I was just reading this article on a village in Bihar that has no electricity, no water supply and none of the facilities we take for granted like a health centre or a school. And this village is represented by Lallu Prasad Yadav, a walking and talking political nuisance and windbag. So I was just wondering, why couldn’t these villagers vote for electricity, water supply and a school, instead of empty promises and perhaps bottles of country liquor? For instance, get us electricity and water supply within the next two months and we will vote for your party, something like that. Getting electricity and water to a village within a couple of months isn’t impossible.

Most of the goons like Lallu are elected to power not because of their work, but the useless stuff they distribute and the pathetic promises they make during pre-election campaigns. You might say but then these villagers deserve what they get but that is not the point. Ours is a highly patriarchal society so whatever the males of the village do, the children and the women have to bear the brunt. Once country liquor or lose cash is distributed among these men they do not only vote for the wrong people themselves, they also make the women and the young adults to vote for the same charlatans (assuming they are not threatened into voting for wrong candidates by the henchmen of these charlatans).

These silly people don’t understand that they are prolonging their misery by focusing on immediate gains. But is this the only story? Is it about silly and stupid and backward villagers constantly trapped in their own imprecation of ignorance and greed? It might be (and that’s why recently I suggested that illiterate people shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but the issue is debatable), but the problem is not confined to backward Bihari villages. Even among the intellectuals and the middle classes dwelling in the cities and towns, the same problem persists: either they don’t vote, or even when they do, they have no clue whom to vote for.

We are not aware in terms of our rights and responsibilities. We see elections as just days when we have to go and cast our votes and then flaunt that little mark on the tips of our fingers. We are not politically conscious and we don’t have strong opinions regarding our politicians. We don’t realise that these politicians impact the way we and our children live our lives and spend our days in this country.

Our current political mess is simply because we don’t vote for the right reason whether we are living in villages or cities. We either vote indifferently as if we couldn’t care less who comes to power because basically they are the same (very convenient) or we can be easily incited/enticed. Both these problems have attained an alarming state. The political class isn’t going to do anything about it because it works in their favour. The more indifferent you are, the more corruption they can indulge in with greater impunity because they know  that your indifference is going to help them maintain a political status quo. But what if all the candidates listed are basically of the same variety? This is why it is very important to fully support movements like Anna Hazare’s. He may sound a bit loony sometimes but the fundamental approach isn’t misplaced. He is raising all the issues whether rightly or wrongly, that we should be raising as concerned citizens. Take for instance the right to recall. But that is another topic.

So unless we start voting for the right reason we are never going to get the sort of politicians needed to give us a balanced growth.

China has been a regional thorn for India ever since the 1962 war. India took a severe beating (due to Jawahar Lal Nehru’s shortsightedness and the foreign policy ridden with a personal agenda) in that war. India’s military power has improved tremendously since then, but obviously it cannot match China’s might due to its sheer size. China knows this.

Aside from repeatedly crossing the Indo-China border and carrying out various mischieves it has also started to meddle with India’s foreign policy vis-a-vis other regional countries like Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, etc. The recent example is the indirect warning against India’s forays into oil exploration in the South China Sea in collaboration with Vietnam. According to India, ONGC-Videsh (ONGC’s overseas arm) is carrying out its operations fully in compliance with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Seas.

This particular problem is not directly related to India because China considers the region being explored as a disputed territory and it is already embroiled in heated exchanges with countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. So India going ahead with collaborative oil exploration means Vietnam taking unilateral decision and asserting its right on the region.

Anyway, this is just one of the issues. China is a tough neighbour to handle. Beyond doubt it is a regional bully and to make the matters worse, it is not even a democracy. It is headed by a communist regime and most of its people (not everybody, understandably) support such a government. It has no interest in establishing and maintaining friendly ties with the country it looks down upon: India. India is an economic competition but more than that it is a nuisance for them simply due to some perverted habit. Pakistan’s hatred towards India can be defined on the canvas of religion and historical references, but China dislikes India just for the heck of it, it seems sometimes. Both the countries have enjoyed historical ties but something happened in 1962 and they were permanently broken.

So how should India handle a neighbour who is not interested in peace and who doesn’t respect you? China is almost double the size of India and nothing can be done about that and this is a reality we have to live with. It is economically stronger, militarily stronger and even its influence on the international politics is much greater than India. China is one of the biggest holders of US debt (the US public debt is 98% of its GDP). There is practically no country in the world that can directly challenge China or come to India’s support due to whatever reason.

I think we should learn a lesson from Pakistan. Despite being comparatively smaller and despite its economy being in total shambles, Pakistan has created a significant deterrence against India. Should India have more nuclear warheads with their nozzles pointing at China? I’m not a military strategist so I don’t know how much of it is going to be effective.

By nature India is not suicidal. India can obliterate Pakistan completely and in retaliation even Pakistan can cause lots of harm to India. In desperation Pakistanis will be okay with the fact that they will be completely destroyed as long as they can inflict a significant wound to India. India on the other hand cannot have similar approach towards China. The Chinese can completely finish off India and India can cause a significant damage to China. Being a country optimistic about its future India will never tread upon such a path.

Similarly, China will be ready to bear significant damage, just like Pakistan, if such a case scenario manifests, as long as it can incinerate the whole of India. As a layperson, I see this as a lose-lose situation. Both Pakistan and China can be reckless and this makes them more dangerous. The only saving grace in the case of Pakistan is perhaps India can contain it before it can launch its nuclear warheads.

Jingoism and filibustering is not going to help. This issue needs a long-term policy. Every problem has a solution and so must this one. I think if India can sort out its massive corruption it can invest a good chunk of that money in defence-related research and development. It desperately needs to upgrade its warheads – on the seas, in the skies and on the ground. It’s high time India stopped purchasing out-of-use or second-hand warheads and started developing its own, targeted versions.

The current political establishment is quite directionless as well as pussilanimous (but then how can you expect the corrupt to have a vision for the country?). People of this country must work towards completely changing the establishment and encouraging people who have a vision and direction. We must have a strong and well-defined foreign policy. We should clearly know how the government is going to respond to unfavourable overtures, physical as well as verbal. We are always reacting and even those reactions are not actually reactions but fumblings. Just like corruption, terrorism, price rise and religious/class conflicts we should choose political parties that have a clear foreign policy agendas. The next time your local politician comes to seek votes, ask him or her, how his or her party plans to handle China?

The solution to China-problem lies more with people of India than building a strong military deterrence (although that too is necessary, but it will happen gradually). China is a real problem gawking at us and challenging us, although we cannot see it directly or experience it immediately. It is like the bull in the china shop and you never know when it will turn violent.

The dust is gradually settling down after almost a fortnight of public anger and high-drama negotiations and this is the time some thinking work starts. Just read this objective piece on Wall Street Journal titled Getting a Grip on Indian Corruption that suggests a balanced approach of reforms and monitoring. Although the article takes a pessimistic view of the Anna Hazare movement it rightly says that

Restricting business freedom through extensive government regulation is probably the greatest source of graft. Licenses, permits and quotas create artificial rents and self-interested bureaucrats and politicians attempt to extract these rents while entrepreneurs lobby for them. Compliance requirements and inspections worsen the problem.

Another source of corruption is the state’s welfare schemes, which are notorious for corrupt middlemen. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi complained that only 15 cents of every dollar spent by the government on welfare reached the poor. Too many bribes change hands for the poor to get access to their entitlements.

But people over-analyze the situation and tend to miss the whole point of the agitation. To be frank, the common person on the street (lower-middle-class, hawkers, rickshaw pullers and such) are not bothered with high-level scams where crores of rupees go waste. They are concerned with the day-to-day corruption they have to face while trying to earn their living and this was the bone of contention when the team Anna was negotiating with the government, that the lower level bureaucracy must be brought under the ambit of the Jan Lok Pal bill.

Is this problem going to go away? I’m not sure. As I have  repeatedly mentioned on this blog as well as in my Twitter postings, the thing that attracts me towards such movements is the public consciousness that is stirred by them. Whatever may the cynics say, even if 50 people are motivated and try to embrace the ideas being spread by the movement I think the objective is achieved. No political party or politician has been able to achieve this feat.

Eventually we need social, political and economic reforms and unless these reforms happen nothing much is going to change. A single agency or a lokpal (ombudsman) no matter how many thousand people are employed in the chain of control (we have a pretty big country), won’t be able to achieve what reforms can achieve. Controls, interference and misplaced incentives that are the root causes of corruption must be refined or eliminated, whether it is the reservation system, the license-permit formalities or a horde of other things that create a breeding ground for corruption.

Huffington Post, an American online newspaper, has published quite revealing details about the political holy cow of India, Sonia Gandhi. What makes this article a good reading is that the writer is totally objective, doesn’t sound partisan, and has merely expressed whatever she knows. In fact, it is a bit older article, as it was published back in April, but I just came across it.

The disturbing part is that an Indian journalist was forced to abandon his journalism career when he tried to unravel the mystery surrounding Sonia Gandhi and the copious corruption accusations growing around her like wild creepers. Whenever such things are discussed in India, they are either discussed in a hush-hush manner, or totally suppressed. This article says:

The allegations came out in the open in 1995 when M. D. Nalapat, then Resident Editor (Delhi) of the world’s largest English language newspaper, the Times of India, began a groundbreaking series of articles about Sonia.

The articles made the controversial (at the time) claim that the public docility was just a ploy, and that Sonia actually had serious political ambitions (later confirmed by her role in Congress). Also, crucially, the series said that her desire for power wasn’t simply altruistic and that the wealth not only of her, but of her Italian relatives, rose stratospherically after Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1984.

Nalapat’s articles could not be ignored as he was one of India’s most respected journalists and had, throughout his career, taken on corrupt politicians, social inequity and institutionalized discrimination.

This however was a ‘topic too far’. While the facts in the article were never refuted, Nalapat was forced out of journalism in 1998 and moved into academics.

This is another disturbing part of the article:

In 1998, India was being led by BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee. When Nalapat spoke with him about Sonia, he was bluntly told to lay off, as, "so long as a white Christian lady is head of the Congress Party, I [Vajpayee] and my party will always be in power"

It shows when push comes to shove, whatever is the political party, the only thing that matters is power and the country can go to the dogs. Just imagine how much trouble could have been avoided had the then Prime Minister acted proactively, assuming the incident is correct.

Coming back to why can’t the Indian media cover such issues objectively? I think this is because everybody cannot be Arun Shourie and Goenka. Arun Shourie single-handedly brought the Rajiv Gandhi government down just by his journalistic power when he was the editor of Indian Express, owned by Ramnath Goenka.

Most of the journalists these days are not journalists, at least in India, in reality they are political stooges and write whatever their political masters ask them to write. They are court bards. This fact is manifest in the way no journalist worth his salt has taken up Nalapat’s issue and launched a new campaign. At least I don’t know of any and correct me if I’m wrong. Go read that Huffington Post article, it will be worth your time. And also spread it because such news is not covered in the mainstream media. I don’t know if it is true or false, but reality must come out.

The main gripe of people opposing Anna Hazare’s anticorruption movement (see for example, India’s Selective Rage Over Corruption) is that the middle class is extremely hypocritical when it goes for corrupt politicians without exploring its own conscience. The second gripe is that most of the conditions mentioned in his proposal lurk in the realms of draconian, but that is insignificant rhetoric so I’m not going to address it.

Regarding the middle class being hypocritical, to an extent this is true. Remember when people used to say, “Sarkari naukri aur salary to theek hai, par ooper ki kamayi kitni hoti hai?”: It is well and good that you have a government job and you have a particular salary, but how much extra do you make?

This “extra” was of course the bribe you can get as a government employee. You can also have this extra money by evading taxes (but then we all have our different views on the merits of tax laws in our country). It is also true that the Indians have a prodigious talent to flaunt law — not stopping at red lights, jumping the queue, jostling while getting into and getting out of public transport, cheating in exams, taking unfair advantage of the reservation policy, dirtying public places and stealing things when there is no danger of getting caught, etc.

If we really want to solve the problems of the country (as far as corruption goes) we need some sincere introspection and merely going for a particular class (politicians, for instance) is not going to solve anything. Having said that, it is a good beginning. This is why.

Powerful politicians, bureaucrats and businesspersons enjoy an immunity that a common person can only dream of. They cannot only indulge in scams worth thousands of crores of rupees they can also stash away their ill-earned money very easily. The entire machinery works for them. The common person deals at the level of chai-paani sort of bribe whereas the people mentioned above swindle away whopping amounts of money. Although you cannot say that my theft is justified and yours is not, but in practical terms there is a big difference.

For the common person, corruption and bribing is a necessary evil and it is not a choice. He or she doesn’t make a living out of being corrupt; it is a matter of survival. Even if he or she doesn’t want to indulge in corruption there is no easy redressal. Try refusing a bribe to an official that has to move your file or sign a document and see what happens. You can totally forget about your work being done. If you complain no action will be taken because even if someone wants to take an action it is very difficult to terminate a government employee’s job. Even filing a case doesn’t help. Here I’m not talking about people who can afford to take on corrupt officials by neglecting their job and family. There are certainly people who stand up to corrupt government employees and bureaucrats and to an extent even politicians, but you normally end up paying a heavy price. It is very easy for politicians, social activists, journalists and intellectuals to preach but they preach because it is their job and livelihood to lecture people. So blaming the common man for corruption is like blaming a woman for being raped.

The large-scale corruption is more harmful to the country compared to small-scale corruption and once you begin to deal with large-scale corruption the small-scale corruption will automatically scale down. Thousands of crores of rupees that are lying waste in foreign banks can be used for the development of the country. Rajiv Gandhi said that for every rupee spent on development work only 10 paise reaches to the actual people. Just imagine the scale of achievements if the complete rupee is spent and even if not the complete rupee, just 50-60 paise.

Corruption is everywhere, it is also there in the most advanced countries, but there, politicians and bureaucrats are accountable. For instance, if a certain area needs water, the water will reach that area. If a road needs to be built, the road will be built. If a school needs to be run, it will be run. There might be a few corrupt officials here and there but it is not a norm. In India it is the opposite – corrupt officials are a norm and honest hard working people are an exception. This is what needs to be changed.

Since the politicians and bureaucrats enjoy the greatest power, they must also be held the most accountable for the sorry state of the country. If our society in general is a thief, then they are the bigger thieves and hence the bigger danger to the country and hence, must be targeted first. Being always in the limelight they set an example for the rest of the country. I’m pretty sure that even if there are 10 politicians (not in the opposition but in the government) who have an impeccable record it will inspire many citizens to shun corrupt practices. Why hasn’t our Prime Minister ever come on television especially to exhort people not to indulge in bribe giving and bribe taking? Why hasn’t any minister worth her or his salt ever tried to reach out to the masses and make them aware of the perils of encouraging corruption in public life? Because our ministers never want our country to be free of corruption because then they won’t be able to loot the country openly the way they do it now.

So yes, a countrywide introspection is needed and we need to deal with corruption at the grassroots level (and various other levels) but there is nothing wrong to start with the political class because one, they always carry this halo around them claiming what great service they are doing to the nation and how honest they are, two, they enjoy power and immunity not available to common persons and three, their corrupt activities are literally destroying the country. So this is a big hole that needs to be plugged first, and later on we can take care of the smaller holes.

Once our politicians and bureaucrats know that it is not worth it to indulge in corruption and might have to pay a heavy price for it, they will start discouraging it at various levels, because if they don’t, at least under their own departments, it will mean that they are abetting corruption even while not directly benefiting from them. So automatically they will be forced to cut corruption under their constituencies.

Making corruption unprofitable will automatically discourage criminal elements from entering politics and this will create space for people who really want to work for the country. With such people at the helm it will have a cascading effect.

So journalists and the intelligentsia should stop hyperventilating about why we should target politicians when there is corruption all over us and let events take their own course. When the corruption stops at the top, it will also begin to erode at the bottom.

My this post is certainly not in conjunction with PM Manmohan Singh’s pronouncement that we’ll never carry out a USA-type operation, which I without doubt think has political motive. I had written this last week for Huffington Post. When they didn’t get back I decided to post this on my own blog.

With the killing of Osama bin Laden the hardliners in India have started raising the question why India cannot act similarly and smoke out terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim and Maulana Massod Azhar. To add fire to fuel Gen V.K. Singh of India, when asked whether India could carry out such an operation, said the country is capable of successfully undertaking such strikes. This achieved nothing but give Salman Bashir, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, a high moral ground to warn India of “dire consequences” in case India indulges in such adventurism.

When asked whether the US would support India if India carried out similar operations to bring to book its own bunch of terrorists hiding in Pakistan, state department spokesperson Mark Toner said no parallel should be drawn between 9/11 and 26/11 which basically means the US wouldn’t support similar strikes from India.

It’s not that India needs a nod from the US to pursue its foreign policy and internal security matters but we live in a world of reality and the reality is that the US is much better placed compared to India to carry out such aggressive operations, both in terms of military might and geographic location. Even if the US carries out 10 such strikes Pakistan can do nothing more than protest vociferously and threaten the US government of non-cooperation in its fight against terror. An armed conflict between America and Pakistan is simply not possible from Pakistan’s point of view.

Additionally, Pakistan receives lots of financial and military aid from the US and its military and civilian establishment won’t easily give up such a lucrative arrangement. Although it has started making overtures towards another giant, China, since the Cold War days Pakistan has felt closer to America than any other country.

India on the other hand is at a great disadvantage in terms of geographic location and military power. Beyond doubt India is a stronger country but it is also a country surrounded by hostile and semi-hostile neighbours. Due to its vulnerability and a weak political establishment even smaller countries like Nepal occasionally cock a snook at it without inciting a reaction. All major countries around India — Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal — have one or another grudge to grind against the country. So there is going to be no support from its neighbours if there is a full-fledged war between the two neighbours. To make matters worse China may take this opportunity and show some military support to Pakistan by raising tension on the eastern borders. India and China have had a quarrelsome history although it is not as obsessive as between India and Pakistan.

Even if there is no regional opposition to India doing a Geronimo on Pakistan a direct conflict can be disastrous for the region considering that both the countries have nuclear capabilities. This is a threat Pakistan wields whenever India adopts aggressive posturing. And this is not just sabre rattling. Although no country in the world would want a nuclear disaster you can never be sure when it comes to Pakistan. It is a country that supports terrorism and harbors various terrorist training camps within its borders despite the fact that the same terrorists are turning against it and blowing up buildings and buses within the very country that nurtures them and provides protection to them. It’s like infecting yourself with HIV so that you can transfer it to your enemies. So with such a neighbor it is very easy to expect a nuclear stand-off in case there is an active armed conflict.

So instead of giving out martial cries (knowing quite well they are just cries) India should set up a separate ministry/agency whose only purpose is to sensitize the international community and make it aware of what Pakistan is really up to. This way even America will be forced to take notice (of course it knows but there is some hidden agenda that stops it from openly acknowledging it) and encourage Pakistan to move away from such destructive and self-defeating tactics.

I normally avoid writing blog posts in response to other blog posts (by other bloggers) but there is a blogger I really respect (I think there are just a couple of bloggers I keep a conscious effort to follow) and when he wrote on Anna Hazare I was compelled to write this short blog post as a response. For what he has written, please read Anna Hazardous.

As such, the blog post by Sandeep has nothing new to say and easily qualifies as one of those “spinner” anti-Anna Hazare articles being published with great zeal, with so much repetition that it has metamorphosed into chain mail activity.

First a quick observation. All these the so-called experts on Indian democracy and the parliamentary system share the following attitudinal traits:

• They hate candlelight marches
• They think the Indian maudlin middle class is totally hopeless and even if it comes out once or twice a year it is a total sham
• A protest is no protest unless you burn buses, people are lathi-charged and there is a general state of destruction and disharmony
• What-if and why-now are their favourite refrains
• Intriguingly, maybe this is a whimsicality, they also nurture an inveterate disliking for activists, global warming advocates, NGOs and social workers

So maybe the recent reaction to the Anna Hazare movement is simply a manifestation of the above-mentioned peculiarities. Having said that, since in the beginning I wrote that I am specifically writing this blog post in reaction to what Sandeep has written on his blog and since I eagerly await his blog posts, in this case, and for the sake of writing this blog post, I assume that it is more than a whimsicality.

Now, I’m not saying here that I am completely aware of the situation. I will be sincere here: I didn’t know about Anna Hazare much. The first time I read about him was when he received the Magsaysay award. And to be more sincere, I would also like to mention that people associated with him during this current movement, barring Kiran Bedi, have shady backgrounds especially Swami Agnivesh and Mallika Sarabhai. This out of the way, let me come back to what Sandeep has written and I would like to provide my point of view beneath that.

After quoting Shakespeare for no particular context he says:

–Enter Baba Ramdev whose rally in November 2010 is hugely successful. The English media dutifully relegates it to Column 4, Page 5.

–Enter Anna Hazare who on April 5 2011 begins a fast-unto-death-until-something-is-done-about-corruption “movement.” It picks up steam, is graced by various “civil society” eminences, and is generally declared a blockbuster.

Well too bad if Baba Ramdev couldn’t sell himself (or his idea) the way Anna Hazare could. Of course there was a strategy involved and I found him quite shrewd in the way he handled the entire affair. But how does that make him a villain? We obviously need smart people in the country who can manipulate circumstances for the betterment of the country. Kautilya would have appreciated that.

Regarding the role of media if media were so powerful then Rahul Gandhi would have been the “youth icon” (nothing short of a nuclear disaster) and not Anna Hazare. Media, especially Times Now and IBN7, surely played a constructive role, but they couldn’t have gone beyond a particular point.

–On April 6 2011, newspapers gleefully announce that Anna Hazare “tasted his first victory on Wednesday, the second day of his fast unto death, when Maratha strongman and NCP chief Sharad Pawar quit the group of ministers (GoM) on the anti-corruption bill.” What a slap! The nation is delirious with joy.

I don’t know what newspapers he read because every right minded person knows that in no way it was a victory but a small step towards the envisaged victory. It was a perfunctory action performed by a guileful politician who knew that nothing much was to lose. It would have been a small victory on the other hand if he had resigned altogether.

–On April 8 2011, the Queen graciously bows down to the wishes of this gentle Gandhian and on April 9 2011, the Government of India issues a Gazette of India notification to form a joint committee to draft the Lok Pal Bill.

The Queen was simply trying to be “begani shadi me Abdulla diwana” as more than 99% Congresswalas habitually do. They simply wanted to leverage the entire state of affairs and I personally feel, for the moment, it was sort of a dampener.

–For lack of information to the contrary, I do believe Anna Hazare to be a man of integrity whose commitment is genuine and has done good work in the past. But many things don’t quite add up and unless there are some convincing answers the nag of suspicion will persist.

Well, for lack of information you can doubt everybody. If doubting is the game of the day then first of all let us start doubting the credentials of all those experts who are doubting the intentions of Anna Hazare. I would like to doubt the credentials of all those who kept quiet when scams of thousands of crores emerging right left and center and now they are breast beating about extraconstitutional thingies and the hypocritical middle-class that doesn’t vote. I would like to tell these writers that it is this middle-class that mostly consumes their misplaced opinions, and not those villagers in tattered clothes whose only concern is the next meal.

–Cut back to the Spectacular Socialist Seventies when Mrs. Gandhi had all of India in her iron fist. What that alsomeans is that conditions so horrid that corruption was just one of the grave issues: we were pretty much under an authoritarian regime where inconvenient people simply disappeared, Indira was India, and so on. What’s the record of Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption and these grave national issues back then?

It is like saying why did the Indian cricket team win the World Cup this time? What was it doing 4 years ago when it lost? Or maybe something like why didn’t Sandeep share his brilliant ideas back in the days when there was no blogging but there were newspapers and magazines (I don’t know, he could have been writing, but I’m just using the Anna Hazare conjecture that he used — we don’t know much about him so we can easily doubt him)? I think it is a ridiculous argument even if Anna Hazare didn’t do something purposely. Maybe nothing moved him. Maybe he was too bogged down by his own personal problems. Maybe back then he wasn’t motivated enough. Who the hell cares? That time is gone, it is not going to come back, so why worry about that?

–The one thing that I see amiss is not the nature of his fight—it’s noble etc—but the timing. Why now? Why not say, when Madhu Koda looted his state for what it was worth or during the Adarsh scam that happened in Hazare’s own state or against Kalmadi or against Raja as soon these scams erupted? Is there some gold standard of corruption that had to be met before he launched his movement? Now, there was a lull from April 2 to April 8. If you want me to spell that out here goes: April 2 was when India proudly lifted the cricket world cup. April 8 is when the first IPL match for 2011 was held. Now go back to the papers and news channels between April 5 thru April 8. Nonstop drumming about the “movement” on television and relentless front-page assault. Now read #7 again. On which page does Anna Hazare’s news figure in the papers now?

Rhetorical. If we start the “why not this” and “why not that” we can go back to the thousands years of Indian history. No reforms in India can take place simply because these reforms haven’t taken place yet. We can never do anything constructive simply because we have been so destructive.

I think it was an astute move even if it was based on the cricket season. People were already charged up after winning the World Cup and there was a strong sense of nationalism brewing in the country. It was like hitting the iron when it is hot. Good strategy. Even if the movement was abruptly stopped before the IPL matches the organisers knew the fickle-mindedness of the Indian masses, especially the middle class.

And every news, I’m pretty much sure it also happened when we got independence, eventually is relegated to the inner pages

–We wonder what the selfsame media was doing when Baba Ramdev launched his protest. Or is it the fact that Ramdev didn’t go on a huger strike? Or the fact that he didn’t have celebrity societal conscience-keepers like Agnivesh, Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, and Jayaprakash Narayan who jumped on board the Anna Hazare ship barely before the anchor was dropped?

Just wondering. Would he have found the movement against corruption legitimate had it’s been Baba Ramdev’s successful campaign?

I totally agree that some opportunists conveniently latched onto the Anna Hazare bandwagon including Agnivesh, Medha Patkar (I don’t dislike her per se because I have never seen her openly expressing her views) and Mallika Sarabhai.

Regarding Baba Ramdev, again, I don’t know much about him but he does seem a bit queer, but then again it is my personal view (my parents respect him). Again, if his movement against corruption didn’t catch on than perhaps he did it in the wrong way. Let’s face it, it’s the reality of our time, everything has to be marketed through proper channels. Our generation sucks, I know, but we have to accept the reality and make the best of it.

–Had Anna Hazare undertaken a Bosesque “movement” instead of the Gandhian garden variety, what’s your bet how the government would’ve reacted? He and his supporters would’ve been arrested, lathi-charges galore would’ve ensued and the rest. The worst? Not one candle-kisser would’ve turned up because the occasion would’ve evinced not kissing candles but getting middle-class-asses kicked and lathi-charged.

What is this fetish about getting lathi-charged and ass-kicked? Cannot we ever rise above such animal behaviour? I am pretty much sure that had the movement been violent most of the people wouldn’t have gone and there is a psychology involved in this. Politics in our country is basically goondagardi. Go to any political rally and you will either come across villagers who have been paid by the organisers or you will see their musclemen. There are rarely “normal” people in these gatherings. And by normal people I mean people who can bring along their kids (even in their prams), their grandparents, their grandkids, their spouses, and girlfriends and boyfriends and go back home without being jostled, groped, molested, shot at or killed. My wife attended the sit-in at Jantar Mantar twice and she amazingly said that not even a single shoulder pressed against her shoulder and everybody was so respectful. What is wrong in that? Why are we always seeking maar-peet and janglipana in anything that can be called a socio-political movement. As our civilisation progresses, whether you believe it or not, more and more protests will be of such form.

–And so we repeat: why did the Queen agree to all his demands, and so soon?

So what if she did? Do you think people in our government have a backbone? They are the greatest cowards we have ever seen ruling the country so far. They must have seen protesters emerging from every part of the country and they were worried about getting things out of control. People had already started saying that they would attack the Parliament if something happened to Anna Hazare during his fast.

And who knows, maybe it was also something related to IPL. They wanted to wrap things up before the matches started so that there was no revenue loss especially to people like Sharad Pawar. Doesn’t matter what was the reason and who did what. The only thing that matters is things turned out to be the way people wanted it. Maybe it was stage-managed, but it was something really positive for the country.

–Developments after the Hazare Fast Circus ended only point to the fact that the Congress party has more than a sinister hand in the whole affair. This news item reports that Anna has asked Kapil Sibal to quit the newly-formed Panel of Pushers. Here’s a rescued-from-obscurity Gandhian who has suddenly “found” widespread fame, now dictating terms to a government elected by the people of India, all nice and Constitutional.

I think it is the way he talks. He doesn’t mince words. Even before starting the hunger strike he was just like that, if people paid attention back then. It is not about having confidence or finding widespread fame. He is just being himself.

We shouldn’t give too much credit to the intelligence of the Congress party and assume that it was stage-managed by these dumbwits. It was apparent by their body language and facial expressions that they were being screwed from behind and they could do nothing about it.

–Alleging that Uttar Pradesh is the most corrupt of all states, the Congress today asked social activist Anna Hazare to start a movement from the state if he wanted to start a state-based campaign.

Just so that it suits our argument we are now going to quote whatever bullshit is said about Anna Hazare and by whoever. Very convenient.

–Draw your own conclusions. I think that Anna Hazare is a well-meaning and committed individual but that he’s just being used. Is there someone who’s feeling threatened by Baba Ramdev’s growing and massive popularity and the fact that he’s promised to reveal ugly secrets of a certain party?

Frankly, I pretty much believe that Anna Hazare is quite prone to being used by all sorts of shady people and political parties and this is a worry. About Baba Ramdev’s “growing and massive popularity” I would say let the time decide if the Baba is sincere and deft. If he plays his cards well nobody can hold him back, especially the Congress party who is in power only due to the bizarre lack of alternatives (the BJP is a sorry excuse of an opposition party).

–Anyway, the circus has pretty much ended and the tents have been packed. The middle class has again deluded itself, which is how it should be because it deserves the illusion of power that the government is letting it have from time to time because it’s still not time for the middle class to realize the brutal truth that candle-kissing and assembling in parks doesn’t hurt the middle class and that lasting change is not achieved without cuts and bruises and broken bones.

Here again, coming back to the violence fetish. Whereas I totally agree that our middle class is quite fickle I absolutely don’t agree with the fact that you need broken bones and dead people to make significant social changes. Remember when people used to die because there were no medicines? Now we have medicines and the average life expectancy rate has risen. Similarly, we have different forms of protests. Things change, the way people behave and react changes. There was a time when decapitating people was normal and now it is considered barbaric.

Finally, I agree to some points and there are definitely some shades of conspiracy if you are hellbent upon finding them, but by choice I’m not an alarmist. I think candle marches and peaceful sit-ins have great potential provided they are used as mass movements, they will never work as isolated occurrences. Our strength is in our numbers are not in the way we express and protest. Even if you just sit together in multiple cities and do nothing it can be an effective protest. Even if we just wear black bands around our arms and then carry on with our day-to-day activities it can be a potent form of protest. We shouldn’t underplay such phenomena just because we cannot comprehend such things.

Part of my article on the Anna Hazare fast and the subsequent developments that was published in The Pioneer today:

The fundamental flaw in our parliamentary democracy is that there is very little people’s participation. All you can do is elect the Government and then hope that for the next five years your elected representatives will behave. Do they? We all know the answer. You may say that why don’t you come out and vote? Vote for who? Someone rightly, yes, on Twitter, pointed out that voting in India normally means making a choice between Chota Rajan and Dawood Ibrahim. Even if it is an exaggeration, you can very well gauge the general mood. Our current political system has practically made it impossible for the common man to join politics (of course there are exceptions but they haven’t helped much).

Read the rest of the article.

And here’s the QR code if you want to read it on your phone:

Phew! Scam after scam and now journalists-businesspersons-politicians wheeling dealing: we have a roller coaster society going on here. There is “outrage” and this is really stupid, I mean, who are we fooling? We have always been in the list of the most corrupt developing countries in the world (and this is what keeps us “developing” and not developed).

The problem is not with our businesspersons, politicians and journalists: they have always been the way they are, and the nexus has always existed.  It’s just that due to the Internet and social networking websites the news spread like wildfire and people no longer have to depend on newspapers and electronic media to get news and exchange opinions.

The 2G scam (4G is already out, by the way) is one of the biggest scams the country has ever endured, and so is the Commonwealth Games scam (1,70000 crores – approximately $ 37570000000 — and more than 35000 crores, respectively). There has been a litany of scams under the present government and even the most tolerant are forced to point fingers at the Prime Minister who quite undeservedly enjoys a clean image.

What is clean?  Cleanliness can be of many types:

• You just wear clean clothes but underneath you never wash your body
• You wash your body but wear dirty clothes
• You neither wash your body nor wear clean clothes
• You appear very clean but from the inside, spiritually and mentally, you are unclean
• You are totally clean, from the outside as well is inside but you operate in an environment that is totally unclean

Manmohan Singh probably falls under the last two categories. He has the saintly image and he draws a very miniscule amount of salary. But what is the reality?

The country witnessed a deluge of scams when he was the Finance Minister and now when he is the Prime Minister.  Of course the sudden gush of liberalization could have fuelled the corruption engine of the country, but what is the use of you being clean if everything and everybody around you is dirty? Are you really clean if people around you are unclean and you mingle with them and allow them to run the country knowing all the time what harm they are causing to your country?

In today’s The Pioneer column Swapnadas Gupta has written about how Nehru and Indira Gandhi tolerated, if not encouraged, corruption as a necessary evil bi-product of socialism. Is Manmohan Singh perpetuating this string of misguided philosophy? It sure looks so. But at what cost?

This mentality has cost the country billions of dollars. According to an international report discussed by Kanchan Gupta in the past 60 odd years the country has lost more than 20.85 lakh crores, and that’s a conservative estimate as most of the data is unavailable. Some excerpts:

The outpouring of moral outrage over Raja’s crime may have served the purpose of forcing one of the most corrupt Ministers (by no means was he the lone wolf in the Cabinet) in the present regime to quit office in disgrace although he remains defiant as ever. But it has also swamped a revealing report on Global Financial Integrity that was released last week. The details of the report indicate the extent of corruption in India and confirm what we refuse to accept: We are a corrupt society with a corrupt system; a nation that silently indulges in corruption while raucously protesting against it, as is being witnessed at the moment.

The GFI report says, “From 1948 through 2008, India lost a total of $213 billion in illicit financial flows (or illegal capital flight). These illicit financial flows were generally the product of corruption, bribery and kickbacks, and criminal activities.” Illicit financial flows pertain to the “cross-border movement (or transfer) of money earned through illegal activities such as corruption, transactions involving contraband goods, criminal activities, and efforts to shelter wealth from a country’s tax authorities”. The total of $213 billion is a misleading figure because “the present value of India’s illicit financial flows is at least $462 billion,” the GFI report explains, adding, “This is based on the short-term US Treasury bill rate as a proxy for the rate of return on assets.”

The GFI report provides some other interesting insights. For instance, contrary to the claims of successive Governments, more vociferously by the UPA regime, India’s underground economy, which is “closely tied to illicit financial outflows”, continues to expand with each passing day. The present value of illicit assets held abroad ($462 billion) “accounts for approximately 72 per cent of India’s underground economy — which has been estimated to account for 50 per cent of India’s GDP ($640 billion at the end of 2008)”. Just above a quarter of illicit assets are held domestically.

Go to his link for more juicy data.

Corruption has seeped into our very psyche. In fact people who are not corrupt are looked down upon. “Ooper ki kamayi” is a given. You’re termed as silly if you don’t pay a bribe and get your job done faster. Breaking rules and then getting away by bribing corrupt policemen has become an act of bravado. corruption has become a part of our daily lives and people have given up on the ideas of an upright society ruled by a principled government.  The common citizens have started following the philosophy of “if you can’t beat them join them”.

Well, that’s the problem, but what is the solution?

The solution against corruption is not a mystery, we all know what needs to be done.  As of now our politicians, businesspersons and bureaucrats will never let the rampaging dinosaurs of corruption go extinct. Too much money is involved.  Just imagine having 170000 crores stashed away somewhere in your account.  It will be mad to think that they will deal with the putrefaction when almost everybody is involved. People like Raja and Kalmadi are not so powerful that they could orchestrate scams of such proportions.  Some bigger people are involved and somehow our media and intellectual commentators are avoiding taking their names (understandable, actually). Even we know their names, but I’m not going to name them here for obvious reasons.

If ever we are going to see a resistance against corruption it is going to be as monumental as the independence struggle. Or by a miracle we may get a person at the helm  who follows a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to dealing with corrupt individuals whether they are in politics, bureaucracy or business.

The Indian government opened a can of worms when it banned Satanic Verses and ever since then various political and religious parties try to get books, movies and paintings banned at the drop of a hat.  The latest instance is the University of Mumbai withdrawing Rohinton Mistry’s book "Such A Long Journey" due to an objection raised by Shiv Sena. To be frank I haven’t read the book so I don’t know what objectionable text it contains but coming from a reputed artist, I’m sure the book doesn’t have pornography.

Banning art is one of the most churlish ways of dealing with opinions and facts you don’t agree to. In fact you are doing a favor to the book or the movie you’re trying to ban: I just ordered a copy of "Such A Long Journey" and I am sure hundreds of thousands of people bought Satanic Verses just because that Iranian leader went crazy about it and issued a fatwa and the Indian government obliged by happily banning it.

But more than political or religious it is a law and order problem and our successive governments fail to stand up for people’s right to express their opinions unless of course these opinions are being expressed by separatists and terrorist apologists like A Roy and Geelani. Instead of tackling the real issue our politicians and administrators are perpetually trying to sweep the problems under the carpet by targeting individuals that are being targeted.  Remember that statement from Shiela Dixit when Soumya Vishwanathan was shot dead?  She said the girl shouldn’t have been out so late in the first place.

It is the duty of the government to make sure that no untoward incidents take place whenever people are protesting against an opinion or a piece of art. Let there be riots and let people break each other’s heads but why should writers and other creative people suffer due to such lunatics?

Again, I’m not talking about the issue of including the book in a university syllabus or not because we all know how books are selected in our universities and schools, I’m talking about the way we so easily let our governments and rogue political parties decide for us what is good and what is bad.

So when should a book be banned? Never. Let people decide what they want to read and what they don’t want to read.  Even if the book contains highly objectionable and obnoxious material, let people decide.  If people of our country are responsible enough to elect governments (no matter how lousy these governments are) they are also responsible enough to know what to accept and what to reject without fearing the wrath of political muscleman and criminals.