Awakened Nation Wins First Phase Of Battle For Lokpal(Ombudsman) Bill
Yesterday in the evening when our parliament passed unanimous resolution in an unconventional and dramatic manner by thumping their tables in favor of demands set by civil society led by Anna Hazare, all the people who were supporting this crusade took a sigh
of relief and today in the morning when Anna Hazare broke his 13 day long fast it seemed that people were in a festive mood and yes indeed they had a reason to celebrate this occasion, but this is also true that government had set no time frame to pass this bill which could be another fancy trick to delay the process, so I would say its just the first phase of the battle, who knows we might have to raise our voice again to get Lokpal(Ombudsman) Bill passed, but still we have a reason to celebrate, after all its a hard fought victory achieved by the collective efforts of Indian nationals, and its definitely a historic event for people of my generation because it was the first time we saw such a non-violent mass-movement, and that too of this magnitude, the visuals we saw during this entire movement were overwhelming, whether it was huge gathering outside Tihar or Anna's journey from Tihar to Ramlila ground where we saw 2-3 km long human chain surrounding the vehicle despite heavy rains, or record gathering at Azad Maidan and India Gate, or nation wide protests on streets and outside houses of MP's and politicians or gathering of people at Ramlila ground unaffected by heat of sun in arid days and unmoved by the heavy rainfall during day as well as on nights, they just stood there day and night ensuring success of this movement, and I consider myself lucky to witness this people's movement, which made people of this nation realize that they have power to decide, and get what they want from their parliament , and their political class must listen to them, and if they don't, then they must be forced to listen to the people's voice, this movement gave common man his first taste of real democracy, and I hope our political class understands that now they need to redefine the definition of their self projected version of democracy, according to which till date politicians considered that role of a common man in democracy is confined to just cast vote once in five years,
but its high time they realize that people who elect them also have right and power to question them, and they are accountable to the people who elected them. Its people who make a nation not just the parliament and parliamentarians, after all our democracy says its of the people, by the people and for the people, so which means its people who are supreme not the parliament, its time our politicians get out of this dilemma and accept the truth and supremacy of people above parliament.
of relief and today in the morning when Anna Hazare broke his 13 day long fast it seemed that people were in a festive mood and yes indeed they had a reason to celebrate this occasion, but this is also true that government had set no time frame to pass this bill which could be another fancy trick to delay the process, so I would say its just the first phase of the battle, who knows we might have to raise our voice again to get Lokpal(Ombudsman) Bill passed, but still we have a reason to celebrate, after all its a hard fought victory achieved by the collective efforts of Indian nationals, and its definitely a historic event for people of my generation because it was the first time we saw such a non-violent mass-movement, and that too of this magnitude, the visuals we saw during this entire movement were overwhelming, whether it was huge gathering outside Tihar or Anna's journey from Tihar to Ramlila ground where we saw 2-3 km long human chain surrounding the vehicle despite heavy rains, or record gathering at Azad Maidan and India Gate, or nation wide protests on streets and outside houses of MP's and politicians or gathering of people at Ramlila ground unaffected by heat of sun in arid days and unmoved by the heavy rainfall during day as well as on nights, they just stood there day and night ensuring success of this movement, and I consider myself lucky to witness this people's movement, which made people of this nation realize that they have power to decide, and get what they want from their parliament , and their political class must listen to them, and if they don't, then they must be forced to listen to the people's voice, this movement gave common man his first taste of real democracy, and I hope our political class understands that now they need to redefine the definition of their self projected version of democracy, according to which till date politicians considered that role of a common man in democracy is confined to just cast vote once in five years,
but its high time they realize that people who elect them also have right and power to question them, and they are accountable to the people who elected them. Its people who make a nation not just the parliament and parliamentarians, after all our democracy says its of the people, by the people and for the people, so which means its people who are supreme not the parliament, its time our politicians get out of this dilemma and accept the truth and supremacy of people above parliament.
When Anna Hazare started this crusade for Jan-Lokpal Bill I am sure even he didn't expected such a massive turnout of people and huge support which this movement received, but according to me there are few reason responsible for this mass-movement,
- First reason is undoubtedly the rampant corruption spread across the nation, and the frequency and magnitude of the scams which took place in last 2-3 years left common man filled with anger, and people were looking for an opportunity to express their wrath and this movement was the spark which ignited the fire.
- People also joined this crusade because they realized that this is the cause worth fighting for, as this is something concrete which can help in eradicating corruption, because people support a cause not the person as an individual so that's why they joined this movement.
- Most crucial reason behind this movement is Arrogance, utter-stupidity and complete mismanagement of things from the side of government which added fuel to the fire.
Government started dealing with this situation by wrong move launching attack through spokes person of congress Manish Tiwari 
who made derogatory comments and false allegations against a honest person like Anna Hazare, and such comments and remarks could neither be forgotten nor be forgiven, another mistake was denying Team Anna a place for agitating and fasting, they were forced to run through several offices for permission to agitate peacefully, and finally imposing 22 stupid conditions for agitating and fasting, to which Team Anna refused to accept and decided to court arrest, another foolish step was to arrest Aanna Hazare,Anand Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia from their residence at early morning, while they didn't broke any law and they were put in Tihar Jail, as a result we saw "Jail bharo" and massive protest of people on the streets of Delhi and across the nation, ultimately government had to lick its own spit and decided to release Anna with Anand kejriwal and
Manish Sisodia, but Team Anna outsmarted the government and decided not to leave Tihar Jail unless they were unconditionally given a place to carry on agitation, crowd started gathering outside Tihar Jail in massive numbers some says at one time numbers even touched the figure of 27,000 now due to the constant mounting pressure government agreed to their demands, and gave lame excuse and tried to hide their face behind Delhi police, stating it was Delhi police's decision to arrest Anna and his team, but we all know Delhi police commissioner reports directly to Home Minister, which exposed the lie of government's statement. Then government sent Kapil Sibal, P.Chidambaram and Ambika Soni for press conference raising questions on the methods being used by Team Anna, but this strategy seriously backfired and then government went completely into a shell, and on other hand the number of people agitating at Ramlila and across the nation
kept on increasing, and very soon it became a national issue and number of people agitating at Ramlila touched the count of about 2 lakhs and soon people started agitating outside the houses of their respective MP's across the nation, even PM's house 7RCR and Rahul Gandhi's residence were not spared, as a result on 10th day of Anna's fast government initiated a dialogue which went through several flip-flops, during this phase and ministers and leaders of government were behaving like headless chicken, and clearly displayed that there are multiple centers of power in government because of which there is a serious lack of co-ordination, and none of them has the complete authority to take a decision and stick to it, once they used to agree on some issues, and then during next meeting they used to change their stand, but full marks should be given to Prashant Bhushan, Anand Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi in dealing with these situations, and at last when each passing minute became a threat to the life of Anna Hazare, Team Anna did display some flexibility in their stand which was the demand of time at that moment, and they put three main conditions in front of government on which they demanded a resolution to be passed in the parliament, they also met top leadership of BJP and LEFT parties asking for their support to develop a political consensus on the issues, and opposition almost agreed to most of their demands, except bringing Judiciary under Lokpal but agreed on citizen charter, bringing lower bureaucracy under Lokpal and setting Lokayukta in state on the format of Lokpal in central, though still Salman Khurshid tried to play cheap game on behalf of government, and conveyed a message to team Anna that opposition doesn't want voting and resolution to be passed in parliament after debate, but later Arun Jaitley denied that charge in a press conference and stated BJP is in favor of voting and passing resolution in parliament on lokpal, and he had meeting with top leaders of congress along-with top leadership of BJP, and at the last government was left with no other choice but to pass the resolution in parliament and send it to standing committee.
who made derogatory comments and false allegations against a honest person like Anna Hazare, and such comments and remarks could neither be forgotten nor be forgiven, another mistake was denying Team Anna a place for agitating and fasting, they were forced to run through several offices for permission to agitate peacefully, and finally imposing 22 stupid conditions for agitating and fasting, to which Team Anna refused to accept and decided to court arrest, another foolish step was to arrest Aanna Hazare,Anand Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia from their residence at early morning, while they didn't broke any law and they were put in Tihar Jail, as a result we saw "Jail bharo" and massive protest of people on the streets of Delhi and across the nation, ultimately government had to lick its own spit and decided to release Anna with Anand kejriwal and
Manish Sisodia, but Team Anna outsmarted the government and decided not to leave Tihar Jail unless they were unconditionally given a place to carry on agitation, crowd started gathering outside Tihar Jail in massive numbers some says at one time numbers even touched the figure of 27,000 now due to the constant mounting pressure government agreed to their demands, and gave lame excuse and tried to hide their face behind Delhi police, stating it was Delhi police's decision to arrest Anna and his team, but we all know Delhi police commissioner reports directly to Home Minister, which exposed the lie of government's statement. Then government sent Kapil Sibal, P.Chidambaram and Ambika Soni for press conference raising questions on the methods being used by Team Anna, but this strategy seriously backfired and then government went completely into a shell, and on other hand the number of people agitating at Ramlila and across the nation
kept on increasing, and very soon it became a national issue and number of people agitating at Ramlila touched the count of about 2 lakhs and soon people started agitating outside the houses of their respective MP's across the nation, even PM's house 7RCR and Rahul Gandhi's residence were not spared, as a result on 10th day of Anna's fast government initiated a dialogue which went through several flip-flops, during this phase and ministers and leaders of government were behaving like headless chicken, and clearly displayed that there are multiple centers of power in government because of which there is a serious lack of co-ordination, and none of them has the complete authority to take a decision and stick to it, once they used to agree on some issues, and then during next meeting they used to change their stand, but full marks should be given to Prashant Bhushan, Anand Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi in dealing with these situations, and at last when each passing minute became a threat to the life of Anna Hazare, Team Anna did display some flexibility in their stand which was the demand of time at that moment, and they put three main conditions in front of government on which they demanded a resolution to be passed in the parliament, they also met top leadership of BJP and LEFT parties asking for their support to develop a political consensus on the issues, and opposition almost agreed to most of their demands, except bringing Judiciary under Lokpal but agreed on citizen charter, bringing lower bureaucracy under Lokpal and setting Lokayukta in state on the format of Lokpal in central, though still Salman Khurshid tried to play cheap game on behalf of government, and conveyed a message to team Anna that opposition doesn't want voting and resolution to be passed in parliament after debate, but later Arun Jaitley denied that charge in a press conference and stated BJP is in favor of voting and passing resolution in parliament on lokpal, and he had meeting with top leaders of congress along-with top leadership of BJP, and at the last government was left with no other choice but to pass the resolution in parliament and send it to standing committee.But this entire episode did raised some fundamental questions like
Why common man was denied initially to have his say in world's largest democracy ?
Why some people from political class tried to prove that this movement is all media choreographed, and is run by media ?
Have the morals of our political class sunk so deep that they can even go for character assassination of the person who raises his voice against their wrong doings, is this shooting the messenger right tactic instead of addressing the real problem ?
Why world's largest democracy is run by dictatorship of political parties who keep their interest first, before national interest ?
Why our political class tried to violate the fundamental rights of Indian nationals giving vague excuse that parliament is supreme ?
Is this the right manner how a true democracy functions ?
Right now people are celebrating across the nation, but isn't it ironic that a 74 years old man had to fast for 13 days and lakhs and crores of people had to step on streets agitating, to get their voice heard by the people sitting in parliament who call themselves representatives of people ?
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