A Land Mark Year for India

A decade down the line, we will turn back and look at 2014 as the year that changed India.

 

The year that ended decades of absurd socialistic pseudo secular leaderless rudderless (mis)governance.

 

The year that saw the rise of a powerful leader who brought to the table the need for citizen involvement in development - personal, social and national.

 

The year that saw a leader opening communication channels directly with the common man.

 

The year that brought back on agenda the magnificence of our wonderful culture.

 

The year that put common man ahead of pampered netas.

 

The year that saw a popularly elected PM single handedly resurrecting the tarnished image of India on the World stage

 

The year we told Pakistan to go fly a kite

 

The year that gave hope to the majority Community Hindus that their interest will not be compromised at any cost

 

The year we put the issue of development back on track

 

The year that saw someone talking about accountability of the public servants

 

The year that made us sit up and listen to a man with ideas and a vision for the country

 

The year a leader showed us the way by clocking 80-100 hours per week himself.

 

The year, during which we could say with heads high

 

" I am proud to be an Indian"

 

Thank you Narendra Modi!  and Thank you The Indian Voter!

May our next generation have a bright future under his leadership!

Shatamaanam Bhavati Shataayu: PuruSha: Shatendriya: AayuShyevendriye Pratitishthati"

What is common between Modi and Rahul?

At last, we have a leader in Modi! and let us be thankful for that, after being handled ( I wont use the word 'led') by a series of pathetic rulers - both in the front seat and back seat.

 

He has smashed the caste and religion based polarization, putting the agenda of development on the forefront, as it should be. Never mind what the media says. They have a vested interest in projecting Modi as a Hindu icon.But in truth, he never polarized during the elections. It was his enemies who moved heaven and earth to divide people based on religion and caste.

 

He enthused voters across the country. The young, fed on a diet of entitlement based policies of Congress, were seething and found in Modi someone who understood their aspirations and talked their language. The rural folk related with his specific agricultural policies that were tried and tested in Gujarat, but were alien to them. People started to 'HOPE' again. And the hope turned into dreams by the time votes were cast. And therein lies the success of Modi.The BJP poster on the left says it all. This is not Modi, but this is THE OPPORTUNITY. And people were not willing to let go of the opportunity, which has come their way after decades.

 

I wrote about youngsters who travelled hundreds of kilometers to just cast their vote. Even school kids, who have no voting rights, debated and discussed the election process. After an era, when voters had become apathetic to the elections, 2014 signifies the resurgence of our democracy, thanks to Modi. This is no mean achievement.

 

A teenager accosted me and asked ' Can you tell me one similarity between Modi and Rahul?'. I told him I am not stupid to compare cheese and chalk ('Well! even chalk has some use', my young friend commented). But he had the last laugh, "Uncle, wherever Modi or Rahul addresses an election meeting, BJP gets One Hundred Thousand votes extra!!!"

 

That, my readers, sums up Election 2014

Winds of Change in the Southern States

I spent a week in Kerala and Tamil Nadu recently. There is a surprise lack of buzz on the electioneering front, even on the last day of campaigning in Kerala. Perhaps it is due to the curb on election expenditure set by the Election Commission.

Kerala has always been strongly polarized between the Congress led UDF and the Communist led LDF. BJP has a good share of votes, but since they stand alone, and their voters are not concentrated, they were not able to win any seats so far in the State. LDF and UDF have tactically transferred votes in the past to keep BJP out in some of the seats in the past, which may happen again in Trivandrum and Kasargode this time around too.

But I detected a small undercurrent of change in Kerala. This could be due to the excitement generated by Modi, or could be due to the utter disgust of the electorate towards the antics of UDF and LDF.

On election day, couple of Engineering Students studying in Coimbatore, travelled all the way to Kunnamkulam ( 130 kms away) to exercise their franchise. What was remarkable was that they took this trouble to vote for BJP in a seat where BJP doesn't have a ghost of a chance of winning. When queried why they did this, they replied that 'they were making a statement, irrespective of who won'. If this is any indication, then we might see a consolidation of neutral votes behind BJP. They may still not win a seat (for that matter, it would be nice to have an election where all the parties stand on their own in Kerala, and then see where each one of them stand. Most of them are riding on the votes of their alliance partners)

Tamil Nadu case is a little different. A state that has seen none other than AIADMK or DMK or their alliance partners winning, could see for the first time a genuine 3rd front winning 4-5 seats - this is the alliance of BJP, MDMK, DMDK, PMK. With DMK likely to be decimated, and Congress not expected to even retain deposit, this front could move into the vacant space.

With BJP tying up with TDP in AP, slowly but surely BJP is getting a foot hold in the major Southern States.

This augurs well for the future for BJP, provided Modi delivers what he promises - Development

Modi to the fore

I have always been a politically sensitive person. Maybe it has to do with the kind of political awareness we had when we were brought up in an era that was in turmoil - Emergency, Post Emergency Turmoil, Indira Gandhi Assassination.......................all these were defining moments in the history of India, and happened when we were impressionable. Unlike the modern day students we were not apathetic to politics, but debated about issues concerning the country amongst ourselves. We were a group of 17 - a bunch that had KSU, SFI, ABVP, AISF supporters and a few neutrals. We had party based elections in College and even at School. Today's generation studying in CBSE Schools and Private Colleges miss out this experience, which really shaped our thinking.

 

I have followed all the elections in the past 40 years, and there is an element of excitement with the current one. After a long time, we smell change in the air. We have as a candidate who has demonstrated, both leadership and governance, qualities. Modi is a man with a mission, and one sincerely hopes he wins big and wont have to compromise with smaller parties to implement his agenda.

 

Gone under the barrage of criticism of Modi by the Media, are a few facts that stand out.

 

Modi has proved to be a master organizer. He identified rightly that UP is where he will win or lose the battle for Delhi, and sent his right hand man Amit Shah 18 months in advance to prepare the state for BJP. And how well Amit Shah has performed. If BJP is optimistic of getting more than 45 seats in UP today, it is solely due to Amit Shah. It has also led to a situation where Modi is willing to fight in Varanasi, despite Murli Manohar Joshi winning that seat by a mere 17,000 votes last time around. If Varanasi, with its symbolism, is considered to be a safe seat now (otherwise Modi wont fight there), it is no mean achievement. Amit Shah, has single handedly, sidelined spoilers like Uma Bharati, Kalyan Singh, MM Joshi and even Rajnath Singh, who have done enough to queer the pitch for BJP in UP in the past.

 

One of the reasons why BJP almost degenerated to being considered to be the Congress replica is the functioning style of L K Advani, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh and Sushma Swaraj. There was hardly any differentiation in their functioning with respect to Congress. But these people, who lived on past glory, like Yuvraj Singh in Indian team now, were proving to be a drag. To their credit RSS and BJP identified this bogey well in advance and anointed Modi as the PM Candidate well in advance, giving him the time and space to have his own team and agenda in place. It was on the cards that the above mentioned will try to put a spanner in Modi's rise at some stage or other. That is precisely what happened. But one by one they were cut to size. While media might scream about disrespect shown to senior leaders, one can go back to panchatantra to find the logic behind this act - 'One can sacrifice an individual for the sake of a house/village'. Modi took a stand that if some people had to be shown the place, or cut to size for the greater good of the party and the country, so be it. Advani was forced to accept Gandhinagar, Yashwant Sinha is not even contesting, MM Joshi was denied his Varanasi seat, Jaswant Singh refused his choice of seat and Sushma Swaraj's opinion on various issues have been contemptuously dismissed. And all these were done using the party apparatus. The party is run by a team of dedicated people, who are there to strengthen the arms of Modi, and they are doing a good job. Once the above 4-5 are put in their place, dissent down the line will die down naturally, which augurs well for BJP.

 

And nothing succeeds like success, or rather, nothing attracts like a person who is about to triumph. Parties and individuals are lining up to align with BJP - be it Paswan, Pawan Kalyan, Raj Thackeray, TDP, TRS and even DMK, PDP, NCP. Modi is no longer untouchable. But I sincerely hope, BJP gets 272 seats on its own, and wont have to depend on the whims and fancies of the turncoats.

B2B- Back to Basics 1

 

One of the things I learnt from my days as an amateur sportsman is to 'Go Back to Basics' when things go wrong. If you are not scoring runs, get back to nets, have a relook at your stance, get someone to throw down balls at you, start playing forward defence, then the drive, play in the V and hit thousands of balls. And then go out and play a match, and see the difference.

 

This is true of business too. Whenever things go wrong, I do go back to the drawing board and see where I am deviating from the tried and tested plan. As one gets sucked in by the day to day work, one tends to start taking liberties with policies and practices, resulting in much regret.

 

It is time India, as a nation, stop talking about rubbish like Secularism, Communalism, Rights to ...........well! everything under the sun!!!, or even corruption.

 

We need to go back to the basics and start discussing about a few fundamental issues.

 

Every one agrees that Education is the foundation in which a society is built. It is ridiculous that we are earmarking less than 2.5% for Education every year. The Primary education is in shambles. The Government schools are rotting. The private schools have become money making machines. Less said about the University Education, the better. We are churning out graduates who lack the skills to be productive, and are unemployable. The hold of private educational businessmen mafia over this sector is so strong, that one cant even see a glimmer of hope. We need a total revamp of the education system from the primary level to the Ph.D level. We also need to give children more choices at the school and college level, and have to introduce the Credit system ASAP. Why should a child be forced to study Maths, Physics and Chemistry when he can jolly well choose Maths, Psychology and Business Administration or Music? Let him learn what he loves. Anyway, we hardly use 5% of what we learn technically in our Schools and Colleges in our job. So why not make learning fun............ to be continued

Of News, Comments and Newspapers - Onine or otherwise

We did not have Television during my formative years. TV came to our household only when I was into my 20s. Even then we had only one channel - the drab DD. The news explosion with Cable TV came a decade later.

 

The only source of getting information was through the Newspapers and to some extend the Radio. The Newspapers, then, had good journalists who wrote pieces that had news and journalistic value. They were far from today's newspapers where one can, and does, a newspaper by copying and pasting news stories from internet. Father subscribed to three newspapers at home, and we read at least two more by exchanging with the neighbors.

 

I still have in my attic the notebook containing the clippings of the India-West Indies Cricket tour of 1975 and can recall the detailed constituency wise analysis of the General Election post emergency. We read with joy Indira Gandhi being beaten by Raj Narayan and Sanjay biting the dust. We learned about the exploits of Bjorn Borg and his epic struggle with John McEnroe. We were thrilled by the exploits of Sunil Gavaskar battling it out against the West Indian pace men.

 

Times have changed. The newspapers of today hardly have any in depth articles. The magazines are still worse. They are aimed at an audience that has brought up on a staple diet of Breaking News. The attention span of the viewers/readers is very small. No wonder we don't get to read long essays or articles with deep analysis any more.

 

I have moved with times and read a lot of online news papers. It makes economical sense too, as I live overseas.

 

The articles are shabby, poorly written and most of the online newspapers have strong political leanings. There is hardly any balanced writing any more, with a few exceptions. But I used to enjoy the comments section. The Letters to the Editor in a conventional news paper had limited space and only a select letters, heavily edited, were published. But the online comments can be endless, scathing, crude and brings out the carnal side of the people. Even highly educated people behave like one in the gutter. But at least it gave us a perspective of what a cross section of people think about a particular issue. And they were genuine people, who vented their true feelings.

 

But even that has changed. Now political parties have paid comment writers who troll on all online sites, which masks the genuine people who have moved away from these sites, like me. And there in lies the tragedy