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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Baba's strike and a craven show of UPA

Baba's strike and a craven show of UPA

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published Published on Jun 3, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 3, 2011
-The Economic Times
 
The only worse thing for a government than a perception of it dragging its feet over fighting corruption is to be seen quailing at the prospect of assorted godmen and gurus launching campaigns over the issue. And the UPA regime attained that craven low with the spectacle of four very senior ministers and bureaucrats waiting at Delhi airport to greet multi-million dollar yoga empire founder Baba Ramdev as he landed in a private jet as a preliminary to his planned hunger strike against corruption.

With the ensuing parleys between the two sides, the government's placatory attempts to prevent the hunger strike so as to avoid a repeat of the Anna Hazare effect, the campaign against corruption is rapidly, even at the level of images, assuming the shape of what it has actually been politically - a tussle to manage public perceptions on the issue. The point isn't at all that members of civil society don't have a right to critique or campaign on issues affecting our polity. Every baba or guru has that right too. But it patently isn't quite the same thing to have a campaign against corruption led by a well-known Gandhian and social activist and that by a multi-millionaire guru. Even if the latter argument could be debatable, the government has no business whatsoever to be pleading with such a figure. And that becomes even more egregious if it is part of some larger gameplan to undercut the Anna Hazare campaign.

The sight of top politicians and officials waiting upon a godman or a guruis itself a certain vitiation of Jawaharlal Nehru's notion of cultivating scientific temper. And politically, with the Congress and the BJP fighting hard to be seen as more earnest on the issue, it also signals a failure on the UPA's part. For, government managers could well have presented the formation of the Lokpal Bill drafting committee, and the attendant discussions, as a first-of-its-kind attempt to formulate policy and set up an ombudsman to tackle corruption. We certainly do need an effective Lokpal. Discussions can continue as to what its ambit and purview will be. What we don't need is public posturing and petty politicking on an extremely serious issue.

The Economic Times, 3 June, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/babas-strike-and-a-craven-show-of-upa/articleshow/8706188.cms


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