Loony or Messiah?

The last few days saw the surging anti-corruption movement in India suffer an affront with Baba Ramdev’s supporters being lathi charged in Delhi. This has prompted Ramdev to declare he will form a militia of 11,000 armed soldiers. Is Baba Ramdev a guiding light to the movement or will he potentially derail this rare chance for Indians to wipe the window to the gears of Government clean?

Baba Ramdev’s wide influence in India cannot be overstated. He has for many years been a televised Yogi with an audience of millions of people. I cannot tell you how surreal it was to be sitting in Arunachal Pradesh, the remotest state of India, to be lectured on the benefits of Ramdev’s signature explosive breathing. The late tribal Minister, who was enthusiastically telling me this, was convinced this would cure his hypertension. As indeed Ramdev’s drug company insists that his herbal remedies cure HIV and cancer.

This creative entrepreneurship has spawned an empire worth many millions.

This is a break from the Swami tradition of austerity. Gandhiji on being asked why on earth he travelled third class replied because there is no fourth class. If Ramdev was asked why he was travelling in an aircraft’s first class he would reply because I couldn’t charter the whole blessed aircraft, which is exactly what he does.

But India has changed. This hedonistic behavior inspires awe not disdain. His eccentricities are swallowed whole by millions of followers.

Including his five-point plan. 100% voting. 100% Nationalistic thought. 100% boycott of foreign companies. 100% unification of the country. 100% yoga oriented nation.

These tickle me but his points that address corruption make me sit up and pay attention. The death penalty for graft convictions amongst them. This would be a sound move if it didn’t involve the impracticality of liquidating the entire political class but it is academically deeply satisfying.

The repatriation of the estimated trillion dollars in Swiss bank accounts. I have met industrialists who openly admit to having offshore accounts. It seems there is a finite amount of black money you can blow up in 5 stars and weddings attended by a populace that would qualify as a New Zealand city.

He has tempered these Swadeshi instincts with a reported purchase of a Scottish Island for several million pounds. Which is a just spare change for a man worth 1,100 crore.

But can we be too precious about the individuals who are leading the people to what we pray is a historical change? Who gives a monkey’s uncle if the diseased limb of corruption is severed by a scalpel or a garden spade?

Yes, Ramdev is the polar opposite of Hazare. Hazare is the cleaner than clean Gandhian. Not the MLA Gandhian who habitually sports a gold Mount Blanc pen in his kardi kurta pocket but the real deal. Hazare would sooner starve to death than charter an aircraft. Yes, this has gained a deep respect but not a universal respect. No contemporary politician has understood this modern voter burnout to Gandhian austerity like Mayawati.

Mayawati, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, understands down to her chopals that Gandhism isn’t moving off the shelves like it used to. She sells bling. She shamelessly flaunts her massive personal wealth like a West Coast rapper and commissions pharaoh like memorials to her living self. The dalits love it. She’s one of them and they want to be like her.

They no longer respect Gandhian ideals because the lifestyle they aspire to rid themselves of is in fact Gandhian and is practiced out of simply having no choice. They are now revolted by the hypocrisy of money grabbing gangsters shouting twisted versions of the Gandhian gospel. Ramdev is unashamedly capitalist, much like the electorate.

He still has a long journey to be an enduring national leader. For India’s villagers are uneducated and because of this they rely on a steel strong instinct for a person’s character. Will he stand up to this aggressive litmus test? Will the result be saffron or a cowardly yellow?

What is indisputable is that Ramdev is a marketable hybrid of emerging India’s worlds. The jet setting sadhu. A living metaphor of India’s half complete metamorphosis from spiritual socialism to globalisation.

He has my reluctant vote because I think he can learn to not talk of armed revolution when having fasted for three days. He has the vote too of 85 year old K.L. Gupta who made his way from Indore to Rajghat, alone and in 40 degree weather. Even with his catheter bag he slept outside on Delhi’s pavements so he could pray with Hazare and Ramdev for his beloved India.

Indian Nuclear Plants Sitting Ducks

The nuclear developments in Germany over the few days on the heels of the Fukushima crisis has grave importance for India.

The German Chancellor recently did a 180 degree turn on her decision of last year to greatly extend Germany’s 17 nuclear plant’s lifespan. With overwhelming public concern for nuclear safety after Fukushima she now has proclaimed Germany will be free of nuclear power by 2022. Indeed, currently only 4 of the 17 plants are now on line. This was monumental as her policy of only late last year snuggly embraced the burning atom as the panacea of long cold German winter power shortages.

Fukushima of course was largely influential in this about turn. The world watched with dropped jaws and crossed fingers as we watched little men in white overalls look very industrious. For the better part of I was convinced they didn’t have the foggiest idea what they were doing, or worse what was happening, but it was terribly reassuring.

What wasn’t reassuring, actually quite destabalising, was that this was happening in the most technologically advanced country in the world. The world sees the Japanese as very clever and insanely organised, if not a little humourless. If it could happen there it could certainly happen in German, indeed they even share traits.

This is why the rest of the world certainly shouldn’t have nuclear power. The rest of us are dimwitted, disorganised and always up for a laugh.

But what has not been reported widely is the findings of the safety enquiry commissioned by Merkel to assess the structural integrity of the plants. This was the decider. Regardless that the tests were conducted with 30 year old safety perimeters they have concluded that none of the 17 nuclear plants would withstand a crash by a large plane and seven would not withstand the crash of even a light aircraft!

This is terrible news for India. "You don't have to take the bang to the enemy; the bang is already there when you take out his nuclear plants." India is surrounded by some strange idiot neighbours. Pakistan to her West should have been certified years ago and China to her north is madly ambitious. Giving these countries the courtesy of constructing nuclear plants for use as bombs at their convenience is being far too hospitable.

As Matin Zuberi says,"The core of a typical nuclear plant contains about 1,000 times the radioactivity released by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A high explosive bomb used against it would acquire the attributes of a nuclear weapon without its blast effect.”

What worries me to my core is that India could suffer an incalculably catastrophic disaster not from powerful missiles from a highly militarized neighbour but from some dribbling at the mouth nutter with a Cessna or a Tata tempo laden with explosives in the car park.

With the US assassination of Osama exposing the porosity of air defense systems, with their brazen abuse of Pakistani sovereignty, India is mortally defenseless. All it would take for an Indian nuclear plant to be breached would be a Pakistani helicopter with an almost effeminate explosive. If a German plant cannot withstand the impact of a small aircraft we can assume a plant in Kalpakkam would not repel a crazed, red eyed Pakistani pilot high on patriotic tripe.

The terrorist attacks of the last few years would not have found a place in fiction. They have been too brazen and wholly implausible. Now the ridiculous notion of a terrorist attacking a nuclear plant must star highly in security agencies risk assessments not in the grubby newsprint of pulp fiction. After 26/11 any satanic scenario seems wholly real.

If India cannot protect the heart of Mumbai, as indeed the Americans could not protect her New York from a handful of murderous zombies, then what hope can we hold for a dozen nuclear plants?

How could these plants be protected from erstwhile human beings who are dedicated, increasingly sophisticated and have, as the Headley trial has evidenced, State sponsorship? It is like the Peacock desperately trying to save her white domed, delicate eggs from the village rats. The point of difference being that only one egg cracked will leave Hindustan a desolate, sterile nuclear landscape.

It is deeply ironic how delicate these plants are that harness such brutal power. But it is deeply moronic that India’s political establishment have swallowed the sales pitch of nuclear plant manufacturers with this very real risk of incineration.

Are Australian Judges Mentally Challenged?

Chief Commissioner Simon Overland’s herculean effort to initiate change in Victoria Police’s cultural outlook towards Indian students has been given a kick in the guts by Judge Gaynor.

As a County Court Judge she has given a youth a suspended sentence for participating in an intense series of attacks on Indians in Melbourne. He drove a gang of seven thugs who viciously assaulted six Indians over a four day period in 2009.

She heard testimonial evidence of the gang “Punji hunting”, a term coined by the goondas for hunting Indians. Despite this, and this is where you will think someone has spiked your chai with an Old Monk Patiala, she judged that the attacks were not racially motivated but simply they attacked Indians because they were perceived by the gang as “soft targets”.

This is not the forum but this where the reader can let loose with some chaste Punjabi abuse. I certainly did.

I believe Judge Gaynor may have got her law degree from a guy I know in Nizammudin market and then hit her head on a speeding rickshaw. I wouldn’t let this woman judge a Methodist Church cake baking competition never mind cases of grave violence.

Listen very carefully Gaynor. When a gang goes ‘Punji hunting’ it is racist. When a gang attacks people because they are perceived as “soft targets”, based on their race, it is racist!

I cannot convey the seriousness of this miscarriage of Justice. It is a near mortal blow to a hope that Police and students can work together.

I was asked to brief the Victorian Police high command, with student leader Dayajot Singh, during the massive Indian student protests in Melbourne. Chief Commissioner Overland was not what I expected. He looks like he will knock you out with the butt of his gun, shove you in a car boot and bury you under the West Gate Bridge in a shallow grave. But he proved to be highly sympathetic to the student’s plight and very international in his outlook.

In fact he became too sympathetic. On the morning he rang me to say he was calling a press conference to ensure the State Government finally accepted the fact that many of the attacks were racist, he swiftly allocated enormous resources to sensitive areas. Sunshine, with mounted police, circling helicopters and regular patrols, was reminiscent of the Indian President popping out for a curry.

All of this constructive effort was in the face of blistering personal attacks from the Indian media. But he soldiered on. He suffered terrible clashes with the State Labor Government who made billions of dollars annually from foreign students but couldn’t find it in themselves to spend a pittance on the most basic transport security or indeed to increase Police resources. Which was infuriating as the Government demanded that the Police protect those very students.

Overland’s greatest attribute has become a terrible weakness. The Chief Police commissioner has a code of honour that has no place in the seedy world of politics. During the high pressure days of the Indian student attacks it is hard to convey how intensely he was besieged by a rabid media, both Australian and Indian. That code ensured he refrained from telling the media the litany of sexual assault cases perpetrated by the student community. Recently that code has ensured he has refused to bring internal Police politics in to the gutter, putting his job in mortal danger.

This positive attitude gave impetus to policies that embraced multiculturalism despite been wholly unfairly painted as a 1970’s South African death squad commander. I will never forget his heartfelt reply to a South Indian student who, on the verge of tears, at the Flinders Street protest confessed to not knowing if Australians wanted him in the country. ‘I want you here son’.

Indeed, contrary to popular belief, Victoria police led by Overland have made a herculean effort to apprehend a great number of perpetrators of attacks on students. Despite a lingering racism that still fouls Australian society of which Police are members of.

But now this.

What cop is going to even bother to take a report from a bleeding Indian student when he knows with certainty that the Judiciary are just like them but only more so?