Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Fear management - Politicians should take cabs and autos to offices

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, BJP spokesperson – “There protestors (silent) are like terrorists. They put powder and cream on their faces and criticise politicians and democracy...”
R R Patil, NCP, outgoing home minister of Maharashtra – “In big cities, such small incidents happen”
Vilasrao Deshmukh, Congress, CM Maharashtra takes his son and producer Ram Gopal Verma to do some “disaster tourism” in the Taj...
BJP claimed to be united with the government in Mumbai while at the same time came out with a scathing advertisement in Delhi. Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje’s, BJP, has made terrorism an election issue.
As they say...Is hamam mein sab nange hain
Worse still, the celebrated journalist of our times Arun Shourie – someone, most of us have grown up admiring almost blindly, clinically dissects the government’s role in this mess by bringing out facts that how Shivraj Patil and co exactly knew what was going to be the modus operandi and yet, did not do anything. (Indian Express, December 1)
Perhaps, forgetting in his zeal that the Parliament attack happened under BJP’s leadership, and so was the hijacking of IC 814. – For sheer argument’s sake, the attack on the Parliament was much more audacious and showed larger failure of intelligence and systems than the “Mumbai Massacre”, unless Shourie wants to admit that they were caught napping. Or he speaks like former home minister Shivraj Patil – We knew there was a terror threat but did not know when or where it will happen.
I have a simple question. Politicians can be forgiven and they always are, for behaving in an abrasive manner. But should an intellectual, especially of Shourie’s stature be so insensitive? He was so busy putting facts together that he perhaps forgot that over 500 people were either dead or hospitalised.
Watching 24X7 television in the last few days has left many of us sick. I really wonder what democracy means? Does it create a “dog-eat-dog” society?
For me, it is as simple as this. I am angry. For now, I think every single politician should be stripped of every damn security cover and those bullet proofs cars. They should take cabs or autos to their respective offices. That will perhaps give confidence to the common man that our politicians are in the same boat. And force politicians to make sure that there is some serious security in our cities that protects them and their children.
Either they do that or we don’t vote for them. Is it possible?

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Stone pelting at the Karachi stock exchange...

Though markets worldwide have crashed because of the rise in oil prices, inflationary pressures and a whole lot of reasons, no other country has seen investors pelting stones and breaking windows of their own stock exchange (Bloomberg reported today that Pakistani investors smashed windows of the Karachi stock exchange to protest the worst fall). Indian investors, on the other hand, would rather down a quarter of rum (whisky is getting too expensive) or worse still, some idiots will try to hang themselves or throw themselves off the 30th floor of the building...