BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today
Two months after Maharashtra social activist Anna Hazare put the issue of high-level corruption at the top of the national agenda through a Gandhian campaign, the movement is in the doldrums.
Hazare’s indefinite fast at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, under extensive visual media coverage, had drawn wide support from the urban middle class, and forced the government to set up a committee to draft a new bill to set up a Lokpal with powers to investigate charges against top functionaries.
Political parties were cool to the goings-on. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition, was unhappy that it had no role in it. Hazare had turned away its leaders when they went to Jantar Mantar to pledge support to him. The Communist Party of Inda-Marxist, which views the civil society with suspicion, distanced itself from Hazare’s ‘apolitical’ movement.
As the drafting committee, with equal representation for the government and civil society, started work it became evident that the two sides differed so widely on certain crucial matters that an agreed formulation was unlikely to emerge.
Hazare and his colleagues want the Lokpal to have the power to look into complaints against all top functionaries including the Prime Minister, members of Parliament and judges of the Supreme Court. The government wants to keep the PM beyond the Lokpal’s reach. Also, it favours internal mechanisms to deal with charges against members of Parliament and the Judiciary.
There is little chance of the government and Hazare agreeing on the composition of the Lokpal. The former envisages an authority which will be somewhat amenable to the Executive’s influence. The latter wants an independent authority, which, political parties fear, may become a Frankenstein.
Against this background, it is not surprising that political parties are playing games with a view to advancing their own interests. The government and the opposition are trying, in their own ways, to weaken the civil society movement. Recent statements by Kapil Sibal, a minister and member of the drafting committee, indicate that the government is preparing to announce the failure of the efforts to produce an agreed bill and place before Parliament its own draft.
Even as the drafting committee was continuing its work, Baba Ramdev, a yoga guru who has built up a cult following with the help of his own television channel, announced he would go on an indefinite fast at the Ramlila Grounds in Delhi demanding that black money hoarded abroad by Indians be declared national asset and steps taken to bringing it back.
The BJP saw in Ramdev’s plan an opportunity to carve out a role for itself with assistance from the Sangh Parivar associates. The government viewed him as a possible foil for Anna Hazare who was proving a difficult customer. As Ramdev flew into the capital in his private aircraft it gave him a grand reception at the airport with three ministers in attendance.
Ramdev’s fast and television coverage of it set the stage for another urban middle class carnival. The government realised that the saffron-clad Ramdev could be more dangerous than the khadi-clad Hazare. Late in the night a large police contingent was sent to break up the Ramlila Grounds show and fly the guru out to his ashram in Hardwar.
The opposition parties from the BJP to the CPI-M and the Maoists came together to condemn the high-handed action against the Baba and his followers. Since Ramdev continued the fast at Hardwar, he was removed to a hospital in Dehra Dun and given glucose drips.
The government will be making a grievous mistake if it imagines it can get off the hook by outwitting Hazare and Ramdev. The issues they have raised have made a deep impress and cannot be wished away. With former Communications Minister A. Raja in jail since April, pending trial, and his predecessor Dayanidhi Maran apparently set to join him there, the United Progressive Alliance government stands discredited as one reeking with corruption.
Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Arun Kumar, who has studied the black money problem, has estimated that India has a parallel economy of Rs20, 500 billion (about $500 billion), half the size of the official economy. As much as 80 per cent of the black money is generated from legal businesses.
The Executive’s inability to act except under pressure from the Judiciary has exposed it as an accomplice in illegal activity and a possible beneficiary of it. Unless it exorcises the ghosts of corruption and black money they will haunt it relentlessly.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 13, 2011
Showing posts with label Baba Ramdev. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baba Ramdev. Show all posts
13 June, 2011
07 June, 2011
Women's group condemns police action at Ramlila Maidan
Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression has strongly condemned the midnight crackdown on thousands of people staging a ‘Satyagraha’ and hunger-strike at Ramlila Maidan with Baba Ramdev for demands related to corruption and black money.
In a statement, the group said:
We are astonished at Mr Manmohan Singh's defense of police action saying that there was no alternative. The attack on the protesters was absolutely unwarranted as the ‘satyagraha’ was neither causing any law and order problems nor was it disrupting the peace of the city in any manner.
We are not supporters of Baba Ramdev but clearly see the role of dissent in upholding a democratic society.
We also condemn the secret parleys between the government and Baba Ramdev as both parties are ready to compromise with each other and show no regard for the genuine mounting anger that people are feeling towards corruption and theft by those in power for personal and corporate gains. It is the breakdown of these parleys which prompted the attack on innocent satyagrahis.
We also question BJP and Sangh Parivar's opposition to this act of repression. It is selective and opportunistic; whenever it has suited BJP it has deployed the same means to quash opposition and questioning. In Chhattisgarh, most recently, it is proposing to ban People's Union for Civil Liberties which has been an above board organization espousing the cause of civil liberties since the dark days of emergency leave alone frequent burning of villages, and violent attacks on the villagers.
We wish to highlight that such attacks are an everyday occurrence in large areas of Adivasi and Dalit habitats where land is being grabbed to subserve corporate greed. Except that they are more vicious and batons are replaced by automatic rifles but unfortunately they do not make the headlines though they have rendered millions homeless.
Kalpana Mehta, Rinchin, Ranjana Padhi, Indira Chakravarthy, Sudha Bhardwaj, Geeta Charusivam, Lena Ganesh, Uma Chandru, Madhuri Krishnaswami and others
In a statement, the group said:
We are astonished at Mr Manmohan Singh's defense of police action saying that there was no alternative. The attack on the protesters was absolutely unwarranted as the ‘satyagraha’ was neither causing any law and order problems nor was it disrupting the peace of the city in any manner.
We are not supporters of Baba Ramdev but clearly see the role of dissent in upholding a democratic society.
We also condemn the secret parleys between the government and Baba Ramdev as both parties are ready to compromise with each other and show no regard for the genuine mounting anger that people are feeling towards corruption and theft by those in power for personal and corporate gains. It is the breakdown of these parleys which prompted the attack on innocent satyagrahis.
We also question BJP and Sangh Parivar's opposition to this act of repression. It is selective and opportunistic; whenever it has suited BJP it has deployed the same means to quash opposition and questioning. In Chhattisgarh, most recently, it is proposing to ban People's Union for Civil Liberties which has been an above board organization espousing the cause of civil liberties since the dark days of emergency leave alone frequent burning of villages, and violent attacks on the villagers.
We wish to highlight that such attacks are an everyday occurrence in large areas of Adivasi and Dalit habitats where land is being grabbed to subserve corporate greed. Except that they are more vicious and batons are replaced by automatic rifles but unfortunately they do not make the headlines though they have rendered millions homeless.
Kalpana Mehta, Rinchin, Ranjana Padhi, Indira Chakravarthy, Sudha Bhardwaj, Geeta Charusivam, Lena Ganesh, Uma Chandru, Madhuri Krishnaswami and others
05 June, 2011
Baba Ramdev's arrest condemned
Human rights organizations and political parties have condemned the arrest and removal of Baba Ramdev from Ramlila Grounds wher he had begun an indefinite fast on Saturday.
The following is a statement issued by the People's Union for Civil Liberties:
PUCL condemns in the strongest possible terms the arrest of Baba Ramdev and use of force against the people who had peacefully assembled at Ramlila Ground to demand declaration of black money as National Asset and severe punishment to the guilty. The action is anti-democratic and is an act in defence of corruption and the corrupt. The UPA government has a record of dragging its feet to shield the corrupt till it is compelled by the Apex Court or some other circumstances, and in the future also it is not likely to act to curb corruption till compelled by the people.
The PUCL is also of the firm opinion that attacking the tip of the iceberg of corruption overlooking the its ‘Gangotri ‘(Source of origin), as is being done, will have very little impact on the evil of corruption. PUCL demands that a law should be enacted immediately to disclose and regulate the source of funding and mode of spending by the political parties on the line of such laws in the U.K. U.S.A. Canada and put a limit on donations because the rich have become virtually the master of almost all governments in the country by financing the political parties and politicians with black money and have been making them do their bidding in running the State. To save our democracy, it is necessary to break the nexus between the rich and the political class and ensure that our political system is fuelled by clean white money instead of the dirty black money as the case at present.
The PUCL further demands that all coercive action against Baba Ramdeo and the people fighting against corruption must be stopped forthwith
Pushkar Raj
General Secretary, PUCL.
The following is a statement issued by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist):
The UPA Government’s draconian midnight crackdown on anti-corruption protestors at Ramlila Maidan and must be condemned in the strongest terms. The Prime Minister and the UPA Government at the highest levels must answer for this shameful assault on democracy and the right to peaceful protest.
While on the one hand the Government was conducting negotiations with Baba Ramdev, it launched an underhand and arbitrary police action in which sleeping protestors were lathicharged, several severely injured, the protest venue forcibly cleared, and Ramdev himself detained and flown out of Delhi. Such an assault is a blatantly unconstitutional assault on the freedom of expression and protest.
To justify the crackdown and divert from the burning issue of corruption, Congress spokesperson Digvijay Singh has launched an irresponsible and personalized attack on Baba Ramdev. Digvijay Singh’s intemperate allegations cannot explain why top Congress and UPA Government leaders rushed to the airport to placate the same Ramdev and why they have been negotiating with him?
It emerged yesterday that the public had been kept in the dark about a written agreement between Baba Ramdev and the Government, arrived at even before Ramdev’s agitation began. Moreover, the backing of communal forces for Baba Ramdev’s agitation, capped by the presence on his dais of those notorious for inciting communal violence, cannot be condoned in any way by those struggling for a democratic, corruption-free India. But this cannot justify the central Government’s unwarranted and unprovoked police assault on sleeping protestors including women and children. The Congress-led UPA Government, by conducting behind-the-scenes deals and talks on the one hand and brutal crackdown on the other, is only ending up bolstering communal forces while marginalizing the forces of democratic protest.
With the crackdown, the UPA Government (which has several Ministers and coalition leaders in jail on charges of 2G and CWG scams) is trying to sweep the issue of scams, corruption, corporate plunder and black money under the carpet. At the same time, the Government is trying to block the effort to create an effective anti-corruption law, by attempting to keep the PM out of the purview of the Lokpal. Corporate loot of land and minerals through corrupt means and violation of laws is underway at the POSCO project in Odisha, while the threat of a severe repression hovers over the protesting tribals. Such repression cannot possibly weaken the determination of the awakened people to struggle for a democratic India free from corruption.
Prabhat Kumar
for CPI(ML) Central Committee
The following is a statement issued by the People's Union for Civil Liberties:
PUCL condemns in the strongest possible terms the arrest of Baba Ramdev and use of force against the people who had peacefully assembled at Ramlila Ground to demand declaration of black money as National Asset and severe punishment to the guilty. The action is anti-democratic and is an act in defence of corruption and the corrupt. The UPA government has a record of dragging its feet to shield the corrupt till it is compelled by the Apex Court or some other circumstances, and in the future also it is not likely to act to curb corruption till compelled by the people.
The PUCL is also of the firm opinion that attacking the tip of the iceberg of corruption overlooking the its ‘Gangotri ‘(Source of origin), as is being done, will have very little impact on the evil of corruption. PUCL demands that a law should be enacted immediately to disclose and regulate the source of funding and mode of spending by the political parties on the line of such laws in the U.K. U.S.A. Canada and put a limit on donations because the rich have become virtually the master of almost all governments in the country by financing the political parties and politicians with black money and have been making them do their bidding in running the State. To save our democracy, it is necessary to break the nexus between the rich and the political class and ensure that our political system is fuelled by clean white money instead of the dirty black money as the case at present.
The PUCL further demands that all coercive action against Baba Ramdeo and the people fighting against corruption must be stopped forthwith
Pushkar Raj
General Secretary, PUCL.
The following is a statement issued by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist):
The UPA Government’s draconian midnight crackdown on anti-corruption protestors at Ramlila Maidan and must be condemned in the strongest terms. The Prime Minister and the UPA Government at the highest levels must answer for this shameful assault on democracy and the right to peaceful protest.
While on the one hand the Government was conducting negotiations with Baba Ramdev, it launched an underhand and arbitrary police action in which sleeping protestors were lathicharged, several severely injured, the protest venue forcibly cleared, and Ramdev himself detained and flown out of Delhi. Such an assault is a blatantly unconstitutional assault on the freedom of expression and protest.
To justify the crackdown and divert from the burning issue of corruption, Congress spokesperson Digvijay Singh has launched an irresponsible and personalized attack on Baba Ramdev. Digvijay Singh’s intemperate allegations cannot explain why top Congress and UPA Government leaders rushed to the airport to placate the same Ramdev and why they have been negotiating with him?
It emerged yesterday that the public had been kept in the dark about a written agreement between Baba Ramdev and the Government, arrived at even before Ramdev’s agitation began. Moreover, the backing of communal forces for Baba Ramdev’s agitation, capped by the presence on his dais of those notorious for inciting communal violence, cannot be condoned in any way by those struggling for a democratic, corruption-free India. But this cannot justify the central Government’s unwarranted and unprovoked police assault on sleeping protestors including women and children. The Congress-led UPA Government, by conducting behind-the-scenes deals and talks on the one hand and brutal crackdown on the other, is only ending up bolstering communal forces while marginalizing the forces of democratic protest.
With the crackdown, the UPA Government (which has several Ministers and coalition leaders in jail on charges of 2G and CWG scams) is trying to sweep the issue of scams, corruption, corporate plunder and black money under the carpet. At the same time, the Government is trying to block the effort to create an effective anti-corruption law, by attempting to keep the PM out of the purview of the Lokpal. Corporate loot of land and minerals through corrupt means and violation of laws is underway at the POSCO project in Odisha, while the threat of a severe repression hovers over the protesting tribals. Such repression cannot possibly weaken the determination of the awakened people to struggle for a democratic India free from corruption.
Prabhat Kumar
for CPI(ML) Central Committee
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