"In the long-run we are all dead", once said John Maynard Keynes. Reading about Rahul Gandhi's recent jibe at Narendra Modi, claiming that the incumbent prime minister had invited his predecessor to have an "hour-long Economics lesson from Dr Manmohan Singh" made me think that one can very well be dead not only in the short-run - as compared to the 'long-run' as mentioned by Keynes - but also when one is very much alive and aspiring at least apparently.
Let me at the very outset pronounce my opposing views on Rahul Gandhi. In 2012, I had written my first blog post on Rahul Gandhi when he stopped short of making any mark as a "successful Indian politician" by failing to lead his party - the Indian National Congress - to victory in the assembly polls in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, also one of the politically significant ones in the country.
My second blog post on the Gandhi scion, written just after the worst ever drubbing faced by the Congress, was much more personal and sympathetic about the physical, psychological and emotional captivity that Rahul had to live with all his life, thanks to the greed for power of the leaders of the party he leads as its vice president.
Ever since he returned from his much talked about 57-day sabbatical, Rahul seems to have mastered the art of being the typical Indian politician - the usual street smartness without much substance and an iota of statesmanship.
What's the harm if Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought some advice on the economy from his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh, who happens to be an internationally acclaimed economist? Moreover, Dr Singh steered India out of the economic mess in the early 1990s.
In many of the world's mature democracies there is either a well defined handover process during change in governments - as is prevalent in the United States when the president-elect works very closely with the outgoing head of state for weeks together to ensure a smooth transition in power - or the ruling and the opposition parties work in tandem despite the acrimony and competitive politics during the elections.
In the Westminster system, which is followed in India, it is often said that the British prime minister knows the leader of the opposition much more than his/her spouse. If that is the essence of the democratic relationship between the ruling and the opposition parties in India then why can't an incumbent prime minister invite his predecessor to seek advice.
In fact, Prime Minister Modi set a nice precedence when he called on Dr Singh immediately after assuming office, so did Dr Singh when he called on an ailing Atal Behari Vajpayee to wish the nonagenarian leader on his birthdays. Even Sonia Gandhi called on the former prime minister to condole the death of his long-time companion Rajkumari Kaul.
Competitive politics may be the call of the day but nothing can be more unfortunate if that killer instinct of achieving short-term gains comes in the way of civility and interpersonal relationships between the political actors in the country. Moreover, there is no harm in learning even if it is from a political adversary. As Albert Einstein reportedly said, "The day you stop learning is the day you stop living."
Political animosity between former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Jayprakash Narayan is well known. JP, as the social reformer was known, was arrested during the Emergency and in return he made sure that Mrs Gandhi was ousted from power. However, before JP's death in 1979, when Mrs Gandhi called on him, the Lok Nayak wished her well and said that he hoped that the former prime minister's future would be brighter than her past. Political equation never came in the way of JP's affection for his "Indu" - the daughter of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru, despite their longstanding political differences.
Reading the news report on Rahul Gandhi's diatribe against Mr Modi, I find that the Gandhi scion has also criticised the strict disciplinarian practices of the hardline Hindu organisation, the Rashtriya Sayamsewak Sangh or the RSS, stating that "Discipline is an excuse for suppressing individuality." Mr Gandhi probably forgot that his grandmother Mrs Gandhi and uncle Sanjay Gandhi did exactly the same during the Emergency, and his father Rajiv Gandhi tried to do the same by introducing the infamous Defamation Bill in 1988, which was later withdrawn.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Saturday
A divided Kingdom
After days of discussions around a possible hung parliament and various coalition equations, who could have expected such a poll outcome in the United Kingdom? Certainly, not David Cameron. Or else, his party wouldn’t surely have campaigned so vigorously against a possible pact between the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), vehemently ruled out by Ed Miliband.
Ironically, in a year that marks the octocentenary of Magna Carta — the Great Charter — signed by King John at Runnymede on June 19, UK’s major political parties planned their campaign strategies around fear. Magna Carta was the first formal document making it imperative for the monarch to follow the law of the land, and ensure individual rights against the wishes of the ruler. It was a charter of liberty and hope. But in its 800th anniversary year, we witnessed an election campaign tied to fear. Can anyone deny that exercising the franchise without fear or favour also constitutes an important individual freedom?
The Tories scared the English voters into believing that a minority Labour government would be captive to the SNP, which clearly wants to break away from the United Kingdom. The Labour, on its part, pressed the panic button based on their assumption that another five years of Tory austerity will cut the public services, including the much valued National Health Service, to size.
The campaign of fear, it seems, is going to haunt David Cameron in the weeks and months to come, as he heads to form a single-party government backed by a slim majority. Armed with the over 50 seats in Westminster, the SNP will make every possible effort to irritate David Cameron and undermine the authority of his government over Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon, the charismatic leader of the Scottish party, had vouched to enhance the influence of Scotland in Westminster. She led her party to win 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland. But, given the outright majority of the Tories, the election outcome didn’t necessarily enhance SNP’s power in Westminster. Sturgeon will, therefore, try her best to enforce that power by questioning Cameron’s authority, and, thereby, fuelling Scottish ambition of independence from Britain in the form of a referendum.
The rise of the SNP meant bloodbath for the Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party in Scotland. Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have lost their seats to the SNP. Alexander lost his seat to a 20-year-old student, Mhairi Black.
Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a key figure in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and Charles Kennedy a former Lib Dem leader too, suffered the same fate. So did Vince Cable the Business Secretary and Lib Dem leader from Twickenham, a constituency he held for nearly two decades. What is surprising is that the coalition partners may have projected their record in government during the campaign, but it is the Lib Dem candidates who were punished as the Tories returned as winners.
As the election results stated coming in on Friday morning, I met a girl from a religious minority community. She told me, she voted for the Conservative candidate overlooking Cable, who represented the middle ground and sanity in British politics. And she is not alone in holding that view. While the voters were polarised as a fall out of a vitriolic election campaign, it is equally true that the electorate can’t be stereotyped by their religious and ethnic backgrounds any longer. Across the country, young voters from the religious and ethnic minority groups stood by the Tories, generally considered tough on immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. For years and generations, these groups have constituted the core support base of the Labour Party.
The performance of the Labour Party isn’t that dismal in London. They have increased their tally from 2010, probably a message for the city’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, the darling of the party’s right-wingers. Rumours that Johnson would be propped up as a leader of the Conservative Party if Cameron failed to deliver an outright majority, were circulating. The electoral outcome in London also underlines a consolidation of working class votes in favour of Labour after the Tory onslaught on a possible Miliband government in a tacit agreement with the SNP.
The electoral outcome across the United Kingdom is a complex equation, definitely much more than what caught the eyes of the poll stars, a majority of whom were proved wrong.
The equation is even more complex in England. The United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), which wants the UK to quit the European Union (EU) and blames the migrants — especially those from the East European countries — for all the ills that have befallen Britain, have made significant inroads in England, not necessarily in terms of seats won, but in the share of votes garnered by the party.
The rise of the UKIP comes not necessarily at the cost of the Conservatives, which incidentally is its parent party. But, also at the cost of Labour. The Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat because of the number of votes secured by the UKIP in his constituency of Normanton in West Yorkshire, up in North England. The polarising party led by Nigel Farage is making its presence felt beyond the South of England which sees the maximum immigration from the continent.
Despite the resounding success of the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru, another nationalist party in Wales, has managed only a handful of the 40 seats. But there is apprehension that the trend set by the Scots will inspire the Welsh to speak out more vigorously for independence.
With a large number of leaders not returning to parliament, the Labour Party faces a generational crisis. The burden of the skeletons of the New Labour, left by the Blair-Brown years, seemed to have been too heavy for Miliband to bear. The infighting between the Blairites and the Brownites, which later resurfaced in the form of a family war between the Miliband brothers — Ed and David — the latter leaving the Labour Party to take up a plum job in the US, split the organisation too wide for Ed Miliband to stage a comeback.
An outright majority is not all comfort for Cameron. Now that there is no coalition, he will face enhanced pressure from his backbenchers to deliver more for the Tory core voters. Europe and immigration are causes for concern for the prime minister so is the difficult task of balancing the books and yet deliver a reasonable public service.
Divisive politics awaits a divided nation.
A version of this write up was first published in the DNA on May 9, 2015
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Ironically, in a year that marks the octocentenary of Magna Carta — the Great Charter — signed by King John at Runnymede on June 19, UK’s major political parties planned their campaign strategies around fear. Magna Carta was the first formal document making it imperative for the monarch to follow the law of the land, and ensure individual rights against the wishes of the ruler. It was a charter of liberty and hope. But in its 800th anniversary year, we witnessed an election campaign tied to fear. Can anyone deny that exercising the franchise without fear or favour also constitutes an important individual freedom?
The Tories scared the English voters into believing that a minority Labour government would be captive to the SNP, which clearly wants to break away from the United Kingdom. The Labour, on its part, pressed the panic button based on their assumption that another five years of Tory austerity will cut the public services, including the much valued National Health Service, to size.
The campaign of fear, it seems, is going to haunt David Cameron in the weeks and months to come, as he heads to form a single-party government backed by a slim majority. Armed with the over 50 seats in Westminster, the SNP will make every possible effort to irritate David Cameron and undermine the authority of his government over Scotland.
Nicola Sturgeon, the charismatic leader of the Scottish party, had vouched to enhance the influence of Scotland in Westminster. She led her party to win 56 out of the 59 seats in Scotland. But, given the outright majority of the Tories, the election outcome didn’t necessarily enhance SNP’s power in Westminster. Sturgeon will, therefore, try her best to enforce that power by questioning Cameron’s authority, and, thereby, fuelling Scottish ambition of independence from Britain in the form of a referendum.
The rise of the SNP meant bloodbath for the Labour and the Liberal Democratic Party in Scotland. Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, and Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, have lost their seats to the SNP. Alexander lost his seat to a 20-year-old student, Mhairi Black.
Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a key figure in the Tory-Lib Dem coalition and Charles Kennedy a former Lib Dem leader too, suffered the same fate. So did Vince Cable the Business Secretary and Lib Dem leader from Twickenham, a constituency he held for nearly two decades. What is surprising is that the coalition partners may have projected their record in government during the campaign, but it is the Lib Dem candidates who were punished as the Tories returned as winners.
As the election results stated coming in on Friday morning, I met a girl from a religious minority community. She told me, she voted for the Conservative candidate overlooking Cable, who represented the middle ground and sanity in British politics. And she is not alone in holding that view. While the voters were polarised as a fall out of a vitriolic election campaign, it is equally true that the electorate can’t be stereotyped by their religious and ethnic backgrounds any longer. Across the country, young voters from the religious and ethnic minority groups stood by the Tories, generally considered tough on immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities. For years and generations, these groups have constituted the core support base of the Labour Party.
The performance of the Labour Party isn’t that dismal in London. They have increased their tally from 2010, probably a message for the city’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson, the darling of the party’s right-wingers. Rumours that Johnson would be propped up as a leader of the Conservative Party if Cameron failed to deliver an outright majority, were circulating. The electoral outcome in London also underlines a consolidation of working class votes in favour of Labour after the Tory onslaught on a possible Miliband government in a tacit agreement with the SNP.
The electoral outcome across the United Kingdom is a complex equation, definitely much more than what caught the eyes of the poll stars, a majority of whom were proved wrong.
The equation is even more complex in England. The United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP), which wants the UK to quit the European Union (EU) and blames the migrants — especially those from the East European countries — for all the ills that have befallen Britain, have made significant inroads in England, not necessarily in terms of seats won, but in the share of votes garnered by the party.
The rise of the UKIP comes not necessarily at the cost of the Conservatives, which incidentally is its parent party. But, also at the cost of Labour. The Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls lost his seat because of the number of votes secured by the UKIP in his constituency of Normanton in West Yorkshire, up in North England. The polarising party led by Nigel Farage is making its presence felt beyond the South of England which sees the maximum immigration from the continent.
Despite the resounding success of the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru, another nationalist party in Wales, has managed only a handful of the 40 seats. But there is apprehension that the trend set by the Scots will inspire the Welsh to speak out more vigorously for independence.
With a large number of leaders not returning to parliament, the Labour Party faces a generational crisis. The burden of the skeletons of the New Labour, left by the Blair-Brown years, seemed to have been too heavy for Miliband to bear. The infighting between the Blairites and the Brownites, which later resurfaced in the form of a family war between the Miliband brothers — Ed and David — the latter leaving the Labour Party to take up a plum job in the US, split the organisation too wide for Ed Miliband to stage a comeback.
An outright majority is not all comfort for Cameron. Now that there is no coalition, he will face enhanced pressure from his backbenchers to deliver more for the Tory core voters. Europe and immigration are causes for concern for the prime minister so is the difficult task of balancing the books and yet deliver a reasonable public service.
Divisive politics awaits a divided nation.
A version of this write up was first published in the DNA on May 9, 2015
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Wednesday
Scare dominates campaign in Magna Carta octocentenary
The campaign frenzy is over and the electorate is all set to exercise their franchise to elect the members of what is historically the mother of parliaments. The year which marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the first charter finally contributing to a body of conventions called the constitution of one of the influential democracies in the modern world, is witnessing an election unprecedented in the history of the contemporary British politics.
The Magna Carta may have been the first formal document making the King of England answerable to the law of the land and ensured individual rights and a beacon of liberty, but the campaign of the election held in its tercentenary year is dominated not so much by the spirit of optimism and hope but more so by a message of fear.
David Cameron is scaring the voters that if they don't vote judiciously, the "achievements of the past five years of containing the deficit will be thrown out of the window." The Labour Party is pressing the panic button based on the fact that "another five years of Tory rule will cut the public service down to size". The Liberal Democrats are using a dual strategy for scaremongering, saying that the Tories are dangerous for the society and the Labour detrimental to the economy.
The UKIP has its favourite punching bag the European immigrants, harping on the collective psychosis on jobs and increased pressure on social goods. The threat of global warming and climate change are good enough for the Greens to make the electorate worry of what lies ahead for the British Isles.
The nationalist parties - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - have set out a battle among nations in what is actually a national election.
It's not only among the parties but within them as well that fear, apprehension and insecurity are more predominant than ever before. If reports are to be believed, the right-wingers in the Conservative Party are waiting in the wings to push David Cameron from the pedestal of leadership if he fails to deliver an outright majority. The people on the right in the Conservative Party want to prop up Boris Johnson as the next leader, making the general election of 2015 a make or break for Mr Cameron.
The Labour leader is also under pressure from the trade unionists, despite the best of efforts to distance himself from his largest support base during the party's leadership race. The Tories may have trained their gun around the narrative that Ed 'back stabbed' brother David under pressure from the left hardliners, the Labour leader is facing the heat from the trade unionists and the nationalists SNP and Plaid Cymru who are harping on the traditional political philosophy of the Labour Party, lurching more to the left and with greater credibility.
As the heat and dust of a hectic election campaign settle down, its time for the British electorate and the politicians to seat back and reflect. The negativism that dominated the campaign, can this antagonism bring about any positive change in Britain!
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
The Magna Carta may have been the first formal document making the King of England answerable to the law of the land and ensured individual rights and a beacon of liberty, but the campaign of the election held in its tercentenary year is dominated not so much by the spirit of optimism and hope but more so by a message of fear.
David Cameron is scaring the voters that if they don't vote judiciously, the "achievements of the past five years of containing the deficit will be thrown out of the window." The Labour Party is pressing the panic button based on the fact that "another five years of Tory rule will cut the public service down to size". The Liberal Democrats are using a dual strategy for scaremongering, saying that the Tories are dangerous for the society and the Labour detrimental to the economy.
The UKIP has its favourite punching bag the European immigrants, harping on the collective psychosis on jobs and increased pressure on social goods. The threat of global warming and climate change are good enough for the Greens to make the electorate worry of what lies ahead for the British Isles.
The nationalist parties - the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland - have set out a battle among nations in what is actually a national election.
It's not only among the parties but within them as well that fear, apprehension and insecurity are more predominant than ever before. If reports are to be believed, the right-wingers in the Conservative Party are waiting in the wings to push David Cameron from the pedestal of leadership if he fails to deliver an outright majority. The people on the right in the Conservative Party want to prop up Boris Johnson as the next leader, making the general election of 2015 a make or break for Mr Cameron.
The Labour leader is also under pressure from the trade unionists, despite the best of efforts to distance himself from his largest support base during the party's leadership race. The Tories may have trained their gun around the narrative that Ed 'back stabbed' brother David under pressure from the left hardliners, the Labour leader is facing the heat from the trade unionists and the nationalists SNP and Plaid Cymru who are harping on the traditional political philosophy of the Labour Party, lurching more to the left and with greater credibility.
As the heat and dust of a hectic election campaign settle down, its time for the British electorate and the politicians to seat back and reflect. The negativism that dominated the campaign, can this antagonism bring about any positive change in Britain!
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media consultant.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
Monday
What's missing in this British election campaign
American political strategist Roger Stone once described the general election as a "mass media exercise", and true to his observation the major political parties in Britain are leaving no stone unturned to use, utilise and influence the media to their advantage. While tabloids like the Mirror and the Mail are at daggers drawn when it comes to Labour and the Conservative parties respectively, the Express has sided with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) this time, and The Sun dividing its loyalty between the Tories in Britain and the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland. Among the major broadsheets the tilt of The Guardian with Labour and that of The Telegraph with the Tories are an open secret and they make little effort to conceal or camouflage their stances, and The Times toes a more centrist line.
The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.
The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."
The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .
Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.
In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.
Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.
Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.
Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.
The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.
They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
The debate on public spending is at the heart of this year's election campaign with the major political parties, gauging the public mood, are committing themselves to save the National Health Service (NHS) from any possible cuts, only to be questioned by their rivals on accounting credibility to balance the books and economic trustworthiness to manage the deficit in the long run. In the process, however, each political party is craftily overlooking the lapses in its own spending plan.
The austerity practised by the the Conservative -Lib Dem coalition over the past five years has caused immense hardship to people on low income. The euphoria over employment figures is subdued by the chronic problems in youth unemployment, under employment and ridiculously morbid "zero-hours contract". Prime Minister David Cameron looked helpless when encountered by Jeremy Paxman on the contract which is professed by the Tories, allegedly "to make people's lives more flexible."
The Camerons and the Osbornes are also overlooking the economic realities of under-employment and disguised unemployment. The rising employment figures seem ridiculous when you find a Bulgarian project manager working as a cleaner earning around £8 an hour. The person might not have had any other option but to take up the job, and that added to the employment figures of Mr Cameron, but surely this is under utilisation and misuse of professional skills ultimately resulting in wastage of resources. .
Historically, the Labour Party suffers from lack of trust when it comes to the economy and it has become more so after 13 long years under New Labour, when they professed Labour values but acted more like the Tories at the centre of the party's political spectrum. Although a respectable civil servant has argued that Labour is not to be be blamed for the financial crisis engulfing Britain, but over spending and wasteful spending are detriments to social and economic justices that Labour leadership proudly claims to achieve.
In the midst of claims and counter-claims on public spending, with all political parties trying to show how magnanimous they are, what is missing in the campaign trail is a detailed plan to instil a sense of aspiration in the British society, especially among the youth. No political party has articulated any plan on how to enhance the aspirations of the British youth and influence them to acquire new skills so as to utilise them through gainful employment. Even the UKIP which is constantly crowing against the influx of immigrants from the European Union (EU) and allegedly grabbing the jobs from the British people, are not asking the indigenous people to aspire high or speaking out any plan to make them more enterprising.
Years of post-war social security and welfare have rendered a large section of the British population susceptible to state patronisation in the form of benefit. Even a couple of years ago people would compare their entitlement from benefit and remuneration from jobs and in a substantial number of cases the former overtaking the later.
Entitlement (to benefit) irrespective of achievement (enhancement of employability skills and job prospects) may be arguably good social justice but not necessarily wise economics. The system of entitlement without any commitment to deliver, prevalent over the years, has subjected the working population to stunted aspiration, limited or no entrepreneurial skills and above all a flawed sense of self respect.
Tightening of benefits and monitoring (carried out by the staff at the Job Centre Plus) have resulted a new form of systemic fraud by which young people attend further education colleges, work placements and skill centres, to save their benefits, but hardly pick up any knowledge or skill from there (mainly due aspirational deficits), making bulk of the public expenditure to train them wasteful.
The major political parties competing on public spending and those like the UKIP taking the vexed path of blaming the immigrants for everything ill and evil in Britain should first chart out their plans not only about allocating the taxpayers' money but how they will instill a sense of dignity and enterprise among the working population, a large proportion of whom are otherwise unemployed.
They ought not lose sight of the fact that austerity is an imposition but aspiration is an achievement.
Tirthankar Bandyopadhyay is a journalist and media commentator.
He can be contacted at tirthankarb@hotmail.com
All comments are personal.
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