Many waters have flowed down the rivers since India's tryst with destiny. Young India claims to have embarked on saving my country from corruption. My bible teaches me that Wisdom comes with age. It also warns that to reason out with fools may end up making one foolish himself. To those who question, Young India hits back saying that they are at least doing something. But, doing something without thinking of the consequences is also dangerous. This is an age of vested interests hiding behind the labels of Face Book and Twitter communities.
We have no doubt that Corruption is one among the greatest evils of our country. We have spent years raising our voices against it and that is why some newspapers in Goa think it fit to deny us space for our opinion. Instead we have endless rolls of paper trying to brain wash us into believing that the draft of a Jan Lok Pal Bill is that one wonder drug to arrest this cancer. We have strong reservations to the tactics and claims of Anna Hazare and his gang. The NCPRI draft of the Lok Pal Bill is kept away from public glare. We were then young turks from the emergency era. We have learnt lessons from the JP movement. So the question arises, why is Anna in a hurry that his version provides the ultimate solution?
> We were young then, just 14 years of age. We rejoiced as Janata party swept the polls. Indira Gandhi was crushed by the people of this country in 1975, but how long did that euphoria last? What happened to Jay Prakash Narayan’s call for a Total Revolution no sooner his supporters tasted power? Was the Purnn Swaraj movement not a second freedom struggle? How did the communal forces use that occassion to further entrench themselves in the government administration? These are all questions one is left to grapple with and will never be debated by the media.
We watched the Ram Mandir frenzy generated by Advani during his rath yatra across the country. Only Lalu Prasad the then CM of Bihar had the guts to defy the public mood. He ultimately paid the price. We were horrified to see the demolition of Babri Masjid while the State Government just watched. We were also convinced that an innocent looking Vajpayeee who got portrayed as the leader was the hope for millions aspiring for clean governance in this country. We are made to forget how Enron project got kick started by the NDA. We are denied memories on how SEZs and Nuclear deals were shaped by none other than the swadeshi pall bearers who now accuse the PM, Manmohan Singh of being an American agent. And the icing on the cake was the crores of rupees from the public spent on media campaigns by the NDA to brain wash this country into believing that India was shinning just as we are made to believe about Modi’s Guajrat and Nitish’s Bihar. We are more than convinced that noises against corruption are nothing but those of one beggar envying the other.
Now that Advani is a spent force, the moderate Vajpayee is rendered a lame duck, a prospective PM material called Modi has failed to attract the imagination of this country, and the dancing girl Sushma of Bellary fame lent herself to become a laughing stock at Raj Ghat. The NDA desperately needs an issue and another innocent face to embarrass the Congress. Anna Hazare has been hired to fill that void. He may not know it. But the tone and texture of the movement betrays the claim that it is the genuine voice of the civil society. A Medha Patkar or Mamta Banerjee fast has not got such media space. Sharmilla lies weak on her bed from fasting for over 10 years now but does not attract that relentless media attention. Swamy Nigmanand passed away fasting the rest of India not knowing that he had fasted on 30 occsassions to save the Ganga from being mined and dammed by none other than the BJP government of Uttranchal. So who is fooling whom?
It is obvious that fascism is seeking to ride piggy back to power on the anti-corruption sentiment. The well constructed media hype and portrayal of a second Gandhi leading a second freedom struggle is no accident. It was this hidden alliance that compelled Anna Hazare to praised Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar for their good governance, utterances which made his script writers jittery. He was sent to Gujarat to do damage control and retract his flawed claims on the pretext of supporting Medha Patkar’s fast. What we are now witnessing is nothing but a “ Peepli Live’ where the reasoning voice is shouted down by relentless screaming or clapping mobs on media channels. Sanity has no place in this journey of Young India from the Ram Mandir to the Jan Lok Pal. Reason cannot appeal to mobs.
All we can pray now is, God save our country!
-Soter D’Souza (With no love or brief for a corrupt Congress)
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