Anna Hazare: Assassin or Saviour?

The following article was originally published on Infinity IIT Delhi website - http://infinityiitd.com/anna-hazare-assassin-saviour/

India is on the threshold of writing history; thanks to Anna Hazare and company. I respect Anna Hazare, but I am not a big fan of his attitude and his methods. The way Hazare is handling things is totally against a democratical form of government.

Our government is elected by electoral processes and not by mere revolt by a group of people.

A law is made by the discretion of the parliament, a body which is capable enough to amend and make laws. People can only suggest the parliament to make certain laws, not bully the institution. Who has given authority to Anna Hazare and his entourage to negotiate with the government? We are disrespecting our prime minister. Our acts are only demoralizing the government.

Right to Information act, a first of its kind bill was introduced by the present government only, and this is the reason the past decade saw so many scams being unravelled. Manmohan Singh is no fool. He is wary of the situation of the present government. He knows that letting in an extremist bill won’t be of much help. Making a new law won’t stop the people from taking or giving bribes. The mentality of the people needs to be changed. By punishing the criminal, crime cannot be liquidated.

 In the current situation, the system is diminished by the hollow ‘revolutionary’ gestures of the crowd. A nation’s general public collectively cannot make or amend laws. Only the representatives chosen by the public have the true power to make laws. A ‘crowd’ has no name, no accountability, no sense, and no brains. They are blind followers and sometimes even bought. Babri Masjid was demolished by a ‘crowd’; riots in Gujarat were an act by a ‘crowd’; the mass killings of 1984 were also initiated by a ‘crowd’. Thus, a crowd is not legitimate enough to support the bill.

Winning general public’s support or being popular doesn’t suffice to authorize someone with electoral rights. Hazare is setting a wrong example by taking public support into account to pass the Lokpal Bill. Tomorrow someone else will propose a new bill and tag it with public support. Baba Ramdev is a recent example of the same. The public is seeing only the bright side of the bill and doesn’t know the inner politics behind it. They are blindly supporting the ombudsman; half of them don’t even know what the Lokpal Bill is. We are ourselves weakening our institutions by our very own hands. The voice of Arvind Kejiriwal is not the voice of the whole country. He is imposing his thoughts in the name of public’s.

Anna says that Jan Lokpal Bill will reduce corruption by 65%. My take is – if all the people pledge not to give or take bribes, all businessmen pledge to honestly pay taxes, then corruption will reduce more drastically.

Comparing Anna to Gandhiji is disrespectful to the latter. Gandhiji fought against a foreign rule. Anna is fighting against a government chosen by the citizens of India. Gandhiji’s voice was solely his own, but Anna seems to be borrowing voices.

Anna Hazare has said what he had to, which has come to the notice of the whole nation and the government as well. Now he must rest his case and give the government enough time to complete the cause.

I am fed up of CRMD

3 minutes to go before the serpent would arrive. We were more than 100 people sweating in a subterranean area, our whereabouts unknown to our beloved ones. Tension was being mirrored on the new entrants of the cavity. Same train of thought ran through the minds of all the trapped people. Many thinking, why they ever chose to come down here?

2 minutes to go. More cherishing faces were pouring in only to become worried ones. The density of the hall was increasing exponentially.

1 minute. Why were the people so desperately waiting for the serpent? Didn’t they realize the atmosphere inside it would be much more venomous than what was outside? And then the sporadic sound of the awaited monster could be heard. By the face of it, it already seemed so full. Wait! Is it going to puke? No! But it was too late. Its many pores on the side of the body opened up and out came a clump of macro particles in immeasurable volume. And the anticipated sucking effect then took place, pulling us all inside the serpent’s body. The effect of gravity seemed to have shifted laterally and I was free falling sideways. My body was being guided by the people in my vicinity and theirs’ being guided by the people in their vicinity. Now we were inside ‘it’. The already existing faces inside the giant body looked familiar given the fact that they were also laced with the same amount of tautness as the ones outside. The serpent then swayed and made its way towards the opening of the tunnel which it was now facing.

My eyes activated their zoom in + search mode and started scanning the insides of our host, looking for what it was looking for. But the new macro particles (which included me) were blocking the view. If I consider myself as India on the world map then in the direction of Nepal my eyes installed its view, successfully finishing its search. Lucky Me! But USA, Germany, Japan have made such advancement in technologies that they attacked poor Nepal before India could take its first step. Hah! Unlucky Me!

As usual the seat in the coach of one of the trains of Delhi Metro won in the encounter to avoid me as one of its occupants and at the end of the journey from Hauz Khas to Chandni Chowk my legs were cursing me.

I am fed up of the Corporation of Rail and Metro in Delhi, or is it called DMRC!