This I promise is going to be a very short blog. I have said what I wanted to say about Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev in earlier blogs (Lokpal I: Corruption in the Fast track; and Lokpal II: Fastin patterns).
The country is now facing the pestilence of a disease of being honester than thou spread by the cronies and followers of two men of very deservingly simple intelligence. These men have considerable ability to believe in their greatness as thrust upon them by those who would benefit from it. These are people like Kiran Bedi a failed police officer and Kejriwal a failed IIT engineer who wasted national wealth by not becoming an engineer and instead sought and got a revenue officer's post for god knows what reason except the obvious.
When we look at ourselves we should not require any convincing of our own intrinsic corruption.
It seems that those who are angry are so, not because others are corrupt, but because they do not themselves have the opportunity to be as corrupt as they would like to be.
Some of us are proud of our yoga tradition as brought down, say, by Krishnamacharya, BKS Iyengar, Pattabhi jois, and so many other learned scholars. Where are they in our eyes now? Do we have to suffer the very common Ramdev?
Where is the refined culture of our singers and dancers and philosophers?
Why are we so mired by the instance gobblers of virtual space?
The antics of Baba Ramdev send a shudder down my spine when I have to proclaim him as a wise yoga guru. By tradition yoga gurus live in sack-cloth and ashes. Baba Ramdev has taken this tradition literally wearing only the gamcha of a poor man but otherwise travelling by chartered planes and making mediterranean cruises, having private islands, all the while pandering to the needs of the wealthy and vulgar. It is incredible that somebody like him would have the gumption to fight against black money and claim that he has cured 10 crore (hundred million people) people!!!
Anna Hazare has little to throw light on except that he lives as a Gandhian for those who know little about Gandhi.
Egged on by TRP seeking TV channels that are anchored by those who revel in slander and gossip, the country is going through a very messy and completely undignified politically messy situation.
Is there no anchorman who would say that the baba is a hoax? Do we know so little about yoga? Do we only marvel about Baba's yoga tricks like any intelligent Texan such as George Bush?
Finally, it wont make any difference to the way we live. We are like that only. Still ...
The way these things are being handled I would even agree with the very weak Advani that Manmohan Singh is a weak prime minister indeed. Unless...
Unless Sonia Gandhi has a weak spot and Ramdev has found it so that we have four cabinet ministers running to the airport ...
Unless it serves Mrs Manmohan Singh's vanity that she finally found a way to get at Sonia Gandhi.
Unless America is out to detabilize India (of course always) so as to get its economy and Walmart going.
Who knows?
Where are we going?!!
What is this madness when a yoga fakir naked in everything except his material gains, should preach a morality to the vocally screeching part of the Indian nation fed by a limelight seeking multimedia firefly?
Bliss will it be in this dusk to be dead?
Or shall we, as heirs of glory, rise out of our slumber against this tyranny of very very common men?
Showing posts with label Anna Hazare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anna Hazare. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Lokpal II: Fasting Pastimes
On Fasting in General.
Most of us are not corrupt. We take comfort in sayings such as “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul.”
Some of the times it is perhaps because we are too lazy to "gain the whole world".
Some of the times we don't have an opportunity to be corrupt.
Fasting against corruption is a matter we think we understand because no gain is involved esecially if one is not fasting for a public cause oneself. We prefer others to do it perhaps for the same reason that we are not corrupt.
It is good for our soul, or so we think, which would be enough.
Fasting regularly is one of the more common eating habits especially when we are not corrupt.
We do it to also purify our digestive tracts (for which we can find solid if not concrete evidence) along with our soul (which we don't really know where it is) most times.
What is interesting is that, for those who are able to afford it, the fasting menu is quite rich and rather tasty. Fasting of the starving kind is not what one has in mind when we Indians conjure up images of fasting.
Moreover. fasting food in India need not kill one faster than fast food.
The British were probably of the type who, like me, were impressed by voluntary fasting, which they may have misunderstood, as I did, as voluntary starving. It is amusing to think that the clever Krishna-like Gandhi may have known about this when he threatened the British with a fast.
All but one of his fasts were under British rule.
His last fast was after Independence --- in January 1948 --- for seeking communal peace in Delhi which resulted in a peace pledge between the communities after six days when he gave up his fast. One community which knew about fasting food perhaps could not stand Gandhi using fasting as a tool against his own community.
So why does one believe that one is going to fast unto death?
For one, as Gandhi himself said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."Martin Luther King, Jr. seems to have said " If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Most of us would say that that's what we do in any case: to spend our life till our death.
There is a difference, of course. Both the Indian and American Gandhi's were killed for their beliefs. That is what they meant perhaps. To oppose by their examples those who they thought were oppressive to such an extent that they (the Gandhis) had to be killed by those they opposed. They did not need to fast to die for their cause.
For a fast to be effective, one must be judged by the way one wears the Gandhi cap.
When Gladys in Dorian Gray says “… all good hats are made out of nothing”. Lord Henry interrupts with (with perhaps the same logic that gives Newton’s third law): “Like all good reputations, Gladys ….Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
What the author means by "mediocrity" is not clear since the author is Oscar Wilde. What is probably meant is that one must have a simple common perception regrding weaknesses which are easily identifiable.
Gandhi's Experiments with Fasting.
Gandhi fasted several times for less than seven days mostly. In keeping with Lord Henry's observations about falling in love mentioned earlier, each time Gandhi fasted, the effect of his fasts had greater intensity.
Gandhi's fasting was rarely tagged as a political weapon but rather as one for "upliftment of the soul" if one may call it that.
It is difficult, however, to realize that Gandhi, idolized by all, could set unreasonably high "upliftment" standards for his own family! His first fast was for seven days against his own son who kissed a teenage girl in Gandhi's neighbourhood in Phoenix, Durban. Gandhi himself may not have understood the urges of a teenager as he was married when he was only thirteen. However, as a result "Manilal’s actions were always tempered by the fact that Gandhi would punish himself through fasting when displeased with his actions."(from "Gandhi's Prisoner: Manilal Gandhi as Son and South African Dissident" by Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie).
Gandhi must have learnt from this unreasonable act. He probably thought, because of his son's reaction, that he required becoming a Father figure for the Indian Nation.
His first fasting for the nation's problems was perhaps by accident. The textile labourers in Ahmedabad were paid poorly and Gandhi organized a strike by them demanding a 35% increase in wages. The strike was about to be broken because the striking workers agreed to a proposal of a 20% wage increase. The impression (true) was spread that Gandhi belonged to people who 'come and go in their car' and 'eat elegant food' without knowing the agonies of starving. It was then that Gandhi came up ('unbidden and all by themselves the words came to my lips' Gandhi would write unconvincingly in his autobiography later) with “I cannot tolerate for a minute that you break your pledge. I shall not take any food nor use a car till you get a 35 percent increase.” This was Gandhi, the fast-thinker.
In 1919 when he was at the Sabarmati ashram far away for the Jalianwallah Bagh massacre, he did a penitential fast in for three days in Ashram claiming an exaggerated 52,000 deaths. He saw his opportunity of abjuring violence as a method of protest (and perhaps to neutralize Subhash Chandra Bose) and also perhaps to ensure among the British rulers that he was the more reasonable person. He fasted for five days after the Chauri Chaura incident of 5 February 1922 when 21 constables and a sub-inspector were burnt alive inside the police station. He began a 21 day fast in 1924 for Hindu-Muslim amity, when he "... took upon himself the sins of his Hindu and Muslim compatriots ..." .
Gandhi was also against the reservation system when he started his first “fast unto death” in 1932 to demand an abolition of a separate electorate for Harijans (a name given to them by Gandhi, which meant actually that the childen of god would be untouchables in India). This demand for a separate electorate was from Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a graduate from Columbia University who adopted the suited and booted dress of the upper class so that the voice of the untouchables would be heard, probably as a reaction to Gandhi who would adopt the dress of the poor so that the poor would identify with him. After six days of fasting the British Government accepted Gandhi's demands.
It would seem that Gandhi went on the fast track when he had to change mindsets more than obtaining a political objectives.
Did Potti Sriramulu have to die?
Post Independence, Potti Sriramulu actually fasted for fifty-eight days to death demanding a separate state of Andhra, even though Nehru agreed to his demands after fifty days of fasting.
Who benefited by this death? Did his death serve the purpose of those who had prepared themselves for this eventuality?
After Potti Sriramulu's death, violence was fanned vigorously by Communist ambitions. It is claimed that it was this violene that hastened the formation of the new Andhra Pradesh. It was the first state to be formed based solely on linguistic considerations. The Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh contained the Telugu-speaking Telangana region also.
Subsequent events show that while fasting can bring about a result, it is not always a desired result for many others. Andhra Pradesh was initially formed with Kurnool as its capital. The poorer Telengana region felt betrayed when its capital, Hyderabad, was made the capital of the integrated Andhra Pradesh. The people of the Telengana region felt always alienated from the richer Andhra regions. Now, we have a Telangana leader (KCR) fasting-unto-death (for a short while) demanding a Telangana state.
Anna Hazare (Anna could be the equivalent for dada in bengali which usually means an elder brother whom you respect) is a different person. He should be especially followed for his work that began in 1975 on creating a model village based on using traditional methods for water conservation, grazing land management and improving the environment of the barren drought-prone village, Ralegan Siddhi, in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. It is this that brought him into prominence and resulted in introducing different Model Village schemes in his state.
He did not have to fast for this. He did it by example.
We have many things to learn from Anna Hazare and his "model village" development. He was a simple army driver who had to return to his barren village. He fought against desolation and was influence by saffron-dressed Swami Vivekananda to resurrect himself and his village.
He has also a very impressive record in his fight against corruption. He started in 1995 when he perhaps thought that the new BJP-Shiv-Sena government of Maharashtra would be more amenable. He started his fight for rights to information (RTI) struggle in 1998 by observing maun or silence which to many would be more difficult than fasting. He won his RTI fight after he successfully used his fasting strategy in August 2003 to get overwhelming popular support for RTI. It was conceded after 12 days of fasting.
I worry about his simple background and the way he may be molded or may have been influenced by the modern media-savvy spirits.
The ordinary people of Maharashtra remain very hard working with little time to be corrupt. Maharashtra was the first state to pass the Lok Ayukta bill in 1972, and the first state to get the RTI act which was passed for the entire nation.
But those who have the time, inclination and the money use it to their full advantaqe giving Maharashtra the reputation of being the most corrupt state. So much so that their most powerful politician, Sharad Pawar, had to sit out of the government committee on Lok Pal as a first condition.
In the meanwhile it is perhaps important to know amongst the hoopla of the fight against corruption by self-elevated giant spiritual leaders there were seven relative dwarfs: the seven Gandhians included six freedom fighters (they would have been less than thirty when Gandhi was shot). These were: Shambhu Dutta (92 years, has been trying to introduce the Lokpal bill for the past 15 years), R. Saradamani Devi (84 years), K.P. Sahu (79 years), Murari Lal Gupta (94 years), Govind Narain Seth (78 years) and Amarnath Khanna (89 years).
We wonder where they were positioned, if they were positioned at all, before the TV cameras.
Most of us are not corrupt. We take comfort in sayings such as “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul.”
Some of the times it is perhaps because we are too lazy to "gain the whole world".
Some of the times we don't have an opportunity to be corrupt.
Fasting against corruption is a matter we think we understand because no gain is involved esecially if one is not fasting for a public cause oneself. We prefer others to do it perhaps for the same reason that we are not corrupt.
It is good for our soul, or so we think, which would be enough.
Fasting regularly is one of the more common eating habits especially when we are not corrupt.
We do it to also purify our digestive tracts (for which we can find solid if not concrete evidence) along with our soul (which we don't really know where it is) most times.
What is interesting is that, for those who are able to afford it, the fasting menu is quite rich and rather tasty. Fasting of the starving kind is not what one has in mind when we Indians conjure up images of fasting.
Moreover. fasting food in India need not kill one faster than fast food.
The British were probably of the type who, like me, were impressed by voluntary fasting, which they may have misunderstood, as I did, as voluntary starving. It is amusing to think that the clever Krishna-like Gandhi may have known about this when he threatened the British with a fast.
All but one of his fasts were under British rule.
His last fast was after Independence --- in January 1948 --- for seeking communal peace in Delhi which resulted in a peace pledge between the communities after six days when he gave up his fast. One community which knew about fasting food perhaps could not stand Gandhi using fasting as a tool against his own community.
So why does one believe that one is going to fast unto death?
For one, as Gandhi himself said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."Martin Luther King, Jr. seems to have said " If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." Most of us would say that that's what we do in any case: to spend our life till our death.
There is a difference, of course. Both the Indian and American Gandhi's were killed for their beliefs. That is what they meant perhaps. To oppose by their examples those who they thought were oppressive to such an extent that they (the Gandhis) had to be killed by those they opposed. They did not need to fast to die for their cause.
For a fast to be effective, one must be judged by the way one wears the Gandhi cap.
When Gladys in Dorian Gray says “… all good hats are made out of nothing”. Lord Henry interrupts with (with perhaps the same logic that gives Newton’s third law): “Like all good reputations, Gladys ….Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
What the author means by "mediocrity" is not clear since the author is Oscar Wilde. What is probably meant is that one must have a simple common perception regrding weaknesses which are easily identifiable.
Gandhi's Experiments with Fasting.
Gandhi fasted several times for less than seven days mostly. In keeping with Lord Henry's observations about falling in love mentioned earlier, each time Gandhi fasted, the effect of his fasts had greater intensity.
Gandhi's fasting was rarely tagged as a political weapon but rather as one for "upliftment of the soul" if one may call it that.
It is difficult, however, to realize that Gandhi, idolized by all, could set unreasonably high "upliftment" standards for his own family! His first fast was for seven days against his own son who kissed a teenage girl in Gandhi's neighbourhood in Phoenix, Durban. Gandhi himself may not have understood the urges of a teenager as he was married when he was only thirteen. However, as a result "Manilal’s actions were always tempered by the fact that Gandhi would punish himself through fasting when displeased with his actions."(from "Gandhi's Prisoner: Manilal Gandhi as Son and South African Dissident" by Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie).
Gandhi must have learnt from this unreasonable act. He probably thought, because of his son's reaction, that he required becoming a Father figure for the Indian Nation.
His first fasting for the nation's problems was perhaps by accident. The textile labourers in Ahmedabad were paid poorly and Gandhi organized a strike by them demanding a 35% increase in wages. The strike was about to be broken because the striking workers agreed to a proposal of a 20% wage increase. The impression (true) was spread that Gandhi belonged to people who 'come and go in their car' and 'eat elegant food' without knowing the agonies of starving. It was then that Gandhi came up ('unbidden and all by themselves the words came to my lips' Gandhi would write unconvincingly in his autobiography later) with “I cannot tolerate for a minute that you break your pledge. I shall not take any food nor use a car till you get a 35 percent increase.” This was Gandhi, the fast-thinker.
In 1919 when he was at the Sabarmati ashram far away for the Jalianwallah Bagh massacre, he did a penitential fast in for three days in Ashram claiming an exaggerated 52,000 deaths. He saw his opportunity of abjuring violence as a method of protest (and perhaps to neutralize Subhash Chandra Bose) and also perhaps to ensure among the British rulers that he was the more reasonable person. He fasted for five days after the Chauri Chaura incident of 5 February 1922 when 21 constables and a sub-inspector were burnt alive inside the police station. He began a 21 day fast in 1924 for Hindu-Muslim amity, when he "... took upon himself the sins of his Hindu and Muslim compatriots ..." .
Gandhi was also against the reservation system when he started his first “fast unto death” in 1932 to demand an abolition of a separate electorate for Harijans (a name given to them by Gandhi, which meant actually that the childen of god would be untouchables in India). This demand for a separate electorate was from Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a graduate from Columbia University who adopted the suited and booted dress of the upper class so that the voice of the untouchables would be heard, probably as a reaction to Gandhi who would adopt the dress of the poor so that the poor would identify with him. After six days of fasting the British Government accepted Gandhi's demands.
It would seem that Gandhi went on the fast track when he had to change mindsets more than obtaining a political objectives.
Did Potti Sriramulu have to die?
Post Independence, Potti Sriramulu actually fasted for fifty-eight days to death demanding a separate state of Andhra, even though Nehru agreed to his demands after fifty days of fasting.
Who benefited by this death? Did his death serve the purpose of those who had prepared themselves for this eventuality?
After Potti Sriramulu's death, violence was fanned vigorously by Communist ambitions. It is claimed that it was this violene that hastened the formation of the new Andhra Pradesh. It was the first state to be formed based solely on linguistic considerations. The Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh contained the Telugu-speaking Telangana region also.
Subsequent events show that while fasting can bring about a result, it is not always a desired result for many others. Andhra Pradesh was initially formed with Kurnool as its capital. The poorer Telengana region felt betrayed when its capital, Hyderabad, was made the capital of the integrated Andhra Pradesh. The people of the Telengana region felt always alienated from the richer Andhra regions. Now, we have a Telangana leader (KCR) fasting-unto-death (for a short while) demanding a Telangana state.
Anna Hazare (Anna could be the equivalent for dada in bengali which usually means an elder brother whom you respect) is a different person. He should be especially followed for his work that began in 1975 on creating a model village based on using traditional methods for water conservation, grazing land management and improving the environment of the barren drought-prone village, Ralegan Siddhi, in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. It is this that brought him into prominence and resulted in introducing different Model Village schemes in his state.
He did not have to fast for this. He did it by example.
We have many things to learn from Anna Hazare and his "model village" development. He was a simple army driver who had to return to his barren village. He fought against desolation and was influence by saffron-dressed Swami Vivekananda to resurrect himself and his village.
He has also a very impressive record in his fight against corruption. He started in 1995 when he perhaps thought that the new BJP-Shiv-Sena government of Maharashtra would be more amenable. He started his fight for rights to information (RTI) struggle in 1998 by observing maun or silence which to many would be more difficult than fasting. He won his RTI fight after he successfully used his fasting strategy in August 2003 to get overwhelming popular support for RTI. It was conceded after 12 days of fasting.
I worry about his simple background and the way he may be molded or may have been influenced by the modern media-savvy spirits.
The ordinary people of Maharashtra remain very hard working with little time to be corrupt. Maharashtra was the first state to pass the Lok Ayukta bill in 1972, and the first state to get the RTI act which was passed for the entire nation.
But those who have the time, inclination and the money use it to their full advantaqe giving Maharashtra the reputation of being the most corrupt state. So much so that their most powerful politician, Sharad Pawar, had to sit out of the government committee on Lok Pal as a first condition.
In the meanwhile it is perhaps important to know amongst the hoopla of the fight against corruption by self-elevated giant spiritual leaders there were seven relative dwarfs: the seven Gandhians included six freedom fighters (they would have been less than thirty when Gandhi was shot). These were: Shambhu Dutta (92 years, has been trying to introduce the Lokpal bill for the past 15 years), R. Saradamani Devi (84 years), K.P. Sahu (79 years), Murari Lal Gupta (94 years), Govind Narain Seth (78 years) and Amarnath Khanna (89 years).
We wonder where they were positioned, if they were positioned at all, before the TV cameras.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Lokpal I: Corruption in the Fast track
One of the truisms that always brings out a chuckle even if you have heard it zillion times is “Giving up smoking is very easy, I have given it up several times”.
It reminds me of (I don’t know why; perhaps it could eventually find a place in this blog) what Lord Henry said in Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” :”Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved, each time with increasing intensity” modifying a bit Lord Henry's addition “Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.” So when some one, say Bertram Wooster, professes love for someone and she says “you must have loved a million girls before” or something like that Bertram Wooster could have said “But Darling! The intensity of love is a million times more than that for my first love”. I do not know whether Wooster actually said it, but I would have loved to have said it to my favorite woman in my life if I had the opportunity?
What Lord Henry may have said now, after the recent upheavals due to threats of fasting unto death is perhaps “each time one fasts unto death is the only time one has fasted unto death each time with increasing intensity”.
The intensity of corruption in India (and elsewhere, I guess) is such that the intensity of fast undertaken against corruption by an individual has to promise a lot, the extreme being a fast unto death by somebody who has a believable reputation. It does not actually mean that the faster has to die, although that would be a spectacle that the public could secretly enjoy as they did, so they say, watching gladiators being killed when the thumb went down.
Its easier said than done?
Before Anna Hazare's movement took over this anti-corruption movement, the Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade (GSB) had started their own fasts-unto-death in January 2011 on a very small scale. The GSB consisisted of "true" (whatever that may mean) Gandhians and being mainly octagenrians and nonagenerians, all senior Gandhians compared to Anna Hazare.
This movement must have been extended (I wont say hijacked) to larger proportions within a period of a few months, by would-be saints such as Kiran Bedi (a TV reality show under her belt) and Swami Agnivesh who takes the effort to wear a dress that symbolises the fire that he says is within him, and who represents people who dont believe in a democratic character for their self-professed revolutions. Revolutionaries don't have to account to the public for their funding. They will never come under a Lok pal or a Lok ayukta or a Central Vigilance committee. Something like the Board of Control of Cricket of India.
These aspiring saints, such as Kiran Bedi or Agnivesh, prop up Anna Hazare with the help of desperate TRP-seeking TV channels to a fever demanding a Lok Pal who would be a protector of the people against corruption. They do not explain how the Lok Pal would function and under what authority. They claim the support of 1.2 billion people just like the cricket team. It may not seem even frivolous to some if Sachin Tendulkar was made a popular Lok Pal!
One of the less frivolous and certainly more dangerous signal from the Anna Hazare movement is their insistence that the representative democracy should be done away with. This is reminiscent of the Jaiprakash Narayan Movement of 1977, a movement that set the country back several years without raising its moral standards or even changing for long enough times the political leadership. Indeed, Indira Gandhi's re-election showed the futility of the JP movement even if it had a validity. The JP movement has so far provided only one genuine politically trustworthy leader, Nitish Kumar.
Believe it or not, one of the successes of the JP movement is the introduction of the Double-7 Cola, which was meant to fight the imperialism of Coca-Cola. Judging by the way Coca-Cola and Pepsi now dominate the Indian advertising landscape, they must thank Double 7.
It is difficult to imagine how one Lok Pal could bring out a corruption-free society by just passing a bill. It could only be a beginning, at best. There is a real danger in having unbridled janata rule that Anna Hazare said is required to replace representative democracy.
The Democratic State has now a great democratic weapon of mass media to exercise their Big Brother control, without the wasteful nuisance of a representative democracy. When democracy is used as a spontaneous conquering religious movement without the wisdom of a restraining parliament, one can easily self implode. One may imagine a Lok Pal unleashing a "Lok Pal" zouth brigade without taking extreme care that it would not degenerate into something like a Hitler Youth Brigade.
The television channels would love it to be a reality show sponsored by multinational companies and Coca Cola advertisements with contenders asking/answering questions and winners being declared based on number of SMSs without a genuine-ness guarantee and softwares that generate SMSs.
This new Indian Lok Pal reality show could chose a genuine leader by the sacrifice the candidate could make, excluding perhaps actual fasts unto deaths. This could generate more sincere activists. As Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche famously said "One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk."
"There is an old illusion - it is called good and evil." --- Nietzsche
While it is easy to point to corruption as an all pervasive evil, there does not seem to be a strict criterion as to what kind of corruption should be tackled at what level and who is to benefit from the elimination of corruption?
The so-called 2G scam is an example of confusion over what constitutes corruption. Kapil Sibal would argue that the 2G policy has benefited the common man and the loss of revenue is made up by the several increase in revenue by the increase in tele density. I think that is a perfectly valid argument.
The CAG like all banking clerks only looks at the revenues lost by not having an auction. They did not bother about the benefits of the aam aadmi. Thats not their concern´nor has it ever been.
One should always be aware of a Bank clerk, Lewis Carroll has probably experiEnced THIS when he writes in his poem "The Mad Gardner's song"
He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
‘If this should stay to dine,’ he said,
‘There won’t be much for us!’
It is only now after the row between Kapil Sibal and the CAG that I really understood what was meant. The Banker's clerk like good orthodox people from Tanjore and elsewhere in the purely Academic communities follow rules strictly and leave nothing for experimentation.
We will not be worried about Anna Hazare's intentions. We do not know need to worry also whether he has Gandhi's sense of humour. We need to be worried about those who surround him. Two of the more conspicuous credit-baggers are Kiran Bedi and Swami Agnivesh. The latter will be dismissed because he has already committed himself to a non-representative parliamentary democracy and has championed an anarchic revolution of the people.
Kiran Bedi, who would have loved to have been nominated as a Chief Vigilance Commissioner, does not now leave Hazare's side exploiting all photo-opportunities. She must have loved being the only one jumping with as much joy she could put on for the cameras. She also literally forces a very uncomfortable and perhaps reluctant but very sweet little girl to give a glass of juice to Anna Hazare to break his fast (http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/anna-hazare-ends-fast-says-real-fight-begins-now/196091).
I happened to listen to Kiran Bedi on you tube speaking to a packed medium-sized Hall of middle class american women audience. The talk was full of self praise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CSsL3it9Y&feature=related). It was the kind of talk that most impresses foreigners who would love to have one, who they can identify with, telling them the great things they have doen for a horrible country. She got the applause for giving the Prime Minsiter's car a parking ticket. She did not mention that Indira Gandhi was not in India and she did not mention how the car came to be parked wherever it was in the first place. Her taking credit for this incident is something like the donkey taking credit for chasing a tiger simply because the donkey happened to be running behind a running tiger.
She does not mention what others have done for prison workers.
It was all about her self.
A comment on the video would read: It's all about her, about how great she is, how couragious and smart she handles stuff.... I hear very little about the prisoners. They prayed and had lessons (and she became holy??) .
Kiran Bedi has the horrible mistinction (if that is the word describing the opposite of distinction) of being the host and TV judge of a TV series "Aapki Kacheri" (see, for instance, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hZZcmk8HHo), broadcast on the Indian TV channel, Star Plus. One cannot imagine how a civilised country can have such a lady advising any one of who or what a Lok Pal should be!
More ominously, Kiran Bedi also predicted in this talk that she is working on an ombudsman bill against corruption about which they will hear a lot about. This was more than three months ago! "Daal mein kuch kaala hain?".
Just as an exercise I looked up the memebers of the India Against Corruption movement. It is a motley crowd including many so-called spiritual leaders with probably good management and marketing skills if they are not successful con men. The group is led by Swami Ramdev (Bharat Swahiman Trust; Akhada Parishad Baba Hat Yogi, said of the Swami: " A decade ago, Ramdev used to move on a bicycle. He even had to struggle to find money to fix his punctured cycle. Now he flies on a chopper. …." ) , Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Art of Living: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar … has repackaged a well-known breathing technique and commercialized it. See http:// www.deeshaa.org/is-sri-sri-ravi-shankar-a-con-man/; see also The The great great Sri Sri NGO NGO scam scam --- http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/the-the-great-great-sri-sri-ngo-ngo-scam-scam/
see also ), Kiran Bedi (we know about her), Swami Agnivesh (Bonded Labour Liberation Front!!! among others), Anna Hazare (simple man), Arvind Kejriwalh (IIT Mechanical engineer, joined Indian Revenue Service with his eyes open) J. M. Lyngdoh (good man), Justice Tewatia (litigation for amount of pension he could receive since he was Chief Justice for only six months, this was crucial since he could call himself chief justice), Mallika Sarabhai (Peter Brooks fame), Facebook personalities Maulana Mufti Shamoom Kashmi and Maulana Kalbe Rizvi , Arch Bishop Vincent M Concessao (of Delhi wears wooden cross instead of silver cross to identify with poor), Prashant Bhushan (500 PILs) , Devinder Sharma (interviewed Dr Borlaug), Subhash Chandra Aggarwal (4000 letters to editors, guiness book of records), Pradeep Gupta (Pan IIT), B. D. Lall (could not find anything about him, a non-entity?) and Sunita Godara (marathon Arjuna award winner, ran 200 international marathons, Director with Population Control Society - an International NGO!!! how come?) among others.
It is possible that these "spiritual" leaders mobilised the support through facebook and the to make it look massive. The fast has exploited the polling exigencies well to achieve what it wanted to do:- to extract a promise from the Government. The real game will begin after the results are known.
One silver lining among this crowd of spiritual leaders is that they are not innocent and they must be having a good experience of corruption that has allowed them to become the leaders they have become.
Requirements for a Lokpal
The least important of the issues is perhaps what the Lok Pal would actually look like.
It has to be rememebered that the Lok Pal is based on the institute of the Swedish Ombudsman whose purpose was to look after the affiars of the king (Charles) when he was recovering from a military defeat in Turkey. The Ombudsman has different interpretations in different countries. The French have one who is supposed to be a protector of the people just as our Lok pal is supposed to be.
There is no ombudsman in USA at the national level. This is for the information of the vocal NRIs in USA in case they did not know.
The Ombudsman of Phillipines, a lady, has been impeached by parliament.
The actual function of the ombudsman is difficult to visualize and seemingly cannot be solved by an unilateral fast unto death by a public movement, if only because of different perceptions of corruption in different societies or different value systems.
As per a description on the net (see http://www.jstor.org/pss/3230819) "The classical ombudsman has to be (1) legally established, (2) functionally autonomous, (3) external to the administration, (4) operationally independent of both the legislature and the executive, (5) specialist, (6) expert, (7) nonpartisan, (8) normatively universalistic, (9) client-centred but not anti-administration, and (10) both popularly accessible and visible." That sort of disqualifies all those public figures we know for or against the Lok Pal?
The problem with ombudsmen is that they can investigate only government agencies.
A mischievous private body with adequate financial resources can easily make the function of the Lok Pal hopelessly innocuous and ineffective serving only the purpose of crippling the government.
We have enough of such mischievous men, especially with multinationals who really would like to handle the way we are corrupt for their advantage.
So we wait.
It reminds me of (I don’t know why; perhaps it could eventually find a place in this blog) what Lord Henry said in Oscar Wilde’s “Picture of Dorian Gray” :”Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved, each time with increasing intensity” modifying a bit Lord Henry's addition “Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.” So when some one, say Bertram Wooster, professes love for someone and she says “you must have loved a million girls before” or something like that Bertram Wooster could have said “But Darling! The intensity of love is a million times more than that for my first love”. I do not know whether Wooster actually said it, but I would have loved to have said it to my favorite woman in my life if I had the opportunity?
What Lord Henry may have said now, after the recent upheavals due to threats of fasting unto death is perhaps “each time one fasts unto death is the only time one has fasted unto death each time with increasing intensity”.
The intensity of corruption in India (and elsewhere, I guess) is such that the intensity of fast undertaken against corruption by an individual has to promise a lot, the extreme being a fast unto death by somebody who has a believable reputation. It does not actually mean that the faster has to die, although that would be a spectacle that the public could secretly enjoy as they did, so they say, watching gladiators being killed when the thumb went down.
Its easier said than done?
Before Anna Hazare's movement took over this anti-corruption movement, the Gandhian Satyagraha Brigade (GSB) had started their own fasts-unto-death in January 2011 on a very small scale. The GSB consisisted of "true" (whatever that may mean) Gandhians and being mainly octagenrians and nonagenerians, all senior Gandhians compared to Anna Hazare.
This movement must have been extended (I wont say hijacked) to larger proportions within a period of a few months, by would-be saints such as Kiran Bedi (a TV reality show under her belt) and Swami Agnivesh who takes the effort to wear a dress that symbolises the fire that he says is within him, and who represents people who dont believe in a democratic character for their self-professed revolutions. Revolutionaries don't have to account to the public for their funding. They will never come under a Lok pal or a Lok ayukta or a Central Vigilance committee. Something like the Board of Control of Cricket of India.
These aspiring saints, such as Kiran Bedi or Agnivesh, prop up Anna Hazare with the help of desperate TRP-seeking TV channels to a fever demanding a Lok Pal who would be a protector of the people against corruption. They do not explain how the Lok Pal would function and under what authority. They claim the support of 1.2 billion people just like the cricket team. It may not seem even frivolous to some if Sachin Tendulkar was made a popular Lok Pal!
One of the less frivolous and certainly more dangerous signal from the Anna Hazare movement is their insistence that the representative democracy should be done away with. This is reminiscent of the Jaiprakash Narayan Movement of 1977, a movement that set the country back several years without raising its moral standards or even changing for long enough times the political leadership. Indeed, Indira Gandhi's re-election showed the futility of the JP movement even if it had a validity. The JP movement has so far provided only one genuine politically trustworthy leader, Nitish Kumar.
Believe it or not, one of the successes of the JP movement is the introduction of the Double-7 Cola, which was meant to fight the imperialism of Coca-Cola. Judging by the way Coca-Cola and Pepsi now dominate the Indian advertising landscape, they must thank Double 7.
It is difficult to imagine how one Lok Pal could bring out a corruption-free society by just passing a bill. It could only be a beginning, at best. There is a real danger in having unbridled janata rule that Anna Hazare said is required to replace representative democracy.
The Democratic State has now a great democratic weapon of mass media to exercise their Big Brother control, without the wasteful nuisance of a representative democracy. When democracy is used as a spontaneous conquering religious movement without the wisdom of a restraining parliament, one can easily self implode. One may imagine a Lok Pal unleashing a "Lok Pal" zouth brigade without taking extreme care that it would not degenerate into something like a Hitler Youth Brigade.
The television channels would love it to be a reality show sponsored by multinational companies and Coca Cola advertisements with contenders asking/answering questions and winners being declared based on number of SMSs without a genuine-ness guarantee and softwares that generate SMSs.
This new Indian Lok Pal reality show could chose a genuine leader by the sacrifice the candidate could make, excluding perhaps actual fasts unto deaths. This could generate more sincere activists. As Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche famously said "One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk."
"There is an old illusion - it is called good and evil." --- Nietzsche
While it is easy to point to corruption as an all pervasive evil, there does not seem to be a strict criterion as to what kind of corruption should be tackled at what level and who is to benefit from the elimination of corruption?
The so-called 2G scam is an example of confusion over what constitutes corruption. Kapil Sibal would argue that the 2G policy has benefited the common man and the loss of revenue is made up by the several increase in revenue by the increase in tele density. I think that is a perfectly valid argument.
The CAG like all banking clerks only looks at the revenues lost by not having an auction. They did not bother about the benefits of the aam aadmi. Thats not their concern´nor has it ever been.
One should always be aware of a Bank clerk, Lewis Carroll has probably experiEnced THIS when he writes in his poem "The Mad Gardner's song"
He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
‘If this should stay to dine,’ he said,
‘There won’t be much for us!’
It is only now after the row between Kapil Sibal and the CAG that I really understood what was meant. The Banker's clerk like good orthodox people from Tanjore and elsewhere in the purely Academic communities follow rules strictly and leave nothing for experimentation.
We will not be worried about Anna Hazare's intentions. We do not know need to worry also whether he has Gandhi's sense of humour. We need to be worried about those who surround him. Two of the more conspicuous credit-baggers are Kiran Bedi and Swami Agnivesh. The latter will be dismissed because he has already committed himself to a non-representative parliamentary democracy and has championed an anarchic revolution of the people.
Kiran Bedi, who would have loved to have been nominated as a Chief Vigilance Commissioner, does not now leave Hazare's side exploiting all photo-opportunities. She must have loved being the only one jumping with as much joy she could put on for the cameras. She also literally forces a very uncomfortable and perhaps reluctant but very sweet little girl to give a glass of juice to Anna Hazare to break his fast (http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/anna-hazare-ends-fast-says-real-fight-begins-now/196091).
I happened to listen to Kiran Bedi on you tube speaking to a packed medium-sized Hall of middle class american women audience. The talk was full of self praise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CSsL3it9Y&feature=related). It was the kind of talk that most impresses foreigners who would love to have one, who they can identify with, telling them the great things they have doen for a horrible country. She got the applause for giving the Prime Minsiter's car a parking ticket. She did not mention that Indira Gandhi was not in India and she did not mention how the car came to be parked wherever it was in the first place. Her taking credit for this incident is something like the donkey taking credit for chasing a tiger simply because the donkey happened to be running behind a running tiger.
She does not mention what others have done for prison workers.
It was all about her self.
A comment on the video would read: It's all about her, about how great she is, how couragious and smart she handles stuff.... I hear very little about the prisoners. They prayed and had lessons (and she became holy??) .
Kiran Bedi has the horrible mistinction (if that is the word describing the opposite of distinction) of being the host and TV judge of a TV series "Aapki Kacheri" (see, for instance, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hZZcmk8HHo), broadcast on the Indian TV channel, Star Plus. One cannot imagine how a civilised country can have such a lady advising any one of who or what a Lok Pal should be!
More ominously, Kiran Bedi also predicted in this talk that she is working on an ombudsman bill against corruption about which they will hear a lot about. This was more than three months ago! "Daal mein kuch kaala hain?".
Just as an exercise I looked up the memebers of the India Against Corruption movement. It is a motley crowd including many so-called spiritual leaders with probably good management and marketing skills if they are not successful con men. The group is led by Swami Ramdev (Bharat Swahiman Trust; Akhada Parishad Baba Hat Yogi, said of the Swami: " A decade ago, Ramdev used to move on a bicycle. He even had to struggle to find money to fix his punctured cycle. Now he flies on a chopper. …." ) , Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Art of Living: Sri Sri Ravi Shankar … has repackaged a well-known breathing technique and commercialized it. See http:// www.deeshaa.org/is-sri-sri-ravi-shankar-a-con-man/; see also The The great great Sri Sri NGO NGO scam scam --- http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/the-the-great-great-sri-sri-ngo-ngo-scam-scam/
see also ), Kiran Bedi (we know about her), Swami Agnivesh (Bonded Labour Liberation Front!!! among others), Anna Hazare (simple man), Arvind Kejriwalh (IIT Mechanical engineer, joined Indian Revenue Service with his eyes open) J. M. Lyngdoh (good man), Justice Tewatia (litigation for amount of pension he could receive since he was Chief Justice for only six months, this was crucial since he could call himself chief justice), Mallika Sarabhai (Peter Brooks fame), Facebook personalities Maulana Mufti Shamoom Kashmi and Maulana Kalbe Rizvi , Arch Bishop Vincent M Concessao (of Delhi wears wooden cross instead of silver cross to identify with poor), Prashant Bhushan (500 PILs) , Devinder Sharma (interviewed Dr Borlaug), Subhash Chandra Aggarwal (4000 letters to editors, guiness book of records), Pradeep Gupta (Pan IIT), B. D. Lall (could not find anything about him, a non-entity?) and Sunita Godara (marathon Arjuna award winner, ran 200 international marathons, Director with Population Control Society - an International NGO!!! how come?) among others.
It is possible that these "spiritual" leaders mobilised the support through facebook and the to make it look massive. The fast has exploited the polling exigencies well to achieve what it wanted to do:- to extract a promise from the Government. The real game will begin after the results are known.
One silver lining among this crowd of spiritual leaders is that they are not innocent and they must be having a good experience of corruption that has allowed them to become the leaders they have become.
Requirements for a Lokpal
The least important of the issues is perhaps what the Lok Pal would actually look like.
It has to be rememebered that the Lok Pal is based on the institute of the Swedish Ombudsman whose purpose was to look after the affiars of the king (Charles) when he was recovering from a military defeat in Turkey. The Ombudsman has different interpretations in different countries. The French have one who is supposed to be a protector of the people just as our Lok pal is supposed to be.
There is no ombudsman in USA at the national level. This is for the information of the vocal NRIs in USA in case they did not know.
The Ombudsman of Phillipines, a lady, has been impeached by parliament.
The actual function of the ombudsman is difficult to visualize and seemingly cannot be solved by an unilateral fast unto death by a public movement, if only because of different perceptions of corruption in different societies or different value systems.
As per a description on the net (see http://www.jstor.org/pss/3230819) "The classical ombudsman has to be (1) legally established, (2) functionally autonomous, (3) external to the administration, (4) operationally independent of both the legislature and the executive, (5) specialist, (6) expert, (7) nonpartisan, (8) normatively universalistic, (9) client-centred but not anti-administration, and (10) both popularly accessible and visible." That sort of disqualifies all those public figures we know for or against the Lok Pal?
The problem with ombudsmen is that they can investigate only government agencies.
A mischievous private body with adequate financial resources can easily make the function of the Lok Pal hopelessly innocuous and ineffective serving only the purpose of crippling the government.
We have enough of such mischievous men, especially with multinationals who really would like to handle the way we are corrupt for their advantage.
So we wait.
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