Long time.. where was i.. what was I doing.. all that is immaterial... What matters is am back… few things changed in life… but I have read it somewhere that change is the only thing constant.. I guess they were right..
So what made me come back… honestly a 74 yr old man… Mr Anna Hazare… now I will be honest about myself.. I personally am pretty selfish about stuff and am not much of a social thinker… till the time I have my car, my credit card and my cell phone works, world is livable for me… I guess most of my friends kind of gave up on the social stuff after the india shining debacle... but atleast I am honest about it…
So what changed… 2 days back… I was there on a bridge… awaiting some guy in India, as I needed updates from him before we could decide upon the future resource strategy… after waiting for 5 mins, my famous patience, which shows up in little streaks, gave up.. and there I was trying to call him up and check what on earth was keeping him away… so this is how the conversation went...
“tring tring… hello alpha beta gamma here”
“alpha … Abhinav here.. we are waiting for you on the bridge.. hope you remember we had this call…”
“sorry Abhinav.. forgot to inform… but have taken an off today…”
“oh np… so shall we reconvene tomorrow same time if that works for you”
“am not sure when am I joining back… u can ask super alpha to fill up for me…”
“I hope all is ok.. sounds like mid life crisis.. J but anyways whatever you wana do…”
“Yes man.. am on the streets with Anna Hazare… sersly kinda mid life crisis… seems like I am not where I had to be.. and not for a good reason …blah blah blah…”
“I understand… will talk to you later”…..
So what was so very special.. an SDM of a reputed multi national, who is regarded as a go getter, just kicked his career out of the window according to me… and more than the act … his specific reason was more appealing.. am on streets with Anna Hazare.. now I didn’t tell him, but I had really no idea about what was going on in india, my motherland love ends on cricinfo and moneycontrol… so being the inquisitive soul which I am I started digging on to mr Hazare.. so what is it about this man that he has started this civil unrest…
And here is what I understand after a few days of looking up whos who… and whats up…
The 2nd independence struggle… The 2nd Gandhi… Civil unrest… 2nd JP… unbecoming of the biggest democracy… the cribbers and the doers…
Well these were the common punch lines which I could find on the Indian dailies... so what is this whole movement all about… One Mr Baba Ramdev and Mr Anna Hazare, got up on a fine morning and decided that they need to get corruption wiped out of Indian system… well good thought… so they called up their nearest aides and talked about how to go about things… Mr ramdev had regular one on one with people of the country in his camps, and mr hazare found solace in his team, the ultra collaboration social media savvy team Anna. The fb and twitter generation…
So what do they do… they pick up one agenda… and start throwing in popular lines on the same… and the people of india who were kind of exasperated counting the number of 0 s in the 2g and CWG scam, found a mission in their voices. More than the charismatic personality of these 2 leaders, it was the UPA government whose my way or the high way policy, was the root cause of these angry people coming together…
Lets look @ what these 2 gentlemen are asking… Mr Ramdev is asking that get all the funds in Swiss bank which is black money back to india. Or else I will fast… :O he missed an important part HOW…Do you expect the government to go to the banks and say pl. wire the money back else mr ramdev might die of hunger strike.. the whole episode justified one thing, mr ramdev is not much of a thinker, and he said whatever sounded more populist, get the black money back… get me the moon.. would have helped if he would have told how… and the most strange part is he wont eat.. till it is done… now what has the restaurants done in this, why screw up their business.. also how does it matter to the corrupt if mr ramdev is not eating.. but since it worked 65 yrs back with mr Gandhi, so it should now also…
Now to talk about the 2nd set of thinkers and visionaries in this, the Indian government… picked up ramdev @ 12 midnight, beating up sleeping people… imagine this u sleeping in your room, someone comes in and starts beating ya up with laathis.. and then they didn’t stop there … they went to maligning ramdev, his aides.. smear campaign.. why whats the need.. ur the freaking government on a 1.2 billion people.. why do u need to come to these levels to address a lunatic who doesn’t know what he wants… let him jump around and go home why bother… why give him undue attention.. today he is asking black money, tomorrow he might ask all nri doctors and engineers should come back… there is no end to fancies… now don’t get me wrong abt not getting back the black money… I don’t understand how to get it back, but I surely do understand that by just fasting it wont…
So mr ramdevs experiment went wrong.. and was a good starting point for mr anna as to how to go about things.. so what is Mr Hazare all about… he wants a Lokpal bill to brought into light which will apply brakes to corruption. Atleast he bettered one from mr ramdev and thought about how. The lokpal bill which he has come up with would be a super government, which can investigate anything under sun and falls within Indian boundary.. sounds impressive in the 1st place.. but lets take a deep dive about what we are talking about... with the lokpal bill which mr hazare is asking about, if I go to a bank, if the counter clerk says wait for 10 mins, and knowing my famous patience, I insist on not.. he tells then he cant help.. and then I take the lokpal number.. call them up and say that this guy didn’t cooperate, the intention could have been under table money making… and phew.. there goes the bank officers life for a toss for the next few months… in the least he will be exonerated but will have to go through the hassles of being investigated… all this because someone was not ready to wait for 10 mins… now simulate the same scenario on almost everything in a daily life on all the interactions.. do you think the Indian system, or for that matter any system can function with so much control checks? Spider mans uncle was quite right in saying with great power comes great responsibility. Distributing across such powers to almost everyone in the country would be lethal… am not sure if mr anna has thought of it… now lets see the implementation and maintenance cost of such a system. Given to make it effective, the amount of work force which this will require would be very high on the state exchequer… again am not saying that lets not do anything.. but whatever we need to do needs to be well thought of… think about what needs to be done, have a clear design, with failover s and then come back and protest, don’t do it just to make it sound catchy… we will remove corruption.. how??????
One common thing which I found in between both of these gentlemen are they are popular people, and they say things which sounds good to common man.. lets get the black money back.. lets finish corruption.. lets change from the land of the talkers to the land of the doers.. know HOW… have a plan as to how to achieve it and then lets get on the road..
Coming to the Indian government, well the less said the better… our beliefs were shattered when india shining went down, and congress with 10 more seats WON and election… we got a nice guy as the PM, but the team he got was even more amazing.. the lesser talked the better.. I remember when I was a kids .. scams used to run in 100s of crore 1000 crore was benchmark.. of arriving.. but looks @ the numbers now.. 100000 + and then you come back and say that the pm wasn’t aware of it... well if he wasn’t then he should go for negligence of duty, and if he was he should go for conniving.. but again looking @ the disdain with which the political people talk, they surely need to be thick skinned.. very very thick skinned.. every thing has got a foreign hand, everything has got a conspiracy theory… the funniest was us supporting anna hazare.. did anyone bother to ask why? Just for the heck of it.. one fine afternoon the Americans played dart on globe, hit india and decided abt supporting hazare.. so much for the self importance… I hope the next election indian people vote sensibly…
And now coming to the media houses, calling this the 2nd freedom struggle, and anna the next Gandhi.. now to begin with Gandhi was an intellectual, well read and educated, who understood what he was out to achieve, and could foresee the consequences of his actions. Anna on the contrary is not that qualified, and according to his interviews, sounds more like a populous jargon saying old man, rather than an intellectual who can change the course of history according to his social experiments. He is more like the java developer who has picked up few words hearing the masters speak, and has forgotten that all he knows is those words, and he has no idea of how the world is beyond those words.. but he is respected in the organization, as the others don’t know what he means, and due to their ignorance consider him smart.. apathy… but this is how indias biggest organizations are… but coming back to Anna… sorry anna I don’t see it in you.. speaking popular lines and reciting about being true, is not going to solve the issues… come up with something more substantial..
Now calling this agitation is like calling myself Sachin Tendulkar… we are class apart… Indian freedom fight was not something which was done on twitter and fb… I agree that the new media cannot be denied its place, but with no editorial control, we need to understand that self control is the name of the game.. people who don’t understand the difference between omlette and mandate are infuriated about why Anna is arrested… the so called people of india, just want to support Anna, 80 percent of them don’t event understand what he is asking about.. other 15 know what he is asking about, but don’t understand the implications, and the other 5 are there as india team is not performing well.. so since watching the test is boring, so lets go and agitate..huh…
Much ado about nothing… was watching some news reports… I sersly like the way Indian journos speak.. DO YOU THINK THERE IS SOMETHING MORE TO ANNA… it is more like a request to god, let there be more to him, give me the extra sound bite, lets forget abt the quality of journalism, I sersly miss the world this week days of pranav roy, am sorry barkha dutt, giving the sound bites to people who can spark controversy is not thought provoking journalism. But when was it thought provoking, wasn’t it supposed to be entertaining…
Now for a second lets imagine that there is no corruption in India.. my Jharkhand registered car gets caught in pune, and I cant pay my way out.. the only way out is I need to go to Jharkhand, get an noc, go to the other state and get it registered back, all this over the weekdays, with my job not giving me any time off, there being no online system or centralized system, or some expedited way of doing it from pune, I will be in for a ball… and ya no corruption, but I don’t think I would be that very happy… I guess the answer to this is overhauling the overall process and system, and then relooking @ it, lokpal is not a fool proof solution, and its not worth so much ado..for the starters see how bihar government is handling itself.. right to service is an amazing concept, bring it to center and see how without lokpal how things can differ…
Lastly… Hitler was the biggest doer of the modern times, but was not much of a thinker.. lets hope india starts following the thinkers rather than mindless doers… lets hope 200 thousand people stop calling themselves representative of 1.2 billion people.. lets hope that bollywood folks are making movies, rather than promoting Anna hazare… lets hope this Indian government starts managing the country with a vision rather than like the storyline of a mithun movie.. high time we start believing in specialists for specific jobs, rather than everyone trying their hands at everything… lets hope there is some method to the madness… lets hope alpha joins the call next week..
