Tags:
Journalism of Courage
8220;EASY come, Easy go,8221; the Swamy was muttering imprecations. Chandramouliswamy, to give the full rendering, Chandra to some, Swamy to others and Chandraswamy to his bridge pals, was red in the face. Breathing morality to his gills. I sidled up to him. After a decent pause, I tried to find out what it was that had upset the swamy.
8220;It is all because of people like you. You take all this. For half a century the system has worked. What8217;s wrong with it? Didn8217;t we get you freedom? Some of us went to jail, maybe for blackmarketeering, but then that was our way of registering our satyagraha against the feringhee. Didn8217;t Valmiki the bandit extraordinaire write the Ramayana? The robber barons made King John agree to the the Magna Carta, by which our founding fathers swear.8221;
The Easy8217;s directive 8212; I realised with a start that the swamy was referring to the Election Commission 8212; cuts at the fundamental right to pursue the chosen profession. Lord Krishna would be barred from Parliament for stealing butter and people8217;s hearts. Where would the Yadavs be if their forbear himself were to be disqualified? The shepherd, having got a bounty of milk with that fodder on the house and converted it to cream and rabri, where would he go, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences? Of what use is fodder if one can8217;t savour Turkish delights? Can you have fodder without urea? Nor can one have misri or kesri without sugar.
8220;Go tell the Easy saabs all this.8221; There have been several parliaments in history. For instance, the Parliament of Religions. The law recognises defection. An exclusive Parliament for ourselves is merely an extension of this principle. The parallel economy needs representation. It is not secession. We will have our own Sabha. For starters, it could be located at Tihar. It is convenient, as several of us have a permanent address there. Cabinet papers and decisions, confidential files, Parliamentary agendas, committee papers are all delivered there. Civil servants meet us there, without the one knowing that the other had already been there.
Veerappan would take care of the furniture, then, I wondered. He exploded at my ignorance. 8220;When will you grow up? It would be Veerappan8217;s Cabinet. He would be in charge of Forests and Environment. Phoolan Devi would be the Home Minister. Dawood would be given the Finance portfolio. He has hands-on experience in revenue, in particular customs and foreign exchange. He may not be educated at Harvard but he is an original thinker. The brain behind the Bombay blasts would by virtue of functional experience be given Defence. It would be a government of trust.8221;
To my arched eyebrow, the swamy said: 8220;You sab jantawallahs and pseudo angrezes know it better as hawala. Jain would head the Ministry of Hawala Prohibition.8221; Seeing my wonderment he clarified: 8220;Soda will be banned. Everything will be neat and on the rocks. Colas will be banned. By George, the multis will be down on their knees.8221;
8220;We represent the majority and yet injustice has been done us all these years,8221; he continued. 8220;Occasionally, we did smuggle through some legislation like VDIS and got TADA and COFEPOSA struck down as unconstitutional.8221; But the swamy ran out of time for fulminations. It was, instead, time to do something constructive. He was on his way to meet like-minded souls, to help redraft the Constitution.
