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Anna's Style of Functioning:

My Reservations

One incident of World War II always inspires me. As the war was raging, one professor in Germany was engaging his class near a bunker. Totally unaffected by what was going on, he was sincerely teaching his students. Someone asked him as to how he could go on with his lecture amidst all the sound and fury of a world war. His reply was, ‘There can be two results of the war. Either Germany will lose or Germany will win. In both cases, we will need educated people to take charge of the country. I’m working for that.’ 
 
In my two and half decades of teaching at the university, I’ve realized the volatility of youth. Once a boy goes and shouts slogans, becomes part of the mass hysteria and God forbid, experiences retaliation or violence of some kind, he becomes useless for life. The utopia shown to him does not materialize. He does not study. He talks bombastically. Finally, he gets frustrated. The leaders who ride on the mob get to newer heights but the non-entity on whose shoulders, the voice and fame of the great ones rest gets lost forever. I’ve seen so many youth being cheated into grandiose ideology by rhetoric. You meet the firebrand five years later, and you’d find a negative, cynical person struggling for his bread. And the one who kept with his studies, his duties and his work is at some respectable place.
 
I may be wrong. Of course, my thoughts may be in need of correction. But evocation of public sentiments in the name of national pride is dangerous; at least to my mind. It indicates anarchy. Do these people realize as to what are they doing? If the balance is broken, it could be bad for our country. It’s like playing with fire.  The institutions that we’ve nurtured over the past six decades are sacrosanct. They must be kept sacrosanct. 
 
For Anna, anti-corruption crusade is only and only murdering the poor governmental employee. To see a super-fine, highly developed model of corruption, we should go to a place very near the place I live. The name of the place is Katni. The proverb in our region goes that in Katni, you’ll get a duplicate for everything, including yourself. Right from ‘Red and Cheap’, ‘Rebok’ and ‘Godej’, you’ll get everything. Some time back, we heard that they have developed artificial cashew nuts! The whole Indian market is stuffed with adulterated, duplicated items. It’s going full guns. That’s not corruption for Anna.

The way our representatives spend the money allotted to them for public welfare is known to everyone. But Anna doesn’t speak on it. The curse has to fall on the poor governmental employee. The whole country keeps on multiplying progeny. It doesn’t matter. But if a governmental employee has more than two children, s/he will lose job.

All experiments must be done on the poor creature! It’s a culture where we are promoting penalizing of educated, hard-working people. We are discouraging the youth from entering public service. We are promoting, what Mukesh Ambani recently called as ‘democratic paralyses’. No one will work. No one will take responsibility for decisions. The negative logic will say that I’m saying that if you don’t allow corruption, government won’t work. That’s not the case.

Anna’s approach is segmented. His definition of corruption is wrong. Promotion of incapable people, advantage of reservation to rich, highly placed people, and business corruption are grave examples of corruption. Hanging the governmental employee won’t do. Instigating the confused youth of the country out of your personal views or may be even personal interests is not good.
 

More By  :  Prof. Shubha Tiwari

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Comments on this Blog

Comment  Better Bharat will come from hard-working Indians and not through Theatrics. This whole movement is policing-based. It depends on generating fear. Lokpal is nothing but the biggest policeman. It is extremely doubtful if policing alone will help India. Learn to accept criticism. Kindly know that there are different views in this world. Targetting one political group or one person will not help. Learn to appreciate and praise where it is due. Anna's approach is fundamentally faulty. Had he been a social reformer, he would have talked about uplifting the social psyche instead of siding with political parties and superficial antics. No system works when the quality of human beings is poor. A comprehensive approach is required to deal with issues facing our country. Anna and his followers alone are not nation-lovers. There are many more people who love India and also differ from Anna's stand. 

Prof. Shubha Tiwari
01-Jan-2012 01:06 AM

Comment I too do not agree with you as you are limited to find fault in Ann's movement. "Jaise Raja Waise Praja" so it is the Govt. who is responsible to implement the rules and regulations and it is their failure in doing so had brought this artificial cashew. Corruption has crossed all limits and Anna is just giving a small tablet for the beginning and then Injection and operation etc. will be tried to save the patient from the dicease called corruption. Be patient and if not support at least don't be a pessimist and sabotage his and millions of youths hope for a better Bharat. - Jai Hind.

Premkumar
31-Dec-2011 06:15 AM

Comment I wish to make one more point. There is much talk about citizens' charter: a time-bound mechanism to get things done from government offices. There're lakhs and lakhs of governmental employees waiting for their legitimate and due pay-hikes and promotions. No one talks about time-bound incentives for the employee on whose shoulders the success of every scheme rests. I'm just trying to say that there's no point in victimizing the governmental employee, in targeting him/her endlessly and making him/her the villain. You accept it or not, Anna' s campaign is not anti-corruption in the broader sense; it's anti-employee. Anna is riding on the sense of jealousy that the unemployed feel for the employed. It's a game of negativity. 

Prof. Shubha Tiwari
16-Dec-2011 08:34 AM

Comment My intention is not to give communal color to any issue. My pain is that Anna does not think like the mother whose son has gone to an agitation. The youth is being misguided; you agree or not. I've seen so many disillusioned young boys who go for grandiose ideology initially and lament the wasted years later. 
Democracy is precious. Anyone who does not value democracy is being naive, in my opinion. 
I also believe that it's camera craze more than anything else that's driving this so called movement. Any group of four persons cannot have monopoly over all wisdom. NGOs too have rampant corruption. RTI has been reduced to systematized 'blackmail' by many unemployed, negative and revengeful people. The atmosphere that Anna is trying to create may have a destablizing impact on our country. This won't be accepatble to any sensible person.   

Prof. Shubha Tiwari
15-Dec-2011 11:35 AM

Comment I am sorry to disagree with the views which author of this article has tried to communicate and interpret the theory Anna Hazare is striving for. Anna's view is much broader. He does no speak of any particular field of corruption but he talks of corrupion as a monster.  It is wrong that he wants to ride on mob frenzy nor he wants to misguide the youth. I do not agree that he wants to kill the poor government servant. He is against every thing that troubles the common man in day to day interection in connection ith their daily needs. May be elecricity problem or water problem. Every body knows that funds allotted to public representatives are not being honestly used for public welfare. Who says Anna wants to spare such persons? If a government employee having more than two children is caught it is not Anna's fault but it is the fault of government policy because Government looks at the votes of muslim community and therefore can not prevent them from producing children beyond the permissible limits. He is continuously accusing policy makers who are politicians. India is the biggest victim of democracy. See your neighbour China. They have controlled population by the use of Danda . Why can't we use it. Why votes stand in the way of every good work that government wants to do?   Please do not accuse Anna. Call names to the system. Vayavastha( system)  is bad and needs to be changed.  End with Democracy if it is the biggest hurdle in the progress of the country.Indira Gandhi was right in imposing emergency when opposition did not allow her to work in right direction.

R.S Tomar
15-Dec-2011 08:29 AM

Comment
Hello Professor,

I agree with the points raised in the article, it may lead to more anarchy if mass is provoked in a certain manner.

I also agree with point that Corruption is not limited only to Govt. employees, it has wider scope.

However, government is single most influential entity to control the whole system, almost on all areas - social, economics & business, administration, education etc. are easily influenced by the government (or the ruler, history provides enough evidences to support this argument)

If govt. wants, it can curb corruption in an area within short time, e.g. all duplicate stuff can disappear from Katni and nearby area by year 2013 if govt. takes on it with willpower.

In India, having lots of 'smart people', even corruption is performed in 'smart' ways. This is the reason why big fishes hardly get caught even after big scandals are unearthed with evidences. Before performing scandals, the culprits ensure that big fishes will remain untouched even if scandals are unearthed - afterall, India is land of 'smart' people.

If all govt. employees are not put under one autonomous investigation authority, such as proposed Jan Lokpal, those 'smart' people will surely get easy loopholes to use small babus to perform corruption.

That's why, from cabinet ministers to peon, all need to come under ambit of single autonomous investigating authority. It is needed to make it hard even for finest minds to perform corruption without risk of getting caught.

And when govt. machinery is relatively free of corruption, we will be in a state like 50s and 60s where corruption by non-goverment entities, such as in business & trade, private institutes etc. will be curbed by a 'willing' govt. machinery.

In other words, I believe that if govt. starts functioning with reasonable honesty, everything else will be put in place by a rightly working government. Hence, if ONLY GOVERNMENT ENTITIES (Legislative & Bureaucrats) ARE BROUGHT UNDER AUTONOOUS Jan-LOKPAL, THEN SUCH A SYSTEM ALONE WILL HAVE THE QUALITY TO CORRECT ITSELF AND ALL ARROUND TO MAKE INDIA A BETTER PLACE.

Dinesh Kumar Bohre
12-Dec-2011 07:26 AM






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