Gangs of Wasseypur 3

By Manuwant Choudhary

The film Gangs of Wasseypur is no exaggeration. Its real.

Ofcourse, when you live in a dark corner of India you may think its all normal.

I watched the two part film by Anurag Kashyap and chose to watch in Bihar....to get the full audience ambience as well.

Gangs of Wasseypur in Delhi or anywhere else will not be the same.

I have been to Dhanbad, India's coal belt,  several times as a reporter.

The first time was to cover Jharia - an entire town whose belly is on fire.

I met an expert and he explained how the sand mafia were responsible for the fire...the sand tunnels had never been filled but the money pocketed !

The fire rages wild and homes collapse suddenly as the ground beneath cave in.

You can wear a white shirt in the morning and in an hour it will grey with coal soot.

I have also covered mining tragedies where several miners lose their lives being trapped in the mines.

But on my journeys I also noticed that in Jharkhand if you take any inner road you will come across a mine and you will also see people carrying coal from them on bicycles.

These are the thousands of open cast  illegal mines - abandoned by the Indian government after they nationalised the coal sector.

Coal India chose to mine only the profitable mines.

So essentially its the mafia and maoists who took charge of the illegal mines and use this as an economic base to wage wars against India.

Had India's mining sector not been nationalised even smaller mines would have private owners who would pay royalty to the government.

I liked Gangs of Wasseypur for its originality and also for showing the violence as it is.

The politician, the police and the courts.

The wars.

Someone asked me the other day if India had a future?

And I said  No.

They looked back at me sad.

Gangs of Wasseypur 3 is being played out in New Delhi.

The Coalgate scam.

Even after nationalisation how top industries can get a coal block allotted without an auction.

I am not an Anna team member and so don't carry oversized Indian flags on my shoulders but seeing all  the drama and the levels to which we as a people have gone down, I am only being honest.

India needs to be saved.

Pussy Riot & Holy Shit

Pray why should this girl be sent to prison...look at South Africa...remember Desmond Tutu...its the church that has often been at the forefront of political revolutions and change...but not in Russia....Courage to Nadezha and her pussy rioteers...this is what she told the court but she has been sent  to prison.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova: “I was outraged at the Patriarch saying that ‘Putin has fixed the crookedness of history.’ The phrase resembles what [Deputy PM Vladislav] Surkov or [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov said about Putin’s power being God-given. I maintain that our motivation was political. The prosecution and the court ignore it, trying to interpret our actions as motivated by religious hatred and hostility. We haven’t done anything aggressive or violent, and we haven’t insulted either God or religion. The phrase ‘holy shit’ means that there is something very unpleasant happening, which is how we feel about what’s going on in our country.”

Courtesy: RT.

Where The Mind Is With Fear

By Manuwant Choudhary

Rejecting the caste census as I wrote in my last blog today I continue to fear for India.

Even as I watch the thousands of people from the north-east flee Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai...all trains in India it seems head towards Assam.

I cried.

Even as the violence continues in Kokrajhar in Assam where the helpless are targetted by an unforgiving underground Bodo militants.

I cried.

I watch a helpless Prime Minister (elected to Rajya Sabha from Assam) make feeble assurances..

I cried.

Chief Ministers asking people to return..

But the tv footage shows people are ready to believe the rumours and not the politicians they elect.

So I fear for India.

I do not sit in India's parliament because liberals are barred by law to even contest elections.

But it hurts to see our MPs crack jokes while Indians flee in fear.

I cried.

I also cried because I see a helpless parliament not quite knowing how to deal with the situtation...and instead blame twitter and facebook...just they did the foreign hand in the sixties and seventies.

I have cried before too when MNS and Shiv Sena would attack Biharis.

But as an Indian and a journalist I have always fought back and fought back hard.

I have got the Shiv Sena president in Bihar to condemn his own leader Bal Thackeray.

And the violence stopped.

But the Bodos how do you deal with them....when they attacked Biharis in Assam and Biharis who had never even been born in Bihar or seen Bihar began pouring into Patna, I cried.

It was late 10.30 pm and I did what few would have thought of...I went to meet an old source of mine.

Sitting in a tin shed in Patna in his simple kurta pyajama he was the general secretary of the truckers union of Bihar.

He was surprised to see me so late and asked me what he could do for me.

I told him if he could stop all trucks going to Assam in order to put pressure on the Bodos to stop the violence and also on the Assam government to provide security to all Biharis living there.

He agreed and gave me his interview calling all trucks to stop going to Assam - an economic blockade till all violence stopped.

Dalkhola in Bihar is a vantage point from where all trucks pass...and as we aired his interview on national Tv...trucks blocked Dalkhola completely.

And as the supplies stopped Assam's chief minister was compelled to get serious....the violence pettered out as well.

India deserves better politics and politicians. Not the ones we have now based on caste reservations, religious considerations and netas who are really corporate agents stealing  farmers lands.

India needs a liberal alternative - Vikalp. (and not the Anna way).

MOVE

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

India's Casteist Government

By Manuwant Choudhary

Two men on a bike came to my home but I did not know them at all. When I asked them who they were they told me the government of India had sent them to do a Census.

But I told them that the Census is done once in ten years and only two years ago a school teacher had met me and asked me all sorts of questions, including if my loo had marble or tiles !

The Census is more like an inquisition of the Income Tax Department.

But the two men told me that this Census is different.

I asked them how.

And they replied, "Please tell us your caste !"

I told them to get lost.

I also told them to go tell the District Magistrate that a citizen has rejected the Caste Census and he is free to take whatever legal action he wants.

But then I asked them to wait..."Can you tell me the caste of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh first? Or better still Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow and President of the ruling Congress Party.

Shobha De wrote this Sunday how she felt naked replying to Nandan Nilekani's questionaire for the ID card where they have a column for Male, Female and Transgender!

Thats exactly how I felt today and angrier.

There has never been a caste census since India's freedom and the British conducted one in 1931 as a part of their policy of Divide & Rule. Remember, the British for all their reformist zeal they never abolished untouchability.

The democracy they introduced to India was also based on such divisions..there were Hindu and Moslem constituencies, and even economic barriers to contest elections.

Todays democracy continues to divide India.

I was watching the parliaments TV coverage and L.K. Advani's speach calling the current UPA government `illegitimate'.

And an angry Sonia Gandhi called upon her MPs to, "Shout, shout."

What both Advani and Sonia missed is that Indian democracy is itelf illegitimate as liberals are not allowed to contest elections or register a liberal political party - banned by law.

And Sonia Gandhi did not realise what will happen when India shouts. Not fasts.

Touch My Feet President

By Manuwant Choudhary

This man Pranab Mukherjee should have been India's Prime Minister.

But the Congress Party does not trust him fully so, while deserving, he gets to become India's first citizen - The President, if elected.

And even for this he is internally thanking Bengal's chief minister Mamata Banerjee who raised the war cry to re-instal Dr. APJ Kalam, India's missile man, as President.

Kalam is a nice guy and the children love him but that does not mean he should be President for Life !

Ultimately, whether its Bihar or the United States ..its always caste that wins in a democracy.

How can Mamata oppose a Bengali?

I have never met Pranab Da because Pranab Babu spends most of his time in New Delhi and he has perhaps had a rather long innings touching the feet of the Congress High Command.

But he has not always fallen in line and for this he has also paid a price.

So its not surprising as a Member of Parliament he loves going back to his constituency West Bengal.

The other day after his candidature was announced he returned to Birbhum and as people came up to meet him Pranab Da forcefully pushed the heads of young boys to touch his feet.

But while India's political fraternity is a divided house they all love Pranab Mukherjee.

And while some said that he is hardly an economist to become India's Prime Minister. It would be fair to say `Andha mein Kaana Raja' (in a land of the blind, the one-eye becomes King')

India's economist Prime Minister is not doing any better.

But Pranab Da is happy and his rosogulla smile just doesn't seem to go away.

India respects him for the way he handled the aftermath of the 26-11 attacks on Bombay.

And the Pakistani press showered praises on him for his no-nonsense, straightforward approach in dealing with Pakistan.

Pranab Babu is the right man to build relations with Pakistan.

As for protecting India's constitution, it will still be a socialist constitution that he will protect, where liberal parties are not allowed by law to contest elections.

Yet, it will be perhaps the last time a dhoti-clad person will live in the Presidential Palace.

A Burning Mantralaya & Socialism

By Manuwant Choudhary

Images of a burning Mantralaya in Mumbai reminded me of my days as a cub reporter with The Afternoon Despatch & Courier.

But I was never  a Mantralaya Correspondent.

I remember telling my  editor Behram Contractor that I do not want to be  a Mantralaya Correspondent and he replied emphatically that even he did not want me to be that....

A Mantralaya Correspondent meant sitting in chambers of various ministers and spending the day over tea and coffee and by evening the ministers PA would give a hand-out and the journo would return to the desk and hammer a story out of nothing...the job done...and go home.

Next day the minister would be happy and so more samosas and more chais.

But as I write this and watch TV news I think more of us have actually become Mantralaya Correspondents.

National TV covers the fire saying how important documents some related to famous scams have been destroyed.

Rest assured the Mantralaya fire hasn't destroyed anything worthwhile..maybe just handouts and worm eaten files!

I have been there a few time and actually there is nothing in the Mantralaya.

And the lunchtime fire was way off the mark...killing three innocent persons.

No politician was even hurt.

As for corruption its spread across Mumbai.

I remember once Shiela Barse a firebrand journalist of Indian Express gave me a file and told me to have a look how ordinary hardworking and honest people contribute to Black money. (Not the few whom Baba Ramdev attacks) but literally everybody.

Anyone who buys an apartment in Mumbai has to pay in black !

And its one industrialist Ratan Tata who connects Mumbai to Kolkata where the other BIG story is making NEWS.

The Kolkata High Court has over-ruled an earlier High Court order and held Mamata Banerjee's decision to hand farms back to farmers at Singur as unconstitutional.

And Ratan Tata is mighty pleased...

But lets look at the issue more closely.

Its like saying the government can take over AIR India from the Tata's but cannot return it to them.

Socialism has always been about robbing Paul to pay Peter but the current judgement shows we have completely destroyed our constitution.

Forget the Supreme Court. India now needs a new constitution one that will guarantee property rights to all Indians.