- Forces halting our n-surge
- The Baba and Neo-Mayos
- Economic 'reform' to perform of economics
- From ‘shy’ to ‘shameless’ politics
The agitation against the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant has been running as a TV reality show for weeks now. The news-starved visual media has reduced the Koodankulam nuclear plant — a national investment of Rs 13,000 crore and just about to start — to a day-matinee-night show. The Koodankulam theatre is plagiarised on the Anna Fast model for media to hype it. The media too obliged and packaged it as hapless villagers fighting for their right to live. For long, it had winked at the scriptwriters, directors and actors behind the show. But does the media know — or not — that Koodankulam is no isolated event? And that the goals and mission that drive it link it to the stir that is on for almost two decades in the distant and remote West Khasi Hills in Meghalaya against uranium mining? The scriptwriters, directors and actors behind both have a common mission. The Koodankulam stir blocks the building of a nuclear plant for India. The West Khasi Hills agitation prevents the building of nuclear arsenal for India. Who are the directors and actors and what is their mission?
To his faithful millions, he was God; to his disbelievers he was a fake; to his detractors he was a fraud; to the cynical he was a suspect. Yet, to Karunanidhi, a professed atheist, he was a God-Saint. This sums up the public discourse on Sathya Sai Baba who passed away in April this year. But most, particularly outside his faithful lot, seem to have missed out the dimension of the great soul hidden beyond adulations and abuses — the unparalleled humanist. Here is that Baba not so well known.
Many men and women of high learning, achievements and wealth in India and outside were not just attracted to him. They revered him as the Divine Incarnate. It was his charisma that built a matchless organisation manned by hundreds of thousands of volunteers drawn from the highest echelons to the lowest strata of society. The number of volunteers registered to render from menial to clerical service exceeded six lakh. Baba’s entire work rests on this devoted cadre.
Here is a sample for the extent of anger against the corrupt today. “If you can’t deal sternly with corruption, India will break up like the Soviet Union. We should emulate China and hang highly corrupt people openly at the India Gate.” Who says this? Abhijit Bhattacharya, formerly chief commissioner of customs and excise. A newspaper correspondent, who overheard him saying so to his friend on phone, quoted it in his report. Here is an entry in Abhijit Bhattacharya’s bio. He impounded and taxed the aircraft imported by Mukesh Ambani as gift to his wife. See just the three scams and the volumes of bribe which make responsible people like Bhattacharya talk of hanging the corrupt in public: 2G ($40 billions). CWG ($1.5 billion) and Hasan Ali ($24.8 billion) – totalling $66.3 billion or over Rs 3 lakh crore.
Nobody denies, indeed no one can deny, the fact of high corruption. Yet, no one dares to identify the face of the corrupt high. Raja, Kanimozhi or Kalmadi do not exhaust the faces of the corrupt. Are they main players? Or just side actors? Raja himself says that he will “reveal all later” — implying undisclosed actors.