What will happen to Kezriwal and Anti corruption movement?

Close to 2 years back I have written about Anna Hazare and Arvind Kezriwal in my blog, the only difference is now we have a lot of clarity on what they could not achieve and where they have gone wrong (of course most of it could be mere perceptions).Couple of hours back I was casually reading on Quora, A question about Aam Admi Party supporters caught my attention. This person who posted the question seems to have vexed up with the supporters of Kezriwal and APP even after it's debacle in elections and sensation about Kezriwal's arres and resignations of Shazia, capt.Gopinath. I think his frustration is fair but at the same time "Supporters" have no choice to an extent, leaders can resign and join other parties but a once supporter will always be considered to be a supporters even  if he/she does not believe in AK/AAP anymore.

So who to blame? Supporters or the party & Leadership?

First of all, I don't think AK has clarity on what he wants to achieve with his party which in way promotes the culture of taking decisions suddenly aiming short term gains - which will be frustrating for people around him. 

Second, Leaders who joined AK/AAP were in a hurry to support him before even understating the philosophy of the party - obviously their loyalties will disappear in a quick time.

Third, the way Aam Admi party is being run sometimes it looks like an even management company who plans and executes “Dharnas”. Criticism by Capt.Gopinath or by Shazia or not far from truth for obvious reasons. Absence of Democracy" in AAP is quite natural for the reason that as a country we are extremely far from this word internal democracy within our political parties, moreover it is very unlikely to happen to AAP with the stance they take on few issues like Kashmir, Khap etc. It will be pretty much driven by AK and few more - I don’t think Shazia is new to this, and just realized there is "no democracy in the party" .

Leadership is the problem for AAP, they seems to have come to a conclusion that questioning is far more comfortable than answering. So for now AAP is an unguided missile.

United by cause, divided by agenda. What will Anna, Kiran Bedi and others do?

The whole nation knows the fact that Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi supported Narendra Modi, now that he is the prime minister, can they influence Modi to get the list of black money holders in swiss bank? If they ask will BJP will act on it? These are the biggest questions bothering most of the honest supporters of Anti-corruption movement.

Now that Kiran Bedi’s name is taking rounds in the media for Delhi CM post, will she be able to put pressure on Modi’s government? Or will she just keep quite? I can’t stop being cynical now, has she done all this just to grab nation’s attention so that she could qualify for the top post in Delhi? The much larger question is whether this whole “Anti-corruption movement” is part of the long-term pre-election strategy of BJP?

Too many questions! They all arise because of we can establish a relation and trend between the major players in Anti -corruption movement : Ram Jethmalani is fighting a case I Supreme court to get the black money back, Ram Dev Baba has been giving lectures on the same, we know about Kiran Bedi and Anna Hazare already. But not even once these guys tried to come together and sorted out a plan as to how they will pressurize the government to have this major task completed. Now my questions make sense?

For now AAP is an unguided missile and Kiran Bedi, well should we say future CM and Anna Hazare the Guru of 2 chief ministers, possibly the only honest man left?

Ganges to Thames – a slice of memory - My travel experiences : Varanasi and London

This is a long pending post, I’ve been procrastinating it for a while. I was compelled to write this while I was in the flight back from London to India. Thanks to Emirates, they asked me to travel in a flight which was ahead of the flight I am supposed to travel. It was December in London, delay of flights is pretty much expected, temperature drops drastically and might rain too. I thought I would miss my connecting flight from Dubai to India if I take a chance. Travelling with the option they gave me appealed to be the right decision. I on-boarded the flight and got bored with same Bollywood movie collection they have, tried reading for some time, did not work. There was a thought which was bothering me from the moment I landed in London. I shall tell you what it was later.

Let me come back to why I named this post as “Ganges to Thames”, well just to denote the places I travelled in a span of a year – Varanasi and London and my emotions, experiences. I should thank my job for giving me an opportunity to travel and see places for real.

It was campus recruitment season and in my current company we only go to IIT campuses to recruit fresher’s, so I’ve asked my team to choose what campus they would like to visit, indirectly hinting that I would like to travel to BHU, they understood an left BHU for me I think. But they would have thought I wanted to go to Varanasi to pray Lord shiva where as my interest was to see Ganges in Varanasi and stay there. River Ganga has a great place in my heart like for most Indians, the moment I think of gages I can’t stop imaging the roaring milky white water, jumping from the sky. Completely influenced by what my grandmother used to tell me when I was a child.

Along with other 2 colleagues of mine, went to Varanasi through Delhi. The moment I entered the hotel, there was only one thing circling in my mind, let me see Ganga first rest all next. Took bath, bullied my colleagues and requested them to get ready fast so that we can go to the river bank. Arranged a cab from the hotel, as we travel through the roads I could see the old (pre-1998 India I should say) buildings, not really well maintained roads, orange color stains everywhere. Not a great visual for someone who got used to so called hi-tech city, Hyderabad roads (There are the same in the rainy season though), one surprise was foreigners everywhere, I expected them but not in the number I was seeing, they are there everywhere. The more we got close to the river the more excited I became. The moment car was stopped I jumped out of the car and started walking briskly. Let me tell you, I was disappointed at the first sight itself; it was muddy, green water, I could not feel the flow of water with my eyes, felt like someone punched in my face…. I may not come to Varanasi again because I am not religious at all and now all the way I come here to see Ganges in this state. We took a ride I the river my colleagues took a holy dip, I could not do that , not because I am hygiene conscious but because of the pain of disappointment  I was carrying think I could be the only mad person who did not take a dip in Ganges after going to Varanasi. When I went to the college I asked one of the professors on why Varanasi is like this, I could not find even a slight resemblance of the development our governments talk about, the security at the temple also looked quite not sufficient for the historical and religious importance it has. Professor looked uncomfortable and deviate the topic to how Varanasi was the only city which had best drainage system in the world few hundred years back. The only relief was visiting Saranath, it was a beautiful experience. I still feel the photographs I clicked at Saranath are the most precious ones I ever had.

After few months, I had to travel to London. It was my first overseas travel. My colleagues and one of my friends who lives in London scared me of the winter there. So I had to shop specially for winter wear which suits less than 10 degrees temperature. Was a long journey. The moment I stepped out of the   Airport the only thing I could feel was that someone put a piece of ice on my jaw. Quickly opened the jacket and wore it, I could not feel comfortable till I lit a cigarette.

Got in to a cab (They call it Black cab there, which is expensive) and asked him how much it would be to go to St.pauls. He said approximately 80 pounds, I thought of screaming and saying “are you insane”? 8000 rupees for a cab? In a moment realized I can’t convert those into rupees and compare. Checked into the hotel. I thought of eating something which is spicy along with rice, could not find anything in the hotel menu, had to force myself to eat a sandwich and sleep.

At St.Paul's

Next morning I had to go the office, requested the receptionist to guide me to ONE new change, he said it is 2 minutes’ walk from there, the moment I step out of the hotel, I could feel the coldness on my fingers even while gloves on. I really enjoyed the walk along the churchyard of St.Pauls every day. Roads are clean, most of the people respect traffic rules, even there was no traffic people patiently wait the green signal, I was surprised to see people jogging in thin T-shirts and shorts. Even school going kids does not have any extra protection like gloves, but that is nature, it empowers human beings.

My boss took me out for lunch twice, along with wine and nice sandwiches. I was scared of eating beef or pork – though I consider myself to be a more materialist, the kind of brainwash happens during childhood – you just can’t erase it at all. My boss was a good looking, tall (for Indian standard), white man. I used to enjoy the way he treats waiters in the restaurant and the way he strikes rapport with them. Shopping for kids, good food, wine and taking a tour of London, especially the museum, London bridge, Shakespeare’s globe were amazing wanted to go to London school of Economics, but could not go due to time constraint on Saturday.

But the moment I saw some jewellery of Moghuls, and Kohinoor diamond in the museum, I started feeling disturbed. The feeling that “I am in the same country which not long ago caused suffering for my country”. Took away most precious things from my motherland, killed thousands of my countrymen. Don’t all these beautiful looking structures have the stains of Bhagat Singh’s blood? How about the murders they have done across the world? These monuments, do they ever carry a small piece of writing in their history about what their rulers had done to the world? It was long deeply disturbing thought. 

  

The consolation was cab drivers, hotel staff talking about India with a sense of respect. While I was on my way back to the Heathrow’s airport, the cab driver after knowing I am from India said “ You are ruling the IT world mate, we have lot of Indians here in London who are doing well and really rich”. I said thanks – did not know how to respond. I thought; well let his comment come true more and more, let India rule the world, not in the way Germany or Britain did.

On that day dear politician, we all wish to dance on your grave

Curtain rose for the mega drama, wolves and vultures are secretly conspiring the defeat of Indian freedom spirit. Souls of those heroes who kissed death for the freedom are now hanged again and again. Animals in the human skin are enchanting the song of blood unendingly. Persons who exploited the downtrodden people the most are now talking of being leaders of a caste, leaders who ate the money of temples, churches are now becoming the owners of a religion. Free bees are offered at the cost of pushing millions of citizens in to the vicious circle of poverty for next coming decades. After over six decades of democratic process we don’t even have a leader who is accepted to be the one who leads our nation, such a tragedy.

By the way do we find any difference between the major parties who are talking of unity, development? Is there any striking fact which makes the job of the voter easy? One says you killed innocents in Gujarath and the other ones replies you killed Sikhs in Delhi so we are equal. One alleges you are corrupted to the core – 2G, Coal gate, commonwealth games scams are proofs for it.The other one reply, and your party president was caught accepting bribe from the weapon dealer so we are the same there too.

I think most of us observed the ad campaign instigated by congress and BJP. Congress’s ad says Gaujarath is not developed as much as Modi claims to be but it is X% lesser, funny you … whose responsibility is it to develop a region, are you also not responsible just by being in the central government? BJP’ s add no corruption “no mara –mari” is joke as the examples of Yeddy and internal power struggles surfaces every day.

The biggest irony in the whole drama is no one talks about what went wrong, no mention about what needs to be done to keep this country untied and progressive except saying vote us so we will take care. The manifestos and election campaigns conveniently escapes from the crux of the problems, and all it is done is superficial glorification of so called solutions. At this ironical juncture my questions to Modi and Rahul.

What is development? Building cities?

Both leaders are flattering themselves with what they have done in building aiports,fly-overs, electrification, roads they have built, number of universities ,Improved education facilities. All of these were supposed to be done few years back and in a much better fashion

• Can you please stop talking about these and address the focal point of what happened after all these, what positive change did it bring  in the lives of people?
• Do the famers of India now able to transport their products well, do they have better warehousing facility, do they really have  bargaining power and getting the price their products deserve?
• What position India has in Innovation? After all so called  increase in  the infrastructure for education and business, how many nobel prizes did we win in last 3 decades?
• What percentage decrease did the country witness in the number of slums we have across the country?

The joke of black money and corruption?

The argument of bringing back the black money and routing it in to the development of the country reminds me the question I asked my school teacher saying “why can't we print more currency and distribute to people? So that poverty is gone. Both the parties are thinking that they can fool this nation with the help of media on this argument. We shall think, what happens once all this money is back in India? It creates more and more black money the way we are creating now unknowingly. This is like the classic example of trying to fill a leaking pot.

• Have you ever realized that even the most common man would also have black money for which he already paid tax? Consider you earned one lakh through salary for which you paid tax already and bought a piece of land. On the registration papers the actual value will be shown as 30000 rs the rest 70 thousand disappears? Why does this happen?  People are scared of paying a bomb of registration fee on the original value; on the other hand the value of land is determined by government which is insanely lesser than the original price.
•  Is the government blind, don’t they have this minimum intelligence on the actual price?
• Why do we need to pay tax on the money for which we already paid? why can’t you reduce the registration fee? So that people won’t lie?
• Rather fooling around nation with abolishing incomes tax, can you fix these kind million different policy tragedies?

Welfare? Where is it?

There are only few things left for most of the parties – like they promising to change the diapers of our kids. Gas, Medicine, helping for dowry almost everything is covered.

·         India ranks 136 in the Human Development Index , can all these parties offer an apology to the nation?

• Only 10% of the children go to college India rest all dropped in the middle, what are you going to do about this, except what you have already tried like midday meals? Why this is not taking the steering seat in your campaign?
•  Millions of people die of curable diseases, around 15 lakhs children die within a month from their birth, did Modi or Rahul every thought of cruelty? What is their plan apart from the sanctioning more money for existing programs?

If these leaders cannot do anything but  just talks about superficial growth, craving for power, killing people , setting each other up against. They should quit and give way to someone who can cry for the needy, who nerves to stand up , who behaves like men- otherwise there will a day – when this nation of billion people visit temples, churches, mosques – with the only prayer “ God give me an opportunity to stand and dance on the graves of these coward politicians”

ఎన్నెన్ని తిట్ల ఎత్తిపోతలో ఏ వార్తలు తిరగేస్తున్నా, 
పరువు వీధిలో పడగ  నిలువునా విరిగిపోతుంది స్వాతంత్రం