Fast Against Corruption and Other Charades

Take how all of this Baba Ramdev “issue” started. With Anna Hazare’s fast against corruption and his insistence on framing new laws. Technically, an unelected set of people shouldn’t have the right to “force” the creation of any law. The operative word in that last sentence, of course, is “technically”. Because, technically, the elected crooks…er, representatives of the poor people (note it’s always about the poor, never people like you and me)…are supposed to be framing those very laws. And they’re supposed to give the law enforcers the clout to enforce those laws. But since the elected representatives don’t do their job, somebody else had to step up.

Next, look at this Baba Ramdev’s aims. At least, Hazare and his group aimed at realistic targets. Demands many of us could relate to. Not so with Ramdev. This guy decides he wants to aim for everything under the sun: retrieve money from Switzerland, hang the corrupt, and oh yes, even unrelated demands like making Hindi the medium of education.

Let’s take his ridiculous demands. Hang the corrupt? Give me a break. We can’t even hang Ajmal Kasab in this country. What makes Ramdev think we’ll ever hang an Indian citizen, a politician no less? And why should we make Hindi the medium? What has that got to do with corruption? Most of this country doesn’t know or care for Hindi. And strangely, those very parts of India are the most prosperous states. The drivers of that spectacular GDP growth we so love to talk about. Besides, it’s knowing English that creates so many jobs from IT to call centers. So by bringing in a useless, unrelated topic, Ramdev has managed to divide the set of people who were united about corruption. Methinks Ramdev may have been sent there by the politicians to sabotage things from inside. Or maybe a Chinese puppet meant to sabotage our growth rate!

Of course, regardless of this nutjob’s aims, he should be allowed to protest peacefully. You know, all that Voltaire’s “I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” principle. But that’s so not the Congress philosophy. Nope, they’re the party that believes in imposing the Emergency, Article 356 and every other suppression of our rights. But hey, they are still the good guys…after all they are “secular”. And no, the 1984 riots don’t count as per them and their supporters.

Comments

  1. KumarJune 7, 2011 at 6:34 PM

    It is very true that Baba Ramdev has degraded the awakening, which looked like showing some semblance of emerging. We don't want more self-seekers and self-projectors. We don't want people who are themselves groping in the dark to guide us. We don't want more politicians. We don't want religious fanatics to mess things up.

    We want, actually we need, leaders. True leaders. We still have none at this juncture. Sad. Standing up against corruption is a big task. It needs tenacity. Not a matter to be trifled with.

    We need someone who can arouse a lot of educated and not-so-poor people and people with balanced attitude to create a movement that will help improve and avoid decadence. The politicians are a very clever lot driven by extraordinary cohesion and determination, when confronted about their corrupt ways. They transcend party divide when they come to this point. All of them are soaked in corruption - no exception there! They will do everything to ensure that their looting the nation can go on and on, with assured safety.

    And, they know this nation tolerates them for their being above the law which they very much want to be and manage to achieve too. A good part of the blame unfortunately is indeed due to the weakness, ignorance and wrong mind-setting of the people. We do not have the ability to check the politicians and bureaucrats.

    At the moment, there is not much of a sign about any movement with right leadership to give us direction. We seem to be no better than what we were during the feudal times.
    We have no option but to bear the brunt and wait, for now. I don't want to experience impotent anger - what use it has? It only consumes the angry person.

    Somehow I feel hope amidst all this. I don't know why. Things will change for the better; they should. ("If winter comes, can spring be far behind") Let's have patience.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more