Forces Of Calumny

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. (Hamlet, 3.1.129) – Shakespeare.

NDTV and CNN-IBN simply couldn’t have expected events that unfolded. When a carefully cultivated line of thinking and campaign goes terribly wrong it leaves one wondering which way to jump. Throughout August 17 as the Anna Hazare stalemate continued NDTV could only think of calling it a ‘circus’. Barkha Dutt kept tweeting about Alice In Wonderland and how this is all mad. Her late evening programme sported the tag line ‘protest or blackmail’ and an hour prior, Nidhi Razdan started her Left, Right, Centre by once again calling the event a ‘circus’. I couldn’t help laughing at the irony. When Barkha Dutt rushed to Egypt and Libya she didn’t find those events to be circus or the world of Lewis Caroll.  To Rajdeep Sardesai’s CNN-IBN, of course, must go the credit of inaugurating mud-slinging season. When a prominent news channel like CNN-IBN undertakes brazen mud-slinging it starts emboldening the forces and faces of calumny. The three stooges that were the faces of Congress in the entire Anna Hazare episode pretty much reflect the combined faces of calumny spurred by some in the TV news media. Rajdeep and Yogendra Yadav would be delighted to know how their recent opinion polls confirm everything they are seeing on the ground now. Oh yeah, if elections were held today the UPA would be voted back to power! That's what they would have you believe. And, of course, their poll suggested that only 28% believe UPA is corrupt. Will the truth ever set these media dealers free?

Faces of Calumny

Things didn’t go wrong on August 16. They went wrong on the night of June 4 when a peaceful crowd was lathi-charged in the middle of the night. I had then written that ‘Chidambaram, Sibal and Soni were the ones to have hatched the Anna arrest. But the people already knew that by now. What is worse is having a PM who has more or less abdicated his responsibilities and received a severe pasting from opposition leader Arun Jaitley.

The Congress and many in the media have tried desperately to spin these events as ‘parliament v street legislators’. Even that has failed. If the intellectuals in the media haven’t realised yet that no matter what Anna or Baba or Bedi do, they simply cannot make a law, the ordinary people are under no illusion. The best they can do is fast, agitate and protest. After the murder of journalist J. Dey did the media not demand special protection laws? Did they not demand that crimes against journalists be made ‘non-bailable’ offences? Is that not demanding laws that they want? The laws that Anna Hazare demands may be different but it’s not different in principle. He just seems to have more determination and the will to die for it. Fact is, journalists were demanding special privileges whereas Anna is not demanding any special privileges. But, that’s OK, people demand all sorts of things.

The most striking feature of the debates on TV is that people like Mahesh Bhatt, Nandita Rao, Rahul Kanwal question the wisdom or intelligence of ordinary people. I’m not kidding, here’s a tweet from Rahul Kanwal:

Rahul Kanwal:

Quite certain protesters don't understand finer nuances of Anna's bill. Doesn't matter to them. They're livid with Govt over corruption.

Finer nuances? Alright, I can laugh but the media morons wouldn’t understand nuance if it kissed them in broad daylight. What they hide is that the crowds are just as angry with the media as they are with the politicians. I can safely vouch for the fact that there is not a single lawyer or constitutional expert who knows everything that they talk about. What they talk about is a common-sense stand that they take. These opinionated egos of media might be under the impression that every MP even reads every bill that is passed. Ordinary people just have a boiling point. They keep watching the crimes of those in power and when it reaches a crescendo they will come out and fight. They don’t need to read law books before coming out on the streets as some of our stupid media dealers seem to desire. And a man like Mahesh Bhatt believes without cameras the Anna Hazares would disappear. Without a camera it is the Barkha Dutts, Rajdeep Sardesais, Sagarika Ghoses, Rahul Kanwals, Arnab Goswamis who would have had to choose a different career and would be consigned to the bin of the thousands of unknown journalists. Bhatt’s statement is like an idiot cursing the very gift by which he earns his livelihood. Same goes for the media dealers who claim protests would die without the camera. This is the same belief that leads them to believe that they are indirectly the most powerful law-makers in the land. An offence they accuse the street protesters of.

Rahul Kanwal shouldn’t assume people on the streets are dumb. If he offered them a choice to listen to a moral sermon, between Anna Hazare and Barkha Dutt, I’m certain even Kanwal knows who they’d pick. And Hazare isn’t the cacofonix on TV screens every night. All said and done it is not Anna who has lost his sense of decency. The media should ask the PM if he has lost all sense of decency and let loose his ministers to take the actions they did. I doubt you need a constitution or law to tell you what common decency is. After all, the Ten Commandments didn't include rape or child-abuse. Common human decency helped us learn that.

In all this, conspicuous by their absence from the media are M/s. Hit and Run. Yeah, both Digvijay Singh and Rahul Gandhi must have run out of silly statements. The media must be dearly missing the crumbs that this duo is used to throwing at them. Tarnishing RSS doesn’t seem to be paying anymore. In Gujarat,  Gandhi is a name used to refer to the corner-shop grocer. That’s because Gandhis are traditionally grocers. There is a reason why Gandhi cared to understand ordinary people. The Gandhi-grocer is the one who interacts with ordinary people almost every minute of his working day. That someone like Rahul walks around with the name of Gandhi may not be his fault, but there is a reason why he has a severe disconnect with the people as does the media. And the most stunning comment on the man came not from his detractors but his ally in UPA-I. It was Brinda Karat of CPM, who for the first time sarcastically used the term ‘prince charming’ in parliament to describe the white-wash that the Congress attempted to make in the bungling of the Hazare incident. The Congress and media attempt to credit Rahul Gandhi with diffusing the crisis failed miserably. We had one great Gandhi who is now in heaven. We don’t need fake Gandhis in our parliament.

The PM who stupidly talked about ‘skeletons’ before the current parliament session is now warning Anna Hazare of consequences. His lack of decency and miserable failure as PM is embarrassing for the whole nation. When he indirectly condones the sacking of the nation and then lets loose his forces of calumny the nation looks for leadership. In the absence of a leader they found one in Anna Hazare. In less than 12 hours they have made him a national, and probably international, hero. This is a time to be humble. If the PM cannot find his own conscience then a Janlokpal bill will not be the only thing that the protesters will demand.

The Official Indecency Act

I would have liked to quote an Indian MP, but I couldn’t find a speech that is close. But here are excerpts from a famous speech to the US Senate in 1950, called the Declaration of Conscience speech (in blue),  by the late American senator Margaret Chase Smith

It is strange that we can verbally attack anyone else without restraint and with full protection and yet we hold ourselves above the same type of criticism here on the Senate Floor.  Surely the United States Senate is big enough to take self-criticism and self-appraisal.  Surely we should be able to take the same kind of character attacks that we “dish out” to outsiders.

I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul-searching—for us to weigh our consciences….on the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges. I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.  I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism:

            The right to criticize;

            The right to hold unpopular beliefs;

            The right to protest;

            The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood… The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents.  Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America.  It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.

There are those in our government and our media who follow an unwritten law. The Official Indecency Act. Chief among its practitioners are Congress spokesmen Manish Tiwari and Digvijay Singh. In the media you have the likes of Nandita Rao (CNN-IBN panelist) and again another Congressman V. Narayanaswamy. It does not take great intelligence to recognise these personalities as some of the most foul-mouthed people in the public domain. Yet the media delights again and again in putting them on your screens and in your drawing rooms. The filth that follows is unbelievable. The worst is character assassination, smearing and tarnishing of reputations and of course frequently calling others RSS agents and fascists, anarchists and Maoists.

Media doesn’t get to choose the spokespersons of the political parties. Yet they can choose who they invite on their panels. A Manish Tiwari maybe the Congress party’s choice. There is no need for the media to choose him on panels unless they deliberately enjoy the theatre of the foul-mouth. Same goes for those who invite the likes of Nandita Rao or Narayanaswamy.

In the current Anna Hazare stalemate, when asked if this was like the Emergency of 1975, Ram Jethmalani replied on CNN-IBN, that it is even worse. He explained that a court order had dethroned Indira Gandhi, there was a threat of her losing power, her government falling and therefore declared Emergency. But the current UPA is facing no such threat of any kind and yet chose to act in the most indecent and arrogant manner that any government in a democracy could. At the top of the pile is a Prime Minister who is simply lost and has proved to be the worst measure of lack of leadership.

So we had three stooges, P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Ambika Sonieloquently explaining how the government was not involved in the Delhi police decision to impose sec.144 and bar Anna Hazare from holding his hunger-strike and then making a preventive arrest. The arrogance and audacity with which they mislead the nation and attempt to whitewash their wrongs had to be seen to be believed. And then you previously had those that called Hazare an anarchist, a fascist and much earlier Ramdev was called a ‘thug’. What have these crooks taken the people for?

This was backed up by foul-mouthed media experts like Nandita Rao who has problems with Anna Hazare dictating terms on the Lokpal bill. There are also others like Tavleen Singh and some more. Now the issue at hand is first not the Lokpal bill itself. The issue has now turned into deliberately and illegally arresting individuals and denying them their right to protest. And the piety with which the three stooges defended the 22 obscene conditions imposed on Anna Hazare for the protest can only be described as a mockery of our constitution and mockery of our democracy. These people who cite our constitution, law and order are usually the ones who frequently abuse it. Many should remember that Ambika Soni herself has the Emergency to credit for her rise to prominence.

The Digvijays and Tiwaris have really gone a step too far in calling the agitators fascists and communal and being funded by invisible right-wingers. Fingers were pointed at pictures of Bharat mata or chants of Vande Mataram as proof of anti-nationals and right-wingers being involved in the protests earlier. Seriously, pictures of Bharat mata or chanting Vande Mataram are symbols of anti-national right-wingers and fascists? This time the scandalous crime that the Congress has tried to perpetrate has failed. Their propaganda stooges in the media have failed. No matter how much spin they tried, the NDTVs and CNN-IBNs failed.

The concept that parliament is the supreme law making body is certainly not misplaced. But the law makers need to be guided by ordinary people and not vested interests. The rulers in a democracy cannot rule without the consent of those being ruled. The one vote every five years is not a blanket sanction to pass any and all laws. It is particularly NOT a sanction to indulge in corruption and loot the nation. When that happens, parliament surrenders its supremacy and ordinary people must intervene. When that happens people power will definitely prevail over parliamentary authority. People power will definitely prevail when governments do what they have not been authorised to do by an electoral mandate. Corruption is one of those. What vote or what constitution has authorised our government and our MPs to indulge in such unprecedented corruption?

Those who call Anna Hazare’s demands for the Janlokpal as street laws are simply foolish. In a democracy every individual or group has the right to demand a law or demand the removal of a law. It is for the government of the day to discuss, negotiate and arrive at sensible solutions. The behaviour of the current PM is all the more reason why he should be under the Lokpal, but that is an altogether different issue. He should have stepped up and said “I am the Boss, and I will talk to you”. He did not. The people will then need to show the government who the boss is. Why only PM, I want even the media brought under Lokpal. One can prove any day that our media is not only corrupt that it is also a frequent law-breaker. Anna Hazare and company have not held railways, roads, buses and airlines to ransom or held up normal life to ransom unlike many other agitations have. To deny them the right to protest with absurd conditions and then arresting them is the last resort of a frightened, fascist government. And the government must and always should fear the people and not the other way around.

To back up their indecent and foul-mouthed statements, the Congress has now backed it up with indecent and unconstitutional action. If peaceful protests are drowned then violent ones are likely to follow. This UPA is quite clearly the most corrupt and dangerous government this nation has ever had. The media should also learn a lesson now that all their propaganda will not help when people power takes over. They need to really play the role of the watch dog. Foul mouthed politicians and activists should not be allowed an excessive platform in the media. The official indecency Act must die.

Fascists Will Reap The Whirlwind

There can be no more pretensions. No more defence. No more self-righteousness. Fascist Sonia Gandhi and fascist Manmohan Singh must go. So far, in each of the scams, many have supported the PM as still being clean despite the huge scams that had unfolded and keep unfolding. No more! Both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have not only presided over neck-deep corruption, they have now presided over SIN! Sins against ordinary and peaceful men, women and children. The HAND they hold up to beg for votes from the Aam Aadmi has over and over again been raised to slap the Aam Aadmi. The same hand has encouraged or presided over stealing of public funds, atrocities on innocents and proposing draconian laws.

“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power”. - Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In my previous post (The fast & the spurious) I had mentioned that some of our media outlets not only indulge in yellow journalism they also play the role of the anarchist. The midnight drama involving Delhi police carrying out a lathi-charge and lobbing teargas shells on people who were sleeping is as good a symbol of anarchy as you can get. With channels like CNN-IBN, Headlines Today and Star News firmly on the side of the government in tarnishing Baba Ramdev directly in every which way possible the government was emboldened to carry out action they think they can get away with. As expected not one single media channel has termed this action as criminal and disproportionate.

It is now beyond tolerance of a democracy to have a foreigner and a foreign born person with little understanding of this vast country to be dictating actions and laws for this nation. Anna Hazare has already asked for the government to resign and it is a valid and fair demand. Demands on Lokpal, black money etc. can now wait for a fresh government. The first demand has to be clearly that foreigners or foreign-born people who are not of Indian origin should not be holding any public office. It is not just Sonia Gandhi who should be out of any public office. The fact that this Congress is attempting to promote Rahul Gandhi as a future PM of this country bodes ill for India. This nation is under danger, clear and grave danger.

The extra-constitutional body called the National Advisory Council must be disbanded.  It has become almost a parallel government ministry outside the regular norm. A coterie of people who are close to Sonia Gandhi work to draft and impose draconian laws on this country. It has become a resort for anti-hindu people, some who are embroiled in legal cases. Teesta Setalvad, involved in criminal cases and seeking anticipatory bail, is on the draft committee of the Communal Violence Bill. If this NAC has its way very soon being a Hindu will automatically amount to being a criminal. This must not come to pass. (Read the analysis of this draft bill at Calamur and Offstumped.)

This is also the same government that refuses to take strong action against separatists and those accused of sedition. Wait, it actually rewards people like Binayak Sen, by elevating him to the planning commission. He has already been convicted and is out on bail and at the very least they should have waited for him to be exonerated. I had also warned in my post ‘This Dog Bites’ that the main worry against Ramdev is neither corruption nor black money. The main worry for the Congress is clearly the colour of his clothes and the elections in UP and other states in 2012. And post the atrocious attack in the middle of the night Congress spokespersons continue to ridicule and tarnish Ramdev as if he were some national enemy. Imagine the confluence of a thousand gutters and you can imagine the stench flowing out of the mouth of a Digvijay Singh. Our media celebrates this gutter mouth as if he were some spiritual leader.

There never was and never will be any serious attempt on the part of this corrupt government to either tackle corruption or to tackle black money or bring back money. What is that? Setting a thief to catch a thief? But there is no doubt that the agitation will now intensify. The Congress has sowed the most violent wind. The whirlwind will follow.

Also read:  Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi Should Be Held Criminally Liable...

All The Queen's Poodles....

Here’s a tweet from Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN on June 1:

“Face the nation at 10 pm: should unelected members of civil society have so much power in a democracy?” Excellent question Rajdeep and I will field that one for you. But before I do, let’s attend some other issues.

Kapil ‘zero loss’ Sibal, Pranab Mukherjee and others who rushed to mollify and appease Baba Ramdev yesterday did a bad job and weren’t quite prudent in their action. They could have just left it to our communist media. It’s only communist media persons who believe that ordinary people should be ‘powerless’ and almost be slaves to those who rule. There are quite a few other tweets from media persons that are just as interesting and enlightening and some are reproduced below: (Thanks to regular reader of this blog, Free_Verse)

NDTV - Maya Mirchandani:
If Baba Ramdev is seriously planning to fast against corruption why wait until saturday?Jo kal karey so aaj kar, aaj karey so ab ko kya hua?

I completely agree. And I hold the same view about NDTV. I would give them the same advice – Jo Kal Karey So Aaj Kar – Now then, I have held in a post of mine that it is time to End-It TV where NDTV is concerned. So why are they waiting? Why not do it soon enough? If they had an ear to the ground they would surely know what people think of NDTV. They should be running an NGO with their Greenathons and their Coca-Cola sponsored school programmes. Seriously, the last thing I would want is associate a sugar drink with even the poorest of children. That’s a great way to creating future addicts of junk drinks. Well, Coke can do what it likes. It needs explanation why a supposed news channel is involved. Barkha Dutt has been prudently relatively quiet on these events but here are a few more from the NDTV godown:

Pankaj Pachauri of NDTV Hindi:
- "Can the civil society please audit Baba Ramdev's campaign expenses like election commission tracks political parties?"
- Just got this on sms: Baba naheen ye dhongi hai, kaaledhan ka bhogi hai

Hmmm! Take that for self-righteousness. Pachauri can now join Digvijay Singh and Rahul Kanwal (Headlines Today) and audit Ramdev’s accounts. Since when does civil society audit anyone? It is a Congress led government at the centre and like I said in my post on ‘Erring Barkowitch…..’ the government can use all its forces – the CBDT, the ED, CBI, IB, RAW and everything at their command to investigate the funds and properties of Ramdev. And if they need more help, there is P. Chidambaram who can even authorise phone-taps on Ramdev. Ooops, wait, phone taps might inadvertently reveal some more goof ups by NDTV. I wonder which journalistic school Pachauri attended to imagine civil society auditing people or entities. They don’t need the Sibals and Mukherjees to target Ramdev. The media will do it for them.

Pallavi Ghosh – CNN-IBN:
- We all r meant to do what we do..ramdev is a grt yoga guru..surely he can't dictate laws..
- Ramdev has come on a chartered plane..has said he will give intv to all channels..what a contrast to hazare team!

- Diggy joins in says who's afraid of ramdev

Pallavi covers the events and issues of the Congress party for CNN-IBN. And she rightly says we all r meant to do what we do. Yeah right, who’s afraid of Ramdev? Well, I suppose you would rush to the airport to appease a yoga trainer to prove beyond any doubt you’re not afraid. And as for dictating laws I remember a certain programme on CNN-IBN by Rajdeep Sardesai where there were live tweets seeking to legalise lobbying. Yes, that’s right, tweets to support legalising lobbying. Those tweets were later proved to be spurious. Well relax, that is not dictating laws, is it? And as for flying around in chartered planes here is a piece from a letter by Subramanian Swamy  (Read the post: 2G Scam: Subramanian Swamy accusesSonia Gandhi family of getting loot)

"…..What requires your special attention is the mode of the travel, not by commercial airliners, but by jets provided by the corporate sector which itself is illegal under the DGCA Rules. I find that often Ms.Sonia Gandhi and family have traveled to Dubai and then traveled onwards on private jets provided by dubious Arab business interests to Europe….."

Well, Pallavi, the letter Swamy wrote to the PM on November 24, 2010 contains some serious charges, including Sonia Gandhi flying on private chartered jets. Did you or CNN-IBN report this accusation? Did any media channel report this? In contrast, Ramdev is not flying around secretly. His aircraft and flight was there for all of you to grab videos of.

So now let’s get back to Rajdeep Sardesai’s tweet about whether unelected members of civil society should have so much power in society. Ever heard this line Rajdeep – ‘We the people…’ or is that just a programme on your ex-channel? On ‘Face the nation- CNN-IBN’ on June 1, there were three questions by my favourite TV anchor, Sagarika Ghose. Here goes Ghose:

Are unelected people seeking too much power?

Is Ramdev misusing people’s faith?

Are citizen groups taking shortcut to power?

The concoction of questions itself is a brazen attempt to ridicule Ramdev’s movement. The panelists on the programme – Madhu Kishwar, Arun Bhatia and Kiran Bedi were mostly unanimous in supporting citizens’ right to undertake such movements so that was a bit of a disappointment for CNN-IBN.And still Sagarika maintained the 'debate' will go on! Nothing wrong in that.

I wonder if our scholarly journalists ever heard the line ‘Power to the people’! Almost all civil rights movements in the 60s and 70s were brought about by people movement. The famous civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is referred to as a movement that brings power to the people. John Lennon, Beatle and peace activist, even composed a song “Power to the people”. And yet, our clever media crooks paint any civil movement as lust for power, misusing people’s faith, question their integrity, accuse them of illegitimate wealth and all this to suggest only those in the government or those who are elected have the right to have power. These people need to go back to school and refresh their understanding of democracy.

Hang on, if you thought that the media is seriously questioning the Hazares and the Ramdevs you are terribly wrong. They have a big fear. The fear that these johnies are encroaching on the territory that the media thought was their own turf. Yes indeed, the media believes they are the only ones who should have the power to influence opinions, course of events and the national discourse. So fake opinion polls, fake exit polls, spurious panels on their debates, paid news, coining various political terms, and outright bias in news reporting was a domain they thought was exclusive to the media. Now they have these johny-come-latelys taking over their territory. That’s what worries our media. Ramdev does not need the media, the media needs him. Ramdev has grown his empire without any help from the media and he can sustain it without them. Not just that, he has enough resources to run his own channel and lay out his own propaganda. That is really what irks and worries our media. That Kalaignar TV and Sun TV have reportedly got huge funds from the government’s misdeeds is now out in the open. Why shouldn’t we believe that all the other media outlets have also got their share of the cow-dung pie?These seven years have been a joyride for them, why would they want it to stop?

Governments should FEAR people and not the other way around. Learn that, Rajdeep Sardesai!

Power to the people doesn’t simply mean the right to elect someone to a parliament. It means the power to also influence the course of a nation, its policies and its laws. The Congress is in a soup. All the queen’s poodles may not be able to put the kingdom back together. Well, it wasn’t their job in the first place. The media took it upon themselves to put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall. FAIL !

Sense & Senility

“If a poor child does not have any means for education, then how will Lokpal bill help? If a poor man needs help for medical services then he will call up a politician. How will the Lokpal bill help”? That is a statement attributed to Kapil Sibal (TOI April 12). That is profound wisdom for you! I cannot fathom how the Lokpal bill is in any way connected to education or medical services. More, what stops the government from ensuring education for the poor is free and medical services are made available too. The real Gandhi would rot in hell if he sees the state of affairs of the present Congress. And there cannot be any further doubt that Sibal and some more Congressmen have not only lost their senses but are now bordering senility.

Anna Hazare’s campaign has been called a comic revolution (Manu Joseph of Open magazine) and ‘rule of the unelected’ by many media persons. Nothing wrong with the first statement. Every revolution has a comic side to it. How else does one explain the presence of Swami Agnivesh in this campaign?  Hazare had made it clear that no politician will share the stage with him. Agnivesh was, is and will be a politician. There’s the irony. And then like most stupid politicians even after his victory Hazare goes around giving interviews to the media. The man hasn’t learnt in all of his 71 years that the media exists to destroy and poke holes into every action and word of any leader. So the question the media now happily raises: ‘Is this rule by the unelected’.

The answer to the question of ‘rule by the unelected’ can partly be answered by another constitution, one of the USA. The second amendment of the US constitution allows people to bear arms. The words in that amendment have been interpreted in many forms but here is a very common interpretation: “The Constitution aside, bearing arms is a fundamental human right. It is the only means the American people have to reclaim control of their government, should it one day become irredeemably corrupt”. Arms aside, it is the duty of the unelected to reclaim their government should it become irredeemably corrupt. Is our government irredeemably corrupt? Make a wild guess!

Now, there is this lot in the Maharashtra Assembly which has moved a privilege motion against actor Anupam Kher for supposedly stating “throw out the constitution”. Kher, of course, has denied making that statement and there is no evidence that he has. But what even if he did make that statement. What is so damn wrong about that? Why don’t these same people move a posthumous privilege motion against Babasaheb Ambedkar? He is known as the architect of the constitution and he himself is on record stating he would be the first one to burn it.(Read the post Ambedkar wanted to burnthe constitution.. And he should have ! ) Again a case of the Congress+NCP losing its senses. After all, Sharad Pawar was accused by Hazare as the most corrupt in the Lokpal bill draft committee. And the NCP is the protector of the constitution. If anything, politicians have subverted the constitution many times over. Does that make sense?

Senility is now spreading across the Congress. Just the other day Sonia Gandhi was reported to seek votes for the LDF in Kerala. That’s the alliance the Congress is fighting the elections against. Well, it might just be a slip of tongue, but she sought votes for the LDF more than once. And who do they blame? The speech writers. That’s a good one. Even a badly written speech is always dealt with skilfully by a speaker with presence of mind. That says a lot for Sonia Gandhi’s general awareness levels. I wonder who will hang for her silly mistake now.

Finally, I couldn’t resist responding to my favourite politician – Rahul ‘The Duh’ Gandhi! Whenever he opens his mouth there is bound to be at least one great gem of wisdom. He finally seems to have got basic arithmetic right and learnt to count. Achutanandan, the CM of Kerala, would be 93 he said if he finishes another term in power. Hmmmm! He is 87, so plus 5 makes it 93 according to Rahul Gandhi. And then Abhishek Manu Singhvi cries and complains at Rahul being called an ‘Amul baby’ by Achutanandan. That’s more comedy for you. The Congress’ TN alliance chief, Karunanidhi, is almost 90. Manmohan Singh will be into his eighties and Rahul Gandhi, the sage, will be 400 before he becomes PM. The ghost who walks! That’s Congress sense and senility for everyone.

Lokpal Bill: Why The Congress Blinked..

For five days the drama of Anna Hazare’s fast unto death gripped the nation and even NRIs beyond our borders. In my previous post I had written that if the Manu Singhvis and the Manish Tiwaris and the Congress don’t wake up and act the people’s army and artillery will be right there at their doorstep. And sure enough, they were there. And how! A few Congressmen and some in the media tried to dismiss the Hazare campaign as arm-twisting and blackmail but little did they realise how well organised and planned the campaign was. The Congress didn’t get a sniff into Anna’s strategy.

First, let’s give credit where it’s due. Hahahhahaha! I am laughing at the silly media channels trying to take the credit for what was essentially a people’s campaign. Sample these slogans and lines : From Headlines Today: ‘People Against Corruption-Headlines Today Campaign’. Yes indeed, after all HT was the champion. Not to be left behind CNN-IBN slogan was ‘Citizens Against Corruption – A CNN-IBN Campaign’. Now you know who really ran the whole campaign against corruption! Don’t you? That’s not all there was your own channel TimesNow reminding us how it was the only channel to cover Hazare’s fast and campaign live right through. Hmmm! If not for TimesNow we would have never heard of all this. So now that the back-scratching by the news media has been dealt with, we can move on.

Kapil Sibal has once again proved to the nation what an ass he is. From the zero loss in 2G Scam to this campaign his utterances have over and over again proved only one thing – That Sibal doesn’t think much before speaking. Well, the otherwise articulate Sibal seems to have picked up these habits from the unbearable Singhvis and Tiwaris of the Congress. Forget Hazare holding a gun to the government’s head, the Congress shot itself in the foot once again. They didn’t really believe that Anna Hazare had it all well thought out and planned carefully.

First, corruption is a sore wound that hurts all citizens. Anna got it right. Then, it was important to get some honest and credible people into his campaign. So there was Anil Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi (I am not sure I want to put Swami Agnivesh in that league). Anna got it right. Catch the Congress at a time when elections are around in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and some more states. The timing was important. Anna got it right. The world cup fever had died and people had the mood for another public display of solidarity for something. Anna got it right. Then he had rightly expected that the people’s army would be out in great numbers all across the country. Anna got it right. Even a nobody like me got that one right. Most people did, all except the Congress. In the end, the Congress had only one option - 'Blink'!

Anna Hazare may not have expected his fast to wind up so quickly within about 4 days. He even had his next move planned – ‘jail bharo’. Caught up between a population growing increasingly angry and scared it might hurt their election alliances and results in key states did the Congress really have an option? The only option was to cave in and that’s the power of people. I am sure somewhere deep in their minds the Congress had images of Egypt and Libya playing out over and over again in their nightmares.

The campaign was a great victory and done in the right spirit. There was no rail-roko, no road-roko, no calls for bandh. This is how people can and should protest and agitate. Time the politicians and crooks learned who the real boss is! And no matter how the Congress paints the closure it’s been a resounding kick on the Congress ass and deservedly so. And it was fun while it lasted.

2G Scam – More ‘Si-BalShit’

After the sacking of Spectrum Raja one would have thought the induction of Kapil Sibal as Telecom Minister would bring in some sanity to the ministry. Most people have known Sibal to be knowledgeable, sensible and a straight-talking person. Being a top grade lawyer, he has usually chosen his words carefully in the past. Adversity and calamity bring out the best in a man or the worst in a man. Far from his best, it seems to have brought out the worst in Kapil Sibal. I am now tempted to say ‘Si-Bull in a china shop’. (Or 'Si-Bull in a mobile shop?)

Si-Bull In A Mobile Shop?

First, the uncalled for attack on the CAG when he stated: “We are extremely pained at the methodology adopted by the CAG for arriving at the [allocation loss] figures that have no basis. The “presumptive losses” had embarrassed the government and the nation, he said, and this “resulted in a kind of sensationalism, which has allowed the Opposition to spread utter falsehood among the people.” Falsehood? The CAG then stood by its report.

Later, in January,  in an interview with Rajdeep Sardesai, Sibal was unusually combative and almost militant. He even mentioned that all the letters to and from the PM that were being referred mostly didn’t exist and that the ‘Aam Aadmi’ had actually benefited from the spectrum policies. In other words, the aam aadmi had benefited from the 2G Scam. Sardesai was so battered by the ‘Si-Bull’ that he couldn’t even ask proper questions or get answers.

In between, he appointed retired Justice Shivraj Patil as a one-man panel to look into the irregularities in spectrum allotment. The justice dishes out a report that suggests wrong polices existed since 2003, during the NDA regime. Quoting the report, Sibal said the committee found that original spectrum allocation was "bad" and procedures were not followed both during the NDA government till 2004 and the UP government up to 2008.  This comes today, a day after Raja’s arrest.

It’s time the press and electronic media told Mr. Kapil, “Enough of your (Si)Balshit please get on with the job”. Kapil Sibal has the job of cleaning up the mess and moving on to ensure better policies, more transparency, and do the best to recover any losses that the nation may have incurred under previous policies, previous ministers or previous regimes. It would be a disaster if a respected politician and lawyer such as Kapil Sibal drowns himself in petty politics to defend the UPA. Nobody is blaming Kapil Sibal for any mess but if he continues in this vein he will attract the same revulsion that A. Raja has.

The arrest of A. Raja has nothing more than drama value and some comic relief. It means nothing unless he is sentenced to prison after a proper court procedure. In the meantime, Mr. Kapil please spare us anymore ‘Si-Balshit’! We would not like to see you become Si-BULL in a mobile shop!