Quote:Abhishek Singhvi like all congress men and women dependent on Sonia Gandhi's bounty, was compelled to state, as chairman of the Parliament Standing Committee, that his life's mission from now on would be to realize Rahul gandhi's dream - to make a beautiful aesthtically pleasing lokpal commission like the election commission.



Was it a coincidence that TN Seshan was present in Delhi the same day that rahul gandhi used his privileged status to breeze in and breeze out to make his infamous state of the nation speech where he mentions the lokpal commission a la election commission.



Makes me wonder if Sonia gandhi will make TN Seshan the first Lokpal.



The BJP in particular and the NDA must shoot down Rahul gandhi's suggestion at the first opportunity. The selection process is the key issue here. And I hope parliament as a whole applies its mind to the selection process. RR

Quote:Anna Hazare's self-description is he is a Gandhian. This means he, like Thakkar Bapa, Vinoba Bhave should have lived among the people in a small commune and transformed their life. Such a man was dragged to Delhi by Sonia Gandhi and her NGO minions only to neutralise Baba Ramdev's corruption crusade.



Baba ramdev himself, a man with formidable influence and following was dragged into a issue which was not his domain and for which he had no competence.



Baba ramdev was pulled by the strings by people standing in the shadows and others controlling the movement from Chennai over the cell-phone.



Anna Hazare's shadow puppet masters were more villainous. They didnt want just national attention on corruption, like Baba Ramdev and his puppet masters wanted, but wanted to bring the Indian Parliament to its knees, push the Prime Minister into a corner and eventually force the party to seek his resignation.



The villains underestimated the intelligence of the Hindu politician and their towering ambition to become some kind of supra watch dog body which will monitor our members of parliament, our government, our judges, was blown to smithereens today by parliament.



I am gpoing to say it - a party which grovels before their imported president, stands in frozen silence as she walks past disdain oozing from everyu pore, has remained strangely inactive and unmoved by the news that she is critically ill. No oprayers, no wishes, no candle-light vigils asking allah, jesus and ishwar to protect her, no we love you sonia posters, nothing. I find this extremely suspicious. The party is not reacting at all. And her two children are here - one making an asinine speech in parliament from a written text and the other running anxiously into parliament to hear him speak (or something lese?) Do doting family members of MPs routinely come rushing into parliament to hear their husbands sons and daughters make their speech?



Rahul Gandhi breezed into parliament yesterday during zero hour pulled out a sheaf of papers from which he read out his address to the nation and then breezed out. Rahul Gandhi was absent the whole day today when the house assembled for a specioal session to discuss an important issue and not even a squeak from any of our media channels about his absence?



The ambition to be a permanent member of this supra watch dog, despotic body was almost certainly Kejriwal's idea - short cut to enormous power thru the NGO route. Kejriwal's ford foundation cionnection is now established. The scams tumbling out of the Congress cupboard was excellent opportunity to implement the script and he succeeded initially.



Kiran Bedi's 24 hour stand up comedian act notwithstanding, ther group around Hazare and Hazare himself began to talk aboiut compelling parliament to submit to their tyranny - my Bill and no other Bill, pass it now or else.



I met a group of 300 students with national flag in hand, faces painted in tricolour sitting in front of the Rajaji Bhavan housing central government offices in Besant Nagar where I live. Driving down to feed street dogs, i was horrified to see them all sitting in dharna. Bringing my car to a screeching halt, I got down and asked the idiots gathered there (they were all students from some christian engineering college) how many of them had read the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by team Anna?



Only two put up their hands! Ia sked them why in hell were they sitting there, what were they supporting and was it an informed decision?



I could have saved my breath. One ponytail told me that he was there to protest corruption. That at least was unpretentious and genuine. and that would have been true of many of them there.



Kejriwal and co. cynically exploited the anger of ordinary people against corruption to futher their towering ambition to rule the country from the shadows.



Parliament gave them all a well-deserved set down. parliament gave Anna Hazare and Co. nothing because they deserved nothing. A resolution spelling out the sense of the house is not worth the paper it is written on and we all know that. To pretend that this is a win for x and humble pie for y, or win win for both is so much bullshit.



The Indian Parliament confronted these anarchist, villainous forces firmly and with intelligence.



Sushma Swaraj was brilliant today. She-

Spelt out her party's position with cogent arguments in support of 2 out of 3 Anna Hazare's demands.

Ripped Rahul Gandhi's presumptuous and colonial attitude down the middle

While expressing full support for the prime Minister, she tore the Congress party apart and by treating rahul gandhi with sternenss she put paid to any ambition he and his mother may have nurtured to plonk him on the throne.



Bottomline - Anna Hazare was treated with respect but Kejriwal and Co. were shown the door. They got nothing and Justice Santhosh Hegde alone had the courage to admit they had lost.



Now rajdeep sardesai should start seeing the truth instead of looking for face savers for anna hazare. Anna Hazare like Baba ramdebv has only himself to blame for allowing himself to be used by manipulators. RR

Quote:Sorry, this post is not at all on topic.

Quote:Asking because of the timing of Capt Manoj Singh's entry onto IF, his "Team Anna is the ONLY hope" and his "Congratulations!" (as if anyone else here was looking forward with equal fervour to "Team Anna" winning, self-congratulations doesn't require its own thread), his excessive vocalism on just this subject, so that no reader is allowed to read the other - far better argued - opinions on Anna's rise and current 'victory' over 'corruption' *:

Quote:- every single person who doesn't wholly agree on "Anna and co." or their methods or their multiple bills gets an instant rebuttal - just any response will do, however empty/meaningless/pointless*. Manoj is very on-fire

- anyone's views disagreeing with his fandom - even if by people who obviously know more about Indian politics than his brain can handle - are described as "conspiracy theory"

Quote:- I can hardly read a sensible comment on the "Anna" events without his interference immediately after

- then there's his thread concerned with TV media debate's bad coverage of Anna's side, but where was he all this time when TV did unfair coverage about other matters (like Godhra, Modi, usw)?

Quote:(* Even his mourning the lack of IF readership - "not enough per day" said he, again in a thread all its own - when seen in context of the rest of his activism on the 'Anna' related topic, sounds like he's missing an audience the size he wants.)

Quote:Where was he - in terms of IF membership - all this time? None of the other topics interested him?

Quote:Surely there are a gazillian Indian forums/blogs/whatevers out there drooling all over Anna and his anti/corruption drive. Why IF?

Quote:With the ‘Sense of the House’ letter from the Speaker reaching Anna Hazare, the Anna fast has ended. And the Team Anna and the media have proclaimed victory. Now the nation is relieved from the non-stop 24x7 screams of the media. It can think now! It can now draw a balance sheet of the Anna stir to know what are its giveaways and takeaways. Now go back to where the agitation began.



What is now known as the Anna movement started as India Against Corruption (IAC), whose website says, “India Against Corruption movement is an expression of collective anger of people of India against corruption.”



The IAC website lists as founders besides Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, Mahamood Madani, Arcbishop Vincent M Concessao, Syed Rizvi, Justice D S Tewatia, B R Lall and others. Click the January 2011 archives of IAC website, it is full of “March against corruption” in every nook and corner of India from Agra to Chennai and Ahmedabad to Silichar.



The leaders of the IAC, particularly Baba Ramdev, had raised, besides corruption, the emotive issue of Indian black money abroad. But the IAC receded into the oblivion and the apolitical movement against corruption, got reduced to merely a fight for Jan Lok Pal (JLP) Bill. The Anna movement emerged, narrowed into just a battle for a just JLP Bill, marginalised other founders and reduced its leadership to just four, the ‘Team Anna’. See the effect of these changes.



This was how Jan Lok Pal Bill replaced black money and corruption as the core agenda of the IAC? In the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, thanks to L K Advani, the black money issue had become a huge issue; it remained dormant after the UPA victory. But after the Tsunami of corruption hit Indian politics, the public roar against black money stashed abroad by politicians, businessmen and criminals became stentorian.



The media alleged that Sonia Gandhi had huge monies stashed away abroad. It was then that the UPA II suddenly thought of a Lok Pal Bill to ride out of the tornado of corruption and black money. It was a trap. Soon IAC walked into the trap. It dismissed the government version of the Lok Pal Bill and insisted that the draft prepared by its think tank, the Jan Lok Pal Bill, should be accepted. The Congress party saw it as a blessing in disguise to make its Lok Pal Bill fight the Jan Lok Pal Bill, to keep corruption and black money out of headlines.



Meanwhile, the BJP committed a Himalayan blunder. L K Advani wrote a personal letter to Sonia Gandhi for the hurt caused to her. That was made public to make it appear that it was to regret the charges made in the BJP Task Force Report on black money that Sonia Gandhi family was keeping huge illegal funds abroad. The BJP’s move against black money became moot, leaving the issue to the apolitical Swami Ramdev, Anna being confined to JLP Bill.



The Congress, thrown on the back foot by corruption and black money issues, saw in JLP Bill an opportunity to obfuscate both. When Anna started his Jantar Mantar fast, Sonia Gandhi – charged with hoarding black wealth abroad – offered to partner him in his battle against corruption! The result, the Congress successfully divided the IAC agenda between Anna with JLP Bill issue and Baba Ramdev with black money and corruption issues.



The first fast of Anna was thus subsumed into this Sonia-led Congress strategy, leaving the BJP – thanks to its own follies – with no issues. The collateral benefit to the Congress was that Anna helped to depoliticise and rob the BJP of a highly political issue. The Congress strategy also did more damage to the BJP. It helped to club all political parties, including both the ruling party and the opposition – read the Congress and the BJP – as one and the same.



Clubbing the BJP with the Congress on issues other than secularism helps the Congress and harms the BJP. Yet the elite leaders of the BJP allowed the Congress to succeed in its strategy. So after the first fast of Anna the Congress virtually dictated the agenda. Meanwhile Team Anna got Anna, who had first praised Narendra Modi, to talk against him so as to move the Anna movement further away from the BJP. This was the setting for the second Anna fast.



But the simple Anna proved increasingly difficult. He demanded a JLP Bill that included the PM down to everyone in the net. The Congress raised the plea that Anna could not dictate to the Parliament and got the BJP into the trap again. It got the constitutionalists in the BJP to endorse its view, again clubbing the BJP with itself!



But, the Congress strategy to handle Anna like it handled Swami Ramdev failed miserably with the media, which had no other headlines, focussing on Anna 24x7. With the media screaming ‘Anna’ and ‘Anna’ all the time, the Congress was on the run. Alas the BJP also found itself running with the Congress, against Anna. But, RSS workers enthused by Anna’s cry of “Vandemataram” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai” – both branded as RSS slogans – joined the movement in large numbers forcing the BJP president Nitin Gadkari to disregard the BJP Parliamentary Party and write to Anna offering support to his demands.



This forced the BJP Parliamentary Party also to side with Anna, rationalising the shift as the “evolving” stand of the BJP! This tilted the scale in Anna’s favour. But again the Congress would not leave the BJP. It joined with the BJP in the ‘Sense of the House’ exercise. The media claimed victory for Anna and for itself.



Here is the balance sheet of the Anna movement as of date. The BJP bracketed with the Congress loses; the Congress does not. The Congress cannot take Anna for granted; Anna cannot trust the Congress. The nation waits for what the Parliament will do about JLP Bill. The RSS is pleased that the two slogans “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” and “Vandemataram” long ostracised by Secular India have been secularised by Anna.

Quote:Kejriwal: Did not know VHP backed organizations were serving food at Ramlila. If we knew they were RSS fronts, would not have allowed them

Quote:IS, on August 29, 2011 at 11:08 pm said:

The plain truth is that the only winner in this contest was the Congress UPA-2 government who was able to divert interest away from Sonia-jee’s Swiss bank account towards a future – very far future – Lokpal bill and the Americans who financed the tamasha at the Ramlila Ground (RTI petition shows that the Ford Foundation / CIA paid for the show).

Quote:Kabir



To promote use of India's Right to Information (RTI) Act and to develop a repository database of RTI requests and uses

Amount $200,000

Period 2011

Region India, Nepal and Sri Lanka

Issue Democratic and Accountable Government

Initiative Promoting Transparent, Effective and Accountable Government

Primary Approach Network Building and Convening

Quote:New Delhi Television

Date: March 2011

Purpose: to bring greater awareness, and help inform public debate and inspire individual action around maternal health, a critical underreported health issue plaguing the developing world

Amount: $872,204

Term: 6 months

Topic: Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health

Region Served: Asia, Global

Program: Global Health

Grantee Location: New Delhi, India