Arundhati Roy blasts anti-corruption 'saint' Anna Hazare

[RazPaK]

You guys are giving more power to Lokpal thank RAW. Which sounds ridiculous. I know many Indians are high off the notion of Hazare being the new Gandhi of our age, but damn get a grip.

 

[Bang Galore]

Problem #1. That is the job of the Judiciary.

Answer #1 : They do the investigations & prosecute, still up to the judiciary to convict.

What guarantee is there that the other members aren't corrupt? What's the guarantee that there will be timely justice? What if it does not eradicate corruption, what will India do then?

Most of the Lokpal panels will be retired supreme court & high Court chief Justices. They will be reasonably well known before they take their job. It won't eradicate corruption but it will put the fear of the law in atleast a few of those who are corrupt.

You don't even know the extent of the workings of the Lokpal. It is much much more than what you think it is. The Lokpal would oversee the PM, Judiciary, members of Parliament, everyone. Besides its own prisons, it would have the power of investigation, surveillance & prosecution. It is not simply a panel that oversees the current system, it is much more.

Repeating a line over & over again does not make you an authority on the subject. What do you mean oversee? This is a body that deals only with corruption cases and there are plenty of safeguards built in.

 

[harpoon]

That actually sounds more like a recipe for madness. The Supreme court has a zillion things to do without being burdened by frivolous petitions.

How about making every court in country work 24 x 7 x 365 so as to speed up our judicial process.

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.

 

[Kazhugu]

Problem #1. That is the job of the Judiciary.

wrong...the lokpal will just oversee the cbi in its investigation to make sure the investigation is impartial which is not the case now as the cbi whihc investigates about scams done by the ruling party reports to the ruling party itself....

instead what will be is a EC type body which controls the CBI so that the investigation is impartial and the cbi is not used for settling political scores...

What guarantee is there that the other members aren't corrupt? What's the guarantee that there will be timely justice? What if it does not eradicate corruption, what will India do then?

there is no guarentee for anything in life...who knows what will happen to ourselves tomorrow..? but instead of maintaining the status quo fearing an imaginary thing lets seek to change it...

You don't even know the extent of the workings of the Lokpal. It is much much more than what you think it is. The Lokpal would oversee the PM, Judiciary, members of Parliament, everyone. Besides its own prisons, it would have the power of investigation, surveillance & prosecution. It is not simply a panel that oversees the current system, it is much more.

these lines show your absolute ignorance about lokpal....own prisons and prosecution...? lol.... what are you smoking bilal ?

 

[newdelhinsa]

Two oligarchy blah blah blah. There are already many oligarchies acting on someone in power's behalf. At the end of the day its about facilitating the people who need justice not the sake of sustaining some super efficient complex system of law which does not exist at all.

How much the system and people operating the system have been compromised and are inefficient to protect the innocent is well known to everyone. Its better to have your say heard than living like a cannon fodder in this country.

I wish i was living in an ideal world where anna Hazare like people were useless and Arundoti Roy was the goddess of all the rationalities.

The best way to get a rid of corruption is to find the corrupt and send him to the jail (Ram Jethmalani). But this hasn't happened so far actually we failed to do so. People are conditioned to live in a status co world, heck they aren't able to reform a single law but only since someone is out on the street, PM and his advisory is talking about more regulation and consensus etc.

If Arundoti has some shame left then she should share her own experiments of reforming society and helping the oppressed. Anna team has made a well thought of law and the compulsion of pressuring the govt. is well justifiable. Let Anna be given a chance and let this Jan lokpal monitor every one including CBI (This is what Jan Lokpal bill is demanding) so that many oligarchies be covered under single oligarchy.

 

[RazPaK]

You see Indians, I am interested in the Lokpal bill, because if it were effective, we across the border would want to follow suit and end corruption here in Pakistan with a similar concept. I think Lokpal is an ideal, yet novel idea. It needs a high amount of revision if Hazare's intentions are genuine. I mean you are just going to create a separate group of elitists to fight fire with fire.

 

[Gandhi G in da house]

You guys are giving more power to Lokpal thank RAW. Which sounds ridiculous. I know many Indians are high off the notion of Hazare being the new Gandhi of our age, but damn get a grip.

Read the lokpal bill then come back .

Lokpal bill may not be perfect but is better than the whatever we have today .Apart from that the Lokpal members are also accountable .

---------- Post added at 12:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 AM ----------

Problem #1. That is the job of the Judiciary.



What guarantee is there that the other members aren't corrupt? What's the guarantee that there will be timely justice? What if it does not eradicate corruption, what will India do then?



You don't even know the extent of the workings of the Lokpal. It is much much more than what you think it is. The Lokpal would oversee the PM, Judiciary, members of Parliament, everyone. Besides its own prisons, it would have the power of investigation, surveillance & prosecution. It is not simply a panel that oversees the current system, it is much more.

Your post has only reassured me of how ignorant you are about what the lokpal entails.

 

[misterme2]

Yup there were some good points which is noteworthy.

The important points

It has to be noted that Jan Lokpal bill is a anti corruption law ,carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

‘The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. ‘The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. ‘The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. “A billion voices have spoken,” we're told. “India is Anna.”

Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans': “It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.” Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-“merit”) movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?





At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.


Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of the utter failure of India's representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.



Note: Though i hate this thing called "Mrs RoY to the core , the above article has afew points which are noteworthy.

You the points you brought up are noteworthy. But you should recognize the core problem is that the inefficient gov't is the main cause of these problems. At least, I can tell you with an efficient central gov't free from corruption, many of those problems can be solved amicably. This is an effort by one man after putting up with 60 yrs of inefficiency. Sorry but I and others are not going to sit idle and watch this cycle repeat and repeat itself. Time is now or never. It is time for Indians to demand change becuase till now those demands for change fell on deaf ears.

 

[rollindays]

wrong...the lokpal will just oversee the cbi in its investigation to make sure the investigation is impartial which is not the case now as the cbi whihc investigates about scams done by the ruling party reports to the ruling party itself....

instead what will be is a EC type body which controls the CBI so that the investigation is impartial and the cbi is not used for settling political scores...




there is no guarentee for anything in life...who knows what will happen to ourselves tomorrow..? but instead of maintaining the status quo fearing an imaginary thing lets seek to change it...



these lines show your absolute ignorance about lokpal....own prisons and prosecution...? lol.... what are you smoking bilal ?

I said besides it, meaning it doesn't have its own prisons. But even though it doesn't have its own prisons, it has the power of investigation, surveillance & prosecution.

 

[rollindays]

Difference in fast by Gandhi, Anna Hazare: Mahatma's great grandson

Holding that Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement has an element of "populism" about it, Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar has said there is difference in the way the two leaders have used fasting as an instrument of protest.

He also feels that while for the Mahatma fasting was a means to "reform an adversary", in case of Hazare, a self-professed Gandhian, it was like targeting an "enemy".

"Hazare's fast is different because Bapu's fast was to reform an adversary into a friend, while Anna's fast is against an enemy. It is like a me versus you kind of thing," Tushar Gandhi said.

"Hazare has become an icon of the desperation being felt by the people in India. However, there is an element of populism in the movement," he said.

"What we are seeing since yesterday is concern of people about democratic rights. There is a sense of disconnect between the people and the government. That is reflected in this whole movement," he added.

Asked how would have the Mahatma viewed Hazare's agitation, Tushar said, "Bapu would have never allowed the situation to reach this level. He would have become active when the disease (corruption) was at a nascent stage and not when it has reached alarming proportions."

Difference in fast by Gandhi, Anna Hazare: Mahatma's great grandson - Times Of India

 

[misterme2]

You guys are giving more power to Lokpal thank RAW. Which sounds ridiculous. I know many Indians are high off the notion of Hazare being the new Gandhi of our age, but damn get a grip.

Hey I understand where you are coming from but you don't see the ground realities in India. Try buying land or property? See how many briber you have to pay in order to get a bloody stamp. The sad thing is that its so ingrained in culutre, its not even a surprise. YOu make the wrong move, say voice your disgust and file a complaint....good luck on getting your paperwork processed. I and many, many others see Anna as a beacon of hope for many who have lost hope. Mind you many folks defending the gov;t are able to manipulate the system to their benefit. Some have genuine concerns but sorry after putting up with this **** for 60 yrs, its enough. Rahul and Con-gress are busy pushing pressbriefonline.com via posting videos showing how great Rahul is thru many forums. Its funny this piece of **** is trying to make folks believe he is perfect for India. Let me ask you something, don;t you think there is something wrong democratic system when a great grandfather, grandmother, father, mother from the same family are involved in politics? I think so, it may not be called corruption but it sure speaks volumes of a system that isn;t working quite as it should, if we are so dependent on one family. There are a billion plus f-king ppl in India. There are more capable folks who simply lack family political connections. Time for INDIANS to wake up. Sorry for the rant, but like I said earlier, I trust Anna more than any of these seasoned bullshit artists and I am not giving them an ounce of leeway anymore.

---------- Post added at 03:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:49 PM ----------

Difference in fast by Gandhi, Anna Hazare: Mahatma's great grandson

Holding that Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement has an element of "populism" about it, Mahatma Gandhi's great grandson Tushar has said there is difference in the way the two leaders have used fasting as an instrument of protest.

He also feels that while for the Mahatma fasting was a means to "reform an adversary", in case of Hazare, a self-professed Gandhian, it was like targeting an "enemy".

"Hazare's fast is different because Bapu's fast was to reform an adversary into a friend, while Anna's fast is against an enemy. It is like a me versus you kind of thing," Tushar Gandhi said.

"Hazare has become an icon of the desperation being felt by the people in India. However, there is an element of populism in the movement," he said.

"What we are seeing since yesterday is concern of people about democratic rights. There is a sense of disconnect between the people and the government. That is reflected in this whole movement," he added.

Asked how would have the Mahatma viewed Hazare's agitation, Tushar said, "Bapu would have never allowed the situation to reach this level. He would have become active when the disease (corruption) was at a nascent stage and not when it has reached alarming proportions."

Difference in fast by Gandhi, Anna Hazare: Mahatma's great grandson - Times Of India

TOI is running this BS...its not free media. The gov;t is directing it to publish what it wants to change the public's perception. Come on its called propaganda and its legal under the law of many countries.

 

[IndoCarib]

You must be a very famous Indian Comedian !!!

And you are a Famous Pakistani comedian ? Atleast on PDF you are

 

[Agnostic_Indian]

the youth of India was accused by politicians for not taking part in politics..but see now they are on roads for hours and hours supporting an old man...and I have to admit that the so called youth icon of congress is failed to earn the same trust and support from them.

 

[vijayjha]

No, the Lokpal is not accountable to the Indian public. It is not accountable to anyone. Therein lies the problem. Where there is no accountability lies excessive corruption.

where did u get that from , genius !
have u read the lokpal bil yet

 

[fd24]

I wish there were more people like this woman on both sides of our border she always make thought provoking interesting comments