Political Innings Over, Back to the Pavilion

What went wrong?

The New Year 2015 did get the BJP’s ever-soaring balloon a bit punctured to let out some air and save it from escaping into the heavens of glory. Kejriwal won Delhi assembly elections, after having presented his still more worn out jersey and muffler, and still more common suffering face to each and every slum in Delhi. The masses whose lives and generations have been spoilt by poverty, hunger and multitudes of deprivations, definitely play a spoil-sport, a short of revenge, when they get a chance of hitting back and they generally hit at the one apparently sided with the better classes.

The retired history professor, who had actively provided full-time support for the Modi wave had his little plate of woes. The BJP had won from the constituency and all through the campaigning the BJP candidate had looked at him with such friendly smile that the poor academician got into believing that he was possibly the best hand around the would-be Member of Parliament. Under such assurance the political bug bit his arse inevitably to give him a sadistic nightmare of getting a little political career for himself. To still take his recently-cropped up ambition, the elections for the state assembly were around the corner. The party you support having almost absolute majority at the centre, the local MP smiling at you like you are a bosom pal and obliged to you for your all-out support in the campaign, and elections around the corner for the state assembly! Having spent his life in books, convictions, far away from the grit and grind of the real anvil that hammers down political careers, he found his eligibility to get ticket to contest from his area as near infallible. But when the plotting, scheming and strategising game of grabbing the ticket started, he was like the tiniest little boy standing scared in the corner while the fatter, ugly urchins blabbered to eat the pie. The stampeded left him heaped on the ground with his burden of bookish knowledge and bruises on his clean self. His presence was not so much even felt by anybody. Coming back almost in tears from the state capital, he cursed the MP whom he had toiled for and missed his thousands of pension funds that he himself had invisibly poured into the flooded river of political financing to make the candidate’s campaigning more glamorous and temporarily fruitful to the poor in the constituency. The parliamentarian had not even looked at him in the state capital.

Pushed and shoved in the little political pie-gathering stampede, the old historian was nursing his reflections. He even felt happy about the tiny muffler man beating the burly fellow.

The professor was now having razor sharp analytics of the BJP’s defeat in Delhi. His reflections and pen competing in what he thought and what he wrote.

David Killing the Goliath!   

 

So the muffler man Kejriwal does what has never been done before! More than reflecting over his victory, we can reflect over BJP’s set of mistakes.

People do not appreciate the class when their fates are stinking in a mass!

It is good to have a smart, suave and presentable Prime Minister. But people will definitely follow a faded jersey clad muffler man if they find him pitted against somebody clad in royal clothes. So it was a 100,0000 INR suit against the 200 INR muffler. The masses in Delhi obviously chose the latter! India after all is a country of struggling, hungry, ill-clad masses. They sympathise with the underdog. Modi, the tea seller of the past, garnered sympathy in parliamentary elections. Now it is the time of the muffler man to be made a prince from his castrated status of a crazy idealist. It was not for nothing that Gandhiji abandoned clothes to mix with the poorest of the poor. Modi has to look less exclusive! Indian masses are decades away from their appreciation of style and statement like the Americans appreciate the US First Lady's style. 

The revolting professor, denied a political dream of his own, sprinkled the ink of irritated reflections flowing from his pen.

Never let loose a panic wave even among the lesser mortals even if they are lying dusting around your feet. They will stealthily crawl up in the dust to stick around your feet to dump their beaten selves, like a stone around your feet, stopping you from moving ahead.

Never ever publicly declare your intention to annihilate your enemy. However strong reason you have to destroy him! The slogan of ‘Congressmukt Bharat’ is catchy, but injurious. Do your deed, but why repeatedly tell your enemy that you are going to annihilate him?! Congress is cornered. They know the BJP wants to dismantle the party itself. So what is the option left for them? Their sense of victory right now can just be to help anybody in defeating the BJP. They did it smartly in Delhi by shifting its votes to AAP’s coffers. They even know that AAP’s clout will increase at the national level. They are but very much comfortable with the idea that AAP gets 50 or 60 seats in the next Parliamentary elections. Well and good. They are happy to lead corrupt coalition governments, unlike BJP that wants a one party show in India. So AAP emerging nationally is a step towards Congress getting one more partner in a future coalition government.   

When the BJP started its all-out campaign to wipe out the regional outfits, the professor had this apprehension that all and sundry political forces, which hitherto did not see eye to eye, will cling to each other in the short term to somehow survive the BJP onslaught. The academician now termed it as their political trump card. The ideals shift, more so off the common man.

The BJP getting a bitter political pill that will cure it of its paranoid political fever to colour India politically in just one colour!

This is what had happened in Delhi assembly elections. Congress, communists, Janta Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party, and many others, all allowed their vote bank to go under AAP's fold. Result! Defeat of the mighty! India is strangely unified in teasing diversities. Those who accommodate these divisions survive, and those who cross age-old barriers will come against unified opposition from various groups. Lesson is learnt: You cannot afford to neglect friendly regional forces. Having regional partners is a sign of your strength and legitimacy, not weakness. It is not for nothing that America that can singlehandedly wage war against the whole world, still keeps small contingents of troops from friendly small countries. It adds to the legitimacy of its actions.

The professor reproached the bigger world of the bigger stage-masters who managed things in such a way that the real, capable and honest people lose their rights to contest elects.

Do not outgrow your skin to appear mythological. People like small characters on the real stage of life. Bollywood has saturated their desire to have super-powered heroes.    

Another factor that has put the BJP in a shady zone is the few personas emerging all powerful and manipulative. It makes a party look aloof from common man, creates apprehensions, puts it in a too lofty position at which the common man looks with insecurity. Hope Modi, Shah, Rajnath and Gadkari pull strings in more subtle ways, instead of making it evident in high profile posturing in media. Let the BJP, the party, be at the forefront at least in media! We can have more pictures of development works accomplished by the BJP, and lesser full-framed robust pictures of arrogant Shah walking majestically after press conferences. He can continue with his string-pulling from behind the scenes, but it should not be evident in media. Amit Shah is also becoming too predictable in that he goes for religious polarisation. He has to pull his strings differently now, and without high profile posturing in media.

People want to stay secular in the country, at least those who are not politically ambitious.

Young educated part of the Indian population is outright against religious rhetoric and extremist talk and posturing. Have administrators in your cabinet. Saffron clad jingoistic sadhus and sadhvis can catapult venom from other platforms, but if they do it from the ministerial positions, then even much-appeased, ancient Hindu Gods would not save you from the modern day public’s new anger. The class that recruits khaki-clad, stick-wielding fake soldiers should be made to understand that they can serve mother India at the practical level and spare hypothetical verbal jingoism and sloganeering to the politicians. If the blood has not been allowed to be boiled down to a sufficient degree in their veins post-independence by the Nehruvian ice, they can get it further boiled up and as the true sacrificing Indians can send their own sons to army and dedicate their lives to remove darker shades from the people’s lives. There are billions of things to be done by the hands; we can lead our lives without their tongue-work. Already the dress is damn funny. It needs to be changed. Legs are too thin, the shorts too wide. And it will help the nature if sticks are spared.

The old professor was tired after the fusillade. He was even feeling scared. This time from the different side!

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.

Smiling Back at the Self

Nature is not with anybody. Neither is it against anyone. It is for us to decide whether we are with it or against it. The onus is on us! Since we are a part of it, it suits our purpose if we go with it! Going against it means going against ourselves. But that is what we are doing presently!

The pretty faced young environmentalist had spoken well at the environment seminar in a prestigious public school and concluded with the above well-meaning lines. She had studied environmental studies and was now working with an NGO fighting for environmental issues. The organisation ran a monthly environment and nature magazine as well and the young activist did more than her salary justified for the editorial part of the publication. There are various compartments of identities, hopes, aspirations and desires inside us. She loved the cause of the nature and environment, but then somewhere inside her, as a normal young girl, there was the innocent ambition of moving up on the material ladder of life, having a car, costlier mobile set, some flat of her own in future, and many such mundane hopes as any other educated girl in Delhi would have. Many of her colleagues in college who had chosen more convenient subjects like economics and business management appeared to have already taken a big leap in that direction getting good salaries and CTCs.

Possessing better knowledge, drive and debating skills than even the brightest girl she could recall from her circle, she always tried her best to compensate for the lower CTC—even lesser than the dimwit school friend who was now making more money in fashion designing—by thinking about the larger cause she worked for. The cause of mother earth! But the biggest cause is the cause of the self. So she always felt the pinch and many a time wished she should have chosen a better, more lucrative subject. The young girl in her had the soft dream of a comfortable life, having all the basic amenities around her. But given the fast-paced consumerism that comes tugging at our hearts and more so at our wallets, the resources are never sufficient. We have to have more. She was no exception to this. She had her little girl’s cute cynicism building in her.

Her manager who generally wrote the editorial for the monthly magazine was outstation and not in a position to write the piece this time and she had been given this extra responsibility to write editorial for this month’s issue focussing on poverty, hunger and environmental degradation. We have our own weapons and tools to criticise. The catapulting throw is powered by our little-little miseries as individuals. But then speaking for the common cause can provide us the safe route of justified cynicism, without sounding outright jealous cribbing. With her mind calculating the prospects of a better career, the heart-chores trying to reach the farthest limits of her purse to get the costliest gift for her boyfriend on his approaching birthday, she wrote with strength and conviction.       

 

Despite hogging some mediocre limelight for making advancements in various fields India still ranks at the bottom of the list in terms of quality of life. In fact even very poor African countries are better placed than India in this regard. The reason is simple: the economic statistics that put India in the league of rapidly developing economies are just limited to the economic fortunes of mere 1 percent of the total population. How has this miniscule section of Indian population come to grab almost 80 percent of the total wealth and give a very deceptive picture of the Indian growth and development? The answer is very simple! Political-industrialist nexus has allowed the plundering of natural resources to an unbelievable extent. Take for example coal. The industrial house acquiring a coal block has to spend just 100 rupees per ton (including royalty and extraction costs) and gets legal rights to sell it for 5000 rupees. This is plain theft! How can anyone justify such mammoth profit margin? It applies to the rest of the resources including minerals, forests, petroleum, natural gas, water bodies, lands, etc. All that a big industrial house is required to do is to take the particular minister heading a crucial resource ministry into confidence, set up a deal regarding the massive returns for the party, individuals and the institutions. That is how unimaginable sums of money get deposited in secret accounts abroad. This money is then used, not for development works, but in parochial ways meant to perpetuate the ways and means of the system that allows this loot. Consider a reverse scenario! Suppose rules and regulations are reformulated to increase the royalties to the extent that the industrialist is left with a logical profit margin on the basis of investment made. Like if the industrialist has to pay back 2500 rupees out of 5000 rupees made for per ton of coal. These 2500 rupees coming back into the governmental coffers as direct visible money can be used for developmental works directly related to the quality of life of the 99 percent of the population. It will avoid a situation where just 1 percent of the population sits on majority of the resources, directly or indirectly. This is no communist dream! It is pretty much based on the market principles. Let the investing industrialist have the best returns as per the money-making ratio in rest of manufacturing and services sectors where people put up best of their management skills to earn decent sums. If it is not done then we will definitely have scenarios where the Prime Minister has to eat humble pie at the hands of criminal coal ministers having nexus with coal mafia and big industrial houses.

These were very avid and pertinent questions and issues that she raised. Reading it again she felt proud for having spoken out so loudly to reach at least the two thousand magazine subscribers. With her sweet innocent ambitions taking a temporary backseat, she definitely enjoyed the dozens of appreciation mails from the readers praising the editorial. And of course, she believed a bit more that she should feel proud of earning her bread and contributing to a social cause. In the mirror of the self inside her, she peeped to find her face happily smiling back. At least today!   

The Mishits

As the heat and fervour was building up though the summers and smouldering political tempers, and India looked again to get a saviour from the conventional political corridors, there were many who agreed that Ramdev and Kejriwal missed it. In their failure India also missed the chance of putting in front certain individuals and personalities that would have changed the apparent face of events in a totally unexpected, unconventional way, as the eventful times during the couple of years preceding the general elections in 2014 promised.

In the immediate Indian history two people have let the rope slip through their hands and fall back into the hole where they started from. They could have reached the summit being pushed and prodded up by the revolutionary fervour. Revolution is not just about the drastic changes born of bloody battles and massacres. In contemporary times revolution basically connotes mass frustration reaching the boiling, effervescent point and the spilled-over froth carrying a few chosen individuals as the representatives of the surge for change.

The UPA-2 messed up things. Even the common man struggling on the path of survival felt its pinch. Scams, ever-rising costs of living and the deplorable living conditions of the people, the aam aadmi, whose representative the UPA government claimed to be, disgruntled the masses. These small-small agonies came to be voiced out by the civil society movements. And these small rivulets of common man’s frustration merged to form two streams that carried two individuals as the modern-day revolutionaries. They seemed to hold the light leading out of the long cave of gloom and despair. Baba Ramdev and Arvind Kejriwal missed it! The reasons have been that they came out too ambitious than they appeared initially. It boils down to their not doing justice to the image that people held them in.

A lot needs to be accomplished in the health sector in India. Inefficient health infrastructure, fake medicines, unethical ways and means adopted by the medical fraternity and on top of that stress and shortages of basic amenities of life mean that majority of Indians face health problems of all types across the year. Ramdev to begin with served a Yoga pill that appeared so easy and approachable even to the average Indian. His Yoga was customised for mass appeal. Given his vocal skills it was sold well. It caught mass fancy. People fed up with traditional system took a nosedive into the pool of Ramdev panacea. Ramdev also had very strong words against Pepsi and Cola. People in fact started to use these as toilet cleaners. Very surprising that he no longer talks about them. Sceptics grope around to find the financial aspects of this silence.

Ramdev vaunted of mighty nationalism. People believed him as well. But we have to take it with a pinch of salt. If his Patanjali medicine outlets sell even his versions of sweetmeats then it shows more of business skills and less of a diehard nationalist. It comes down to make good profits as is proved by his millionaire status. Indians are very good followers. People raised him to the status of the saviour of the country when he talked of bringing back the black money from Swiss accounts. Almost two hundred thousand people clamoured under his leadership at the Ramleela ground. People accepted him as a revolutionary taking India to a new dawn of major shift from a system allowing 10 percent individuals sitting over 90 percent of resources to a system where majority will get at least the basic needs of a common day. Such major shifts demand at least a few broken heads and bruises. Ramdev the nationalist then, scared out of his wits for his life, tried to run away from the show clad as a woman. The aura was punctured. Next day we saw the crying baba who had forgotten to change women clothes he was wearing and crying before the media. People just said this is no revolution and he is not the modern progeny of Bhagat Singh and Shubhash Bose he eulogised on the stage. Today all common Indians believe him to be a smart businessman only.

Similarly, Kejriwal served a curing pill to the masses suffering from political illness and with no cure in sight. Social movements were just struggling as an ineffective appendage to the Indian democracy. Then Anna was smartly portrayed as an icon figure by the smart group of people who voiced people’s frustration. Media is a new business. Its raw material is anything new and happening. So the Indian civil society movement that was hitherto sidelined was portrayed in modern clairvoyance as channels competed with each other to increase their TRPs. The whole of India saw a new creed of selfless Indians following Anna Hazare. They challenged the prevalent system in all its versions. Arvind Kejriwal and Company jumped to another orbit as this movement showed signs of halting. In his stupendous success as a politician Arvind just cashed on the mass frustration at the collective level against the chosen few who were seen plundering the resources in various forms.

Kejriwal sold dreams. And rightly so. When things are effervescent you have to act as a catalyst to take it to the boiling point. When you can convince a common voter that you have equally bright chance to be an MP or MLA, it will at least ensure that people will come out of political apathy. Broom as a symbol and the very name of the party served as masterstrokes. In India symbolism is more powerful than the substance. So these symbols of cleaning the system and taking the aam aadmi to the centre stage of development worked wonders for them in Delhi Assembly elections. People when conscious of themselves can spring a few surprises. And the surprise was thrown in the faces of mainstream political parties. The Aam Aadmi Party got 28 seats. But at this moment the common man’s juggernaut came to halt on account of still weightier plans of Arvind and group. Delhi people had trusted them. They welcomed AAP’s decision to form a government even with Congress help! People were expecting exemplary action. Unfortunately even as the CM and as ministers the AAP leadership could not come out of their revolutionary and activist mode. Governance is different. It’s very easy to shout slogans, and very difficult to bring effective changes.

It was more than apparent that they were more interested in carrying on their movement that was catching mass fancy across India on account of the unexpected success in Delhi. The AAP leadership did not want to let go of their hold on the common man’s psyche. So just hyper-sensitised all issues. The wheel of their popularity was rolling across India. So Kejriwal ever-eager to keep it rolling even during the parliamentary elections jumped out of the CM chair and again started with the typical noisy accusatory game of hitting the big fish with verbal pot-shots. A lesson here. It’s not possible to keep the graph of mass excitement at the same level for too long. As a leader you just cash on the temporary peaks of mass excitement like he did during the Delhi elections. But to expect it to spill over the coming months and do the same in parliamentary elections is like asking too much from the common man struggling and lost in the issues of bread and butter. It was a historic blunder on Kejriwal’s part to jump out of the CM chair and run for the PM chair. He could have done wonders as an honest administrator. People would have understood his handicap as the leader of a minority government surviving on the Congress support. All his works would have set up a new criterion of clean and honest governance in the country.

Now when they were slogging it out across India there was hardly any difference between them and the other political parties except the cap they adorned. But how long the common man would be impressed by the broom, the tag of the aam aadmi party, typical revolutionary accusatory shoutings, and selling of mass dreams? This distinction was going to be even more diluted as they took brave pot-shots against the high and the mighty politicians. To sustain your visibility when the mass hysteria subsides, you need to have some accomplishments in your kitty. The AAP could have achieved those small milestones in administering Delhi. But they were dreaming too big and grossly overestimating the degree of mass hysteria.

A lot many people still wished both Ramdev and Kejriwal had turned out to be the way they proclaimed. Alas! Our retired, single, lonely social worker was again looking for the directions to dump his opinions, as his election victory-born enthusiasm for Kejriwal again nosedived to the dustbin of criticism, a sort of betrayal against the masses. He ended up voting for the BJP by the way. And when the famous single man of India acquired the highest decision-making chair in the country, he applauded, feeling proud for this man who had the whole country as his family and who would act as selflessly as he in his neighbourhood in feeding cows, stray dogs and homeless people. He indeed found a meaning in life again because he belonged to the select group of single-by-choice people in the country, who looked to a larger cause beyond the mundane confines of a domestic life involving clock-hand type circles around the same axis. Many people passing through his street had a sweet taste in their mouths.

The Mute Button Gone

 

It was February 2014. The sun had started to shine a bit more warmly across the fog. The atmospheric god had impregnated the late winter air with seeds of spring to smile in March. India was also waiting for a spring, a blossoming of hopes, rejuvenation of broken dreams, and avid aspirations for the ‘good days’ to come. There had been a thaw in the retired history professor’s frozen pension funds. After much hassles and bruises to his panicked self, he had the financial support meant for his old age. A new dream waited India in May after the whirlwind of multiple-phases of elections in April to May, when a billion people would go to vote, the mahakumbh of democracy!

For all that he had believed and consequently undergone, the professor had every reason to pitch for the BJP. With his knowledge and academic background, he was eligible to give what and whys of the more suitable political choice. The BJP candidate, been informed about ‘that’ episode, had canvassed his all out support. Nursing the injuries and consolidating his belief in his version of history, the old academician went overboard in his support to help India have a new dream in new hands, in Modi’s hands, who had single-handedly changed the fate of Gujarat.   

Why the BJP brand of politics is a safer bet for the Indian democracy at present? He used his ideas and opinions to woo the educated voters for the BJP. He had regained his confidence and no longer just wrote in the journals. He could thunder from the public platform. After all he was singing hymns to the rising sun only which would just provide him warmth after the frigid winters during the day. He spoke with authority, with conviction, as a politician:

Family politics is one of the biggest issues that plague the Indian democracy. The Congress led by Gandhi-Nehru clan and the smaller regional offshoots has checked the flow of democracy from reaching the grassroots level. That’s the reason Swaraj is still a distant, almost impossible, reality even after 66 years of independence. Even within the folds of democracy, only autocratic tricks can succeed in maintaining power concentrated in a particular family. In this regard Gandhi-Nehru type of manipulations have done the greatest harm to the spread of democracy and independence across the widespread strata in India. Consequently, things did not change much for the common man of India post-independence.

The BJP’s brand of politics is in sharp democratic contrast to the Congress in this regard. Atalji headed the NDA as the Prime Minister.  He could focus just on his democratic duties instead of wasting resources and institutional powers in consolidating family fiefdom to keep it floating across generations. The new BJP Prime Minister designate, Narender Modi, will be in a far better position to function as the topmost administrator of the country in comparison to let us say somebody from the Gandhi-Nehru clan. The latter will again have to go into undemocratic manipulations, directly and indirectly, to maintain their grip as the first political family in the country.

In the present conditions the BJP is the only option for the spread of democracy in India. Under Modi, the BJP will take the Indian democracy to the next stage when Swaraj will be a possibility under the care of the new rising son of mother India! 

The Neighbourhood Battle

In the summers of 2013, China's Himalayan Drills had become worrisome. The retired Brigadier never missed a chance to warn that ‘they’ can anytime put a knife in our back. He always believed that with a bit stronger political leadership and a bit better basic amenities, the fight would have been different. After all he still remembered many soldiers fighting in angora shirts forget about jersey. And it was as cold as you can imagine.   

His two neighbours had been at loggerheads for long. One was strong, financially and socially in a decent position. The other was comparatively lesser on all these counts. The stronger one would not miss an opportunity to badger the opponent and never skipped a chance to prove his strength and the other's helplessness. One day he heard the one, who was always at the receiving end, saying, 'I am going to an all out with him. Even if he beats me it’s better to be fully defeated instead of getting insulted all the times!' Driven by the concept and brooding over his insults, he went all out with the enemy at the next provocation! It was unexpected given his unresponsiveness of long. The stronger opponent was taken aback and before others, including the retired Brigadier, intervened he had bloody mouth and many bruises. The Brigadier knew the conditions in which the man had attacked finally. He drew the moral of the story: Sometimes it serves to hit hardest when you are pushed against a wall; when you have been completely cornered!

Each time there was some news of the Chinese wrongdoing in the Himalayas, the soldier’s soul pined for revenge. He openly confessed he hated the Chinese to the core of his heart. When this episode happened in which the unprovoking underdog had finally hit, taking the stronger transgressor by surprise, the polish-mannered soldier had even abandoned his neutrality in the affairs and went to the winner’s house to even congratulate him for his brave battle.

The repeated Chinese transgressions into the Indian territory and India's helplessness in this regard served the ex-soldier a corollary to the episode narrated above. He was telling the man representing India in the episode:

China, on account of the War and repeated intrusions, has taken it for granted that India will remain inert to all provocations. Can India act ultimately like you? If China can cross over into our territory, cannot we go for the same exercise sometimes? Suppose China reacts at the level of using force at our China-type intrusion, we will also earn a right to ward them off at the same level if they play the mischief again. It will only define the LOC more definitely---after all you are supposed to put your stamp of authority on your land through the use of forces to the utmost capacity. It will just balance out the position.    

Amarnath Yatra

The soul eating focus on the editorial desk gave him a tired and brooding look. He, the young man from The Broken Dream, seven years down after the debacle at the hands of the state, looked different from his still-enthusiastic face at the start of his innings in the publishing sector. The civil services candidates, at least from the humanities background, cram bits and pieces of all subjects to be jacks of all trades and masters of none. And when the sledgehammer of reality smashes the dream, all they are left with is to grope around for some respectful means of earning bread and butter. He had been a bookworm, so faced with this challenge to earn his bread, by default sneaked into the publisher’s world. He had always worked with his civil-services-preparations-born ethos. It only means more and more hard work. But then you have to be smarter at many levels to excel in the corporate. The more he worked, harder became things for him. In the melting heat of July, his life unbearable under the harsh torchlight of insecure bosses and jealous colleagues, his mind literally on the brink of insanity, he escaped to the blessing climes of the Kashmir Himalayas, to find himself, to regain his lost footing, to seek solace, to find a saviour, to be with himself.   

Life is all about exploring the self--its limitations, its specialties, its weaknesses, its strengths. Putting yourself in inhospitable conditions can be one of the means for this. The holy cave of Amarnath is situated in the frigid heights of higher Himalayas. As you move along the rain-lashed, slippery and stony mountain track, you find yourself caught in a dualistic chasm. Pleasure and pain side by side. Sighs of agony as well as excited palpitations of heart over the nature's masterwork. In the misty heights the melting glaciers are a visual delight; but the hazy heights lacerated by gloomy, craggy tops gets into your heart like some ice-cold stare of a corpse. 

Walking on treacherous muddy foot-track, with life and death side by side, with agony and ecstasy mating to give a queer sensation, he felt the little world in Delhi inside the cubicle of an office to be funnily tiny with its tinier characters. How could that little hovel turn his life literally into hell? This boundless, open nature cannot give enough pleasure like that tiny bread-earning hovel can give you the misery. He recalled the faces, the faces that had literally broken his hardworking convictions in the professional life. The selfish seriousness on their faces loomed more dangerously than the risky precipice he was taking a rest upon. Their plotting and strategising appeared gloomier than the threatening raincloud surrounding that mountain top and admonishing to come his way to make the climb more treacherous.

Gasping like a fish without water, for the oxygen was seriously low, he found the next little step as the most unachievable task in the world. One look however at the melting glacier on the opposite side of the valley uplifted his spirits like Phoenix. He saw the signs of warmth triumphing over snow: emerging pastures side by side with snow. Yes, green gives solace! The mountains lost in their massiveness just took his tiny existence into their mystic oblivion. He just surrendered! Even their selfish, smart, suave, polished, over-imposing selves, that always intimidated the simple human being in him, appeared a puny little, inconsequential piece of craziness against such massiveness surrounding him. It became bearable for him. Their triviality and this massiveness. ‘We should realise that we are mere parts of nature that can simply smite our existence away in just one angry stroke of little finger!’ he mused and seemed to admonish his detractors.

He looked anxiously into the sky for the traces of rain. The clouds building up around the surrounding hilltops sent down still chillier sensation down his spine. But then a look into the deep gorge across the sheer precipice carrying the track, gave him an outwardly sensation of fear and excitement mixed with a strange elation that cannot be explained in words. He saw fellow devotees struggling along the labouring ponies. These were the rare moments when one can really feel the agony of a fellow human being because you are put in the same cauldron.

The last portion of the valley leading to the shrine was still covered with heavy snow. As he walked over it, he slipped and regained control like a toddler learning to walk. ‘After all we are always God's kids,’ he had a smile on his face. A smile that was so comforting that it could outweigh hundreds of unshed tears in his eyes which they had given him. Despite all the quagmire of terrorism, he felt Kashmiri Islam to be beneficent. At no other place one will find a Hindu religious occasion being supported by so many Muslims. All the hawkers, stall operators, tent owners, porters, foot massagists and alms-seekers were Muslims. At no other place in the world you will come across a Muslim stall operator welcoming a tired Hindu pilgrim: 'O Bhole come and take shringaar for Mata Parvati' In delicious Kashmiri and warm hospitality the locals called him 'Bhole!'. And once inside the majestic cave, he just found himself lost in the divine trance of the ice lingam, Baba Barfani!

He felt safe and sheltered there. The Ice God giving him warmth that his lacerated self needed so much after all of their cold gestures and frigid petty selfishness had turned him to hypothermia, even though Delhi was burning with heat. But he had to go back to the fire. Mustering up courage he started his journey back. Back to where he began from!

Luck, the Slippery Eel

He vividly remembers one Holi. At least seven or eight years back. Drunk and mired in cheap colours like toads in filthy waters, they had hitched upon a tractor and went to the district city to spoil the appearance of their friend's beautiful wife. After spreading disharmony in his household, the Holi-smitten lampoons were coming back to the village. The tractor was giving a stiff competition even to the cars on the potholed road. They yelled at the top of their ebriated, coloured rascality. There was a scene by the roadside. Such a scene instantly gives an ecstatic high to almost all Haryanvis. A man was thrashing his wifie; possibly the result of an argument while they travelled on their scooter. Poor Bajaj Chetak was the mute spectator to this gross act. The hooligan-carrier tractor came to a halt and the first instinctive reaction of the demonic group of friends was: 'Aur maro s*** ko!' And they laughed all inclined to get free entertainment from the spectacle.

As a presumably better educated human being his instincts immediately clobbered down the common Haryanvi instinct and he yelled: 'Aurat pe attyachhaar!' They respected him, those father-defying idiots. So they just jumped down and many heart-felt fist strikes found the man bleeding from mouth in just few seconds. The lady cried: 'Harramjado he is your jeejaji and works with Haryana police!' So all daredevilry was gone in an instant. Totally slouched, civil-dress-clad policeman was dazed beyond all limits. He looked a perfect Hindi movie villain. They were aware of the consequence, even though he was not on duty and was doing something that should have taken him behind the bars. But then it is not the convention. The policemen can be allowed such freebies sometimes. Realising this they just chickened out of the scene even more efficiently than a murderer ever did. His friends cursed him, ‘Your bookish ideology got us in trouble. It would have been better to laugh. The Police in Haryana is held in fearful awe by the common mortals, at least by those who are just common citizens without any background defined by wealth, prestige and the so called connections.

A bloodied policeman can get you in serious trouble. The tractor was mired in mud, even the number plates. So by appearance it just gave clue to its manufacturing company, nothing more. All nasha gone, they washed it clean in the village pond and took a vow to send it to the sheltered barn for at least a month. He had heard the fabled stories how the policeman spanked the naked bum with a leathered monster. His poor bum already twitching against the painful strikes, he prayed to all his Gods for rescue. But luck certainly falls in our laps however unlucky one might be feeling. He could not believe what happened onwards. Next day, one guy from the beating squad was reading newspaper by a roadside barber shop in the village. A policeman came and asked for the approach route to a neighbouring village. 'What happened' the scared reader asked. 'Yaar yesterday some goons on a red tractor gave a bloodied jaw to one of our policeman! Look at the guts!'  

It happened like this. The lady who was being beaten had her maternal uncles in the said neighbouring village. She had spent some part of her pre-marriage time at her mamaji’s place and was seriously aware of the family feud going on between her mamaji’s family and a peasant family in their neighbourhood. That day some elders from this rival family had reached the eventful spot and intervened while the real culprit group chickened out. Nursing insult and unfathomable anger, and not being able to find the real rascals, she and her husband had conveniently farmed these people who had in fact resolved the issue. Pure bad luck for them. Well, somebody’s good luck is at the cost of someone’s bad luck. Luck changes hands man, impersonally, mechanically, like the coins flow from one pocket to the other in the bazaar. It might slip out of a King and land up in the beggar’s bowl and the vice versa.     

Homage to the Martyrs

The professor with unconventional historical sense was fighting his mini battle of rights. He took it as his little movement against the exploiters. His pension and other funds on hold, he was waging a war in the court. It was just a week short of the first anniversary of his revolt, the fateful speech. So much tortured by the injustice to his righteous self by the stronger exploitative state force, he drew massive parallels between himself and the martyrs who had sacrificed their lives on this day, March 23. Having lost his enthusiasm for dust-raising speech, he now appeared all eager to vent out his angst in his journal. He firmly believed, and now more than ever, that those who really shed their blood for independence occupy just a few pages in the history books, and the ones who enjoyed the fruits of independence have manipulated history books. He was writing some more pages on behalf of the revolutionaries, thinking it would be handier for more convenient times under a more suitable government. His heartbeat up patriotically, he was jotting down: 

While you go full throttle on weekend enjoyments, take out a moment to remember three martyrs who on this day decades ago kissed the noose of death with such love and affection that no pining pair of lips can ever match the selfless compassion behind the lock. March 23, Sahid Divas of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev! At each step we take liberty for granted. We see the signs of growth and prosperity for ourselves in all directions, we can go out and shout regarding the causes of our grudges, we can afford to be totally individualistic and still be counted as the best people around, we can afford to allow the greatest injustices right there before our eyes and still be counted as legally clean, we are even free to take socially permitted actions to cut down the freedom of our fellow citizen, we are free man! Free for the best and the worst. But they were not free. At each step they knew that their fates lay in outsiders' hands. Their spirit always felt the cold iron of fisticuffs. They knew one single step as a free man is far better than 100 miles travelled as a slave. Even if it meant cutting their lives in the nip, while their youth was blossoming like a spring rose. They had their sip of justice and freedom. For a larger cause they defied this strongest instinct of self-preservation. They found themselves defined by their identity as Indians, not just self-seeking individuals. They died for a vision. For freedom. Was it just from the colonial rule? No, it was a dream to set all individuals and Indians from the slaving chains inside, chains of narrow parochial means, of moral apathy, of criminal negligence of murderous assault on ones fellow human being, of blindness to self-evident acts of abuse, of saddest old eyes left on road looking at the Mercedes shooting away, of abused young women left on the roads to bear more and more criminalised behaviour by the people of the same species. As a homage to these martyrs, let us open our eyes and see the larger picture. At least be a bit more caring for the world around us. As free individuals we have to pay this nominal fee at least!   

Smashed Dreams

‘Mother India’s dreams have been smashed,’ many who took out time to look at the scenario in 2012 appeared to pay the famed hypothetical concern. This concern is fuelled by the petty individual-level disappointments fathering little-little grudge-born cynicism, the latter then delivering its grandchild, the I-know-it-all attitude. There were many frogs croaking in different voices in the muddied pond. Everybody was taking pot-shots at the Congress, the grand old, wrinkled century-plus outfit, well past its prime, and getting mistreatment by the revolting grandchildren like they snatch the crown of authority from the ageing heads.  

Somewhere the retired professor was jotting down the collective fury, crowning it with his individual misery. His farewell speech indeed had ruffled a few local-level feathers. It had reached the university Vice Chancellor’s ears. As all of us know, during the present state of the affairs, this august position is a subtle, academically justified means of the state government to have its political share in managing the academic institution as per its suitability. So even though the issue had not raised any ripples in the state capital a good 200 kilometres away, the VC had deemed it fit to take it politically at his own level, feeling politically responsible, lest it created troubles for him later. So the professor’s post-retirement leisure and peace had been disturbed a great deal. A mini racket had been busted. For years most of the staff had been claiming LTA (leave travel allowance), like they do in most of the departments, without travelling, just taking a tiny short-cut, assuming it to be almost a legal right now because it gets done so easily and also all others elsewhere taking it--theses little impregnations of commonly allowed illegalities, to deliver a baby of malpractice when the situation demanded. So the last year’s case had been put under enquiry, and his pension put on hold consequently. Afraid to speak loudly, the professor was jotting in his journal:  

It is the time to rethink. Rethink at the collective level. The time is ripe. Any educated Indian will accept that the Republic has been mismanaged terribly. Overflowing wealth in Swiss accounts bears testimony to this. If we compare the wealth amassed in dubious foreign accounts in independent India with the wealth drain during the colonial regime, I am afraid there might not be much difference between the two figures. The only consolation we can draw is that instead of the White man it is the Brown man who is doing the same profiteering chores. Indian judiciary is incapable of catching these big fish, it eats up the little ones, the helpless ones.  

Do you remember the guy from the The Broken Dream who now slogged in the private sector for his bread and butter? He worked the hardest he could, looked back many a time at the prestigious position he had been deprived of by the Congress government in Haryana, again went back to work even harder, only to be stalled by rampant office politics that allows the politically smarter ones to move on, leaving the apolitical hardworkers in the position where they belong, the real hardworking, subordinate donkeys. The anti-congress political analyst in him raised tirade many times:

The question arises: Whom to blame? Even with a pinch of salt, majority of us will agree that the kind of political ruling class and culture that emerged after Independence is more or less sired by the Congress. As the juggernaut that fetched us freedom, it occupied a holy, absolute and unquestionable status. Dreamy-eyed Indians don’t question the illogical circumstances developing in their lives. They still worship their deities. Congress was a deity. Unfortunately public service rarely comes out of the bum feeling the warmth of divinity perpetually carpeting the throne. So for terms after terms the masses paid homage to Devi Congress by voting in its favour. But the religious trusts are rarely managed well by the priests.

Sukh Ram, the Hindu with a scared soul, and thus a natural supporter of the BJP, was irritated by default with whatever the Congress did. Lynched by the so called ‘Muslim-appeasement policies’ of the first political family, he was prattling about the multi-generation political business in India:

The lesser genies are just the offshoots of the same colonial hangover like the absolute power, milking the public resources for enlarging self-interests, using public authority to cut down any wind of change, family raj, etc. When non-Congress politicians amass wealth to lay a solid footing for dynasty-raj in their territories, they are just taking a logical and justified clue from the rulebook of the first political family in the country. It is tragic for the democracy. When as a legislator you lose sight of the constitutional objectives and responsibilities of public service for the masses and instead focus on establishing your lineage on the throne, then all the golden lines that were framed with dreamy eyes in the lengthy sessions of the Constituent Assembly take a backseat and become strings to a farcical puppet show of money, power and vagabondage.

The Frog Fella with his senses jolted had turned a philosopher. Very surprisingly! He could have lost his senses as well, but it happened otherwise. He was hammering his judgements with intellectual solidity and envisioning darker days for the democracy:

Indian democracy is supposedly evolving healthily. But in reality it has been a malnutritioned and unhealthy baby. Where is the political choice at the national level? Literally every Indian is using bad words for the UPA government. There are not too many praises of the BJP either. What will people do? A fractured mandate is a real possibility. The regional dynasty-rule-lorn satraps will enjoy the hotchpotch poultice brimming up in Delhi. Over-fed Congressites will belch and burp and happily welcome a break after enjoying the public resources for a decade during its latest innings at amassing wealth. The Yuvraj will go sight-seeing, relaxed and visit Dalit homes and try to find out the taste in the famed dal-roti of India. The Maharani will give more focus to her Hindi lessons. The BJP is trying to see beyond Lal Krishna Advani. Its house in disarray, how much it can cash on popular angst is still in doubt. Maulana Mulayam plays his cards well and always sees the throne in Delhi a distinctly achievable target. Mayavati is happy to rally all the historically mistreated dalits behind her and make them believe that merely voting for a dalit and showing the index finger to upper-caste candidates means the Buddha-sent justice for them.

The Kejriwal ignited soul--his disillusionment now healing like a wound getting the coagulated crust towards getting a political skin)--our ageing unmarried social reformer from A Fistful of Goodness was shutting up many lesser noises to raise his toot of a mini-white-revolution:

The question is: How long the educated middle class in India will continue with its famed apathy and allow the present kind of ruling establishment to thrive at the cost of the common good. The popularity of Civil Society Movement provides a glimmer of hope. But how long can a movement survive and sustain while harping from the clean pedestal of morally clean apolitical carpet? How can you fight evil politicians without jumping into the political cauldron? It is like hunting a lion with sling-shots. For an effective fight it has to be inside the political cage only: a hand to hand real fight. But the moment they try to do it, even their supporters point fingers in admonishments that they appear just lesser dirty politicians in this avatar.

Among all this hoot and holler, the red-nosed guy from Friends and Foes, his time buddy safely in his pocket, was telling his co-passenger in a noisy, rickety state transport bus plying on a pot-holed road:  

The main problem lies with the kind of political machinery that has taken the driving seat in the wagon of Indian constitutionality. So the main fight is there only. As far as the Civil Society Movement is concerned, we can do them a favour--clap when they take mud-shots at the so-called starched khadi wears by fighting with as much political force as possible. In the looming directionless scenario, I think this is the need of the time. Who knows this extra hand will come with a pleasant surprise. So Ramdev, Anna Saheb & Company, the soon-to-retire General and many others should be encouraged to draw as much politics into their movement as possible. At least politics played by educated middle class will be better than the one played by people like the buffoon from Bihar.

A Sneezy Snippet from the Buffalo Land

He comes from the Jat stock. The arms working quicker than the brain, the culture being the agriculture, the government services generally meaning the police and the military—well these are some of the fundamental traits of the Jats. Oh just forgot the Haryanvi dialect that literally sums up the Jat attitude of being on top of this world in wisdom, knowledge, strength, stamina, guts, looks, sacrifice, etc., etc. There is one more historical element that qualifies as the defining element in the proud definition of being a Jat: love for the water buffaloes. Even a historian during the time of Alexander the Great notified that ‘these (Jats) people have a special affection for water buffaloes’. The Jat does not feel the pinch when some bruised city dweller dubs him as a ‘buffalo mind’ from the ‘buffalo land’. That’s true at least literally. Now coming to the time-tested fact of these people’s love for the water buffaloes! Sometimes back his mother sold her buffalo to a tough farmer. Now this one had been brought up by his mom like it was her daughter. Pampered to the hilt I tell you. But then taking care of this pampered one, whose requirements were seriously reaching human levels, was proving to be too tiresome for her. So she was forced to sell the spoilt animal. The buyer, a rough and rowdy farmer, was famous as the number one wife-beater in the village. While handing over the rope to this work brute, his teary-eyed mother said, ‘Son, hope you won’t mistreat this gudiya of mine!' 'I never beat buffaloes.....', prompt came the reply, 'I just.....', he stopped a bit embarrassed. He just stopped himself from saying that he beat his wife only. Well that shows the Jat’s respect for the animal. You can say it is more or less equal to their womenfolk. The menfolk are male buffaloes anyway!