Selection 2014

Thank GOD that the bustling cacophony and the election fever are over for now: but if one closely looks @ the contemporary Indian Democracy, it involves rather a mere selection progression deviating from a basic democratic election process. Of course it was never been the case since our independence & hence we Indians should least expect it. But then, it is interesting to know that till last year BJP was not in the reckoning and people were looking for alternatives elsewhere, but now how MODI wins voters mind & influence India has been a matter of research considering that he got only part of the year & not even a complete term. He was indeed fighting against time & innumerable contradictions that our diverse & heterogeneous India has to offer as a potential challenge. Amazingly, MODI appear to establish an intense connect with all generations especially the younger ones to the belief of many demonstrated by the response of the populace in the various media forums nevertheless. The middle class & the first time voters have been stirred up, if the increased voter turnout is of any indication. The lesson we learn from him is that by working hard with commitment & obtaining results may be a straight forward answer to this question but his run rate needs to be credited!!!. In 7 months & 10 days he has covered 300,000 kms + of travel, 8000 + of rallies and 3D rallies in over 1300 locations with 3 to 3.5 hours of sleep per day: this is beyond the comprehension of a normal Indian like me, a super human effort indeed!!! In all probability no one Indian of equal stature has got energy & intent to match his at the moment. No comparison can be drawn since the rest has so far shied away from giving statistics. Use of technology to the maximum, extensive media coverage & occupation of TV & social media space occupying almost 50% of TV media prime time, 14.1 million Facebook likes, 3.9 Million Twitter followers remarkable for any public figure in Modern India. BJP is may be the only party having an iPhone & an Android application! Results are a few days away & vindication of his stands will be established or not, is for the time to tell & hopefully it will make or break future strategies of all the major political parties in India, to decide what is best to go either for caste / communal based polity or on selecting the method of communication with the electorate or whether Indians have changed from being emotional mongers of the politicians or have become matured enough to come in terms with reality and to be more realistic in demanding pro-development, corruption free, controlled inflation, providers of work & income - as prime means of Governance. The other factor hindering the progress of the Indian Demographics is the existence of extreme sense of negativity all around especially in TV media. Surprised to find that TimesNow: the most yelling & mudslinging matches taking place day in & out there, high pitch, high decibel, minimum all round news content channel, only to amazingly find it to be mostly watched in India for prime time news. On the contrary the experience being the rest of the channels have more News Content and are much less noisy. Journalist of today tend to pick up one negative vibe from a speech of may be of one hour duration & keep harping on it. May be 95% of the content was positive but gathers no coverage on the burning issues of development, inflation, job creation but attracts attention of the negatives instead. The most convenient path of the political parties has been found to drag the campaign towards the negative issues like religion, caste & personal attacks, washing dirty linens in public. All parties seem to shy away and avoid discussion on Inflation, corruption & good governance. This has been my experience even 10 years back where I had attended a Seminar on Infrastructure development @ Park Hotel Kolkata presided by none other than Late Subhash Chakraborty, then Minister of the West Bengal Government, whose speech was wonderful for about an hour or so, full of positives concerning the infrastructure development of the state of West Bengal but he said one negative thing in his entire speech. “ West Bengal have no intention of doing things in right earnest in spite of harping on the slogan of DO IT NOW". I was amazed how the media could neglect the entire excellent speech & only project this negative statement in the next morning print. Hence, probably the tradition continues. Nevertheless, Indian Democracy has come off age from a stage where at one point of time during the proclamation of the state of internal emergency in India in the mid seventies, invoking article 352 Clause (1) of the Indian Constitution, Dr. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed the then President of India on the advise of Mrs Indira Gandhi the then prime Minister of India authorized to rule India by decree. Resulting in elections being suspended, the fundamental rights of Citizens in terms of Civil Liberties curbed, censorship of the media imposed, political oppositions were arrested including Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee & Mr LK Advani among others. Several other atrocities were reported from the time to time, including a forced mass-sterilisation campaign spearheaded by Late Sanjay Gandhi, the prime minister's son. One interesting episode that happened in my life remains unforgettable till date is one afternoon when we were in the class room of our higher secondary school in Shillong, all of a sudden saw all the mothers & many fathers as well of my class mates except mine arrived at our school. It was a huge commotion at the school gate. On inquiring our Head Sir, why all the mothers are crying, I came to understand that as a part of the population control drive, a team of doctors are arriving at our school to perform sterilisation. All the mothers were therefore demanding with utter urgency and impatience that their son be returned to them immediately. Every mother was asking for their own son and I ultimately accompanied someone else’s mother. We all went home immediately following the alternative guerilla routes to our respective houses only to find that no one came till late evening and the school went on normal mode from the next week onwards, so we had enjoyed 3 to 4 hays holiday. Today’s circumstances are quite good compared to those early years of my life, we have free press, free TV media, globally free social media, even if Government intends to control cannot do the same. I could not be writing this blog had there been state of emergency like situation. Now why selection & not election is because for instance the PM candidate of the BJP is selected prior to the congressional assembly of the elected MPs & the same applies for other major political party in race as well. Congress is indirectly projecting an heir apparent for the post if returned to power, discerning loss at the first place. We Indians are clouded with high intensity negative vibes & GOD only can save us & draw us out of this. Pray to ALMIGHTY that a good result of this election should convert the future of India into a atmosphere of prosperity & development so that the quality of our lives takes an upward trend.