I do agree with you guys on most of the points except a few.

/* Today, it has acquired a racial character and the some tamil racists (particularly DK) are attempting to purify tamil.. they are proved wrong, simply by the numerous scriptures (kal vettu & pattayams) where the spoken tamil is used as it is, which contained sanskrit words also.. */

– This doesn’t seem to be true for me. The DK of Periyar revolutionized things, which are pivotal to what we see today. A small change then though, a large impact these days. Eg: forced entry of temple, eventual reservation system. The current DK is useless and it doesn’t look like having a proper agenda. The purification of tamil is something that has been taken by PMK, if I’m not wrong. Which we all would read back to know thats completely a political agenda.

/* While the DK are chauvinists, there point about Sanskrit’s influence on Tamil is entirely accurate. However, what they are forgetting is that we can’t turn the clock back on history. */

– Again, i don’t think DK focuses on lingual chauvinism. Sanskrit’s influence on Tamil is there,, and then, Tamil also would’ve influenced Sanskrit. DK’s agenda then, from 1930s or later,, have been mostly on atheistic and caste systems. Now people do believe in God, and still don’t believe too much superstitions. Which itself is a big change. Caste discrimination is not there at office at all. However I might not know about government offices. People misusing caste based reservation privileges are there,,, its happening around, which is an unwanted byproduct. But the impact it has created making millions of societies from lower middle class to middle class, mix with communities is because of DK’s stance then, by Periyaar. It fits perfectly for chaos theory proof.

The language roots and their sources are pretty important for any analysis. For instance, being a tamil guy, when I learnt malayalam and telugu, I learnt fastly. I was able to converse in those languages pretty fast. However, when I learnt Hindi, I was able to write fast, but unable to converse very fluently like a native speaker. When I learnt English, it was worse. I was able to write, but unable to converse fluently. Malayalam and Telugu native speakers couldn’t differentiate my accent as quickly as a north indian did. North Indian friends, who speak hindi were able to tell me my accent differences.

I had felt the same from Rajinikanth’s tamil accent from a kannadiga origin, and Jaggi Vadudev Swamiji’s tamil accent from a kannadiga origin, that these guys are from karnataka. But theirs were very close. However, there are many rajasthani friends who live in my place, whose tamil is very different.

Coz phonetically hindi and tamil are different. In fact, Indo aryan languages differ from Indo dravidian languages. This condition is worse if you notice my English. Anyone from the world, can find my accent and language different. I need to practice more spoken english to make speech fluent. So, for a tamil guy to speak fluent malayalam, all he needs is ONE subject, malayalam.

For a tamil guy to speak fluent english, he needs to be TAUGHT COMPLETELY in english or spend most of the time in an English spoken atmosphere. All the private schools do this only to improve fluency. Nothing else.

So mere comparison of two languages will be incomplete. Certain languages for a certain tribe will be difficult to learn, and hence needs more attention. English needs the attention to make us globally competitive.

Regards,
neo

You may have a logical point.. but i feel, the very purpose of nandan’s book is to have an entry point to the politics..

My prediction would be, he will be elected to Rajya sabha, and then made a formal entry to politics..

To me it is simple – if you read Nandan’s book (which i have done and not sure if you have) and look at his appointment as UIA chief. He is in politics. Period. Manmohan Singh, who has much better credentials in public service than Nandan is now inarguably in politics although if we had had a similar argument about Manmohan Singh in 1991 you may not have accepted that he is in politics.

Here is my reco – please read Nandan’s book. If after that if you still feel this UIA has nothing to do with Nandan entering politics, we can discuss.

I can make my point with more clarity.

1) The bureaucrats of the country are supposed to implement the policies/vision of the government. But by being a bureaucrat and implementing the government`s policy one cannot tell that the person is in politics. If that was the case we should have ideally said that all the people in bureaucracy are but in politics. The reason we do not call a D.C as politician is because he/she is part of the bureaucracy which is different from being a part of politics.

2) You said holding the rank equivalent to that of a cabinet minister is equivalent to entering politics. Remember holding the rank and status of a cabinet minister and being a cabinet minister are two different things.A cabinet minister has to be a member of either houses of the parliament BUT the one who just holds the status of a cabinet minister is not necessarily to be a M.P….Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia also holds the status of cabinet minister. Can we tell that Dr Montek is in politics? Or is he a part of bureaucracy ?If that is the peculiarity of the unit planning commission then we can take the case of NSc.
M.K.Narayanan-chief of NSc- holds the rank and status of the minister of state. Adding with this his years in public service can we still tell that M.K.N is in politics? Or is he a bureaucratic professional?

3)Highly important bureaucrats are carefully selected by politicians and there is enough room for using political discretion in their selection. This does not make those appointees politicians.

4)Practically (not sure whether exceptions are available ) a cabinet minister should be atleast a primary member of a political party and should follow the constitution of whichever political party he belongs to.

I don`t think the position held by Nandan ,AS OF NOW,could satisfy enough conditions to tell that he is in politics. The only difference is , instead of selecting members from the Indian civil service who conventionally occupies such positions the P.M has selected a member from the private sector.
The status of cabinet minister will provide him enough administrative power to implement the policy of such a large scale.

PS: There is still some confusion on how Nilekani is going to work under the planning commission since the one who runs the planning commission ,ie Deputy Chairman, also has a rank and status nothing higher than that of a cabinet minister.

PSS: Some of the bureaucrats flirts more with politicians and holds open and strong political views which makes it tough to draw a clear line between the two(Eg Brijesh Mishra was more like a politician but anyway not because of his protocol position but because of his proximity to AB Vajpayeee)