AAP : Delhi Resignation and contesting on 432 seats in 2014 Lok Sabaha elections.

Arvind Kejriwal resigned from the post of chief minister on 14th February, 2014 after 49 days of governance in Delhi. Since then it is being said that a significant part of his supporter base has eroded away. I am not sure if “erosion” is a justified word to use but for sure the way he has resigned has created doubts in the mind of people & his genuine supporters.  I can confirm the same based on my participation in AAP’s volunteer Varanasi calling campaign. It is an important issue and hence I thought of putting down my thoughts on this.

Regarding quitting, Arvind has explained his reasoning at least 100 times. But for the moment, let’s not be MODIyabind type of blind followers and let’s try to analyze this move critically but at the same time logically. Let’s assume that it was largely a political move. But It was nonetheless very important, if not smart, move (more on this in last section). While being a chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal (AK) could not have taken the AAP to national level before 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He would always have been entangled in Delhi in one or the other nuisance created by political rivals. While in government, he was getting engaged more and more in futile issues like attack on Rakhi Bidlan, Somnath Bharti issue, Binny Singh’s compromise etc. So quitting, although on the grounds of principles, was a gamble that was played in the hope that people will take it as a sacrifice and will appreciate it and in the meantime he will be totally free for Lok Sabha elections before re-elections are held in Delhi. Unfortunately, the move has backfired (to some extent) and it is ok as in a big movement/revolution like this for a goal as large as like “corruption free India”, one loses some battles and wins some. In the end, what decides the fate is your perseverance and the means you adopted to reach the goal.

However, based on my discussion with people in Varanasi Calling campaign, unfortunately it is not the resignation but the way AK/AAP made it has caused more damage. In my opinion, he should have first created the news that he is going to resign after 7 days and should have borrowed some time to do direct communication with the people of Delhi. As it happened very quickly and people didn’t get any time to listen or react, his political rivals took this as a great opportunity to fill the vacuum with Kejriwal’s negative publicity in terms of his credibility, administration, governance ability and all. I am calling it unfortunate because it probably could have been anticipated given that our media is highly compromised (please see the video below for confirmation & IT IS NOT FROM AAP) . Surprisingly, international media is more hopeful than India media on AAP/AK for strengthening Indian democracy based on principles. ( another link , and here is another very important one on communal riots in India; 🙂 Isn’t it funny that people living outside India seem to be more concerned about India 🙂 )

Now comes the most important question of this discussion. Is it right to expand at national level ? Isn’t AAP stretching too much by contesting at 440+ seats.
I believe AAP is doing absolutely the right and very important thing. In fact it was one of the smartest and most important thing to do after Delhi election. By expanding at national level, AAP has formed a basic structure at national level and has connected all the good people together. It has put them in a garland like beads. Just read about their candidates from the list of AAP’s candidates : Soni Sori (Bastar, Chhatisgarh), Anoop Nautiyal (Tehri Garhwal), Rajmohan Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi), Shastri ( Grandson of Lal Bahadur Shastri), Tilya Devi ( Nobel Peace prize nominee, Bihar) , Gul Panag ( Chandigarh) , Javed Jaffrey (Lucknow), Meera Sanyal (Bombay), Medha Patekar (Bombay) …… list is long. In fact 70% of people are those who have done something for country or society without being selfish. AAP has brought all these good people together. You might call them as activist and media might paint them as anarchists (after taking money from rivals) but the fact remains that these people have been fighting in their life for the right of the others and not for themselves. Isn’t it good for any democracy that unselfish people are being promoted. May be none of these people will win in this election but imagine even if they are in opposition and united what a support for the honesty and transparency in administration will it be. When AAP was doing anything good in Delhi it was creating ripples in whole NCR region. Now wonder even if 15 good people win from AAP in whole country and do the good work, what kind of positive impact it will have nationwide. It was such a necessary move that for this even a big & unfortunate step like resignation from Delhi sounds logical to me.

In the end, Well actually anything can be taken from both positive and negative perspectives. The sad part with India is that we are not trained to form our own perspective at all. In fact, we are trained and brought up in a way where you don’t question your senior’s (parent & teachers) perspective. Currently, media has become a big senior in our lives. We all just come home tired and grab anything that is thrown at us by media. Just imagine if Anna comes in 2019 saying I have formed a party, please vote for it. All the rivals and media will start throwing the jibe that where were you all these years. Now, imagine talking to people outside Delhi to be ready to vote for AAP in 2019 as we will expand then. Everyone’s reaction would be like , yea it’s ok we will see it then. And for that matter those who find something to criticize in AAP now, would have found even in 2019 if AAP had just remained in Delhi till 2019. They were anyway criticizing AAP even in during those 49 days when AAP was writing the history of good governance.

The challenge for AAP is that we, the common men of India, are so busy in our lives that we hardly get the time to dig the truth. And with Rs. 30,000 crore being spent in this election, NaMo to kya Dawood Ibrahim ki bhi wave banayee ja sakti hai. I discussed this with one of my friend and asked him where you get the information about AAP from. He says, news channels, newspaper and all. When I asked him, do you follow AAP’s facebook page as it takes only 5 minutes per day to get to know what they are doing. He said no and in fact looked upon me suspiciously as if I was asking him to read an extremist literature or some Lal Kitaab :). That’s sad but true. On the other hand, we all know but want to ignore the fact that a significant portion of media is compromised from medium to worst levels. I am not saying that everything is compromised but to a large extent of 30,000 crore is going in buying media space only.

Holy Nar once said it aptly, “We who are interested in relative truth have to keep digging for it and not let ourselves be sucked under.“

 Jai Hind.

PLEASE WATCH FOLLOWING LINKS (not from AAP) BEFORE YOU DIGEST THE FOOD GIVEN BY INDIAN MEDIA TO US ON DAILY BASIS.

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Corrupt Media : Part 2

We have seen earlier – How paid media undermines Indian democracy and how paid media spreads the propaganda.  Here is an another example of the same.  It was recently said that 500 crore has been allocated for PR, ad Majors for Rahul Gandhi.   It is nothing new as during the latest Gujarat assembly elections, 414 cases of paid media were confirmed by Election Commission.

With this background, I wanted to show How Paid media works ? Once again to tarnish the image of people absolutely untrue and catchy headlines are put on the front page but when you go to the link, truth is far from the claim.  Here, on 21st January, Times of India  puts a catchy headline – Kejriwal puts Delhi under siege, launches Lok Sabha campaign. But in the link to the article there is nothing related to the claim about Loksabha campaign. It was, as expected, neither said by Kejriwal bit moreover newspaper also didn’t explain how did they reach the conclusion.  In fact when you open the link, headline of article changes to – “Arvind Kejriwal puts Delhi under siege, asks honest cops to join him” . Earlier we have seen the cases that ToI alters  the content of article and then will put the false claims related to Lok Sabha campaign. So, we have saved the copy of article as of today.

I read it as a comment on a social media site – “India is the best place and now is the right time if you want to makes million and are in the business of news.”  I completely agree on that. ……….What ? Did someone say it is not good and is harmful for our society ? Who cares. After all, even those who fight for us are considered as anarchist.

Arvind Kejriwal : Why doesn’t he take security.

It is true that a person like Arvind Kejriwal comes once in a century in a country. He is intelligent, determined, patriotic and above all “fearless”. Every aam aadmi of India, who is not corrupt, wants him to be successful in his dream of corruption free India and prays for him to be alive forever. We all know that he might be little inexperienced [1] but his intentions are honest. He is the hope of aam aadmi and that is why aam aadmi is scared for his life. On the other hand, Arvind Kejriwal says that life and death is in the hands of god and he doesn’t want to take any security and wants to end the VIP culture. This has raised fears among his well wishers. Even AAP supporters consider it to be a big risk………………………. But I believe, here, we are missing the point completely. I would like to share my thoughts on this.

First of all, it is not good for a nation to be dependent on one person. India should focus more on producing more Arvind Kejriwal(s) every year rather than protecting one Arvind Kejriwal forever. This is something U.S.A. has focused for last 100 years. U.S.A. sets up the environment for producing more and more Einsteins every year rather than celebrating that some person of US origin has become the MD of some company in other part of the world.

Secondly, we are totally missing the point of Arvind Kejriwal here. This guy is asking us to be fearless and come forward against the corruption and we are instead scaring him also by thinking of the worst and negative all the time. He is trying to get us out of the shell of this safety net and selfish life and we are telling him that he should also become like us – a timid, cribbing and selfish creature. It is sad and reminds me that we have learnt nothing from our past as a nation. It reminds me of a story related to Bhagat Singh. When Bhagat Singh was in jail, just a couple of days before his execution, his friends sent him a letter telling him of a plan to attack the jail and get him out of there. Bhagat Singh got really upset over it and he replied to his friends that NO, you guys absolutely shouldn’t do this because the whole purpose of my life has been to motivate the youth of this country to come forward and fight for the freedom. If I escape and run away from death like this then I will have no right to ask youth to come forward and die for the country. Bhagat Singh finally hugged his death happily. But I guess it never really served his purpose because even after 65 years we are asking Arvind Kejriwal also to be like us.

Jai Hind  !!

Narendra Modi

Sometimes, my words and posts on this blog are taken as anti – Narendra Modi . That hurts me as it is not true and I wanted to write clearly about it here.  Narendra Modi is a popular personality of India and he is certainly a potential candidate for the post of Prime Minister of India. But that is not the reason for writing this post about him. The reason is more to clarify my position / opinion about Mr. Naendra Modi.  “Mr.” in here is driven more out of respect for his age rather than the Modi wave or Modi Tsunami.

First, a bit of history, if it matters.  Until 3 years back, I used to be a big admirer of Narendra Modi. I also remember writing a blog post about him once in which I considered him a great leader on three accounts – being truthful and no appeasement,  sincere diligence in pursuing business opportunities ( reaching to TATA Nano & Maruti Suzuki)  and  good administration. My perception has changed over time, at least by 120 degree for sure if not by 180 degree. It might hurt to some his fans but I certainly cannot consider him the god like many of his online worshipers treat him to be. I am plain neutral about him. I consider him to be just another common man. He is simply a politician; may be a better one.

But there is one thing for sure for which no one can take the credit from Narendra Modi. He has made the development and growth as the agenda of elections and politics. Intentionally or unintentionally, he has certainly brought this positive change to Indian politics. He has made Gujarat growth, Indian Economy and international business prospects as agenda and that is certainly a good thing I credit him for. But believe me it is only an agenda just like corruption is for UPA govt.

Aam Aadmi Pyramid : Who wants the change ?

Who is the Aam Aadmi? Is every one of us an Aam Aadmi. There is a lot being said about that Aam Aadmi is frustrated with the system and wants to change it. Does Aam Aadmi even want a change? And if so can he bring this change in his life time. All of these thoughts led me to think of our current society structure.

At any point of time, any society is divided into different categories. Our current society can also be viewed as divided into 6 main categories as of today. The current structure forms a pyramid structure based on the population of each segment and interestingly the segment with the least population rules all other segments.

Different people might view it differently but in my opinion it is only the lower 3 categories (D, E & F) which are the Aam Aadmi. It is only these 3 categories which are looking for the change in the current political/educational/administrative system. On the other hand, the current system is very favorable for the first 3 categories – (A, B & C). It is for their benefit that system keeps working like this and doesn’t change. D, however, is an interesting category. It is the category in which most of us the facebook & blog janta belongs to. Some people in this category are ok with the system but some want change in it and some do not realize that change is needed until they themselves are hit hard by the system one day. For example, one of my friend realized that something needs to change when he was asked for money for taking the dead body of his father from the hospital. Before this incident he was a different guy. He felt it is negative thinking to think that things are not working in our system.  He always wanted to think positive and believed in “All is well” philosophy.  But there is a very thin line between ignoring the problem in the shadow of positive thinking and facing the challenge with positive thinking. This one incident changed his opinion.

Another interesting observation is that 3.5/6 categories are fine with it so why do we need the change.  But the facts is that 80% of the population is effected badly by the current system and needs the change. This is something similar to the way data is presented and manipulated in presenting growth / inflation in our country.

Anyways, sharing some thoughts about the different categories.

• [A] – This is the category which sits on the top of the pyramid and it consists of the super powerful (& super rich too) people of India. I am counting 572 Member of parliaments, ~5000 MLA(s). Top 100 richest businessmen of India add t this category too. This makes the sum to be around 10,000 and makes it percentage wise around 0.001% of total population.

• [B] – Second from the top, this category mainly consists of highest level of senior bureaucrats of Indian administration. They are closest to the politicians and somewhere make the law of the land. I am counting IAS/IPS/IFS officers in this.  Extending this category with their close friends and immediate close connections. This number can be rounded off to 50,000 or to 100,000 or to be conservative.  In all we can assume this to be 2% of population.

• [C] –Super upper middle class. 5-7% of the total population. It is the category of people who are superstars of India and have a huge fan base. These are the Film Stars, Cricketers and other noted personalities of India. These are also the businessmen of India who are not may be the top 100 businessmen of India but still have strong businesses like Diamond merchants, Popular Food chain owners etc. Main distinction is that these guys have the links with powerful people in category A & B and usually get away with any problem with their help.
• [D] – 10-15% – Upper middle class people. Pretty much anyone who is making 1 lac per month or more.
• [E] – 30-40% – Middle class – Lower middle class. Anyone who is making 15,000 per month to 1 lac per month.
• [F] – 30-40% – Extreme poor people { labor class, tribal , poor farmers (except sarpanch & collector and all)}

Jai Hind !!

Kiran Bedi & V K Singh : The B-Team of ??

Jump to 18:00 in above video.

Is AAP the B-Team of Congress ? Or Is it the B Team of B.J.P.  Unfortunately, we the people of India want to put someone, who is putting some efforts in doing some good, to the highest of the highest standard of expectations but never bother to question the integrity of people who raise these questions.  We never ask Kiran Bedi ji ( listen to video above ) and V. K. Singh if they are the B- Team of B.J.P.  We never ask Swami Agnivesh if he acted like B – Team of Congress. We never ask Deepak Chaurasiya if he is acting as B Team of Manu Sharma ( Jessica Lal murderer).  We never ask if Asaram acted as B-team of some party.  The question of B-Team has become more important these days than the question about if the culprits of Coal Scam, Thorium Scam, 2 G Scam & Land Scam ( Gujarat ) will ever be convicted or not.  No, I am not trying to digress the topic here. I believe both the questions are important but it is equally important to put everyone to same standards of test else we are practicing the partisanship.

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आज कल लोगों को एक दूसरे को किसी की बी-टीम कहने का प्रचलन चला हुआ है! खास कर के “आप” पार्टी को कभी कॉंग्रेस और कभी बीजेपी की बी टीम कहा जाता है ! अगर आप गुजरात की तरफ करके मुँह पे हाथ रखके छींक भी दे तो उससे कॉंग्रेस की बी टीम कहा जाता है और अगर वो ऐसा दिल्ली की तरफ करती है तो उससे बीजेपी की बी टीम कहा जाता है. पेर कभी यह लोग अपनी गिरेबान में झाँक के देखते हैं !

इन्न लोगों की तो रहने दो ..आप लोग टीम अन्ना के सदस्यों की बातों पेर ध्यान देते हैं ? यह वीडियो जिसमें किरण बेदी जी कुच्छ सलाह दे रही हैं ! इससे देखिए और बताइए की क्या आपको नहीं लगता की किरण जी किसी पार्टी की बी टीम बन कर काम कर रही हैं ???

Jai Hind !!

Arvind Kejriwal & Subhash C. Bose.

Friends,

I have been following Aam Aadmi Party;s movement very closely for last one year now and many a times I have felt that Arvind Kejriwal shares many good traits with our beloved great leader  Late Sh. Subhash C. Bose. I am sharing my observations here. If you have any comment , please share in the comments section.

Thanks

The India.

	Subhash C. Bose	Arvind Kejriwal
Intelligence	Cleared civil services.	Cleared IIT , Civil services.
Patriotism	Left the civil services and jumped into the Indian Freedom struggle.It is said that in his civil services exam, he was asked to write 300 words on what are the main reasons Britishers are able to such a huge India. He just wrote 3 : “Divide and Rule”	Left one of the most coveted job. Moved on to work on social problems.  Fought for RTI, created the Parivartan NGO and then jumped into the IAC (India Against Corruption) movement
Un-selfish	He was not after the publicity or heroism. The goal, of free India, was more important than anything else. He joined Mahatma Gandhi and Indian Congress in 1939 as goal was more important.	He was also not after the publicity or heroism or “Mahatvakanksha”. The goal of corruption free India was more important and hence worked on RTI with Anna Hazare. Put Annaji as the face of the IAC movement though himself was the main architect.
Aggressive, Result oriented & quick to adapt.	He wanted India to be free as early as possible and hence wanted every action, protests, movement to be result oriented. He challenged the opinion of Gandhiji on many issues and suggested that modernization should be started.  He was quick to adapt to new strategies for the freedom movement .	He is aggressive & result oriented. Analyzes the outcome of actions. Realized early enough that people are not buying the theory of protesting on Jantar Mantar and begging for Jan Lokpal when the people on the other side of the table are constantly lying and cheating.He was always keen on taking feedback from people and analyzing it sharply and reached to a conclusion that a political alternative needs to be given.
Strategist	Architected INA	Architect-ed I.A.C. and established AAP
Leadership	Great leader with distinguished capabilities	Once again a great leader , leads by example and takes the bull by horn ( challenged Sheila Dixit & won).
UPDATE ( 19-Dec-2013)Motivating Indians living abroad to think about their country.	Galvanized Indians living abroad for their support in the movement	Motivated Indians living abroad (NRIs) to support and join the movement.

 

UPDATE (29th march) : Seems like i was not the only on who thought so.  Mr. Abbas Ali, 95 year old, one of the last living members of Subhas Chandra Bose led, INA comrade also thinks so.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/lok-sabha-elections-2014/more-stories/Netajis-comrade-pins-hope-on-Arvind-Kejriwal/articleshow/32798537.cms

 

 

Salute to them & Jai Hind !!

Anna Hazare : Can India afford another Mahatma ?

“Anna nahin hai aandhi hai , yeh doosra Gandhi hai.“  It was the chorus of this slogan which had filled the Jantar Mantar during India Against Corruption movement in 2011. Supposedly, India had found its second Gandhi in Anna Hazare. It was true also to a large sense as the spirit of fight against corruption of this 70 year old man had united a big mass of India which was deeply frustrated with the never ending list of scams in India. This is something similar what Mahatma Gandhi had done during the freedom struggle of India. He had united Hindu and Muslims against Britishers who were so far enjoying their “Divide and Rule” policy . So, it is not wrong to say that modern India has found its second Gandhi in Anna Hazare. But the bigger  question is – Can India afford another Mahatma.

Yes, the question is real – Can India afford another Mahatma? Mahatma Gandhi, although a great leader and a real patriot but had his own weaknesses. And these weaknesses led to some big mistakes for which country had to pay a huge cost. Gandhi practiced favoritism and had a huge ego. He did partisanship in the favor of Jawaharlal Nehru and had an unnecessary and huge ego against Subhash Chandra Bose. It is clearly reflected in two incidents in historical references.

In the first incident,  [ Jump t0 37:46 in following video if it doesn’t so automatically ],

When the President  of Congress committee was to be selected, 12 out of 15 state committee boards had proposed the name of Sardar Patel. Few had proposed the name of Kriplani also. No state committee had proposed the name of Nehru but still in the end Nehru was elected as the president of congress committee. As a leader, it was the responsibility of Mahatma Gandhi to promote the most popular, eligible and deserving person as the President. But it didn’t happen.  In fact , it somewhere set the culture of promoting the favorite rather than deserving person on the top which is still present in the country. By the way the whole objective of mentioning this incident is to underline the partisanship and lack of promoting the right person. It would be stupid of a country and society to look for next generation of their great leaders under the same region (Gujarat or Chicago) or same surname of Lincoln(s), Roosevelt(s) or Patel(s).  A leader is born and not produced.

Favoritism for Nehru was not something which happened by mistake or for the first time. Here is a verbatim excerpt on Gandhiji’s faceoff with Subhas Chandra Bose from Orissa review .

“In 1937, Gandhiji felt that Bose was a force to be reckoned with and hence he should no longer be neglected. He was further convinced that Subhas alone could be an instrument in the split of the Congress. Hence he decided to elect Subhas as the president of the Indian National Congress even when Subhas was not a member of that party. In the51st session of the Congress held at Haripura in 1938, Subhas was unanimously elected as the President. Unfortunately both for the Congress and the country, the alliance between Bose and Gandhi remained precarious. Subhas not only condemned Gandhi’s favorite Charakha but gave a call to modernize India. He called upon the people to get united for an armed struggle against the Britishers. At the presidential election in January 1939, Subhas was vigorously opposed both by Gandhi and Nehru. Nevertheless, he has achieved a decisive victory over his opponent Dr. Pattabhi Sittaramayya, Gandhi’s nominee by 1580 to1375 votes. Gandhiji openly declared that Sitaramayya’s defeat was his defeat. He said that Subhas’s references to his colleagues were unjustified and unworthy. He remarked that since Subhas had criticized his colleagues as ‘rightists’, it would be most appropriate on his part to choose a homogeneous cabinet and enforce his action. At the Tripuri Congress, Bose as the president made a clear proposal that the Indian National Congress should immediately send an ultimatum to the British Government demanding independence within six months. It was opposed by the Gandhian wing and Nehru. 

In the midst of the hostile situation Subhas resigned the Presidentship of the Congress on 29th April, 1939, and immediately proceeded to form a radical party bringing the entire left wing under one banner. In this connection, it would be most appropriate to mention that – Bose’s innate devotion and respect for Gandhiji  remained as firm even though his path was diverging. He clearly stated ‘it will always be my aim and object to try and win his confidence for the simple reason that it will be tragic for me if I succeed in winning the confidence of other people but fail to win the confidence of India’s greatest man’. ” .

Gandhiji, clearly had a big ego issue here with Subhas. What is more important to observe is that Subhas’s  ideas were even backed by majority (1580 votes) of people then. It might be true that Gandhiji was opposed to Subhash’s idea of violence but then may be the need of the hour was to fight for freedom. In fact in this respect, I believe may be Gandhiji was over hyped on the idea of non-violence and maybe his views of non-violence were also over-hyped intentionally by Britishers as it was in their own favor to not have any violent conflicts as they were already in deadly war with other world powers. Gandhiji was a great leader but he was not the only leader. People like Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Sigh were also present in those times and they had different views about means of achieving freedom. American president,  Franklin D. Roosevelt was a also a great leader of those times and in one of his very famous quotes he rightly ( in my opinion) said,  – “In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved.”  Another great quote from Mr. Eleanor Roosevelt went like this – “Freedom makes huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility… it is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself. “ And may be those 1580 votes in the favor of Subhas Chandra Bose were also feeling the same but for Gandhiji’s ego Subhas had to step down and Indian freedom movement had to split and loose a great leader.

Something similar is happening in India today. On One hand, Arvind Kejriwal looks so similar to Subhas Chandra Bose. Both Subhas Chandra Bose and Arvind Kejriwal are technically very intelligent as they both cleared civil services exam. They both are great architects of revolution – INA & AAP ( non-violent political revolution). Both worked with their respective Gandhi ( Anna and Gandhiji )  for almost  18-24 months and then both split from their Gandhi for the difference of opinion on the methods of achieving of goals. Both are aggressive in terms of speedy achievement of their goals ( Freedom and Corruption free India). Both are very much result oriented and highly determined for their goals – i.e. to have “never say die” attitude.  In another incident when Subhas asked Gandhiji to not to withdraw non cooperation movement after chorachori incident as Britishers were really under pressure from world war and India might not get another such chance for pressurizing for independence. To this Gandhiji replied – “No Subhas, such opportunities will keep coming.”  This approach of Gandhiji looks similar to Anna Hazare’s beliefs of fighting for corruption from outside only and keep continuing non political movement. But with fasting and peaceful protest , when will we get our JanLokpal, no one knows ? Then why not to try some political change.

One last striking resemblance between Subhas and Arvind is that they both had/have great respect for their respective Gandhi. But unfortunately their Mahatma were not either comfortable or sure with it.

I respect Annaji a lot as he did an ardent job of uniting the people of all the religion and regions against corruption. He is a real patriot and has sacrificed his whole life for country and in this respect he is no less than Mahatma Gandhi. But on the other hand, Delhi Elections are around and his name is being pulled in by rivals to derail AAP. He earlier promised that he would not join politics but would promote clean candidates. AAP has given clean candidates but for reasons,  not known to me and most other people of this country, Annaji is not coming out to support for AAP.  On the contrary, he is surrounded by people who off late have started showing soft corner for B.J.P. on different grounds (check videos on links) – V.K. Singh and Kiran Bedi. These signs have actually started giving me the confidence that it was probably for the good of the country that I.A.C. movement was split Arvind Kejriwal didn’t compromise on values and his promises to the country. The political scenario today makes me think again – No doubt Anna Hazare is a Mahatma but the question is Can India afford another Mahatma ?

Jai Hind !!

Times of Media : The Cute Poison

Times of India (ToI) is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year. On one of the recent stamp unveiling ceremony on this occassion , India’s president Mr. Pranab Mukherjee said that Times of India is truly representative of India’s aspirations and ambitions. But unfortunately, if someone who has been following the state of affairs of India and that of the newspaper wouldn’t agree to it. The case study mentioned below reflects an altogether different face of the newspaper and the damage it is causing to the Indian society.

On 6^th Nov, 2013 , ToI gave the link to an article on its website ( http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com ), with the headline which read like “Big B, Aamir, Ajay Devgn support Modi”. But when anyone clicked on the link the headline of article converted to “Lata’s hardly the first Bolly celeb to sing the Modi tune“. What was even more worse  was that into the details there was no mention of Amir khan in the article.  Later on after sometime article was changed and unconfirmed reports of Aamir endorsing Narendra Modi were added. I was not shocked by this because It has become an almost daily routine for such things to happen on ToI. Headlines are misleading and untruthful. Contents are altered. Unconfirmed reports are added. Links to garner publicity are given and later on dropped. There always seems to be a bias for a particular person or party or a corporate house.  There are some innocent “wordsmith” rank holders in their news discussion forums who have bashed the article authors for such things several times. I call them innocent because I believe they do not understand the term “paid media”. I call them innocent because they don’t know that  some of the politicians and corporate houses hold as much as 60% stakes in news channels and newspapers. On the other hand there is a big team of paid comment makers ( read “traitors”) who try to navigate the discussions to the direction their bosses ask them to. For example, in this case itself when someone posted in comment that there was not mention of Aamir Khan, his comment was “Disagree”d by 5 people. It is done so that such genuine comments don’t even come up when people come and sort the comments by the “Recommended” category.

What hurts even more is that http://indiatimes.com is the 9^th most visited site of India. With such blatant lies, cheating headlines and gigantic online reach, just imagine what a cute poison this Times of India is for the society. They say, with great power comes great responsibility. But what if someone with great power doesn’t realize the importance of great responsibility??? Who will punish it or forget about punishing who will control it ? Well, I believe answers to such question have to be explored by the society itself. Because ultimately a society needs to decide on its own in which direction it wants to take its next generations to. For the theoretical purposes let’s assume that we decide to give a strong message to Times of India for this incident. Will we be ready to boycott the news site for one week ? A simple 1 week of boycott itself will give enough tremors to their ad revenues that they will think twice before repeating such unethical things. But will our online community do this ? Once again, with great power comes great responsibility.  Yes we the people of India are powerful. Huge online presence by the virtue of population, relatively better freedom of speech ( at least than that of Malala’s country) and lackluster but still a democracy are clear indicators that Indian society is powerful.  But the question is – Are we ready, as a society, to play responsible enough to teach ToI a lesson ?

Jai Hind !!

Interesting References 

Delhi : Rape, Capital & Dress Code

What “Delhi” means to the world at the moment….

I have been thinking of writing this for a long time and perhaps have been deferring it for even longer. But recently Kalki Koechlin posted a video after Delhi Rape Case and it finally got me moving to write my thoughts on this sensitive topic. There is no doubt about that rape is a very heinous crime and it’s perpetrators must be castigated harshly. Rape in itself not only shows the psyche of the rapist but also the frequency of such cases in a city reflects the state of the society altogether.

I have myself lived in Delhi for good 15 years and was lucky/poor enough to have traveled through those D.T.C. and Blue line buses. I have seen how the feminine gender is treated in these buses. In fact when I moved to Bangalore and saw how the women are respected in the city it opened my eyes about the definition of “metropolitan”. By the way, males are not harassed any less in these buses in Delhi. Pretty much all the private buses are run by local mafia and there is no background check for the driver, conductor or helper the of buses. In fact in the name of helpers, there are always 3-4 friends of the driver / conductor who are anytime ready for fighting & beating the passengers. Sometimes, these friends are pickpockets  too and loot the passengers on knife point.  I remember one incident when a young boy objected to the groping of a girl by the friends of the conductor of bus. This guy must have been very new to this environment of the bus, to which the other daily passengers had become used to. Perhaps his confidence in objecting to this also stemmed from the possible fact that he knew the S.H.O. of the area. But what he got in response from the conductor and his goon friends was shocking to everyone. One member of this gang slapped him hard and  told him “ Jo ukhadna hai ukhad le …..jis thane mein jaake report likhani hai likha le. Krishna Nagar, Seema Puri, Karkarooma har jagah ke ACP ko monthly jaata hai. “ . It might have been shocking for this guy but it was something I knew from inside because I had seen this bus mafia growing up in front of my eyes from the beginning till now. It all started in 1995-96. The population of “The Capital” was growing due to eternal immigration from the neighboring states and there were not enough buses for public commuting. It was then when Red Line buses were started.  The buses were operated by private operators under a permit from Delhi Govt. But ground level workers ( drivers & conductors ) were mostly the literate but unemployed youth of that time. Police personnel never took the ticket in these buses and similarly students also never paid for the rides in these buses. Whenever, conductor asked for ticket all the students will get united and will say “staff”. “Staff” was the term which police used to refer to the other fellow policemen of the force. And they used the same thing to mention in the buses to tell that he is from police. Students took it as verbatim and they also started saying that they are from staff and will not take the tickets. A couple of times bus owners and operators objected to this but their buses were either tormented or its windows were broken with stone pelting.  Soon, the bus owners realized that the way things were going it would never be a profitable business. In a period of 3-4 years either they quit the business or they roped in the local goons to run these buses. It was another side of the interesting story that those same students who were running “staff” in these buses 3 years back and were the front runners of any project of kind of damaging the buses were now being called for running these same buses by the owners.  Soon the seniors of college and students were going to threaten their alumni J to pay for the ride or be ready for the fight.  Eventually it had become the need of the business also for these buses to have a group of at least 3-4 people who were always ready to fight with anyone who wanted a free ride.  The number of deaths caused by accidents by these buses was growing. On the other hand bus operators had started giving bribes to the Govt. (D.T.C.) buses  to not to come on particular routes at prime time so that they could make maximum profits. In all the “Red Line” buses had all turned bloody red and that’s when their name was changed to “Blue Line” ; perhaps to disguise the dirt behind the scenes. When there was a medical student raped in MAMC case in Delhi in 2000, I was of the opinion that the rapists must be hanged. But my roommate then, who is a very smart guy said something that changed my opinion forever. He said it is not the amount of the punishment which maters but it is the swiftness and seriousness of the punishment which counts. He said that even 7 days in jail can be very tormenting so think of what 7 years would be. It is not that the punishment is less but it is that almost all the times rapists go scot-free due to lacking judicial and law & order system.

So that’s the story of buses in Delhi and somewhere tells about who and what kind of people those rapists of infamous Delhi Rape Case would have been. You must be thinking – that explains the rape and capital part, but what is here for “Dress Code”.  Well, Dress Code is the main thought which made me write this. I sometimes wonder what would be my opinion if my own sweet little daughter asks for my opinion on if is there any correlation to dress and rape. I would tell her this. Sweetie, just imagine that I give you 5 Crore rupees ( 1 million USD) in cash and ask you to take this to uncle’s place on the other end of the city. You also have to use only the public commute for this. How will you carry this money ? Will you carry this in a transparent plastic bag or will carry this barely fitting in your small and tiny pockets. Or will you try to properly wrap it in newspaper and hide it in some bag so that is not visible to others and move in with confidence in Metro. It’s all up to you. People get looted even when they are travelling in their own private cars but that doesn’t make any reasoning for carrying such a big amount in transparent plastic bag. Just the same way that carrying this money in plastic bag doesn’t justify the act of looting it by the criminals. So, sweetheart , just think your body is priceless It’s all up to you to decide if how you want to carry it. Do you want it to be a transparent bag or move with confidence in a no show wrapping …..

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• Rape cases double, molestation up 4 times in Delhi (thehindu.com)