VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 276 Date: 08.04.2019
Contents:
1. Closure Of A Highway In Kashmir
2. Modi On The Campaign Trail & His Innings Since 2014
3. Hindu Terror Does Exist
4. Dispense With Foreign Experts Of Indian Origin
Closure Of A Highway In Kashmir
Those who talk of nationalism, claiming to protect the nation are unable to secure a highway in Kashmir from Jammu to Srinagar and for that penalise common citizens by banning them from using the highway. The Pulwama incident was a clear security failure and completely amateurish in allowing a private vehicle come anywhere near the buses carrying the CRPF jawans. It was only after the blast that it was found that the car was loaded with explosives. The martyrdom of the jawans was hyped so that the negligence of the authorities responsible for the incident is hidden. The succeeding incident when another private vehicle went up in flames near about the same place of the Pulwama incident attributed to a gas cylinder burst prompted the authorities to ban private vehicular traffic on the highway. Highways are for the local people to move about in doing their daily lives and for civilian traffic and should be kept open at all cost particularly in areas of hilly and difficult terrain. The use of these highways by our armed forces and paramilitary forces should be incidental to their use by civilian traffic and should in no way curb it. If our government cannot think of ways and means to protect a single highway between Jammu and Srinagar, how can we expect them to secure the nation against the enemy? The curtailment of civilian traffic on some days of the above highway is an admission of defeat and a sign of cowardice that is being signalled by this government. Yet again it has been proven that the nationalist jingoism balloon touted to the skies by the present regime is filled with gas. At the first sign of direct or indirect enemy action this government trembles, knocking its knees together and retreats behind closed doors and puts restrictions on its people who have no choice but to follow these inane and irresponsible instructions. That the people of Jammu & Kashmir have come out in protest against the injunction not to use the highway between Jammu and Srinagar on some days is but natural. We need to support them in their cause since we may see a replication of the same thing where each one of us stay by being told that you cannot use a thoroughfare right in front of your house.
Modi On The Campaign Trail & His Innings Since 2014
Narendra Modi and to a lesser extent his Man Friday, Amit Shah seem to have a massive fixation about the Nehru-Gandhi name and the family in the context of India. One needs to thank Modi for not starting to pick on Mahatma Gandhi yet. But one never knows, maybe he is waiting to do that if and when he gets a second term. Talking about a second term, one would have thought that Modi having got a first term in office in 2014 would in the campaign for 2019 concentrate on his achievements. But he seems to be suffering from selective amnesia and mostly one would believe that the last 5 years have been wiped out from his memory. This is natural also because these have been painful years for India under Modi's rule. People are unable to forget the 'surgical strikes' of Demonetisation and GST launched against them and then the famine of cash in the economy because of the misadventure to forge India into a 'cashless' economy. Subsequently the lack of jobs for people due to lack of economic growth and the after effects of the above 'surgical strikes' has led to a deep disenchantment with the present government. The people have seen muddle headed implementation of high sounding plans and programs leading to more and more confusion.
As for Modi's anathema to the Nehru-Gandhi name, whatever said and done these people like Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi have contributed to what India is today. This cannot be denied or negated. Modi picks on the mistakes or errors made by these leaders conveniently ignoring their positive contribution to the Indian nation and its economy. Criticism is all fine if it is balanced but not partisan. The other thing is that since Independence it was not only the Nehru-Gandhi family which built India. There were others also who brought India to where we stand today like Rajendra Prasad, S Radhakrishnan, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Atal Behari Vajpayee and others. Does Modi want us to forget the contribution of all these leaders? Are we to fall in line behind Modi chanting that he is the only leader who can do right? This when there are visibly no achievements to speak of that can be attributed to Modi.
Modi needs to realise that you cannot negate the past because then you are negating the present. If you negate the past then you become rootless and will tend to drift along on the path of your present endeavours. The fact that we are enjoying a certain quality of life today is because there were definitely some achievements in the past. Everything was not bad. Even Modi and his cohorts are taking advantage of these now like better communication, better transportation facilities and improved technology. All these were not 'swayambhu' developments, some one must have sweated to get these done. So we need to be a little grateful to those who travelled the road before us. The other thing is that to be severely critical you need to have made as said earlier some earth shattering progress yourself. Can Modi speak of any achievement of his that has led to a better quality of life for the Indian people?
Narendra Modi has been harping on corruption by previous governments mostly Congress and also among the leaders of the regional parties. Now these are judgmental pronouncements. How clean are Modi's hands and that of the BJP are to be seen. It is too early to tell. However going by the fact that criminal cases among the BJP in the present Lok Sabha was the highest among all other parties and the choice of people like B S Yediyurappa in Karnataka belie the claim of purity made by Modi. There is another perspective that one must share in the context of corruption. Corruption is endemic in developing nations and this pattern has been seen across the world. India cannot be any different but maybe you can control the incidence of corruption and its extent as well as rapacity. One needs to go back in time and cite the case of LN Mishra from Bihar who was the Railway Minister in one of Indira Gandhi's Cabinet. He was considered one of the most corrupt but at the same time he was accessible and worked for the people. It was for this reason that we was liked by the people. The lesson is as long as the political leaders deliver on their work for the people we need to accept a little bit of corruption. This is not to condone corruption but to recognise a fact and accept it. The other thing is that people will not mind that their leaders are corrupt as long as they are left unaffected and are allowed to live their humdrum lives. Modi's anti-corruption plank is also debatable since it is yet to be proven in his personal case like in the Rafael deal. Even for all his talk about being a chowkidar we have seen that he has done little on the corruption front since coming to power in 2014. If he had been serious then at the least 6 or even more of the Opposition leaders should have been jailed by now. Thus Modi as we have seen rarely practises what he preaches. His pronouncements are more for the consumption of others and the media than for himself. We also need to look at another aspect and that is both Modi and Amit Shah, the No. 1 & No. 2 of the BJP are survivors of cases against them in criminal courts for the Gujarat riots and murder respectively. So to be rational and practical, we need to ask - Whom should people trust, those who are corrupt or those who have the cold blooded propensity to kill or order killing?
Modi needs to realise that you cannot negate the past because then you are negating the present. If you negate the past then you become rootless and will tend to drift along on the path of your present endeavours. The fact that we are enjoying a certain quality of life today is because there were definitely some achievements in the past. Everything was not bad. Even Modi and his cohorts are taking advantage of these now like better communication, better transportation facilities and improved technology. All these were not 'swayambhu' developments, some one must have sweated to get these done. So we need to be a little grateful to those who travelled the road before us. The other thing is that to be severely critical you need to have made as said earlier some earth shattering progress yourself. Can Modi speak of any achievement of his that has led to a better quality of life for the Indian people?
Narendra Modi has been harping on corruption by previous governments mostly Congress and also among the leaders of the regional parties. Now these are judgmental pronouncements. How clean are Modi's hands and that of the BJP are to be seen. It is too early to tell. However going by the fact that criminal cases among the BJP in the present Lok Sabha was the highest among all other parties and the choice of people like B S Yediyurappa in Karnataka belie the claim of purity made by Modi. There is another perspective that one must share in the context of corruption. Corruption is endemic in developing nations and this pattern has been seen across the world. India cannot be any different but maybe you can control the incidence of corruption and its extent as well as rapacity. One needs to go back in time and cite the case of LN Mishra from Bihar who was the Railway Minister in one of Indira Gandhi's Cabinet. He was considered one of the most corrupt but at the same time he was accessible and worked for the people. It was for this reason that we was liked by the people. The lesson is as long as the political leaders deliver on their work for the people we need to accept a little bit of corruption. This is not to condone corruption but to recognise a fact and accept it. The other thing is that people will not mind that their leaders are corrupt as long as they are left unaffected and are allowed to live their humdrum lives. Modi's anti-corruption plank is also debatable since it is yet to be proven in his personal case like in the Rafael deal. Even for all his talk about being a chowkidar we have seen that he has done little on the corruption front since coming to power in 2014. If he had been serious then at the least 6 or even more of the Opposition leaders should have been jailed by now. Thus Modi as we have seen rarely practises what he preaches. His pronouncements are more for the consumption of others and the media than for himself. We also need to look at another aspect and that is both Modi and Amit Shah, the No. 1 & No. 2 of the BJP are survivors of cases against them in criminal courts for the Gujarat riots and murder respectively. So to be rational and practical, we need to ask - Whom should people trust, those who are corrupt or those who have the cold blooded propensity to kill or order killing?
Modi in the 2014 election capitalised on being called a chaiwallah and in this election campaign is going to town with his chowkidar appellation. This is a low brow appeal to capture the imagination of the aam admi. An attempt to equate himself with the common man by projecting that he is like the chaiwallah and the chowkidar. But this is not true. The other day for going to a meeting at the BJP HQ on Ashoka Road he was shown arriving in his bullet proof BMW, a distance of less than 5 Km. from his residence. He enjoys the trappings and perquisites of office to the full. His penchant for changing his clothes multiple times through the day is well-known and his vanity exposed with the monogrammed surname on the cloth of the Nehru jacket that he wore at the beginning of his term. Even at election meetings he keeps his distance from the people and you rarely see him mingling with the crowd like other leaders. So one needs to prick and blow the persona balloon that Modi is bent upon creating since that and the person Modi are miles apart.
The people of India had blessed Modi and the BJP with a massive majority in 2014 which has been frittered away in the last 5 years with wasteful and misplaced activity and the reason for that is Modi's obsession to build a personality cult and surround himself with yes-men which have kept India away from any meaningful development. This was not what the people expected and they have been betrayed simply because there is no imagination with Modi to think beyond his agenda.
Hindu Terror Does Exist
The comment made by Narendra Modi that our 5000 year old history shows that there was no Hindu involved in terror is absolutely wrong. If you consider just the last 50 years when the Naxalite movement was spawned in Naxalbari and Srikakulam and which continues to this day as the Red Swathe that runs through northern Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and into Nepal, the members of these terror groups and mostly their leaders were predominantly Hindu. Other than this there are other random terror attacks which can be ascribed to misguided Hindus. Even now there are many court cases pending where Hindus have been involved in terror including the case of the 6 odd activists who were arrested a few months ago on charges of fomenting terror and to 'assassinate the prime minister'. Terror as has been said has no religion and therefore any attempt to proscribe it as belonging to certain religions is completely irresponsible since it deviates from the focus in destroying terror activity. At the same time Modi giving a carte blanche to Hindus on terror is also incorrect. Also Modi should desist from making sweeping statements that are patently erroneous. Modi tends to have this penchant of wanting to rewrite history which he should refrain from since these random forays by him and his henchmen only end in distorting it and make them look like fools.
Dispense With Foreign Experts Of Indian Origin
If there is one thing that one can agree with Arun Jaitley, it is his recent statement that ex-Governors of the RBI should refrain from politicking. He was obviously referring to Raghuram Rajan who a few days ago had questioned the 7% GDP growth to add a few more arrows into the Congress' quivers who have been trying to corner the incumbent government on growth figures. It is not only Raghuram Rajan but also Arvind Subramanian, the ex-CEA and Arvind Panagariya, the ex- Vice Chairman of the Niti Aayog who put in their hollow two pennies of wisdom on India's economic policies, nice in a while after leaving India's shores. All the above named 3 individuals are from American academia and who taking advantage of the liberal leave and sabbatical programs prevailing there come across to India for their random 'vacations' or extended stays for their home country personal agendas. When these agendas are over, they give vague and puerile reasons and return to the comfort of their foreign havens. This can be for simple reasons or if their vanity is hurt, for instance if their term is not extended. Another thing about these out-of-country experts, they do not seem to be governed by the normal rules for our bureaucrats like publishing their views on matters relating to their assignments while in India. These people put out books and write in our media sometimes on contentious as well as controversial issues which at times may not be very proper. For this we cannot blame nay them but also Indian media who seem to pursue them vigorously. Like our bureaucrats have a cooling period that after retirement or superannuation they cannot take up any assignment in line with their professional expertise for a period of some 3 years in particularly the private sector and are also covered by the Official Secrets Act for matters related to their work, some such ruling must be put in the contracts of these foreign professionals of Indian origin who come to work here. Actually there is no need for us to get these kind of people since we have enough expertise within the country and we need to give a chance to our local experts. Our own people are familiar with local conditions and will bring more effectiveness to the job, one believes. At most foreign experts can be brought in as short-term or as specific assignment based consultants.
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