Anna's Victory: Whose defeat?

So Anna Hazare has won the battle, leaving his supporters jubilant. Quite understandable. My congratulations to team Anna and its brigade all over the country. The government is left red-faced. Each one of them, from Kapil Sibal to Pranav Mukerjee to PC to the Prime Minister, is looking like a fool of the first order. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can be seen vulgarly joking about the ministers on social networking sites. Sonia Gandhi must probably be the only person in the world happy to be recuperating from cancer at this point in time. I have, however, I few questions to ask to anyone who’d be worried about the future of this country.

1. The supporters of Anna Hazare movement seem to have been under the impression that their army was fighting against something foreign to our nation, a clandestine force from the outside that was hell-bent upon bringing nothing but disaster to the country. They seem to have forgotten that the government they were fighting against comprises of the very people they sent to the parliament as recently as 2007. So do they think they had voted for all the wrong people? If yes, who are the right people? By ridiculing their own choice, they are ridiculing themselves.
2. Anna is being touted as the second Gandhi to the nation. Hardly, I think. Consider this: The resolution was passed unanimously in both houses on Saturday evening (27 Aug). Anna Hazare, who was on water-only fast for the last 12 days, chose a time 14 hours later to break his fast! Why? All Muslims fast through the day during the month of Ramadan, starting from just before sunrise to just after the sunset. Ask any Muslim (ask me, I’m a Muslim) and he’ll tell you how difficult it is to stay hungry even for a minute after the legal fast-breaking time. It is almost impossible to do so. So why did Anna, hungry for not one, but 12 days, choose Sunday 10 am to break his fast? (Feel free to read between the lines here) Because he wanted the whole world to know that he was going to do so; he wanted all arrangements for all the fanfare to be there- the media and the paparazzi. Two children were selected to feed him juice, as, through the cameras, indeed the whole nation watch with awe and admiration. Later, he chose a five-star hospital to get admitted to and the cavalcade of vehicles that carried him from the Ramlila maidan to the Medanta hospital in Gurgaon, would’ve paled the US president’s cavalcade in comparison. Why all this? Would Mahatma Gandhi have done all this?
3. And as things looked like settling down eventually, Anna, perhaps already starting to miss the media attention, publicly announced that it was not over as yet and only postponed. He announced that the next fight would be on electoral reforms, so please don’t take away those cameras as yet. His electoral reforms would include right to reject and right to recall (an elected candidate). So with a lokpal already over their heads with a naked sword, and no power worth its name, certainly no means of making money, and no surety of being in the office for five full years, I think willing candidates for the next elections would be impossible to find for the political parties! Then, perhaps, Annaji wont have any option but to be the MLA, the MP, the cabinet minister AND the prime-minister. Why be just a lokpal?  Be a Deshpal.

Janalokpal- The Ceaser's wife?

In my last blog post I had put down my views on the on-going debate on the
lokpal issue. As the days have gone by, some more thoughts have crossed my
mind and I’m putting them here. Suppose the government, finally bowing to
public pressure, gives in and accepts Anna team’s version of the Lokpal and
a Janlokpal bill is passed in the parliament, what would be the scenario?
People like Anna, Kejriwal, and Kiran Bedi would perhaps man the Janlokpal
committe, and have supreme control over practically everything- from the
bureaucracy to the judiciary, right up to the Prime minister. Sounds very
powerful indeed. Powerful enough to corrupt mere mortals? Ah, but Anna and
 others in his team are not mere mortals, you would say. But literally speaking they are, aren't they? What would happen after them? What would be the procedure of choosing
people to chair this Janlokpal committee? What is the guarantee that all
those people who’d be in the committee would be as fair, impartial and
dedicated as the present Anna team? Mahatma Gandhi was charismatic as long
as he lived. Now there is no trace of that Gandhian philosophy. Could not
the same happen with the Janlokpal? Why are we assuming that a janlokpal
would not be corrupt? Would it be the Ceaser’s wife, so as to be above
suspicion?

Anna Hazare, Manmohan Bechare?

I will start by saying that I am as much concerned about corruption prevalent in India, as is everyone else. Also, I have utmost respect for shri Anna Hazare, for he is doing something that was needed to be done years ago. Having said that, I will now list four things that I firmly believe in:

1. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown;

2.  Telling others how things should be done is entirely different from doing it oneself;

3. Power corrupts;

4. Be the change you want to see in the society.

Our Nation is a nation of mass hysterias. A few weeks ago, there was a mass hysteria about Baba Ramdev, and the entire nation seemed to be behind him on the issue of black money. The media worked without pressure; they did not need to hunt for news in deep borewells in small towns. That hysteria died down sooner than expected, and now it has been replaced by the Anna hysteria. Again, the media is having a bonanza. One witnessed a similar hysteria early in this year when India first beat Pakistan in WC semifinals and again when India beat SL in the finals. Thousands poured out on the streets in the middle of the night to celebrate. A few days later everything was forgotten and IPL fever took over. I’m afraid of a similar fate for the Anna hysteria.

I’d like to share a few points here:

1. Anna (and his team) is now doing exactly what our netas have been doing over the years: exploit popular support. Just as on the basis of the support of the electorate in their area, netas indulge in all kinds of excesses, including goodaism and hooliganism, Anna too has leant on the popular wave in his favor and has put a virtual gun on the government’s head and is dictating terms. He’s almost saying, ‘Accept our version of the bill or else I’ll unleash this crowd on you’. Not a good sign in democracy. Pick 8 out of 10 random people in any of the rallies in Anna’s favor and they’d not know the difference between the lokpal bill and a driver’s license. Agreed, everyone is out on the street on the issue of corruption, but there should be method to everything. Bills are not presented to the parliament at gun point.
2. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Is this why Anna Hazare, despite being a popular figure for decades, hasn’t fought an election? ‘Be the change you want to see in the society’. In all probability, Anna Hazare knows that in India, it is practically impossible to be in the seat of power, howsoever miniscule, and not be corrupt. Why didn’t he take up this challenge and show to the world that it can be different? Why doesn’t he become a part of the government and bring the change that he wants by being on the inside? Is it because that it is easy to point fingers from the outside than being inside and have fingers pointed to you? He reminds me of the left-front parties that were a coalition partner to the UPA government in the previous Lok-sabha, by the way of their ‘support from the outside’. By doing this, they were neither in the government, nor in the opposition, and played the role of either, at their convenience!
3. The hullabaloo of the opposition parties notwithstanding at this stage, I’d be wholly surprised that if and when Anna’s version of the bill is presented in the parliament, these very parties would vote for the bill! For a simple reason: though they are in the opposition today, they have certainly not lost hope of being in the power some day. And going by the way the UPA has conducted itself in the past one year or so, this seems possible as early as 2 years from now! So, in such an event the present opposition parties would then in direct line of fire of the lokpal! Therefore, I doubt it very much that Anna’s version of the bill would ever see the light of the day as a law.
4. http://righttoinformation.info/ncpri-public-consultations-on-the-lok-pal-bill/public-consultations-on-collective-and-concurrent-lokpal-anti-corruption-and-grievance-redress-measures-by-the-ncpri-nehru-memorial-museum-and-library-and-inclusive-media-4-change-csds/

    The above link is a fine one to study the finer details of the proposed lokpal bill. The government, being what it is, has taken into consideration the fact that Anna’s version of the bill, if implemented in its totality, has a potential of unleashing a barrage of plaints, justified, and unjustified, against all and sundry in the central government. (Remember, the Lokpal would have jurisdiction only against the central government agencies, and not the state government ones. The state governments have the option of having a lok-Ayukta. It was a Lok Ayukta’s report against Yedurappa in Karnataka that made him resign his post as the CM. But some states, like Gujarat, don’t have a lok-Ayukta for several years, and nobody’s going up in their arms about that!) Of course, even the government’s version of the Lokpal bill is not wholly acceptable, but then a middle path should be devised by the way of talks, and not by the way of blackmailing. One hopes that some day, sanity would prevail on either side, and a plausible bill would be passed in the parliament.

Finally, a word about corruption. The truth is that corruption is so rife in India that the dream of removing it in totality is an unreal one. There is corruption at high places, like the 2G and CWG scams, and there is corruption in small offices, like the roadside traffic policeman demanding a tenner. The fact is that one should be concerned about both with the same fervour. It is only the unchecked corrupt traffic policemen that burgeon into Kalmadis. But alas, we are concerned only about the A Rajas thieving our nation of thousands of crores, and not about ourselves when we don’t think twice before paying up the BSNL lineman for a new set of wiring. My daily anger against corruption is against the people responsible for maintaining the roads of my small town. Monsoon has battered the roads beyond recognition, and this is an annual affair. Will the lokpal bill repair my roads?  

Movie Review- Aarakshan

I have seen Prakash Jha grow as a director from Gangajal to Aparhan to Rajneeti. And since Jha raised the bar himself, Aarakshan disappoints a bit. I must say that only two kinds of movies thrill me: the ones that make me laugh heartily; and the ones that make me cry. Aarakshan started on a very promising note, and could have burgeoned into an intelligent and intense debate on the matter of reservation. But alas, as soon as one felt that the film was going to be differently entertaining, it lost its grip on the primary subject, and by the time the movie was in the final stages, it had become a fight between expensive private coaching classes, where education is as much a business as oil is for Arab sheikhs, and selfless and dedicated teachers like the protagonist Dr. Prabhakar Anand, played by the unequalled veteran of Hindi cinema- Amitabh Bachchan.  

The film has tried to incorporate two subjects within its fold- One, the subject of highly debatable reservation in educational institutes, and two, the subject of commercialization of education, by the way of over-priced coaching classes, and by the way of ‘self-financed’ professional colleges. While the primary theme of the film seems to be the former (going by the title), somewhere in the course of the movie, this slowly but interestingly maturing subject suddenly loses its hold and gives into trivialities. This is where the movie disappoints. I won’t write the story of the film here because the gist is what matters. I’ll simply narrate the reasons why one can watch this one:

One can watch this one for the intense character of Dr Prabhakar Anand, played extremely well by Amitabh Bachchan;  for Prakash Jha’s near-perfect direction.; for the poignant love story between Saif and Deepika, depicted  to be extremely romantic without as much as a single truly romantic scene; for Manoj Bajpai’s justice to the villainous role he played; and finally for the cute Tanvi Azmi, who despite having aged over the years appeared so charming and fresh in her role as Amitabh’s wife. Deepika Padukone looks stunningly beautiful; Saif looks strange in his studious look, with ‘chappat’ hair and orthodox glasses. There are just two songs in the movie- the first one, ‘accha lagta hai’, is a sweet, melodious number appearing early on in the movie, perhaps to emphasize the relationship between Deepika and Saif, and the other one, ‘kaun si dor kheenchein, kaun si kaatein’, a superbly sung classical by Channulal Mishra and my favorite Shreya Ghoshal. Channulal belongs to the same family as the legendary siblings- Rajan and Sajan Mishra, and has a similar bass voice. Go and watch this one, and yes, there’s nothing in it that should have provoked some of the Indian states to ban its screening. Publicity stunt, I suppose.     My rating: 2-1/2 on 5
Pic credit: Indicine.com

Of injection pricks and sore behinds!

When I was a kid, we had an MBBS doctor in ONGC’s dispensary. He was a chubby Assamese guy; cheerful, and a great cricketer. However, I was morbidly afraid of him, like most kids are, of doctors. Since the dispensary was within the premises of the township we lived in, all one needed to visit the doctor were the slightest of symptoms, and a personal medical record book. For this reason, my mother often sent whosoever was sick amongst us brothers to the doctor all alone, properly rehearsed with what to say to him. Though I detested going alone to the doctor, I had often no choice, with my dad busy at office, and my mom having many other important things to do than to attend to one of her son’s running nose. As I sometimes waited in the queue to see him, my medical record book clasped tightly in my little hands, I used to pray to God that I don’t end up getting an injection prescribed. When it was finally my turn, I always crossed my finger before entering. Once inside, I used to greet the burly doctor with a ‘namaste’, and then like a parrot narrate in well-rehearsed lines my symptoms to him. But, like a man who seemed to know-it-all, he used to nearly finish writing the prescription in my book by the time I finished speaking about my illness. Sometimes, when either I was very ill, or sometimes when he was in the mood, he’d poke his stethoscope at random spots on my chest ever so briefly before handing over to me my book. So many times I tried to gather the courage to ask if the prescription included an injection, but I never really could. So it was another wait at the compounder’s window, who filled up our prescriptions, and who would finally let out the sentence, ‘There’s an injection here, to be taken once daily for five days.’ The hell would break loose on me, and if god-forbid it were the Quinine for malaria, I used to almost die out of fear for the utterly painful injection (in those days Quinine injection was the treatment for malaria, and malaria used to be diagnosed in our dispensary only by the doctor’s clinical acumen. Lab tests were rare.). More often than not, the doctor decided to mix a dose of Analgin (for fever) with Qunine, creating thus the devil’s own mixture, and I often thought if this was the infamous third-degree torture they often talked about in films. The nurse who administered the injection was no less than a daakan (witch) to me (poor thing, I hope she’s doing well wherever she is now). She chose the largest of the syringes for me with the thickest of the needles, precariously boiled for not more than a jiffy after the last victim’s injection, and poked into my behind with criminal indifference. That I shouted at the top of my voice and even cried in muffled sobs did not make any difference to her, and it was in those days when I had first started wondering if God pardoned at least one murder per person, per life. Once, after the first of such five injections, I decided to give the whole turmoil a slip by not declaring to my parents about the prescribed injection, and quietly skipped going to the dispensary the next day. To my great horror, the witch herself showed at our house, late in the evening, after she’d finished poking everyone else’s behind at the dispensary, fully armed with the injection kit and all. That evening not only did I suffer the great prick on one buttock, my dad placed a few smacks on the other as well. Malaria is now-a-days treated in much more humane ways, but I bet there won’t be another nurse anywhere who’d go to the errant boy’s homes to give them their missed pricks! 

India's cricket debacle!

The charisma of the game of cricket is such that the true fan falls in love with the format of the game he is watching. When IPL was in full flow, one thought which idiot of a man invented the test cricket.  A five-day game of cricket? How boring. But the current series between India and England, in England, has mesmerized me. Now I wonder why they don’t have more test matches! I know India has fared very, very poorly in the two tests played, plus the disappointment of the elusive hundredth international hundred for Sachin Tendulkar….it does get on to the nerves but then, there were ups and downs that kept the audience spell-bound, and there was certainly no dearth of drama. My own hero Rahul Dravid made back to back centuries in vain, and he must be feeling awful for that. The depleted Indian team without Viru, Zak and Gauti looked uncertain of itself from the very start of the first test, and coupled with poor form of top order players like Tendulkar, Yuvi, Dhoni, and Bhajji the debacle was only waiting to happen. Imagine, the turbanator managed to scalp just two wickets in four innings! And the English players are supposed to be ‘bad’ players of spin bowling! MSD chose a wrong match to show that he could play the game fairly, when he re-called Ian Bell who went on to smash a scintillating century. Then there was Micheal Vuaghan who sparked controversy with his Vaseline remark on the appeal that was turned down against Laxman. But honestly, one has to give it to the British players. All of them were in form- Pieterson, Strauss, Bell, Prior, Morgan, etc. Even some of their bowlers batted well. Bresnan did well, and Stuart Broad is emerging as a promising all-rounder. Not only did he bat very well, he did not in the least look like he was the guy who had once got hammered by Yuvi for six sixes in a T-20 match! In all, he scalped 15 wickets in two tests!!

Well, like in politics, there can never be permanent positions in cricket. The current English team is the best I’ve seen in a long, long time, and they richly deserve the newly gotten number one test team status. With two bad losses in two tests, the best that can India hope for is a 2-2 final tally. But that seems a tall order. Unless Viru and Zaks make it back into the team.