Fight Against Corruption: Baba Ramdev New Savior?

The righteous minded hates corruption and wants this evil eradicated from India or possibly form planet Earth. Therefore, when Anna Hazare launched a movement in April, 2011 he immediately enjoyed unprecedented mass support and captured the national stage. Inspired by Anna’s achievement the immensely rich yoga guru Baba Ramdev jumped in the fray too with a movement against a related factor of black money. History was created.

As the internal contradictions within Team Anna grew mass support for the movement began to wane. The Mumbai fast in December, 2011 was a terrible flop and the situation further worsened with Anna Hazare falling sick frequently and going on a silence vow. Team Anna was plunged into severe introspection. 

Maybe inspired by Baba Ramdev’s star power, this time Anna Hazare decided to join hands and the two cult figures celebrated their union with a one-day token fast in Delhi in June, 2012. Sometime later both of them held a joint press conference and announced two major movement programs. Anna would start an indefinite fast from July 25 for a strong anti-corruption Bill and Baba Ramdev would launch an indefinite movement against black money. The venue was the national capital, New Delhi.

Team Anna sat into a fast with Anna to join later if necessary. It became inevitable after a pathetic lack of support. The Baba attended the fast on the third day and infused crowds into it, but the supporters stayed there as long as he was there. Lot of people criticized the Baba for trying to highjack the movement.

With no surging crowd and a disinterested government Anna Hazare turned political on 3^rd of August. Three days later he disbanded Team Anna saying the team had outlived its objectives and they would no longer negotiate with the government for a strong anti-corruption Bill. There will be a political party instead to enter into Parliament and change the system from within.

As planned, Baba Ramdev started his movement from today in Delhi. The crowds surged to nearly 20,000 people thanks to the Baba’s star power, but it was a far cry from the 900,000 he boasted of bringing in.

Now, the most significant development. The Baba announced a three day fast first and then the next program if the government did not relent by that time. And, it was not only a fight against black money, but also for a strong anti-corruption Bill with the basic elements demanded by Anna Hazare. He expressed his vow to always support Anna’s cause, but unlike Team Anna he had no political agenda and he would never attack or target any political party or politicians.

While the righteous wants corruption removed the very fight against the evil is becoming utterly complex and replete with question marks. The government sticking to its wait and watch policy and therefore the main opposition party, BJP, naturally is openly extending support to Baba Ramdev.

The movement is also becoming charmingly open for both corrupt and non-corrupt to jump in. For many corrupt souls it provides the platform to show off; in fact, it provides retirement benefit bonanza too. Many retired persons who dedicated their lives to greed and corruption and made a dirty lot of money can join in for a ‘safe’ social service. There is hardly any surprise in the poster incident today when Baba Ramdev’s aide Balkrishna who is in jail for a forgery case was shown along with the greatest freedom fighters of India including Mahatma Gandhi!

The politics of corruption goes on unabated!

Politics: A Question About Legitimacy!

Article first published as Indian Politics: The Legitimacy Syndrome! on Technorati.

One has to search the pages of history frantically to find when exactly someone might have called an elected government an illegitimate child. If the search was unsuccessful do not despair as yet, because it just happened in the largest democracy of the world. It happens only in India, if you want to buzz! 

It happened right in the floor of the lower house of the Indian Parliament. It happened in the very first day of the monsoon session that started today, Wednesday, the 8^th of August, 2012. It was expected the opposition political parties would storm the house on several burning issues ranging from ethnic violence to ongoing scams. But nobody could anticipate the desperation to reach such depraved levels. 

And, the question of legitimacy was raised by none other than the senior most opposition leader of the country, the former Deputy Prime Minister of India, the opposition leader of the lower house of Parliament till 2010, and the octogenarian, L K Advani. He had been one of the pioneering figures of the main opposition party of India that is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the consequent opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that got elected to rule the country from 1999 to 2004. Under pressure from fundamentalist groups who wanted him to withdraw in favor of younger politicians Advani gave up as president of the BJP in 2005 and from the post of the leader of opposition in Parliament in 2010. At that point of time it was believed the grand old politician had finally retired. But it was hardly so. He went on with his Prime Ministerial aspirations and even countered the candidature of a much younger and dynamic Narendra Modi. His so-called goodwill trips across the country in chariots continued too. He never resisted from making political waves by uttering or doing something unexpected. 

Only the other day LK Advani shocked allin NDA and in BJP by declaring that the Prime Minister after the General Elections of 2014 would be a non-Congress and non-BJP candidate. Many leaders criticized his as already accepting defeat. Maybe the grand old man saw an opportunity to build on the ‘unexpected’ and wanted to make amends as soon as possible. 

So while attacking the ruling coalition on the continuing ethnic violence in the state of Assam Advani said he felt the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2) government was like an ‘illegitimate child’. The unprecedented remark drew unprecedented angry reactions from the members of the Congress-led UPA-2 and disrupted the proceedings of the Parliament. A normally calm and quiet Congress President Sonia Gandhi seethed with anger and agitation and asked her colleagues to demand a withdrawal of the remark. She asserted that a democratically elected government could not be defamed like this. 

That the Assam violence issue has rocked Parliament on the very first day of the session is perfectly legitimate, because the long pending crisis needs to be solved immediately. But the ‘storm’ raised by LK Advani was not a legitimate one. The Assam ethnic crisis dates back to pre-Independence times and exactly what have Advani and his party and his alliance been doing all these decades? If he has realized the immensity of the problem only today then his very realization is illegitimate. Politicization of the human tragedy must be stopped if anyone genuinely wants to solve it NOW! 

With the storm getting beyond him the veteran politician did withdraw his comment saying that his remark was in fact made in a different context. Perhaps or not he was blissfully unaware about how the bigots and the reactionary forces of the largest democracy had already started to feed and build on his remark taking the ‘depravity’ to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origins. 

The damage was done. Another low was achieved in Indian politics.

Cricket T20: Pathan Stars As India Thump Sri Lanka!

Pathan Gets Mahela!

Irfan Pathan who came back strongly in the Micromax Cup cricket one-day series captured the first three Sri Lankan wickets as India won the one-off T20 encounter against Sri Lanka today at Pallekele by 39 runs.

Sri Lanka won the toss and put India in. RMS Eranga who made his T20 debut today got the wicket of Gautam Gambhir in his first over and the second of the innings, and he had a terrific achievement of getting a first-over wicket in all his debuts in Tests, ODIs and T20. Then it was the Micromax Cup Man of the Series, Virat Kohli again who took absolute control of the innings first with Ajinkya Rahane and then with Suresh Raina. But India was not allowed to run away to a huge score by some consistent Sri Lankan bowling and fielding. Virat was the third down for an individual 68 in the 17^th over with the team score reading 129/3. Skipper Dhoni joined Suresh Raina and the duo took the score to 155 through some hard work. RMS Eranga finished with two Indian wickets for Sri Lanka. Indian lost only three wickets, but that advantage did not reflect in the total. A target of 156 off 20 overs looked immensely gettable for Sri Lanka at home.

But Irfan Pathan reversed that emphatically. With effective swing he clean bowled Dilshan in the very first over; got Thanranga caught by Raina in the third over and then captured a settled Mahela Jaywardene leg before wicket in the fifth over. He reduced Sri Lanka to 35/3 and the team never recovered from that. Ashwin bowled Thirimanne in the 10^th over. Mathews and Mendis tried to offer some resistance for the fifth wicket, but when Ashok Dinda removed Mathews at the team’s score of 96 in the 13^th over it was all over. The remaining wickets fell in a heap with Dinda coming up with 4 scalps, Ashwin, and Umesh Yadav who also made his T20 debut today got one each. Virat Kohli contributed too by bowling three tight overs for only 13 runs in an important juncture. The highest score of the Sri Lankan innings was just 31 made by Mathews and the last three wickets fell at the final score of 116. A thrilling match finally ended in rout as India won by a huge 39 runs.  The Scorecard:

Irfan Pathan was adjudged the man of the match and his comeback is a good positive of this Sri Lanka tour. India dominated the proceeding right through by winning the one-day series 4-1 and the one off T20 match convincingly. They come back to Sri Lanka again to play in the T20 World Cup starting on September 18, 2012. Before that India play New Zealand at home for a brief series to two tests and two one dayers.