Our societal mindset is reflective in Anna Hazare's fast unto death at Jantar Mantar. Before this fast and media blitz, most of us didn't even know his name or the cause he stood for.
His real name is Kisan Baburao Hazare and His demand was greater public role in the Lokpal Bill (Anti-Corruption Bill) , a law that will establish a Lokpal (ombudsman) that will have the power to deal with corruption in public offices. It's been discussed at various levels for the last 40 odd years.This battle against corruption reached it's peak on 5th april 2011 when this social activist began a fast unto death at Jantar Mantar.[Source: wikipedia]
Had gone to jantar mantar to express my solidarity with his movement.... There were loads of people there carrying out some form of protest... some with candles n flags marching arround shouting slogans... other sat peacefully... There were young and old alike.... anti-corruption is a cause that bought everyone together irrespective of the caste, creed or religion....
Anna has done a lot of work in the field of Uprooting alcoholism, The Watershed Development programme, Milk production, Education, Removal of untouchability, Collective marriages, Gram Sabha, Anti-corruption protests in Maharashtra, Right to Information movement.
Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare called off his five-day-old hunger strike on Saturday morning after receiving a gazette notification from the Centre regarding constitution of a 10-member joint committee, comprising members from the government and civil society, to draft an effective Lok Pal Bill.
This fast and move reminds me of the movie Nayak where a common reporter takes up the challenge of becoming a CM(Shivaji Rao) for 1 day in a lark and removing corruption is the first thing he does... and the movie continues a huge tussle between older politicos, younger n sincere CM; the corrupt n common man. The state goes to elections and unanimously supports this new CM and he has all the political parties running after him... he establishes public complaint boxes and takes serious action on them His life is put thru perilous danger, loses his loved ones yet sticks to his principles. At the end of the movie the city develops under the governance of the new CM and his colleagues. The complaint box, where people were supposed to fill in their complaints and information about various threats anonymously, is shown to be empty, signifying that the reasons to be afraid have been taken care of.... The movie has a ray of hope....
The 73-year-old called off his fast-unto-death campaign on the fifth day with a little girl giving him a glass of lime juice at 10.45 am.
The 10-member Joint Drafting Committee will have five Cabinet members — Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee (chairman), Home Minister P. Chidamabaram, Law Minister Veerappa Moily (convenor), Telecom and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and Water Resources Minister Salman Khurshid. Apart from Mr. Hazare, civil society will be represented by the former Law Minister, Shanti Bhushan (co-chairperson), the former Supreme Court Judge, Justice N. Santosh Hegde, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal. [Source: http://www.kollytalk.com]
This team will now have to face a lot of flack from people who will try n run down this initiative... I hope India comes out shining....
In my own small way I wanted to contribute... It's these young kids who are the future of India...
Made cookies for them which had our tricolour flag.... These kids still have the innocence and if we give them good values, it's then that we'll be able to continue our nation's growth story...... Which is why education is very important.... real education....
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.
~Bill Beattie
~Bill Beattie
Recipe is the one we used for the September 2010 Daring Bakers Challenge.
A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.~ Mohandas Gandhi
Where we have happy children... There is hope....
1 comment:
Anna Hazare sure taught us some things..Appreciate your thoughts, loved the message in the cookies:-)
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