The New Arguments

The week gone past has seen a lot of action on the anti-corruption movement front (hope you noticed that I did not say anti-corruption front). Anna Hazare was arrested, released, reached Ramlila Maidan and is now fasting to get the Jan Lokpal bill presented in the Parliament by the government.

In all this milieu, a lot is being said and discussed on Facebook, Twitter, through Emails and on different news websites. The discussion now, is not just about whether the Jan Lokpal Bill is better than the Govt Lokpal Bill (in fact that is not even a discussion point) or if Anna Hazare's fast is legal or whether Anna Hazare being adamant about Jan Lokpal Bill is extra-constitutional. The events have spawned a whole new set of argument points

i. The anti corruption movement is purely a middle class and urban movement - and thus not representative of the entire country.
ii. The supporters of the anti corruption movement are middle class "non-voters" who do not realize the importance/relevance of the constitution hence support the movement as an alternative to the more-difficult systemic ways of tackling corruption
iii. Anna Hazare being portrayed as the MK Gandhi of today
iv. This being a second freedom struggle (third if you factor in 1857)
v. People who are supporting the current anti-corruption movement are themselves corrupt (some have extended the argument to include immoral) in their lives and therefore are being hypocritical by participating in such protests.
vi. Some pro-Anna supporters have also resorted to abusing people who differ with them on online forums - which in turn is being taken as a point to show the irony behind a Gandhian movement
vii. One of the most important points being argued is also if a Lokpal Bill is required at all.
viii. This is all a big tamasha and will get over very soon.
ix. Even if the Lokpal is made into an act, it will not end all corruption in the country.
x. This is an Indian version of the Arab Spring.

I, personally support the movement against corruption. I am not in support of undermining the constitution or parliament - so my opinion would be to have open discussions on the shape of the Lokpal bill. We could even discuss if such a bill is required if other steps can be taken which would ensure that corruption both at the "retail" and "wholesale" levels (not sure who coined these terms) are tackled adequately.

However for everyone who is keenly watching the developments in this movement, I feel there are a few things to know and acknowledge.

i. The level of corruption in our country have reached unprecedented levels. I would like to bring into focus the wholesale corruption like 2G Scam, CWG scam, Cash for votes scam and many more. I do not have the numbers to know if retail corruption has drastically increased in the last few years or during the tenure of current dispensation. The public is fed up of such brazen and nonchalant acts of dishonesty occupying reams of newsprint on a daily basis. For many, the current movement against corruption is a way to show that they have had enough.

ii. It is important for everyone irrespective of whether they are pro/anti/who Hazare to realize that corruption is something they come across on a daily basis and many a times they too contribute to the scourge of corruption. You cannot fight for a Lokpal but not be honest in your conduct. Having said that it is not correct for people to say that first you correct yourself then ask for a Lokpal or an honest dispensation. Not everyone is proactively corrupt and not everyone is interested in fighting the system.

iii. Know the contents of all three versions of the Lokpal Bill - the one proposed by government, one proposed by Team Anna and the one proposed by Team Aruna Roy. It is very important to know what you are protesting for. If you are protesting for a corruption free India you should be open to all means that can achieve the purpose. If you are protesting for the Jan Lokpal Bill then you have to be sure of how it is better than the other versions being proposed and what is going to happen if contentious provisions of the bill are not included in the bill that is finally presented in the Parliament.

iv. This movement is a very important one for our country because it finally has rallied many people on the subject of corruption. However remember that each of us should use this opportunity to become more aware as citizens. We need to engage more with the government institutions if we want to see them change. All of may not agree with what "all" is happening at the Ramlila Maidan.

v. I personally do not feel that the major supporters of this movement are middle class youth who are isolated from the democratic process. I have seen people from varied backgrounds who have come to support the agitation. The motivations maybe different for different people. But the concern is genuine.

Amul and Anna :)

Amul does an Anna.......again!

 

Conversations with a stranger - I

I am sure many of us get into situations where you get to (or have to) talk to a stranger. I too face such situations many a times. But one of the most frequent has been conversations happening on the Scooty on the way to office or the way back from office. I give lift to people and sometimes the conversations that come out of this act are simply amusing. Take this latest one that I had with a school going boy when I gave him a lift.

Boy (In Telegu): What is this sound coming from under the scooty

Me (Not hearing any sound): There is no sound that I can hear. There is no sound.

Boy: No, I can hear a sound.

Me: Well maybe, this scooty is old. Quite possible.

Boy: How old is this scooty

Me: 10 years old

Boy: That means how many months

Me(doing the 12*10 calculation in my mind): 120 months

Boy: Oh ok. How much is it in weeks?

Me (doing the 52*10 calculation in my mind and not accounting for leap years for brevity) : 520 weeks

Boy: Ok. How many days is it?

Me: (doing the ...365*10...) 3650 days

Boy: Ok so 10 years is 120 months, 520 weeks and 3650 days. Do you know Telegu?

Me: Very less.

Boy: Hmm

Me: Which class are you in?

Boy: V class

Me: Which school

Boy: K V Gachibowli

Me: Is it near the stadium

Boy: I don't know

Me: What is your name

Boy: Hinduvardhan

Me: What?

Boy(spelling it out):  H I N D U V A R D H A N

Me: What does it mean?

Boy: I don't know

Me: You should ask your mother. You should know that your name means.

Boy (obviously returning the favor): What is your name

Me: Aishwarya

Boy: What does it mean?

Me: Prosperity

Boy(By this time he has got down and standing and talking): Pros-per-ity Hmm. How old are you?

Me: 30 years old

Boy: Are you married?

Me: Yes and I have a kid

Boy: Oh! You are lucky! For how long have you been married

Me: around one and a half years...

Boy(doing some mental calulations): And you already have a kid???

Me (smiling): My daughter is 20 days old

Boy: Nice

Me: Ok, now I will go

Boy: Ok bye!

As I speed away, he notices that Army sticker on the back of my scooty and asks me "You...Army?" Already having gone a distance, further explanation is not possible so I say yes and proceed.

A Fact Check

Dear Smoochy,

Through this blog post I will try to answer many questions that you have posed in your blog post on Anna Hazare and his means of getting a bill passed. As a disclaimer, I am not directly related to the organization India Against Corruption or anyone who would have a vested interest (apart from clearing the air) in responding to your blog. My only objective is to put things in perspective. For this I will go step by step. You have mentioned in one of your comments that you will respond to people's queries in a follow up post. Since I do not know what you will be writing there, I will decide to update this post depending on your follow up post. Here goes my response:

i. Anna Hazare is hell bent on getting his version of the bill passed: I am not sure where you have gathered this information from but I have personally listened to Prashant Bhushan speak when he was in Hyderabad on 14th August and he said that they are ready to discuss many points of the bill with the government.  Also this article in Tehelka clearly states that Anna Hazare and his team is ready to discuss contentious points of the Lok Pal bill. Then what is Anna Hazare and his civil society coterie hell bent on. They want (and I support) a semblance of honesty and the right spirit of tackling corruption in the bill that the government presents in the Parliament. Have you read the Jan Lokpal Bill and the Lokpal Bill proposed by the government of the day? I hope not. Because ignorance is a better excuse than denial. I would have gone into the details of every point but all of us here are literate and referring to any comparison of the Jan Lokpal and Govt. Lokpal would make the govt's intentions clear regarding the bill they proposed. Here are a few links to comparisons of the two versions - Ombudsmen.in, Outlook, PRS Legislative, The Hindu. If you remember, there was a 10 member committee comprising of 5 ministers and 5 members of the civil society which tried to draft a common bill. You can debate the reason why it ended up in two different bills and we could take it up in another post.

ii. Corruption does not involve only the PM and MPs. Well you are bang on but again looks like you have missed out on reading the proposed drafts of the two sides. Jan Lokpal Bill proposes to cover all public servants including Grade D whereas the government does not do so. It stops at Grade A. You are right when you say everyone CAN be corrupt. You are actually supporting the JLPB by saying this since JLPB is more inclusive in its mandate than the GLPB. Throwing around words like votes can bought is not a very smart argument to make. Do you know whose votes are bought? People who actually vote. This is not to support bribing of voters but just to bring in perspective the people you are talking about. There is also ample evidence of the fact that people take money but vote the way they want. And talking about that, tell me what you would do if 4 strong men come to your shanty (mind you not the gated community) in the dead of the night and ask you to take money. Refusing is not an option.

iii. Talking about the right to protest. Everyone has the right to protest including freedom of place and duration of protest. The only point is one's protest should not cause inconvenience to others. Did you read the 6 conditions that Anna Hazare's team refused to agree to. In my opinion those six conditions go against the very spirit of freedom to protest. The conditions included - the protest should not last more than two and half days, no more than 5000 people should attend the protest, no more than 50 cars and 50 two wheelers should come to the protest. If you feel these conditions are valid well you can stop reading right here. Anna's team was ready to take an undertaking that there would be no violence or any inconvenience because of the protest. Did you know that? Did you listen to Arun Jaitley replying to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh yesterday. He clearly stated:

"The conditions imposed on a protest can be that you won't indulge in violence, you will not disrupt normal life.. but they cannot be such that they finish off your right to protest"

"This is the first time we are hearing these sort of conditions.. how many days will you protest, how big the protest.. A small protest will be allowed, a large protest will not be... You can't lay down impossible conditions that take away the right to protest. This is what the government is trying to do"

"Will the ministers give an undertaking to the Country that the Congress party will not have more than 5,000 people in its protests. It is incredible that there is no place in Delhi where a peaceful protest can happen"

iv.  About the Judiciary, I too have the highest regards for them. But the arguments you make to defend keeping them out of the ambit of the Lokpal are weak. Judiciary is not free of people who are dishonest. Did you watch the impeachment of a judge in the Rajya Sabha today? If you look around there are many more cases of judges' behavior being opposite to what is expected of them. We have every right to be cynical about them and the Lokpal too. And the JLPB has provisions to address this cynicism directed against the judiciary and the Lokpal itself. Having said that, I am not adamant on keeping the judiciary in. Your arguments still stand defeated.

v. You have given examples of CBI and CVC - do you know most the good work being done by CBI is on cases that are being monitored by the honorable Supreme Court. CBI has always been used as a tool to take up positions which protect the dispensation of the day and investigate the opposition.Have you never wondered why particular cases become hot only when a particular party comes to power. CVC is a recommendatory body and its findings and suggestions are not binding on the government - so giving example of CVC is also not a smart thing to do. Karnataka Lokayukta is a good example. What if someone like you had said the same thing about setting up a K'taka Lokayukta in 1983 - there are institutions already to deal with such things.

vi. What is your point when you mention TN Seshan and Santosh Hegde? Are you saying that institutions are as powerful as the individual heading them? I thought you started off your post supporting the opposite point of view.

vii. If you have to write about the country you need to know how it works (and not just how it works on paper). Your comment about the elections of India is an example - The government, which is properly elected by the majority of the people of India through free, fair elections - will not have the final say when it comes to making laws. - key points are properly and majority. According to one estimate Congress got around 28% of the votes polled in the elections of 2009. Another estimate says 30%. Your argument of a majority suported government stands hollow.

So next time you feel like voicing your opinion either leave judgments aside or think hard and think twice :) No hard feelings. Still respect your decision of choosing to not support the campaign against corruption.

Anna Ke Liye Ek Panna (A Page for Anna)

16th August 2011 has been an eventful day so far. Anna Hazare was arrested while I was still sleeping. Last night, when I went to sleep I was still mulling over whether I should join the protest or not. Today morning when I was leaving for office, I had decided I will go to office and from there I will "see" whether I should go for the protest at Indira Park in Hyderabad. The "seeing" is a well known delaying and cancelling tactic we all use to not do something we should have done and absolve ourselves of not doing it.

Before leaving I decided to watch the news and found out that he had been arrested. Now the "seeing" had to be changed to "deciding" and then, maybe, "doing". I kick-started the scooty and decided to go to Indira Park and from there I will "see" what happens. I ended up staying at the protest for around 5 hours.

Scores have taken to the streets in major cities of the country demanding the release of their "beloved" Anna Hazare. To those who have whole heartedly pledged allegiance to Anna and to those who are sitting on the fence not sure (if what he is asking for and if the things he is asking for are right), it is important to know as much detail as possible about the clash between Jan Lokpal and Govt Lokpal (Jokepal as it is being termed).

To start with you can listed to this speech by Arvind Kejriwal at IIT Madras where he explains Team Anna's stand and many other questions like who gave them the right to represent civil society etc.,

 

[The video is hosted in 4 parts on Youtube]

Shoma Chaudhry's article in Tehelka also explains Team Anna's latest stand.

I hope once you read these you would actually be more informed about what the current stand-off is about.

Having read these, you can now see that what happened today is not necessarily about Jan Lokpal. It is about a citizen's right to protest peacefully and whether the government of the day would respect his right to do that. Now government apologists would again cite that the man in question refused to abide by 6 of the 22 conditions laid down by the Delhi Police. Conditions like the fast/protest should not last more than two and half days, no more than 5000 people should come and no more than 50 cars and 50 motorcycles should be there are roadblocks put only to sabotage the protests.

On a personal note, I am not adamant that only the Jan Lokpal be adopted but looking at the government's proposed bill makes you laugh (or cry depending on where in the frustration cycle you stand).

Please remember that with voting does not end your engagement with the polity and politics. We need to be citizens conscious of our duties and rights. Read more, not just about Anna, Arvind Kejriwal, The Bhushans and Kiran Bedi but also about the government's policies on various issues.

Lastly, there is absolutely no reason you should be bogged down by comments like "You voted the current government to power", "You get the kind of government you deserve". While these are true to an extent they should not bog you down. They should just remind you of the fact that being a responsible citizen does not end with voting.

What does Freedom mean to us?

Another Independence Day, Streams of messages on Facebook and Twitter wishing each other "Happy Independence Day. Proud to be Indian". Sometimes I feel when we say "Proud to be Indian", do we want to say "Proud to be Indian despite what India is" or do we really mean "Proud to be Indian for what India is".

Would I be wrong if I say that most of us, netizens, never actually got to experience first-hand what it means not to be free. All of us have grown up in a country which is free in definition . But don't you think freedom from British is a very narrow definition of freedom. P Sainath wrote the contents of his book "Everyone loves a good drought" in the year 1992-93. That was a good 45 years after independence and if you have read the book you would realize that many people were not free even then - in all probability their conditions worsened because now they were victimized by their own (governments). In 2011, people in many parts of India are still struggling to make ends meet.

Is it enough of just feed old people or orphaned children's and visit them for a day to justify your place in society? What is our contribution to making the country a free one in the true sense. Today, my friend's maid has to buy a gas cylinder refill at Rs 600 because she does not have a proper LPG connection. That is because she does not have any documents to provide to the LPG distribution company. We buy it it at rates, subsidized for people who do not even have the documents. An irony indeed! So the country is free but a person is not free to buy a gas cylinder.

Sadly, one is reminded of this great line from Animal Farm "All animals are equal. Some are more equal than the others". In our context, "All Indians are free. Some are more free than the others." On this Independence Day, I would request all of those who read this to remember, you are only as free as the society you live in. Anything else is a bubble that is liable to burst.

Happy Independence Day!

Akelapan and Azadi

When I read an excerpt from Aman Sethi's A Free Man in the Caravan Magazine, I was immediately drawn to his narrative style. His description of Delhi went a little more deeper than the other descriptions I had read in articles and books. Maybe, because he talked about Delhi in context of its people and not its history and buildings - old or new. The book revolves around Mohammad Ashraf, a daily labourer (dehaadi), his friends and the stories of their lives.

At one point Ashraf makes a very pertinent point about Azadi(Freedom) and Akelapan(Loneliness). You are truly free only when you are alone.

According to Ashraf, Munna's story illustrates that the life of the mazdoor is equal parts azadi and akelapan, or solitude. "Today I can be in Delhi", says Ashraf. "Tomorrow I could well be in a train halfway across the country; the day after, I can return. This is freedom that comes only from solitude. Isn't that so, Munna"

Another beautiful part is where Aman talks about the various brands of country-made liquor.

Made from the finest commonly available ingredients. Everyday liquor is not for everyone. New recruits often shun this intoxicating brew, in favour of more bombastic brands like Hulchul that shakes the very foundations of man's being.; Jalwa Spiced Country Liquor that speaks of youth, fire and passion; Toofan, infused with the pent-up vigour and vitality of an impending storm; and Ghadar Desi that is the perfect antidote to colonial oppression. Enclosed in a squarish, clear-glass bottle, the name printed across in simple bilingual lettering, Everyday makes no such promises; its prosaic name serving as a reminder of an incontrovertible truth: Everyday - for those who crave it every day, day after day.

The book grips you from its first page and even though a short one, it needs to be relished at east to really enjoy it, appreciate Aman's keen sense for detail and the keen sense of language that slowly eases you into understanding the people and situations he talks about. A must read for everyone who loves reading. In the end I leave you with another gem which gives a great insight into people's thinking.

"We will always remember you, Aman Bhai", says Lalloo, as if he doubts I will ever come back. "We won't forget you, especially how your sister went and helped poor Satish."
In my five years at Bara Tooti, it is my sister's underwear purchase that has the most resonance. Not that I admitted Satish into the hospital, or the hundreds of hours we spent together. No, all that pales in comparison to the fact that my sister - a girl! - went into a TB ward to bring underwear for a man she had never met before. "People like that are hard to find, Aman Bhai"