Anna Hazare is not following FB and Twitter posts

A movement that began in April with an Independence Day ultimatum is on in full force now thanks to Anna Hazare, a man known best for his developmental initiatives - Ralegaon Siddhi in Ahmednagar in particular - a drought-prone village which began seeing year-round water supply, a grain bank, a school and no poverty after his efforts rallied the villagers into becoming self-sufficient and empowered. The blatancy of the Commonwealth scam, the 2G spectrum allocation scam, shamed the average Indian, but a sense of 'what am I going to do, anyway' crept in as always and we kept watching the TV screens in horror as scam TV started hogging prime time TV space! Till one day, one man decided that enough is enough. A man with a track record, given that his crusade got the Right to Information act enacted and this act has benefited people by the millions! Very good! It is high time someone told our Government that we are a democracy and though we may be too involved in the throes of everyday life, at some point, some of us care about how we are perceived in this small world!

His protest has managed to galvanize the average Indian, and that is heartening. It feels good to know that people are gathering in places to express their solidarity and also joining Anna Hazare in his fast. Finally, after putting up with terror attacks, the Government's damp squib responses to terror abatement, image damage in the wake of scams, the average Indian perhaps believes he has had enough. And Bravo to that!

But while the protest has managed to rally people together against the ineffectiveness of the Indian Government, it has managed to stoke the imagination of the 'Social network patriot', as I'd like to call that breed! The timing of Anna's protest has been very opportune for the average Indian. Tahrir Sqaure is fresh in everyone's mind and the Facebook Revolution has seemed like a fun thing to do for everyone! People suddenly got fired up, seeing how one FB message overthrew the rulers in Tunisia and 40 years of dictatorial rule in Egypt, and completely shook up the Middle East. Urban India suddenly wanted their own Facebook saga. And the tweets and status updates began in April and lasted a couple of days. And on August 16th, they began again. Trite comments like "Anna...I am with you" or "Down with corruption" are all over the place. And I wonder why. Does someone believe that these messages are going to scare the Indian Government? Does someone believe that FB updates are going to be collected and sent by Anna Hazare to the Government? Does someone think that such messages imply patriotism? I still remember how in 2008, when Mumbai was besieged by Kasab and his cohorts, a friend of mine in the US kept asking me in Mumbai for updates, as he wanted to update his tweets and report about the attack in real time on Twitter! Why, I exclaimed then and I ask now.

If one really wants to 'Root out this evil corruption', one needs to realize that we are ourselves at fault. And little drops do make an ocean, but not on Facebook. One must stop rolling that 100 rupee note inside his palm while whispering to the traffic policeman - 'Kaka, zaaoo dya na', when booked for a traffic offence. One must stop investing in houses where the 'black' or unaccounted and untaxed cash component is 5 times the white or taxed amount. One has to stop bribing Ticket Collectors on trains while traveling ticketless. And then, when every young Indian is rallied in this manner, it makes sense to ask the Government to 'root out this evil', by looking at the pay scales of Government employees who are most prone to bribery. We can then ask the Government to enact laws that have a self-correcting mechanism when it comes to corruption.  We can ask for better transparency in property deals and the like, and that can in effect root out asset bubbles! 

And  then we can show that the final power does indeed lie with the people, when we choose not to elect a corrupt government. The power does lie in our hands, but not through 'hip and happening' social networking routes which go more like 'one status update, a dozen likes, end of story.' True power needs true words and real, sustained action.

I support the fight for a corruption-free India.... do you?

The past few weeks have seen upheavals follow each other. First came the barrage of scams and scamsters in the Indian scene, and while India was busy getting disillusioned with almost everything from politics to sport to industry, a 26 year old immolated himself in Tunisia, setting off a snowballing domino revolution of sorts. The revolution spread from square to square toppling Governments, creating unrest across the middle east. Last checked, Tunisia and Egypt had toppled leaders, Libyan Gaddafi was at his rambling best and now Syria, Bahrain and Yemen were also joining the revolt bandwagon. Not wanting to feel left out, our own country too is debating, wondering, and getting charged up about an all-out war on corruption!

I, personally am a huge fan of people movements, akin to Munshi Premchand stories where the protagonist, who all along having been ill-treated by the 'mean Britisher' finally turns around and hits his 'master' with a stick! Gandhiji's Satyagraha which formed the basis of winning India independence from British rule is the starting point. More recently, Justice for Jessica was a classic case where miscarriage of justice was brought out to the open and people fought for the blatantly smirking Manu Sharma to be booked for cold blooded murder. So, non-violent populist protest movements are not new to India. In Tunisia, ages of despotic rule despite simmering resentment, perhaps reached a tipping point and the youth's self-immolation was the trigger the already incensed nation needed to break free. And Tunisia, perhaps was that precedent, Egypt needed to set her revolutionary wheels in motion. Yes, the current Middle Eastern revolutionary spree is nothing short of a fairy tale - one small event sets off a 'Facebook' revolution of sorts and manages to topple regime after regime. But the issue is, not all fairy tales have predictable endings! Like say, in Egypt, people now are suffering from revolutionary fatigue, the army that took over comes across as an equal, if not a bigger devil in terms of human rights violations, the economy is in a shambles, tourism is dead, and the void looks alarming, to say the least.

Why am I bringing this up here? Well, Anna Hazare's current movement is my trigger for this thought. The slew of scams that India has seen does make me feel rather ashamed to say that I belong to this country as it stands today. I've almost forgotten the look of the newspaper without a scamster headline screaming at my face. Winning the ICC World Cup perhaps helped salvage some pride, though the up coming Indian Premier League (IPL) brings back memories of blatant frauds and scams of less than a year ago. The way scamsters and Indian politicians work hand in glove is disgusting, to say the least. I know for a fact that a greater part of the Indian youth has lost faith in Indian politicians. No doubt, democracy is lovely, the freedom to choose who governs me is excellent in concept. But, given the kind of people I see ruling over me, I feel that I'd be happier being disenfranchised! It is election time in Tamil Nadu, and laptops, TV sets, gold, clothes, money are being promised to all and sundry. Protesters are being harassed, thrashed even and the brazenness of it all makes one's blood boil!

Having an independent entity oversee the moral uprightness of people who govern us, looks like a plan that can deliver us from such disgrace as what faces us in India, today. The fact that the Lokayuktas would comprise upright, respected members of civil society is a shot in the arm. The fact that they would have rights to press charges and prosecute any wrongdoer who might be in power seems most necessary. The fact that those in power cannot protect their own, hopes to ensure no more Jessica Lal cases, or instances of Marie Antoinette, steeped in arrogant power! It is a new model, where we want a stand alone entity apart from democratically elected leaders, put in place by us, to keep a check on those who govern us. The old, existing model has clearly failed, as there was the office of the Central Vigilance Commissioner, appointed by Parliament to check corruption, which, as it turns out, was toppled as the CVC himself was kicked out for being corrupt in a palm oil scam!

So, why not try the new model? Maybe those who govern us, need a higher power that governs them, because clearly, depending on a conscience and God is a non-existent concept vis-a-vis Indian politicians. No doubt, this is not a panacea. In my humble opinion, I would perhaps be happier saying I am an Indian if such a body did come into place, and did manage to keep a tab on the corrupt corridors of power in India. This revolution is not a be-all and end-all. But it is not a trigger happy FB revolution, either. If not for anything, I, like scores of Indian youngsters, want to give this concept a fair chance. So, my bit for this movement starts with 'Here' is what you need to know about the current Anna Hazare movement for enacting the Lokpal bill.

Swindler's list

It's crazy to observe our extreme sense of adjustment to everything that happens around us in India. Being a Bambaiyya, I have grown up in an atmosphere of adjustment to everything - from adjusting to accommodate a fourth passenger on a train seat that can fit just 3 people, to adjusting to traffic snarls caused by snail-paced infrastructure development. One spends a good deal of time and effort fighting for the basics - electricity, water, transport, a house-maid, and almost everything else! And at the end of the exercise, you end up becoming a pro at adjustment. But extrapolating this sense of adjustment to a greater political and economic arena and expecting the average Indian to adjust to swindling behavior by a handful of crooks who choose to not just swindle the nation of a few crores and in some cases a few lac crores, but also to make the average taxpayer look absolutely foolish is perhaps stretching the 'thoda adjust please' concept a bit too far.

That's why, a new scam story hitting the papers each day is not just disgusting to me as an average Indian, but it's also extremely frustrating to know that while I and maybe half a billion other working people in my country are much too busy working, a handful of characterless and morally dead individuals choose to subvert the very meaning of the word law and turn every single public office into a viable money manufacturing machine! And each day, the stories get murkier. Long long ago, a supposed clean PM got embroiled in a scandal involving kickbacks on a defense deal. Then came a couple of huge stock market scams involving forgeries, and massive insider dealing. In the recent past, we've had scams in real estate, with benaami properties, nameless bank accounts, unverifiable customers swindling huge sums of money, nepotistic dealings by people in power - you name it, we have it and if we don't just wait for a bit!

And now, we have the massive 2G scam, wherein as a dirty, murky plot comes to the fore, one gets more and more disillusioned about the whole civil system as a whole! So we have the 2G spectrum airwaves to be used by telecom companies (demand side) sold the same by our government (supply). The Govt sells it dirt cheap to some unrecognizable players for peanuts. You think the Government has been cheated in the bargain, but as it turns out, it is just the taxpayer and the economy of the country that have been cheated. The spectrum sold by the govt for peanuts, finds buyers for over 10 times that price, amongst huge global players, begging the question why they were sold dirt cheap in the first place. And in this story, the main characters allegedly range from a ruffian Indian political party and all its cronies to one of the doyens of Indian industry, to countless babus in places of power.

And while the media has enough stories to fill reams and reams of paper, hog airwaves 24x7, one hopes that something would be done about the perpetrators of such dubious acts. Although, I do wonder, while staring in disgust at the blatant indecency of the whole mess, why must we believe that those, smart enough to conceptualize and pull off such a swindle, might just not be smart enough to buy their way out as well! After all, even a 0.01% of 1 lac 76000 crores can cover anyone's legal fees plus bribes for 7 generations!!!

The Corruption Wrought Games

India is more often than not associated with happy endings. From candy floss movies, where strife in a family ends with everyone giving everyone else a big hug to the inevitable cricket match where somehow, India manages to turn a corner and win. But somewhere, this obsession with happy endings has perhaps led us into becoming delusional!

The Commonwealth games form the perfect example. Somehow the organizers took the meaning of the word Commonwealth literally. Too literally! The Telegraph had this interesting timeline - »Nov 2003 New Delhi beats Hamilton, Canada, for right to stage the 2010 Games, after promising to give each country $100,000.

»Oct 2007 It emerges that work on the athletes’ village is yet to begin, while the new stadium cannot be built yet as the old one is still standing.

»Nov 2008 The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) insists the Games will go ahead despite the Mumbai terror attacks, in which at least 175 people are killed.

»Sept 2009 The Indian government reveals that two-thirds of venues are running late.

»Oct 2009 Michael Fennell, president of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), gives Delhi a final warning over the delays and sets up a review panel to monitor progress.

»Dec 2009 Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, visits Delhi and is said to have voiced “serious concerns” over the security arrangements.

»Feb 2010 Al-Qaeda’s Pakistani arm directly threaten the Games, warning that athletes and spectators who attend will face “consequences”.

»April 2010 Indian officials ban teams from bringing their own armed security staff with them, although security advisors will be permitted.

»May 2010 Officials warn that the Nehru Stadium and aquatics centre may not be finished in time, after the CGF identify 38 ’critical issues’.

»July 2010 The first venue is completed, over 14 months behind schedule.

»Sept 2010 Organisers play allay fears about a dengue fever outbreak in the city. Meanwhile, two Taiwanese tourists are injured when gunmen fire at a bus in Delhi. Hours later a car bomb explodes nearby. Police blame the attacks on “disgruntled youths”.

We had bid for the event 7 years ago. 7 years is enough to transform any place. Bangalore is a classic case in point - from a retirees paradise it has been transformed into a bustling IT hub within a decade. So achieving the target of rising to the fore on the surge of the games seemed possible.Not just for the romantic mind that believed in the power of belief, but even for the practical minded ones, who wanted proof of feasibility.

But one small point that had been forgotten, was the fact that Bangalore grew on the basis of free economic forces and that free markets ensured that demand met supply and caused a point of developmental equilibrium. In case of CWG, Classical Economics was left to the wind and the Government had stepped in! So by all definitions, things were bound to go haywire. That any form of intervention causes serious chaos is true and instances of the same can be seen on Mumbai roads as well - signals manned by cops are almost always in a state of chaos. But this story got all the more murky, just because everyone has been too busy with kickbacks and corruption over the past 7 years. And suddenly when the event was 7 months away, people felt that they had to somehow pull it off! And our belief in Karan Joharesqe stories made us believe we might just be ready with the whole village and infrastructure by the D-Day at a fraction of the cost, since most of the money had already been spent filling pockets!

And now, we're at a point of no return. It is going to be an embarrassment no matter what! If the event fails, India will never be a strong contender for any event of world consequence, except of course the Cricket World Cup, which has the blessings of the BCCI and having already greased the necessary palms, it will go on without any hitches. If we pull off the CWG, the victory will forever be tainted by the intense story of corruption, broken bridges, potholes, dengue, and athletes concerned about their own safety. If anything good is to come out of this mess, let's just hope that the world realizes the corrupt society we live in in India, with black money propping up the vibrant Indian economy. And let's hope India manages to salvage it's pride by refraining from any future attempts at showcasing itself in the global arena, since the showcase primarily has skeletons!

P.S. It really disgusts me to portray such a picture of my own country, which, save for such terrible ethics is a wonderful place to be in!