What worries me is the fact that lower-level officers have also been included with the ambit of the LokPal bill. If I were a corrupt politician , the best way of protecting myself against the LokPal would be to make sure that a large number of cases were filed against lower-level Babus. The LokPal machinery would then get so swamped with fighting low level corruption that they would then have no ability to go after high-ranking officials or politicians !
In a few years, the LokPal would then become a mirror image of the present judiciary - lots of good intentions and plenty of power on paper , but very little ability to implement and execute.
Isn't this exactly what happened with the Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum ? It was supposed to provide the consumer with easy access to justice , without involving expensive lawyers or long wait times - but it's become completely clogged up and ineffective !
My name too is Gandhi
ReplyDeleteI do not know if there is a standard politically tantalized tone, tenor, vision, diction, articulation particularly employed by Rahul Gandhi; or the Gandhi family, or the real Gandhi for that matter. But what I do know is that there indeed is a standard tone, tenor, vision, diction, articulation that distinguishes an Indian politician from the rest of the world. Rahul Gandhi, regardless of his name, age, race, or craze, overly establishes this as a matter of charm, perhaps!
A few months back, when a man named Hazare was convincing the country on how his name could also be spelt with G, D, H, and I, Rahul Gandhi, true to his surname, wowed and mesmerised a pack of personnel donned in white-kurta and possibly jeans on how magnificent it was for India to be a democracy. His magnanimous moment could be a product of several motives; for him making such a volatile, bombastic claim. It could be that he was referring to his country with his family’s legacy, as tautology to his greatness; it could be an attempt to base the 1st meeting point with team Anna’s godly guild of greats; it could also be that he was cunningly alluding at Anna’s undemocratic dramas in India’s otherwise dazzling democracy; or, for the least, it could be an ode to the white kurta with jeans as a symbol of comfort and not a leftist or rightist political stunt.
There are exactly 42 more inferences that can be drawn out of that one comment. None of it is stupid or smart. What it is is a wise political thing to say; a thing, because that’s exactly what they understand, just as you may not understand what I mean here! Rahul Gandhi certainly impressed a few more women by saying that, be it from Anna’s masses!
The monsoons showered the people of India with a plethora of speeches. Rahul Gandhi, being young, charming, tall, and single, just could not hold himself back when too many people had started watching, listening, and admiring a 70 year old man, with him very well alive. He tried hard, like crazy, much like Hazare and Kiran Bedi, to grab eyeballs, at least, for that one Sunday post breakfast session. And indeed, he did put up a show, gathering immense cheer and jeer from the Members of Parliament who woke up on time that Sunday and attended the show. The crowd was thoroughly infotained and they responded justifiably with “GO GANDHI GO OOOOOO!!!!!” But, I still do not see how simply being loud, stout, not-old, and a Dosco, makes one seem like a good speechmaker!
In a country obsessed with Gandhi, it is a lucid task to put a halo around your head by quoting Gandhian ideals and sitting before a 9000X poster of Gandhi’s innocent looking selfless face. That is exactly what Anna understood, manipulated, and practiced better than the rest of those not wearing Gandhi caps but white kurtas with jeans instead. Rahul Gandhi was determined to remind his audience that he too was a ‘Gandhi’ of some kind, but again made the mistake of speaking too much in English, and not wearing the cap. But as far as his speech is concerned, in parliament, outside parliament, there were some who said ‘yeah!’, some more who said ‘kk’, and many more who said ‘k that’s it, man’, and didn’t spoil their Sunday morning.
Any way, Go Gandhi! And I mean ‘Rahul’ by the way!