Banana Republic

India is supposed to be a big and powerful country, with a strong government and political and diplomatic relations that reach into every corner of the world. There are numerous countries that look up to India in terms of aid, guidance and support, and there are numerous groups and organizations that India is a part of where it makes it voice heard.

So when the government of this same country squabbles with a group of seemingly harmless men and women, a minuscule entity when compared to the collective might of the government of India, it shows that this same government is incapable of behaving like the government of a nation that is supposed to be big and increasingly powerful, and that the politicians who form a part of this government demonstrate a very petty, selfish and short-term behaviour that shows that this big country is increasingly functioning like a banana republic.

Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Swami Agnivesh, Baba Ramdev and many others are doing what they have to, and no doubt they seem to have attained a critical mass of support behind them that is openly questioning the motives and action of this sad sad government, but to watch the Government of India, that mighty Government of India, led by the CONgress party to fret, shout, parlay, browbeat this group of people, threaten them with consequences, dig out laws to disallow them to assemble and then arrest them for breaking those laws shows that the CONgress party and its government seem to be losing control of this great game.

Either that or the CONgress's plan is running so perfectly that everybody is fooled into believing that the CONgress party is cornered when in fact they are pulling the strings of this entire operation.

Watching Kapil Sibal talk to the press about Anna Hazare and accusing him and his team of all sorts of tricks and treacheries with that Government of India logo behind him was the first time I realized how petty this whole show had become, when this man, supposedly representing the Government of India, is attacking a 74 year old man and his group like a perfect tabloid story. While it is tragicomic to watch this 'fight' between what increasingly seems to me the Government of India versus the people of India, its amusing to watch all these CONgress netas come on television with all sorts of statements and reasons about what is going on. Surely there must be something brewing which the CONgress has no control over when the Prime Minister of India when addressing this country from the Red Fort on the 65th Independence Day spends so much time talking about corruption and how people like Hazare should use the legal and democratic processes to have their grievances heard! On another note, nobody seems to take the PM seriously anymore. Shammi Kapoor died (may he rest in peace) and a tabloid Hindi news channel said that upon his death, a number of notable personalities such as Manmohan Singh and Amitabh Bachchan expressed their grievance! A notable personality? Ha ha, I would think the office of the Prime Minister of India would be much much more than that, but then we're fast turning into a banana republic as I said.

One CONgress spokesman said that what Gandhi (the real Gandhi, not the frauds today) did was against the colonial occupiers when he got the masses behind him in civil disobedience and the movement of non-violence. To do the same today against a "democratically" elected government of the people is wrong and should be punished. It really amuses me at how the word 'democracy' is used so efficiently by politicians to justify their actions and shenanigans. It is exactly like how everything in China is for and by the people, such as the People's Republic of China itself, even when its people can't think for themselves anymore.

Anna Hazare, Mr. Kejriwal and the rest were barred by the Government of India to protest, and the Delhi Police, obviously under the directions of the Government of India, said they couldn't have more than 5,000 people at the protest even if they were allowed to have it. Last week, there was a big political rally in New Delhi by the Youth CONgress, where over a lakh "young" CONgressi's attended. Anna Hazare and his team went to J.P Park in New Delhi to fast in quite a symbolic way, considering it was J.P Narayan who had unseated Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India.

Of course, killing the messenger is a very effective way of killing any dissent, as the CONgress abley demonstrated against Baba Ramdev and Balkishan ji. By attacking the background of Ramdev, the CONgress basically killed the point he raised, that the Government needs to be more open on what its doing about bringing the black money from abroad home, and basically being more open on who owns most of it. I suppose it would be a very educated guess on any body's part that most of the black money outside India can only belong to people who are in a position to earn it and stash it, and this would include the big businessmen of India hiding their untaxed wealth, and of course the politicians who run this country and have their paws wherever money is involved. I think it was in the era of Rajiv Gandhi that this shift started when politicians started keeping huge chunks of money for themselves, as opposed to keeping it for the party.

So if somebody says that Sonia Gandhi's family in Italy is a billionaire family now, you know that it is not because they hit upon a billion dollar business idea. But the CONgress says that nobody has a right to question it because they are capable of digging the dirt on anybody who raises a voice. Of course, the Nehru family is only one of the many, many beneficiaries of Government policies over the decades, so I think if skeletons indeed tumbled out of the cupboard, they'd be so many that they'd drown us all. And of course, coming back to this pesky issue of corruption, the Prime Minister, yes, he's still around, promises us the strictest action against graft! Ha ha ha, this truly is turning into a banana republic where ridiculousness rules the roost. Its like a mad world that Asterix had to face as one of his twelve tasks - a world where nobody is answerable, the answers remain hidden and if you go seeking for answers, you will run in a loop forever.

I really don't want to say anything about what I expect to happen in the next few days because I, like the rest of us, have absolutely no idea of what is brewing in the backgrounds and the parlays between all the stakeholders involved. I do hope though, that there is some semblance of law and order, and more importantly, a sense of justice, instilled in the psyche of this country again.