New Danger to Indian Democracy: Anna Hazare

No doubt, Dr. Manmohan Singh has damaged indian democracy by rendering its resolution for socialism inconsequential under sheer misuse of prime ministerial powers. His reign has ruined common Indian’s confidence in administration. Unbridled price rise of essential commodities has shattered Indians’ dreams for a fair living. Administrative priority on private industry under guise of globalization has impoverished maximum majority of Indians, specifically those that have for generations been in self-employment as small and marginal farmers even as shrinkage of employment opportunities in public sector has pushed the highly qualified young persons into such pusillanimous mentality that they acquiesce into exploitive service conditions in the private sector and many work as bonded workers though of elite class.

In Singh’s regime, dignity of the Parliament has been destroyed. The Country has been forced to suffer the ignominy of having a Parliament that allowed the American nuke deal without even examining the text of the Act that controls the deal and did not solve the riddle of note-for-vote in the Loksabha in the context of Dr. Singh’s confidence motion after his allies broke away as all their attempts failed to dissuade him from the said sad deal. Not even yet the ignominy has ended.

When the world is rising against nuclear power, Dr. Singh is suppressing the people in India to provide business prospects to foreigners by planting their nuke plants in Indian soil as is going on in Jaitapur.

The money his government has denied the exchequer to get, in a single instance of scam in 2G spectrum, is so huge, as calculated by the CAG – the nation’s constitutional authority of audit – that, had the country thus not been cheated, every citizen could have got sufficient tax relief without any disadvantage caused to the ongoing projects and the current plan.

There are other mega scams, exposed by CAG, such as the one in the commonwealth games, in which, the national supreme auditor has spotted demonstrable improprieties practiced by the PMO and the Delhi CMO whereas the Opposition sees the needle of suspicion pointing straight to Dr. Singh and his protege, the CM of Delhi, Shila Dixit. Singh’s regime has become a regime of scams and protection of black money.

Had Dr. Singh taken required steps to retrieve the already known black money stashed in secret accounts in foreign banks by the traitors of India, every inch of cultivable lands in the country could have been irrigated with that money. But he did not, probably because, that could have led to retrieve the massive amount of secret money stashed by Sonia Gandhi family in Swiss Banks as exposed by the Schweizer Illustrierte of Switzerland in its issue of November 19, 1991 leading to its discussion in Indian parliament and subsequent authentication by its publisher and harped on umpteen times by Indian Media and eminent journalists and jurists ever since.

Black money has created an India of the mafia within India of the Indians.

Corruption has engulfed the country in every sphere, from Parliament to Panchayats, from judiciary to public servants even to the extent of peons.

The situation is so alarming that even the Prime Minister has admitted this in his customary speech on the occasion of Independence Day on August 15, 2011.

“Corruption manifests itself in many forms. In some instances, funds meant for
schemes for the welfare of the common man end up in the pocket of government
officials. In some other instances government discretion is used to favor a selected
few. There are also cases where government contracts are wrongfully awarded to the
wrong people”, he has admitted.

In his speech he has said, “In some cases, functionaries of the Central government face allegations of corruption. In other cases, it is the functionaries of various State governments.” But, he has said, his government has also “no magic wand” to save the country from corruption.

What a Prime Minister! He has been seeking a magic wand! Why he is not resigning if without a magic wand he cannot control corruption? His job is a political job and not of a magician. His economic policies and rule of bulls that he has encouraged has been increasing corruption and instead of taking a turnabout, he has been ruining India in search of a magic wand!

When in his independence day speech he has asserted that “there is no single big step which we can take to eradicate corruption” and maintained that he “will say nothing more on this subject”, he has uttered not a single word against black money that the traitors have stashed in secret accounts outside India. Nothing could have been more patronizing to the traitors than this stance of Dr. Singh.

Therefore, the people of India are eager to stop this. They are eager to be extricated from this quagmire. They want to save their democracy from the danger that Dr. Singh has created. So there is a new awakening of Indian masses against Singh’s misrule. It is so very clear that even senior Congress leaders are projecting an alternative in Rahul Gandhi when he is in Office, without bothering for how embarrassing it is to the incumbent PM. They know, with Dr. Singh in Office, it would be impossible for their party to return to power in the coming election.

If people reject the party of Dr. Singh for all the crime his government has committed against the country, who should take over?

It is natural for BJP as the main Opposition to aspire for office.

But this party of profiteers had sabotaged India by selling out profit fetching public sector undertakings to private operators in dubious deals during Vajpayee’s Prime Ministership and had unleashed a loot raj by private sector that had devoured national assets and helped its organizers amass huge black money.

As for example, Pramod Mahajan, son of a school teacher of low income, had become a multi-billionaire while basking in Vajpayee’s proximity by the time of his death in the hands of his younger brother in a family feud over sharing the money.

The misrule was so menacing that people had refused BJP a fresh mandate.

But BJP is incorrigible.

Being a party of profit fetchers, its members had no qualms for collecting cash in bribe to put specific questions in the Parliament. The Parliament was so very embarrassed that it had to terminate their membership. And, on challenge, the Supreme Court had to refuse to restore them.

It had to change its national President Banguru Laxmana after he was captured in camera while taking bribe to facilitate illegal deals even in the area of defense of the country.

When these are sample instances of the past, its present is also blackened with corruption. It has members, who, once in power, indulge in rampant corruption, the latest instance being Yeddyurappa of Karnataka,

who had to quit Chief Minister post a few weeks ago on determination of his corruption by the State’s Ombudsman. So, even if people reject the Congress, BJP cannot be sure of victory.

Against this backdrop, a very interesting phenomenon is taking shape. That is, the possibility of revival of the country’s resolution for socialism; because sans socialism the country cannot be extricated from the quagmire it has fallen into. When in these pages I had to advance an argument for imposition of ceiling on private property, I had done so with this reality in mind.

That the strongest champions of socialism – the Communists – have recently suffered a set back specifically in West Bengal Assembly elections, is in no way indicative to people’s preference for non-socialism.

The set back to Communists in power in a province or two was bound to happen under impact of capitalistic opportunism that Dr. Singh’s government has enhanced in continuation to that of Atal Bihari Vajpayee of BJP, specifically as, while taking oath of office, the Communists were legally bound to pledged themselves to a non-communist constitution.

No wonder, the Communists experimentation with power has not proved beneficial to Communism. But Communism has spread its support base in majority of Indian provinces where revolutionaries instead of seeking power through elections are acting as active voice of the suffering but silent majority. There is possibility that the new awakening of masses against Dr. Singh’s misrule, perceivably inspired by the ultra-left’s relentless struggle against capitalism, against exploitation and corruption, may metamorphose into an ideological evolution of India on the basis of political economy and in the opposite pattern of what Dr. Singh has clamped on India. This is why Indian rich is worried.

They are in search of a new mask to retain their reign over India if the current mass awakening ousts Manmohan Singh from power and denies BJP to take advantage. To keep the emerged era of plutocracy in tact, they want just to divert public wrath from the real danger of wealth amassing to a peripheral issue of corruption.For this a new mask is needed through which the gullible people can be mislead again. Their new find is Anna Hazare.

The rich is helping Hazare to hijack the mass awakening against corruption like they had used Jayaprakash Narayan in the early 1970s. I see a tremendous similarity between emergence both of Anna and Narayan as leaders of mass movements against misrule.

Smt. Indira Gandhi of the Congress Party was then the Prime Minister. The country was drowned under corruption. Now Dr. Manmohan Singh of the same Congress Party is the Prime Minister. The country is drowned under corruption.

Indira was heading a government that was so corrupt that wrath of the masses had irrupted into a wild, disorganized agitation strong enough to throw her from throne to the dustbin and to completely change the system of administration she was running.

But her system of administration was suiting the country’s rising mafia, merchant communities and black-money world. For them the system was to be sustained. Through JP that was ensured. A freedom fighter of repute, not soiled by power-politics, he was accepted by the masses to lead their agitation. Indira Gandhi had to go from office. But a more corrupt government had to come in. Beginning from Morarjee to Biju Patnaik, the very same people who had corrupted the Congress and therefore had been jettisoned from that party, had emerged as stars in the movement that JP had taken over as leader and after the election, were in the new government in the name of Janata. And JP was discarded by all of them and the Ministers including Prime Minister Morarjee Deasai indulged in so much corruption and nepotism that the first non-Congress Government collapsed under its own load of filth.

This happened because the mass movement was diverted by JP from awakening against capitalism to slogan against corruption.

The same tactics is being now used by Indian rich through their new mask: Anna Hazare.

If body temperature of a person is alarmingly high, the Doctor must try to bring it down. Therefore, it would be his primary duty to determine the root cause of rise in body temperature. Temperature enhancing malaria cannot be cured by medicines meant for filariasis that also heightens body temperature.

Therefore, he must first determine the cause of rise in body temperature, which, to medical science, is just a symptom of a disease.

Anna Hazare and his team comprising Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Prasant Bhusan et al is misdirecting the movement against misrule to appointment of an ombudsman against corruption. As appointment of a doctor does not cure a disease, appointment of an ombudsman will not eradicate corruption.

Corruption is a symptom, not the disease. Corruption has its root in Indian Constitution that allows individuals to accumulate wealth. Opportunity to acquire and accumulate wealth as personal property without any limit is contributing to corruption. It is because of the political economy of capitalism that Manmohan Singh has initiated in India and has been executing. If corruption is to be eradicated, its root cause – capitalism – is to be removed from political agenda of India. Creation of a Jan Lokpal cannot save the country from corruption. Only social ownership of means of production can.

The so-called team Anna is not for this. Hence the spontaneous mass movement against inequality and misrule is just being hijacked through Hazare by the the same segment of India society that benefit from capitalism and the movement, if goes this way, like that of the movement of 1970s, will melt eventually in a new phase of plutocratic misrule and incorrigible corruption.

Therefore, a new danger to Indian democracy is Anna Hazare. If he and his team do not like to be termed like this, they may steer the movement to at least a demand for a ceiling on private property.