The following post links you to the "Annihilation of Caste" Multimedia Study Environment
Welcome to the Annihilation of Caste Multimedia Study Environment (MSE) which was produced by Frances Pritchett, Professor of Modern Indic Languages, Columbia University and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, with additional sponsorship and funding from the Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was the first highly educated (Ph.D., Columbia University), politically prominent member of the ritually-polluted Hindu "Untouchable" castes. Dr. Ambedkar wrote the "Annihilation of Caste" for the 1936 meeting of a group of liberal Hindu caste-reformers in Lahore. After reviewing the speech, conference organizers revoked Ambedkar's invitation. He then self-published the work, which became an immediate classic. Gandhi wrote a refutation in his own newspaper. Ambedkar then answered Gandhi's refutation, and included the whole thing in appendices. The Multimedia Study Environment includes the Annihilation of Caste, edited for classroom use by Fran Pritchett; her explanatory annotations; and several other major texts by Ambedkar, including The Buddha and His Dhamma; Pakistan, or, the Partition of India; and the Indian Constitution.
The text source for this version of the Annihilation of Caste is reprinted from: Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 1. Bombay: Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1979, pp. 25-96. Annihilation of Caste was first published in Bombay, 1936; 2nd ed. 1937; 3rd ed. 1944.
Is Anna a true leader....? Many educated people are going behind him like a herd...! Anna Hazare is supported by (bribe giving) corporate and corporate media....! How can one support this corrupt person? By calling this corporate sponsored protest as another freedom struggle we all insulting the true freedom fighters of India......!
Before going in to the review of the Jan lokapal bill we must know about the persons involved in drafting this lokpal bill and the hidden agenda behind this bill. Even some of the members in the Anna team have a point to prove on their integrity. This article cannot be seen as a attack on some individuals, i am trying to emphasise the facts surrounding this protests and the true intentions of these corrupt individuals. Since most of the English media (corporate sponsored) and some regional media are portraying this fast by Anna as another freedom struggle. It’s high time we all must stop this kind of news (nonsense), because it directly insults the true freedom fighters of the Indian nation. Here are the serious integrity issues relating to the Anna team:
1.Anna Hazare: Termed as another Gandhi he is accused of misusing his trust money for celebrating his B’day. To add up to these allegations- I request the readers to look in to the following links about Anna`s atrocities in His own village.
2.Arvind Kejriwal: This former IIT student is being projected as next youth icon (next to/instead of Rahul!). Soon after getting a capitalists sponsored award he rose to prominence. Later he started a NGO called kabir. He is a key member in the Anna team. His NGO is said to have got donations from Ford foundation and several other unknown persons to the tune of 250,000 $. Till now the identity of the donors are not being disclosed in the organization’s official website. Here is an excerpt of the interview given by Arvind Kejriwal to THE HINDU on the donations received from outsiders. Arvind Kejriwal himself does not follow transparency in his own organization. But he is advocating transparency to the government?
THE HINDU:“Another of your NGOs, Kabir, received grants from the Ford Foundation (FF). According to the FF, Kabir received $172,000 in 2005 and $197,000 in 2008. The FF also sanctioned an “in-principle” grant of $200,000 for 2011, which you have not accepted so far. Why does Kabir not mention the FF and these specific details on its website?
Arvind Kejriwal:We did not give the specific details because we also got some other NRI contributions and these were clubbed together. I will make sure that the website gives the break-up.”
3.Kiran bedi: Abusive use of power is also a corrupt practice. So kiran bedi itself guilty of this corrupt practice. She has been projected as a straight forward IPS officer but her official work record speaks the other way! She has derailed from her duties several times. She has used her power to secure her daughter’s admission at Delhi’s Lady Hardinge College for an MBBS course through the Mizoram quota. I request the readers to read the following links to know more about it.
It’s very clear that the main leaders of the campaign itself corrupt and we are following the wrong person/ group of people and portraying them as crusaders of corruption. So it’s high time that we all must think about their true intentions and the supporting force behind the Anna teams’s protests. Maoists are seen as a terrorist outfit because they don’t believe in the Indian state and they seek to over throw the Indian state by armed struggle. Same is the case in the Anna team and its supporters –They don’t believe in the constitution of India. They seek to control the entire government under a dictatorship kind of bill. So in a way Anna team should also be seen considered as a dangerous outfit. Many of the supporting organization of the Anna team are right wing saffron terrorist’s organization like RSS, VHP and many anti reservation outfits like youth for equality team. Thus one can easily conclude that these short minded persons don’t recognize the “right to equality” clause mentioned in the constitution of India.
Will Jan lokpal bill eradicate corruption?
The answer is NO! because one must keep in mind that there are numerous laws are in place to tackle the corruption practice in India. But the fact is these laws are not being properly implemented and executed by the law enforcing agencies. If we can find a proper way and will to implement this already existing law we can eradicate corruption at the grass root levels. But as far as the big scams involving the corporate companies the government must come with a new law such as “if a company is found to involve in corrupt practices it should be nationalized or banned from any other future business, hefty fine should be imposed on them or one must make it as a non-bailable offence”. The entire lokpal bill is critical in giving punishment to the bribe accepting politicians and government servants but it does not have a mention on the extent of punishment that would be given to bribe giving capitalists and industrialists. A person who induces another to indulge in wrong doings deserves better punishment than the other. Lokpal bill deserves to be in trash it deserves nothing more than that! There are numerous articles written about the flaws in the lokpal bill some are given in the references section do please read it and spread awareness about it.
The root cause of corruption can be understood clearly when we look in to the liberalization policies that are implemented in India after the 1990`s. The primary reason said for its implementation is that it would reduce corruption in India. At that time it was widely believed that the biggest corruption takes place at the government run institutions, hence the role of private institutions is seen as an alternative to combat corruption. But after the liberalization policies were implemented the corruptions and scams grow even bigger. The amount of money associated with each scams accounted for more than thousand crores or lakhs of crores. Although before liberalization India saw some big corruptions, the scams in that period was very few and the money involved in it was very meager when compared to the present cases.
A few notable Scams before liberalization:
Jeep Scandal of 1948-Rs 80 lakh.
Bofors in 1985-86-Rs 64 crore.
Liberal Benefits? The opening up of the economy post-’91 boosted scam monies into the stratosphere
Total scam money (approx) in Rs crore since 1992: 73000000000000
2006 Punjab's City Centre project scam Rs 1,500 cr, Taj Corridor scam Rs 175 cr
2008 Pune billionaire Hassan Ali Khan tax default Rs 50,000 cr The Satyam scam Rs 10,000 cr Army ration pilferage scam Rs 5,000 cr State Bank of Saurashtra scam Rs 95 cr Illegal monies in Swiss banks, as estimated in 2008 Rs 71,00,000 cr
It must be noted that the above stats does not include the 2G, CWG scam, the KG basin scam and the illegal mining scam etc. If we add up the scam money involved in these scams the total scam money would grow up even bigger. Thus from the above facts we can clearly say that the root cause of the corruption lies in the liberalization policies carried out by the Government of India. The root cause of corruption is privatization policy! A classic example is the health sector. In India hospital business is seen as a great oppurtunity to earn huge amount of profits. In the name of improving the quality of health sector the GOI opened up the health sectors to the private players. But instead of improving the quality of health sector it has driven millions of poor Indian people to debt by indiscriminate collection of fees. The main slogan of private ownership is to “earn profit-no matter how they come by”. So in such a scenario no private involvement is required in key sectors such as agriculture, education, food distribution (PDS), transport, health and other social sectors. Without eliminating corporates from these key sectors we cannot eradicate corruption no matter how many laws/bills are tabled.
With most of the politicians is either coming from a business family or a corporate sponsored person, it’s up to the voters of India to prevent them from winning the elections. Without preventing the corporate-politician nexus it’s difficult to achieve a corruption free society. The Lokpal bill does not highlight the key issue of corruption involving big MNC`s, corporate sectors etc. and it remain silent on corporate scams. Even some of the English media like Times now, CNN-IBN and NDTV 24x7 that supports this Anna Team campaign is also facing serious allegations in various issues such as paid news and Redia tape case etc. When more than 50,000 trible people protested against the wrongful acquisition of their home land for a foreign company POSCO at Orissa, no one from the Anna team or the media highlighted it (this protest also happened at the same time of Anna’s so called protest!). Also till now the villagers of kudumkulam of Tamilnadu are staging a marathon protest against the building up of nuclear power plant but no one highlighted this issue. So, it’s not wise on our part to support the Anna team blindly because their true motives are even more dangerous than the corruption issue. By the time I finish writing this article a new illegal mining scam at Goa to the tune of Rs.4000 cr is being reported!!!! The so called corruption crusader ANNA HAZARE again started to give ultimatum to the union government of India to pass the lokpal bill!
Arundhati Roy on Anna Hazare's campaign: part one:
India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report. The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So it’s clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have acquired the privacy details of the internet users tointimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seeks censorship to political views, hate speech, Government Criticism etc. It is clear we the Indians don’t have freedom of speech when it comes to criticizing government in key issues.
DISCLOSURE:
Hence I hereby declare that the above article is my personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.
