The Hungry Bird

Oye! I always knew it cost the nation a lot to keep Mahatma Gandhi poor during his lifetime. But what I did not know was that it would cost tax payers Rs Six crore to keep Narendra Modi hungry — for just three days in air-conditioned ‘discomfort’!
And hungry for what or who, pray? I thought the man was a billi who had already eaten some sau chuhays and now he thinks of going to Haj? Burp! Oops, sorry. That was so bad-mannered. But that’s because I have just had lunch, you see. Just about three chappattis, a katori full of dal, some palak paneer and a bowlful of curd. Cost me just Rs 40, add some Rs 10 here or there for the cooking gas and all that but that has made my stomach full and very appreciative. So full that I think I might have to skip dinner tonight.
And that already makes me feel like a good citizen. Why, you might wonder. Well, my maid who carried the left-overs with her tells me, round the corner near the neighbourhood temple, sits a man who never gets enough to eat. “No one cares about him, Madam. Your palak paneer will be a feast for him today.”
And, if I want to earn more punya, she says, I should visit the main temple in town. “You have to see their state of hunger to believe it!”
I am worried. How much will it cost me to feed a whole army of hungry mouths, I wonder. She looks at me pityingly. “Not as much as you earn in a day,” she says scathingly. “They don’t eat as much as you do. And they never burp!”
Now that is a real slap in my face but I thought if they were so hungry for so long, it might cost us at least Rs six crore to feed them for just three days? Given that that is what it is costing the Gujarat government to keep Modi hungry for just as long?
“You must be out of your mind,” says Sakubai. “A crore? Try a few thousands. May be just a couple of thousand rupees for three days. A crore will last you a lifetime or more!”
So if it costs me only a few thousand rupees to feed an army of hungry people for three days, why is it costing Modi six crore not to eat during the weekend?
Oh, I get it! This is not about going hungry. This is about one-upmanship. He wants to be remembered about something other than the 2002 Gujarat riots, just like LK Advani is remembered for being a rath yatri apart from contributing to bringing down the Babri Masjid! And, of course, he wants to be India’s next Prime Minister. And he is practising to see how all our millions of citizens below the poverty line feel when they go hungry. Like Adi Shankaracharya did, getting into the body of a king to know what it is to be worldly wise.
But Modi, methinks, is no wise man. Very, very foolish or thinks the rest of us are to be fooled. Becoming a prime minister requires more than just going hungry in air-conditioned comfort. He needs to wipe tears, as even my Sakubai knows. The tears of those who are still crying after the riots, wounds that no amount of development can heal.
And no hunger can assuage, six crore or otherwise.
Did anyone tell Narendra Modi that an apology, on the other hand, will cost him almost nothing – other than his pride and arrogance? But six crore, clearly, is a cheaper price to pay, for Modi.

"The Hungry Bird"

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Shiv Sena badnaam hui…

If this had been the Youth Congress or even the Yuva Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bal Thackeray would have gone red in the face, spouted some purple prose and cried blue murder.

But since it was grandson Aditya Thackeray, the Shiv Sena patriarch looked on benignly and had only praise for the Yuva Sena leader.

I am sure Aditya is doing well in his enterprise – after all the Sena never had a youth wing before and Thackeray allowed it only after much persuasion by both Aditya and his father, Uddhav.

The organisation completed a year on October 17 and the Yuva Sena marked the event at a grand show with some raunchy numbers like Sheela Ki Jawani, Munni Badnam Hui, Jalebi Bai etc, complete with gyrating dancers in skimpy clothes et al, and some even more saucy Marathi songs.

Now, the Yuva Sena was formed as a challenge to Uddhav’s cousin and Bal Thackeray’s nephew, Raj Thackeray. Ever since Raj broke away from the mother party he seemed to have caught the imagination of quite a lot of youth in Maharashtra with only the old fuddy-duddies left behind with Uddhav.

While these old timers did not quite appreciate a 19-year old Aditya thrust upon them as their `leader’, somehow the youthful tiger cub does not seem to have posed enough of a challenge to his father’s cousin as yet.

People still seem to be comparing Raj with Uddhav and hanging on to the original Shiv Sena only because of their reverence for Bal Thackeray. Under the circumstances, it may be easy to understand why the Sena thought it was out of touch with the mobile-toting, disco-going youth and perhaps felt raunchy numbers and sexy songs were the way to their hearts and minds.

Now, while the Yuva Sena charges critics with attempting to divert attention from their good work by raising a controversy over their dance numbers, clearly many hardcore Shiv Sainiks did not quite agree with the concept. While Uddhav Thackeray arrived at the do much after, there were several senior Sena leaders who woke up from their naps halfway through to stop the dances abruptly, knowing well the opprobrium the programme will attract.

Predictably, rival political parties have been quick to jump down the Shiv Sena’s throat. “Such shameful behaviour from a party which believes in moral policing to save Hindu Sanskriti is condemnable,” said the NCP.

A Sena supporter bemoaned the fact that untrained people like Aditya Thackeray might sound the death knell of the Sena by going contrary to all that the party has held dear for years.

While the Sena has gone to extremes in its attempts at moral policing, perhaps the Sheila and Jalebi numbers by dancers in backless cholis only points to a generational shift in the party. But I believe it would have been wiser to apprentice the young boy with senior leaders in the Sena who are heading various units (like the Kamagar Sena, for example, or even the Vidyarthi Sena), for several months each, rather than hand him a forum of his own to do with as he pleases.

A 20-year-old will know only as much as he does and, perhaps, needs the guidance of wiser heads and the help of older hands before he can begin to pose a challenge to anyone let alone his uncle, who has spent years perfecting the art of political one-upmanship.

I had suggested as much to some Sena leaders who had once asked me about what the media thought about Aditya’s entry into politics — his father should have allowed him to work his way to the top, rather than impose him over others from above. That would not only have ensured that he learnt all the ropes (and tricks) but he would also have got to know the organisation/party from inside out, developed some goodwill of his own as well his own band of loyalists from among all sections and not just some college friends. He could then have brought a young perspective to an ageing party that would have done good for all three generations of leaders in the Shiv sena. Many Sena leaders had agreed with my perspective and, from what they said, I believe they will not lend their wisdom too easily to Aditya. That, in later years, could prove to be a deep flaw within the leadership, for no party can be wholly composed of only either the young or just the old. It ought to be all things to all people, something that the Congress manages to do even today at a time when it is not at its best or strongest.

But the threat posed by Raj Thackeray had been so intense that, I guess, the older Thackerays just lost patience and gave in to whatever (or whoever) they thought would pose a challenge to him. Raj must now be really laughing up his sleeve – he never did do a Sheila number even as his own MNS refrained from coming in the way of Valentine celebrations and at one time also decided to conduct ballroom dancing classes for the young.

But, of course, Sheila and Jalebi Bai were indeed a little extreme and did succeed in pushing any recount of the good work the Yuva Sena might have done in the past year off the media reports the next day. Perhaps Aditya was right that the controversy was a conspiracy against him. Or, perhaps, he was just being what young men his age are all the time: young, naïve, with a zest for life and a taste for the salacious that appeals to people his age and comes from being, well, so really young.

Nonetheless, the generational shift has given the party a bad name. Shiv Sena toh badnaam ho hee gayee!

"Shiv Sena badnaam hui…"

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Divide and rule?

Now what did I say about Anna Hazare? That he is a loose canon? That he always makes statements and then retracts them? That he adopts positions and then goes back on them? That he never fails to leave his backers with a sense of being let down? All of that is now happening to ‘Team Anna’, isn’t it? Whatever Anna may or may not have told the New York Times, I find it difficult to believe the paper could have got it so far wrong as to completely misquote him on the ‘egos’ of his team. Egos they do have — and Anna was completely right about that. But he is also playing true to his form by withdrawing that statement as he has done many times before — the latest being when he first described Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the best chief minister in the country, eliciting a grateful response from the man, and then labeling his administration as the most corrupt he had ever seen in the country. Years ago, Hazare had done the same to Bal Thackeray, playing hot and cold with the Shiv Sena supremo. He first called Thackeray corrupt, then went to tea with the Sena tiger at Thackeray’s home, Matoshree. Suddenly, the Sena supremo was the best anti-dote to corruption in Anna’s book, before someone got to the ‘Gandhian’ again and, hey, presto! Thackeray was out of favour again. That’s why Thackeray is the only politician who has openly cocked a snook at Hazare, saying at his annual Dassera rally on Thursday that while Anna’s movement was right and honest, he would achieve nothing for the manner in which he was going by it. For Thackeray knows, as most other politicians in Maharashtra do too, that it is very easy to influence Anna’s mind – to the extent that he can even turn against his own, if duly impressed. And, I believe, that is what is happening now in a very subtle and covert operation undertaken by the UPA government at the Centre. I have reason to believe that certain elements in the union cabinet have set Anna’s old team against his new one– those who had supported Anna all these years were extremely upset at being completely cut off from the social activist by those we now know as ‘Team Anna’. The likes of Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal had kept them completely away from Anna during his August agitation, thus giving those who would want to break up the movement a crack in the door edgewise. So now they are using the old against the new and now that Anna is back in his village and cannot be watched like a hawk by Bedi and Kejriwal all the time, he is open to influence by old friends who are letting him know how he was ‘used and misused’ by these NGOs, who perhaps did not bring him up to everything they were saying to and being told by the government during the negotiations. His information about lawyer Prashant Bhushan being anti-globalisation is also part of that campaign as is his impression that the ego of his new friends is endangering his reputation. And Anna is nothing If not indiscreet in his statements to the media. So while he has been kept on a tight leash by his new team (did anyone notice how he was not allowed to be alone even on television chat shows?) it was but natural that Anna would have to go home one day — and then those wishing to discredit him would have to do little more than allow him a free rein to help discredit himself. That is happening in double measure, I can see. The Congress is delighted at his statement that he will campaign for the defeat of the party in Uttar Pradesh and other states going to the polls shortly. As they are by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Dassera statement that his organisation had fully backed Anna and actively participated in his anti-corruption movement. That gives the party an opening — and a credible one this time — to label Anna as biased and a tool in the hands of the saffron forces. They couldn’t have asked for more or even any better. And, yes, it is the ego clashes of both Anna’s old and new friends that is helping them along. It is divide and rule at it’s very best, I should say. And knowing Anna well, I believe it will be a long, long time before he catches on. But by then it might be just too late for us all who genuinely need an end to corruption.

"Divide and rule?"

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Modi’s mirror!

By :-  SHREYAS NAVARE

"Modi’s mirror!"

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BJP activist beats Karnataka minister Somanna with slipper.

A senior Karnataka BJP minister was beaten with a slipper by his own party worker in full public gaze in the well guarded state secretariat, apparently venting his anger on him for not helping him become head of a state owned board or corporation.
The assailant, B S Prasad, a small time civil contractor accosted Housing Minister V Somanna as he emerged out of his room in Vidhana Soudha and hit him with his slipper, police said.
"What have I done to you. Why did you beat me with a slipper?" a stunned Somanna asked Prasad, who entered the secretariat after procuring an entry pass on a recommendation letter by BJP office, saying he wanted to visit the Chief Minister's office.
Angered over the attack, Somanna's supporters rained blows on Prasad, as police personnel took Prasad into custody and whisked him away.
Bangalore City Police Commissioner Jyoti Prakash Mirji asserted "there is no security lapse". He said the accused had gained entry with a valid visitor's pass from the security wing and attacked the minister with his slipper.
Mirji who met Somanna said police would investigate the attack.
"I have met him only twice so far. This seemed to be his second visit to my office. Earlier he had sought a letter of recommendation, which I obliged. But I do not know the reason for the attack", Somanna told reporters later.
Somanna said he did not see any reason for the attack, even as Prasad was heard saying "I can't disclose it".
The minister wanted police to tighten security in Vidhana Soudha.

"BJP activist beats Karnataka minister Somanna with slipper."

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