50 days!
I have been spinning in hectic schedules of work and a strenuous life of intermediate intensity. I have had hardly anytime to catch up with the news, especially at this time when elections are just around the corner. During all these frenzied days of my work life, I have terribly missed Karan (Thapar), Rajdeep, Arnab, and Udayan & Mitali (Mukherjees), of course. Yes, I did catch up with the Oscar ceremony and the hyped Slumdog jazz though.
I am exhausted now. I tried to squeeze in some time yesterday to go through the recent political news (I wasn’t interested in what is happening to Kasab or was eager to know about India’s heroic cricketing triumphs). I pulled out some news archives from various websites, newspapers, and did watch news channels for whole three hours yesterday. I liked the oath taking Lead India 09 campaign, I liked Aamir’s representation to think better for this country in one another Lead India campaign, I loved the awareness and initiatives that Jaagore team has marched with. I was excited to see so much of educational inventiveness that various groups have come up with. Yet, there were some pieces of news that pulled me down – the hate politics, the blame games, criminalisation of politics, I was confused about what are we planning these elections for, to find a new Prime Minister or a Crime Minister – sad but true.
To top the list there is Varun Gandhi, whose hate speech (if true) has created a mess, which the political parties are now using to reap profits, even if that means exploiting the strictest law of the country. Everybody is wrong, from Varun to Advani to Mayawati, who in some way or the other are trying to entice the voter community. Anything based on a selfish motive may look pleasing for some time but in the long run it loses its charm. Varun thinks he possibly has pleased the Hindus of Pilibit and Mayawati feels she has soothed the Muslims – temporary, who knows tomorrow for some other reason Mayawati may go and join hands with Varun to get the absolute majority kind of status.
As I write, there is news flash that Modi (Gujarat CM) has selected some C. R. Patil to contest on a BJP ticket. C. R. Patil has a criminal case against him, 6 months of jail and suspension from his police services. We are strongly promoting the message – “SAY NO TO CRIMINALS”, it is good that there are programmes to edify the voter class. However, is that alone sufficient? Should the party leaders be not made equally aware that we don’t need criminals on the ballot paper as one of the option? Mr. Dutt has asked for a stay on his conviction, possibly trying to follow Sidhu’s suit and many others. It is all so easy, do a crime – get a stay – contest election and once elected have the power in your hand to twist and turn the law. I am surprised that our judicial system is so fragile and vulnerable that it can be exploited at one’s wish and will. Let there be a common rule – “No criminal, with whatsoever status, will be allowed to contest any election of any scale”, no exceptions allowed, change the Section 8 of Representation of People Act, if required. Even if you have served your term in jail etc, you cannot contest; we don’t want to take chances after all. I don’t say people don’t change, but let’s at least avoid people who have had charges of forgery, murders, aiding ill social elements, kidnapping, extortion, and other heinous acts. All the criminals, as citizens of this nation, will continue to enjoy their right to vote, but not to contest. There are more than 50 candidates with criminal records who will try to test their fate in coming elections. I can go on and on with criminalisation.
Then there is a blame game story. I read Jaitley’s statement on some news channel that our country is not safe in hands of Chidambaram as a Home Minister and our investments were not safe when he was a the Finance Minister. Then offer a solution, Mr. Jaitley. What are you waiting for? Is coming to power the only premise when you will offer a solution that will work towards our country’s interest? Is, otherwise, the country not dear to you? “Let my party come to power, then I will tell you what to do, until then it is not my job”, is that what you are trying to tell us Mr. Jaitley.
Udhav Thackeray few days back bashed our PM, Manmohan Singh with some rude comments about the latter’s performance etc. There was at least some performance from our PM to comment on. What is there in your kitty Udhavji? Making hate speeches, instigating communal divide? I sincerely respect our PM, the most learned man that he is, and I have seen few things taking shape during his reign, even if someone wants to call him a puppet in hands of Sonia Gandhi. I understand that not everything mentioned in their manifesto. No party would have been able to so, in a country where government is based on coalition, democracy is taken for granted, and bureaucrats deeply rooted in corruption.
Interestingly, I read Govinda’s (our Virar ka chokra turned actor turned politician) statement and had a good laugh – “I don’t think I did a mistake by joining politics”. Haaa haaa haaa… How can you make a mistake sir when you actually haven’t done anything? An error or a mistake occurs when you attempt to do something.
Prakash Karat, who once staunchly opposed Mayawati, is now her partner (in politics), and he does not mind the list of tainted members that Mayawati has roped in to contest this year’s elections. Communist party always boasted of their moral principles, unfortunately which are over thrown now by the elephant lady.
Today, sadly, our democracy is a poor mockery of coalition government. Parties withdrawing support, announcing new alliances, I hear it every single day it all is very chaotic. How are we to believe then, that these leaders will be loyal and honest enough to fulfil our dreams of becoming the most successful democracy? The only single testimony that we are made to witness is back stabbing and betrayal.
There are many other examples that I can cite here, but the post would run as long as our constitution. I am terribly confused what is going to happen next. Should there be one more panel other than the EC, comprising the likes of Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata, A P J Abdul Kalam, who we look up to as the most ideal and honest men, to interview and scrutinize the probable candidates to test their eligibility? Have that sieve at one level, and then pass filtered candidates to us.
I am, in no way, from my statements above, trying to show my disbelief for the coming elections. I will vote and would request each one of you to vote. For time being, let us devise our own filter test, so that we vote the right candidate.
I somehow have a strong feeling that Congress (I will intentionally avoid using the word UPA), will win this elections with a good majority. The ratio of wise men to foolish is better in Congress than in any other party or coalition for that matter. Congress, at least, has some intellectual heads, which I anytime prefer to communal minds. I, personally, would have loved to vote for Shashi Tharoor, had I been a voter from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency.
I am not saying that the entire of Congress is pure, there are definitely some taints but little lesser than other parties, till this point at least. All parties, out there, are like cats, selfish and may be wild too. However, it is better to have a cat that meows in anger than the one which bites and nails.
Comments
Good one bro...
Hope that changes soooonnn. :-)
I personally endorse MMS as our pm, I applaud his determination during nuclear deal chaos. As per my consistuency, I am relieved Mr. Joker(Govinda) is not given ticket.
- david
Of course, all of our opinions, even collectively, mean nothing and I'm too depressed from the politics that I've seen, however little that is, to think that voting makes a lot of difference. It does make a difference, yes, but not a lot. Not in our country, not yet. In any case, that shouldn't stop us from voting... keeping our fingers crossed... doing our job as responsible citizen, yet living on hope and hope alone. Why I'm so pessimistic is that no one is here to guarantee booth captures don't take place, even in a place like Mumbai. Its all as much an eyewash that it has always been. Having set that as a ground for this comment, I'm daring to go further.
First, I'll comment on your statement near the end of your weblog: "The ratio of wise men to foolish is better in Congress than in any other party or coalition for that matter." IMO, not so humble, *wise* is a wrong choice here, you may want to rethink it to *smart*. Congress is anything but wise; they are a bunch of smart people, if not shrewd. I also subscribe to the strong view that Congress has been in power for too long (over 50 yrs!) to get away doing so little and instead doing so much harm; in other choicest words, they've raped the country! We'd a good president in the form of APJ who didn't get support for a 2nd term by UPA. Any political party, having any wise men, would hardly disagree. We've the great Pratibha Patil as a substitute, God only knows who she is and what she does!
There have been some stupid round of affairs recently from our great PM. I call it stupid, you may not. But assuming that you didn't catch that in your running around, I mention them: in that needless Slumdog fever, our PM got a letter from some firang (no one in power, just a regular aam aadmi like us, but a firang, mind you!) inquiring if children were really forcibly handicapped and made to beg in Mumbai. This kind of thing has been shown in movies of yesteryear and I'm sure that our good PM must have seen it. But he asked some goddamn committee to inquire into this matter if its true. I'm not stating any conclusion here, but you can imagine what it takes for our PM to act. A related matter, from what I see, is the passing of law against the film industry piracy, illegal VCD, DVDs, etc. Hah! That came as a shock to me. Not because its I think its a wrong law.. well, nothing I think matters anyway, but why it is being done now. Because the great US told our great PM that terrorists used money from pirated VCD/ DVDs to fund Mumbai's 26/11. I'm short of decent words to appreciate PM's steps of getting to that law so bloody fast that I felt that they got the freaking 26/11 criminals arrested and shot/ hanged already. Oh, Sweet Justice! Our PM needs some other letters from firang civilians or out of their mind US authorities to wake him from his slumber and tell him that Bollywood had been in news for ties with underworld since an era already. And that is no different from how Hollywood has been a generation earlier. Its not our best kept secret, but still there's not much action taken on that front, be it with a new law being passed or old one acted upon.
Moving on to Varun... Yes, its all politics, but on one speech to attract voters by an inexperienced youngster who apologized already, has NSA pressed against him and he is thrown behind bars. OTOH, record criminals with jail terms, booked under POTA, etc, are out there contesting elections. Everyone gets a taste of our sick politics. On a related note, I wonder how Raj Thackeray measures on the hate-speech, hate-act scale for our EC!
My *biased* choice is BJP, because I think BJP-led NDA did do the most in the short term they were in power (They did make a mistake of claiming what they did with "India shining" slogan, but I think they brought some shine to claim in a term than Congress-led UPA did in 50 long and tortorous years); because BJP seems to be a sane choice for me looking at development of all states that have BJP or BJP-alliance, including Bihar of all places, not to mention Gujarat (surely, a host to the next financial capital of India); and last but not the least, because I can be a Hindu and secular at the same time!
I'm not saying BJP's fully clean, but I don't think that voting for Congress because BJP's not clean is the right thinking. We can't wait for ever looking for a party that is clean and can win. We need to switch to less-worse to slowly move toward our goal of a better India.
I think you may be getting as tired reading it, that is if you read this far, as I'm getting writing it out, but I'll say this a couple of things out: Why should Jaitley express love for his country by being a guide to PM on resolving the financial crisis? That too in the time of elections when pointing failures means more win than correcting others and helping them win? Its all a political game, righteously fundamental to Chanakya neeti. Aren't we pointing Jaitley's mistake with this where it was not his responsibility than to point at the PM whose responsibility it was? It may at most be okay to say that PM did the right thing, took the right measures, but to say that Jaitley should have advised PM in the larger interest of the country is way too much, IMO. Would the PM have acted on Jaitley's guidance is another matter altogether. All things aside, Manmohan Singh should have taken the open TV debate, a clean one-on-one against the blamed game in speeches, challenged by Advani.
Apologies, I'd to write a blog-like comment in response to your blog... now I might as well blog it. :)
Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!
Its indeed okay if, as a citizen of India, the writer has expressed his view on whom he wants to vote. Shashi Tharoor is an excellent choice for the past record he has instead of a Mayawati or an Advani.
Hail Democracy.
Great to see you back (with a bang). We had been missing you so much.
Good thought provoking article again.
Regards,
Navin
And no sir, Raj wasn't done enough with, if he's out in the open having done harm and Varun is inside jail for having voiced harm. I'm not saying let Varun out, I'm saying put Raj in too, if that. I'm just too fed up with so called "blind justice" which has a selective view. Mixing internationally, its exactly how US goes bombing life out of Iraq or Afghanistan when they have nothing while they dare not touch China or North Korea.
Lastly, we are unfortunately not a US kind of democracy, in voting I mean. If Shashi Tharoor is to be the PM, I'd vote for him, but not for the Congress if Shashi Tharoor just represents them, a party where PM is just a namesake placeholder.
Against that, any day, I prefer BJP with Advani leading or better still, Narendra Modi, the loud-and-clear non-corrupt development-friendly chap.
Sadly, we're still very far from "Hail Democracy" slogan, a country where rural voting is purely decided on the basis of desi-daru and/ or cash distributed a night earlier. So being more realistic, "Hell Democracy!"
Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!
You have managed to shock me there by divorcing matters that need to sleep together!!!
(sorry Amol, spamming your blog! :)
Thanks for all your comments. It has got very hot here :-)
It seems that I have stamped a scorpion tail and the provocation looks scattered all over my blog-post.
By far, this has been the most interesting article (comments wise) that I think I ever posted.
Thanks again
Keep reading and commenting ;-)
Cheers,
Amol
I appreciate UPA on this aspect, keeping my biases aside.
Dont worry about the spamming, go on. I appreciate everything as long as it does not turn utterly abusive. Yes there some illogical insane ideologies/ideas been echoed here, but it is just appropriate to keep talking (read typing) till we put things in right perspective, are able to cohesively read between right and wrong, good and bad, common-sense and non-sense.
Cheers,
Amol
There's another interesting thing that people may not know and/ or think over and/ or just don't care enough about. These people should really watch the Chanakya series at least, if not read Chanakya Neeti. The idea of a war, apart from grabbing land (expanding horizons, if you will) is really to cripple the economy. The US would grab land and set up an army base that will *never* get picked up; thats why US is all over the world! The Chinese would move in and make it China in totality.
Apologies, too much deviation there, but what I am getting at is there are reasons why most wars are made on "another's soil".
If India goes to war, its too risky to get in Pak's soils... we ourselves will get handicapped playing in our territories. Yes, we may destroy Pak totally, but that hardly helps us. We don't care about Pak's economy at all; they may shine to heavens or go to hell for all we care. Taliban will be next doors in an event of war or post-war. And we can't become a fanatic country throwing all our tax money (not that there will be much tax post-war... a nuclear one at that!!!) in fighting idiots.
A better option is to spend half the war budget on security and closing borders.
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The Future Mantra
Your thoughts may superficially seem to be ok in comparing the tenures for which the Congress and the BJP got to rule. Having said that, I would also like to make a point that much of the development has happened during the times of Congress for e.g. the growth of India that we today see on the global map. India Shining was just an irony of the NDA government.
We may want to accept that the roots of terrorism were sown eversince the partition and the Kashmir issue, but things got aggrevated with the Babri Masjid and Ram Mandir issue and its off shoots are still noticable in various parts of the country in form of sporadic blasts, killings, hijacking etc. The Congress government hasnt been to completely prevent what has happening but you cannot blame them directly for something that is of BJP or Hindutva origin. I feel relieved that Congress (or the UPA) at least follows a secular form of governance.
I accept completely that Congress has been inefficient in some areas, I would rather say forced to be inactive by its alliances and hence to avoid any emergency polling.
Coming to Varun Gandhi and Raj Thackerey, I would prefer not to comment, as the neither bother me, for MNS is indirectly an accessorial part of BJP, BJP-Shivsena-MNS goes the link, as far as ideologies are concerned and we keep aside the technical flow of these parties. Moreover, Raj had been adequately punished and there are cases going against on him, it depends on the court to take the necessary action. Why the action was strict in case of Varun is that he has made inflammatory speeches during the time of elections which violates the code of conduct laid down by the EC, that he has been booked under NSA is a smart play by Mayawati to out smart the Muslim voters.
Giving a way for BJP to form a government means forming tributaries for RSS, Bajrang Dal to enter the House of Parliament, and God forbid if that day comes, then we can talibanisation of Hinduism by people who surely dont understand what Hinduism or Hindutva stands for. We will more and more Muthaliks sprouting else where in the country and you can imagine the state of this country then.
While I am still confused whose luck it will be to shine in Delhi, I hope the it is certainly not BJP comrades, I dont like to mention any other party here as it would be some part of the tail of either the Congress or the BJP.
Jai Hind & Vande Mataram indeed!
No, my dear Sir, with all due respect, its anything but superficial! You can't be serious about a comparison of tasks done in a single term of BJP vs 50+ yrs of Congress and outweigh the former by the inexcusable menial improvement by the latter. Nonetheless its just my opinion against yours.
Whether we may want to accept that or not, the fact still remains that the seeds of hatred were sown during the partition. We just didn't see it as much, because we've always closed our eyes to what is happening in Kashmir. You may say that it was more visible elsewhere too post-Babri, but thats an incorrect perspective, IMHO, if we consider Kashmir as a part of India. Why should we ignore what has been happening in Kashmir endlessly on a daily-- nay, 24 hr basis-- and be bothered only about Mumbai or Gujarat or whatever? I've myself gone to Jammu twice and closed those official trips in fear, and that was not even Kashmir! Its hell out there, it has nothing to do with Hindutva or whatever we may want to blame it on now. As much as you think that BJP's India shining slogan was an irony, I consider UPA/ Congress' secularism bogus... sorry to say, its a govt of minorities.
All those alliances you mention were not really there for 50 yrs of pure Congress rule... so the onus is clearly theirs on ruins we see, its only post NDA rule that the vote has actually split into an unstable, coalition, that too with BJP getting the most votes at most times.
If neither bother us, shouldn't they both? Pls consider a questioning thought: why any speech should be more dangerous during election time and even actions when elections are not on are not to be taken strictly? I'd like to see a set of rules functioning all the time, elections or no elections. BJP-Shivsena link may be okay to draw, but you can't blame BJP for Shivsena actions and viceversa. Even so, MNS has hardly anything to do with Shivsena and absolutely nothing at all with BJP. Ideologies don't mix in the beginning and definitely not to conclusion... even using a pinch of that logic, the Left belongs in China than India. Agreed that Varun is under NSA due to shrewd Mayawati tactics.
I think the people who have coined "Talibanisation of Hinduism" understand nothing about Taliban and nothing about Hinduism, so it is an obvious resulting oxymoron! I've seen BJP rule and nothing like "entering the House of Parliament" happened. There's this common mistake of mixing up all parties calling themselves Hinduvadi with BJP. Mixing Muthalik with BJP is as wrong as mixing any violent activist against Hindus with Congress and I am unwilling to do that. If you didn't know, Muthalik is banned from entering Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka by a BJP govt. I doubt if any other govt ever dared to do so! So kindly don't confuse "Muthaliks" with BJP.
I myself hope it is not the Congress. Let us keep hoping for our voted party to win, but lets at least be together towards a common goal: a safer, clean, better India on all aspects. :)
Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!
So forget Hail Democracy, Hell Democracy, Hindutva, Talibanisation, Slumdogs, Varuns, and Mayawati. Let us just follow and believe Jai Hind and Vande Mataram!
Think Right, Vote Right
T. Rao
I don't think this is a fight, its still a debate, some thing that should help us "think right, vote right". I personally don't think that the system here works well in terms of looking at just the local candidate, its all party politics... no matter who the candidate. In any case, to each his own.
@Anon1:
AFAIK, Ananth Kumar Hegde has not made any hate speech, he's just said that he doesn't need any minority votes to win! Yes, it is insanely daring, especially for a person to be upfront that way, unlike some others who hide under the bogus "secular" tag while being a party for minorities.
@Anon2: I think you should have commented yesterday, you've missed your chance of an "April fool". :)