To kill a mocking sparrow

 

The recent trends in Indian politics are very disturbing. The present government says their goal is Congress-free India. Now can you visualize a democracy without opposition? A political system without effective opposition is as good as autocracy. Let’s try to understand it through a true story about Chinese premier Mao Zedong. The all-powerful leader ordered his subjects to kill sparrows so that they won’t eat grains in the fields and thus there would be more grains for human consumption. The people treated him as a God and on his instructions the entire Chinese human population turned enemies of poor little sparrows. So the sparrows vanished from the Chinese skies. A sparrow-free China it became. But they had forgotten that sparrows don’t eat just grains they eat pests and harmful insects as well. So with the predators gone, the pests and insects reigned supreme and chucked out entire croplands. It resulted in a terrible famine that lasted for three years. Similarly, if opposition, that is Congress, is chucked out of the system, the pests and bugs of predatory tendency to misuse and manipulate power will chuck out our democracy. A healthy opposition is a predator for the bugs and pests of autocracy. The government has to understand that Congress doesn’t merely eat their parliamentary seats, it eats the pests of autocracy as well. The government is legitimate in its efforts to come to power again in 2024 but why shout Congress-muqt Bharat. Say we will defeat Congress. If you openly declare that you want to finish the opposition, it only means you want to run this country as an autocrat.