Thought Garage

By any and every measure, the whole Jan Lokpal and/or Anna Hazare movement against corruption has been phenomenal. Tremendous response and discussions all over. Do not know what triggered so many people to come out and support in their own ways. I am not sure even today, everybody really understand the whole issue and what this bill is practically capable of. Some don't know what it is all about. Some understood a little. A whole majority of people are yet to read the bill.   via  78638509@N00@Flickr However, the movement as it is, some thing of huge importance, we need to think about. The bill may take a while to come into existence and actively enforced. But if we can leverage the rage and support of general public, we may be able to do something immediate and that make a difference in common man's life. May be, we can encourage more participation in other civic issues, enlist greater participation in politics in general. May be we can start focus groups to resear...

Below is an excerpt of some thoughts shared on a different discussion on the fight against corruption and argument that Anna's bill doesn't change a thing because most people are corrupt and we need a social transformation rather. The argument further goes to say that Anna should instead focus on educating people to elect honest representatives to solve the issue at its root.  I do not say we shouldn't try to fix the root cause, but we should be practical and consider the approach based on where we are now. Corruption in India is like a cancer evolved over generations. It would be a better and quite practical solution to do a surgery and use chemicals and medicine (even though they all have quite serious side effects). Fixing the root cause really mean reversing the evolution (social and systematic) and kind of irreversible (or impractical). We can start over after the surgery, for sure, and take steps for a grass roots approach. But grass roots approach alone is li...

Arvind Kejriwal @ IIT Chennai explaining the Jan Lokpal Bill, background, history of the movement and clarifying so many frivolous objections raised by the Government. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The following text has been extracted from my response in an email discussion thread around the current anti-corruption fight back in India and argument that if the movement were to survive, Anna or Ramdev must come clean and must be ideal and perfect citizens rather than just any other Indian fighting for a cause. “I believe in ideas rather than just people that spearhead or follow an idea.  By focusing too much on a person, we often get blinded, bogged down or loose our common sense by personifying ideas and fail to reason. Not to discount the people and leaders that brought those ideas into life. But more often than not, ideas outlive those leaders, just for the reason that even those leaders are human beings and imperfect. Getting a consent by threatening to go on fast unto death is stupid if Ramdev does it. Anna does it. Or Gandhi does it. We could only reason if we could separate the idea from the person. Otherwise, for instance, whatever Gandhi did will be considered alwa...