Opinion Questions for two Saints
In last weeks contretemps between Baba Ramdev and our honourable Members of Parliament,I found myself on the side of the MPs.
In last weeks contretemps between Baba Ramdev and our honourable Members of Parliament,I found myself on the side of the MPs. Not just because on the day I sat down to write this,I found in my mailbox a particularly nasty missive from one of Anna Hazares followers. Not just because I think Annas movement is flawed and fraudulent. Not just because I think Baba Ramdev is a gasbag but because if some of our MPs need to explain their ill-gotten wealth then so do our sainted holy men and NGOs.
Before Baba Ramdev next goes on national television to call MPs looters and murderers and before Anna next talks of corruption in the temple of democracy, it is time they answered a few questions. Let me begin with the most important one of all: where do they get their money from? Who pays for Baba Ramdevs private jets and vast estates? Who pays the travel bills of Anna and his followers? These are legitimate questions because for a yoga teacher and a rural activist,they certainly live very,very well. Anna is regularly portrayed by his followers as the embodiment of simple living and he himself takes huge pride in repeating ad nauseum that he lives in a temple and does not even have a bank account. So who is paying for his endless tours around the country? Who pays for his rallies? And,whose expensive SUVs does he travel in when he goes out in procession in Mumbai and Delhi?
Baba Ramdevs travel bills must be even higher because he regularly travels to distant lands to convert decadent Westerners to Indian ideas of yogic bliss and simple living. Who pays for these foreign tours? If yoga lessons are the foundation of his vast spiritual empire then he clearly knows something about making money that the Indian government does not. If the Finance Minister does not move from North Block to that magnificent mansion on Raisina Hill,may I recommend that he hire Baba Ramdev as his economic advisor. This is not as facetious a remark as you may think if you consider that this Finance Minister has presided over the astonishing,and perhaps terminal,decline of the Indian economy. Baba Ramdev may be able to show him how to revive the growth rate without needing any capital to get this going.
He may even be able to show him how black money can become pure as Gangajal (used to be) simply by hiring his services. The pivot of Baba Ramdevs campaign against corruption is his claim that Rs 400 lakh crore has been stashed abroad by corrupt Indian businessmen and politicians in secret bank accounts. If this money is brought back,he says,then every Indian will be rich and the rupee will become the strongest currency in the world. You and I know that this is complete rubbish and,if as nothing else,then as an economist Baba Ramdev is a charlatan but that is not my point.
What I believe is much more important is to find out whether the money that our most famous yoga guru gets from his alleged followers is white or black? If the rich men who finance his jet-setting life style really have only white money then there are even stronger reasons for the Finance Minister to appoint him as his Chief Economic Advisor. He must learn their secrets.
The Finance Minister is a socialist to the core. The last time he occupied the hot seat in North Block was when Indira Gandhi was prime minister and taxes in those days for rich Indians could be as high as 97 per cent. I personally know some very upright businessmen who admit that in those socialist times they sometimes had to borrow money to pay their taxes. Whether this be true or not,it is completely true that
Mrs Gandhis impossible tax regimes bred Indias black economy. So if Baba Ramdevs financers produce for their guru only white money then either there is more magic in his yoga practices than he has so far revealed or he needs to be careful before he next charges Parliament with being a den of thieves and murderers.
What neither Anna Hazare nor Baba Ramdev appears to have understood is that the first principle of parliamentary democracy is that you need to be elected. And,once you get elected,you should be allowed to sit undisturbed in a legislative assembly for five years. At the end of these five years, if your constituents think that you are in fact a criminal and not an upstanding representative of the people then they have the right
to vote you out. This is what makes Parliament the highest temple of democracy. Not the quality of our MPs. When will Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare discover this?
Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ Tavleen_Singh
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