The Fruits Of Revolution

By Kaveree Bamzai | India Today

Mango people. Banana republic. Guttersnipe. Man of the street. The corruption crisis has seen a remarkable upsurge in the dictionary of political discourse. It has also proved that Indian politicians have much in common. The vocabulary of those in power is not too distant from those out of it. If Salman Khurshid called Arvind Kejriwal a guttersnipe, Nitin Gadkari called him a muckraker. At his Delhi press conference on October 14, Salman Khurshid set some "rules of the game". Our assessment of these rules, checking a wide body of evidence across the Congress leadership, is: 1. All fruits are bad, especially mangoes and bananas. Robert Vadra says so, on Facebook.

2. Tigers are better than dogs. As the steely-eyed philosopher Beni Prasad Verma told Kejriwal through the media: "Don't bark day-in dayout, try to sometimes roar like a tiger. Those who always bark are of no value." Of course, anything is better than a guttersnipe, which Khurshid helpfully defined to a TV interviewer in Hindi as not being a "naali ka keeda" but a "naali ka saanp".

3. Big loot is preferable to small thievery. In the words of Verma again: "It (Rs 71 lakh) is a very small amount for a Central minister. I would have taken it seriously if the amount was Rs 71 crore."

4. All establishment relatives are off-limits. This, according to Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh, is an unspoken "ethic" between all parties. "We don't target people who are not in politics. This is ethics, everyone has a private life. For example, Ranjan Bhattacharya was not in politics but he was living with Vajpayee. Have we ever said a word about Ranjan?" Or, as he said, about L.K. Advani's son and daughter. And then to the question that there was never a case against them, he said: "Don't ask me that, we have enough evidence and reasons to say but we would not."

5. No one breaks zipcode solidarity. Khurshid's response to the CAG report that validated allegations of misappropriation of funds by his Trust was along these lines: "He is my nextdoor neighbour. He had to just look over the fence to seek my response to his queries. Officials visited the Trust premises thrice. As it happened, none was there then. They could at least have left a request letter behind and we'd have answered their questions."

6. Avoid specifics. It invariably exposes the claimant. So if Narendra Modi got his claim of Rs 1,818 crore as Sonia's medical bills wrong, Rahul created a furore with his statement that "seven out of 10 youngsters in Punjab are drug addicts".

7. Always, always, use strong language as a defence. Popular ways to discredit rivals are to either compare them to a figure from Nazi history (Digvijaya Singh has compared Narendra Modi to both Goebbels and Hitler), or to a businessman (Digvijaya's description of Nitin Gadkari), anathema to a Congress party that has rediscovered its socialist roots. Clearly, the politician's guttersnipe is the public's desh ka nagrik. One man's kalam (pen) is another man's lahoo (blood). Kejriwal's politicianturned-businessman is Ravi Shankar Prasad's "social entrepreneur".

The cosy political club is rattled and their language is evidence of it. "They all do business together, they all have the arrogance of power," says lawyer Prashant Bhushan. And the arrogance of ownership. Listen to Khurshid as he talks about Kejriwal visiting Farrukhabad, his Lok Sabha constituency: "I don't give a visa to go there, but it's a long road to Farrukhabad... He can get there... but how will he return?" The politicians are running scared, and the swagger shows it.

The above is from the mail I receive from Rediffmail.

It is obvious that the Congress Party and the entire opposition are scared shit of this new up-start by the name of Arvind Kejriwal who does not go by the rule book. He has challenged established norms of thievery and the cozy relations between the parties in looting the nation.

These established crooks are using all the ammunition at their disposal including so called turn-coats who claim they were earlier associated with IAC to discredit Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sishodia and Prashant Bhushan.

They are using the police force in Haryana to beat up IAC workers mercilessly.

Let them understand that the people of India have woken up and no amount of dis-information they may spread will make the people waiver from removing the present lot of corrupt politicians in the next elections.