Exorbitant price hike and the slap menace

by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
November 25, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1967/exorbitant-price-hike-and-the-slap-menace

One of the most influential and extreme heavy-weight politicians in India, Sharad Pawar has been slapped by a citizen of the country in protest of exorbitantly hiking the prices of the essentials. Most importantly, such slapping has been greatly welcomed and supported by the commoners in India, which is considered to be the largest democracy in the world.

The incident occurred as the 71-year old Indian minister was walking down the steps of a New Delhi Municipal Council auditorium after participating in a literary function. The youth broke away from a group of journalists and hit the Minister on his face. Pawar, the Maratha strongman lost his balance but quickly regained his composure and walked towards his car. The youth was identified as Harvinder Singh, a transporter from Rohini. He was overpowered by some journalists and private security guards. Raising anti-corruption slogans, he brandished a sharp object. He was arrested by the Connaught Place police and charged with voluntarily causing hurt, assault, criminal intimidation, using force to deter a public servant from discharge of his duty and attempt to commit suicide.

This incident of slapping the Indian minister has been termed by the local media in that country as "moos of intolerance". Some say, Indians are greatly distressed by high inflation translating this into a slap on a minister's face points to something else: frustration and intolerance.

Commenting on this, one of the Indian medias said "When an angry man hit Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar on Thursday, it was another in a series of instances of unreasonable behavior directed at persons in public life. Home minister P. Chidambaram, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and now Pawar have all been at the receiving end of "instant justice".

"…It should, however, awaken our political leaders to the anger that is turning into such atrocious behavior. Dismissing it as a one-off incident would be lazy. Clearly, there is a gap between leaders and citizens. If this occurs in autocratic settings, one can rationalize it. But in a democracy, it points to a much bigger problem."

Harvinder Singh, the man who slapped the minister said, he slapped Sharad Pawar, the country's agriculture minister, because he was angry about corruption and rising prices.

As television cameras rolled, Harvinder Singh defended his actions, shouting, "What I did is absolutely right! What is the condition of common men?"

Singh also claimed to be a follower of Anna Hazare, India's anti-corruption crusader who is agitating for a Lokpal Bill which would create a new agency to watch politicians. Asked about the incident, Hazare reportedly said of Pawar, "He was slapped only once?"

Another anti corruption activist, Kiran Bedi, who works with Anna Hazare, said on Twitter, "Pray proper Lokpal bill gets passed in winter session or else pent up anger may come on streets. Politicians may get targeted."

A few days earlier, Harvinder Singh reportedly assaulted a retired politician, Sukhram Sharma, who had been convicted on a corruption charge. Singh accosted Sharma as he was taken into custody following hearing his sentence on the corruption charge.

India is facing nearly double-digit food inflation and several massive corruption scandals. On Wednesday, a senior opposition leader, Yashwant Sinha, of the Bharatiya Janata Party, expressed concern about the impact rising prices will have on most Indians. "I will not be surprised if price rises led to violence in this country."

Physically assaulting the politicians and even the political VVIPs started on December 15, 2008, when an angry Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi stood up and shouted "this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog," and threw his size 10 shoes on the American president. Instantly, Muntadar al-Zaidi became a topic of the international news media and he later was cheered by the mass section of the Iraqi population as a "hero".

Following this hugely covered incident, throwing of shoes on the politicians took place at a number of occasions in several countries. Now, India has also listed its name in that list with the latest incident of Harvinder Singh slapping Sharad Pawar.

Of course, there is no reason to feel delighted at such indecent incident, where senior politicians are humiliated and assaulted in public. But, it also leaves a very strong signal to rest of the politicians in the world that, if they continue to ignore sufferings of the civilians, at any stage, people may demonstrate any of such highly audacious actions on the leaders.

I am not sure if Bangladeshi politicians will onwards behave cautiously while making senseless and madly comments on issues related to public sufferings. It is important to mentioned here that, a number of ministers of the ruling party, such as commerce minister Faruq Khan, finance minister AMA Muhit, foreign minister Dr. Dipu Moni and few more are already known for their unkind and senseless remarks on a number of huge issues of public sufferings. Especially, finance minister's remark over the stock market issue was surely madness if not audacity of the highest degree to the 3.5 million people, who were visibly robbed-off in the stock market by an organized gang, mostly belonging to the ruling party.

Current government in Bangladesh are earning increasing public wrath with the exorbitant hike of the essentials and cost of utilities as well as series of highly criticized political decisions, including slicing the capital city into two parts. The government is also maintaining total silence over continuous fraud of a number of multilevel marketing companies, including Destiny 2000 Limited, which are continuing to cheat the public with false promises or high profits. It is rumored that, promoters of Destiny 2000 Limited public pronounce "buying" few of the extremely influential figures in the ruling party against "heavy financial compensation". Though such claims by this fraudulent MLM Company is yet to be verified, from the behavior of the ruling party, especially its total reluctance in taking any action against Destiny 2000 Limited for its gross fraud, leaves sufficient space for the citizen to think, if in reality this MLM Company has purchased these politicians.

Exclusive Video: Harvinder Singh slapping Indian union minister Sharad Pawar.

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