NHDP and the highway sector collapsed under UPA-2 until HAM was introduced by Gadkari in 2016). There was a collective failure of society who didn't heed to public health warning again due to decades of pure incompetence by Governments. There's still massive administrative failures especially at the State level. District magistrate ignored playbooks and guidelines issued by both State and Central govt. The only fellows who even bothered reading about it was TN health secretary, BMC commissioner (who had to put his foot down with Uddhav Thackeray) and Jalna district magistrate. You clearly care about the dead, I think you should spend time to learn the structural deficits in our Governments.
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  11.  @vikramsaini5061  LMAO. The same Gandhi that added fuel to the fire and got himself infected. Please. In July 2020, nobody had a clue which vaccine would work. Outside of OECD, the rest of the World was still dependent on technical advisory for any form of vaccine development and culture analysis. Under the hood, DGCI guidelines had to written from scratch for an accelerated timeline. If you went to MoHFW website and read through the publications you would have picked up on this. Govt. made a smart move back in late November by going after Active Pharma Ingredients through PLI (IIRC it is the current Health minister who came up with the PLI scheme and API imports have fallen). The failures also came from really bad projections and really bad advice from National Health authority of India (aka Ayushman Bharat) and relying too much on sero survey results. That also understates the lack of initial response in Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra. Maharashtra let Delta spread and didn't enforce any measures until after gudi padwa. Haryana waited until after holi. Please be better informed. It's one thing to say Govt. was catch sleeping, it's another thing to say they did nothing. It's pretty stupid and extremely lazy to be tunnel visioned especially in this day and age. Again read about my point about logistics. I'd also encourage you to spend time to read up court docs, tenders by Delhi govt, UP govt and Centre. They are all online along with their implementation status. If at all anything it says a lot about the rot in the Administrative system. I have done that for Maharashtra and I know exactly where the failures are in my State.
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  12. Hey @ThePrint, did you get my payment for this month? YouTube says I auto-renewed (?)
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  13.  @DKSingh-wf8tn  likewise. It's nice listening to your perspective.
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