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Original question answered: What do think of Modi's MSG speech?A crowd of twenty thousand mesmerized completing the slogan “Bharat maata ki...” “Jai ho!”with the statesman....an electric audience captivated, hanging on to every word, lapping up every word...it must have been an evening every person there must have carried away for a lifetime!Some excerpts from his speech...If it were not for Indians abroad, people would still think India was a land of snake charmers, he said. From a nation that made snakes dance to people who make the mouse dance in their hands and make the world go around – these Indians have done India proud...You may not have voted but all of you must have stayed up all night waiting for the result and celebrated with all of India, said he. The crowd shouted in agreement...For the first time in thirty years, a government with complete majority – winning an election brings a responsibility, a trust he promises to never break.Economic improvement – an expectation in which he promises a 100% success – NRIs will have one foot in India, he assures.India, world’s youngest nation with the oldest heritage, a unique combination – no looking back...The strengths of a 125 crore people....DemocracyDemographic dividend (65% population below 35)DemandThe three D’s that shall take India on the global level and make her cross all barriers. Two countries so similar and yet so dissimilar...USA – world’s oldest democracy India – world’s largest democracyUSA – host to people from all countries India – people are there in every corner of the world.He went on to involve people in governance – Jan Aandolan, how skills imparted to the youngest members of the country could create skillsets needed all the world over – quality nurses, teachers and the like. A skill development ministry which would work towards this end.Touching upon Mars @ less than Rs7/km, the Jan Dhan yojana which has involved all of India, “Make in India”, how officers reach work places on time and the recent “Clean India” movement.He made mega points with the “Chaiwala” who is a small man who dreams of small things for small people through big things like cleaning up the Ganga. This sounded like a pitch for donations from bigwigs there? There was clarity of thought in his idea when he went on to explain that 40% of Indians depend on the Ganga for their livelihood besides the health of Ganga directly affecting climate change. He made the audience participate in his dream for a clean Ganga by 2019 – Gandhiji’s 150th anniversary and his vision for a home for every Indian by our 75th anniversary.One small misstep...he referred to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as Mohanlal Gandhi...Then came the sops for all those who had been patient all alongVisa issues of PIO card holders to be solved by giving them lifelong visasPeople on long term visas need not report to police stations any morePIOs with non-Indian spouses would have some new scheme that promised to make life easier for them.Visa on arrival for American touristsOutsourcing visas to be easier in futureHe ended dynamically with “I shall repay the debt of your love by making India the India of your dreams!”Here was a true show stopper who knew the chords to pull, the words to intone, the pitch to make, the sentiments to awaken...I sat there trying to understand the charisma of a man who could excite thousands nay, millions of people with his words and realized that his strength lay in his belief in his words. I hope his party does not let him down for the sake of my country and the hopes so many have pinned on one person.Like I say, my loyalties lie with another party (AAP), but I find here a man with whom I feel the reins of my country are safe. I hope along with a 125 crore Indians that his party people share his vision and beliefs.

I apologize in advance for a very long answer. I assume we are talking about a "peaceful" reunification of Taiwan, where both governments voluntarily agree on a settlement, without subterfuge or manipulation of Taiwanese politics.Background:The People's Republic of China claims Taiwan, and Taiwan (actually the Republic of China) claims mainland China as part of its territory. Most countries recognize Beijing rather than Taipei simply because Beijing is more powerful and a much larger potential market.Both countries follow the One China Policy, though the Pan-Green coalition has its reservations. So we really have two governments claiming to be "China".This results in diplomatic complexities as neither government can officially acknowledge the other as a separate state. The Taiwanese president calls cross-Strait relations "special non-state-to-state relations", which are not between two different states but rather between two areas within the same state (the Mainland, and Taiwan). The mainland thinks that the state is the PRC, and Taiwan thinks that that state is the ROC. Both have cabinet ministries ("Mainland Affairs" in the ROC, "Taiwan Affairs" in the PRC), but officially have to go through government-funded foundations to deal with each other (Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits for the PRC, Straits Exchange Foundation for the ROC).There has been a lot of progress in cross-Straits relations since the end of the Cold War, but these have been in domains such as allowing direct flights from Taiwan to the mainland or reducing tariff duties, where both sides can dance around the issue of statehood and pretend that this is occurring between two factions of one country. Both governments can say that flights from Taiwan to the mainland are not international travel but rather domestic flights (as both are part of the same country). With tariffs, its similar; they can say that the trade is within the same country, and eliminate them.Political unification, on the other hand, would open up quite a can of worms. Here it becomes harder to avoid the ever-inconvenient statehood issue. In the 2000 Taiwan presidential elections, independent candidate (after leaving the KMT) James Soong proposed a European Union-style relationship between the mainland and Taiwan. In 2000 Lien Chan of the KMT ran for president with Soong as his running mate; Chan proposed a 30 year non-aggression pact with the PRC to be followed by a confederation. Beijing rejected this, as forming a confederation with Taiwan would imply Taiwan being another, independent state.The PRC views Taiwan as one of its own provinces, and wants it to accept the PRC's sovereignty and become a Special Administrative Region of the PRC like Hong Kong and Macau. Supposedly the PRC would allow Taiwan more autonomy, such as having its own military (this seems different from the status quo in name only). The ROC, on the other hand, views itself as a sovereign state.Either way, one side would have to give up sovereignty for a reunification to occur, as both claim to be sovereign governments. There probably isn't much precedence for this in the past; how many times in history did a government voluntarily relinquish its sovereignty? I can only think of the United Arab Republic, which occurred when Syria agreed to union with Egypt in order to save itself from Communist takeover in the late 1950s. I think it would be easier if it was a merger of equals, which would better assuage egos and popular pride on both sides, but this will not be the case as the mainland is much larger.One precedent for reunification is Hong Kong. However, comparing Hong Kong to Taiwan is problematic for several reasons:Taiwan is (or thinks it is) a sovereign state; Hong Kong was a crown colony.Taiwan is much larger and far more independent than Hong Kong ever was.Taiwan has been behaving as a sovereign state for over 50 years.Taiwan has a democratically elected government; Hong Kong did notThe decision on reunification was made not by Hong Kong but by the British government.The handover of Hong Kong to the PRC was enormously controversial within Hong Kong, especially after the 1989 Tiananmen Square events, which triggered a mass migration to Canada and the UK. Had Hong Kong been an independent state with a democratically elected government it is difficult to think that this would not have caused Hong Kong to tear up any unification agreement.As Taiwan has much more independence than Hong Kong ever did, Beijing would have to offer it a much better deal than it did Hong Kong. Perhaps give Taiwan permanent autonomy. In 1995 PRC President Jiang Zemin proposed that Taiwan could even keep its own military as well and send a delegate who would be the PRC's #2 leader. If that is the case than I suppose the only thing that would change from the status would be Taiwan/ROC no longer claiming to be a separate state. Not that this doesn't matter; it matters tremendously as an issue of pride.I think that if Beijing sincerely would offer Taiwan such a deal, the only question remaining would be that of the statehood issue. Which still would be difficult. Taiwan might in the future under a Blue government again float an offer of a confederation with the PRC, but the PRC might reject such an offer as it would involve admitting that Taiwan is a state. If the PRC were willing to concede this then a deal could proceed. This could be conceivable in the next couple decades.I suppose the terms of any political settlement would be somewhere between the 2000 confederation proposal by Soong and the 1995 Jiang offer. Somehow they would find a solution to the "statehood" dilemma that would be acceptable to both sides.The unknowns are (this is a bit of a tautology here):China's willingness to compromiseTaiwanese public opinion and perception of the PRCUnknown 1: China has arguably become more flexible with Taiwan as it increasingly understands Taiwanese domestic politics. How will China be in the future? Will it grow ever more impatient and demanding? Will its growing strength make it more flexible and willing to compromise or increase its pride to the point where it no longer wants to deal with Taiwan on the terms it is now?Unknown 2: Taiwanese public opinion and perception of the PRCRight now public opinion in Taiwan has swung against closer ties with China. President Ma has been forced to backtrack on his policies, with the proposed Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement having been defeated earlier this year by the Sunflower Movement.The Cross-Straits Services Trade Agreement would have opened up the service sector in Taiwan to Chinese competition (and vice versa). Things like telecom and healthcare in Taiwan would be opened to the mainland. This was an extension of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) concluded in 2010, which already opened some service sectors in both Taiwan and China to cross-Straits competition. Protesters felt the trade deal lacked transparency and disliked the way it was negotiated. They felt the deal would hurt Taiwan's economy and make Taiwan even more dependent on Beijing. They wanted the deal to be brought into the sunlight, where the public could review each individual clause. These protests were the largest in Taiwanese history, and the Taiwanese legislature was stormed.According to Wikipedia 70-80% of Taiwanese support the status quo. Only 6-7% of Taiwanese support "one country, two systems", and 2% support immediate unification.Doubts remain, as China is seen as poor and authoritarian. It is catching up economically but that hasn't made Hong Kong residents more amenable to the PRC. The PRC is seen more as an economic threat.What could change Taiwanese public opinion would be political reform in China. If China were to both catch up economically to Taiwan and become a liberal democracy like Taiwan that would remove many of the biggest reservations in the minds of the Taiwanese people.I think the political situation in China is the biggest factor to watch.

Clarissa, you asked me to answer this a while back, and I hadn’t gotten around to it, and now that I’ve arrived late to the party, I see that many people, including my betters on this subject, have responded. What’s more, they have pointed directly to the master of counterpoint that I’d have reached for first, J. S. Bach, and to Pergolesi’s glorious Stabat mater.At this point, I am just going to have to pick something I love. Predictably, I too will choose Bach, but like Curtis Lindsay, who wrote beautifully about one movement in the early cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV4) — not necessarily a piece people who aren’t certified Bach lovers know offhand — I will also single out one movement in one cantata. I’m going to go with the third movement of BWV167, Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe, a soprano-alto duet beginning “Gottes Wort, das trüget nicht.”This is not entirely a counterpoint duet; it is, rather, a duet in which unison passages break out into contrapuntal passages, and then recollect themselves back into unison again.The cantata was written in Bach’s first year in Leipzig, and was first performed on May 23, 1723, shortly after Bach had become Thomaskantor, for St. John’s Day (which will explain the emphasis on the Baptist in the text).The first two movements — a tenor aria and a recitative — comprise a celebration of God’s love, which sent his only-begotten son into the world, and then turns to the moment of Jesus’ baptism by John, signaling the occasion for which the cantata was written:(I)Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes LiebeUnd preiset seine Gütigkeit!Lobt ihn aus reinem Herzenstriebe,Dass er uns zu bestimmter ZeitDas Horn des Heils, den Weg zum LebenAn Jesu, seinem Sohn, gegeben.(II)Gelobet sei der Herr Gott Israel,Der sich in Gnaden zu uns wendetUnd seinen SohnVom hohen HimmelsthronZum Welterlöser sendet.Erst stellte sich Johannes einUnd musste Weg und BahnDem Heiland zubereiten;Hierauf kam Jesus selber an,Die armen MenschenkinderUnd die verlornen SünderMit Gnad und Liebe zu erfreunUnd sie zum Himmelreich in wahrer Buß zu leitenFor English-speakers, that is:(I)You people, sing the praises of God's loveand extol his graciousness !Glorify him with a pure impulse of your heartthat at the appointed timethe horn of salvation,the way to lifehe has given to us in Jesus, his son.(II)Praised be the Lord God of Israelwho in his mercy turns to usand sends his sonfrom heaven's high throneto be the world's redeemer.First John appearedand had to make readythe way and path for the saviour;thereupon Jesus himself cameto make glad the poor children of mankindand the lost sinnerswith his grace and loveand to lead them to the kingdom of heaven in true repentance.(Source for both German and English versions here et passim: English Translation [Parallel Format] on the Bach Cantatas Website)These two movements bring us to an eight-plus minute meditation on these six lines:Gottes Wort, das trüget nicht,Es geschieht, was er verspricht.Was er in dem ParadiesUnd vor so viel hundert JahrenDenen Vätern schon verhieß,Haben wir gottlob erfahren.I.e.,God's word does not deceive,what he promises happens.What in Paradiseand so many hundreds of years agohe promised to our fatherswe - God be praised - have experienced.The text seems slight enough, and one wonders why Bach would make it carry such a charge of beauty. Lacking the depth of Curtis Lindsay’s theoretical understanding of these works’ more granular musical details, I can only comment on what I think is happening here, and, as someone who does respond to aesthetic objects both vocationally and avocationally, offer my reading of the effects of that exquisite duet hyperlinked above. (I will happily yield to any correction more knowledgeable parties might have to offer. How else does one learn?)The duet aria begins slowly, and often the soprano and alto are singing in unison, rather than in complex contrapuntal relation — this recurs throughout the piece, e.g., when it speeds up about halfway through — and periodically ramifies into contrapuntal passages. So, from my layman’s perspective, what is the affective freight of this?The aria opens and closes in a mood of something like exalted melancholy or mournful joy. The sorrowful oboe da caccia plays a vital role. Wherefore sadness when one is speaking of the infallible truthfulness of God’s word?The moment of baptism, where John baptizes with water (and trepidation) the greater man who will baptize with the Holy Spirit, is joyous: a meeting of the prophet with the savior, a gathering-together of sanctity on the banks of the most sacred of rivers. And yet, like every moment in Christ’s life, the future is present in the instant. This baptism, an originary moment for Christ’s ministry and more or less the conclusion of John’s, is not only the moment at which the divine dove alights on the Son, but also the consecration of a “righteousness” that will end in the bloody deaths of both men, first John’s, and ultimately Jesus’ own. One vital subtext here is Matthew 3:11–17, which I will give first in Luther’s German — Bach’s lifeblood — then the gorgeous English of the King James Version:11 Ich taufe euch mit Wasser zur Buße; der aber nach mir kommt, ist stärker denn ich, dem ich nicht genugsam bin, seine Schuhe zu tragen; der wird euch mit dem Heiligen Geist und mit Feuer taufen.12 Und er hat seine Wurfschaufel in der Hand: er wird seine Tenne fegen und den Weizen in seine Scheune sammeln; aber die Spreu wird er verbrennen mit ewigem Feuer.13 Zu der Zeit kam Jesus aus Galiläa an den Jordan zu Johannes, daß er sich von ihm taufen ließe.14 Aber Johannes wehrte ihm und sprach: Ich bedarf wohl, daß ich von dir getauft werde, und du kommst zu mir?15 Jesus aber antwortete und sprach zu ihm: Laß es jetzt also sein! also gebührt es uns, alle Gerechtigkeit zu erfüllen. Da ließ er's ihm zu.16 Und da Jesus getauft war, stieg er alsbald herauf aus dem Wasser; und siehe, da tat sich der Himmel auf Über ihm. Und er sah den Geist Gottes gleich als eine Taube herabfahren und über ihn kommen.17 Und siehe, eine Stimme vom Himmel herab sprach: Dies ist mein lieber Sohn, an welchem ich Wohlgefallen habe.I.e.,11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.13 Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.14 But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him.16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.The dove alights to signal the baptismal moment’s initiation of the salvific process; God acknowledges his son through the dove, the symbol of peace — the same which brought the olive branch to the ark to herald the end of the Flood in Genesis. But the moment is pregnant because of the sheer cost of the fact that “Es geschieht, was er verspricht.” God’s promise will be fulfilled when his only-begotten son dies on the cross. And soon enough, John will be imprisoned, and Salome will dance for Herod II to secure his execution. That is a promise sealed in blood. And that, I think, is what the mournful unison passages express: the weight of history, and the devotional sorrows that attend the completion of God’s designs for every believer. There is something here reminiscent of what William Butler Yeats sees in the moment Zeus rapes Leda in the form of a swan:A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.(Yeats, “Leda and the Swan,” ll. 9–11)In that shudder is Helen’s conception, the topless towers of Ilium in flames, Agamemnon coming home to Clytemnestra’s vengeance, and the whole chain of subsequent events set off: Zeus’ ejaculation sets in motion the foundation of Rome, for example, because when Troy burns, Aeneas escapes to found his new kingdom in Latium; and from Rome derives the history of the West. To crib Lady Macbeth’s phrase again, this is to see “the future in the instant.”But the middle section of the aria, on “Was er in dem Paradies” ad finem, expresses the joy not only of the baptismal moment itself — as a happy frieze of a special moment in the progress of God’s design — but also of redeemed humanity, hymning the salvific mission inaugurated here, which, after all, concludes not only with the Passion, but with the Resurrection, and the redemption of humankind. As an atheist, I don’t buy the ontology, let alone the soteriology, in all this, but as a human being sensitive to the mythic patterns out of which the human imagination fashions its visions of hope and transcendence, I cannot be unmoved. And Bach’s music doesn’t make it any easier.Whenever the two voices split off into contrapuntal lines over the course of the aria, two important effects seem to me implicit:John and Jesus, the two sacred figures, one about to be eclipsed and the other about to rise up, are separate figures, and while it is fitting to celebrate them as part of one design (and in unison), it is also vital to mark their discreteness.The underlying movement of baptism → suffering → redemption caught up in the words and biblical subtexts here are reflected in gorgeous contrapuntal expressions of how unity redeems multiplicity: the two voices sing out as the compression of the baptismal moment ramifies into the salvation of the multitude. The soprano and alto, when they begin to sing contrapuntal lines, express, to my ears, the rejoicing of a plurality — they are synecdochal for redeemed humanity, sealed no less at this moment than at Christ’s birth, death, or resurrection.Does the cantata itself do anything more to confirm such a reading of Bach’s use of unison and contrapuntalism in this duet? I would argue that the bass recitative that follows this movement does just that when it speaks, on St. John’s Day, not only of baptism but of fulfillment, alle Gerechtigkeit zu erfüllen.It runs:Des Weibes Samen kam,Nachdem die Zeit erfüllet;Der Segen, den Gott Abraham,Dem Glaubensheld, versprochen,Ist wie der Glanz der Sonne angebrochen,Und unser Kummer ist gestillet.Ein stummer Zacharias preistMit lauter Stimme Gott vor seine Wundertat,Die er dem Volk erzeiget hat.Bedenkt, ihr Christen, auch, was Gott an euch getanUnd stimmet ihm ein Loblied an!I.e.,The woman's seed came,when the time was fulfilled;the blessing that God promisedto Abraham, the hero of faith,has broken upon us like the sun's brightness,and our grief is stilled.Zacharias, who was speechless, praisesGod with loud voice for the miraclewhich he has produced for his people.Consider also, you Christians, what God has done for youand begin to sing to him a song of praise!Here the dynamic and dialectical relationship between sacrifice and salvation, between grief and rejoicing, becomes explicit. But the duet preceding, with its movement back and forth between the voices mourning in unison and their separation into expressions of wild, rapturous contrapuntal beauty, have already, like John, prepared the way.It is, in short, a subtle and beautiful marshaling of musical resources and techniques to express the theological complexity of a flashpoint in the process of redemption. Bach’s duet, in its movements from unison to counterpoint and back, supplements the text — the notes themselves do the work of theology. After that last bass recitative, a joyous chorale bookends the cantata, which had opened with a joyous air for a lone tenor. Now all believers, all creation, in acknowledgment both of its beauty and its price, “sings the praises of God’s love.”Magic, all of it, another magnificent little rose window in the vast cathedral of Bach’s work — not as famous, by a long shot, as the mass, the passions, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, the “G-string” air, the C major prelude that opens Book I of The Well-Tempered Clavier, or the Brandenburg Concertos, but nonetheless full of wonder and exquisite beauties to astonish those fortunate enough to stumble across it.