While scores of Indians support you, offer their pledge to you I am pretty sure they don’t want to be you. What you are attempting is a not putting out small kitchen embers it is more along the lines of a roaring forest rampage. We as a group commend your effort; we applaud your attempt to curb the ever rising monster of “corruption”. However we do have some queries, have some worries with your growing approach to this matter.
First things first I’d fire whoever is your PR manager. They seem to be operating under the notion that all press is good press. There are rumors going around that you were a freedom fighter. It would have been quite an impressive feat, considering the fact you would have been 6 or 7 years old.
We as a nation are trained to become cynics. We don’t expect miracles. When Jayalalitha came to power we hoped she would change the current state of affairs with regard to Wine shops in the city we don’t expect crime rate to drop or auto rickshaws to magically start using “meters”. When you went on fast, we were genuinely excited. We hoped that the public would have some say in the Lokpal. What we did not expect was a complete eradication of corruption in the country. What you expect from Lokpal is as farfetched as India winning the football world cup. If you just “wikied” corruption in India you can see that it dates back decades. Did you think one movement is going to change it all?
Your movement created an impact. It made scores of Indians acknowledge the problem of corruption. It resulted in the UPA agreeing to draft a joint committee for the Lokpal. This would have improved the rate of corruption control in India. We would have won a battle, inspired the scores of Indian to wage a war. Isn’t it how we start?
A lot of people look up to you, you give people hope but your continued actions are taking away this hope. Please change your approach. Your demands on the members of the so called “civil society” being chosen on the basis of “honesty” is ridiculous. Honest according to whom? It is a relative term. Do you not know how the bureaucracy in this country works? They can dig up dirt on anyone, including you. There needs to be a set system of implementation on how the people are represented in the Lokpal. The whole idea is that this committee is to be “of the people” a society chosen by you does not represent the whole of India.
It cannot be all your way. You need to give and take. Gandhiji went on Satyagraha because he believed that the British government will not listen to his demands. But even he compromised keeping in mind the bigger picture. Times are changing, a step by step approach may work; we just need some patience. We need to start at the grass root level. If a 24 year old girl like me can understand that it should be much more apparent to someone of your experience. After all Mr. Hazare Rome was not built in a day.
