On 12th March, a student named Arpan Verma had gone to a Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) outlet in Hawamahal, Jaipur. Going by his account, after ordering his drink he noticed that the refrigerator in that outlet, which contained all the food items, had cockroaches and other bugs in it.
After bringing it to the notice of the employees, he cancelled his order and got his refund. He claims that instead of taking corrective steps, the employees continued to serve other customers from the same contaminated fridge. They allegedly placed menu cards over the part of the fridge to hide the cockroach infestation.
This led to Arpan telling other customers about the infestation. This apparently made the CCD employees get angry, who then asked him to leave the store. As claimed by him, the employees even hurled abuses and one started to record a video from her mobile phone.
This spurred Arpan to start his own recording wherein he is seen showing the cockroaches at the store. The recording also shows a female employee, who in turn was recording his actions. As he was recording the video, that female employee suddenly emerged from behind the shelf and slapped Arpan.
With this assault on captured on camera, Arpan and his friends thought that they have enough proof to make CCD apologise for this behaviour and take action against their employee.
However, nothing of that sort has happened. According to activist Deepika Bhardwaj, the CCD authorities took the female employee to the police station, not to turn her in for physically assaulting a customer, but to submit a complaint of eve-teasing, harassment and molestation against Arpan. This was apparently done so that he doesn’t go public with his expose.
As the incident occurred more than two weeks ago, according to Deepika, the boy Arpan has even been called by the Jaipur police to take part in the investigation, thanks to the complaint against him.
Even though it is not possible to ascertain what transpired between Arpan and the employees before he shot the video, the recording by him doesn’t suggest any provocation from his side except him showing the cockroaches. If the CCD employees’ version is correct, their recording should be in public to counter claims of Arpan, but there doesn’t seem to be any.
After the incident finally went viral, the CCD authorities, maybe as a face saver, assured on their Twitter page that they had escalated the issue and their team was checking the facts. However, they allegedly hadn’t taken any action till earlier today:
So @CafeCoffeeDay hasn’t taken any action so far. Neither apologizd to @arpan_verma15 nor taken action against staff. Enquiries not over eh?
Arpan Verma, the most likely victim in this case also put out a Facebook post, wherein he lamented how CCD which, ironically has a ‘lot can happen over a coffee’ tagline, resorted to emotional manipulation and strong arming tactics against him.
He also claimed that he has sent a legal notice to the company, and if they failed to address his grievances, he would pursue the matter in a court of law.
UPDATE (29th March 2017): Activist Deepika Bhardwaj has claimed that instead of taking any corrective steps against their employee, CCD officials are pressing charges against Arpan and trying to get him arrested:
A PDS scam, which was both grave and amusing at the same time, has been exposed in Nibohra village near Agra. As it turns out Padam Singh, the PDS shop owner, had been distributing subsidized food grains to about 3,500 non existing recipients and was most likely siphoning off the allotted grains for his personal gains.
What makes this case amusing is the fact that of the 350 fake families Padam had created, some had names of Bollywood songs, vegetables, dry fruits, among others.
For example some names were from a Mohd Rafi song called ‘Teri galiyon mein na rakhenge kadam’ from the 1974 movie called Hawas. In the ration card, ‘Teri’ was the mother of ‘Galiyon’, ‘Rakhenge Kadam’ was the son of ‘Me Naa’ and ‘Aaj’ was the father of ‘Ke Baad’.
Apart from pop-culture, the owner also apparently had an affinity with fruits and vegetables. He had created a whole family of a 55 year old bachelor named Manohar Singh where ‘Aalu’ was the father of ‘Loki’, ‘Bhindi’ mother of ‘Baigan’, ‘Badam’ father of ‘Pistaa’, ‘Naariyal’ son of ‘Akharot’ and ‘Supaari’ was the father of ‘Long’. To top it off the owner was also apparently a fan of Nagin Dance as on one card he had named ‘Nagin’ as the mother of ‘Nach’.
The owner was reportedly supplying food grains to these ‘food items’ for the past two years. Here is the copy of a few:
This scam was exposed by a person named Bhagwan (first name only), who is the husband of the village’s Pradhan Kamala Devi. Apparently for the last two years, the owner was so busy selling food grains to Aalu Bhindi and others, that not even a single resident of Nibohra (for whom the shop is actually there) had received a single foodgrain from the shop.
This exercise of siphoning off the grains has ensured the cancelling of Padam’s licence by the local administration after the Yogi Adityanath Government took charge. Padam has apparently been running the shop for the past 5 years. In 2014 too, his license was cancelled but was later reinstated at the recommendation of the Fatehabad MLA.
Bhagwan and others had complained about this reinstatement, but were allegedly ignore by the police inspector. The fake ration cards were apparently created thereafter.
On 24th March, Bhagwan and his team had caught Padam loading three trucks at his PDS shop to transport them elsewhere. The police were informed and the trucks were seized. The Fatehabad SDM has assured of more stringent action once the total amount of loot has been ascertained. The SDM also claimed that the inspector who had disregarded the earlier complaint has been suspended.
Eon expected lines, this invoked an amused response from people on Twitter:
Public Distribution Scheme scan of food grains in UP. Father name Alu, sons called Loki, Bhindi. Mother is baingan ? pic.twitter.com/ypqJcCcU7z
What’s so funny? Alu is name of a Chief Minister while Baingan is a journalist who loves to date politicians. These are legit names. pic.twitter.com/drwNyHr5Z6
Though on a serious note, people have been pointing out that the way to avoid such a scam is making Aadhar mandatory to avail PDS facility. The government has also passed a rule in this regard in February. Yesterday we had reported how mandatory Aadhar for mid-day meals had found a whopping 4.4 lakh fake students in just three states of Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Mizoram.
11th March 2017. That’s a date Arvind Kejriwal will never forget. It’s a date that seems to have impacted him significantly and his public display of affection for Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been conspicuously missing since then. From daily basis insinuations, there’s a discomforting quiet from his Twitter handle since this fateful date.
If you have hated his theatrics, you will find it difficult not to mock his divorce with Modi. Even the national and mainstream media seem to have stopped romanticizing him now. His attempt to share the blame of inaccurate poll surveys in Goa and Punjab on journalists like Prannoy Roy and Shekhar Gupta threw more ice over a dying fire.
The Assembly elections setback isn’t a minor or a temporary crisis for Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). As captain of the ship, he has not just steered his party into a storm. But worse, he has invited a storm to rock his ship. Whether he corrects his course or not, his and his party workers’ existence is in threat.
He has a tough task cut out – that of reshaping his political career and saving his party. Winning MCD elections in Delhi may be just one step forward in an impossible journey of thousands of miles to go.
As he gazes into this gloomy future, he must be reflecting on strategic choices he made when AAP was at its peak – when it won Delhi 2015 assembly elections bagging 67 out of 70 seats. This was a year after the commendable performance in Lok Sabha 2014 elections – 4 seats from Punjab with 30% vote share and a 34.9% vote share but no seats from Delhi.
At this juncture, it was crucial where AAP would put its immediate focus on for the next 30 months. As the non-corrupt alternative to Congress, he would require a great stint as Delhi Chief Minister and strengthening of AAP’s base in other states to stay true to his national ambitions.
But he was in no mood to gradually build the party as it would take decades to do so. Too ambitious to let anyone else overpower him, he was (is) eyeing the post of Prime Minister for himself by 2019 or in worst case by 2024. To do that, winning assembly elections in at least 2 major states by 2017 was the least he would need.
As he looked at the 27 states of India for AAP’s entry, he would need to choose his battles i.e. states carefully. Here is a possible sequential elimination process he would have used to identify these priority states:
Is the state going to polls before end of 2017?
If yes, is the state relevant enough for national presence? (Outcome to efforts ratio is likely to be less in North Eastern states due to ‘tyranny of distance’ and national visibility a party can gain from there. Also, except Delhi, AAP wouldn’t want to win another UT).
Is Congress one of the largest parties in these states? (AAP’s best bets lay in grabbing vote share from Congress aided by his and AAP’s positioning).
Is the state a contest between Congress & BJP? (Since AAP’s another area of opportunity lied in being a part of the 3rd front, it wouldn’t want to antagonize any potential Mahagathbandhan members. So he would rather pursue Bihar, UP, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, etc. on a more opportune date).
Shortlist of states, and how Kejriwal saw red in some states.
If we put the 12 states going to assembly polls from 2015 to 2017 through this test, 5 of them fit the bill well – Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, and Himachal. If one looks back AAP’s actions post 2015, the above choice appears quite obvious.
There were state specific factors to further justify AAP’s entry there. Punjab was a no-brainer, given the encouraging performance in Lok Sabha 2014, Delhi neighborhood effect and the fact that Punjab has always voted out the incumbent for a foreseeable past. AAP’s primary opposition in Assembly 2017 was Congress here, not SAD or BJP.
In Goa, with Parrikar moving to the center, a leadership gap in the Goa BJP coupled with a dominant Christian population (potential anti-BJP vote bank) gave an indication that the state was ripe for shift of power away from BJP.
Gujarat BJP seemed to be weakening under Anandiben Patel as Modi and Amit Shah focused on national politics. AAP had joined hands with Congress and JD(U) in the lead up to the Bihar assembly elections to fuel the Patel agitation. Kejriwal wouldn’t want to part with this opportunity to win votes from the powerful Patidar community.
Strategy is not just what you choose to do. It’s also about what you choose not to do. Kejriwal had by the above choice decided not to pursue assembly elections in some large states like UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Other large states like Karnataka, Chhattishgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan go to assembly polls too close to 2019 general elections and hence investment by himself or of local leadership on these doesn’t seem to have made sense to him.
These choices were hedged on the probability that Kejriwal would win a couple of states to display his own (and not AAP’s) growing popularity in the run up to 2019. These choices came with the opportunity cost of not investing in ground level party framework across the country. His choice of promoting himself came with the cost of not developing a well-organized party that could nurture a leadership capable enough to be delegated with the task of further expansion.
Did the strategy deliver? Obviously not.
His struggle to manage Delhi notwithstanding, he hit the axe on his own foot by confronting Modi directly on issues where he had little chance of winning. Name calling, shooting and scooting, and attacking Modi on his performance as Prime Minister were the tricks he deployed to get Modi to engage with him and to secure elevation of his own stature in national politics.
While it was imperative for him to get this stature, he was always walking on a tight rope in the manner he chose to do so. Modi himself has an unshakeable image of an incorruptible, nationalist and pro-governance leader making it difficult for Kejriwal and AAP to get their positioning in this space. The plank of secularism wasn’t going to work in any of the chosen states, except maybe in Goa.
Meanwhile, party’s volunteers and regional leadership had started losing faith in Kejriwal. Exodus of clean leaders from AAP, involvement of the unclean ones in cases of graft or misrepresentation and his own dictatorial tendencies were denting his image further. What ensued in states other than the 5 priority ones – in the form of disenchantments, split-ups, etc. was nothing but an outcome of AAP central leadership’s choices.
The debacle that came on to AAP in March 2017 is thus a culmination of several of the above factors. What it leaves with Kejriwal will definitely be worrying him. While some of his staunch supporters still remain, the fence sitters and the swing votes now see him as an anarchist and an untrustworthy leader who is power hungry like any other politician.
This doesn’t help when the aspirational youth of the nation started losing conviction in his governance abilities. While the country is seeing a rejuvenated nationalism and Hindutva wave, his choice of ideology, siding with those perceived as anti-nationals or “pseudo seculars” and with extremist forces in Punjab, has left him with little room for redemption.
Today in March 2017, his plans for 2019 are more or less shelved. There is no state that he can choose now to enter and win votes & seats from. He will have to enter 2019 elections without any administrative experience to showcase, and his promises are no more selling like hotcakes.
Nothing is impossible or improbable in politics. But a Kejriwal government at the center in 2019 is. His journey from Bunglow No. 6, Civil Lines to 7, Jan Kalyan Marg suddenly seems decades long if not eternal.
So, what does he do now? Simple, he should look beyond 2019. If he can.
Having reconciled to the fact that he won’t be a significant force over the immediate years, he needs to introspect and build himself again from scratch in a few major states, be content to sit in opposition in these assemblies and eye for 2024 Lok Sabha – as a contributing and not leading member of a Third Front.
Even if he accepts this as his 5 year objective, can he actually achieve it?
Having bathed in the media glare, can he swallow the bitter pill that he will be a nobody in the Indian polity for the next 5 years? Can he plan for a long drawn battle that needs keeping his volunteers and the AAP organization together? Can he motivate himself and his teams to continue working when the BJP is giving nightmares to parties much larger than AAP? Can he manage funds when donations to his party are declining day by day? Can he deliver on governance as promised to the Delhi people while continuing being acerbic with central government? Can he allow dissenting voices of AAP’s well-wishers be heard to course correct?
If we were to poll answers to these questions from public, Nays will outnumber Ayes. I belong to the majority in this poll.
Captain Kejriwal has hit the iceberg, and Titanic AAP is sinking.
Manish Agarwal, a resident of village Jalali in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh has put his house up for sale and has declared his intention to leave the area for reportedly being threatened by goons belonging to a particular community. These goons were reportedly irked by the fact that Manish had a ‘Jai Sri Ram’ ringtone on his mobile.
On 24th March at about 8:30 PM, Manish, who owns a garment store and is a BJP worker, was standing outside his shop. At the same time he received a call on his phone and his ‘Jai Sri Ram’ ringtone started playing. Reportedly irked by it, Yasin the owner of a nearby medical store and his few friends rushed towards Manish and started threatening him.
Yasin reportedly ridiculed him by calling him a ‘big Ram Bhakt’ and threatened to kill him just like his ‘Baba’ was killed. They allegedly warned that Manish won’t be allowed to live in Jalali anymore. The ‘Baba’ in question is Manish’s grandfather named Mool Chand Agarwal, who was reportedly murdered on 17th March 1958.
Manish claims that two of those who threatened him were serial offenders with as as many as 10 pending cases against them. Another resident named Ved Prakash, also claimed that he was similarly threatened, though he hasn’t filed a case yet. A video of their statements is available:
Manish claims that he had decided to put his house on sale and leave the area after receiving the threats. He even put ‘this house is for sale’ sign, which was allegedly vandalized by some miscreants at night.
Local SP Sankalp Sharma has currently downplayed the incident though he confirms that a complaint has been lodged. He also asserted that they haven’t yet encountered anything which would threaten the peace of the area.
UPDATE: Aligarh Police on Twitter have confirmed that a case has been registered against 7 persons (3 named and 4 unidentified):
@abhi_excel@uppolice CCN 135/17 U/S 147/148/307/323/504/506 IPC बनाम 4 व्यक्ति अज्ञात /3 नामजद के विरुद्ध पंजीकृत |
Police has registered a case against a journalist named Poonam Agarwal, who had carried out a “sting operation” for the website The Quint at Deolali cantonment in Nashik, Maharashtra.
Poonam had entered the cantonment with hidden cameras concealing her identity as a journalist, and recorded videos that showed army jawans employed as sahayaks (helpers) indulged in doing menial jobs that they should not be doing.
She talked to a jawan Lance Naik Roy Mathew in particular, who allegedly had no idea that he was talking to a journalist, and the conversation was used to prove that jawans were not happy with the sahayak system and that they were being exploited.
A few days later, Roy Mathew was found dead in an abandoned barrack in the cantonment. A diary was recovered from the barrack, which suggested that the jawan was under pressure and it was a case of suicide. Roy Mathew’s family members also confirmed that he was scared and under pressure as his identity was reported to have been revealed due to the “sting operation” and subsequent media coverage.
This ensued public outrage and people blamed The Quint and Poonam Agarwal to have indulged in unethical practices that finally took away life of an army jawan. People pointed out that there was no need to do a “sting operation” on a “victim” (a sahayak) especially when the sahayak system has been debated for long and it was not something that needed a sting operation (ethics of which are already debatable).
An NGO named Citizen4Forces argued that there as a case against Poonam Agarwal and they lodged a complaint with Delhi Police regarding the same. Around the same time, Army too had started its investigations and lodged a complaint with Nashik Police, though they did not name anyone back then.
A report in The Indian Express now suggests that the Army too considers Poonam Agarwal guilty of jawan’s death and they have submitted an application conveying the same to the Nashik Police. Army has reportedly asked the police to treat the application as complaint, following which the police is reported to have registered a case against Poonam Agarwal.
The journalist has been booked under Sections 3 (spying) and 7 (interfering with members of the Armed forces) of the Official Secrets Act (pdf), for trespassing (as she entered the cantonment without permissions and without revealing her true identity), and for abetment of suicide under the IPC.
Army has also accused Poonam Agarwal of asking “leading questions” to Roy Mathews and filming at a prohibited area.
The website The Quint, which had quietly deleted their reports, videos, and social media posts around the sting operation as soon as the news of jawan’s death was public, hasn’t been named as one of the guilty parties, going by the Indian Express report.
The journalist Poonam Agarwal is still defending her conduct and claiming that these charges are “afterthought” by the army. The police is reported to have questioned her and recorded her statement.
Now it needs to be seen how the mainstream media and its talking heads react to this incident and whether they term this case as an “attack on freedom of press”.
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, who has now shifted his focus from Goa and Punjab assembly elections to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s elections, promised on Saturday that if AAP was voted to power they would proceed to waive the residential property tax that the homeowners in the Delhi-NCR have to pay.
Such a populist and far-fetched promise is not a new thing for the AAP, which had earlier promised free Wi-Fi, 15 lakh CCTV cameras, free water, and lower electricity bills in the past. This promise by the AAP though has serious issues around it.
The first issue raised by many experts was a constitutional roadblock, where it was argued that AAP, or for that matter anyone who wins the MCD polls, won’t be able to do it of their own, for the Tax can only be waived if there’s an amendment in the Delhi Municipal Act, 1957 which can only be done by the Parliament.
AAP leader and Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia though has refuted this view of the experts and has claimed that two amendments were made to this act in 1993 and 2011 without parliament approval and the same can be done in this case.
Now there is another issue that has been pointed out by many. Even if the Tax is waived off without needing Parliament’s approval, it may have serious repercussions about the smooth and efficient functioning of the MCD.
As it turns out, the Property Tax accounts for a substantial part of the total revenue MCD generates. In the year 2016, of the total 8,351 crore revenue the 1,371 crores came from the Property Tax.
The potential loss of at least 1,371 crores has MCD officials understandably worried. The officials lamented that MCD was already facing a cash crunch and the loss of Property Tax revenue would mean more trouble.
VP Pandey, leader of house, North Delhi Municipal Corporation claimed that as it is they didn’t get their dues from the government on time and further wondered from where would they get the money to cover their expenses.
A lot has been talked about the financial crisis which the MCD has been experiencing over the years.
In 2010 the MCD was known to have been riddled in debt of over 2800 crores. The situation had scarcely improved in 2015. As per a report, thanks to a three way split of Municipalities in 2012, the East and North Municipalities have been perpetually riddled in debt.
The East Municipal had been running losses of about 500 crores and in 2015 had failed to pay salaries of 45% of its employees. This report also mentioned about how the Property Tax was a significant source of revenue for the Municipalities and one of the reasons the East Municipality was having troubles was lower property tax collection as compared to the two other municipalities.
The North Municipality too ran a revenue deficit of about 1000 crores. And remains dependent on government grants. One can only imagine what the situation would be if the Property Tax to ends up getting snatched from the Municipalities.
If you are a news junkie like me (and even if you are not), you have probably found your mainstream and social media feeds overflowing with reports of Yogi Adityanath’s crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Here is one such article from leftist propaganda blog Scroll:
Oh! Such grief! How heartless of the modern Indian state to demand licenses… a whole gamut of licenses from the very finest among us : the operators of illegal slaughterhouses. What is happening to the soul of our society? Such passion for unhygienic food has rarely been witnessed in the history of humanity.
What didn’t make it to “national” headlines is another Chief Minister in a different part of the country shutting down a different bunch of establishments because they don’t have the required “gamut of licenses”:
Will we see mournful headlines about Mamata Banerjee’s “crackdown on education”? I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Hundreds of schools are on target in Bengal. The education of thousands of kids, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of kids, could be on the line. And there is no doubt that schools run by one particular religious group are being singled out for the crackdown.
That’s where the cameras should be, covering the plight of young kids.
But they’ve stuck us with debating whether this or that kabab shop in Lucknow was closed for an hour, a day, a week or whatever. Are their customers getting buffalo meat or are they stuck with chicken and mutton?
Presumably, that stuff matters more than whether 125 schools will have to close their doors in Bengal.
Not only is Mamata Banerjee out to close down 125 schools, her government is going out of its way to showcase the special status of Muslims under the TMC regime:
You can’t have a more clear-cut case of religious discrimination. Schools run by one community are hounded and asked to produce a gamut of licenses, while schools run by another are showered with taxpayer’s money. Even more money than the state of Bengal allocates for irrigation. More money than large industries, textiles and IT put together!
But that’s not worth talking about. Slaughterhouses first. Schools later.
Across this nation, elite journalists are anxiously calling up their contacts in Uttar Pradesh, for a minute by minute update on the availability of Tunday Kabab. And social media is going with the flow of the issue of the day.
Somewhere out there, the Break India forces are laughing at us.
Recently we had reported how ISIS posed a real threat to India in the backdrop of the IED blast on-board the Bhopal Ujjain Express on 7th March, which many believe was a test attack carried out by an ISIS module based in Madhya Pradesh.
We had traced the genesis of ISIS in this country from Mumbai students joining ISIS, Twitter handler @ShamiWitness getting arrested to the flurrying of ISIS flags in J&K and a Himachal temple getting defaced with ISIS slogans.
Now new reports have emerged that suggest that the ISIS inspired Islamic terrorism is turning out to be a threat for both the Hindu and Muslim sects in the country.
As per Moinudheen Parakadavath, who is a vital link to an IS module consisting of 22 members which travelled to Afganisthan, the members of the terror group wished to target Hindu leaders, Ahmadiyya Mosques and the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind so as to “create ripples” in India. Both the Ahmadiyya sect and the Jammat-e-Islami Hind have condemned ISIS in the past.
Moinudheen revealed this information to the NIA and other central agencies. He was arrested by the NIA after his deportation from Abu Dhabi on 14th February.
He also revealed that secret online groups of ISIS which include one on the Telegram messaging service regularly discussed potential targets in India. Targets discussed included a Jewish temple in Kochi, and a Jamaat-e-Islami program with Rahul Eshwar as a speaker that took place in September 2016. This event had ended up getting shifted as agencies had intercepted a threat back then.
Moinudheen’s ISIS module isn’t alone when it comes to targeting Muslim sects in the country. The Ujjain train blast accused too has revealed to the authorities that their module wished to attack a dargah in Barabanki, the Bara Imambara in Lucknow and a leading Shia cleric. It should be noted that ISIS doesn’t consider Shias or Sufis as rightful Muslims, and recent attack on a Sufi shrine in Pakistan was an example of that.
Apart from punishing those who don’t agree with their brand of Islam, this plan of ISIS is clearly aimed at triggering internal disturbances in India. While Pakistan pretends to fight them back home, ironically they may extend support to ISIS for their activities on Indian soil, as this only helps the Pakistan’s policy of exploiting the “fault-lines” in the Indian society.
In what may be a major victory in curbing corruption and leakage of funds, the HRD ministry’s decision to make Aadhar card mandatory to avail mid day meals has reportedly exposed a whopping 4.4 lakh fake students who only existed on paper in the three states of Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Jharkhand.
It means that various state run schools in the above three states, which provided the mid-day meal facility, were showing to have enrolled 4.4 lakh non-existent students so that they could get more funds from the Center and State governments which were then possibly siphoned off or misused by the school authorities.
In case of Andhra Pradesh there are such 2.1 lakh students whose enrollment now stands cancelled. There were 2.2 lakh such students in Jharkhand and 1500 students in Manipur.
As limited number of states have shared their data, the authorities are yet to ascertain the true extent of the rot. As many as 10.3 crore children in this country avail the mid-day meal facility.
This exercise would save the funds of both the Center and State Governments as in case of mid-day meals the center pays 60% of the funds and rest is borne by the states. This ratio is 90:10 in case of NE states.
The advantage of linking Aadhar hasn’t just helped in case of the students. In 2014 after the integration of Aadhar in Kerala, the state’s education board found that there were as many as 3,892 excessive teachers in the state. A hiring freeze ensued.
Incidentally this move by the HRD to make Aadhar mandatory was slammed by Congress party and a few activists, few of them have also decided to move to the Supreme Court against it.
Though the government has made Aadhar mandatory, it doesn’t mean that the kids who don’t have an Aadhar card would be refused meals. This was made clear by the HRD minister Prakash Javdekar in the Parliament.
There have long been reports about how the linking of Aadhar for availing LPG and PDS subsidy has ensured plugging of leakages of funds. Reports have also claimed that the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme has saved the Modi government 15,000 crores which can potentially rise to 70,000 crores.
While Aadhar may have some genuine privacy issues linked to it, there is no denial that if used properly, it can eradicate many forms of corruption.
I am a big fan of yours. I was in your support when the controversy around your movie Vishwroopam had arisen and supported your views on Jallikattu too. Not just because I am your fan, but my views were exactly the same as yours were. I hope you are very well aware how the so-called torch bearers of the free speech ditched you on both the occasions.
Recently, you have made some comments about the most celebrated epic of Indian society in general and Hindus in particular. Being a Hindu I don’t find any derogatory or objectionable element in your comment. And unlike those so-called torch bearers of free speech, I am not going to ditch you and I support your right to make those comments.
Those who pretend to be offended by your comments are either ignorant of the complexities of relations offered by the Mahabharata or have some vested political motives. They have lodged complaint against you and the law of the land will decide if they have any valid arguments. Personally, I feel there was no need to bring in legal battle when we can argue based on logic and merits.
My observation about the story in Mahabharat as a whole almost echoes yours. Yes, Yudhishthir without having any authority whatsoever gambled away his wife Draupadi, which was the most inhuman act of him. Even Draupadi questioned the authority of her husband over her by asking how could he, having lost himself first, put her on stake. None in the assembly including Dharmaraj could answer her.
But I have a little disagreement with you when you say that Indian society honours a book which narrates the story of a gambler who gambled away his wife. And then you go on to link that with status of women in the Indian society. That is unfair.
Yes, we do honour the Mahabharat as the greatest epic of the Hindu society. But as far as I know the Mahabharat isn’t a holy book for Hindus like there are holy books for Abrahamic religions.
Bhagavad Gita, essentially a part of the great epic Mahabharat, is considered sacred, and perhaps, you are confused between Mahabharat and Bhagavad Gita. In fact, I have heard from our elders that many people didn’t keep Mahabharat in our in-house library, as it is believed, the story can ignite the fight in the family!
Moreover, Mahabharat is not only about gambling but about almost every aspect of human life, be it morally good or bad. Gambling is merely a part of it. Mahabharat is all about the action and its consequences faced by almost every major characters in the epic. Even the most celebrated and honoured character Sri Krishna wasn’t spared. He also had to accept the curse of Gandhari. It’s interesting to know that Krishna had the power to undo the curse but he didn’t.
Yudhishthir, the gambler according to you, with his brothers ultimately paid the price of having uncontrollable love affair with the gambling. Draupadi too lost her all the sons because of her supposed lust for war and revenge. You can find almost every character in the epic facing the consequences of his/her own actions at some point or other. This is story about Karma.
Even the Brahmins, the most pious soul considered in Hindu society at that time, weren’t spared and got punished, be it Dronacharya or Ashvatthama. In a way, Mahabharata challenges the supremacy of Brahmins, as Dronacharya suffers the consequences of his actions, which includes discrimination against students of “lower castes” like Karna and Eklavya.
Yes, we do honour Mahabharata, but at the same time we don’t honour Yudhishthira gambling away his own wife. We honour the complexities of the human relationships and the human psychology, very effectively depicted in the epic. We honour the concept of Karma, that we will have to face consequences of our actions. That we will be doomed if we treat women like possessions to be lost in gambling.
Mahabharat has no hero and no villain unlike the western epics, but it is the situation, waved around the characters, which made them acted like hero or villain.
In that sense, Mahabharata is more modern than some of the modern literary works. Mahabharata has the courage to absorb all the criticism against itself as well as its characters including even Sri Krishna. It doesn’t shy away from talking about the harsh realities of the human’s behaviour, relationship, strength and weaknesses. The way it challenges the moral standards of the society, is incomparable. It, literally, redefined the morality of the society, be it sexual or non-sexual.
Dear Kamal Haasan, we don’t honour Yudhishthira gambling away his brothers and his wife but the narrator’s honesty which invites the constructive criticism, is what we honour.
I understand that you have your own views about the epic which doesn’t necessarily match with everyone, but I hope you understand the complexities of the epic and pass your judgement on the basis of thorough understanding of the story, and not on the basis of a part of the story.
