I find the shaky Indian Government’s nervousness and challenged-beyond-the-obvious state of existence very amusing!
Led by an economist by education but politician by profession, the Indian Government is being held at ransom by two individuals who have shown the guts as whistle-blowers.
What needs to be seen is, how strongly the Government dodges the second googly, thrown at them against shielding the corrupt and not being proactive to bring back the black money, hoarded and boarding in foreign banks for ages, back into Indian soil! (This IS a long sentence!!).
Why did Baba Ramdev’s fast shake our leaders to have made go to receive him at the airport, whereas Annaji fasted for days till they agreed to meet him? Were they wary of what the proposed fasting would result across the nation? Is it that they wanted to negotiate with the Baba before he set camp up in the Ramlila Ground? But WHY is the government so scared?
If they had nothing to hide or rather nobody to hide why negotiate and make the entire nation sigh with exasperation on their inability to manage two individuals who have proved they can SHAKE a democratically elected government with a single statement of a decision to go on fast.
What led Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev to go on fast? It is definitely not to be in media’s glare. Not for getting newsprint space! Not to test their popularity! Not to be showered with national, international awards for national leadership.
It is sheer frustration about a spineless, puppet government who lives on corporate houses making policies, corporate deciding how much a common man would pay for gas on alternate weeks with prices hikes going up like a sensex out of control. The blind-to-common man who forms 90% of India but seeing, hearing, doing for the 10% of corporate houses Government brought it on themselves! Now live through the nightmare of common man’s strength of voice and choice!
With no such media coverage, with no super fast communication media, no news channels covering every sigh from the action ground, Mahatma Gandhi woke up an entire nation with his freedom movement. Sheer will, belief in what he wanted for the nation and of course a unique leadership quality missing in the two new-age crusaders against corruption.
I wish the government gets more life into themselves, get back the pawned spine from funding sources to who they have mortgaged the nation and its wealth for helping them hoard funds and make their life safer in a nation reeling under price hike, scams, land takeovers, bursting-on-the-seams population with metros becoming more richer diminishing rural India into micro sized villages lacking in basic amenities.
Will Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev usher in a new-age revolution in India and be known as IT-age crusaders against corruption and black money? Or will they be forgotten as Indian citizens whose voices were hushed by a puppet government?
And will the ‘civil society’ ever know how it is to live in a land of no black money? High hopes!
