Where is the soul in our argument?

2011-07-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of months, we are witnessing a social movement that atleast people like us had never witnessed in our lives. The environment is exciting, and key personalities like Anna Hazaare, Arvind Kejriwal, Santhosh Hegde, Baba Ramdev and Kiran Bedi added to the enthusiasm and expectations that things could change and mainstream public involvement in governance issues could be revived again....

As we see the incidents unfold in front of us, writers, journalists and critics in the mainstream media have jumped on the band wagon to comment and or criticize the Anna Hazaare team and its activities. I think that in all their analysis and criticisms, these journalists and critics forgot to ask the opinon of their own souls.

Instead, caught in the wind of arguement for arguement's sake, they kept asking their brains about shortcomings in the strategy, the analysis and coverage of gimmicks of various politicians, comparing the popularity of the gimmicks with the statements of the Anna Hazaare team, the differences in opinon within the team on irrelevant issues, the kind of supporters being gathered, comparions with other movements like Chipko and Narmada Bachao Andolan... as if we all are suddenly the judges of a reality TV show about social movements...and suddenly everyone is unbiased and cautious to say something good about the movement....

The legal experts on TV shows kept reminding everyone that in our constitution, there is no room for such wants, there is no opportunity for this that etc.... The constitution was modified to accomodate Panchayath Raj Institutions, it was modified for RTI, it was modified for NREGA... did all that happen through our so called public representatives? Did all these appear on their election mandates?

Is there an argument against including the Prime Minister and the Judiciary System within the Lokpal Bill other than the technical issues, other than abstract laws that aren't being enforced anyways? Why can't something so fundamentally logical cannot be included in our constitution?

If such fundamental issues remain unanwered (unquestioned rather) by our public representatives, why shouldn't any citizen of India; be it a journalist or a "self appointed civil society representative" or anyone else raise this question and press hard for solutions?

All rules and regulations are naive and mostly meaningless if nobody believes in them and doesn't care to enforce them. Even if the bill is passed in the format it is given by the civic representatives, if there is no political will (which is the worstcase scenario) the Lokpal Bill just like thousands of other rules and regulations will remain ignored and forgotten. But, a movement of this sort, something that has caught the nation's public imagination, that has the promise to attract the youth of the country towards the problems of our governance system had to be carefully nurtured rather than being criticized and made fun of.

Everyone can see clearly that our Central Government doesnot want this bill to even have a chance of being a powerful tool against corruption. Neither does any other party wants it to be so, (evident in the clever way everyone important postpones their decision).

The media has to decide what side it is on and take that side clearly and immediately. It seems to me that the media is very powerful in creating a public opinon on the issue and the opinion they are trying to create is a confusing one. They are deliberately trying to scaledown the importance of this issue and bring it to the level of just another media event, a reality show and a cheap gimmick to extend their market coverage.

We start all over again!

2011-06-08T02:31:00.000-07:00

'The Economics of Life' has been restarted. I hope to update this blog regularly.