Pakorakorner | A personal portal with a strong Asian Indian flavor on a whole range of topics.

As the year draws to a close, one can't help but wonder what a phenomenal year this has been for democracy. Starting with Tunisia, the clarion call for the right to self-determination and democracy has spread across the Middle East and north Africa and continues to transform the region for good. Syria is fast headed to the brink, while Saudi Arabia and the rest are probably terrified as to when these mass movements are going confront them as well. While ...

The last couple of weeks have witnessed a pitched battle between seasoned, time-tested, political operatives in the ruling party and the relative novices of Team Anna. It was like Dhoni's boys belting the English on slow turning Indian wickets. The harder Team Anna tried to defend itself, the stronger the Congress party came at them. The attack has been relentless, Kiran Bedi's travel-gate, Kejriwal's employer dues, a cameo by a previously embarrassed Swami who switched sides (or did he need ...

There has been some discussion lately about excluding the lower bureaucracy from the Lokpal. One of the main reasons being bandied about is that the Lokpal will be overloaded should it include the lower bureaucracy, and it will fail as a result of this overload. There are two sides to this issue -- the politics and the feasibility. Let us first look at the politics behind this move. The government, or for that matter, most political parties, are keen on ...

A number of people have expressed their discomfort with Team Anna’s involvement in the Hisar by-election. Some have suggested that the team should continue to remain apolitical. It is widely believed that being apolitical and non-partisan is what earned Team Anna its lion share of support and goodwill among the people. So it is natural to infer that should Team Anna get involved in elections, it might lose some of the mass appeal that it has garnered over the last ...

I had the privilege of recently participating in a discussion co-organized by the American Leadership Forum (ALF) and the Indians for Collective Action (ICA). The topic of the discussion was "Celebrating Democracy and People Power" with special reference to the rise of the anti-corruption movement in India and the "Occupy Wall Street" movement in the US. One of the aspects that was discussed was the role of the media in the success of the movement in India. There is little ...

The ruling UPA has more than received its share of brickbats for the complete lack of leadership over the last several months. The dismal handling of the various scams culminating in the inept response to the anti-corruption struggle, championed by Team Anna, has been etched permanently in the UPA-II's history. Unable to effectively handle its own dreadful corruption woes, the UPA has unleashed the CBI on its enemies, the Reddy brothers of Karnataka and Jagan Reddy of Andhra being the ...

Shehla Masood, the RTI activist from Madhya Pradesh who was shot and killed recently, joined the unfortunate list of seventeen other known cases of RTI activists who have suffered the same fate over the last couple of years. According to a close associate of Shehla, she filed more than one thousand RTI applications in diverse areas ranging from the judiciary, the tendering process, the enforcement of Wildlife and Forest laws, heritage conservation, the lavish spending of public money, and human ...

The UPA, after having yielded the lead to Team Anna in the first innings, is now back, seething with vengeance, in the second innings. Instead of gathering the scraps and learning from the first innings debacle, the UPA seems to be attempting the same tried- and-failed strategies. A deliberate attempt to malign Team Anna is clearly underway. Privilege notices have been issued to Team Anna for derogatory remarks about parliamentarians. Meanwhile, the Income Tax (IT) department has dusted its rule book ...

In the aftermath of the recent anti-corruption surge, an important bill that is in the works, the Sports Development Bill, is simply not getting the attention it deserves. This bill has everything to do with corruption and the unholy nexus between politics and big business. Interestingly this time around, the crusader who is on a war-footing to fix sports administration in the country is Union Minister of Sports, Ajay Maken. His opposition is the who-is-who of the country’s business and ...

The anti-corruption drama has now moved to the next stage. At the moment, all sides seem to be claiming victory. As one observes the developments over the last few days a few fundamental questions repeatedly come to mind. Who exactly is running this country today? How are decisions taken? What exactly is the Congress' real stand on Lokpal? Let us take a quick look at the sequence of events.  First, the UPA sent its messengers to meet with Team Anna. One ...