I am NOT Anna and dont want to be Anna

[CSK Fan]

Despite all their attempts to malign the movement, 75000+ registrations in just 2 days for the Jail Bharo call by Anna Hazare. They say the numbers could go up to around 200000+ throughout the country. Perhaps the biggest such movement in our independent history. All Anna needs to do is to start touring UP where even a 2-3% swing against Congress will nullify all of Rahul's efforts of last 3-4 years. Those who say he has no base or support, if that was the case, you would not see Digvijay Singh and other leaders target him day in and day out, They know the damage potential he has , especially in the urban middle class vote bank of the congress which supported it wholeheartedly in the last elections. And now a UPA minister has called Anna a "bhagoda sipahi from the 65 war", they are obviously rattled.

Lol, so much for the huge number of registrations. The turnout was so low they had to cancel the andolan and Anna is breaking his fast.

[Sachin=GOD]

^:hysterical: thats simply a result of Team Anna being too impatient and not even giving the Govt a chance to do some work. The Govt had repeatedly said that it would introduce the Lokpal Bill in Parliament in this session (and it has kept its word) so there was no need for another fast and jail bharo andolan. Instead of this Team Anna should have tried to be more reasonable then they would have got more support from the public.

[1983-2011]

Team Anna's protest against a "weak" Lokpal Bill in New Delhi remained a damp squib for the second day on Wednesday and was called off abruptly after Anna Hazare ended his fast in Mumbai. The day began with just 200 people assembling at the huge Ramlila Grounds. Though the crowd grew in smaller proportion as the day progressed but their number did not exceed 1,000. At one point during the day, security personnel were more visible than Team Anna's supporters at the 30,000-capacity Maidan in New Delhi this morning. :hysterical::hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:

[1983-2011]

dIMKJSsI2Iw

[ViruRulez]

Oh feck .. this is hilarious .. Anna makes a complete u-turn and stops all the agitation and jail bharo movement .. his movement was a massive fail and today only 200 or so people came and was down from the few thousands he somehow got yesterday (that too including his village people and northern states) .. LOL @ Anna and his team .. I am not against his idea of corruption free but I have never liked his way of achieving the same which was completely unconstitutional .. also the fake support he said about BJP, Left and other parties turned out fake yesterday ... nobody was raising his points and everybody was taking care of their party concerns in the amendments requested .. in fact, BJP was most stubborn of uniform Lokpal and said no way should any Lokpal be passed in the states even though it was said states could decide on implementation date .. I am not sure how and why Anna would support Lokpal only in central govt. and employees but not for state govt. which is equally corrupt if not more .. Left were adamant on Lokpal taking care of international deals with foreign companies so that FDI or any progressive things can never come to India... so, Anna and his so called supportive opposition are saying diverse and taking care of their own **** .. a massive fail of the fake Gandhian and his movement .. India has rejected him .. his intentions were not necessarily bad but his ways of trying to achieve the same was definitely wrong .. today Kejriwal was saying about democracy and he is not sure democracy is the right form of govt. as there are too much formalities and rules .. the fools do not understand that our constitution and the rules are still one of the major reasons why we are still a very well working democracy Having said that, Indian political parties are just turning out to be the biggest opportunists especially the big two - BJP and Congress .. the way they fight like school kids is pathetic and their only motive seems to pull the other party down and care about their own benefit .. BJP honestly is coming out as a party which changes statements within minutes and are perfect opportunists .. in almost every recent event BJP is only doing things to pull the govt. down if possible on the respective issue and trying to show themselves in good light .. and Digvijay of the Congress especially is going a step further than the BJP at times

[Sachin=GOD]

Bump... the tamasha has started again - this time with much less crowds and less attention from the media as well as the Govt.

[Sachin=GOD]

Revolution without ideas P K Siddharth | Aug 1, 2012, 05.05AM IST

Anna's aims are laudable, but he should not make fasting his sole means of protest As Anna Hazare's fast-unto-death enters the fourth day, the UPA government has shown no signs of relenting on Team Anna's main demand: the enactment of an effective Lokpal Bill to curb corruption in the top echelons of the establishment. Ironically, this is a country where millions go hungry every day without attracting public attention. But fasting voluntarily and with such frequency to press for the noblest of all causes today - prevention of corruption - has seldom been witnessed in independent India before. Not surprisingly, it has attracted unprecedented attention and adulation. However, while undertaking repeated fasts for enactment of an effective Lokpal Bill underlines the unwavering commitment and courage of Team Anna, at the same time it highlights certain other facts. It shows the agitators are not trying to build a parallel mass base on the strength of a constructive programme, as was done by Mahatma Gandhi. Fasting is the last weapon in the armoury of a non-violent movement, and its rampant use tends to blunt the edge of the weapon. While Gandhi, the creator of this weapon, used it on many occasions, he had many other weapons too in his armoury, especially his constructive social programme. Team Anna, however, lacks other tools of mass mobilisation or social reconstruction. Fasts, undertaken by whosoever, even Gandhi - have an element of drama and suspense in it, which is why they attract such a lot of public attention. But getting the nation's attention solely through this prism poses danger for Team Anna, which might ultimately in public perception be reduced to the status of a brave drama troupe. They might finally look, in nature if not in magnitude of impact, like a street-play group that has the good intention of inducing social change and awareness. To quote V S Naipaul on the JP movement in India: A Wounded Civilisation: "The revolution was an expression of rage and rejection; but it was a revolution without ideas. It was an emotional outburst, a wallow; it would not have taken India forward..." Though harsh in tone and tenor, the comment conveys a powerful message. The JP movement, which was without doubt the most powerful protest movement that took place in independent India, left important lessons for the posterity of revolutionaries and reformers wanting to bring macro-level change in the country. JP himself wrote that for a revolution to succeed it required a revolutionary leadership as well as a revolutionary organisation. JP forgot to mention that it also required a revolutionary programme of action. In his movement, only one component was present: a revolutionary leadership. There was no attempt to build a revolutionary organisation to assist the leadership and no revolutionary programme of action, detailing a broad roadmap for change. It was not surprising that the movement finally failed. After JP's, Anna's is the second powerful pan-Indian movement that seeks to bring about macro-level change in the country in a non-violent manner. However, it needs to draw from both the Gandhi-led movement before Independence, and the JP-led movement of the 1970s. Its persistence is entirely laudable, but Anna's movement suffers from many pitfalls. If Anna's group had projected itself as a pressure group for fighting corruption, these pitfalls would not have been evident. However, Anna's hunger seems to be wider. After breaking his fast last year Anna said he was hungry for nothing less than a total revolution, which put his group in a different perspective and whetted the nation's appetite for more. Mahatma Gandhi once said that fasting might not succeed against 'tyrants'. Team Anna will do well to understand that it is up against tyrannical rulers, who subject millions of Indians to abject poverty year after year and decade after decade by siphoning off public money and making a farce of governance and development. That is not to say fasts are no more relevant as a pressure tactic. But the strategy to deal with rulers forever postponing the creation of an effective anti-corruption body has to be redesigned. First, the movement has to be made more holistic. There has to be a larger vision and roadmap for the country. A countrywide constructive programme has to be undertaken, and a revolutionary organisation created which believes in non-violence not as a policy but as a creed. In addition, the onslaught has to be not against one party or individuals aligned to one party but against all corrupt parties. Selective onslaught has made the Anna movement appear to many as partisan, designed to damage the political prospects of one party, while benefiting another almost equally corrupt party, heading some of the most corrupt state governments. This perception is bound to erode Team Anna's moral quality, which initially made it the darling of the masses and the youth, when Anna undertook his historic 12-day fast at Ramlila Ground in Delhi in August 2011. In addition, the organisation, breaking out of a leadership coterie should broaden itself with fresh inductions on the basis of merit and a transparent system of elections. The closest example here is the Indian National Congress of the olden times, which was founded and controlled by a British civil servant - A O Hume in the beginning. It, however, gradually evolved into a vehicle of mass participation, allowing different people to take up leadership at different times based on democratically conducted organisational elections. The sooner this is understood the better it is for Team Anna and, perhaps, the country. The writer is national convener, the Citizens Commission for National Issues.

ToI

[Sachin=GOD]

INFIGHTING, UNCLEAR GOALS AND INABILITY TO SHOW CONCRETE RESULTS Hangers-on Dilute Brand Anna's Equity - Synonymous with anti-corruption, Hazare is finding fewer takers among youth & on social media

A year ago, nothing could go wrong for 73-year-old Anna Hazare. The antigraft crusader's campaign attracted a groundswell from a disillusioned populace tired of corruption as a way of life. The movement succeeded in building Anna into a brand that millions of Indian consumers most of them young and social media-savvy bought into. A year down the line, that brand is frayed at the seams. The erosion of Brand Anna began sometime in December last year, when the roaring crowds seen on Ramlila Maidan in August had thinned to a bunch of diehards and hangers-on during the latest hunger strike. From a time his movement had triggered a Woodstock like anti-establishment mood, the brand's dazzle had significantly faded. Infighting, unclear goals and an inability to show its audience concrete achievements have all but killed the aura of this brand. Brand Anna got diluted by all the holy men and politicians who joined him for a free ride, says KV ŽÃnoop Sridhar, national creative director at Leo Burnett. He reckons that India's youth backed Hazare the man and nor his extended coterie. The moment his coterie became stronger and more visible, the brand deteriorated, says Sridhar. The cornerstone of building Brand Anna Hazare lay in the septuagenarian's ability to attract hordes of youngsters to his anti-corruption public meetings, not just in Delhi's Jantar Mantar and Mumbai's Azad Maidan but across the hinterland too. The movement gained steam in smaller cities driven by a flood of messages across social media such as Twitter and Facebook, the best way to reach out to a constantly connected youth. But social media is no quick fix. Social media is not a one-time initiative; it is a constant effort and clearly Hazare's team has struggled to keep up, says Rohan Chandrashekhar, CEO of BuzzValve, a social business consultancy. Given the nature of social media, even the slightest missteps get magnified. Given this stumble and constantly shifting messaging, social media users have either become disenchanted with the movement or, worse, shifted sides. Social media is not a self-fulfilling prophecy, says Chandrashekhar. You have to keep the effort going and the messaging consistent. Instead, the movement has gone from being proactive and hopeful to angry and reactive, pushing many youth away and hindering rather than helping the brand's position. Santosh Desai, MD and CEO Future Brands, says that when the movement was launched, Anna Hazare represented a seemingly uncontaminated figure, which bore little resemblance to the political class that people struggle to identify with. He seemed to represent a return to simpler and more idealistic times, adds Desai. However, over the last few months, that illusion has been broken somewhat as the middle class perhaps the biggest drivers of this movement have gotten to know him better and actually dislike several things he represents. The sense of a difference or a counterpoint has got blurred, says Desai. A concerted campaign by the government and their own internal strife has led to a muddling of purpose and sullying of the brand that Anna Hazare originally stood for. For this brand at least, too many cooks are clearly spoiling the broth. Quarrelling core team members are clearly doing more harm than good, agrees Desai. They are loquacious and endlessly verbose the movement has become tedious and clarity has been lost. Not everyone thinks that Anna Hazare's cause is lost. He is probably our best bet at getting a Jan Lokpal (an anti-corruption bill), says Vikram Sakhuhja, CEO, South Asia at GroupM, a top media-buying agency. According to him, what will be key to this brand is its longevity, and whether it can move from being a one-hit wonder to having its own enduring legacy. The in-fighting and political connections seem to have dented his brand but, despite this, I think Hazare remains our best chance at fixing endemic corruption, adds Sakhuja. What may help, he feels, is Hazare overhauling the method to reach his lofty goals. The fast-unto-death worked like a charm the first time around, but using this onetrick pony alone may not work in the longterm, he says.

Economic Times

[Lurker]

In some ways it puts into perspective the monumental effort that Gandhi-Nehru and other bigwigs had to do. In an era with no mass transport, no communication a la phone and internet, it must have been something to get an entire subcontinent together. It also reminds me of why Bhagat Singh would always sing Kartar Singh Saraba's couplet - Sewa desh ki jaaneman hai badi musqil Baat karni to badi aasan hoti hai....

[asterix]

^ Shouldn't compare differnet eras.. Gandhi-Nehru's effort was manumental, but that era was of trmendously oppressed people (Kangress has yet to achive Britsh type oppression), people had very little distraction due to lack of TV, 1000s of channels, Britishers not having the Kangrees type advantage of using paid media houses to mis-inform public, peoples struggle for daily needs like today, general apathy about anything in life other than personal issues etc. :hatsoff: to Team Anna for atleast embarking on some sort of mission. It's a long and difficult road but I hope something better comes out of it. Atleast they managed to force those parliamentarians to do something, even if it's a sham..

[Lurker]

^ Shouldn't compare differnet eras.. Gandhi-Nehru's effort was manumental, but that era was of trmendously oppressed people (Kangress has yet to achive Britsh type oppression), people had very little distraction due to lack of TV, 1000s of channels, Britishers not having the Kangrees type advantage of using paid media houses to mis-inform public, peoples struggle for daily needs like today, general apathy about anything in life other than personal issues etc. :hatsoff: to Team Anna for atleast embarking on some sort of mission. It's a long and difficult road but I hope something better comes out of it. Atleast they managed to force those parliamentarians to do something, even if it's a sham..

If those really are the best examples against Gandh-Nehru's effort then you get a glorious.... :bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake: :beee:

[asterix]

If those really are the best examples against Gandh-Nehru's effort then you get a glorious.... :bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake::bootyshake: :beee:

You asked for it.. :beee:

[Lurker]

You asked for it.. :beee:

Did you catch any Olympic event yet Asterix Da? Suna hai bade joron se :clap: maar rahe the kanyaon ke gymnastics aur diving event mein. Paedo :orderorder:

[asterix]

Nahin bhai.. Watching on TV only. :((

[Lurker]

Nahin bhai.. Watching on TV only. :((

My sister watched the Indian badminton match (Kashpay waala) with her little one. The little one was going nuts with Indian jhanda. :isalute::isalute: Day after tomorrow Pakistan's wrestlers start their outtings. Please make sure you get tickets to watch them :desiman:

[asterix]

My sister watched the Indian badminton match (Kashpay waala) with her little one. The little one was going nuts with Indian jhanda. :isalute::isalute: Day after tomorrow Pakistan's wrestlers start their outtings. Please make sure you get tickets to watch them :desiman:

:mad: Bera Gark Ho Pakistani wrestlers ka..

[Sachin=GOD]

In some ways it puts into perspective the monumental effort that Gandhi-Nehru and other bigwigs had to do. In an era with no mass transport' date= no communication a la phone and internet, it must have been something to get an entire subcontinent together. It also reminds me of why Bhagat Singh would always sing Kartar Singh Saraba's couplet - Sewa desh ki jaaneman hai badi musqil Baat karni to badi aasan hoti hai....

:agree: In Team Anna's case lately its just been a lot of hyperbole combined with senseless threats to the Govt.

[1983-2011]

what does Annaji want this time, is it same as last year?

[Sachin=GOD]

what does Annaji want this time' date=' is it same as last year?[/quote'] Pretty much the same as last year. But just now I saw on the news that he is talking about entering Politics. IMO that would be the worst thing that could happen to India.

[1983-2011]

Team Anna to contest 2014?

New Delhi: Surrounded by thousands of supporters at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, activist Anna Hazare, still on a hunger strike and his right wrist full of raakhis, made two important announcements today. He said his aides want feedback within 48 hours on whether they should form a political party, and that they will end their fast tomorrow at 5 pm. "There is nothing wrong with forming a party... we need to provide an alternative to the people," the 75-year-old said, adding that the public's interest has to be safeguarded. His camp was filled to capacity; around him, a sea of flags waved. Anna said he will not contest the elections, but that his aides now have to decide if they can find the sort of funding needed to stand for elections. "We want to form a political alternative... a front of honest people," said a member of his core group, Mayank Gandhi, to NDTV. He said the activists are not interested in forming "a typical party like the Congress or the BJP," but admitted they don't have clarity yet on what sort of shape "a third front" might take. Anna's right-hand man, Arvind Kejriwal, now on the ninth day of his fast, told those gathered at Jantar Mantar, "There is a concern that the people who go into power will become corrupt... The people who go into power shouldn't become corrupt, what is the solution? Want people's suggestions on that. We don't have any links to any party... Don't want Congress to go and we should come into power. We want a change in the establishment not just in power." The movement Anna fronts, India Against Corruption (IAC), has launched a referendum on twitter and on its website. It asks people to vote on whether Anna's aides should enter active politics. See forum The government, which has long accused the activists of trying to dictate terms to a democratically-elected parliament, said Team Anna has always been power-hungry and must contest elections to prove its claim of representing the will of the people. "You can't hold the government to ransom," Cabinet Minister and Congress leader Ambika Soni said. She also pointed out that joining the political process is an arduous task. Another Congress leader, Digvijaya Singh, tweeted, "I welcome Anna's decision to end their fast to create a political alternative which is the only way in a healthy Democracy. Didnt I predict?" (Sic) Earlier today, a group of 26 prominent citizens including Justice Santosh Hegde and former Army chief General VK Singh wrote to Anna, urging him to end his fast and focus on giving people a political alternative. "The ongoing fast represents a voice of conscience...the political establishment has not cared to listen, leave alone to respond, to this voice," their letter says, urging Anna and his associates to "form an alternative political force." In an interview to NDTV last month, Anna had said he would not contest elections but said that if his aides decided to enter politics, he would evaluate their ability to serve as MPs and then decide whether to support them. Anna's protest camp and hunger strike at Jantar Mantar was organized by India Against Corruption to demand the immediate introduction of a new law against graft, based on the Lokpal Bill. Through a series of fasts last year - one of which lasted 16 days - Anna has raised the awareness of the Lokapl Bill across the country. The proposed legislation is named for the national ombudsman agency that it births, with the powers to investigate and prosecute corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. The government says it has done its job by bringing the bill to parliament- it was passed by the Lok Sabha in December, but has been held up in the Rajya Sabha since then. Ministers say they are committed to pushing the legislation through, but their timelines cannot be forced by activists using hunger strikes as blackmail. Anna has been fasting since Sunday; his aides, Arvind Kejriwal, Gopal Rai and Manish Sisodia, have not eaten in nine days. The Delhi Police asked them last evening to check into hospital, reminding them that they had agreed in writing to seek medical attention if their health deteriorated. The activists refused, stating that they would decide when to end their hunger strike.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/team-anna-to-contest-2014-referendum-launched-fast-ends-tomorrow-250551