A Little Slice of Peace

Can Indian Government's population policy be freed from political compulsions?

The question had always come back to him, slipping out of his mind and then returning without any answers.

The importance of this question attacked him with unpardoning urgency this time as he travelled by train in the undisturbed snow-bound wastes of Kazakhstan. Almost as big as India, the central Asian country has a population of just 19 million. Luckily for them, and terribly unlucky for us, he thought, the population of this similar-sized country is even less than the Delhi NCR. After landing up there he had not seen a single stressed out, worried and strained Kazak face across all age, classes and categories. In contrast, he could hardly recall a fully healthy face—even among the teenagers—in the frenzied Delhi Mob or anywhere else in India. His interpretation was simple: in congested ant swarms you cannot expect healthy, confident, strong-willed individuals. You find robust grass grazers like rhino in the undisturbed, undulating pastures, he mused as the train chugged ahead. In the terribly congested, stinking lanes of a place like old Delhi bazaars you see a sea of pathetically beaten down people carrying out their day to day survival fight. The contrast lynched him. There the humans can beat even famished stray dogs in pathetic appearances, he felt far away from that maddening crowd.

Indians have bred like anything, looking at the endless snowy dunes meeting the horizon he realised. Especially ‘they’ have been paranoid about adding to their population. He always addressed that particular section of the Indian population as ‘they’. He had had his quota of secular education and dithered from direct name-calling. But far away from the secular-bound reflections, he took a break, resolved to call a spade a spade. A brave endeavour by a secular-principled Indian, indeed! Unfortunately Islam came to be interpreted in terms of quantification only, he was more direct in his reflections now.

Of course Islamic frenzy has multiplied their population world over. So has the violence. Look at the quality of life in the congested neighbourhoods! Look at their contribution to world culture, peace, innovation, etc. Of course, it leaves much to be desired about their contribution to make this world a better place.

A painful injection to his secular self. He felt the pinch. He just waved away it away and tried to focus on the population-less charm on both sides of the train; miles after miles the distances seemed fathomless; peace appeared to take limitless snowy strides, without human intervention, without clatter and noise.

From the window of the train chugging up to some northern Kazak city his ideas hitting the cold hard reality on its head were abounding across the perfectly calm snowy desert. Already in India the reactive culture hate-mongers had more starch in their khaki shorts, more oiled sticks and more lungpower because the times had changed. The paper soldiers could now dream of making it a stronger India. He found his reflections not too extraordinary under the chime of the time and again fell to the temptation of looking them as the cause of the problems.  

Rampant Islamic quantification contributes more to world disharmony, and its role in world peace is almost negligible.

He had something to think about the clauses in the Indian constitution. In his present state possibly the Khaki-shorts-clad uncle would have embraced him as the bravest son of India.

It is high time that we pay a bit less lip service to the hypothetical Godly status to the so call democratic clauses in the Indian constitution that have done more harm to India as a country in return of just inconsequential praise and tiny certification of being a good democracy. Central government has to come out of that pit of idealist secularism and devise some direct and indirect means of checking the minority population.  

Sipping his morning tea in the pantry car, he had not seen any human intervention in the nature’s sprawl on both sides of the railway track, except occasional outcrop of a little hamlet and small town. Look at the nature, only the weakest species have the largest numbers, his mind was now taking a course where his khaki-clad-uncle would have given a rap on the knuckles. He had a friend who could barely provide even basic education to his two daughters, but he was under constant pressure to have a male heir.

Hindus also have their big role in breeding like ant swarms. Centuries old beliefs like the necessity of marriage, goddamned requirement of possessing a male heir, etc., have meant that Indians force themselves to just add to their species at any cost.

The people he saw on the stations appeared all healthy and hence happy and rich. His mind was drawn to the contrast in the crowded slum in Dharavi, Mumbai. There you fight even for your single breath. Now he was reflecting at the problem just as a problem. A secular idea indeed! His education was stronger for his temporary fits.  

Indian poor class does not produce more and more children to get more helping hands in traditional business and occupations. Ask any poor couple, do they expect help from their children once they grow up. Not many will be found to be optimistic about their future. In fact majority will agree that their position will come down after having more and more children. Still they produce. Strange!

He had tried many times to find out the reason, the psychology. Why the poor people produce children while caught in a strange apathy, a peculiar indifference, absent-mindedness? The poor old much maligned political class of India can silently take any blame while gathering the rewards in lieu of the blames. He was quick to direct his guns in that direction.

Indian political class has glorified poverty by paying lip service in the form of so many fucking social assistance services. These measures were never intended to remove poverty by raising people out of the pit by providing them concrete skills. These were just limited to providing them meals like you give charity to a poor beggar. Do not hate the poor, but of course we can hate poverty that kills the soul of a human being.

He looked at ‘poverty’ as the nasty instrument that dehumanised the self.

Let poor people face the music if they produce children beyond their economic means to provide them a decent life. Do not just give 25 Kg grain to the BPL section so that they carelessly add more mouths in their hut to chuck it out. Let all social benefit schemes be strictly conditioned in proportion to the number of kids they are having.

As the train chugged ahead on its path to still calmer destination, his mind was brimming with disincentives for the poor households brimming with loads of children beyond their carrying capacity.

Sum and summary is that we need to check population at any rate, he concluded. Otherwise we will spoil the chances of taking India to a decent position in terms of social development. Not only this, we will also spoil the environment anywhere we settle. He saw around, it was clean. Indians had not started settling in that majestic part of the world.

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.