Fast Forwarding India: Anna and Baba way!

If I were one of the high TRP media channel ( almost all the hundreds are in fact of high TRP!), who feeds junk to people, at this moment I would be gleaming at my own fortune! Drama, action, emotion, music, and even some Indian acrobatics ( yoga) in impeccably packaged episodes running to full houses for quite sometime now.

By the way, if there's anyone apart from me, who's also finding it difficult to relate to the time period we actually are living in, given the course of events unfolding, here's a reminder: It certainly is the 21st Century, after the age of Communications, well into the age of Information and Technology.  And in this time frame, we are witnessing some of the greatest regressive approaches to revive India, by Fast Forwarding her: : Anna and Baba way,

Corruption is not something new to India, or to any society for that matter. The sudden surge, a giant leap forward in the scale of corruption is what has come to the notice of the civil society off late. Thanks to some loyal Govt. officials like the Lokayukta and a specific Gandhian to have had it echoed throughout the country, which otherwise is comfortably dormant, highly middle classed society.

Looking back, before a couple of months during the Anna phenomenon, almost all of the tax paying, middle class citizens were poised together with Anna Hazare to put a full stop to corruption in India by tweeting, facebooking, reading the bill draft, participating in meetups and discussing out of desperation the pros and cons of an inherently flawed approach towards tackling corruption.
This entire fuss about eradicating corruption and the antidote in the form of another parallel bureaucratic system called the "Jan Lokpal", which has been under way is, if at all implemented going to be a superficial medication for a deep rooted problem in a severely wounded system.

The entire polity and economics of the system must be resuscitated and revived to see any hope of betterment.

Without delving into this repetitive argument on my blog, let us look at the situation at hand.
A Yoga Guru, who is left out of the Drafting Panel of the LokPal committee for obvious reasons, decides to redo the exercise of emancipating the country within a couple of months after the hysterical Anna Hazare movement. He is doing it again because.... I'm not really sure! Maybe the Lokpal committee didn't want to incorporate his ingenious demands to curb corruption. Demands like capital punishment for the corrupt, demonetizing Rs.500/- and Rs.1000/ currency notes, and the Prime Minister being directly  elected by the people, which apart from being unviable are simply ridiculous.

With other demands like undoing Indian black money in foreign banks, Ramdev had hit the chord of double standards: While he has declared his own assets which reach upto Rs. 1000 crores and Islands as property (with suspicion on the sources) he seeks an anti-corruption campaign!

Like the Congress is now branding Ramdev as a thug, he is at the first place unfit to call for a campaign for a cause of this nature. I might even tend to pardon him, but not the gullibles who went behind him, including the UPA Govt. Imagine the spite of the Government,when it sends four of its ministers to negotiate with a thuggish Baba who threatens to go on a fast along with his followers.

Now, when the police in a surprise action has shaken up the India Fast Forward program by the Baba, in an agreeably undemocratic manner, they have made an unnecessary Hero out of a thug. I can only hope not for all the drama that is going to unfold in the bleaky days to come.

And the BJP with their saffron connection with Ramdev and his act, would be more than happy to lift off from the "Ramlila Maidan atrocity" directly to power. They have already started comparing the incident to JalianWala Bagh massacre of 1919 and PM and Sonia Gandhi to General Dyer!

Where has all the sense in this country vanished!

I only can hope that there aren't anymore Fast dramas,and people concentrate on the real issues which are giving rise to these high levels of corruption and injustices.

The Corruption Saaku Campaign - Bengaluru

Bengaluru is witnessing one of the peak periods of protests and campaigns as a result of the reckless attitude of the Government ,here in Karnataka by the BJP, and then at the Centre by the UPA-2.

While Karnataka is being branded the 'Most Corrupt state of India', from being the 'Haven for IT and development', Citizens seem to have finally started bothering about it beyond their coffee discussions and newspaper reads.

Manifesting their concern today, a whole bunch of e-networked tax-paying professionals, students from a set of colleges, few NGO's and the organizers together held the "Corruption Saaku Campaign", as a part of the National Campaign Against Corruption.

I came across this initiative in a mailing list, and was following up their developments for the past week.
Today, I did participate in the Corruption Saaku Campaign to voice my opinion, and more so to see what solutions were being churned and presented in this initiative.

The turn out was really good: There were about 400-500 of us, and the Walk from Kanteerva Stadium to Shantinagar Grounds did make the rest of the public attend to. The T-shirts, posters, stickers, handouts, slogans and banners did convey the intentions of the rally in an attractive manner. The walk lasted about an hour, and at the end of it all of us gathered at the Shantinagar Grounds. I was more keen on the propositions that would be presented at the venue by the Organizers of this event, to get insight into the future actions.

Before analyzing the objectives and measures, and their feasibility presented here, it would be of interest to analyze the variety of people gathered for this campaign.
As mentioned earlier, major portion of it were tax-paying professionals and students, with a few activists from the various NGO's organizing this event. It definitely did not represent all the sections of people who are being affected by this "Multi-headed and tentacled demon called Corruption", as put by one of the participants.
Given that this is the start of a prospective mass movement as portrayed by everyone, it would have been appropriate to include people from all sections of the society. As for today's proceedings, I see no initiatives on those lines happening.

Further, the course of actions, future objectives, which are of more import did end up disappointing me.
The speakers were hinting at empowering the vigilance institutions, increasing the powers of Lokayukta, citizens abstaining from giving bribes, and other measures which I believe would only act at the superficial level. There were no clear measures discussed as to how the "Rotten system"could be cleansed.
It appears that the inherent flaws in the system which invite Corruption to breed would be left untouched,  as a temporary solution the weeds would be chopped off only from the surface.

And no agenda or course of actions were presented which would guide this movement to grow and take a better shape in future.

I am not complaining about the efforts put today. These were genuine enough, but without the long term vision of eradicating a deep rooted parasite like Corruption entirely, it wouldn't bring about any real and permanent change in the system. Attempts to tackle such perils from the surface will only give temporary solace and will be infested again.

All the passion shown today by the concerned citizens should be enveloped together, bringing together people from all sections of the society.
They must be guided with a vision to cleanse the system from its roots. That is when protests, campaigns and attempts to bring about movements such as today's can sustain, and, at the least embark upon the path of salvaging people from the current hostile conditions of the society.