The Minority humbug

A lot has been made of Modi's 'Hindu Nationalist' remark. Presenting and demonstrating one's own interpretation(more often than not in the wrong context) of whatever Modi says has become a fashion now. News channels are having the time of their life, enjoying the so called 'Honey Moon' period to the fullest, covering everything from Raj Babbar's ridiculous 12Rs meal remark to Digvijay's laughable gibberish. BJP and Congress have left no stone unturned in taking barbs at each other. 

Naturally, amidst all this chaos and commotion, the hot topic in the recent times has been Secularism, which leads us to a more sensitive issue of Minorities. It has become a Cliche that "Minorities have always been an oppressed and a subjugated lot". It has now reached a point, where you begin to ask - Is this assertion based on plausible facts and arguments, or is it a baseless rhetoric? More often than not, it has been found that any debate on this subject is constructed more out of mere assumptions than indisputable facts. One is led to believe that minorities suffer hardships and agony merely because they belong to the Minority. The few convenient cases are used by the zealots to prove their point, while ignoring the larger part of the same community which is reaping the fruits of success! A deeper analysis shows that the successful lot of the minorities who tried to better themselves have enjoyed the fruits of prosperity as much as anybody else. Those who were left behind, help make the point for these zealots. The fact that who stopped these people from bettering themselves, or the reason for their perceived backwardness, is a question that is never asked.

Quite naturally, the next argument in the sequence is the demand for justice - In the form of reservations. The enthusiasts of the notion of having reservations, are usually community leaders and fanatics who take leadership of such small backward groups of minorities. They have a vested interest in keeping such groups away from the mainstream bunch of minorities - to pursue personal gains. The mantra is simple - This small section of people, which usually prefers lazing around and expecting spoon fed help out of their self imposed oppression to a self motivated exercise out of indigence, is made a case for demanding rights and benefits in the form of reservations by these community leaders, in turn realizing their personal gains. And, as can be seen, it is quite obvious that the condition of these so called minorities never seems to improve!

Reservations, quotas, relief packages have been offered to minorities for ages now; the situation never seems to come out of hopelessness! The desired outcomes still elude us! Whose failure is this? Shouldn't we stop and re-evaluate this? Could the reason for failure be something else? Those claiming victim hood can be found blaming everyone else but themselves. It is quite evident that they refuse to take any responsibility for their own destiny, for their own plight. Their own dogged refusal to move with the times is blamed on others. There is no cure for this mindset. All the reservations, all the packages in the world are doomed to fail when the minority communities refuse to take any responsibility for their own condition.

All those who claim to take responsibility of these people and speak for their rights can do well to pause and reflect for the moment. They need to ask themselves if their actions are helping the minorities or pushing them further into the abyss! The media is also at fault, helping these zealots carve a gullible and seemingly victimized image for themselves. This would keep continuing on and on for years together, till the time such enthusiasts continue to be guests on popular TV debates.  The day this stops will be the day when we can actually stop and retrospect on the extent of damage minorities have inflicted on themselves and the nation.

My First Post.. "A country called India"

So this is the story - I visited Blogger yesterday to check one of my friend's post on his first days in a Management Institute. Since I wanted to comment, obviously I was asked to Log in using my Google account. And guess what? There popped up my Blogger username "WhoCarez"! I checked the stats, and Blogger told that I was here since August 2010. And I am writing this post on 22 June 2013. It has taken me almost 3 years to come up with my first post.

The reasons for this hiatus could be anything - lack of interest, lack of time, professional/personal commitments or sheer laziness to sit in front of my Box(Computer, I mean) and type - just like Indian Government. And that brings me to a very important and relevant topic in recent times - Which direction is our country heading? I, finally, kick start my blogging journey with this very important and relevant topic in mind. 

In 1991, in the then Narsimha Rao led Government, the country found a messiah, the savior, the liberator, ready to liberate the country from the shackles of autocracy, by introducing a set of reforms which set the precedent for the India Shining story for the next decade and a half. Manmohan Singh had very much become the Blue-eyed boy of Aam Aadmi. Liberalization and Globalization had worked, and country progressed undeterred towards greater economic development. Come 2004, and the UPA came to power, with Manmohan Singh at the helm as its Prime Minister. The next 5 years, India saw tremendous economic development, with the GDP growth rates at their highest around 2009-10. The confidence in the government reached a new peak after the historic Indo-US Nuke deal in 2008 - Manmohan's grit and determination to go ahead with the agreement stood above all the opposition against the deal, a development which could have threatened his government too at the center. UPA-1 had clearly lived up to the Aam-Aadmi's expectations and Manmohan and his UPA government had become heroes.

UPA-2 has turned out to be just the opposite of what UPA-1 stood for. It has done everything what the UPA-1 would have never wanted to do. It all started with the developments leading up to and after the Common Wealth games. Billions of dollars had already been spent, and clearly no preparations had been made for the sporting spectacle. Many politicians, businessmen and prominent personalities bashed the event and the organizers, citing India's Socio-Economic problems and questioning its readiness to host such a grand event. In addition, several other malpractices and problems associated with the event came out in the open, which included corruption, child labor, prostitution, vigilance related failure, preparation delays to name a few. A number of problems were reported while the games were on. All this and the events that followed resulted in CBI arresting Suresh Kalmadi and the subsequent trials. The entire nation knew that corruption and inefficiency was not something unheard of in India, but this was something the Nation had never seen before. Not very long after the CWG scam came the 2G scam, which turned out to be a much more brazen act! The loss to exchequer was a humongous amount, and I, for one, had difficulties in counting the number of zeroes which was looted from the country. What came after that, everybody knows. Since then, this 'biggest' democracy in the world has never looked back. Scam after scam come and see the light of the day, and still this government proclaims that their hand is "Aam Aadmi ke sath". We have a lot of pending issues - Skills not utilized, budgets not spent, roads not completed, projects not approved. There have also been reports of a power tussle between the government and the Congress party. If the government inefficiency was not enough, to make matters worse, we have an unrelenting opposition who are hell bent on opposing the government, whenever the decision to pass a bill has to be taken. We also have a great ally network, whose sole purpose in UPA's second term has been to withdraw support. Clearly, this UPA 2 government has lurched form one crisis to the other, with the entire nation paying the price for it.

With the run up to the 2014 elections, UPA as well as the other parties have begun their preparations well in advance, as always. What comes with it is public mudslinging of these parties on each other, campaigns, discussions on Facebook and Twitter(a recent development) and the like. People also discuss on the elections, more specifically about Rahul Gandhi vs Narendra Modi. The fight between people is not to get a better government, but to sit and discuss only on the internet, about which party will come to power, and the leader who will become our next Prime Minister. And this brings me to the next point of discussion.

When these political parties can start 2 years in advance for their preparations for the next elections, why we, as the body which is going to elect these parties to power, cannot start our preparations in advance? I am pretty sure, that even though people want change, even though they want a better government, even if they know that their future is in their hands only, UPA will again come to power. This is because, the middle and upper middle class Indians, the class which discusses such stuff as I mentioned before, is a very strong class, and this strong class will not go out and try to bring in a change. We will sit at home, enjoy our weekly-offs, switch on our TVs, and see the next "Scam Guru" taking oath. And we will see a poorer India at the end of the next 5 years.

The fact is that we are going through probably one of the worst times that this country has seen. Social order is in a total disorder, with Rapes taking the center stage. People who were poor continue to be poor. Poverty still haunts our country. Slums just next to the airport and railway tracks is a very horrifying sight, and this bears testimony to the fact that poverty is one of the biggest social issues that the country faces today. What comes as freebies with this is Crime in its purest form. Poverty is one of the most important direct as well as indirect cause for Crimes in our country. This in itself, is a big topic for discussion and it would be better if I stay out of it.

What I want, is for people to take a leaf out from the recent Karnataka elections. People elected Congress over BJP, not because Congress was better than BJP, but because they wanted change. The previous BJP government, which saw several scams during its tenure, was doomed the moment it sacked Mr. Yedyurappa. This, clearly was admission by BJP of its mistakes, and the fact that this government was destined to fall would have been anybody's guess. However, it also indicates the efficiency with which BJP handled the issue, with the public appreciating this gesture. The Indian public had not seen such a noble virtue in UPA, which still stands tall and confident even after so many scams. They have been grossly incompetent and totally negligent in handling of key issues.

To hammer the point home, Rahul Gandhi vs Narendra Modi discussion is a very valid one, provided we as the educated lot do something about it. The lower strata of people do not know the difference between Gandhi and Modi. For them, their vote is decided by the party that distributes maximum freebies to them before elections, and promises maximum benefits after the elections.Whether the benefits as promised to them are delivered or not, does not really matter. But we, as the stronger class, possess the capacity to bring about a change. And the most important point I would like to make here, is that people should cast their votes based on qualifications, past record and the fact that they want a change, and not because they love some leader and call somebody Prince Charming. Let us become the Rajas who get lakhs of crores of money INTO the country, and not the one who loots it out of the country to the beautiful country called Switzerland. Keep experimenting, keep analyzing, and keep changing. As they say, Change is the only constant thing in this world.

Finally I would like to end this discussion with a popular hindi saying "Umeed pe hi duniya kayam hai". And with this very hope, I hope there are a lot of Patient readers as well on Blogger. Thanks for reading. :)