Professional Agitators - Killing India Softly

Imagine life without mobile phones now. But there are many who are suffering from the waves of those towers and they do complain. What’s the option? Reduce connectivity? How many would like that? The only option, therefore, is to strike the best possible balance between development and pain. Our population has grown from around 36 crores in 1947 to 1.2 billion currently. That doesn’t seem to bother anyone anymore. And the demands of this huge population are varied and endless. Under these circumstances the objective of the govt is “the greater good of the greater number”. This is why an IB report pointing to a number of NGOs stalling the development of India, various projects, causing delays and acting for foreign vested interests has rattled the media and a lot of the NGOs. Almost all of these NGOs are extensively funded by foreign agencies.

Much of what the IB report says is nothing new and has been in the public domain for long. I don’t even think the report got “leaked”.  I believe it was deliberately handed over to TimesNow by a rogue in the Home Ministry to sound a warning to many of these NGOs. Some of the smooth-criminals who have been a nuisance to various projects are in this pic: 

Medha Patkar has been agitating against the Narmada dam for ages. Tagging along with her was Genocide Suzy (who hates everything about India). The SC had approved raising the height of the dam to 138 metres. On June 12, when the GOI approved the increase of 17 metres to the dam to the approved level, Patkar called it “illegal”. So even the SC ruling is illegal for her. Having realised the stupidity of calling it “illegal”, in later statements she calls it “undemocratic”. I believe we have all seen how all the Commie undemocratic forces gathered under the comforter that Kejriwal has covered himself with. The Narmada dam provides water to millions of historically water-starved people in Saurashtra and Kutch besides other parts of Gujarat. Naturally, many residents around the dam would be displaced. It is right to protest and seek the best compensation for the displaced people but to agitate that dams shouldn’t be built and they are illegal is essentially an anti-people, anti-national activity. That apart, Patkar’s dubious foreign funding comes from vested interests which enables her to personally live a life of comfort while scavenging on the pain of others (read this detailed post).

Then there are others like Harsh Mander, Teesta Setalvad, and Shabnam Hashmi who have scavenged on riot victims of Gujarat. The more they lied the more funds they got from India, political parties and from abroad. I don’t need to provide links because these rogues are now known for their fraudulent financial activities. Teesta has even reportedly used the “riot funds” for her personal shopping, jewellery and fine wines. SP Udaykumar is quite a character. On Timesnow he disclosed he had received lakhs of rupees from abroad, including some research funding from Ohio University. All that research money had nothing to with nuclear projects and nobody knows what research he did. Some “hippy” that Udaykumar referred to as a contact turns out to be an “agent” who carried hand-sketched maps of 16 nuclear plants in India. Oh yes, normal people do carry maps of nuclear plants in India, don’t they? This scumbag led a serious and long protest against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu with no legitimate reason except fear-mongering. Obviously, Udaykumar was being influenced and funded by foreign crooks that have their vested interests in blocking some project or the other in India. And sure enough, the current “rent-an-agitation” warehouse manager, Arvind Kejriwal landed up in Kudankulam too.

The agitations by Patkar and other scavengers of misery have cost a lot. According to an estimate the delays in the last 10 years has cost nearly 45000 crores to the Narmada dam which is more than the cost of the project itself (Read here). The mysteries of that wonderful gang, called Greenpeace, is just about unravelling. It was long known that this group is in India to only create ruckus and nuisance for any project that benefits India. However, the crooks from this organisation, which originates from Canada, targeted only Indian organisations and projects and not projects by MNC. This series of tweets by IBTL shortens the story:

Greenpeace not only funded agitations in general, it even funded agitations by an AAP party member. If one looks closely, the AAP party is nothing but an Apex body of all such foreign-funded NGOs, most of them involved in anti-national agitations and activities. They are hell-bent on stopping every project that India wants to undertake in any territory. It’s hardly surprising, therefore that the most popular form of management by Arvind Kejriwal is street agitations and dharnas. Nothing else suits them. For more on the various other NGOs like CRY, World Vision, MARAG who have been involved in unusual funding and money-laundering please read these posts: “Children as leverage” – Part1 and Part 2 as also “Confederation of Indian agitators”. Some of these NGOs operate as children’s services but are missionaries in disguise who seek to convert children to Christianity. That’s their “return on investment”. Some of them operated as “professional agitators” against projects in Gujarat.

Cordaid and HIVOS are Dutch organisations that are strangely exercising great interest in India. On June 11 in a discussion on Timesnow it turned out that Cordaid first operated in Kashmir for Human Rights and later suddenly turned to the North East sector. From human rights in Kashmir their attention turned to Palmolein and mining and Uranium in the NE. Both these NGOs are also known to have contributed a good deal of funds to, you guessed it, Arvind Kejriwal and his NGOs and IAC (read this post which has links to various reports). General Bakshi (retd) on Timesnow pointed out that there are 90000 tons of Uranium deposits in the NE but till date not 1 gram of Uranium has been extracted due to these NGO agitations and the influence they bring from the foreign govts controlling them. Given this, the following passage from the Sunday Guardian (April 2014) should not shock anyone at all:

“Hillary Clinton likes to operate through NGOs, which are given funding through indirect channels, and which target individuals and countries seen as less than respectful to her views on foreign and domestic policy in the target countries," a retired US official now based in Atlanta said. He claimed that "rather than US NGOs, (the former) Secretary of State Clinton favoured operating through organisations based in the Netherlands, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries, especially Norway" as these were outside the radar of big power politics. These NGOs were active in the agitation against the Russian nuclear power plant at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, with "funding coming mainly from a religious organisation based in Europe that has close links with France.”

The IB report was probably put out to scare some of the errant NGOs but there is definitely a desperate need to get rid of foreign NGOs and foreign-funded NGOs whose actions are motivated not by genuine causes but by “political” persuasions of the country funding them. Some of these NGOs don’t even have much cause to exist anymore. There was a time when the govt did not have a ministry for environment or statutory clearances as a requirement. Our courts too have been very active on these concerns. So for these “specialist” NGOs for quite a few causes are not really needed anymore. The only lame argument that will come up against this is “Govt is corrupt” but then these NGOs have proved equally corrupt too. The NGO domain itself has become one big profitable “business” industry and a tool for money-laundering. There are many politicians who operate NGOs to launder black money. They run educational institutions under such spurious NGOs.

One can’t want to fly in jet aircrafts and complain about the noise. It’s not a design flaw in the engine; it’s the nature of the beast. The same applies to air force jets. Even their training flights cause enough noise to upset neighbouring residents. Ask the residents near Pune airport what noise those Sukoi training flights cause. Do away with those jets? The Mumbai airport is bang in the middle of the city and residents around the airport have to live with the noise of an aircraft every minute. Stop all flights? Airports at other metros are somewhat away from the city but residents still have to bear with the noise. There is a new Mumbai airport that is ready but that too will be surrounded with population. Of course, aviation engineers are constantly working on technology to reduce the noise levels of engines. Our “needs” turn into “wants” in no time and India is a country where a large population is still grappling with basic needs of life: water, housing, food, sanitation, jobs and so on. This lofty ideal of leaving a better planet for the future is adorable but it shouldn’t imply much of the present population should live a miserable life. 

There are, definitely, thousands of NGOs who are into genuine social service and healthy activities. However, the rogues mentioned in this post are the ones who are darlings of our media and get the most attention due to their constant “rent-an-agitation” operational mode. We have 3.3 million NGOs says Indian Express which is nearly one for every 400 Indians. By that measure all of India’s problems should have been well under control. If the poor are getting poorer and farmers commit suicides, then many NGOs too have to bear some responsibility for standing in the way of progress. I am in no doubt that most of the NGOs covered in the IB report (even far-fetched as accused by some) are not here to serve India. They are here to kill India. Softly!

 

Confederation of Indian Agitators

As far back as I can remember we always wanted to establish and own a NGO. By ‘we’, I mean my friends and me who had just finished some education. Apart from our jobs we spent evenings devising ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes. We spent a lot of time on what type of NGO to create. One idea was to make a NGO and build a temple in some popular street corner. The temple could get bigger slowly and the little coins and notes would flow and keep increasing by the day. Then we wouldn’t have to work at all. But when it came to it we didn’t have the guts to do something that illegal so we dropped it. (Good choice too. That ‘communal’ Narendra Modi destroyed a lot of illegal temples). Another one was to create a NGO to educate rural folks on fertiliser use. That could get us funds from Govt, NABARD and even fertiliser companies. But we couldn’t tell fertilisers from cow-dung so we dropped that. There were many more. Seriously, all we wanted was lots of money and few big cars. We wanted to work 3 months and earn a year’s money. What is so wrong about that? And we wanted to spend weekends at luxury resorts. We wanted luxury trips to foreign countries at others’ expense and give speeches at seminars during spare time on the trip. How is all that unfair at all?

Turned out we weren’t brainy enough for those schemes and are stuck to earning money the stupid way – the honest way. When we now chat sometimes we realise how foolish we were in missing an important bus. We could have had a NGO, gotten rich and have done nothing special. All we had to do was to gather a bunch of people and agitate. Did I hear you ask “agitate for what”? Oh come on, we are a constitutionally “socialist” democracy, we can agitate for anything. Street lamps, pot holes, factory workers, farmers, water shortage, floods, health, politics, slum dwellers, hunger, mal-nutrition, riots, justice, transport, trees, forests, flyovers, pollution, late trains, even dams and nuclear plants. Like a 5-Star restaurant we could create an À la carte menu for agitations. We could have been somebody, we could have been famous. And we were, still are, good public speakers. We could have given great speeches and great sound bites for TV. We could have even manufactured ‘reality agitations’ made for TV. Rajdeep Sardesai would have taken pictures with us with our autographs and proclaimed “Great images. Gnight”. I could have written a book and won the Broker Prize instead of writing a blog.

We look at Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Teesta Setalvad, Medha Patkar and many more and regret our miserable lives. Back then a dream groom for parents was an IAS officer and he commanded a huge dowry. Now look at what 21st century has done. Even Harsh Mander gives up his IAS job and creates a NGO. Yeah, even Kejriwal gave up a govt job and created a NGO. Lately, Uday Kumar and Chittarupa Palit have managed better than anyone could dream of. They have introduced great new concepts to agitations. See? Even in this business there is room for innovation. The most inspiring of agitations has to be the Chipko Movement of the early 70s. This was one where villagers hugged trees to protect them from being felled by greedy de-foresters. The history of Chipko movement seems older and there are references to the movement from 1906, 1921 and 1940.

According to Wikipedia the Chipko movement is older than our freedom movement. “The first recorded event of Chipko took place in village Khejarli, Jodhpur district, in 1731, when 363 Bishnois, led by Amrita Devi while protecting green Khejri trees, considered sacred by the community, by hugging them, and braved the axes of loggers sent by the local ruler”. Damn! Even in 1731 it was a woman. One should have known. And the tradition of that brave woman has been followed by many modern day women. Historians are still debating whether Amrita Devi owned a Pajero or a Toyota and if she had a Ph.D. from Cambridge, JNU or AMU. But historians do confirm she studied at the LSE (Luni School of Economics). I’m not kidding, Luni is a prominent town in Jodhpur district. And she spoke English as fluently as Lord Megmoron. For her brilliant efforts Amrita Devi was also appointed member of the MAC (Mughal Advisory Council). Yeah, it was known by that name then.

But nobody, nobody beats Chittarupa Palit (Also spelt Chittaroopa sometimes) in leading agitations. She seems to be a protégé of Medha Patkar from the Narmada Bachchao Andolan (NBA). She gathered some villagers in Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh and organised a Jal Satyagraha to protest some dam. She wanted lands and compensation for the displaced villagers. Noble! So she got some people to immerse themselves in water. Sometimes knee-deep, sometimes waist-deep, sometimes neck-deep, sometimes….. But in all those 14-17 days of being sunk, Chittarupa was always fresh as fish to speak to the media. No matter what the courts say people like Medha, Chittarupa, Teesta, Uday Kumar are instant heroes on TV. Here’s an excerpt from a Times of India report:

Welcome to the village which was in the eye of the storm with 'jal satyagrah' for the past three weeks… It's a story of how the entire media was taken for a ride with the help of mobile phones, which came in handy for keeping tabs on TV crews. The spot shown on TV channels where the agitators protested is not the village proper but the banks of a canal running into the Narmada…When TOI inspected the place of demonstration after the water receded, the spot was found to be only two feet deep… "We were sitting in water," said Mehtab Giri, a villager who joined the protest. "First, we laid bricks and stone slabs on which were placed iron doors used for sluice gates of the dam. This would help us sit comfortably during the protest… "Whenever the media took shots, the second arrangement in the slightly deeper water was used. Agitators waded into water to show the level sometimes chin-deep and at others, neck-deep. When they stood up, it was hardly till their waist." And they weren't in water all the time; they frequently walked in and out of the canal"… there were only three people in the water most of the time… The third was NBA worker Chittarupa Palit, who also walked out to brief the media and file documents. Others took turns. The evidence is all in the television shots"…

Nice, isn’t it? I wonder how Palit makes her living or where she gets her money from. She’s living my dreams. That’s alright, even Arvind Kejriwal rubbished the information that he was funded by Ford Foundation. He did agree that he received funds from them. So what! Even Amrita Devi of that Chipko thing received funds from Ford Foundation in 1731. That brings us to Dr. Uday Kumar, lead agitator against the Kudankulam Nuclear plant. This agitation seems to have received over 50 crores from various Christian Church organisations. Despite Supreme Court orders, despite govt assuring them about safety of the plant Uday Kumar started another round of agitations recently. This time, taking a leaf out of Chittarupa’s book he drove the agitators into the sea for another round of aqua agitation. In the end the poor villagers may end up where they started before the agitations. Some even get killed when the agitations turn violent. “Nameless heads on frameless walls” as a famous artist said. The only ones getting rich and famous are those English-speaking urbanites who run this agitation industry. What's criminal? Agitations are fine but both Chittarupa Palit and Uday Kumar, in their 'possessed' frame of mind had endangered lives of people.

And, of course, based on this farcical agitation and fraudulent immersions, TV channels like TimesNow and CNN-IBN aired the “choreographed” images 24X7 .. 14 days in water, 15 days, 16 days, 17 days. And when the MP govt announced a package they even claimed “TimesNow Impact” and “CNN-IBN Impact”. That’s how foolish our media is and that’s how they try to fool people. I don’t grudge the packages given to the villagers by the MP govt. There’s no harm in that. It’s the methods of the NGO that should have been investigated and reported by these channels. Oh incidentally, both MP and TN are Non-Congress states. That is enough said.

In case you haven't heard, over the last decade or so there are many NGOs created whose job is to just channel funds. They are NGO ‘fund raisers’. Some are even supported by banks. They collect funds from Indians, NRIs and others and channel those funds to the NGOs of the choice of the donor. Their earnings come from commissions from the funds donated. Pretty much like a Stock Broker isn’t it? And these brokers are also passed off as NGOs rather than as commercial businesses. If you plan to start a NGO it might make sense to get yourself registered with one of the brokers.

My friends and I have decided to give it a final shot. Having failed to agitate over anything we have decided to establish the CIA. No, not that CIA. This is the ‘Confederation of Indian Agitators’. This would act as the Apex body of all Agitation-NGOs. We will lobby to get the govt to make it mandatory for all Agitation-NGOs to first be registered with and recognised by CIA for any valid dialogue with them. You see, we then get membership fees, donations, foreign funds, Church funds, govt funds, private funds, hawala funds. And all that without ever having to agitate. Don’t you dare steal this idea now! 

Caution: The post is not a comment on all NGOs. Many of them are doing commendable work worthy of applause.

CNN-IBN Inaugurates Mud-slinging Season

Why is CNN-IBN rattled?

On June 2 CNN-IBN had back to back programs covering the proposed hunger strike by Baba Ramdev. It was Rajdeep Sardesai first at 9PM and at 10PM Sagarika Ghose. The Ramdev issue was top of the list and then, of course, some routine issues of corruption concerning Dayanidhi Maran. Isn’t that nice? For once almost all channels had the Maran kickbacks and corruption issue in second place when normally most channels would have been screaming about it all evening. It’s natural! The Maran corruption case is certainly not as dramatic as the Ramdev satyagraha and by now the nation is pretty used to these stories of kickbacks and corruption. Aren’t we?

Both the programs had a similar agenda – Is Ramdev morally credible to launch a fight against black money and corruption? How did Ramdev get his enormous funds and build an empire worth 11000 crores (None being sure if this is 1100 or 11000). And of course, if this is a threat to democratic processes. The focus of Rajdeep’s program was the money part and that of Sagarika, the moral part. Money and morals! Hmmmm! Our media persons are the best to sermonise on both, aren’t they?

I have a decent understanding of finance and economics. But for those who are challenged in that area I will let Sagarika’s words enlighten on you on some economic and black money issues (Her tweets from June 2):

“Can black money simply be brought back by going on hunger strike? Or systemic currency reform needed so rich stop parking money abroad…..argument is rupee will have to be made into a hard currency. for that india will have to get its fiscal deficit etc in check…..Untaxed foreign exchange hidden abroad is a consequence of exchange controls on rupee. experts say only fwd is to make rupee a hard currency….Real issue of black money shd concern us. need to understand why it happens, a bash-the rich-and-UPA slogan will achieve little…..The govt shd look into why untaxed foreign exchange is hidden abroad, not just penalise those who do it. Reform is urgently needed….”

Do you feel educated now? She wants the government to look into why untaxed foreign exchange is hidden abroad when she, the wise one, already answered that question by stating it's a consequence of exchange controls on rupee. Duh? If any of you really manage to decipher what economic tenets or principles or theories Sagarika has laid out, do let me know and I will send you a special reward.

The Rajdeep program at 9pm in all its cleverness was basically a bash Ramdev exercise with no particular focus except to question his funding and his properties. Now, all the panelists were supporters of Ramdev except one – Nandita Rao. CNN-IBN pulled this person somewhere from the woodwork. She is supposedly a human rights activist and went on a rant on how Ramdev’s funding should be investigated, whether hawala channels were involved and whether illegal money was being transacted in his trusts and so on. Wait a minute! Doesn't that sound like gutter mouth Digvijay Singh? Never mind! Well, first of all assuming the Ramdev trusts are registered as charitable trusts there is a system for filing returns and being audited which is a government job. Secondly, throwing around wild charges of illegitimate funding and hawala transactions against someone is very un-lawyer like. Nandita Rao is also supposed to be a lawyer. So what exactly was her real problem? The real problem is that this guy Ramdev wears saffron, is being backed by BJP and the RSS and could be a front for the ‘saffron brigade’. Isn’t that the same fear that the Congress has? So in absence of any Congress spokespersons CNN-IBN found a proxy in Nandita Rao. The queen has ordered a gag on her puppets against talking about Ramdev. So CNN-IBN takes on the job of a smear campaign with panelists like Nandita Rao. Shades of  operation Namo?

Now, did CNN-IBN know who exactly Nandita Rao is? And what her persuasions are? Make no mistake, they damn well did. And in case you are still wondering, go through the communication exchanged by her with the IAC (India Against Corruption) group. You can read the whole lot (before it gets taken off). She considers RSS, Modi and such entities anti-national and killers, so by association Ramdev is equally anti-national. So who could be a better bet for CNN-IBN’s mud-slinging against Ramdev if not this activist?

The history of corruption in this country is almost equal to the history of the Congress. So the questions being bandied about in the media are whether Ramdev is the right person, whether his methods are right and so on. Nobody asked  – What exactly is the alternative? Shoot some corrupt ministers as in ‘Rang De Basanti’? The program started with images of Ramdev’s people collecting funds by cheques. Yes, would you believe it – they were collecting funds by cheques? Isn’t that alarming when we are talking about black money? By cheques? So CNN-IBN tells us how critics are questioning this fund collection. Wait, hahahahaha! No not critics, it’s CNN-IBN that is questioning or portraying the fund collection as something illegitimate and illegal. CNN-IBN’s cup of joy would have run over if those Ramdev guys were collecting cash!

So Rajdeep accuses Ramdev of using ‘public funds’! Once again, we are being enlightened on economic terminology. Does Rajdeep even know what ‘public funds’ means? Let me educate the assholes at CNN-IBN that collecting donations from the public is not the same as ‘public funds’ in legal terms. Go check that out with your lawyers or an economist, Rajdeep! But this is how they will indirectly imply that public funds are being used or misused to support the activities of Ramdev. And in case CNN-IBN stalwarts forget, one of the most corrupt bodies in this country is the BCCI which controls Cricket. One of the heads of the BCCI, Sharad Pawar, was the first to disappear from the scene when Anna Hazare started his agitation.  Despite all commercial operations, extra-ordinary funds, the BCCI is still a charitable trust. Quite a few politicians, especially Congressmen, are involved in the operations of the BCCI. The funds at the disposal of BCCI far exceed everything that a Ramdev can show. Is there any charitable work that the BCCI does as part of its main agenda?

If the likes of Nandita Rao and Rajdeep Sardesai are really interested in exposing illegitimate funding and spurious NGOs then they can refer to the book NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds, Anti-Nation Industry edited by Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak. How about inviting those authors on your program, Rajdeep? Their book exposes the various illegal and anti-national funds that flow into India for anti-national NGOs. Read more HERE and HERE.

 

Still, if Ramdev has all kinds of illegitimate wealth CNN-IBN should take the trouble of investigating and reporting and not indulge in showing some images of donation-collection to imply there was some wrong doing where there is none. Same goes for the likes of Nandita Rao. Digvijay calls Ramdev a businessman and not a spiritual leader. Well good for Ramdev, at least he is not a crooked politician. And what is wrong in being business minded? Nandita Rao quite clearly demonstrated the fears of the Congress. And what do you know? Digvijay Singh states that “if the Congress was scared Ramdev would have been put behind bars”. Oh yeah? On what grounds asshole? On cooked-up charges? The Congress knows what mayhem will break loose if Ramdev is arrested. I don’t think the Congress is as stupid as Digivijay Singh, not yet.

The woman who opened a pandora’s box, Nira Radia, was put on surveillance by the Home and Finance ministry based on a ‘complaint’ received by the Finance Ministry in 2008. Well, what stops Nandita Rao or CNN-IBN filing a complaint with the ED or the CBDT on similar lines against Ramdev? The UPA government will be more than delighted to act on such a complaint, including phone taps and all. No, instead the likes of Nandita Rao will keep peddling nonsense which no one can decipher but can pass off in the media as gospel. And CNN-IBN will gladly oblige such gossip and rumour mongering.

The tag lines from Sagarika’s ‘Face the nation’ should tell you everything about spirituality. ‘Ungodly politics?’, ‘The asanas of protest?’, ‘Gurus of Government?’ …. Her program started by invoking Chanakya and then listed gurus right up to Bhindranwale. Yes, that same guy who held weapons in a place of worship! Do you feel wiser? See the equation?

Anna Hazare didn’t bother the media or CNN-IBN so much when he was on a hunger strike. It was great for TV. But this guy Ramdev does bother them immensely. Why? His protests and action seem to be backed by Hindus or Hindu organisations. And anything Hindu in this country is bad for the Congress and our 'secular' media. After years of Hindu-bashing, minority appeasement, coining terms like ‘saffron’ terror this comes as a different terror threat to some in the political domain and, of course, some in the media. Is Ramdev right in everything he has proposed? Obviously not. His demand for death to the corrupt, withdrawing 500 and 1000 currency notes, Hindi in some college courses are absurd and are surely not going to be accepted and shouldn’t be. But there are worse cases of absurd demands. The Gujjar agitation for reservation, blocking all rail and road traffic despite High Court orders is a classic example.

Does Ramdev really understand complex economic issues and even that of black money? I don’t think so. Ramdev only understands that black money needs to be tackled. And there is one more dangerous thing that he and many Indians know – this level of blatant and nonchalant corruption and stashing of funds abroad does not happen without the tacit approval or participation of the highest power-holders in the land. The fear for the Congress is that some of its top names may have to eventually tumble. That is bad news for Congress and in many cases, bad news for the media as well.

Let’s do a roll call. Laloo Prasad, Mulayam Singh, Amar Singh, Mayawati all of them have had or still have cases pending against them for corruption. Based on the whims of the Congress the CBI and other agencies go after them or slow down their action against them. Why aren’t these people being prosecuted or why aren’t they in jails?

Much of our ‘secular’ media personalities have built their career on Hindu bashing. If someone like Anna Hazare clad in white Khadi protests, it’s not much of a problem. But beware, if someone in saffron goes into action, all the alarm bells will go off. So you can expect a lot vicious attacks that are still to come. Mud-slinging season has just been inaugurated by CNN-IBN!