"What the hell is going on in this country?" -Supreme Court

"SC pulls up Centre for slacking on money launderers", says a headline. A guy who is alleged to have stashed around USD 8 billion in foreign banks, was served a notice for a tax demand for about Rs 50,000 crore!!! Our government is not bothered about where and how he got this huge amount of money, whether he has anti-national connections, nothing, as if he is just a tax offender! No wonder the honorable court had to show its exasperation!!!

Another order by the Supreme Court today, quashed the appointment of P J Thomas as CVC, slamming the Prime Minister-headed High-Powered Committee for the appointment of a person facing a criminal case. Just think about the sheer brazenness of our government. Here is a post which is supposed to upheld the highest standards of probity in the country, and the person you are appointing for it is already facing a corruption case against him! Still he was chosen by the three member HPC in which the leader of the opposition was vehemently against this appointment! And now our PM will say that we looked only at his bio-data!!! C'mon guys, even in a normal corporate job, a thorough background check is done to see whether the person you are hiring is good for the post or not. Even for a housemaid the police advices us to check her background and credentials! Who are these guys trying to fool?

And these two are amongst the few issues in the news. I shudder to think of the many more future headlines still under wraps, waiting for a whistle-blower or diligent media person to uncover, like in the case of 2G scam.

How in the world can our so-called 'honest' PM be ignorant of these things happening right under his nose? Ignorant will be the wrong word, actually he and his party are just dismissive of these things now. 

I wonder what the Indian voter is thinking or doing. I'm asking the same question as the honorable judges asked, "What the hell is going on in this country?" Are you too?

a note on yesterday's Bharat Bandh

for the first time since late 80s, the Opposition Left and Right in India united against Congress I party's misrule and gave a call for complete 'bandh' (total shutdown) of the country. a lot has been and is being said in favor or against this. while the opposition parties say it was a resounding success, the ruling Congress I says it was anti-people. and this cockiness of the riling party is what i didn't like.

whether a success or not, it was important for the Opposition to get united and forcefully tell the Government, that price rise is an issue that gravely affects the people and cannot be brushed under the carpet anymore. yes, any kind of bandh affects the day to day life of people involved, yes, it extracts a cost, but sometimes, disruption becomes important to draw the attention of the ruling Government towards the plight of common people.

if a peaceful, democratic, bandh is so anti-people, as the Congress I today claims, then the Satyagraha and the Civil Disobedience movements of Gandhi ji and the original Congress party against the British raj were equally anti-people, 'cos they also disrupted so-called normal life, financial transactions and functions of the Government of the day.

the fact is, whether a bandh or no bandh, everything, including the most essential commodities have seen run-away inflation in the present misrule of UPA-II (of which Congress I is the head). and the most affected by this are the very segments of society whose beneficiary Congress promises to be. it is very easy for some media houses, commenting from their air-conditioned spaces, to write this bandh off only as a disruptive attempt by the opposition parties, to write that this bandh was anti-people, to say that India 'lost' 13 thousand crores in a single day... it'll be very difficult for them to highlight the agony of the same 'common-man' on rest of the non-bandh 364 days of the year!

India's voting public possesses a notoriously short-term memory, and Congress I has highly skilled media managers, and that is why i hope that the Opposition keeps this issue on the 'front page' for as long as possible. we need not go back much to understand this, look where the Bhopal tragedy is in the news these days! Bharat Bandh's and Opposition's next trial will be in the monsoon session of the parliament, let's hope it doesn't become another Bhopal story by then!

i'll close with Bhagat Singh's words, "If the deaf are to hear, the sound has to be very loud." and this present Government has not only been deaf, but dumb and blind too. lets hope for salvation.