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<link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr6805103cdef68-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">>
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<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000"> <link rel="canonical" href="<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">); </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>/<span style="color: #0000BB"><?php </span><span style="color: #007700">echo </span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-></span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">; </span><span style="color: #0000BB">?></span>.html"/>
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the...',
'disp' => '<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>',
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
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$disp = '<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>'
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<strong>Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman</strong></h1>
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<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div> </font>
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<div align="justify">
<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
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How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>',
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
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How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>'
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<strong>Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman</strong></h1>
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<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div> </font>
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<link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr6805103cdef68-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr6805103cdef68-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr6805103cdef68-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700"><</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">>
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
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How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. 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Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>',
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the...'
$disp = '<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: &quot;Think about the future,&quot; or &quot;Aren't we also members of civil society?&quot; or &quot;Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?&quot; But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: &quot;Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal.&quot; As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: &quot;74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all.&quot; <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>'
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<strong>Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman</strong></h1>
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<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div> </font>
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<div align="justify">
<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
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How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>',
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<em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br />
</em><br />
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br />
<br />
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br />
<br />
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br />
<br />
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br />
<br />
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br />
<br />
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br />
<br />
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br />
<br />
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br />
<br />
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br />
<br />
<br />
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br />
<br />
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br />
<br />
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br />
<br />
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br />
<br />
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br />
<br />
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
</div>',
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$metaTitle = 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman'
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By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the...'
$disp = '<br /><div align="justify"><em>By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras. <br /></em><br />Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light? <br /><br />After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so? <br /><br />The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals. <br /><br />Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences. <br /><br />Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth. <br /><br />Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government. <br /><br />These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income. <br /><br />Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies. <br /><br />This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers. <br /><br /><br />Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one. <br /><br />If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened? <br /><br />The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all." <br /><br />Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast. <br /><br />The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again. <br /><br />Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.</div>'
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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman | Im4change.org
Anna's fast will boost TV ratings, Sharmila's is for a just cause by Abheek Barman
By the time you read this, Anna Hazare would have started his fast and his well-fed handlers will be stationed in front of television cameras.
Independence Day, grey and wet was a holiday with no breaking news, so after the Red Fort speech, all airtime was taken over by talking heads debating the Anna fast. The talks generate lots of heat: "Think about the future," or "Aren't we also members of civil society?" or "Why weren't any women on the Lokpal panel?" But where's the light?
After the final break, we're off to salute our brave jawans at Nowshera, above Srinagar, with Katrina Kaif. Phew. The government, also glued to TV, is engaged in the futile task of refuting every charge of corruption on prime time. Everything else can wait. So, Manmohan Singh says that we need to eliminate corruption to grow faster. But he's only half correct. How so?
The kind of graft that grabs headlines relates to stuff like new telecom licences, the kind issued by ex-mantri Andimuthu Raja. It's alleged that Raja or his party the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam made vast amounts of money by tipping off a few players to jump a queue and get telecom licences ahead of rivals.
Even if the charges of corruption are proved in court, would Raja's actions have slowed growth? Quite the opposite. After the new licences were issued, India ended up with 12 players, up from six, in each of around two dozen markets. If, say, you need at least 1,000 employees to run a telecom service, that's 6,000 jobs that were immediately created by doling out the new licences.
Other income streams, from peddling phone cards to fixing equipment and servicing them on the field, to putting up billboards advertising the new services have also followed. If you take Raja and the 2G licence allotments as a benchmark, socalled corruption has only created jobs and incomes, not cut into growth.
Actually, the sort of corruption that has India frothing at the mouth - the Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and the telecom scams - have little or nothing to do with anything in our lives. Money is routinely salted away from public projects, kickbacks are routine in the purchase decisions of every state and central government.
These are seldom speed breakers to growth. But there are other forms of corruption that eat into the incomes of ordinary people, make their lives difficult and their pregnancies and illnesses hazardous. Every .`700 that the beat cops extract from a Delhi street hawker every month is a heavytax on a precarious income.
Every time the cops impound cycle rickshaws from the street, the rickshaw drivers have to come up with a hafta to get their livelihoods back. Uttar Pradesh has been rocked by a series of murders of medical officers, as a bunch of crooks try to erase evidence of massive graft in the procurement of medical supplies and cash doles for safe pregnancies.
This sort of corruption corrodes the fundamentals of our society and eats into growth. A few thousand rupees squeezed out of millions of people around the country adds up into a huge river of cash. But this is not a sexy TV story and there's no faux Gandhian on a TV fast against crooked cops ripping off rickshaw pullers.
Kaushik Basu, economic advisor to Pranab Mukherjee, made a sensible point recently when he wrote a little paper on decriminalising people who're forced to pay extortion money or bribes to minimise harass-ment. He argued, quite convincingly, that people who are told to pay money to receive a copy of an examination marksheet, or to get a bed in a sarkari hospital, are forced to collude in the crime, because giving a bribe is as illegal as taking one.
If, he argued, the giving of a certain kind of 'harassment' bribe were not made into a crime, then people would report if they'd been ripped off. Greater risk of exposure would deter people from asking for bribes. This was a very sensible idea, well worth turning into policy. So, what happened?
The same media that idolises Anna and starts frothing at the mention of graft, laughed Basu out of couzrt: "Finance ministry advisor says bribery should be legal." As I write this, I get a text, similar to what you've doubtless also received. It reads: "74 year old Anna staking his life for your kids. Govt plans to arrest him. What will u do? Do nothing or come on the roads. Fwd2all."
Actually, I won't fwd2all. That's because there are people out there fasting for causes greater than picking holes in the draft Lokpal Bill. One November evening, 11 years ago, our valiant military shot 10 civilians in the town of Malom, Imphal, the capital of Manipur. The stomach-churning brutality of the event - the oldest victim was a 62 year old woman, the youngest a boy of 18 - convinced a 28 year old poet and social worker to go on a fast.
The fast was supposed to convince the government to lift the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a brutal law that allows military and paramilitaries to arrest anyone without charges, hold them and even kill people on suspicion, with legal immunity. Three days after the fast began, Irom Sharmila Chanu was arrested on suicide charges. A tube was introduced through her nostril into her stomach and she was force fed in jail. Every year, she's released for a day and then jailed again.
Eleven years have passed. The tube remains. The AFSPA, despised by citizens of Kashmir and the north east, also remains in force. In all these places, people continue to disappear and executions of innocents are palmed off as battles won against terrorists. Some kinds of corruption matter more than others. Some issues, as Sharmila and not Anna teaches us, merit a fast to death.
