Tag: India Against Corruption

Insult To Parliament.

Head of the parliamentary panel on Lokpal bill and party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi of the Congress party claimed that the movement against corruption and the insistence on passing a Lokpal bill was an insult to our Parliament,

I would like to offer a counter argument to Sri. Singhvi.

If anyone has been insulted, it is the Indian citizen who has been led up the garden path by the Congress party. The proposal for the Lokpal bill has been hanging fire from 1968. since then, the Congress party has mostly been in power and mostly with a brute majority in the parliament. If for all these years, the bill could not have been passed and measures taken against corruption in our body politic, our citizens have been insulted and not the Parliament.

Moreover, our respected Parliamentarians have been calling the agitating citizens as the Civil Society. Is it then not obvious as to who is insulting who, and who is the uncivil party in the equation?

Corruption’s New Twist.

Ms. Kiran Bedi is in the forefront of the current anti corruption agitation led by Anna Hazare in India.

Much was expected from Ms. Bedi but, alas, she has let her admiring fans down.

She has submitted false claims for expenses incurred and has been caught red handed with an expose in the Indian Express.

She has clarified that the savings effected were for funding her Non Government Organisations involved in social work, but this does not wash with a lot of us, particularly me.

When I was a salesman, my employers wanted all salesmen to travel by train in the First Class Coaches to enable us to travel in comfort and to be rested well enough to handle tough sales calls at the next stop. Some salesmen would travel by the lower classes and claim the first class fare, but if they were found doing that, they were simply sacked.

Using the same logic, Ms Bedi was surely expected to travel in comfort to carry out her, no doubt, arduous duties at the end of each journey. Irrespective of what she did with the money that she saved, surely, the same logic should apply and she should accept her culpability?

No Ms. Bedi, don’t plead “Not Guilty” for this transgression. You cheated. Accept it with grace and apologise. If possible, return the excess amounts claimed from the various trusting organisations to them and apologise to them too. It might also be a good idea to quietly fade away from the limelight that you have occupied in the current agitation. Your credibility is now all shot to pieces.