I also want Azadi

Last few days India had been a divided nation over sedition charges on some JNU students. All for shouting a slogan; “Bharat tere tukde honge; insallah; insallah”. I fail to understand by what yardstick this measures up to sedition and anti-nationalism. Probably all poor JNU Students have said is that if God willing; India will be broken into many pieces. That simply implies that our destiny is in hands of God. If God is willing; India will be broken. If God is not willing; India will remain united. If God is willing; Pakistan will conquer India; if God is not willing; Pakistan will get down to its knees and plead to India to be accepted back in the family. If God is willing; China would surround and choke India from all sides. If God is not willing; China will come to India with a begging bowl to seek investment in its fast declining economy. God reigns supreme. That is all the poor guys have said.

I remember our music teacher taught us a song in the middle schools:

Teri hai jameen; tera aasman
Tu bada meharbaan tu bakhsish kar
……………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………….
Tu chahe to hame rakhe; tu chahe to hamme mare
Tere aage jhuka ke sar; khade hain aaj ham saare

This in essence meant the same thing.
Oh God; if you wish; you keep us alive; If you wish; you kill us.
We all are standing with bowed head in front of you.
No one was charged with sedition then. This song is still played freely.

You may say that I am playing with words. Umar Khalid and his associates actually want to see India broken in to pieces and are letting the God take a final call on the decision.

If you think so; you are raising the stature of Umar Khalid to almost Jesus Christ.

"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."

And then there is Kanhaiya Kumar. He perhaps did not speak much but got thrashed blue and black. I fail to understand the shock people are expressing over Kanhaiya’s fate. All the Kashmir Separatist lobby guys managed to get into secret hide outs and surrender at mid night and are taken to undisclosed destinations. Poor Kanhaiya had no place to hide. He was beaten in police custody; in the court; on the street. Three lawyers came out in front of camera valiantly and gave graphical details of how they beat him and their plans to go into the jail and beat him again.
Please remember, Kanhaiya is Bihari. Bihar has no negotiation power. China or Pakistan does not lure it to drift away from India and join their side. Bihar has got junk status. Bihar does not supply water or electricity to Delhi. Alas, Modiji’s party also lost it badly in the state elections in spite of promising vulgar investment packages. Kanhaiya is also Hindu. Those thug lawyers or administration have nothing to be scared about Kanhaiya. Kanhaiya can be made an example for other detractors. A Kashmiri; a North East guy; a muslim guy incites fear of repercussions. Those lawyers would not have come on camera if they would have hit a Kashmiri muslim boy.

Do not shed tears for Kanhaiya either. He is perhaps more like the ones prosecuting him than you and me. I remember in 1990 Lalu Yadav became chief minister of Bihar. Most of us had not heard about him before. We were in high school. Till that time, we boys had always seen successive Congress Chief Minister taking turn.

One of our classmates father recounted Lalu’s political background from Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement and student agitation days. During emergency period in 1975; student agitation started in Patna under guidance of JP. My friend’s father was journalist in a local newspaper then,

The students would gather at Dak Bangla crossing to register their protest. Lalu Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Ravishankar Prasad, Sushil Kumar Modi et. al. used to be students’ leaders.
The moment police would come charging with their batons; Lalu would spring into action. While most of the others would recede; Lalu would ensure to take up the first blow. He would hog the newspaper front page due to his constant bleading head. Eventually Lalu took lead in student politics over Nitish, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Sushil Modi by virtue of getting beaten up first. A lead that he maintains till this date.

Lalu became renowned politician by getting thrashed. Once he came into power; his arrogance and tyranny superseded his predecessors. Arvind Kejrival gained prominence by his famous dharnas and forced evictions by police. When he came to power, the same person now gets his opponents kicked out including the poor 3 BJP MLAs in Delhi Assembly and old time collaborators Yogendra Yadav and Bhushan and son.

It would be premature to predict that our Kanhaiya would also groom in to a national leader sometime soon. I would not be surprised if he follows the same path.

Everybody is shouting slogans for Azadi. Witnessing the rampage of the Patels in Gujrat and now the Jats in Haryana; I also want to shout out my heart.

Mujhe chahiye pichadi jatiwad se aazadi!(I want freedom from backward caste attitude).

How to suck out Delhi's pollution

Recently Arvind Kejriwal led AAP Government hit the headlines for coming up with a formula to curb the pollution of Delhi. But for VIP, women drivers, two wheelers; public transport vehicles and perhaps some more categories; vehicles having odd and even registration numbers would be able to ply on alternate days on Delhi roads.

This reminds me of headline grabbing stunt of Kejrival in his last stint when AAP came with innovative idea of using dysfunctional DTC buses as night shelter for relatives of patients being treated in AIIMS during winters.

By all means; the current idea is not innovative. I heard of this formula being used by some cities in other parts of world some 20 years back.

Boss Kejrival; there is a saying in Hindi that you cannot quench thirst by licking dew drops.
While this is a noble idea and should be implemented in Delhi; this would not bring any perceivable change to Delhi pollution levels which is choking the Delhiites.

Let’s muse a bit on what other things can be done in Delhi. Perhaps we need to attack the situation on multiple fronts and a number of initiative may bring a cumulative impact which result in a much more livable Delhi

1. Let everyone attempt to move closer to their workplace; so as to reduce daily commute time

This will definitely not be practical for everyone. But maybe; there are many people who may be able to make adjustment. The aim to reduce need to commute on a monthly basis. Lesser is our need to commute; lesser will we exposed to polluted air and lesser will we contribute to pollution by burning our fuel. Companies may allow 1 day work from home every week for non-production units.

2. Use vacuum cleaning vehicles instead of brooms for removing dust from Delhi roads; cement all the open area or apply green patch
Municipality cleaning staff using broom to sweep the dust from onside to the road to other is just a wasteful exercise. The dust only diffuses in the whole air and practically remain there. There is a need to suck them out and dispose appropriately. Along with this; ensure covering all the bare open muddy patches with greenery or cementing them. Further invest in arranging water sprinklers for the roads. This also means arranging lots of non-potable water for sprinkling on the roads.

3. Identify alternative means of transport of goods to avoid trucks entering the city area

I can think of places like Chawdi Bazaar/Old Delhi wholesale markets; Azadpur fruits and vegetable Mandi and other similar places which would need a lot of trucks to supply the merchandise to the markets. How about supplying the goods by train to the nearest railway station and building some aerial cable cars to bridge that last mile connectivity? This needs feasibility study and investment. This can be a great solution to traffic stagnation and pollution.



4. Divert all the inter-state trucks passing through the city by effective bypass roads.
This is self explanatory



5. Install Smog sucking towers and make diamonds out the smog carbon.

These diamonds can be sold to recover the price of setting up the towers.
http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/07/28/smog-sucking-tower-turns-air-pollution-into-diamonds

Alternatively, we can make fuel out of the CO2 in the air.
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051240/these-enormous-fans-suck-co2-out-of-the-air-and-turn-it-into-fuel

These initiatives must be costly. Why cannot Mr Narendra Modi/Kejriwal invite these innovators under “Make in India” campaign? What is the price of life of all the Delhi citizens? How much of it can our industrialists happily contribute under their CSR schemes? How much of it our citizens would be happy to contribute towards for their own health and that of their dear ones?


6. Replace all the coal fired power stations in Delhi
In a phased manner, slowly replace coal fired stations like NTPC badarpur etc. with solar and wind power stations. Start a movement in Delhi to let all people have solar panels installed on their roof tops and generate as much electricity from cleaner source as possible to meet their daily consumption. If they are able to generate more; let them have the option of sending the unused electricity to the grid and gain credit points from electricity suppliers.

We should have a target of couple of years to bring down the pollution level consistently by focussed effort on multiple fronts and track our progress on a monthly basis. 

My two cents to Modiji on the clean India Mission

Dear Modiji

My compliments to you on your aspirations for India of the future. You master the act of capturing imagination of the nation and your conviction is contagious. Though you do border on boastful deceit at times; I have started admiring your self-belief. It is indeed the sheer power of your undivided focus and self-belief that you cut the ranks in your own party to be the Prime ministerial candidate. No matter what kind of money you spent in your campaign and what all quid pro quo you allegedly did with corporates and the media houses; the thumping victory that you had in such a divided electoral is no mean feat.

Many people are writing about your Japan and US trip. I would dare not tread that path. I am not qualified. Likes of Shashi Tharoor do a superior job.

I feel urged to write about something closer to my heart. I would like to applaud your clean India mission. However, I must admit, your ministers like Ravishankar Prasad, Ramvilas Paswan look very comical with the brooms in their hands. They are holding the stick precariously and give an impression that they have never done the cleaning job; save the photo ops. You definitely know how to make a buzz. So much so that the original broom bearer also came out of his slumber and swept your backyard.

I must admit, on this occasion you did not measure up to my expectations. For your elections; you had state of art audio visual gadgetry; in US you address the Indian diaspora like a rock star with all the fanfare. Do you really intend to clean India of its filth with the humble broom?

It may be my cynicism; a conspiracy theory pops to my mind. I suspect that you have timed your clean India Mission with Delhi Elections in sight. This idea would have been pushed into your agenda by the PR agencies and the psephologists you have hired. It is no secret that symbolism plays a big role in swaying the mood of the voters. During BJP regime under Atal Bihari Vajpayee; BJP floated the buzz word “India shining”. To counter that in 2004; Congress think tanks came up with a question “Aam admi to kya mila?”  (What did the common man get?) This caption really rubbed the shine off “India shining” captions. Come 2012; Arvind Kejriwal announces formation of a new political party to clean the menace of all the old political parties like yours and Congress. The naming of the party took lots of time. After much deliberation and posturing; the name was made public; “Aam admi party”. Call it Political plagiarism. The name of the party struck the right cords of the masses. People forgot that Congress was the first to flirt with the Aam admi concept.

                Now is your turn. Did you pose with the broom to steal the symbol from Kejriwal? If the Delhi elections are announced; what will the AAP members do? They will come out on street with their brooms. With your master stroke; this act would look pale and repetitive. Your band of ministers have already posed with the brooms and people would get bored of seeing politicians with broom in their hands.

Forgive my dysfunctional mind Modiji. Too many conspiracy theories keep rumbling in my head.
Coming to clean India mission at its face value. It is a laudable effort. However; please bring the same modernism to the cleaning act that you bring to your election campaigns. I lived in Delhi for many years. Every morning, I would watch thousands of safai karmchari in utter disbelief. They come out on the streets and just push the dry leaves and dirt from one side to the other. Wind would again blow the heaps of dust and Delhi would always remain full of suspended pollutions.

Introduce mobile vacuum cleaners; water sprinklers to Delhi streets. Make lots of artificial water bodies on barren grounds. Let there be no exposed land. Either it should be covered with green patch or cemented or with water bodies. Introduce effective waste segregation, recycle and processing plants. If needed; introduce seeding and artificial rain during the dry summer months. Learn from countries like Israel how to create a clean and green ecosystem in desert. These things can be done with fraction of your rock concert addresses. If a country of 8 million can achieve it; definitely 1.25 billion can make that happen.

Measure the success of your clean India mission with the drop in suspended ppm in the air of big cities.

Kind Regards
Mukul

White Dwarf Arvind Kejriwal

Finally the much awaited results of Indian General Elections are out. The agility of world’s largest democracy has taken the world by awe. India shows the world how to decide the fate of a nation in most peaceful and perhaps most constructive way.

While the elections have sprung many surprises; none compares the fate of the newly formed AAP (Aam Admit Party) and its founder Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. To many, he was the youngest star born on the horizons of Indian Politics. His rise was unconventional and for a good time he gave all those veteran seasoned politicians a good run for their money. His guerilla warfare antics kept all on their toes.

The pinnacle of his popularity and success was the point where AAP made its debut in Delhi Assembly elections. Kejriwal humbled the Goliath in Congress and BJP to claim the top seat in Delhi Elections.

Kejriwal had two choices here.

Choice 1:
Toil as Delhi Chief Minister and attempt to fulfill all the utopian promises made to win the elections. Grow from strength to strength. Show sincerity in accomplishing the claims made in the state elections manifesto. At the same time; grow organically as a national party; perhaps focus on PHD (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) in the upcoming National Elections.   

Choice 2:
Takht ya Taboot

Go all out for whole of India. Delhi Chief Minster seat is too small to fulfill the ambitions of Kejriwal. It is not possible to do justice to the seat of Chief Minister in Delhi and follow the national dream. Dump the CM seat and go back to the streets and take all the bigwigs head on. The risk is to lose whatever is at hand and the reward is the top post of the nation.

I am no political pundit or psephologist but what gives me liberty to make my own version of audacious analysis and hindsight is that probability of me being right or wrong is same as of those who are doing this for a living:-  50%.

We all know that Kejriwal led AAP went for Choice 2 and now we all know the consequences of it.
Let’s try to muse a bit on what would have happened if AAP went for the first choice.

Simulation, if AAP went for Choice 1;

Both Congress and BJP would be too happy to keep Kejriwal contained in Delhi region and would have conceded to a number of his eccentric demands. After Delhi results; there was a fear psychosis in BJP and Congress circles about Kejriwal’s ability to churn out unpredictable results in national elections.
Kejriwal could have shown off his moral and character superiority on BJP and Congress and perhaps would have won 20 odd seats in PHD region. There was a clear BJP wave this time. BJP had a set of staunch supporters who were adamant to vote him to power. AAP and Congress divided amongst themselves the votes of people who were anti BJP/Narendra Modi. If AAP had not fielded its candidates from all the constituencies; due to vote consolidation; perhaps UPA could have won 30-40 more seats at national level. In that scenario; BJP would have to seek alliances from other regional parties to form Government.

It is said that behind every successful man there is a woman and behind every unsuccessful man; there are two! Narendra Modi attributes his success to one woman; his mother. Imagine the situation where BJP did not have clear majority and Narendra Modi would have to depend on two women; Mamata Didi and Jayalalitha Amma! NDA might still have gone ahead and claimed the power at centre but it would have been a much humbled and limited in capacity.

I feel very thankful to Kejriwal that he went all out at national level. This allowed BJP to have clear majority. In my opinion; the growth vision of Congress and BJP are more or less the same. It is only the limitation of working under the control of irritant and demanding allies that slows down the progress and materialization of all the progressive projects.
I am sure; NaMo will do a sterling job in taking the growth of Indian nation to a new height. Congress could also have done similar things if they had clear mandate. Also job rotation is good as it helps flow of out of the box ideas that have incubated all this while. So, I expect more from BJP at this point of time.

Coming to the fate of rising star, Arvind Kejriwal; I am tempted to draw an analogy from a branch of Astronomy, Formation of stars. It is said that the new stars like our own sun undergo fusion reaction under the force of gravity where Hydrogen atoms combine to form Helium; releasing tremendous amount of energy in the process. When all the Hydrogen exhausts; under constant gravitational pull; the Helium atoms undergo further fusion to form Carbon atoms and thus goes the formation of heavier elements. This does not go on forever for all the stars!.  The big stars, which are 8 times or more massive to our own Sun explode in a spectacular Supernova. If the mass of the star is similar to our own sun; the most probable fate of the star is to become white dwarf. After all the Hydrogen has converted into Helium; the smaller stars swell into a red giant stage and eventually shed off the outer layers. What remains is the corpse of the star; a dim remnant where no Hydrogen fusion occurs. No fireworks come out of them.

Kejriwal attempted to explode like a Supernova but has shrunk to a white dwarf. He and his Aam Admi Party may remain there for a good long time but I do not expect any spectacular rise of his party again. The novelty of AAP antics has turned into predictability and an all-powerful Modi Sarkar will crush his road side agitations with brutal force if he tries them again. He is also expected to lose much of his red-giant layers of supporters as people have got disillusioned in masses and have their doubts in ability of this man to deliver anything tangible apart from dharnas.

So, I take the liberty to write off Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.
R.I.P AAP 

Should India continue with Caste based reservation?

Caste based differentiation of people in India remains an enigma and a tricky topic to deal with socio-politically. At times I get surprised by the simplistic view some of the westerners have about the evil of caste system in India. I understand their situation. It needs first-hand experience of living and growing in the Indian society intimately and mere fancy spiritual and adventurous sojourns do not offer the right insight into this complex social system of India.

A quick recap of the caste system:

Among the loosely coupled group of people in the south east Asia, who call themselves Hindus; the society is believed to be divided into 4 class of people or the 4 castes: The Brahmins, or the ones who derive their livelihood by rituals, worships, priesthood etc. acting as a channel of communication between human and divine; the Kshatriyas or the ruler and the warrior class; the Vysyas or business community and lastly, the shudras or the lowest rung of people meant for doing the menial jobs.

Though it is seen as a parallel to apartheid, the basis was different. People were categorized based on their profession rather than colour or creed. They had flexibility to change their caste by switching the profession; however, over the time the practice became degenerated, oppressive and disgusting. The lower caste people in India were oppressed for generations. They had little opportunity to excel and were out rightly downtrodden. They were considered untouchable; did not have access to temples, place of worship, public amenities and education.

Provisions for quota or Reservation System:

When India got independence and its constitution was written, many progressive leaders felt the need for upliftment and inclusiveness of this section of the society. It was felt necessary to make provisions for rapid progression of this society. It was agreed that this was a temporary measure and the need for reservation should be reviewed periodically and should be abolished in a period.

This led to the reservation system in India. Though it differs from state to state; roughly the reservations as they stand are:

Scheduled caste               = 15%
Scheduled Tribe               = 7.5%
Other Backward Caste     = 27% (This was added later on recommendations of Mandal Commission)

Apart from these broad categories which account for nearly 50% of the seats; there are some more provisions for Defense personnel and their dependents, women, minority communities like Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and now Jains. These quotas apply to all the educational institutions, government jobs, promotions in jobs and there are electoral seats reserved for people from reserved category to ensure representation in the parliament. From a reserved seat, only people from reserved category can contest elections. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled tribe people are also protected by very strict legislation against exploitation.

Though started for a noble cause; the Reservation system soon became a tool for the corrupt Populist politics in India. It has become clear now that the maximum benefit of reservation system is being reaped by the rich and affluent people of the reserved category. The poor people under reserved category are still not able to get suitably benefitted by the reservation provisions as those are consumed by more resourceful rich people under reserved categories. Reservation in technical higher education and promotion in jobs raises a serious question on negligence of merit in the field of technology, life sciences, research, governance and policy making. A very large number of people below poverty line also belong to the so called upper class castes. They remain deprived of these provisions of reservation for the weaker section of the society. This also creates lots of frustration and rebellion in the heart and mind of underprivileged upper caste poor people. The hatred and the chasm between castes remain wide open.

Arguments given in favour of continuing with the current provisions of caste based reservations:

Most of the political leaders from backward classes vehemently support the caste based reservations and are equivocal on when these provisions should be resolved or if they should be resolved at all.

Ram Vilas Paswan, president of Lok Janshakti Party who used to hold records in Guinness Book of World records for winning Parliamentary elections with largest vote margins is of the opinion that caste based discrimination prevailed in India for thousands of years so the caste based reservation should remain for a very,  very long time. The solution as per him is that all the boys and girls from upper caste should willingly marry the girls and boys from lower caste. This way, the social stigma of caste will be abolished and everyone will get similar benefits.

Mayawati, head of Bahujan samaj party and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has based her carrier on the dalit or oppressed card. She wants to be seen and remembered as the epitome of dalit empowerment. To prove a point, she loves to splurge the government money on commissioning hundreds of statues of her own self, public parks and gardens dedicated to herself; all carved out of tax payers’ money. She accepts donations and buys palatial houses for herself costing billions, likes to be weighed in gold at public ceremonies. During her regime, she built a road from her residence to the CM office which would be shut for public. The road used to be dusted and sprinkled with water before her trip to the CM office and the road would be hurriedly closed after her caravan of vehicles would have passed. She would move around with Z+ level of personal security with scores of commandoes; had half a dozen food tasters who would consume the food prepared for her before she would take the plunge. Her take on caste based reservation is not very clear. Lately she seems to agree in principle to consider the poor people from upper castes as well to be considered for the reservation benefits. The details are not clear.

Lalu Prasad, supremo of RJD has been a champion of Mandal Commission implementation and had been a hard player of caste based politics.

Congress Party has been speaking about this for some time and now the rhetoric is getting louder that they want to implement the caste based reservation to the private sector jobs as well. This step looks inspired by populist politics more than any larger ideology. Congress Party seems to be out of game in these upcoming national elections and they are struggling to make a last moment impact.

I am not very aware of what AAPs vision on caste based reservations is. Probably they are yet to include this on their election agenda.

What I make out:

“Moving on” is the need of the hour. Indian politicians and people of some communities should stop lobbying for things for personal advantage and should not differentiate between the needy people. We are a country of limited resources and unlimited asks; let us spare a thought for all the needy people irrespective of the castes and help them come out of it and participate in the all-inclusive growth of the nation. Seeing the political situation in the country; looks highly improbable in the near future. 

Remembering Jayaprakash Narayan and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar

It was a lazy Saturday some 25 years back. That time, I was studying in St. Michael’s high school in Patna. My mother was a teacher in a government school, Sir Ganesh Dutta Patliputra High School on Jagat Narayan road, Kadam kuan.

I used to have both days of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) off while my mother would have to go to her school for half a day on Saturdays. This particular Saturday, my mother wanted to take a casual leave. The procedure for this was to write a formal leave application (in Hindi) to the principal of the school and submit at his office before start of the classes. My mother tore off a page from my notebook and scribbled her leave application. She read through, made some corrections and crushed the page into a ball and threw it. One by one she wasted 5 pages from my notebook before she prepared the final leave application and handed it to me to submit at her head master’s office. I liked making fun of my mother.

I took the application and read it aloud. It was written in chaste Hindi.

श्रीमान,

सेवा मे सविनय निवेदन है कि व्यक्तिगत कारण से आज मैं विद्यालय आने मे असमर्थ हूँ| अतः मैं प्रार्थना करती हूँ कि श्रीमान मेरे आक्स्मिक अवकाश के आवेदन को स्वीकार करके मुझे अनुग्रहित करें| आपकी इस अनुकंपा के लिए मैं सर्वदा श्रीमान की आभारी रहूंगी|

भवदीय

After spending sufficient time, laughing at my mother’s application, I took on my bicycle and rode to my mother’s school. I knocked at the door of the headmaster’s cabin and entered the room with best of my etiquette. The headmaster stared at me with his probing eyes. On realizing that I was son of one of his staff, he took interest in knowing a lot of things about me. Finally I was able to get off the hook and started my journey back.

I had gone just a short distance from the school in the narrow lane that I saw some people, sitting in a jeep waiving at me and asking to stop. My eyes went on the number plate of the jeep. The vehicle was from West Bengal. It was not long ago that I had learnt how to interpret the number plates of vehicles.

“Where is JP House?” An elderly Bengali man demanded of me from the jeep. “I don’t know.” Pat came my reply. My answer seemingly annoyed the elderly man. “You do not know Jayaprakash Narayan’s house? Do you know who was JP?”

“I do not know where his house is. Do not waste your time and ask someone else.” I replied wryly and moved on.

Of course I was aware of Jayaprakash. I have heard tits and bits about him. Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Jayaprakash Narayan apparently were my two celebrity neighbors, a stone throw distance from each other. One was called Loknayak, leader of the masses, for some reason and the other was a rastrakavi, a national poet. The names were ubiquitous. JP Golambar, JP Narayan Aerodrome, JP Murti, Dinkar chauraha...

I must confess, I was more aware of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar than this JP guy. There was a nondescript statue of Dinkar on our school bus route. For years, our school bus would stop there to pick up students.
One day, suddenly we saw the statue getting some face-lift. They painted the statue with bright colours. A barricade was built around the statue and some plants were planted and a small manicured garden was built around.

Some of Dinkar’s poems were included in our Hindi text book. I loved to quote him in my Hindi essay assignments.

“क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को जिसके पास गरल हो; उसे क्या जो दंतहीन विष हीन विनीत सरल हो|”  

Forgiveness looks good on a snake with venom, not on those who are toothless, venom less and simple.

Coming back to Jayaprakash, I was vaguely aware of him being a national leader who was a freedom fighter and also opposed Indira Gandhi and started a popular agitation, JP Movement, against her corrupt government around 1975. Many of the non-Congress national leaders came out of JP movement.

Shambhu Sharan Lal, or just “Lal sir”, our history teacher was a staunch supporter of Congress party. We enjoyed his classes because he always talked as if he was giving first person account of incidents. Jayaprakash Narayan had inspired people to join hands against the corrupt government of Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi had a humiliating defeat and was sent to jail in 1977 on corruption charges.  - This was one of the most painful pieces of information that Lal Sir had to pass on to us as part of his teaching duties.

He would be quick to complement this with what happened after the Janta Party came to power.  They did not have leadership qualities. Morarji Desai and Chaudhry Charan Singh messed it all in internal tussle and JP went and told to Indira, “Daughter, you were better!”

“JP was a great visionary however his movement generated leaders with dubious records.” Lal sir would smile ear to ear telling us.

I stumbled upon this TV report on Jayaprakash Narayan recently.

http://aajtak.intoday.in/video/aandolan-on-aaj-tak-jp-movement-emergency-and-indias-second-freedom-1-753139.html

This helped me close my gaps in understanding about JP whose house I passed umpteen times. A man of vision, fearlessness and great grit. A man who brought the power blind Indira Gandhi to her toes with his vow of non-violent principled means.
I also came to understand why everyone from Anna Hazare to Baba Ramdev to Arvind Kejriwal prefer to have their protests at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. It is this place that JP delivered his famous speech reciting his friend and neighbor, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

दो राह, समय के रथ का घर्घर नाद सुनो, सिंघासन खाली करो की जनता आती हैं ।

Hope this country has more Jayaprakash and Dinkar. It was very unfortunate of India that JP died of ill health soon after Janta Pary came to power. (some say he was poisioned while in jail in Chandhigarh during emergency)

When I see Lalu Prasad, one of the prodigy of JP movement, Sushil Modi, Ravishankar Prasad et al; I also understand what Lal sir meant by JP having unworthy inheritors. Nitish Kumar, the current CM of Bihar also came out of JP movement and he still gives lots of hope.

AAP –From Doubt to Disappointment to Disgust

Swearing in ceremony of Arvind Kejriwal left me spellbound. His song from the podium gave me goose bumps. It felt like witnessing a history in the making. I could identify myself with him. Here was one amongst us; a middleclass intellectual young man who showed the courage and grit to take on the bigwigs of dirty Indian Politics.  

In all honesty, I had my quota of criticism and cynicism about him all along and had been speaking my mind in my blogs for some time now. Nonetheless I admired his grit; his focus and fearlessness. There was a wishful part of me which wanted to give him all the benefits of doubts. I hoped to be proven wrong. I secretly enjoyed when my “die-hard Kejriwal fan” friends and colleagues picked on me for my cynicism. I enjoyed getting bashed up as I always wished to see Kejriwal succeed in his mission.

The Doubts crept in:
For a week, Kejriwal and his ministers used shared auto / public transport to come to office. Then came the news of them getting Toyota Innova cars. These cars are priced at around 10-15 lakh rupees in India. “They will not have the red beacons”, clarified the CM. Mr. AK then tried to sneak into a 10 room bungalow in central Delhi. “Only 5 rooms for my family and 5 rooms for my office work. Compare this with lavishness of ex CM’s house” AK spoke with his assuring poker face. “Shiela must be using her bungalow for running a massage parlor, aerobics classes and gourmet restaurants.” He wanted us to believe. Somehow, his supporters were not convinced. True to his style; AAP asked people to send SMS and his wish to move in the bungalow was declined by his supporters. Then there were water and electricity subsidies which drew flacks.

                Honestly, these were not big issues for me. Ministers are entitled to accommodation, conveyance, a decent salary to be able to discharge their duties and also deserve to have a level of comfort for the services they provide. If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, even he would have approved of these amenities. I saw the hypocrisy and took this more as a learning curve. “We have given so many chance to corrupt people. Let’s give some time to mature to honest people.” I like many others chose to ignore these comical circumstances and looked forward to more substantial actions from them.

Then came the Disappointment

At the stroke of a pen, Kejriwal reverts the ruling of FDI in retail sector in NCT. This was a ruling duly passed by the legislative council after much debate. For a trivial thing like shifting to the chief ministerial bungalow, he went for referendum and tweets and SMS; for FDI, he did not feel any need to debate.

Now there are strong for and against lobbies for FDI in retail sector and it can be an endless debate; here is my take on this:

We live in a world of reciprocity. If US expel an Indian diplomat; we feel obliged to send two of theirs back (sans cavity search). Mr. Kejriwal not necessarily came to power by support of poor people but by aspiring middle class youth; many of whom are connected to IT. IT is our biggest foreign export. If other countries take a cue from this and start refusing to do business with Indian IT companies, what should we do? Protectionism beyond a point is highly counterproductive. If Indian farmers were in a happy state; probably there was not much need to try anything different. Today hundreds of farmers in rural area commit suicide; live on less than 1 Dollar per day in spite of no FDI in retail. Will their situation further deteriorate?  Farmers in India are the exploited lot. I do not see any way the Walmarts and Tescos or for that matter our own Reliance and Tata paying lesser price to farmers than the unorganized sector full of middlemen and Kiranawallahas. Farmers will get better price; consumers will get cheaper products and better quality due to competition.

No process or option is fool proof. No matter what we choose; we need to have regulations, quality control and checks. It is much easier to implement all the checks on organized sector than the kirana owners.
One of the arguments given is that the number of people employed in retail sector will fall drastically if big players come in. That can be a blessing in disguise. In India, we not only suffer from unemployement but also hidden unemployment. A piece of land can be tilled effectively by 1 person but 4 brothers till the same land as they do not take the effort to try to do something else. If we get the flab out of retail sector; they can contribute elsewhere in the economy.

Now the Disgust!

My worst fear came true. In his obsession to come to power at any cost; Arvind did not miss a single opportunity to attack the then Government of Shiela Dixit. He held her responsible for rapes in the city, held candle vigil and felt it justified to derive all the political mileage out of these sorry and unfortunate incidents.

Now, this inevitable social vice has surfaced again in Delhi. A Danish national got raped at knife point. I expected Kejriwal and his team to have the spine to apologize and take moral responsibility and reflect on their act of brandishing the previous government and settling using this for political mileage.

Arvind and his team are on the back foot and they are circumventing the question. Sad to see how quickly the lust for power can erode our conscience and moral standing. Perhaps this was the reason for which Anna Hazare was proscribing to join the seat of power and work as a social activist.