Musings Own Thoughts

After 13 days of fasting finally our dear Annaji broke his fast on national television at the Ramlila grounds. Let us now look back at the phenomenon called Anna and attempt to analyze from where it has come and what is its future trajectory. The man seems to be a rustic villager, simple looking but complex personality who from all accounts seems to have a big ego. He claims to be destiny's child as he considered his escape from the jaws of death, a call to a higher calling in life. The man dedicated his life to rural upliftment of his bretheren and by all accounts Ralegan Siddhi became a model of rural development based on watershed development and social reform. All this was done by Anna in a manner an army man would adopt, a combination of coercion and persuasion more of the former than the latter. His work and his spartan life style won him admiration and acclaim in Maharashtra, India and abroad resulting him getting the Magsaysay award, an asian equivalent of the Nobel prize.

Well in continuity of my blogs, today our PM finally made the grand gesture and the appeal to a great citizen called by a simple name Anna which means brother to call of his fast. If we go back to the beginning, Anna Hazare was an army man who survived a near death experience. The subsequent introspection led him to a path of rural development and uplift. One thing led to another and he started developing the habit of fearlessly taking on the establishment on issues of corruption at the state level. Destiny led him on to greater achievement, and today he stands on the threshold of a revolutionary change in Indian democracy. While his critics, including myself feel that he has exceeded his brief, by insisting on holding the Government and Parliamentary system to ransom by taking maximalistic positions, even his worst critics will acknowledge, that but for his fast and agitation, the political class would certainly not have acted. Even today there is still a feeling amongst his team a

A week is a long time in politics, but a very short time to take a considered stand on an issue as important as the Lokpal issue. While I was expecting a confrontation between Government and Anna Hazare, I never expected seasoned political figures in Government to blunder so badly as they have done so. Well I can only say that this is the result of making a technocrat with a CEO approach, the Prime Minister of a nation. While we feel comfortable having an honest, sincere, hard working qualified man as PM, we cannot feel inspired by his leadership. In fact, today more than ever before in his career, Dr. ManMohan Singh's deficiencies as a leader have shown up. At the end of the day the buck stops at his desk and he must take responsibility for the series of errors of the UPA2 government. However, the governments' loss has been team Anna's gain and a predominantly middle-class, urban movement has transformed into one that has captured the imagination and mood of the nation. 2

Dear friends, On the occasion of India's 65th birthday, I was keenly looking forward to a PM who would rise above the pettiness of his government and party and make a grand gesture of reconciliation to the civil society members. This especially after they had demonstrated over the last few months the widespread support their draft had amongst the intelligentsia. I personally am among the few who have read both the drafts and realized the clever game played by Pranabda Sibal Chidambaram cabal. Very cleverly they have defanged every bit of the snake venom an effective Lokpal would have been able to inject into the corrupt system that we have in the name of governance and rule of law. Our country today has reason to be proud of its democracy, however, we need to understand that our system has many flaws which need correction. Politics and politicians of all parties with exception of perhaps the communists have become a professional exclusive club, where familial lineage, money power