How honest are we?

Back in India, we keep crying “politicians are looting our country”, “we need selfless and honest leaders”, “Our country would be great if had good leaders” and so on. While all of the above are true, I wonder to what extent the common man is honest. You don’t get my thinking, here is the list I compiled.

• The property we buy in India gets registered to half the value and the other half is paid for in cash. This is so rampant that one will be hard pressed to find a seller willing to quote the actual sale price of the property and pay tax for the same. 
• We never believed in paying for the software we use, we believe in hacking an OS and pirating the same than paying the full price.
• We love our pirated DVDs of movies, practice is so organized that one can find an illegal camera print copy of a movie within a day of its release.
• I don’t remember the last time I paid full price for a musical CD
• We negotiate with the food caterer to see if he can give us a discount for paying in cash. Of course he does, deduct the sales tax from the order and offer it as a discount.
• We believe in registering properties and opening accounts in our non working spouses to save on taxes.
• We rarely believe in reporting rental income on our taxes.
• We believe in opening multiple accounts in multiple banks to avoid tax mans interest.   
• We blame the government official of not working but how many hours in an actual 8 hour working day we spend in doing “work”?          

The list can go on, I will be first to admit that I am guilty of quite a few items in the list.

The motivation for this blog post came from this Kannada song. 

Wonder if Baba killed the Lokpal Bill

Remember back in April when Anna Hazare went on a fast until death at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and some of us did a token 1 day fast in support to end corruption. That was a time of excitement when even a pair of poodles supported the cause and the government agreed to work with Anna’s team to draft a Lokpal Bill. All was well and a joint committee was formed with members of civil society and parliament and the draft process began.

Out of the blue in comes our dear Baba Ramdev, who wanted to push his own agenda in the midst of this. I don’t find anything wrong in the noble intentions of our Baba but here is where I think he went wrong.

• He wanted to bring all the black money hidden in different parts of the world immediately, what was he thinking or smoking? its not like we can invade Switzerland and Cayman Islands and other tax heavens and loot the money that is stored and only take that is rightfully ours. If nothing this will be a long drawn negotiation between different governments and if they agree on something then we can hope to get some of it back.
• When Baba said bring the black money back, why didn’t he declare his 1100 crore assets which mostly owned by couple of his devotees (one of them being his relative) in the first place before asking further questions. I had no idea that Aastha channel was owned by Baba.
• When you go on  a crusade like this, you need to choose your deputies carefully. Baba’s deputy Balakrishna is the focus of controversy, he acquired an Indian passport while being born in Nepal and why would a deputy of a Yoga guru need a rifle and a pistol.
• His other demand of devalue 500 and 1000 Rupee currency is the height of stupidity.
• The other thing I don’t get is when he agreed with the government that he will not go on a fast and signed on a piece of paper, why did he go on a fast that same day evening?
• When the fast was disrupted why did he run away, one theory is he was scared of being encountered. So, being a revered yoga guru doesn’t he know that the soul is eternal and the body perishes some day and so what if that some day is today and if the mode is a bullet in the head (I am not supporting the governments action here). 
• His last demand of hang the people who are corrupt, I thought yoga leads to non violence and peace achieved through non violence and action from within is the only lasting peace every thing else is momentary.
• In the end I agree with Tehelka’s assessment that whatever Baba did was to show off his people power and increase his image and nothing more.

Thanks to the above, now Anna and team have to distance from Baba and the government can point play their cards and continue a war of words and stall the bill for ever to come.

Fast in support of Anna Hazare

Today during the Bhagavatam session our teacher Rajima brought up the topic of Anna Hazare who has started a fast until death to get the bill against corruption done right. She said we believe in praying, having a strong intention and doing peaceful protests to get things done rather than retorting to violence and extremism.

So, she asked us to have the intention to eradicate corruption from the whole world and fast a day in support of Anna Hazare. I have signed up to fast till dusk tomorrow. Will you do it with me and support the cause?