The empire strikes back - It's our country stupid

The Government, under tremendous public pressure, had to gulp the CIVIL Society demand on corruption and Lokpal Bill Committee, with the obvious political motive of undermining it and sabotaging it and backstabbing it later once the scene cools down a bit.

Anybody knows what is an ATM Ministry ? It is a ministry where you can get money on demand. In west Bengal it was traditionally the PWD or irrigation department that could supply unlimited money on demand to the people in power. In Delhi it was the Telecom Ministry. I have heard this sobriquet in Delhi at least 5 years ago and found out this is a very common joke in the capital, where you must be extremely good and big to earn a name in corruption, as everybody and their uncle are involved in it in a big way. So, we can safely assume that everybody in the streets of our capital knew about what was going on except, well, our dear PM and his cronies and their Madam and whoever were associated with them, (excluding Raja, he being the only fall guy - and see he is being punished!!) and nobody else ever knew anything about it.

I am happy that at least we have a PM who is spared of the fingers towards the unending streams of corruption stories, some of unbelievable proportions, come tumbling out of the closet. But then if he didn’t know about what was going on under his very nose in the Telecom Ministry, where every Tom, Dick and Harry knew something was amiss, for years on till the CAG – Media and the honorable Supreme court fights it out with the Government and forces some action, The PM should resign for absolute naivette and irresponsibility and intelligence failure and callousness, if not complicity.

We, the people of India, are not interested in the lame stories of the constraints of a coalition Government that you have to be a party to a huge and desperate cover-up of a huge loot of the country – equal to probably 40 years of all Bank heists in the whole country. The bottom-line of the story is loud and clear Mr. PM and your cronies like Digvijay Singh – a man who is talking to much- that you did not even lift a finger in this matter till you were absolutely forced and exposed by a huge effort by the Civil society in different forms and the judicial activism. Even after that, there were a lot of attempts at the beginning to scuttle the whole matter till the topmost court got angry and took the matter in their hands. Instances galore and the Suresh Kalmadis and Dayanidhi Marans and so many other people get a free run for years and usually get away with it unless the media or the judiciary takes cognizance of the lone fights of a few people and stand behind them.

The bill to ensure a watchdog to sniff out corruption in high places and force down some accountability is cooling in the back storeroom in the parliament for probably 40 years and now when under pressure, those very guys are saying that they have the right of self-regulation and they will do it !!?? Self-discipline is a good thing but the natural justice demand that the accused (or his father) cannot sit as the Judge too. When PM is ultimately responsible for the running of the entire Government, the backroom puppeteer Madam notwithstanding, how can he be absolved of all responsibility and be outside the purviews of a watchdog body ?

I am no big fan of Anna Hazare or for that matter, of anybody. But I am a patriotic Indian and fully agree that it is the new independence struggle for the country and it is only the first step that we are fighting for now. The Government will use every maneuver and weapons at its disposal to somehow scuttle the fight, in the name of caste- religion-destabilizing forces-communalism-holier than thou-who are representatives-right of the elected people etc. etc. and do not fall for it. Wake up and rise, my brothers and sisters, fight for the country. It is our country, stupid.