The Hunger

On the wake of Anna Hazare’s Hunger strike, I happened to see a movie on another hunger striker, Bobby Sands. "Hunger", directed by Steve McQueen, depicts a real life story of IRA revolutionary Bobby Sands as he, along with other prison inmates, goes on indefinite hunger strike to protest against the English occupation of Northern Ireland and the denial to give political status to the IRA prisoners. The movie covers the days of “blanket and no wash” protest and the subsequent indefinite hunger strike. The hunger strike and subsequent death of 9 prisoners including Bobby Sands lead to a worldwide protest and condemnation of Margaret Thatcher’s policies and lead to a new wave of Irish nationalism.

 

The main theme of the movie is still Hunger, which is also metaphorically used as hunger for freedom. The movie explores the psychology behind the human will power to fight against the needs of his own body. With very little, and hard hitting, dialogues, the movie is slow and unnerving as it passes through the silent harrowing moments. As said, the monotony of solitary confinements doesn't spare the viewers as well. In the movie “Fight Club”, there is a dialogue which runs as “How do you know yourself if you have not got yourself into a fight”. In that movie, it shows the fight against one’s own body lead to a strange sense of liberation.  I believe same works out for hunger strikers, mainly because that becomes the ultimate weapon he/she can use to demonstrate their protests.  I somehow feel that such defiance increases the courage to continue, which is probably what encourages them to push their limits further. There are people who have attempted violent suicides, hoping for a painless quick death. Then there are people like this, deterministic on the slow death unwavering from their position despite being self aware of the state.

 

There is an interesting conversation between Bobby Sands and the Father Dominic Moran, who was called in to dissuade him from the strike. That scene, about 20 mins long, was shot in a single go, and comes up suddenly after an hour or so without any dialogues.   Michael Fassbender, who plays the role of Bobby Sands, went through a crash diet for the final part of the movie. The painful final minutes were indeed well enacted and picturised. The movie never tries to take sides. There is a scene where an IRA man comes and shoots a police man, in cold blood, inside an old age home when the policeman was talking to his aged mother, in front of her. It also tries to look at the conditions of policemen and wardens of the prison and how life becomes unsettling amidst riots and death threats.

 

After the success of various hunger strikes this has apparently become a favourite tool against establishments. Many bogus hunger strikers have emerged in political circle. Though many hunger strikes assumes the cloak of non-violence, there are always a threat of unprecedented violence on the event of the death of the striker. LTTE leader Thileepan, when IPKF was brought in, went ahead with a hunger strike. He thought India was still Gandhian and would consider his peaceful protests. But IPKF stayed and Thileepan died after 86 days. And we all know how they had started the plan to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi that moment and where it all ended. Similar thing happened since the death of Potti Sriramulu. That exactly would have happened, had GOI allowed Anna Hazare to fast until death. And that is what makes it a blackmailing act, which may or may not be an intention of the striker but definitely looms as a tipping point for an avalanche of human sentiments. That makes hunger strike a potentially violent act.

 

PS. Bobby Sands was elected to British parliament when he was doing hunger strike in the prison. Iranian government changed the name of ‘Winston Churchill Boulevard’ where British Embassy stood to Bobby Sands street. British embassy changed their entrance to adjacent street to avoid using Bobby Sand’s name in their address!

What is it with corruption

What is it with the protests against corruption that attracts much people, that protests on other crimes do not? Irom Sharmila had been fasting unto death for repealing the Arms force special act from Manipur. Medha Patkar had been doing various protests for long, for Narmada bachao andolan, recently against the eviction of a slum for some new building. But none of the above stuffs managed to gather any significant public support as the fight against corruption did – considering the fact that the corruption in various forms has become a part of daily life of individuals! Every employed/unemployed lower/middle/upper class would definitely have had their brush with some or the other forms of corruption. Giving bribe to get something done quickly, or maybe a traffic policeman or quoting wrong figure in the land/building registration paper. Still why are people against corruption?

Money is a big factor for all the classes, especially the middle class for whom tax is nothing less of an enemy. Nobody wholeheartedly love paying tax. It would be surprising to find people giving away tax with pleasure and a smile just because this money funds some state school or subsidize the vegetables. And there wouldn’t be anyone who have tried all sorts of schemes and techniques to save the tax. Now, despite of all the efforts we sometimes have to pay some money every month as tax. It is this piece of heart that is flowing into the pockets of certain set of people (that probably deserves only despise), explaining why corruption is such a painful thing for middle class. This explains why a dam, invading the home of a lakh farmers, or Arms force special act, curbing someone’s rights, is not much of a concern to the wider public. This also explains why the public is adamant over political corruption which according to me covers only a small percentage of the total corruption. The amount of corporate tax evasion using existing loopholes, buying out the officials or making policies convenient to them, is a much bigger territory.



I was reading an article about the tax havens, tax evasion and corporate and government’s role in it. First of all, these Tax havens and other lucrative techniques were not built by politicians nor are they built for them. They probably do hold sufficient money in many lucrative banks but that just comes to a very insignificant(for the country?, oh no!) percentage. Most of the major transactions pass through tax havens, the report says. On top of that the misquoting of taxable and non-taxable items helps evade tax better. Every year approximately 5 lakh crore rupees of corporate tax are being written off in this country and to me that is nothing short of 5 lakh crore worth a scam! The black money, tax evasion etc are some the business as usual for corporate and hence day dreaming that routing out corrupt politicians would end corruption is just futile because they are just middle men in this whole drama.



Today’s newspaper showed how RIL had been goofing the treasury department by quoting over hyped rate over the Krishna Godavari natural gas extraction and supply. The claims, that the license-raj devil can be wiped out by liberalization, proves to be just a lame tirade of the investors lobby. On the contrary what we are witnessing is pure puppetry. Just like how various corporate lobbys, pulling the strings of US policies, have shown how dependent corporates are on policy and law makers, every corporate house expects a corrupt government to be in place so that their monopolist intentions be well managed. We witnessed several high adrenalin protests against the politicians on 2G scam. The investigation reports did mention their names so they rightly deserves chappals and eggs, but the reports also mentioned the names of Reliance, Tata, Uninor and many well known corporate houses. Forget about high decibel cries, did we hear any word being spoken about these big shots in media or any other social gatherings or sites or forums? It could be imagined that Raja wouldn’t have sent out an email to all these chaps asking whether they want some spectrum. In the corporate world politicians are merely agents who gets things done for them, just like a middleman. If these middle men deserves stones and sticks, their employers deserves much more.



Imagine, if Anna Hazare asks the protesters to sell all the Reliance or Tata shares that they are holding, to protest against their corruption, how many of the corruption fighters would be ready for that? What are the chances that Anna Hazare gets tagged as a joker or something like that? Some might want to argue that, as they bring ‘development’ and all that nonsense, it is ok. So should this be interpreted as – I am ok for corruption as long as I am getting a cut out of it? My question is, whom should I slap first? :).