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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  Blogs | The guru of protest
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Blogs | The guru of protest

Ramdev's immense empire is not built only on spiritual aura but on the fact that the country has allowed him and given him opportunities

A file photo of Baba Ramdev. Photo: Hindustan TimesPremium
A file photo of Baba Ramdev. Photo: Hindustan Times

Baba Ramdev is a man in a hurry. The 41-year-old, born as Ramkrishna Yadav in Haryana, has captured the attention of millions of Indians ever since 2003 when his yoga programmes on Aastha TV became a rage. Since then he has not only become the face of Indian yoga, but also the head of a vast corporate empire built through various trusts which manufacture and sell ayurvedic products. His flagship project Patanjali Yogpeeth is a huge complex built on twenty acres of land boasting of a research centre, herbal garden, ayurvedic hospital, residential services and another larger second phase which has air conditioned auditoriums, apartments, food courts and more. Patanjali Yogpeeth’s website gives details besides claiming that 4 billion people across the globe watch Baba’s yoga programmes – not surprising since Baba’s profile picture on the website shows him with two gigantic microphones addressing multitudes of people. His trust is also the proud owner of a Scottish island bought from the donations of a UK-based Indian couple. This is all exemplary achievement in so short a time based upon seemingly sound knowledge of ancient yoga. This is not a man therefore who should be bristling with rage and fury against the state. Clearly Baba’s immense empire is not built only on good wishes and spiritual aura but on the fact that this country and whatever fuel it runs on has allowed him and given him opportunities and options to rise to such levels of popularity and personal achievement. This is entrepreneurship clearly having succeeded hugely. The entrepreneur being a “sanyasi" and a “yogi" who has technically renounced worldly pleasures makes his story even more engaging.

Not surprisingly what follows (as does mostly in such cases of early success) is political posturing and aspiration for public life – in the case of Baba it is doled out with full pepper and spice. Sitting atop a bus in Delhi with scores of people congregated for his protest fast, playing hide and seek with the police disguising himself as a woman, leaning towards the media cameras for the best angles and apparently calling up opposition leaders to share the stage with him in his “apolitical" tirade. Having taken the baton of protest from Team Anna, Baba could have almost achieved what Team Anna had started but which lost its way in a quagmire of shrill posturing. Unfortunately Baba Ramdev’s protest is lined with serious hypocrisy. While trying to brand his movement as apolitical, he does not flinch before making statements like: “Not a single Congress candidate should get elected in the next Lok Sabha elections. The Congress has proved to be the most corrupt political party. It is not as if the other side is squeaky clean but they have convinced me that they will mend their ways" and smilingly shares the dais with a bevy of opposition leaders. “Convinced me that they will mend their ways" – it is indeed hilarious that national level protests are being based upon such frivolous discourse and rhetoric. I do not think any reasonable person in this country would believe that all those with the Congress are necessarily corrupt and all those with other parties are innocent lambs who have been temporarily shepherded by circumstances but have now scrubbed their conscience clean.

Corruption is endemic in our system and our national psyche. Corruption has no faith, religion, caste, creed, cause or politics. It is merely a product of human greed catalyzed by the economics of demand and supply. The worry with the kind of diatribe that Baba is doling out is that it makes his whole protest a bit of a joke and self defeating - and while it may create the initial euphoria it will end up using valuable energy of the masses for giving a fillip only to Baba’s political ambitions. The protest may have raised pertinent issues, but the “tamasha" will give enough ammo for all discussion to be distracted by the antics of the messenger and lose the focus of the message.

For the moment therefore let’s keep the personality and drama of Baba aside and look at the “big audacious hairy goals" (to use corporate jargon) that the protest has propelled upfront. Baba talks of getting black money back into India as the core of his current protest. Unconfirmed reports do say that about US$ 1.4 trillion is stashed away in foreign banks and tax havens while Government sources once gave a statement that the estimate is about US$ 500 billion. The issue of repatriation of black money has therefore consumed popular sentiment recently. Naturally so – for the impoverished masses or the middle class struggling to pay their EMIs or spending a lifetime trying to increase their quality of life by half a notch, the imagery and hope of oceans of cash and money being suddenly available to the country and then being applied for pulling out everyone from their state of poverty, is hugely attractive. That this is not being achieved tomorrow or day after or even the week later is the abject failure of the Government, is also a reasonable deduction.

But have we really asked the right questions - how is all this achievable? Is it really achievable? Are we chasing a chimera? Is there a time frame that even the best-intentioned Government may need for this? Have we debated about and configured smaller steps towards achieving such goals and objectives? Are we in the mood for even listening to reactions and responses from the Government and see where the difficulties lie? Or is our only objective to make sure we topple one corrupt government and replace them with another devil? If the protestor on the street knows only to shout and scream slogans, we the so-called intelligentsia ought to be busy foraging for data and detail. Frustratingly, that is the part which goes missing in our discourse.

The Ministry of Finance came up with the White Paper on Black Money in May 2012, which is worth a read for anyone interested in scraping for details as to the complexity of this task. Pranab Mukherjee, now President of India and the then Finance Minister in his foreword states: “There is no doubt that manifestation of black money in social, economic and political space of our lives has a debilitating effect on the institutions of governance and conduct of public policy in the country. Governance failure and corruption in the system affect the poor disproportionately. The success of an inclusive development strategy critically depends on the capacity of our society to root out the evil of corruption and black money from its very foundations."

It is not difficult for anyone remotely familiar with international affairs or law to figure out that repatriation of monies in another jurisdiction can only be achieved through a painstaking unravelling of a complex maze of bilateral treaties, tax laws, international protocol and individual rights of confidentiality. It’s not a quick colourful trapeze act. While the White Paper provides an informative platform to understand what the problem is and what needs to be done, it would serve the Government well to show, discuss, express and exhibit concrete steps required to achieve such objectives. While intentions can always be subjected to suspicion, hard positive actions and decisions will speak for themselves.

Recent protests including that of Baba Ramdev may be imperfect in their manner, their intention and even maybe their purpose but in the process they have thrown at us some serious Play Doh to mould. At 65, we should get this right.

Anish Dayal is an advocate at the Supreme Court. An alumnus of Cambridge University, he works closely on policy and legislation, media, entertainment and sports law

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Published: 16 Aug 2012, 12:53 PM IST
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