What Baba Ramdev wants

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who has threatened to field candidates in every Lok Sabha constituency in 2014, has stopped the Union government in its tracks with a set of demands, ranging from the serious to the bizarre.

The demands of the jetsetting Baba — whose acolytes recently bought him a little Scottish island to open an ashram — include:

— Tough Lokpal Bill, with a provision for death sentence for the corrupt, especially corrupt officials

— Immediate return of all black money stashed away in tax havens abroad to the country

— Declaring all wealth in foreign countries being held illegally by Indians as national property and charging those with such accounts under the sedition laws

— Abolishing Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 currency notes

— Disabling the operations of any bank which belongs to a country that is a tax haven

— Replacing the British-inherited system of governance, administration, taxation, education, law and order with a swadeshi alternative

— Reforming the electoral system to ensure that the Prime Minister is directly elected by people

— Ensuring that all citizens declare annually their incomes

— Bringing income-tax details under the Right to Information Act

— Increasing substantially the Minimum Support Price of grains

— Making wages of different categories of labourers uniform across the country

— Revoking the Land Acquisition Act, as farmers should not be deprived of their land for industry

— Promoting Hindi at the expense of English.