You may not agree with everything in the following article but it makes
interesting reading.
//configuration OAS_url
='http://adstil.indiatimes.com/RealMedia/ads/'; OAS_listpos =
'Position1'; OAS_query = '?'; OAS_sitepage =
'www.timesofindia.com/Innovation/index.html'; //end of configuration
OAS_version = 10; OAS_rn = '001234567890'; OAS_rns =
'1234567890'; OAS_rn = new String (Math.random()); OAS_rns =
OAS_rn.substring (2, 11); function OAS_NORMAL(pos) {
document.write(''); document.write(''); }
OAS_version = 11; if
(navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/3') != -1) OAS_version = 10;
if (OAS_version >= 11) document.write('');
document.write(''); function OAS_AD(pos) {
if (OAS_version >= 11 & typeof(OAS_RICH)!='undefined')
OAS_RICH(pos); else
OAS_NORMAL(pos); } OAS_AD('Position1');
var ACE_AR = {Site: '738071', Size: '468060'}; Dim
adsVB,po adsVB=0 If ScriptEngineMajorVersion >=2 then adsVB=1 Function
adsAX(aX) on error resume next If adsVB=1 then adsAX=False set
po=CreateObject(aX) adsAX=IsObject(po) If (err) then adsAX=False Else
adsAX=False End If End Function The writer spent considerable amount
of time in researching the information. However, the article says there
was/is a PM from Assam. Who is he? MM Singh?
=============================================================
From the TOI
US can learn diversity from India
10 Feb 2008, 0039 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
doweshowbellyad=0;
Be it Obama or Hillary, either way, a Democrat Prez this year will truly
break the mold (TOI Photo)
For a man who was once dubbed "the best President the United States never
had," Adlai Stevenson came up with one of the most deliciously ironic quotes
about the highest office in the United States. "In America anyone can be
President; that's one of the risks you take," he once said in mock
self-deprecation. A twice Democratic nominee for the Presidency in the 1950s,
Stevenson's intellectual vim and sparkling wit won him a legion of admirers,
but not the ultimate prize in US politics.
At a public meeting during his campaign, Stevenson was once greeted with a cry
from a man in the audience who said he would get the vote of every thinking man
in America. "Thank you, but I need a majority," Stevenson responded dryly.
Mocked by the media and his opponents for wearing a worn-out shoe with a hole
in it during the campaign, he sardonically said, "Rather a hole in the shoe
than a hole in head." In 1952, Richard Nixon called him as an "egghead," a
sobriquet he carried with quiet pride and dignity as he paled into the
political twilight as the US envoy to UN.
Decades later, the myth that "anyone can be the president of the United States"
continues to be perpetuated ("That's the problem," the comic George Carlin
quipped, adding to the make-believe). The truth is, there has been a pattern to
the US Presidency going back 232 years. You have to be white, male, and wealthy
to make it to the White House, going by the metronomic regularity with which
the world's "greatest" democracy has elected 43 presidents of similar pedigree.
Stevenson, despite being arguably the brightest man to run for presidency till
Al Gore went for it, would have also fitted the mold. Any other type of
candidate, until now, would have been in the realm of fiction. Indeed, the
writer Irving Wallace did fictionalize the scenario in his 1960s book The Man,
in which Douglass Dilman, a young black politician, is accidentally pitched
into the Presidency. But more of that, and how it has come to near-realisation,
a little later.
In contrast to the political monoculture that has given the United States 43
white, male presidents in 232 years, it is in India, one of the world's younger
democracies, that the truth of the statement anyone can go on to the highest
office in the land is being realized all the time. Consider this: in only 60
years and with 14 Prime Ministers, India has already elected a staggering
variety of chief executives - from a Kashmiri Pandit to a Punjabi Sikh, India
has seen a UP Thakur and Jat, an Andhra Brahmin, a Punjabi Khatri, a Karnataka
Gowda, and a half-Parsi, half-Brahmin pilot, among others at the helm.
It has even elected a widow, a widower, and a bachelor among its 14 PMs (the US
in contrast, counts only one bachelor among 43 presidents). Counting both
domicile and birthplace, India's 14 PMs span nine of India's now 28 states -
Kashmir, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra (Rajiv Gandhi was born
in Mumbai), Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Assam - including two
who were born in what is now Pakistan's West Punjab (I K Gujral in Jhelum and
Manmohan Singh in Gah).
What's more, this dharma of diversity is set to expand wider in the coming
years with the prospect of a single Dalit woman from UP, a young modernist
Indian who's half-Italian, and an ultranationalistic Gujarati bachelor among
others lining up for the highest office in the land. Truly, it is in India that
anyone can go on to be the Prime Minister.
In contrast, the American political system has seldom departed from the mold of
electing male White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) to the aptly-named White
House. John F Kennedy's election in 1960 was considered a minor exception (he
was a Catholic), while Bill Clinton is nominally considered by some as the
"first Black president" because of his empathy for African-Americans. But it
was not until 1984 that a woman came anywhere near presidency (when Geraldine
Ferraro was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee) and it was not until 2004
that a Jew (Joe Liebermann, Democrat-now-turned Republican-leaning Independent)
was on the ticket.
Of course, Americans are fed plenty of arresting presidential trivia to suggest
that a great variety have occupied the White House. The US has elected a range
of presidents, from one who was completely polio-stricken (Franklin Roosevelt)
to another who was a fashion model (Gerald Ford) and another who was an actor
(Ronald Reagan). There have been large presidents (at 332 lbs, President Taft
once got stuck in a bathtub) and small presidents (James Madison was a
Shastri-esque 5' 4" and weighed only 100 lbs). There have been Presidents who
were loquacious (none more than Bill Clinton) and Presidents who were taciturn
(a woman once bet President Coolidge she could get more than two words out of
him. "You lose," he responded.)
But in the end, they all responded to the same basic description - White Male.
Now, after 232 years, the United States - at least one political half of it -
has come within sniffing distance of truly breaking the mold. Whether the
Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as their candidate for the
White House, history will be made, and even greater history (getting to the
White House itself) attempted. If anything, fact will follow fiction, and it's
not just by way of Irving Wallace's The Man, a book written in the 1960s when
the idea of a black president was truly in the realm of the fantastic. In
recent years, there have been a number of films and TV serials that has
portrayed black presidents - Chris Rock in Head of State, Morgan Freeman in
Deep Impact, Tommy Lister in The Fifth Element and a couple of actors in the TV
series '24'. They have been fewer showing women in the presidential role -
Meryl Streep is set to play a President in a forthcoming comedy with Robert
DeNiro playing "First Man."
But if and when it happens in real life, the US would still be behind the curve
with regard to India in at least one aspect - diversity in high office.
_______________________________________________
assam mailing list
[email protected]
http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
