It's the black money, stupid

Whatever may have been the means adopted by Ramdev to highlight the central issue (the optics of which are clear to even to those whose IQ can be measured on a Richter Scale ), they were peaceful, and had mass support. And what the UPA has done now is going to come back to haunt them. The padding on the hitherto well padded rear end of the government is about to see some serious “close encounters of an unpleasant kind” — involving Jimmy Choos as well as Kolhapuris! [caption id=“attachment_20651” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] But as expected, the issue has been overtaken by personalities, side-shows, midnight raids and politics. Obfuscated by non-core allegations, waylaid by insinuations and mud-slinging. I frankly don’t care if Digvijay is right about Baba’s motives. I don’t care if BJP or the RSS or the VHP or Taliban or Al Qaeda or Pakistan or Shiv Sena — or even China — backed the baba. I even dont care if it turns out tomorrow that Baba Ramdev was a card-carrying Hannibal the cannibal (just being illustrative and hypothetical please, before you lynch me!). I also don’t care about the technicalities of whether the permission was for a yoga camp. Nor do I care if yoga means hanging from a tree upside down and studiously poring over the Playboy (was baba against this as well, alongwith homosexuality?). Those are issues which can be dealt with as and when they come up. Or when there is enough evidence to prove/disprove them. They are non-core to THE ISSUE which was being highlighted by BR. What I care about , and deeply at that, is that the issue at the heart of this entire controversy of tragic-comic proportions now risks being sidelined. We will all get busy talking about Patanjali, saffron and ochre, diggy-piggy, BR’s missing mentor, rahul-shahul-maya-vaya-youpee-shoepee … while the central issue of “black money” being a national asset, black money launderers and hoarders being criminals etc gets pushed under the carpet. Keep it simple silly. This is about black money. Or so I’d thought….