to those who post from india....

it's hard to get a sense for how historic a moment this is or how
important a figure anna hazare is from my perch here in the US.
the BBC world service reported it and so are some of the local
news outlets. what is your own sense of the importance of what
is going on right now? does he have popular support? is he truly
a gandhian as the western press has made him out to be? is this
just a populist movement or have the educated elite joined him? how
about the business community? do you think things are really going
to change? times like this are when i really miss being in india so
i can experience stuff like this first hand.

I do keep a pessimistic view on this... In India people talk about changes, but want their own lives unchanged. So if anything is affecting THEM they resist strongly. That alone is enough to guarantee things will progress as is.

small example... ewwwerybody in India curses bad traffic on roads... you drive with them one time, and you see them breaking the rules themselves.. reason? 'Why be the lone fool on the road? Why be inconvenient and late when e'one else is going ahead?'

Tracy Whitney wrote:I do keep a pessimistic view on this... In India people talk about changes, but want their own lives unchanged. So if anything is affecting THEM they resist strongly. That alone is enough to guarantee things will progress as is.

small example... ewwwerybody in India curses bad traffic on roads... you drive with them one time, and you see them breaking the rules themselves.. reason? 'Why be the lone fool on the road? Why be inconvenient and late when e'one else is going ahead?'

Hazare khwaishein aisi

i don't share your pessimism. i think people are sufficiently ticked
off. what's been missing is a sense of common purpose. and it's
exciting me that that may have finally arrived. i'm hoping hazare
despite the efforts of the govt to tar and feather him won't lose steam.

kapasi, merlot, brick -- please post.

edit to add: the only reason i didn't add rashmun to that list
is because i already know his opinion of AH.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

kapasi, merlot, brick -- please post.

Aren't we allowed to post? Why this favoritism?

harharmahadev wrote:

Aren't we allowed to post? Why this favoritism?

title dekho zara.

k, will see.... The very fact that it STILL is a ONE man versus government issue says a lot. What are people doing? Watching tamasha on tv? But ya, AB, MD, HK can give a better perspective.

Until it's a bigger/team/mass effort backed by strong policies and stronger executions, we can keep dreaming heroic dreams. You may argue that Hazare would kickstart that, but will see.

India needs to elect that leader with that team who promises he/she will do this, and then actually does it. That's the right way in a democracy anyway. And that's how things work in a long run.

harharmahadev wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

kapasi, merlot, brick -- please post.

Aren't we allowed to post? Why this favoritism?

He didn't ask sublime, rekz, nutmeg either... why THAT favoritism?

Tracy Whitney wrote:k, will see.... The very fact that it STILL is a ONE man versus government issue says a lot. What are people doing? Watching tamasha on tv? But ya, AB, MD, HK can give a better perspective.

Until it's a bigger/team/mass effort backed by strong policies and stronger executions, we can keep dreaming heroic dreams. You may argue that Hazare would kickstart that, but will see.

India needs to elect that leader with that team who promises he/she will do this, and then actually does it. That's the right way in a democracy anyway. And that's how things work in a long run.

this rant is on par with the one I heard from an 83yr old iyeran I encountered in sabari express.

Tracy Whitney wrote:

He didn't ask sublime, rekz, nutmeg either... why THAT favoritism?

hey it's a free world. anyone can post. but i didn't know that sublime and nutmeg
posted from india.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Tracy Whitney wrote:

He didn't ask sublime, rekz, nutmeg either... why THAT favoritism?

hey it's a free world. anyone can post. but i didn't know that sublime and nutmeg
posted from india.

Then you should have asked. Now you have inadvertently offended so many people by singling out those three members.

Har koi chahta hai ek mutthi aasmaan

Rekz wrote:Har koi chahta hai ek mutthi aasmaan

By mutthi, do you mean "fistful" or "peeing" (mut-thi)?

Tracy Whitney wrote:

harharmahadev wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

kapasi, merlot, brick -- please post.

Aren't we allowed to post? Why this favoritism?

He didn't ask sublime, rekz, nutmeg either... why THAT favoritism?

did i ever say that i post from india? do i need to live in india to write about india? not that there is anything wrong with living in india. you can believe what you want and you can repeat it as many times as you want. maybe it gives you a sense of belonging here - that you have some connection and know a little something about everyone here. i will not begrudge you that.
or maybe what makes you so sure is that you have access to all our ip addresses. if you are privy to such info, you really should let us know.

.|Sublime|. wrote:or maybe what makes you so sure is that you have access to all our ip addresses. if you are privy to such info, you really should let us know.

.|Sublime|. wrote:did i ever say that i post from india?

the problem is that living in india makes one jaded and cynical.





https://such.forumotion.com/t2720-in-support-of-anna-hazare#23500





Not explicit but near..

.|Sublime|. wrote:
you can believe what you want and you can repeat it as many times as you want.

i second that. i guess TW thinks she's putting 2 and 2 together but then she comes up with 12.

artood2 wrote:

.|Sublime|. wrote:did i ever say that i post from india?

the problem is that living in india makes one jaded and cynical.
https://such.forumotion.com/t2720-in-support-of-anna-hazare#23500
Not explicit but near..

actually being exposed to experiences outside of ones country, gives one a more acute sense of behavior patterns that one would otherwise take for granted and adopt.
but do continue.

Sublime, I am sorry. I really thought you lived in India... Can't really remember why. Maybe some post that made me think that. My bad.

Tracy Whitney wrote:Sublime, I am sorry. I really thought you lived in India... Can't really remember why. Maybe some post that made me think that. My bad.

TW, I am not looking for an apology. Please do not apologize for this. You have this charming quality that you are able to connect well with people. But in your eagerness you have a tendency to out personal details.

I have seen many instances of posters taking bits and pieces of information about posters to taunt and abuse. It has happened with you. I am reasonably thick skinned but having been here for such a long time, it will hurt if someone outed my personal details inadvertently. I am sensitive about my privacy to the point of paranoia. People ask me if it makes any difference if people know where I live. Maybe not. You can call me paranoid.

sublime, the fact is, I don't even know I was outing any personal details.. For me it was obvious that you lived in india... but I can see that I might be totally wrong and maybe you live 20 minutes from me.

Guess I take too much for granted, maybe I should not.... will keep this in check next time. I am too drunk right now, so I am not sure about the rest of your post and paranoia... will read again tomorrow and try to respond.....

ciao.

Tracy Whitney wrote: For me it was obvious that you lived in india...

Obvious?

Tracy Whitney wrote:sublime, the fact is, I don't even know I was outing any personal details.. For me it was obvious that you lived in india... but I can see that I might be totally wrong and maybe you live 20 minutes from me.

Guess I take too much for granted, maybe I should not.... will keep this in check next time. I am too drunk right now, so I am not sure about the rest of your post and paranoia... will read again tomorrow and try to respond.....

ciao.

i did not say you outed my personal details. i was making a point about the problems of outing personal details in any kind of public forum. it happened with Cro in sulekha and just the other day in chat here you said that you may know max's real name. in your point of view it might be harmless but we know that any kind of information out there is fodder. there have been many instances of abuse and slander based on trivial information. i can only imagine what people can resort to if they hold a grudge against you and they know your address or full name.

in my case, it is more about making blanket statements. imo it does not make an iota of difference where i post from or who i am if i make any sense at all in my interactions here. some part of me will be reflected in my posts. it might make me more interesting if i revealed more info about myself but thats ok i can live with that.

anyway, have a good night and enjoy the hangover tomorrow.

It's a big media hype. No revolution is happening anytime soon.

Ponniyin Selvan wrote:It's a big media hype. No revolution is happening anytime soon.

Can you provide two forms of proof that you live in India at present ?

you can ask Charvaka who can check the IP and confirm the location as Chennai.

Ponniyin Selvan wrote:you can ask Charvaka who can check the IP and confirm the location as Chennai.

ok..Good. Just click rashmun's link and I will have the other proof.

In my view (since I live under Adayar Alamaram), Congress did a stupid thing in arresting and then forced to release him. Now the man played an excellent game by staying inside Tihar jail and fasting. He will fast in the jail (which is even more symbolic - as most big political leaders were jailed in Tihar jail during emergency) or move to the grounds.

The arrest has ignited a major spark with opposition parties taking advantage (BJP managed to dump Yeddy just in time) in getting some momentum out of this. They are more cautious this time unlike with ramdev, and even the RSS is keeping out letting it become a people's movement. Killing of a muslim female activist only strengthens Anna's movement.

With UP elections round the corner, this is a HUGE blunder on the part of madam mohan Singh - the only action that he took on his own....in all these years.

.|Sublime|. wrote:

Tracy Whitney wrote:Sublime, I am sorry. I really thought you lived in India... Can't really remember why. Maybe some post that made me think that. My bad.

TW, I am not looking for an apology. Please do not apologize for this. You have this charming quality that you are able to connect well with people. But in your eagerness you have a tendency to out personal details.

I have seen many instances of posters taking bits and pieces of information about posters to taunt and abuse. It has happened with you. I am reasonably thick skinned but having been here for such a long time, it will hurt if someone outed my personal details inadvertently. I am sensitive about my privacy to the point of paranoia. People ask me if it makes any difference if people know where I live. Maybe not. You can call me paranoid.

Sublime, your concerns are noteworthy and I am fully supportive of privacy. However people make their guesses on poster's location based on posting times and it is well.....



OTOH, that was a good seizure of "teaching moment". I am sorry if I got on your nerve there but as I said location guesses are usually based on posting times and nothing more.

artood2 wrote:

Sublime, your concerns are noteworthy and I am fully supportive of privacy. However people make their guesses on poster's location based on posting times and it is well.....
.

I agree fully....and it is time for me to confess. I have been living in India the last 2 years...and I returned to India from Kansas in 2009.

Pheww...what a relief....

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

artood2 wrote:

Sublime, your concerns are noteworthy and I am fully supportive of privacy. However people make their guesses on poster's location based on posting times and it is well.....
.

I agree fully....and it is time for me to confess. I have been living in India the last 2 years...and I returned to India from Kansas in 2009.

Pheww...what a relief....

Yup, that's it. Thanks for clearing it up once for all.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:it's hard to get a sense for how historic a moment this is or how important a figure anna hazare is from my perch here in the US. the BBC world service reported it and so are some of the local
news outlets. what is your own sense of the importance of what s going on right now? does he have popular support? is he truly gandhian as the western press has made him out to be? is this just a populist movement or have the educated elite joined him? how about the business community? do you think things are really going
to change? times like this are when i really miss being in india so i can experience stuff like this first hand.

It's really hard to cut through the shrill 24x7 media coverage and assess the event on merits. Just fyi, Hazare's following is largely young, urban, educated middle-classes which is why our easily excitable media - which exists to serve mainly this class - is now in a state of fevered frenzy. They sense a Cairo moment.

Personally, I don't believe this amounts to much. After all, these same classes were in awe of and solidly behind the India Shining campaign in 2004 but the masses didn't see any great value there. In this too, the classes most shielded from corruption - i.e. educated middle classes who know their rights - are the ones making all the noise while the masses who are the commonest victims see it as a way of life and don't see how a super-bureaucracy can protect them.

Most political commentators have poked holes into Hazare's Lok Pal bill which he's unilaterally trying to force on the nation. Almost everyone unanimously agrees that the Lok Pal is no silver bullet. But the attention he has been able to bring to this problem and the higher levels of accountability that the government has been shamed into including in its own bill is the biggest benefit from his movement.

Re Gandhianism, he's probly a bit too Gandhian, right down to the original's inflexibility, dictatoriness, obstinacy and unwillingness to collaborate etc which was fine in the 40s against an illegitimate colonial rule but is out of place in a 21st century democracy.

Have to go now. Will post in more detail later.

K. I remember now. partly it was your (subbu's) posting timings, partly your food that made me think so. But those parts were just to fit the picture I'd already created in my head. I deduced that (your location) based on 1) ur interactions with hk about what books and how to order them. You told him ways I didn't know and since he is in India I assumed you are too. And 2) you dissed my ny traffic claims citing how it is worse in india.

Mighty flawed deductions on my part, it seems now. But guess sillo is right. I add 2+2 ans make it 22.

I don't share your paranoia. I do agree with you that only your opinion should matter and not our location. Location just adds to the number of topics one can share. I don't know how that factors into abuse. Yeah people laugh about my Bihar roots. But if one is a true Bihari, one is a proud Bihari too. and sometimes hey diss Edison, nj but kaun maine edison se shaadi ki hai.

K. Done with this now. Sorry if I hurt you in anyway.

frankly, i do not have any strong opinions on the lokpal bill being tabled. i have not followed exactly what anna is trying to have presented (because deep down i remain sceptical if it will make any difference). i think i'll read it in detail tonight. i am more interested in the twitter revolution aspect of it. the govt. has *now* given him permission to hold a 7 day fast in ramlila grounds. the govt. has, whole day, been giving him more and more ground. and this after arresting him yesterday and making loud claims that repercussions would be confined to, at the best, some few protests in some 500 cities. ha ha. today the govt. has changed its mind. no one knows how big or scary this demon is.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:but i didn't know that sublime and nutmeg
posted from india.

nutmeg posts from india. .|Sublime|. posts from outer space.

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:

Ponniyin Selvan wrote:you can ask Charvaka who can check the IP and confirm the location as Chennai.

ok..Good. Just click rashmun's link and I will have the other proof.

In my view (since I live under Adayar Alamaram), Congress did a stupid thing in arresting and then forced to release him. Now the man played an excellent game by staying inside Tihar jail and fasting. He will fast in the jail (which is even more symbolic - as most big political leaders were jailed in Tihar jail during emergency) or move to the grounds.

The arrest has ignited a major spark with opposition parties taking advantage (BJP managed to dump Yeddy just in time) in getting some momentum out of this. They are more cautious this time unlike with ramdev, and even the RSS is keeping out letting it become a people's movement. Killing of a muslim female activist only strengthens Anna's movement.

With UP elections round the corner, this is a HUGE blunder on the part of madam mohan Singh - the only action that he took on his own....in all these years.

saamiyar man,
can you go in the utchi veyil tomorrow and have an aavin ice cream for me? since you live under the adayar aalamaram, it is a stone's throw away for you. no?

since this thread is all over the place discussing very important things in life, i thought this is the right place to ask for some recipes. subbi, suggestions please. i am having a truckload of people, one batch coming in sunday night and one batch coming in tuesday night. no, i am not getting married again.


something easy to throw together, vegetarian but not necessarily indian. in return i will give you a flower.

there is unprecedented support for this movement although 99% of the people don't know what they are supporting. they think that this movement will somehow bring the black money back into the country and rid of all the problems (not just corruption). yesterday, i saw on TV that some school kids were made to shout "vande mataram" and "Anna, aage badho" when these kids don't even know how to wipe their nose clean. a lot of young people are on the streets looking for that sense of accomplishment so that they can later go to CCD (cafe coffee day) and tell their friends over a double latte how they shouted their lungs out on MG road. a lot of young females are finally putting those candles to some other use. yes, some elites and business community have also done their bit by wearing those "I am Anna" caps while shouting at Azad Maidan.

now, i am a very cynical person, you understand. but my wife who is never tired of singing "mere des ki dharti" is equally cynical about all this tamasha and knows for sure that nothing will come out of this movement. this too shall pass.

in the past, hazare had made sure that some ministers from MH govt resigned because of corruption. so, he has some record there. he could be sincere in his attempts. but i think he has seized the opportunity. he knows that this is his chance to be counted among the great social activists in india. at this ripe age, he must be loving the attention he is getting. he must absolutely love when he is compared with gandhi. i think he is loving all this and is clearly a winner right now.

congress has made a complete fool of itself. first of all, there are too many people speaking on its behalf. they are making laughable statements such as "Hazare is corrupt from head to toe" and "US is behind all this" (wtf, what will they gain from this movement?). there is some damage to their party in the short term although people of india might forgive them when rahul baba lunches with a harijan in her hut next time. he is already planning to visit Pune 9 days after the police firing on farmers killed three.

i am indifferent to all this and am not following this movement except when my wife tunes into some news channel.

lol @ putting candles to some other use. the media frenzy around this is unprecedented. just saw some girl hyperventilating on screen. thought there was some major development and unmuted the tv - turns out she was describing the preparations underway at ram lila grounds by baburao's men.

and thanks to this circus, the parliament won't do any work this session too. and none of those reforms that have been moving at snail's pace will get passed now. blessed are we to live in this country.

peepli live is what this is.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:
and thanks to this circus, the parliament won't do any work this session too. and none of those reforms that have been moving at snail's pace will get passed now. blessed are we to live in this country.

yes. i took the day off yesterday and while i was browsing the channels, i stopped at Lok Sabha where sushma swaraj was reciting some poetry about enmity. then suddenly all the people there started shouting and i heard the speaker of the house saying "kripaya shaant rahiye, kripaya shaant ho jaaiye, unhe bolne dijiye" before i switched over to some other channel. i am sure that's what happened the whole day - "kripaya shaant ho jaaiye."

i forgot to mention the support lent by our esteemed b'wood stars and starlets. they have tweeted and facebooked with "i love my india" and "mera bharat mahan".

Haha..and I was hearing on FM about some starlet getting roundly scolded by fellow star tweeters for celebrating her birthday overseas and posting those party pics on FB when such momentous events are taking place in India..how dare she live it up when Baburao is fasting in Tihar??

boy you two (brick and merlot) are a cynical pair aren't you?
got an email note from a friend of mine who moved back to india
some years ago and he is beside himself with excitement. i've asked
him if i can post his letter here with references to names and places
removed. if he says yes, i plan to post it here.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:how dare she live it up when Baburao is fasting in Tihar??

did i miss the reason why you address him as Baburao? a peer of baba/bibi = babu?

that's his name-- baburao.

thought his full name was kisan baburao hazare.

Kisan is prob'ly a title he took on to show brotherhood with farmers of Ralegaon Siddhi. I think his real name is Baburao Hazare. And every time I hear of the govt's baburao troubles, I can't help grin.

damn if I see ONE more candle march picture on FB I would go fasting here.

Merlot Daruwala wrote:Kisan is prob'ly a title he took on to show brotherhood with farmers of Ralegaon Siddhi. I think his real name is Baburao Hazare. And every time I hear of the govt's baburao troubles, I can't help grin.

Baburao would be his father's given name, and Kishan his given name.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:boy you two (brick and merlot) are a cynical pair aren't you?
got an email note from a friend of mine who moved back to india
some years ago and he is beside himself with excitement. i've asked
him if i can post his letter here with references to names and places
removed. if he says yes, i plan to post it here.

Yeah, a lot of people are creating history (in their minds) and engaging in nation-building by holding up candles in support of Baburao. I was reading abt this guy in Morgan Stanley who's come down from HongKong specially to participate in the protests. My cynicism springs from the sheer innocence of the protesters. Shouting out slogans against corruption is quite silly IMO - that's like protesting against female infanticide or against wife-beating. Yes, all these things are bad but what is achieved by shouting slogans or courting arrest?

Baburao himself is going on a fast to force his half-baked bill that he and his buddies drafted "on behalf of" all society through parliament. The bill envisages a super-authority outside the constitution, with supervisory powers over the executive and judiciary, backed by an enforcement arm which will be a super-bureaucracy. Without any clue of these intricacies and the challenge to democracy that Baburao poses, all these protesting ninnies are unwittingly helping him in this ill-advised enterprise.