Arvind Kejriwal - Death before Birth

 Some recent developments resulting in loss pf credibility for IAC and Arvind Kejriwal have made it necessary that I make an email dated 19/9/12 to Mr Prashant Bhushan/Mr Kejriwal public. Here is the mail:

"Dear Mr Prashant Bhushan/Arvind Kejriwal,

 I have received no reply to my last mail to Mr Kejriwal. I am not sure whether you are undecided about me or you have made up mind that I am insignificant and shouldn't matter to your cause.

Anyway, I am sharing here my thoughts and giving some inputs, I feel necessary.

Anna Hazare never appeared to be a man with vision. His strength has been his simplicity, selflessness, a life devoted to social service, and his integrity. By some of his utterances and actions today, his integrity comes under cloud. Wasn't it he who publicly announced decision to go political and gave green signal to Mr Kejriwal for proceeding in that direction? If now he has chosen to turn his back on his own team, the team should simply say 'good riddance' and look forward. It is the cause that should matter, and not the individuals, whosoever they be.

I learn that Mr Kejriwal also has stated today that 'the country is passing through a difficult phase, and I'll do everything possible to save it.' No doubt, very commendable spirit. But one can't achieve much by rhetoric alone. One has to act. And it is not so easy for a few individuals to save a country of 120 crores, a country having men of straw at the helm of affairs and a corrupted people. The rhetoric of 'Janlokpal' and 'remove corruption' alone can't achieve much. This rhetoric has served its purpose. It has created some awareness, and brought you and your team to the center stage,  under media attention. Now a lot, lot, lot more needs to be done  beyond lokpal and corruption. 

First of all, the core team must do honest introspection. What is the motivation? What force binds you people together? Is it ambitions or a deep desire for systemic corrections? The people who have  nothing but a deep desire to make Indian society free from inequalities and injustices at their heart alone should form the Core Team. They shouldn't be egotists and must have a sense of purpose above everything else. There are many such Indians, I am sure. The need is to identify them, unite them and bring them to one platform. This is neither very easy nor very difficult. The task at hand -- to correct systems rotting at the roots for years -- is no child's play and very challenging. But where there is a will, there is a way.

I feel encouraged by presence of Sh. Yogendra Yadav, the psephologist, with you. I feel he has a very mature political mind and appears to be a very balanced individual. 

Once you decide to form a political outfit, the work increases exponentially, and you will have to have a detailed road map for a variety of issues. You have to act a lot, and act fast.

I also have an idea, which can be implemented just through creation of a website, may be even more effective than Lokpal, for people seeking justice across the length and breadth of country, not only from govt but also from unscrupulous private players. With your organisation, it will not be much difficult to implement it, and if implemented by you - your credibility will get established beyond doubt.

I shall close now as I am feeling like sleeping. If I look like sermonising, kindly excuse me as that is not the intention in the least. I am sure that you will find nothing new in most of above. If you feel that I am intruding into your space and time unnecessarily, kindly excuse me and let me know. I shall find my peace.

Regards,
Atul Kumar"

It is not so disappointing that they chose to pay no heed to this mail. What is really disappointing is that what has followed since. It is disappointing to know that they have allowed themselves to be blinded by the media glare (did media lead them to this on purpose?), have allowed their credibility to be lost beyond redemption in near future (if they don't realise it and chose to be blind to this fact also, God alone can help them!), and have betrayed the thousands of middle class Indians whose hopes they had raised. An article by Mr Rajinder Puri in 'The Statesman' today raises serious doubts about the credibility of Mr Kejriwal. And Mr Y P Singh, the retired IPS, drew the proverbial final nail in the coffin yesterday. 

What appears now is that Mr Kejriwal and the bunch surrounding him tend to continue to be-fool the people through the slogan of 'remove corruption,' on the same lines as Congress had been doing for half a decade through the slogan of 'remove poverty.' Though Mr Kejriwal continuously talks of need to change the system, he has yet to come out with a plan for the same. He has been doing nothing beyond telling people what they already know, that most of our leaders are corrupt. And posing himself as the champion against corruption, he has had kind words to say about the fountain head of corruption, the first family, as the article by Mr Rajinder Puri reveals. His not bothering to respond even to the italicized para of my mail confirms that he has allowed himself to become nothing but a self seeking politician just like those whom he attacks.  

Now Baba Ramdev remains the only hope for us. Let us see whether he also fails us or we fail him, or together we succeed.

Anna Hazare

 Anna Hazare has been expressing his annoyance at Arvind Kejriwal entering politics. But he himself has already become a politician. That's why one fine morning he is with Kejriwal, next morning annoyed with him, and next morning again not annoyed, the ground reality remaining same all the time.

So much so for the so called non-political movement.

Mamata Di

     Mamata Banerjee, just after withdrawing from the government, in an interview to Rajdeep Sardesai, said that the UPA/Congress government was stable for corruption and by corruption. The interviewer and our great media seemed to have missed a very interesting point. Could UPA become so as alleged by Mamata Di overnight? What was she and her party doing in such a government for last 3 years? The interviewer didn't ask her. I don't know whether it didn't occur to him or he couldn't dare.

Fools and Asses

A simple fact (there could be many more) should be sufficient for even the asses to understand that the Indian intelligentsia, the leaders, and the journalists, are devoid of any common sense, and are not only fools but utter fools. They are always talking about India being a great democracy.They also talk about Rahul Gandhi as a national leader all the time. And what are the credentials of Rahul Gandhi for that. None except that he was born years ago to Sonia Gandhi and one Rajiv Gandhi. If those credentials alone could make one a leader of national stature, how could the country be a democracy?

I am sure the asses will understand but the Indian fools will not understand even now.   

Nothing has Changed

Nothing was expected to change and nothing has changed in last year or two. If things have changed, it is for the worse.

1. The media at large continues to act as a keep of those in power. If team Anna has made any indisputable demand till date, it has been - asking of a SIT to investigate those central cabinet ministers against whom strong prima-facie evidence existed. And it was really amusing when Arnab Goswami of 'Times Now' Fame, and the biggest self-proclaimed crusader against any wrong doing by anyone in the country, also appeared to be questioning the appropriateness of this most legitimate demand.

2. On the heels of the 2G scam, comes the bigger 'Coalgate.' And lo! Chidambrams and Sibbals are at it           again with their absurd logics. I wonder what is the common-sense or education level of the reporters to whom they proudly explain their  'smart' theories. If I were one of them, I could easily take their pants off and make them run in their under-wears. But the media and the government are doing nothing but proving me right. The former proving what morons they are and the later proving that words beyond 'shamelessness' need to be coined now.

3. The erstwhile Team Anna, the good guys, is disintegrating with each passing day. They have also done their bit in proving me correct in all respects.

4. All this while, while the politicians get the brick-bats, the bureaucrats coolly continue to laugh all the way to the Swiss banks.

5. More than Rs. 5000 crores per year continues to get leaked through Railway procurement and no one is least bothered, even though the issue is in the knowledge of the whole parliament and whole of media.

6. The recent Supreme Court verdict on Chidambram has only proved beyond doubt how inadequate and/or pliable our judicial system is.

In short and in essence, the rogues and the rascals are touching greater heights each day and the eunuchs are happily enjoying their impotence.  

Long live India! Shame India!

How do we Err?

First the disclaimer. I pen the following words not with any hope from the present Indian society infested with the pseudo intellectuals, but for the posterity and to satisfy the urge within.

To begin with, we err in not realising how base we are or have become at the roots as a people, remaining individually good at heart. We are a people having a fake leadership and political system, a fake judiciary and judicial system, a fake bureaucracy and bureaucratic system, and above all a fake media. Of course there are some exceptions here and there. I am not the only one to say so, having brought out this fact amply through my earlier articles and in my book ‘rogues rascals and Eunuchs (pain of an Indian whistle-blower)’ (the book is nothing but a systematic compilation of my earlier blog posts), but a number of recent articles by veteran journalists published in the Statesman have also clearly been indicating this fact. To an extent this fact is a result of the crab mentality we Indians are cursed with. Most of the times, we are using up our energies in pulling down the capable and deserving individuals around us, allowing the fake to rise. The correct knowledge of the depth and spread of the rot is necessary before we could think of an effective cure.

Even those of us, who are well aware of the fact and have the best intentions, err in searching for solutions where none exist. Anna, team Anna, and lakhs of their active and passive followers are the immediate example. In believing that Janlokpal was a major solution for the deep rooted and widespread ills of the society and that they could force its creation as an outside pressure group, team Anna betrayed some lack of vision; and their mass following proved once again that the masses were governed by nothing but the herd mentality. At the time of penning of these lines, theirs is a failed movement with loss of credibility for their leaders. Had they not erred and had a year back taken the course they intend to take now, they would not have lost their credibility. It is an irony that they are choosing the political recourse at the same time when proving to the world their lack of political acumen. Had they taken this recourse (the only sensible recourse available to them for last one year) without having led the people into doubting their intentions and without having subjected the nation to the farce (as it has turned out to be) of yet another fast at jantar mantar, they would have been much better off. Or if all this drama was necessary to sway the herds for a good cause, I won’t complain. All said and done, team Anna remains the best among the well meaning Indians in sight and it is unto them to provide the leadership the nation needs and for us to accept and encourage such leadership as and when it emerges.

A failed movement is worse than no movement as it brings more despair to the people. In a similar way as issues are raised without following those to a logical conclusion. Here the Indian media errs the most as they do so day in and day out with no exceptions. Scams are reported, losses to the public exchequer are reported, but one doesn’t come to know of a logical conclusion in one’s life time. The people get more and more demoralized. 

Let us see what the culture we nurture is. One playing seemingly fake cricket gets to earn Rs 150 crores (besides undisclosed income) a year and a carpenter or another artisan doing his or her job most professionally and sincerely gets to earn Rs 150 thousand a year. Families known to have looted lakhs of crores of tax payer’s money and stashed it away in foreign banks are chosen to rule us and are sung praises of by the pseudo journalists and the pseudo intellectuals of the country that far outnumber the genuine ones. We as a people bow at their feet day after day. Politicians known to have looted other lakhs of crores are elected and chosen as key central ministers or chief ministers again and again. We waste our energy in creating stars from among us and then use up rest of it in competing with each other in licking their bottoms.  Worshipping them becomes our main preoccupation. These are nothing but the manifestations of our culture and the capitalist and democratic systems we feel so proud of. When we accept these manifestations so nonchalantly, don’t we look very foolish in making so much noise about corruption? We, very seriously err in not realising that corruption is nothing but a by-product of the culture we pursue.  Corruption is not the root cause of our evils as everyone conveniently seems to believe, it is a necessary off- shoot of the capitalist and bureaucratic structure we have embraced. And if we are happy with our culture, we should be happy to accept the by-product also. If we don’t like this by-product, we must look for solutions in revolutionary corrections in the economic and political systems we follow.

We err in associating only politicians with corruption and scams most of the time, forgetting how thoroughly base our bureaucracy, the backbone of governance, has become. And that much more than the politicians, the bureaucrats and the bureaucratic systems, and the judicial systems we have become slave to are responsible for the massive scams we come across on daily basis now. I say this out of  my experience in the Railways, an organisation supposed to be having a better set of bureaucrats in the country. This aspect has come out in better detail in my interview published in the Statesman about a couple of years back under the title ‘Bureaucrats are both running and ruining the country’ and subsequently in my above book.

The most importantly, we reach the height of human foolishness when we abuse and curse our leaders, duly elected and chosen by the people, for their rogue behaviour, not saying a word to ourselves, the people, who had chosen and elected them as their leaders. We happily accept that majority is authority expressing faith in the wisdom of the people all the time, and then question why a majority of ministers and a large number of parliamentarians elected by those very people were corrupt and rogues. Even after experience of 65 years as a free democratic country, we fail to understand that today’s lowest ever level of governance and the highest ever level of corruption are nothing but a necessary outcome of our character and the parliamentary system of democracy we follow with such pride. Not learning from history, we continue to ignore the diseased roots and in vain attempt curing some stray leaves here and there.

Sushma Swaraj, a renowned leader, was all praise for our parliamentary system a few days back for the  reason that because of it change of power in the country had always been peaceful. But is that a reason enough to justify the existing system? The bottom line remains that a vast majority of Indians live and die in abject poverty. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots is ever increasing. There is injustice all around. There are so many laws, some of those outright absurd, that a common man always lives under fear of having broken one or another. The food adulteration and wide spread corruption in medical care adversely affect everyone except probably the VIP’s and the VVIP’s. If this scenario is acceptable to us, fine. If not, nothing but our folly prevents us from achieving better for us.

We err in looking for incremental corrections for a malaise that requires nothing less than total overhaul for cure. Today many voices, Baba Ramdev’s and Anna Hazare’s being the most prominent among them, are talking of need for total systemic overhaul. So did Jaiprakash Narayan talk forty years ago. We as a nation have been talking and saying everything for last sixty five years as it is our favourite pastime. Often we lack in vision and always we lack in action. Deep down most of us do feel need for a revolution not knowing what it should be and how it should come about.

Historically, revolutions the world over have meant a set of people fighting another set of people. In today’s India, the adversaries are anti corruption crusaders led by Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev on one side and the present UPA Govt, perceived to be the epitome of corruption, on the other side. But is not this government of the people and by the people, going by the definition of democracy? Isn’t it that the government is as corrupt as it is because we the people and the systems we nurture have been allowing it to be so? Will it be correct to consider a few individuals who happen to be in the government and have amassed massive wealth illegally to be the culprit now after having encouraged them to indulge in corruption all these years? Are not the people of India the real culprit? Has world been becoming any better after wars and revolutions involving wars? Is it necessary that for a revolution a set of people must fight another set of people? Couldn’t a revolution be all inclusive where all the people combine and unite to arrive at solutions beneficial to them at large, without indulging in blame games?

Answers to above questions and finding solutions won’t be difficult if we allow ourselves to be dictated by nothing but truth and love (or compassion), the two legs of humanity. Truth and love together. All the religions teach us so and all the literature tells us so. We shall have to unlearn all that we have been following and embark on ‘zero based thinking’ based on the twin virtues and principles of truth and love. That is if we really wish well for our descendants. Otherwise let us continue to engage ourselves in the same vicious circles, exemplified in our late evening TV channel debates involving the luminaries of the society, again and again, to get lost in the quagmire. 

Theatre of the Absurd

This was the heading of a main news item in the 'Times of India', a few days ago. The news item related to the drama around removal of Dinesh Trivedi from the Railway Ministry by Trinamul Congress (TMC) (not the Prime Minister). It mentioned what Mr Trivedi had uttered and what Mamata Di (the TMC chief) had uttered. The headline made one wonder if not the country of India was a theatre of the absurd. Not many days after, another set of events (again involving TMC) unfolded which made Mr Rajinder Puri say that the whole country was a cartoon.

At the cost of some repetition of what I have said earlier, let us see how the country called India is a theatre of the absurd.

i) It has been supporting a most absurd and rotten judicial system and hardly anyone, especially media, appears to be bothered. While the civil society has been very concerned about corruption, it has conveniently or foolishly overlooked the fact that the absence of an effective judicial system is the root cause for all encompassing corruption.

ii) Everyone is bothered about framing of more and more laws but not about implementation of the existing ones. Those at the helm are worried about making more laws for better governance without realising that the multiplicity of laws is a pointer towards bankruptcy of the law makers and the society.

iii) Media in India raises questions and rakes up issues and then forgets about those quicker than any one else.

iv) People vote the known rogues and the most accomplished in corruption to power time and again, and continue making noises about corruption all the time.

v) The media condemns match fixing in cricket one moment and then eulogizes the players who have to be a part and parcel of the fixing, for next hours, days and months.

vi) The political parties contest elections against each other but join post election to get power. They criticize the actions of the government and continue to be a part of the same government.

vii) When a new tax in the form of 'service tax' was levied and continued to be increased year after year to rob common citizens, no one made any protest and the country readily accepted the right of the government to rob. Same country doesn't think twice for holding bandhs and staging dharnas on petty matters.

viii) The newspapers and electronic media scream through headlines regarding amassing of a few lakhs or a few crores by some individuals, but continuing and preventable loss worth thousands of crores of rupees to the public exchequer year after year doesn't bother them at all.

The list would be endless to underline the fact that India is a theatre of the absurd. Our media remains central to, adding all the time, to this theatre of the absurd.

Let us all enjoy the cartoon that we are.