Send In The Clowns

"The idea had been growing in my brain for some time: TRUE force. All the queen's men cannot put it back together again”. That little quote from a famous movie is the rephrase of the simple lines from a nursery rhyme. A Prime Minister who has been humiliated over and over again by others yesterday had to face the ultimate insult from his own party member. Two terms wasted in overlooking so many scams and so much corruption had to end in dishonour. The mindless ordinance attempting to overturn the SC ruling on convicted legislators was the last straw for the public. There were wild guesses that even the President would send it back for reconsideration. We can forget all that now. A long time ago I wrote the post “The tears of a clown prince”; that post was about Rahul Gandhi’s silly utterances on corruption and black money. In a burst of stupidity the same RahulG not only re-established his clownish tendencies, he also reduced the PM, the Cabinet and the entire media to nothing but a bunch of clowns.

In the afternoon of September 27, 2013 RahulG walked into the Press Club where the Congress spokie was defending the Ordinance. RG was kind enough to give a warning to Ajay Maken that he was “arriving”. He first called Maken and then at the dais made Maken look absolutely dumbfounded with what he uttered. I quote the priceless gems from RG:

“I am not going to get into a long drawn press conference. I will make some of my opinions heard and then I'll go back to work. I called up Makenji and he said he was meeting the press, speaking about the ordinance. He gave me the political line that everyone will give you. My personal opinion about the ordinance on lawmakers is that it is complete nonsense; it should be torn and thrown away. Everyone does this and there is a time to stop this nonsense - and I really feel this is time political parties stop making such compromises. When we make small compromises we compromise everything. If we actually want to stop corruption then we cannot make these compromises. I am not interested in what the Opposition is saying; I am only interested in what our government is doing. What our government has done as far as this ordinance is concerned is wrong”.

Complete nonsense? The guy does love tearing things, doesn’t he? He tore that SP manifesto last year. He watched the Lokpal Bill of his party being torn in clever drama. Now he wants to tear the Ordinance. The tears of a …. Oh never mind!

And all this while the PM is away in the US! Not knowing how to respond MMS just said he was aware of RG’s statement and that RG had written to him about his opinions too. Really? So even after receiving a letter from RG the PM went ahead with the ordinance? That’s quite unbelievable. As that bomb exploded our media clowns didn’t know what to do. All these years of sucking up to MMS and RG had come undone in one single stroke. They didn’t know what to do. Even RG’s “evoluter” Barkha Dutt dropped everything else early morning in Washington DC and stuck to politics back home. The free junket wasted! Here are initial responses from some of the media clowns:

Now RG will steer the party? Well Barkha, that depends if you consider he has completely evolved or if he’s work-in-progress. The Category5Moron gleefully jumps to point at some minister in the Gujarat govt under Modi. Well, to Numero Unee it doesn’t occur that the two people most affected by RG “tearing” the Ordinance are Rasheed Masood of Congress, and, of course, Lalu ‘fodder’ Prasad. The entire Cabinet which approved the Ordinance were running around like headless chickens trying to figure out to say. The man who has a “happy-tongue” and blabbers about a lot of things also explained how he was wise not to comment on the Ordinance. Of course, he doesn’t tell us why he didn’t object earlier as part of the Cabinet. Meet Shashi Tharoor, the flip-flop man again:

The ministers and other members, sycophants that they are, crawled behind RG and kept saying PM wasn’t “snubbed” by his stupid outburst. All through last evening TimesNow, NDTV, CNN-IBN and other channels somehow tried to pin the Ordinance tragedy on BJP by twisting the chaos into some imaginary role of BJP supporting it by seeking the parliamentary route. Nonsense! Only yesterday the BJP leaders met the President to reject the Ordinance. The Congress members and spokies, even side-kicks like Sanjay Jha, were totally caught with pants and skirts down. The ministers tried to hide in the nearest hole possible. The last few days and even till RG’s presser all the Congis and some crooks in the media were defending the Ordinance. RG’s order was clear: “send in the clowns”. And I quite like the way this theme expresses it (video 2.49 mins):

The Congis and media make quite a pair. One in mid-air one on the ground. One who keeps tearing around, one who can’t move… Where are the clowns? Making an entrance at a presser with his usual flair. Sure of his lines. Don’t you love farce? The clowns were right there at the press club. Isn’t it rich? Isn’t it queer? Losing the timing this late, in their careers? Where are the clowns? Well, maybe next year!  

What the media doesn’t tell you is the awful truth that for the last few months Narendra Modi has been running away with the political agenda with his block-buster rallies. In contrast, the Congress heir RahulG has had nothing to show but usual blabber about poverty being lack of self-confidence or a state of mind. RG’s rallies have drawn poor responses. The Congress is even scared to allow media to live-cast his speeches. He is that blooper-prone and his nonsensical utterances a delight for cartoonists and the butt of jokes. Terrorism in J&K even as PM goes abroad and wants to hold talks with Pak PM. The SC made mincemeat of the bogus Aadhar card scheme. And public opinion against the Ordinance protecting convicted legislators was abundantly evident. A caller from Hyderabad on Times Now, on September 26, spanked Sanjay Jha severely and the latter still kept defending the Ordinance, as did other Ministers and spokies. They have to realise they’ve been made to look like idiots.

But here’s the dangerous part. Even if all the sycophants line up behind RahulG and MMS is made a scapegoat and many are now demanding the resignation of the PM they miss something. Imagine, when Modi was nominated PM candidate the same clowns were asking if it wasn’t a snub to a senior statesman like LK Advani. Now the same clowns are suggesting RG’s silly outburst is not a snub to MMS. Sanjay Baru, former media advisor to PM, was harsh enough to immediately seek his resignation and slammed RG for not following the Indian culture of respecting elders and insubordination. Funny, isn't that? If your junior commits insubordination you sack him or you yourself resign? Where do Baru and Rajdeep get their wisdom? The truth they won’t acknowledge is that RahulG doesn’t respect anyone or anything. He thinks people are fools and he can go around making silly statements and be a hero. RG has a wrong set of advisors. The other awful truth is nobody has any sympathy for MMS either. He has lost the halo of “honesty” and people see him as a man who condoned scams and corruption right through the last 9 years. Nobody will weep for him over his political death. MMS may even go down as the worst PM India ever had.

And the real danger is that anyone who can barge into a presser when he normally never speaks to media and makes tall claims and makes a damaging outburst against his own party member who is PM is seriously psychologically damaged. Neither RG’s language nor his cruel dismissal of his PM and entire cabinet in public reflect any diplomatic skills. Such a man is really unfit for any senior position in any govt. Far from having reacted to public sentiment or trying to prove he is a leader or outspoken, RG only gave proof he is a bigger clown than we so far imagined. He dunked the Congress into a deeper hole than they already were. This is a man heavily drunk with power without the slightest bit of responsibility. With a man like this you can never know what he might utter anywhere, including on economic issues or matters of foreign affairs. Imagine the man suddenly having a fit at the UN or a G-20 summit. The media who clowned around all along and many still believe RG’s act was a brave one or heroic need to have their head examined. These are the clowns they sent in. 

Ranjit Sinha - Namak Haraam

King Henry II of England and Thomas Beckett were good friends. They were even “drinking club” friends. When Beckett was appointed Chancellor he did everything that the King desired, even taxed the Church. The King even had Beckett playing foster-father to his sons. The King was constantly in conflict with the Church and wanted the Royalty be supreme over the Church. To settle the conflict and gain supremacy he appointed his best friend Beckett as the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s when things went wrong. Once he became Archbishop, Beckett turned pious and refused to oblige and sign any agreements that would establish the supremacy of the King over the Church. Beckett is reported to have started penance for his earlier sins. He refused to break with the Pope in Rome. Beckett was murdered in 1170, presumably under orders of Henry II, and was later bestowed Sainthood by the Pope. Beckett’s story became famous through T.S. Elliot’s “Murder in the cathedral” and partly referenced in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury tales”.

When Ranjit Sinha (RS) was appointed CBI Director last year there were protests from the leaders of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. They had apprehensions that he was another puppet who would do the bidding of Sonia Gandhi & Co. Their suspicion was justified considering RS had a record of being servantile and his record also had some minor blemishes. But when a person assumes a certain office he brings his own story and burden to bear on it. Not many newspapers or TV channels have narrated this story but OpenMagazine has found a genuine explanation for the twin stories that culminated in the destruction of Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar. We’ll get to that. In the meantime, let’s hear some familiar nonsense about who’s to blame for the last Parliament session washout.

It has been a tradition now in our media to blame the Opposition, in particular the BJP, for the Parliament blockades and washout of sessions. The media morons believe, like they do on their TV channels, that everything can be sorted out with a debate. My answer is a clear NO. You cannot debate obvious crimes. When the Parliament was blocked for the 2G issue the same media cried themselves hoarse blaming the opposition. The end result was a farcical JPC whose chairman was in a rush to distribute clean chits. The tweets of the Numero Uno and Numero Unee are reflective of this culture on TV where they believe parliament sessions are the only way to sort out crimes. This is an argument the Congress offers to gain time and prevent action on crimes. Democracy exists far beyond the walls of parliament and we have seen time and again that parliament is incompetent in dealing with criminals. They can only make laws, nothing more. In this case too CNN-IBN and it’s govt foot-soldiers blamed the BJP only to turn turtle in the next few days.

What Ashwani Kumar did was a serious crime which is being played down by the Congress and the media. His role was one of obstruction of justice and protecting people who may have the potential of being indicted by a court in the massive Coalgate scam. The Opposition is right in stalling the parliament where the Congress sought to divert all the issues by bringing in some bogus Food Security Bill with elections in mind and then accused other parties of being “anti-poor” because they stalled parliament. This dubious conduct by the Congress is now familiar to all. All, except our specialists in the media. The Congress, as usual, claimed the SC had not pronounced any verdict and there was an inquiry against Bansal. Nonsense! The SC observations on the doctored Coalgate affidavit is enough for the PM to be sacked. And Bansal? He wasn’t sacked because Sonia Gandhi had an attack of conscience as we came to learn. But in just over a week, Pallavi Ghosh meekly tweets that Congress was to blame for Parliament washout which ridicules the propaganda of her own bosses.

SoniaG reportedly rushed to PM’s residence on May 10 to seek the sacking of Bansal and Kumar. She created all the drama for the media to show how strongly she acts against corruption. Her phones were probably so dead that she had to rush to 7RCR. Nonsense again! It turns out that the tapes in which Bansal was pimping for railway appointments and distributing the loot was out with some in the media and so possibly also with the Congress boss. Kanchan Gupta indicates what exactly could have been the contents of the bribery tapes. It’s like when you’re finally clean-bowled in Cricket and even the third umpire can’t save you if it isn’t a no-ball. That’s when it dawned upon Sonia Gandhi that the damage in retaining Bansal could be far more severe than the Congress anticipated. So while at it, the Congress made both ministers go since AshwaniK would have to go anyway at some point of time. Better hurt now than later. That’s a good choice. But if knowing all this the PM and SoniaG were against sacking Bansal earlier it speaks of monumental dishonesty. All the editors in the media who kept giving MMS a certificate of “honesty” must hang their heads in shame.

In all of this can the lady who is now haunting Pakistan be left out of her own 2 cents of special intelligence? Absolutely not! So there you go, there’s Barkha Dutt telling us about the “Punjabi” conspiracy of some sort. What Open Magazine, which is far more reliable than Barkha, tells us is that an aspirant to the post of Law Minister leaked out information of AshwaniK’s meddling with the CBI affidavit. I don’t think we need the CIA to infer that OpenMag is referring to zero loss. The leak being a done job, there was no way Ranjit Sinha could escape admitting the facts in the SC of the affidavit. He had an added incentive. OpenMag reports AshwaniK was harsh on him and even humiliated him with rude comments on Ranjit’s poor knowledge of English. You see, in India, it is better to be an English Laloo like Salman Khurshid or Shashi Tharoor than a desi CBI director. In short, AshwaniK and the PM’s cohorts gangraped the CBI affidavit and left it a poor survivor to be sent to a hospital.

In the case of Bansal, RS had an old score to settle. It seems Mahesh Kumar, the 10Crore briber who was in the Rail business earlier too, had shunted him out to unattractive posts in the past. So without anyone asking him or any govt advising the CBI, RS started a special watch on Mahesh Kumar and poor Pawan Bansal was caught with his monkey-hand grabbing peanuts from the trap, just like that lady in Radiagate. Conversations were taped over months and even the sacrificial Goat that Bansal used in a puja in the end couldn’t save him. Unwittingly, Ranjit Sinha has become the saviour of CBI and may finally be the man to save it from the evil clutches of the most corrupt govt ever in the history of India. Ranjit Sinha became Thomas Beckett. RS also finally managed to put some fear into the hearts of politicians. He also proved there is no need for the Jokepal, a strong, independent CBI and Judiciary is quite adequate to deal with corruption.

The Congress and some of its allies in the UPA have spawned such a culture of corruption and brazen loot that every joker has started believing he has a “Right To Loot”. Whether it’s Bansal, Ashwani, Marans, Kripashankars or the whole gang of UPA. This doesn’t happen if there is zero tolerance for corruption. This happens only when the whole gang gets a clear signal that looting is okay as long as the Mafia is paid its due. This is what the UPA has been reduced to. And this birthright to corruption doesn’t end with politicians it also extends to the news media who keep lying through their nose to protect their corrupt masters. SoniaG has given a clear signal through Shashi Tharoor and Abhishek Singhvi that if you’re tainted just take a chill-pill, spend some time taking a vacation. You will be back quite soon. If banks are money-laundering as Cobrapost suggests it is surely not without approval and a guarantee of protection.

The Congress appointed Ranjit Sinha with the belief he will be another puppet and be loyal to the Queen and her coterie. The story has gone terribly wrong. The Beckett story was made into a movie. The same movie was adapted and remade in Bollywood – it was called “Namak Haraam” (featuring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan). In both movies the “namak haraam” dies. I have no doubts that Ranjit Sinha is going to be called a ‘namak haraam’ in Congress and media circles. One just hopes he doesn’t meet the same fate.

For India to Progress, Congress Must Dissolve

Products and brands have a life-cycle. Commonly this cycle progresses as development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The pioneer of mosquito repellents in India, the Tortoise brand (popularly called ‘Kachchua Chaap’) is still famous but dead. The toothpaste ‘Promise’ is now mostly given in small bathroom packs in hotels. Ambassador car is a dead brand that is being artificially sustained. The first low-cost one-rupee pen in India, Comfort, is dead. The first famous courier service in India, Skypak, is now into other businesses or exists in other forms. Where’s Daewoo? Across the world brands have been killed by businesses either because they have outlived their purpose and value proposition or they couldn’t survive innovations and competition.

India became independent in 1947 but there is still no reason to believe we have freedom. The British left and the Congress party replaced them. Ever since, it has been downhill. The tragic fact is that for a vast country like ours we borrowed a parliamentary system of a tiny island. We borrowed from the US Constitution but borrowed the workings of a small island. A terrible lack of vision! In the US there are no ‘ceremonial’ offices. The US too had many political parties in the beginning. The Whig Party, The Federalist Party, The Democratic-Republican party and the Independents. Most of the Presidents initially came from these parties or were independents. After about 60 years of the US independence these parties disappeared and then came the Republican and Democratic parties as we know today. If one looks up US politics they too have a whole lot of regional parties but at the national level two parties dominate the law-making and governance. After 65 years we must finally accept that the Congress in India needs to die. When the Nixon hearings were conducted, the Senate committee comprised members of both parties which finally led to his resignation because of the US Supreme Court. In India, the Congress is capable of even turning a JPC into a scam.

We have all heard of huge elephants unwilling to shake off the chains that bind their leg. The elephant can easily do so but was bound to it since it was a baby and lives in the belief that it can’t shake off that chain. This is true of the Congress party in India too. The baby elephant that India was in 1947 was chained to the Congress party. 65 years later the huge elephant is still tied to that chain. Mahatma Gandhi wanted the party dissolved immediately on independence but those who replaced the British became the British. In the early 1970s one of the first movies to portray the corruption backed by violence in politics was Gulzar’s “Mere Apne”. It reflected the direction in which politics, largely led by Congress alone, was headed. Corruption, violence, destroying democratic institutions, electoral malpractices and a huge black economy all came from the fountainhead called Congress.

In a history of the Congress party full of bad governance, unfulfilled promises and intolerable corruption the latest attempt to cover up the Coalgate scam is as bad as any crime ever experienced in a democracy. Not since the Mughals or the British has the nation been plundered so badly. When the Emergency was declared in 1975 some newspapers carried black borders in protest and some crawled. Since then, much of the media not only became slaves of the Congress party and the government they have even become traitors of the people they were supposed to serve. What else explains the frequent clean-chits and “honest” title defence of Manmohan Singh? A PM who has watched lakhs of crores worth of scams happening right under his nose was being defended by our media. Shameful!

It’s more than the massive corruption. Every institution of India’s democracy has been corrupted and misused to serve the security and comfort of the party and one family – The Gandhis. Everyone in the Congress should be wondering how they became such slaves. It even provides for special security for Robert Vadra, Priyanka Vadra and exemptions for them from screening during air travel or travel anywhere in the country. This country has been reduced to those that have tin-pot dictators like North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe. I wonder if even Cuba does so badly. The off-springs of this very Congress who broke away, like the NCP or the Samajwadi Party have continued the same standard of corruption and misrule. Not just that, they have completely destroyed any concern and respect for ordinary men and women. They have turned the common people into specks of dust to be just wiped off the desk very frequently.

In the name of fake secularism the Congress party and its supporters have divided the nation through religious reservations and privileges. Every policy of the party smacks of vote-bank politics and nothing more. Instead of moving towards an equitable society and more towards a uniform law for all the Congress has now even set up Sharia courts. Rahul Gandhi campaigns in Karnataka and talks about corruption. With what face does this non-performer talk about corruption? His own personal integrity or commitment to public work is suspect going by his poor attendance and participation in parliament. The same goes for the PM who promises a corruption-free state in his insipid campaigns. All of this, while they represent the most corrupt party in the entire democratic world! What does it say about the slavery of Congress and its supporters who still live a life of slavery to one family which is protected like a royal household? Sonia Gandhi enjoys all the trappings of a queen without the slightest responsibility or accountability for any deeds of the govt or her party.

What exactly is Sonia Gandhi’s greatest contribution to India? It has to be that coterie called NAC, an extra-constitutional body that is a private club which drafts laws for the country. Each member of this coterie is from some NGO or the other which has become extraordinarily wealthy through funding and donations from mysterious sources. Most members of this coterie were rewarded for their malicious political campaign against opponents. This is the level to which the Congress has brought politics in this country to. The scams, of course, are too long to list and each time the party members have only acted to cover up the truth and protect the culprits. Naturally! It was rightly pointed out by someone that the first purpose that the Congress party sees while being in power is to accumulate enough money to fight the next election. Everything else is secondary. And then the queen talks about ‘zero tolerance’ of corruption while the ‘Prince of fails’ mocks the nation by stating “power is poison”.

In response to the SC observations on CBI on Coalgate on April 30 the Congress spokie Janardhan Dwivedi claimed that his party has always accepted court rulings. This is one big lie. It is indeed a court ruling in Indira Gandhi’s case overturning her election that led to the imposition of Emergency in this country. That’s a black deed unmatched in any democratic country during peace time. Following this, IndiraG went on to pack the SC with judges of her choice and tinkered with the Constitution like it was some baby’s toy. This is how the Congress members forget their own history and brazenly claim they have respect for the law and Courts. It is also a party where a Gandhi is a lifetime president. Democracy does not course in the veins of Congress. A party that does not have or respect democracy at home cannot respect democracy in the nation.

In the attempt to keep its stranglehold on power at any cost the party has destroyed almost every democratic institution in this country. Judges and investigators have landed themselves top postings immediately on retirement for being slaves to the party. Scheme after scheme has been named after some member of the Nehru-Gandhi family as if everyone else in India was just an also-ran in her history. This is neither the democracy nor the freedom that people who fought the British dreamt about. In all of this the media continued to treat the PM and Sonia Gandhi like Gods. They proclaimed from rooftops that MMS was “honest and uncorrupt” as if angels from heaven had whispered in their ears. Shameless editors kept giving these certificates till the Supreme Court finally burst their bubble in the Coalgate case with the bogus affidavits by CBI. The Congress has not only been brazen in defending its corruption and misrule but has now shown the audacity to dupe even the Supreme Court of the country. A shameless doormat of the party passing off as a spokie called the SC "paranoid" on TimesNow on April 30 because of its observations.

NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today, Times Now and all other media outlets have become spineless puppies that do not have the guts to address a single question to the Gandhis. They hurl the choicest abuses at all other political parties and leaders. In the case of CBI’s Coalgate affidavit Barkha Dutt even states she cancelled a discussion because no Congress spokie was willing to be on the channel. Is that how news media is supposed to operate? You would have a discussion or analysis only if the criminal is represented? Are you some court of law by yourself? In contrast all the media outlets provide a platform for the likes of Sheila Dikshit to shed buckets of tears over her own incompetence in handling Delhi as if her sainthood was tainted. The misuse of CBI was evident in many cases and yet the media maintained silence. It seems the only truthful media that is still left standing is the Supreme Court. And I have said this before too.

A company kills a brand at an appropriate time in its life-cycle. India too needs to kill the Congress party which has long outlived its purpose. It doesn’t mean killing the party’s members. There are many good members in the Congress who must free themselves from slavery and reaffirm their true independence and freedom. They must join other parties or create a new formation completely different from this Congress. Not suggesting that other parties are clean but the Congress has been and will remain the Fountainhead of Corruption or the “Congotri” of corruption. Symbolically, other parties should also remove the word ‘Congress’ from their name if they have it, like the NCP. Corruption in the air, land, water, fire and earth as someone put it (2G, irrigation, coal, land). Every reform or policy that the Congress makes has a backdoor or a window that provides for massive loot. There is hardly a single policy or action that the party and the UPA have taken in the last 9 years that has not been associated by a scam and loot. That’s not all. Caning citizens, failure in foreign relations, poor handling and religious politicisation of terrorism, tolerating separatists, discriminating between states, demonising opponents, demoralising the police and the army, farmer suicides, stagnant economy, inflation, unemployment, fake cases against political opponents, constantly appeasing enemies of the state and even poor vigil of our borders. Never has this nation felt so sunk.

No country in history has ever progressed with bad governance and excessive corruption as partners. None! The Congress suffers from this twin ailment since decades. Its survival is detrimental to the progress of India. Death is the only cure. The corrupt media protects this corrupt party and its bigwigs. Someone has coined the slogan “Congress-mukt Bharat” like the slogan for “Gutka-mukt rajya”. I wholeheartedly agree with it. For India to progress, Congress must die. And when the Congress dies so will the corrupt media and democratic institutions can limp back to normalcy! It may not dramatically end corruption or evil but it is the equivalent of pulling down the statues of Stalin or Saddam and getting rid of their ideologies. There can at least be a new start.

PS: Get your copy of the book“Social Media As Watchdog” .. CLICK HERE