Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Today we are celebrating 90th birthday of Shree Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He have been declared as Bharat Ratna yesterday for his contribution to the country as its prime minister and polity as a leader.

Atal as a character is as awesome as any politician can be. His personality and talents are multidimensional. He is a statesman, administrator, demagogue, orator above excellence, poet, writer, journalist and an occasional manipulator. He was a moderate face of BJP for over 2 decades when party was being created at grassroots by LK Advani. Among his all skills I especially admire his oratory. While speaking he rose above all. His grip over language and vocabulary left me mesmerised. He will use 10 different words while expressing same thought, still audience will not find it repetitive because his words will belong to whole of distribution of Hindi. He will switch between very sanskritized words, urdu words and modern anglicized words effortlessly. These switch between one end of Hindi to another are melodious in a way that left listeners hypnotised.

Another more famous and unique characteristic of his oratory were pauses which sometime lasted as long as 10 seconds. It is these pauses which are butt of jokes. One of the jokes said Doodle to celebrate Atal’s Birthday will be like

Sometime these pauses were required so that audience could decipher his complex words, his deep ideas, some time it was a gap for accolades to die down and some other times it was just his style. It is a known fact that pause is an integral part of public speaking but none used pauses as effectively as Atalji did.

But what I like about his oratory skills was his body language, especially his facial expression while speaking. He could ridicule people just by his facial expression. Don’t believe me watch this.

He was at his poetic best when he said “Andhera Chhatega, Suraj Niklega, Kamal Khilega” (watch here at the end of video). He was his feisty best when reciting legendary poem on Pakistan. He was articulate and statesman like when he was speaking in parliament before resigning at the end of 13 day Govt. But my favourite speech is when he was giving a speech on Savarkar in Pune.

A Bharat ratna just before his Birthday is fitting tribute to arguably the biggest leader of political right in independent India. It is him, with help of LK Advani who created a political right in India and laid base of hope that current Govt. will break shackles of leftist economics.

P.S. : I can’t help but right a joke on Bharat Ratna now. It is good that Atal ji and Malviya ji have been honoured with Bharat Ratna. Now it is time to Honour Bharat Ratna with Rajnikanth

Electricity Amendment Bill

Central cabinet have just approved Amendment to electricity Act, 2003 which aims to allow competition in power distribution. Right now power market for end consumer is a monopoly in which state Govt decides who will provide electricity in which areas. Everybody knows that such a monopolized market can not be efficient market. current amendment to the electricity act envisioned more than one power supplier competing against each others to provide better services. This is to be done by separating infrastructure owner from the power distributor. So Power lines and poles will be owned by a separate company which will charge the distributor for its infrastructure. I had proposed a similar arrangement earlier for water in Delhi. this kind of arrangement will allow 2-3 players targeting same set of consumers for supplying electricity. They will have differential services and prices. Customer will be free to choose the service provider and will probably make rational decision based on service quality and tariff.

This will be one of the bigger reform measure by Modi Govt. This will not only improve the services for customers but will go long way to improve condition of State discoms as they will now have to compete in market and competing in the market will not be possible unless they cut down power theft (euphemistically called as T&D losses) Probably state Govt. will shun the practice of providing power for free or at subsidy to politically powerful lobbies like farmers etc.

If everything goes according to plan this act will pay way for better electricity conditions in India and will act as strong foundation for “Make In India”.