Friends,
My congratulations to Amitabh Thakur for very well written articles. In democracy, contrarian views are welcome and let me recount the gains of Anna movement.
1. The movement has been a success as it is a public response to failure of existing institutions and lack of self-corrective mechanism to rectify. Therefore external pressure became essential. Is it not shameful that successive Governments have dragged their feet on Lokpal issue, as it is against entrenched vested interests of politicians and bureaucrats ?
2. Had democratic institutions and elected leaders performed their assigned tasks, there was no need for alternative like Anna Hazare movement. In practice, elected leaders do not remain in touch with their constituencies after they are elected. Anna Hazare has set an example of leadership emerging from response of popular sentiments. To carry this argument forward, if every one elected to Parliament/ State legislature/ Municipality / Panchayat reflects the will of the people and provide democratic leadership, alternatives like Anna Hazare would not emerge.
3. Unseemly bickering to score political points, instead of fucus on public interest, has become a normal routine in Parliament and State Legislatures. Discussion on Lokpal, under pressure from Anna Hazare's fast, was an exceptional event when ruling party and opposition parties came together to resolve the issue before them. If Parliament continues similar performance, number of bills pending before it would be attended to. It would appear that without sustained public pressure, elected representatives do not perform.
4. Lastly, please look at the educational qualifications of elected representatives at http://myneta.info/ (National Election Watch by "Association for Democratic Reforms".) There are innumerable cases of elected persons with criminal records. Level of education also does not instil confidence; they are elected representatives. Om Puri was politically incorrect in calling them"ganwar" ( as reported in media), but he had a point of view that can not be ignored. Electoral reforms are therefore next issue being taken up by Anna and his team.
I agree that there are positive and negative aspects of recent developments that have shaken up every one. One should be thankful to Anna and his team for raising issues of public concern.
Dhirendra Krishna
--- In rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com, Amitabh Thakur <amitabhth@...> wrote:
>
> Friends,
>
> I present my two write ups on Anna movement in the first of which I have tried to present the role of media in the Anna movement and in the second, I have made an assessment of what has been achieved and lost during the movement.
>
> The views are entirely mine and might be in contradiction to what many might be holding. I extend my apologies to anyone whose feelings the two articles might hurt because the purpose is not to hurt anyone but to present an alternate point of view, which is possibly going unnoticed in the mainstream media but is nevertheless important.
>
> The two essays are not targeted against individuals but it gives such a feeling, it is purely unintentional. On the contrary, I stick to each and every word I have written here.
>
> In nutshell
> what I have said are-
> 1. The media has been quite partisan in this period with a misplaced notion of fighting corruption and serving a national cause
> 2. All alternate view points have been severely blocked
> 3. There have been fewer gains from this twelve day hoopla
> 4. We need completely new and pragmatic thinking as regards Lokpal instead of following a didactic view that Lokpal will mean successful control over corruption
>
> The articles are in Hindi.
>
> Here are the given links-
>
> "अनà¥à¤¨à¤¾ आंदोलन में मीडिया की à¤à¥‚मिका" पर मेरा à¤à¤• लेख
>
> http://news.bhadas4media.com/index.php/yeduniya/432-2011-08-28-07-01-32
> "अनà¥à¤¨à¤¾ आंदोलन का विहंगम विशà¥à¤²à¥‡à¤·à¤£" - अनà¥à¤¨à¤¾ आंदोलन पर मेरे विचार
> http://news.bhadas4media.com/index.php/weyoume/436-2011-08-28-08-51-05Ur comments are coordially
> solicited
>
> Amitabh
> # 94155-34526
>
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