Tag: Bribe

‘No Confidence’ Motion – The Road Ahead….

By Mark Tully former BBC correspondent in India).

This Post, forwarded by a friend is only REBLOGGED by me. I did not write it, but agree with it. Hope it is really by Tully.

Mark Tully, India’s true friend

I am going to stick my neck out to predict that the (recent) ill conceived ‘No Confidence Motion’ (in Lok Sabha) is going to be the point, which is going to be looked back at, as the turning point for the end of the Gandhis’ influence and corrupt ecosystem.

Rahul Gandhi will never ever be the PM, or even be in a position to be king maker. Not ever.

Sonia Gandhi will not fight the 2019 general elections now. The debacle, telecast live the whole day, with the highest ever viewership, has put paid to her ability to bribe her way to power. It has shattered once and for all her illusions and mirage of being untouchable under all circumstances.

The stance and ruthlessness of the PM in tearing her and her progeny to bits, is not the polite attacks of yore. It is a clear bugle call that he cares two hoots for her ecosystem or her supposed control on power.

He has finally shed his diffidence to take on these arrogant snobbish dimwits head on, with no quarter to be given to her Lutyen’s Delhi Darbaris and their supposed ability to manipulate levers of power.

So, what are NaMo options ahead to tackle these erstwhile royalty. He is going to make sure Deepak Misra gets an extension of 2 years by amending the retirement age, which will ease the pressure of Lutyen’s Delhi Darbar crowd to approach SC for relief against the government. Also, it will put the Ram Mandir issue on fast track with resolution closer to the general elections for maximum impact.

We can now hope to see an amendment to the SPG act, which assures lifelong security at public expense to the Gandhis & their progeny. With Sonia Gandhi not fighting elections in 2019, her time in 10 Janpath will be over.

Even if Rahul Gandhi wins the next elections (which now is a big huge IF), he will probably be heading a party with less seats than 44. NaMo will shunt him out of his Akbar Road residence and his sister out of Lodi Road residence. That will signal their sorry plight in the power counting one and for all, to everyone to see.

Today’s debacle is going to have a far reaching impact on acceptability of Congress, with the Gandhis as effective partners in an bid to unite opposition. Even though it now seems to be a pipe dream for opposition to present a united front in coming election season. Except maybe in UP, where SP & BSP face possible annihilation if they don’t come together. Congress of course is not even a contender in UP.

Madhya Pradesh may see BSP making compromises with BJP as today’s debacle makes Congress a poor support base.

Today’s debacle has changed the political fortunes of the Gandhis for the worse. They don’t face any challenge to their hold over the Congress as the top supposed leadership of this party is only filled with yes men and royal darbans of the Gandhis, but the effects on the bottom rung will accelerate their complete demise from the political scene.

And without effective bottom cadres, the only way to stay relevant is to throw money to instigate riots, something they have already been doing for the last few years. A short term strategy with even more short term effects but assured long term destruction. And that time is NOW.

So what did NaMo actually achieve today? He essentially called out the empress and the prince as naked. There is now no going back to the illusions of splendour for them anymore.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

(Though fluent in Hindi, Mark Tully is a Britisher by birth and a friend and well-wisher of indua, where he settled down. I have no way to confirm if it is really by him or a fake news.)

IAS ‘Cycle’ of Good And Bad

Sabarwals
Smita Sabharwal, IAS  and Akun Sabharwal, IPS  of Telagana – People’s Officers

INTERVIEWING THE EX-DIRECTOR OF LAL BAHADUR SHASTRI  ACADEMY OF  ADMINI- stration at Mussoorie, P.S. Appu,  just after he resingned  over differences  with the then Home Minister Gyani Zail Singh, I asked him about some IAS officers being inefficient or corrupt while some were committed and idealistic.

Appu

He told me there appeared to be a cycle – some batches at the Academy turned out excellent officers while others failed. It was, I felt, a subject that needed to be researched further, like the phenomenon of IAS officers’ sons or daughters joining IAS.

 

A brilliant ex-Chief Secretary of Bihar and one of the best directors the Academy ever had, the late Pappu felt there was nothing wrong, unless short-cuts and wrong means to do so. “Don’t doctors’ children become doctors and lawyers’ children follow their parents?”,  he asked

Continue reading IAS ‘Cycle’ of Good And Bad

Let’s Have More of Corruption

You-Can-Stop-Corrpution
Image Credit: Bolte Raho (even the spelling is corrupted!)

A FRIEND SENT ME YESTERDAY A FILM CLIP which, according to him, was the shortest film ever made in the world to have won an award.

It showed an official sitting in his drawing room with a pile of files, as his little daughter played around the room. As each file is opened he finds a currency note and signs the paper.  He throws on the floor any file that does not have a note. His daughter picks up the file but he puts it aside. She sees that he signs only the files which have money.

The little girl then puts before him her school  ‘Report Card’ and gets scolded for poor marks in some subjects. He refuses to sign the card and puts it aside.

A few minutes later she returns with the card. When he opens it he finds a few coins from her pocket money inside the card. That opens his eyes; even his child knows that he is corrupt and signs only when he is bribed.

Next to the ‘love’ theme with the hero and heroine dancing around trees singing duets, Indian films focus on social evils like corruption, dowry system and caste

Scamocracy
A  decade of  ‘Scamocracy’

discrimination. Millions see the films and even shed tears for those wronged by the evils.

 

And yet the social evils not only continue but thrive. During the last government in India a new scandal got exposed every day. Some of that regime’s scandals are still being exposed. A cartoonist once showed a newspaper vendor shouting that day’s sensational headline: “NO SCANDAL TODAY’!

No amount of sloganeering and condemnation in films and editorials  have reduced the evils. They are accepted by the society as normal. As I mentioned in another post, no parent would refuse a match for his daughter (in India’s arranged marriage system) because the boy’s father made money by corrupt means.

Even our religious rituals – making an offering to God and asking for a favor in return – promote bribery. There is no social stigma attached to corruption. It may be illegal, but is not considered immoral or unethical.

It took an extreme step like imposition of Emergency with Press censorship and jailing of thousands dynasty rule to be ended. And it came back when its replacement was a weak, divided, coalition.

India threw out a corrupt government to elect the present NDA government. But it has not yet thrown out corruption itself. So extreme corruption which makes life difficult for millions may be required to make people fed up and finally throw out corruption.

Let corruption grow — to end it.

PS –The friend claimed the two-minute film was the shortest ever made to win an award (he called it an Oscar, unaware that there are no Oscars in India).  If I remember right around 1966 Promod Pati won an award for a 50-second documentary  (yes, less than a minute) titled “And Miles to Go“.

In it the camera spans down from a jet plane flying across the screen to an old woman and a child holding a slate (those days children used slates to learn writing). For a second you think the grandmother is teaching the little girl.  Then you realize it was the other way around. ‘And Miles to go’ were words from a Robert Frost poem, found scribbled on a paper on first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s desk after his death.

Yes. Half a century later, it is still miles to go for a corruption-free society.

                                                                 500 Likes
                                 Congratulations on getting 500 total likes on UnstoppableAfterSeventy.