Beating the Ghosts

The sweltering heat of India had blossomed a new flower. Mass-anger lynched India catapulted Modi to the Prime-ministerial chair with unprecedented gusto. Good days are coming, everybody firmly believed, only the irritated Congress spokespersons denied it. The guy from The Broken Dream, slogging invisibly in the publishing houses, felt avenged. After all, his destiny had been broken during the Congress rule both at the centre and in the state. He had had his tiny share in the anti-congress tirade in his unrelenting facebook posts, a convenient means of putting out your voice in the noisy clatter of the bigger world. His hate for the grand old party would not end with just this election debacle, there were many more fronts to be tackled.  

Modi Sir, Congress is yet to be defeated!

He was framing and formulating a letter to the prime minister, admonishing him of the bleaker scenario that might go in favour of the adversary. He was cutting, fumbling, rewriting and redrafting his efforts to sound meaningful to the man who was now leading India to a new horizon, as they claimed.

Sir, we are lucky to have you as the un-politician type Prime Minister of India. Your Majesty’s administration in Gujarat fetches you enough credit points to be taken as an administrator first and a politician second. The new educated generation has high hopes from you. Right from the evening of May 16 when the election results were declared you have been busy like a true son of mother India and have started drawing the roadmap for a better India for the majority of the Indians. We don’t have any reason to be sceptics regarding your capability to take India ahead on the path of multi-dimensional progress.

Sir, but there is a roadblock that you might face when you again fight for another innings in the year 2019. It is born of a certain Congress legacy. All of us do agree on taking Congress and Corruption as synonymous. And rightly so! But decades of Congress-type mis-governance ensured that the very roots of the tree got corrupted to the core. Corruption is not just about 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games and Coal Block distribution; it is also about the common Indians’ belief that without shortcuts nothing can be done. It generates a mentality that does not consider the shortcuts or the typical Indian jugadbaji as the means and mechanism of corruption, but the simple convenient facilitators. People have come to accept the extra costs as additional service charges; officials in various departments have come to consider it as their well deserved unofficial bonus. These officials have set up their budgetary benchmarks to keep their families. Unofficial bonus plays a major part in satisfying this excessive-consumer-lorn mentality. Any cut in this part, which clean governance surely will result into, will find them recalling good old days with nostalgia.

Ask anybody what does government service mean. They will say it is about having safe money, almost no work, and unofficial bonus for the small amount of work that one is supposed to perform officially. For this great facility people pay lump-sum amounts to get a government job. Since they start their journey after paying the unofficial bonus to somebody, they also claim it back when they get the governmental chair. But Sir, your-style governance will mean full work and no such bonus. That will find millions of government babus shaking their head in disapproval. Some of my friends are government teachers in Delhi. Their academic enthusiasm found them supporting Kejriwal vigorously. Straightaway Kejriwal talked of more effort by the idling government teachers. They were asked to stay in school for couple of extra hours daily to cover up the massive loopholes in public education system. Immediately their faces got shrunk. They started abusing Kejriwal and accepted their blunder in supporting him. So millions of public sector workers and their dependents will always prefer Congress-type work culture and governance. It will be very difficult to convince these guys in 2019 that the work they are being asked to perform without the unofficial bonus is a contribution to nation building.

Congress and its constituents abused power. But they were really kind in allowing it to be abused by anybody to the lowest rung. India is a free country in every sense. One can defecate by roadside, one can spit anywhere, one can cross red lights, one can call the prime minister a clown, one can molest women, etc., etc. Good governance will find things falling in place and people feeling cheated that their wings have been clipped. Manmohan government had a bad reputation and they allowed anybody to throw jibes in media in whatever form one wanted. The top office in the country has lost its dignity. You, Sir, will definitely try to get it back. But then people might start calling you a dictator, extremely sorry Sir to use the word. Even poor Manmohan will earn few credit points for being very lenient and allowing even beggars in Delhi to throw obscenities in his name.

Sum and summary is Congress leaves a ghost. Congress might be out of the seat, but it still survives in spirit in millions of Indians who are in a comfort zone based on the old mindset and its profits. Rectifying things in full vigour might see the Indian infrastructure improving, but Sir you might lose votes as well. How long the well-meaning Prime Minister can inspire people to come ahead for building the nation. It is bloody massively populated country. For one chapati there are ten claimants. At this level people cannot see the world beyond their home and hearth. So Sir your nationalistic agenda might see India progressing in infrastructure, but at the cost of massive indents in your popularity since Congress is ruling India in terms of work culture, narrow mentality and unofficial bonus! 

Getting 335 seats in the Parliament is no guarantee that whole of India has given a go ahead to the green signal of nation building. It is very easy to shout as a part of the crowd baying for revolution. But it is far more difficult to come out of the self-cantered zone and contribute extra for the nation in lieu of the same rewards. It is very easy to excite voters into a frenzy; but far more difficult to turn these frenzied zealots into responsible and self-governing citizens. Ask people to take extra responsibilities and their faces will shrink. I think already we have millions of shrunk faces because the public sector might now be open for six days a week. I have already heard many babus lamenting why did they voted for a particular party. Mother of all political evils, the Congress, may still have something to smile about!

The honorary Prime Minister will have to focus on self-governance apart from good-governance. Only self-governance can make unruly Indians as responsible citizens who will positively contribute something extra required for good governance leading to a better India.