Anna Hazare: rise of the middle class
THIS is apropos of A.G. Noorani’s column ‘Protest and parliament’ (Sept 3). Like all progressive intellectuals in India who dislike the Anna Hazare-led agitation, he too trots out the usual mistaken reasons for this mass movement.
Mr Noorani says recent corruption scandals in the press were the reason. Not true. While the ‘press’ may not have known what was going on until recently, the Indian people have known about corruption in high places as well as low for the last 40 years.
What spurred this agitation was the fact that Anna Hazare came forward and stood firm, and was backed by educated middle class people.
This is the first time the middle-class in India has woken up to its own potential and this scares the ‘progressives’ as much as the leftists because they know they may lose their stranglehold on the poor and illiterate masses that keep them in power.
Predictably, the ‘progressives’ have dubbed Anna Hazare’s movement as ‘upper caste’ and started scaremongering about minorities being trampled.
The untold story behind this corruption in India is the utter lack of morality in public officials — not just politicians who manipulate vote banks. Educational institutions have been corrupted because of reservations to candidates who are unworthy of the seats they occupy.
This is why corruption has escalated in India in the last few decades. The Indians are no more or less greedy than any other people on earth.
What the ‘liberals and progressives’ in India fear the most is that the middle classes may wake up and create a ‘vote bank’ that is truly united, with the one goal of building a great nation ‘where people are valued for the content of their character and not
the colour of their skin’ as Martin Luther King put it.
If people with merit occupy offices, be it public, private or political, regardless of religion, caste and creed, corruption will vanish on its own.
B.K. VASAN
United States
THIS is apropos of A.G. Noorani’s column ‘Protest and parliament’ (Sept 3). Like all progressive intellectuals in India who dislike the Anna Hazare-led agitation, he too trots out the usual mistaken reasons for this mass movement.
Mr Noorani says recent corruption scandals in the press were the reason. Not true. While the ‘press’ may not have known what was going on until recently, the Indian people have known about corruption in high places as well as low for the last 40 years.
What spurred this agitation was the fact that Anna Hazare came forward and stood firm, and was backed by educated middle class people.
This is the first time the middle-class in India has woken up to its own potential and this scares the ‘progressives’ as much as the leftists because they know they may lose their stranglehold on the poor and illiterate masses that keep them in power.
Predictably, the ‘progressives’ have dubbed Anna Hazare’s movement as ‘upper caste’ and started scaremongering about minorities being trampled.
The untold story behind this corruption in India is the utter lack of morality in public officials — not just politicians who manipulate vote banks. Educational institutions have been corrupted because of reservations to candidates who are unworthy of the seats they occupy.
This is why corruption has escalated in India in the last few decades. The Indians are no more or less greedy than any other people on earth.
What the ‘liberals and progressives’ in India fear the most is that the middle classes may wake up and create a ‘vote bank’ that is truly united, with the one goal of building a great nation ‘where people are valued for the content of their character and not
the colour of their skin’ as Martin Luther King put it.
If people with merit occupy offices, be it public, private or political, regardless of religion, caste and creed, corruption will vanish on its own.
B.K. VASAN
United States