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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 09, 2012 AT 23:47 IST
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Edited At: Sep 09, 2012 23:47 IST
Brief facts of the case
- Aseem Trivedi, a Kanpur-based cartoonist, participated in, and displayed some cartoons at an Anna Hazare Jan Lok Pal rally held in December last year at the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai
- Soon thereafter his website cartoonsagainstcorruption, was suspended by web company Big Rock after a notice from the cyber wing of Mumbai police
- Trivedi set up a Facebook page and also put up those cartoons at Google's blogspot.com, knowing Google's anti-censorship stance. The government would clearly find it more difficult to persuade Google to take off these cartoons unlike “Big Rock,” which hosted his suspended site.
- A member of Republican Party of India, Amit Katarnayea filed a complaint against Trivedi
- In January, a case of sedition (under IPC section 124A) was filed against him at the Beed district court.
- In another case before the Bombay HC, Trivedi was charged with insulting national symbols, under Prevention of Insults of National Honour Act, 1971.
- The other charge against him of course was violation of section 66A of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008
- A team of Mumbai Police was sent to Kanpur on August 30 with non-bailable warrants, but by then Trivedi had moved to Delhi from where he contacted the BKC police station who asked him to reach Mumbai on his own
- He surrended on Sept 8 night and was taken into custody.
- Activist Shivam Vij reported: Trivedi has for the moment refused to hire a lawyer and does not intend to apply for bail: "I want to first see how a British-era law like sedition is going to be applied against a cartoonist in free India."
- Today, Sept 9, he was remanded to police custody till September 16 by a local court in Bandra
- Outside the court, a defiant Trivedi said, "If telling the truth makes me a traitor then I am one. Even Mahatma Gandi was called traitor and if I am booked under sedition for doing service to the nation then I will continue to do so."
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 09, 2012 AT 23:47 IST, Edited At: Sep 09, 2012 23:47 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 06, 2012 AT 23:39 IST
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Edited At: Sep 06, 2012 23:39 IST
Coincidentally, two independent pieces make substantially the same point: that things may not be as bad as they might seem. The poison coming out is a form of cleansing, not a sign of greater disease, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express:
...just in the last week, three central elements of India’s dirty political economy, which at first sight might seem unconnected, have arguably reached a new inflection point. Our political economy was founded on state complicity in communalism, a disregard of law and regulation by big companies, and the plunder of natural resources. But there is a distinct possibility that things may never be the same again..
The Naroda Patiya judgment was significant for several reasons. It has, for the first time, convicted senior politicians for complicity in a riot. This will send out a powerful message. As many people have pointed out, if such convictions had been achieved in the case of the1984 riots, our history would have been different...
Though seemingly unrelated, the Supreme Court’s historic ruling in the Sahara case, ordering an unprecedented Rs 17,400 crore to be returned to investors, is also part of the maturation of our system. This is the first time a really big fish has been hauled up for what, based on the court judgments, seem egregious violations. This judgment will empower regulatory institutions like Sebi, whose effectiveness has been undercut in the past by the uncertain course of the law...
Despite vicious attacks on the institution of the CAG and the controversy over numbers, there is now one incontrovertible fact. No state will, any longer, be able to dispose of mines in the recklessly casual way that they did in the past. You can actually begin something of a clean-up of this sector...
The BJP is overdoing its blockade of Parliament. But the government went out of its way to wreck the key institutional device for public reason — the committee system...
An editorial in the Business Standard makes the same point:
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 06, 2012 AT 23:39 IST, Edited At: Sep 06, 2012 23:39 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Apr 25, 2012 AT 23:49 IST
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Edited At: Apr 25, 2012 23:49 IST
April 2012 marks the 25 anniversary of the Bofors-India media revelations, which began on April 16, 1987 with revelations on Swedish state radio. Sten Lindstrom, the former head of Swedish police who led the investigations into the Bofors-India gun deal, reveals himself as the Swedish Deep Throat, and explains why he chose to turn whistleblower, to former Indian journalist Chitra Subramaniam-Duella, in an interview for the Hoot, where he goes on to say, inter alia:
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Apr 25, 2012 AT 23:49 IST, Edited At: Apr 25, 2012 23:49 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Apr 04, 2012 AT 20:53 IST
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Edited At: Apr 05, 2012 01:11 IST
On March 13, rediff.com carried what seemed then to have been an innocuous story,India's elite paratroopers meet their match in fog, traffic during mockup, which talked about the elite Parachute Brigade of the Indian army, based in Agra playing out two different scenarios depicting " the need for a quick operation almost akin to the situations that obtained in Maldives last month and the consequences of the mutiny by the Bangladesh Rifles (now Border Guards, Bangladesh) two years ago:
During the exercise, elements of the brigade travelled by road from Agra to Delhi to link up with the Indian Air Force base at Hindon on the outskirts of the capital, since the recently acquired medium lift transport aircraft, the C-130 Js are stationed there.
Army itself held an official briefing on the subject two days after that—on March 15, 2012—in Agra.
***
But the innocuous story (along with another instance of troop movements towards Delhi on the same day) found itself featuring in a three-deck, four-byline, eight-column banner headline by the Indian Express today— The January night Raisina Hill was spooked: Two key Army units moved towards Delhi without notifying Govt— to a full front-page story that was authored by none other than the paper’s editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta, jointly with Ritu Sarin, Pranab Dhal Samanta and Ajmer Singh, which, inter alia, also went on to state:
Nobody is using the “C” word to imply anything other than “curious”. All else is considered an impossibility.
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POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Apr 04, 2012 AT 20:53 IST, Edited At: Apr 05, 2012 01:11 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Mar 28, 2012 AT 22:54 IST
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Edited At: Mar 28, 2012 22:54 IST
It started with an interview to the Hindu, published on March 26, 2012, with Army Chief, General V.K. Singh alleging he was offered a bribe of Rs. 14 crore and that he had told the defence ministry about it:
The General said the lobbyist offered him the bribe in order to have a tranche of 600 sub-standard vehicles of a particular make cleared for purchase. He said the vehicles, 7,000 of which were already in use in the Army, had been sold over the years at exorbitant prices with no questions asked. He said there was no proper facility where they could be serviced and maintained and yet they continued to be sold to the Army: “Just imagine, one of these men had the gumption to walk up to me and tell me that if I cleared the tranche, he would give me Rs. 14 crore. He was offering a bribe to me, to the Army Chief. He told me that people had taken money before me and they will take money after me.”
The Army chief said the brazenness of the act shocked him out of his wits. “I was shocked. If somebody comes and tells you, you will get so much, what can you do?” He said the man had recently retired from the Army, indicating how deeply entrenched the problem was.
The General said he went straight to Mr. Antony and reported the matter. “I told him, if you think I'm a misfit, I will walk out.” ...
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Mar 28, 2012 AT 22:54 IST, Edited At: Mar 28, 2012 22:54 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Mar 22, 2012 AT 23:58 IST
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Edited At: Mar 22, 2012 23:58 IST
In response to the Times of India story of March 22, 2012, titled CAG: Govt lost Rs 10.7 lakh crore by not auctioning coal blocks, which stated that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had estimated in its 110-page draft report that the coal ministry's decision to award 155 coal acreages without competitive bidding had led to "undue benefits" of Rs 10.67 lakh crore to private and public firms, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) today issued a press release saying:
CAG writes to PM clarifying the coal block issue
With reference to the lead story published in the Times of India today titled “Government lost Rs 10.7 lakh cr by not auctioning coal blocks: CAG”, the Prime Minister has received a letter from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India at 1:30 pm today.
Among other things, the letter clarifies that:
“In the extant case the details being brought out were observations which are under discussion at a very preliminary stage and do not even constitute our pre-final draft and hence are exceedingly misleading. … Pursuant to clarification provided by the Ministry in exit conferences held on 9.02.2012 and 9.03.2012, we have changed our thinking …. In fact it is not even our case that the unintended benefit to the allocatee is an equivalent loss to the exchequer. The leak of the initial draft causes great embarrassment as the Audit Report is still under preparation. Such leakage causes very deep anguish.”
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Mar 22, 2012 AT 23:58 IST, Edited At: Mar 22, 2012 23:58 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Feb 20, 2012 AT 16:13 IST
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Edited At: Feb 20, 2012 16:13 IST
S.L. Rao in the Telegraph:
Many people have written off the Anna Hazare movement against corruption. They are blind to the effects already visible in orders, policies and procedures. Hazare brought together the widespread disgust against the pervading corruption in our society and the apparent freedom from punishment of those identified as culpable. All political parties and the government combined in a coordinated way to discredit ‘Team Anna’ and to diminish his influence. Public disgust and anger remain and will express itself in votes cast at elections, and also when a new movement is launched by a more sophisticated public leader, who will not express himself in the crude way that Hazare frequently did. Such a movement will make full use of the internet and the social media, having learnt from the viral spread of the song, “Why this Kolaveri di”.
Dramatic changes have already occurred in a number of areas. They will make things more difficult for the corrupt minister and bureaucrat as well as for the incompetent bureaucrat.
Read the full article at the Telegraph: Fruits of Public Anger
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Feb 20, 2012 AT 16:13 IST, Edited At: Feb 20, 2012 16:13 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Dec 15, 2011 AT 02:46 IST
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Edited At: Dec 15, 2011 02:46 IST
Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express says our debates are about scoring points, not in making progress:
The government believes it is more important to be seen to be doing things than to be doing them well. The proposed food security legislation is another example of this tendency. The legislation exemplifies the self-defeating obduracy of bureaucratic modes of thinking. But the debate around it also exemplifies a failure of intellectual argument in India. Our debates often have this character. First, we spend a lot more time arguing about the destination than necessary. It is absolutely unconscionable that the need for a credible food security system still needs to be argued. Then we have a slightly more productive discussion about the route to get there. Some will argue that the Public Distribution System, though currently broken, can be fixed. Others will argue we need to replace food with cash. Sometimes these debates are in good faith. But sometimes in these debates, as in identity politics, belief chases evidence, not the other way round. But once we have, for good or for ill, chosen a route, we stop caring whether we will drive well enough to get to the destination. Or, worse still, we will actively subvert whatever route has been chosen. Often this is because each side can say, “I told you PDS won’t work.” Or, “I told you private provisioning won’t work.” We make sure that the conditions that might make the chosen architecture work do not obtain.
Read on at the Indian Express: Food Insecurity Bill
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POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Dec 15, 2011 AT 02:46 IST, Edited At: Dec 15, 2011 02:46 IST
POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Oct 27, 2011 AT 23:42 IST
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Edited At: Oct 27, 2011 23:42 IST
Ashok Sanjay Guha in the Telegraph:
Selling an asset at a rate far below the market price has two sets of consequences. First, it creates an incentive for the first buyer to resell, directly or in a roundabout fashion, as soon as it is possible to pocket the enormous margin between his purchase price and the market price. Second, the possibility of such enormous profit generates an excess demand for the asset in the first round: potential buyers have, in consequence, an overwhelming incentive to offer bribes to the arbiters of the sale process so as to influence the allocation of licences in their own favour. These are not mere hypothetical possibilities. They can be predicted with perfect certainty as the inevitable outcomes of pricing below the market rate.
...When they decided on the 2G policy, were the prime minister and the finance minister totally oblivious of the logical implications? Had Manmohan Singh left his knowledge of economics behind at Oxford or at the Delhi School? Had Chidambaram forgotten his experience of corporate management and law? Having given their blessings to the sale of a scarce resource far below market price, was it not incumbent on them to exercise the strictest vigilance so as to avert the predictable consequences — bribery and loot? Instead, Singh instructed his officers to keep themselves ‘at arm’s length’ from the goings-on in the telecom department. Was this complicity or child-like innocence? I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
Read on at the Telegraph: A Saga of Personal Gains
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POSTED BY Sundeep
ON Oct 27, 2011 AT 23:42 IST, Edited At: Oct 27, 2011 23:42 IST
POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 26, 2011 AT 06:43 IST
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Edited At: Sep 26, 2011 06:43 IST
Manoj Mitta in the TOI:
In the span of a fortnight, the Supreme Court has come up with conflicting approaches to corruption and communal violence. While it has been goading the CBI to spare none of the culprits in the 2G scam, the apex court showed more concern about ensuring fair trial than about making the Modi regime accountable for the Gujarat carnage. The activist zeal involved in transgressing the lakshman rekha to kill Ravan, much as it is evident in the corruption case, is conspicuously absent in the communal violence case.
The UPA government tried to scuttle the Supreme Court’s monitoring of the 2G probe by citing, ironically enough, the precedent set in the Modi case. The two-judge bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi, however, clarified that it would not allow the lakshman rekha to come in the way of monitoring the remaining aspects of investigation and insulating the trial from extraneous pressures. In one such bona fide transgression of the lakshman rekha, the Singhvi bench attacked the covert attempt to undermine the trial by bringing in the telecom regulatory authority’s assessment of a zero loss in the spectrum allocation.
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POSTED BY Buzz
ON Sep 26, 2011 AT 06:43 IST, Edited At: Sep 26, 2011 06:43 IST
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