Anarchist as CM: Kejriwal’s dilemma
by A. J. PHILIP
Kejriwal created political history when he became Chief Minister with the support of the very party which he had been denouncing as the fountainhead of corruption. He justified the government formation on the ground that he had held mohalla meetings where the people asked him to go ahead. Nobody knows till today how many such meetings were held, how many attended and how many favoured the AAP accepting the Congress support.
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To be an African in India is not easy. One of my relatives is married to an African, who always keeps her hair covered and says grace before eating even a morsel of food. Once I accompanied her to the visa office in Delhi. I felt that the Americans and Europeans were treated better than my relative for the simple reason that she was black.
If Africans stay in large number at Khirki Extension in South Delhi, it is because accommodation is relatively cheaper there. They are in India for studies, business, treatment and the like. I know one area near Vikaspuri where refugees from Myanmar live together. In Khirki, not one African owns a house. Everyone is a tenant. They have to pay a higher rent than what fellow Indians have to pay. Now, the charge against them is that they run prostitution and drug rackets.
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It may be true that police are hand in glove with drug dealers and those who run prostitution rackets. After all, Justice A.N. Mulla of the Allahabad High Court had once said, “There is not a single lawless group in the whole of the country whose records match that of that organised unit, which is known as the Indian police”.
If Bharti had clear evidence about the Africans’ involvement in these rackets, he should have gone the legal way to bust the rackets. After all, he is the law minister of the state. Instead, what did he and his vigilantes do? They waylaid a group of Ugandan women travelling in an auto-rickshaw.
They were manhandled, called names and forced to give urine for drug tests. By the way, the tests did not find them guilty of drug use. They also raided their homes at night to bust the prostitution racket. Was anyone found with his pants down during the search? No, nobody was found indulging in flesh trade. Now, imagine the feelings of the Africans. Or, is that they do not have any feelings, which are the preserve of the Aaam Aadmi Party members?
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The splendid and the sordid: Death of Sunanda Pushkar
by A. J. PHILIP
Small wonder that Tharoor has over two million followers, built over 21,300 posts. I always marvelled at his ability to remain connected with so many people. Of late I have not been checking my Twitter account, either on my mobile or the computer, though Twitter feeds pop up on both. So I was blissfully ignorant of the Twitter war that Sunanda Pushkar and Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar fought on Thursday until I read all their tweets in the New Indian Express on Friday.
I sensed that in claiming that his Twitter account was hacked, Tharoor was only as truthful as Bhima had been during the Mahabharata war. My allusion here is to Bhima claiming that he killed Ashwatthama to demoralise Drona whose son was named Ashwatthama. The slain Ashwatthama had actually been an elephant with the same name, but Drona was not to know this and laid down arms in grief.
Yes, Tharoor’s account seems to have been hacked not by any Pakistani terrorist but by his own wife Sunanda, who could have accessed it through a computer because she most probably knew his password. Since every newspaper reader would have by now read the Twitter messages the two women had exchanged, I do not want to dwell on them.
I am a well-wisher of Tharoor, though I did not support his candidature for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations, particularly because his rival was a fellow Asian, Ban Ki-moon. Manmohan Singh should have overcome his affection for Tharoor and not supported his candidature when it was certain that he would be defeated.
Tharoor came down further in my estimation when after the defeat, he sought Ban Ki-moon’s approval to keep his job as Deputy Secretary-General. His column in The Hindu was one of my favourites, though I was shocked when he wrote approvingly about the phenomenon of Ganesha idols drinking milk.
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