Test #1: UPA Vs Team Anna, New Delhi, August 16, 2011

[Vijay.Sharma]

I was watching some videos on NDTV yesterday. Apparently, NDTV is pro govt. Because all the videos were harping about how this is not a national movement and how Anna doesn't have any support and blah blah blah...

o yeah I am coming fresh from watching a program hosted by Rahul Gandhi's very own b!tch, Barkha Dutt. Damn she is so shamelessly pro Congress and Rahul baba that it is sickening.

[Vijay.Sharma]

May be what I wish is wrong....why our cricketers won't comment on such national issues..I never heard a single superstar Indian cricketer make any comment regarding national Issues... even Film stars whom i respect less compare to Cricketers give some comments on this Issue... ***** I know Rohith dharma tweeted yesterday in support of Anna.. comment from Sachin or Dhoni or even Ganguly will have great value to common man... again it's not their job..but still they can try something which people of this country definitely need and Appreciate

Oh please the media would then hijack the issue even more. Don't you remember how Bal Thackeray said "ay Sachin tu tujhi khel var lakshyat tev, politics madhe yeaytsa nahi" - "ey Sachin, you mind your cricket business and don't enter politics" when the Buddha said Mumbai belongs to all Indians.

[Alchemist]

o yeah I am coming fresh from watching a program hosted by Rahul Gandhi's very own b!tch, Barkha Dutt. Damn she is so shamelessly pro Congress and Rahul baba that it is sickening.

Barkha Dutt used to be a very good reporter in her early days. i remember her covering the Tiger Hill concquest during Kargil war. I don't know what happened after that, but these days she seems so biased (and has gained a lot of pounds) :--D

[Stuge]

Went to Jantar mantar yesterday .will post pictures later :)

[Yoda-esque]

n 1965, during the Indo-Pak war, Anna Hazare was the driver of an Indian Army truck. His trundler was part of a military convoy attacked by Pakistani jets at Khem Karan along the border in Punjab. Very few survived that attack. Even the man in the next seat was killed in a hail of bullets. He was 25 at the time. The sequence of events has been documented before. According to the classic account, Anna Hazare’s thoughts turned immediately to the divine as his convoy was riddled by enemy fire from the air. Once the smoke cleared, he saw bodies all around him. Struck by his escape—as the legend goes—he directed his voice upwards. “You saved me, God,” he kept saying, “But why?” God did have a design for him, and it became apparent much before he went on his hunger strike at Jantar Mantar. Hazare quit the Army and returned to Ralegan Siddhi, a poor village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district. He mobilised the youth to develop the village, ran into corruption, and was almost forced to become an anti-corruption activist. For over two decades, he has relentlessly, if amateurishly, got governments to implement reforms on corruption. Not even his enemies dispute that the Right to Information Act in Maharashtra was passed solely on account of his efforts. Like the people who surround him, there is neither consistency nor permanence to Hazare’s struggle. Those who are part of one movement don’t seem to figure in the next. Whether it is activists Pushpa Bhave, Baba Adhav, late Govindbhai Shroff, late Mohan Dharia, former bureaucrat Avinash Dhamadhikari and a host of other well known figures none have stayed a part of his campaigns. Those who have followed Hazare’s work through the decades put it down to the maverick manner of his functioning. “Anna does not trust anyone, so he does not delegate duties or discuss his plans with anyone. He functions like a one-man army,” says a former bureaucrat who joined the Jantar Mantar campaign. Hazare’s take is different—he feels that people must not hold on to posts if they do not attend meetings. Even in the current agitation, some co-protestors are already distancing themselves. Mallika Sarabhai, who appeared on TV channels spouting praise for Hazare, is now going her separate way because of Hazare’s praise for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. In a letter to Hazare, she wrote, ‘We are deeply shocked by your endorsement of Narendra Modi’s rural development. There has been little or no development in the state. In fact, gauchar lands and irrigated farmlands have been taken away by the government and sold off at ridiculous prices to a small club of industrialists.’ Sarabhai went on to add, ‘Your endorsement is appalling and we will be forced to distance ourselves from the Lokpal Bill movement unless it is irrevocably retracted.’ One of the obvious comparisons doing the rounds now is between Anna Hazare and Mahatma Gandhi. But there is a difference. Gandhi was sincerely committed to all forms of non-violence. Hazare has not been averse to using violence for what he considers valid reason. When he first set out to reform Ralegan Siddhi, he ordered that villagers be prohibited from drinking or coming drunk into the village. According to a Reader’s Digest article: ‘He soon proved he meant business. A few days later, when three men returned to Ralegaon drunk after a binge in a nearby village, Hazare had them tied to the temple pillars and personally flogged them with his army belt,’ no less. Hazare justified it, saying, “Rural India is a harsh society. If you want change, it’s sometimes necessary to be tough.” The villagers didn’t seem to mind, and the reformed alcoholics were all praise for him several years later. But Ralegan Siddhi is also not the same village anymore. Ravindra Jagannath Jadhav, a former office assistant to Hazare, saw little glory in working for the man. When he first took the job, Jadhav was starry-eyed. After all, Hazare was a celebrity. It just took him a couple of days on the job to realise that it was not his calling. “There are no job opportunities or any future in Ralegan Siddhi. Anna used to pay me a salary of Rs 1,200. Could I marry and set up home on such a paltry sum? There is no future here,” says Jadhav, whose parents chide him for saying anything against the social activist. He is not the only one who wants to move on. Despite the resounding success of Hazare’s latest stir, Ralegan Siddhi is full of young men who want to live their dreams elsewhere. Nearly three decades after he transformed the drought-scarred village into a green paradise and model for development, cracks have appeared in the copybook Eden. “Anna is insistent that we live in the village and look after it. What opportunities do we have here? Our parents have never seen a good life. There is only poverty here. But they agree with Anna and want us to live here. What about our dreams?” asks a friend of Jadhav. When Prashant Shinde, a former office manager for Hazare’s projects, signed up in 2003, he was not heeding any lofty call. He was hoping that one of Hazare’s many important visitors would give him a break. He is still waiting. Alcohol, smoking, gutka, paan and paan masala are all forbidden in Ralegan Siddhi. At some level, that may be understandable. But a large part of the discontent stems from Hazare’s ban on cable TV. “Cable TV is not just about dance and songs. It opens our window to the world. There are so many educational programmes that help us gain a better perspective,” says another youngster unhappy with the man’s finger-wagging ways. Hazare has justified the ban by saying that it will keep villagers from working and they will think only of entertainment. There is a rundown TV set kept in the common community room at the Yadav Baba Temple. However, TV hours are strictly regulated, and it is never more than half-an-hour at a time. Only Doordarshan and select Marathi news channels are switched on. There was a relaxation, though, while Hazare was on his indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar recently. Non-vegetarian food is also not permitted. In past interactions, Hazare has pointed out that it leads to a craving for alcohol, a connection that has no basis whatsoever. There is also a ban on cows, buffaloes and goats grazing on open land. They have to be fed wherever they are tied. As a result of this, livestock cannot move around freely. Hazare feels that grazing denudes the top cover and leads to soil erosion. There is also a ban on axes—as people will succumb to temptation and chop trees. And if all this is not enough, men in the village must undergo vasectomy to limit their family size. Though Hazare has fought corruption for over two decades, the Jantar Mantar strike has catapulted him into national consciousness. During his past hunger strikes at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan and in Ralegan Siddhi, except for a handful of reporters from the vernacular media, the media would ignore him. A decade-and-a-half ago, when he was on a fast-unto-death against corruption at Ralegan Siddhi, a group of reporters from the vernacular media took over his campaign and became his publicity wing. Each hour, they gave updates to representatives of other media outfits over the phone. Facts were twisted irreverently. If 50 people attended an event, they hiked the number to 500. After a week into the fast, these reporters told Hazare that since it was inconvenient to cover it for so long, he must think of giving it up. Hazare asked all those present if they thought so too. When all of them nodded, Hazare took the cue. He decided that he would give up the fast on a Sunday. When he was told that it would be an inconvenient day for the press, he decided to give it up the next day at a mutually convenient time. Television has been a key factor in the sudden renown he has acquired. “In the past, there was no TV. The frenzy was due to TV channels beaming the fast all day long,” admits a Hazare supporter. Prior to his fasting at Jantar Mantar, Hazare had toured Maharashtra to garner support for the Jan Lokpal Bill. The attendance at these rallies was nothing to shout about, nor did the media cover it. Many of those who have known him feel that the work he undertakes needs organisational backup. Lack of infrastructure, a network and a dedicated workforce renders Hazare powerless to keep a check on all the issues dear to his conscience. His Hind Swaraj Trust is skeletal, really. Of the many enemies he has across the political spectrum, one is former NCP minister Sureshdada Jain. Forced to quit office after Hazare levelled charges of corruption against him, he had hired a detective agency to look into the goings-on of the Hind Swaraj Trust. A few financial discrepancies were found that Hazare dismissed as “minor irregularities”. In the early 1990s, the Shiv Sena gained from corruption charges levelled by Hazare against the Sharad Pawar-led Congress government. But when the Sena-BJP settled into Mantralaya in 1995, Hazare alleged that three of its ministers were corrupt. The Sena hit back, alleging that Hazare had misappropriated Rs 22 crore given by the state to his Hind Swaraj Trust. In response, Hazare called Bal Thackeray a liar and cheat. The Sena chief called him a “crackpot”. Finally, Thackeray’s nephew Raj was sent to meet Hazare and calm tempers. Still, one of the three ministers filed a defamation case against Hazare, who was sentenced to a three-month term. He served only one day of it, after which the then Chief Minister Manohar Joshi intervened to have him released. Also known is that Anna Hazare once contemplated suicide and even wrote a two-page essay on why he wanted to end his life. He wanted an answer to the purpose of human existence. One day at the New Delhi railway station, he chanced upon a book on Swami Vivekananda. Drawn to the book by the sanyasi’s picture, he bought and read it. It gave him his answer—that life’s purpose lay in the service of fellow human beings. He gave up alcohol, non-vegetarian food and decided to stay unmarried and celibate. This was in 1964. Many will disagree with the way he goes about it, but 45 years later, he still sticks to that purpose. Source : http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/not-your-textbook-saint

[Sidhoni]

Dhoni's family is leading protest here in Ranchi. They fully support Anna.

:two_thumbs_up::two_thumbs_up: I read that in newspaperz...

[Stuge]

Congress Hints at US Hand in Anna Hazare Protest http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/08/18/india-digest-congress-hints-at-us-hand-in-anna-hazare-protest/ These guys seriously needs to visit Agra mental hospital now .:hysterical:

[Sidhoni]

^:haha:

[kabira]

Honestly I am fed up with this government. When they were elected with good majority without Left support, most of ppl were happy, atleast thye had clear majority. Right now they have some old hogs, who *****ing don't want to do anything..Chidambarn and Pranab aspire for PMship...and fight amongst themselves. MMS has no guts to manage his own cabinet. The cabinet has hardly done anything to stop inflation, our industrialist are investing in countries like Indonesia, Australia, USA etc instead of Inidia..There is so much insecurity amongst businesses. We are back to where we started in 1992. I wish there are midterm elections and this old hogs are kicked out.

[Vijay.Sharma]

Source : http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/not-your-textbook-saint

As always there is some truth and some falsity in such articles. It is logical to assume that Anna Hazare is stubborn in his ways because stubbornness is a necessary trait that one must possess when fighting long drawn battles. However, is Anna Hazare the sort of person whose stubbornness impedes the freedom and suppresses ambitions of people who work with him? I don't think we will know that unless we work with him. While the author has cited examples of those who have been unhappy with Anna, he has conveniently not written about the people who are happy working with him. The article reeks of propaganda. It appears that the people who have been quoted in this article seemed not to share the same vision that Anna Hazare had. So obviously the job-fitment was not right. It is neither Anna's fault nor the dissatisfied individual's fault; the ambition of the individual and the job responsibilities were incongruent. Nothing evil or sinister about it. The aspect of concern is Anna's dictatorship in Ralegaon Siddhi. That portrayal doesn't seem very honest to me but there are reasons to believe that it is quite possible. Anna seems to be a person who has a high sense of morality and his way of life is governed by moral codes. While it makes sense for an individual to live with definite moral values, the same when applied to a society/community becomes counter-productive. Binding a community to definite moral codes is the worst thing one can do. Such an approach will give you short term benefits but will drive you back to the caves in the long term. I came across this detailed write-up of Anna Hazare and Ralegan Siddhi movement. It gives us a much better perspective of the man and his ways than the propagandistic article in the Open Magazine. It's a long one, though - http://kafila.org/2011/04/14/the-making-of-an-authority-anna-hazare-in-ralegan-siddhi/

[Yoda-esque]

^ I thought that the article posted his positive side

[Vijay.Sharma]

^ I thought that the article posted his positive side

I felt the author tried to portray Anna's ways as dictatorial - his prohibition of non vegetarian food' date=' alcohol, paan, etc shows him as someone who [i']decides for others not just as someone who fights for others. To draw a parallel the author tried to portray Anna as Guru Greg - great batsman, strong ideologies and vision, but dictatorial/authoritarian in nature.

[Rajiv]

Congress Spokesperson- Govt. is still waiting for someone to approach them with a bribe to pass the Lokpall Bill

[Tiger80]

Anna has done 15 hunger strikes in the past 13 against maharashtra Govt 2 against GOI.He is Sachin tendulkar of Anshan's

[Yoda-esque]

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-Circus/entry/why-anna-hazare-should-not-win-this-battle

[ravishingravi]

Million dollar question is, where is the imbecile blood sucking parasite Manish Tiwari now ?

[WC2011INDIA]

Million dollar question is' date=' where is the imbecile blood sucking parasite Manish Tiwari now ?[/quote'] Hiding in his bill after embarassing his party by making some stupid statements.

[Sachin=GOD]

I am against corruption but not in favor of Anna.

[ravishingravi]

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[bulbul]

I am against corruption but not in favor of Anna.

then what yo will do Sit idle or just type ... I agree Anna may not be the solution for corruption free country...but somewhere fight has to start.. if everyone sits idly by saying I want Corruption to end but won't support that guy or this guys won't help country... even if Anna doesn't succeeded this is just beginning , people at least realize we can take fight to govt.