Arundhati Roy blasts anti-corruption 'saint' Anna Hazare

[IndoCarib]

Arundhati Roy
In a column entitled "I'd rather not be Anna" published in a newspaper, Arundhati Roy condemned both the style and substance of Hazare's campaign.
NEW DELHI: Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy launched a scathing attack on Monday on the "aggressive nationalism" behind the anti-corruption drive led by hunger-striking campaigner Anna Hazare.

In a column entitled "I'd rather not be Anna" published in The Hindu newspaper, the novelist, essayist and rights activist condemned both the style and substance of Hazare's campaign that has mobilised public opinion in India.

In particular she questioned Hazare's use of the hunger strike and other tactics and symbols co-opted from his hero -- India's independence icon Mahatma Gandhi.

"While his means may be Gandhian, Anna Hazare's demands are certainly not," Roy said.

The focus of Hazare's protest is a new anti-corruption bill.

The 74-year-old activist says the current draft is too weak and wants parliament to pass his own version which gives more scope and power to an ombudsman who would monitor politicians, bureaucrats and the judiciary.

While agreeing that the government bill was so flawed "that it was impossible to take seriously", Roy said Gandhi would have been dismayed by Hazare's vision of an all-powerful, centralised ombudsman.

"It will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies instead of one," Roy said.

Hazare, who has not eaten for six days and took his fast public on Friday, has drawn huge crowds to the open air venue where he is staging his hunger strike in central Delhi.

The atmosphere is one of celebratory protest, with the crowds singing along to patriotic songs and waving the Indian national flag.

But Roy, a vocal government critic, said she was dismayed by "the props and the choreography, the aggressive nationalism" of the Hazare movement.

"They signal to us that if we do not support the fast, we are not 'true Indians'," she said.

"Who is he really, this new saint, this Voice of the People?" she asked, accusing Hazare of remaining silent on other issues like farmers' suicides in his home state of Maharashtra.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Arundhati-Roy-blasts-anti-corrupti

---------- Post added at 08:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:41 AM ----------

This woman supports only Anti India movements, not pro India movements. She feels left out , now that Anna has stolen all the limelight. A true goddess of bigots !

 

[INDIAISM]

Another Diggy Raza oops Sorry Diggy Rani''


If you want to get media attention then you just need say something against the general feeling...but i think its high time..now she should stop these cheap shots....first Kashmir and nowShri Anna Hazare...What Next?....

Roy ji pls don't become another Digvijay singh

 

[Gautam]

Everyone has a right to talk and free speech. There's nothing wrong if she wants to just express. What she doesn't know is that, we also have a right to ignore!

No one gives a damn to what she thinks..

 

[LaBong]

She makes some valid points!

 

[IndoCarib]

She makes some valid points!

What valid points?

 

[MrProudIndian]

Yaar a 74 years old person hasn't eaten for the past 7 days..just have look at his face,he has gone so weak,lost 5 KG and this ****** is criticizing him..he is struggling to get our nation free
corruption and some people don't understand and mock at him.

 

[Quick MIK]

I agree with her.This anna vs govt standoff is only helping media

 

[LaBong]

What valid points?

That lokpal will create an alternative oligarchy.

 

[IndoCarib]

I agree with her.This anna vs govt standoff is only helping media

Do even know what Lokpal bill is all about ? Or do you suggest India should not fight against corruption ??

 

[Tangent]

She is Rakhi Sawant of third grade.. Always looking for cheap publicity...and there is no easier way of gaining publicity by vomiting against the just cause.
Why doesn't she tell reason of her and her husband "thrown out " from Kanha National Park ?

 

[SpArK]

She makes some valid points!

Yup there were some good points which is noteworthy.

The important points

It has to be noted that Jan Lokpal bill is a anti corruption law ,carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

‘The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. ‘The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. ‘The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. “A billion voices have spoken,” we're told. “India is Anna.”

Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans': “It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.” Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-“merit&#8221 movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?





At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.


Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of the utter failure of India's representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.





Note: Though i hate this thing called "Mrs RoY to the core , the above article has afew points which are noteworthy.

 

[MrProudIndian]

That lokpal will create an alternative oligarchy.

so how do u think corruption can be tackled?

 

[cyphercide]

Arundhati Roy is a great writer of prose(The God Of Small Things is one of the best books penned by an Indian writer),but is naive and misguided in her role as an "activist. I would go as far as label her childish and deluded from any semblance of reality.Some of her politically charged articles that appear in Outlook magazine make for a good laugh.Sample a few of them and you will know what I mean.

 

[IndoCarib]

Yup there were some good points which is noteworthy.

The important points

It has to be noted that Jan Lokpal bill is a anti corruption law ,carefully chosen people will administer a giant bureaucracy, with thousands of employees, with the power to police everybody from the Prime Minister, the judiciary, members of Parliament, and all of the bureaucracy, down to the lowest government official. The Lokpal will have the powers of investigation, surveillance, and prosecution. Except for the fact that it won't have its own prisons, it will function as an independent administration, meant to counter the bloated, unaccountable, corrupt one that we already have. Two oligarchies, instead of just one.

Whether it works or not depends on how we view corruption. Is corruption just a matter of legality, of financial irregularity and bribery, or is it the currency of a social transaction in an egregiously unequal society, in which power continues to be concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority? Imagine, for example, a city of shopping malls, on whose streets hawking has been banned. A hawker pays the local beat cop and the man from the municipality a small bribe to break the law and sell her wares to those who cannot afford the prices in the malls. Is that such a terrible thing? In future will she have to pay the Lokpal representative too? Does the solution to the problems faced by ordinary people lie in addressing the structural inequality, or in creating yet another power structure that people will have to defer to?

‘The Fast' of course doesn't mean Irom Sharmila's fast that has lasted for more than ten years (she's being force fed now) against the AFSPA, which allows soldiers in Manipur to kill merely on suspicion. It does not mean the relay hunger fast that is going on right now by ten thousand villagers in Koodankulam protesting against the nuclear power plant. ‘The People' does not mean the Manipuris who support Irom Sharmila's fast. Nor does it mean the thousands who are facing down armed policemen and mining mafias in Jagatsinghpur, or Kalinganagar, or Niyamgiri, or Bastar, or Jaitapur. Nor do we mean the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, or the people displaced by dams in the Narmada Valley. Nor do we mean the farmers in NOIDA, or Pune or Haryana or elsewhere in the country, resisting the takeover of the land.

‘The People' only means the audience that has gathered to watch the spectacle of a 74-year-old man threatening to starve himself to death if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not tabled and passed by Parliament. ‘The People' are the tens of thousands who have been miraculously multiplied into millions by our TV channels, like Christ multiplied the fishes and loaves to feed the hungry. “A billion voices have spoken,” we're told. “India is Anna.”

Oddly enough we've heard him say nothing about things of urgent concern. Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India.

Despite the din, sober journalists have gone about doing what journalists do. We now have the back-story about Anna's old relationship with the RSS. We have heard from Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegan Siddhi, where there have been no Gram Panchayat or Co-operative society elections in the last 25 years. We know about Anna's attitude to ‘harijans': “It was Mahatma Gandhi's vision that every village should have one chamar, one sunar, one kumhar and so on. They should all do their work according to their role and occupation, and in this way, a village will be self-dependant. This is what we are practicing in Ralegan Siddhi.” Is it surprising that members of Team Anna have also been associated with Youth for Equality, the anti-reservation (pro-“merit&#8221 movement? The campaign is being handled by people who run a clutch of generously funded NGOs whose donors include Coca-Cola and the Lehman Brothers. Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in Team Anna, has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years. Among contributors to the India Against Corruption campaign there are Indian companies and foundations that own aluminum plants, build ports and SEZs, and run Real Estate businesses and are closely connected to politicians who run financial empires that run into thousands of crores of rupees. Some of them are currently being investigated for corruption and other crimes. Why are they all so enthusiastic?





At a time when the State is withdrawing from its traditional duties and Corporations and NGOs are taking over government functions (water supply, electricity, transport, telecommunication, mining, health, education); at a time when the terrifying power and reach of the corporate owned media is trying to control the public imagination, one would think that these institutions — the corporations, the media, and NGOs — would be included in the jurisdiction of a Lokpal bill. Instead, the proposed bill leaves them out completely.


Will the 830 million people living on Rs.20 a day really benefit from the strengthening of a set of policies that is impoverishing them and driving this country to civil war?

This awful crisis has been forged out of the utter failure of India's representative democracy, in which the legislatures are made up of criminals and millionaire politicians who have ceased to represent its people. In which not a single democratic institution is accessible to ordinary people. Do not be fooled by the flag waving. We're watching India being carved up in war for suzerainty that is as deadly as any battle being waged by the warlords of Afghanistan, only with much, much more at stake.





Note: Though i hate this thing called "Mrs RoY to the core , the above article has afew points which are noteworthy.

Answer to the bolded part; YES. In India corruption is one of the causes of poverty

read this article: Poverty And Corruption - Forbes.com

 

[Quick MIK]

Do even know what Lokpal bill is all about ? Or do you suggest India should not fight against corruption ??

No i didnt know about lokpal i just came from mars today.Everybody want corruption to be eliminated I agree with anna on that.But the way he protests i dont agree with.We need a strong & balanced lokpal satisfying all not TEAM ANNA only.