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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Ramdev crackdown hurts democratic rights

Ramdev crackdown hurts democratic rights

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published Published on Jun 6, 2011   modified Modified on Jun 6, 2011
-The Economic Times
 
The single most significant achievement of the government's midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev and his fellow protesters at Delhi's Ramlila Grounds has been to dent its own credibility. Its critics are entirely right to ask why, if the fasting Baba is a charlatan as the government now claims he is, more ministers were sent to receive him at the Delhi airport than has been assigned to greet any visiting potentate, whether Barack Obama or Hu Jintao.

Why did the government behave in a schizophrenic fashion, feting him as some haloed crusader who had to be cajoled into abandoning his planned protest at any cost, and then coming down on him like a tonne of bricks? The UPA leadership owes the nation an explanation. Anyone has the right to protest peacefully in this country. If Baba Ramdev wanted to protest , he should have been free to feast, fast or photosynthesise in the sun as he pleased. So the forcible disruption of the protest is an offence against democratic rights.

At the same time, the government is perfectly justified to have been concerned about the security implications of saffronites mobilisation in large numbers, complete with Sadhvi Ritambhara, the most vitriolic amongst those who campaigned to demolish the Babri mosque at Ayodhya. The last time religious passions were mobilised for politics and people assembled in large numbers, the Sangh Parivar brought down the mosque and much of the minorities' faith in the institutional integrity of India's commitment to secularism. The sensible course would have been to restrict and regulate the size of the assembly, not to break it up.

It is, indeed, silly to give in to populist pretensions that black money can be removed by a new law. It is equally silly to hope that people's anger against corruption can be dissipated by outsmarting or dividing civil society groups. The UPA leadership needs to show its own credible initiative against corruption.

That means Sonia Gandhi leading a campaign for transparent funding of her party from now onwards, not setting up yet another Group of Ministers. Cleaning up political funding is the first, and most important, step to fight corruption.

The Economic Times, 6 June, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/ramdev-crackdown-hurts-democratic-rights/articleshow/8742754.cms


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