India Rising

In my last post, I wrote about how our nation has been disintegrating and that unity has almost diminished. However, I seem to be changing my opinion looking at the strong protest rallies, candle lighting campaigns, and listening to the voices that echoed at the Gateway of India yesterday and all across the country.

Though I strongly condemn the notorious acts of the terrorists, I also somewhere wish to thank them for provoking the youth of this nation, getting them united and making then think, retort, and question the governance. I have seen the “Incredible India” and “India Shining”, and I now see “India Rising”, which hopefully is to preserve the glitter of that shining India. “United we stand” today. I feel a sense of pride that for once we have forgotten our regional boundaries, and got together to analyse the situation and come up with possible solutions. I see the “Spirit of Mumbai” rapidly transforming into the “Spirit of India” – we all are ready to fight back.

Having gone through entire episode over the week, I presume that all opinions have converged on having a government (politicians) that is accountable, selfless, and proactive. One and all feel that we need major changes in the government that range from having a dictator to having a presidential to corporatisation of our states and so on. We have finally risen to the true meaning of democracy – of the people, for the people, and by the people. People are ready to cleanse the governance that had taken the common man for granted all these year. Not any more though, we have awakened now, and we will bring about the change we need. Of the many voices that spoke yesterday across the country, many suggestions seemed absolutely necessary and practical.

From the voices that I heard yesterday at the Gateway of India, one girl raged that cricketers are taken in air-conditioned Volvo buses, whereas the commandos who fought there in South Mumbai were taken in BEST buses. The girl’s anger is very much justified. Why this discrimination? Is a cricketer more of an asset to us than a commando? Sachin, Bhajji, Dhoni etc can practice peacefully at the nets just because they know that there is a army man guarding the border. We give our sportsmen crores of rupees as prize money when they already have crores, but pay our martyrs only 5 lacs or 10 lacs. The commando fights with his life on peril. What danger do these cricketers have? – a ball hitting them, some bleeding, some swelling, neck sprain, tennis elbow, ping-pong leg, blah blah…uhhh. There were SMSs floating “Bhindra makes country proud” and so on. Why does a valiant commando not make us proud?

Other angered young men and women also protested that the Congress has axed some of its leaders, but we don’t need that, we need action against what has happened. Some cried that we for sure know that Pakistan is responsible, go and bomb them, take Kasav (arrested terrorist) with you in a chopper and ask him to show where the camps are – bomb it then. Some said declare a war on Pakistan, and finish is off, we would prefer dying in a war than a terrorist attack.

Yes, indeed enough is enough. However, we need constructive measures to curb the exploitation we have been subjected to for so many years. I definitely don’t want a war, and I am sure there are many who will second this. History proves that wars have always been destructive. A war will erode much of our infrastructure, kill the innocent, and will only lay a plot for another war – we don’t want that to happen. “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”, said Mahatma Gandhi – the greatest even proponent of peace. We also should be careful of the US; they might just provoke us into a war with Pakistan, and use us, just as they did with Afghanistan against the Soviets. While we may just listen to them in terms of their intelligence reports and their strategies of previous operations, our implementation strategies should be our own and not influenced by anyone else.

Now for all of this to happen, we need a strong leadership. It is important to understand that we, the people can create an uprising but cannot completely insulate us from politics, we have a political democratic system, and have to couple with it for advancing.

Let us have an entirely new breed of transparent, honest, and selfless politicians that put country’s benefits prior to their own pockets and treasuries. Let us have strict security measures, and ramp up on our educational policies.

Improve on defense mechanisms – advanced arms, better technology, new bullet proof jackets and helmets, throw away lathis and give guns to hawaldars, mandatory physical fitness checkup for the police personnel, scale up the Mumbai police back to its original form (Mumbai police was once considered the second best cop group in the world after the Scotland Yard), empowering the people (on voluntary basis) to combat such attacks and handle emergencies, evacuation drills for people, and so on.

The other day (much before the terror attacks), my friends and I, at office were discussing about what kind of political leaders and government we need, this is what we had come up with

• Graduation mandatory for anyone who wants to contest elections
• If you have a single criminal case filed, you are not eligible to contest elections
• Retirement age to be made mandatory for all politicians, this is where we also need young India to take part in politics
• The politician can serve only a maximum of upto 2 terms in office
• The cabinet to consist of equal number of young and senior people
• Issue a memo and temporarily suspend the leader if found using regionalism, communalism, casteism or other ill means to make false propaganda – always keep a replacement backup leader ready
• Have at least one corporate leader on the advisory panel for most important portfolios

I know some of the above may sound foolish and impractical, but that’s the way we need it, strict rules laid down by the election commission. A leader can get a fake degree certificate and contest elections, I agree there can be corruption at this and various other stages, but aren’t we talking about cleansing that very point, and it has to be done in stages, we cannot have saints overnight. These are some points we had randomly thought that day, I am sure we all together can come up with better means to sanitise our politics.

I would also love to draw some inspiration from the US (we always love doing it, don’t we?) – make the leaders debate in public and telecast it live. Let the whole country see their capabilities in communication, analytical reasoning, negotiating powers etc. Also, going ahead,

• Let Arnab Goswami, Karan Thapar, Rajdeep Sardesai, Prannoy Roy, and likes grill the leaders and expose the leaders’ skills to the public.
• Give them case studies, and analyse what solutions the leaders have come up with. Have a panel of experts, intellectuals like corporate honchos, editors, army personnel, bureaucratic advisors (would be great if we can few foreign heads on this panel) to study the results
• Have interim appraisals every quarter to study the performance of the individual and the party
• Have a facility to allow the common man to provide feedback on the political leader (even the smallest)

Yes, it may look like I am making politics sound like a corporate house. Why not, if we can reap benefits from it? The only snag here is appointing a governing body that keeps an eye on cleanliness of all the processes. We, the young have always been accused that we only dream. Yes, we do, but only to set a target, we don’t like to wander aimlessly like the seniors (politicians) of this country.

I hope that the anger, frustration, retaliation, and the peace marches remain alive in the hearts of those who gathered across the country, on and off the screen, to bring about a change, a much needed change. It is said that out of every bad, there comes a good, and that good is about to come, we are definitely making this country and the world a better place to live. It is this country that has always loved peace and taught tolerance, and we will keep preaching it – that won’t change.