Democracy – Blackmail, are they synonyms ?

At our homes, institutions and offices we come across people, whose opinion we don’t agree with, whose behaviour offends us, whose thought process is in complete disagreement with ours, what do we do? We learn to live with it, we compromise, and we adjust as that is what is expected from mature professional individuals.

But if that issue has nothing to do with us it is much easier to bring about a significant change. Suppose you don’t like a book then just gather a few friends, along with a few uneducated, easy to hire “professionals” and you have a mob. About 20 to 40 individuals are enough to fill, indeed overflow, the camera lens frame of those rapidly growing news channel. Believe me that 20 people group, depending on the energy levels, can be presented as a big mob on the 21’ TV screen. The video footage would be more than sufficient to ban the book in that particular state/town, and if you manage to keep your team motivated just long enough to allow one of those big national news channels to arrive at the live scene then the desired result could be replicated on bookstores across the whole nation. Better still if you hire some real good professionals, within that mob of yours, and they manage to set ablaze a vehicle or two, preferably one of those 24 x 7 parked roadways bus, then you can be rest assured that you have done enough to force that writer into exile.

The same effect could be replicated against paintings, movies, photographs or any other object against which you have any form of prejudice. You just need to have enough spare time and financial resources, rest our complex democratic system takes care of. The moment the mob is captured on the new channels, it is associated with a particular religion/caste, and then we have one or more of those political parties which has always pretended to be the voice of that section of the society, or in simple words has had a strong hold over that particular votebank. The results could be even sweeter if this particular party that we are talking about is currently in opposition, in that scenario they would make sure that they leave no stone unturned to bring you to the frontages of every leading daily. What if you make the fatal error of manufacturing a mob with different religious and caste identities, better still, the mob is backed by the entire opposition in unison. And the government is attacked on bigger ground like “morality”, “insensitivity”, “law and order chaos” and an emergency is requested. Once an emergency is requested it just boils down to the fact whether the governor was appointed by “Sonia ji” or not.

We know this is not the right course. Powerful media, a fruit of liberalization, threatens this very liberalization. We cannot blame the media channels after all they are governed by mere commercial interests. What needs to change is this politics of castes and religion, its time to welcome politics of agendas and ideologies. Effective Governance is about conceptualising and executing plans for macro level social and economic welfare, it is not about appeasing each and every component of the society. This politics of appeasement would if not reverse, incredibly slow down the pace of the desired transformations. We Indians would not like to earn the distinction of redefining Democracy as the Government of the people, for the people, and “blackmailed” by the people.

 

 

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India is Unique, in more ways than one!!!!

After all that front page coverage’s and heated political debates on prime time television, 123 Nuclear Agreement has finally blurred into the background with the emergence of the “incredibly serious” Ram Sethu Controversy. How surprising that matter of national and economic importance can so easily be hijacked and taken over by matters of faith, religion, and minority-majority divide. I may be gravely mistaken to state that Ram Sethu is not a matter of national and economic importance, but that’s the way it is being projected. No one is interested in discussing the economic benefits that shipping industry would have or the eco logical and sea life damage the project is likely to cause.

But is this not expected in a country where the second largest political party is built and has succeeded merely on the ideology of Hindutva and support of fundamentalist organizations like RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal etc. One thing I would give to BJP is that alleast it is a party built on an ideology unlike Congress(I) which is built on and around a family. Although the usefulness of such an ideology is far beyond my comprehension or for that matter beyond the comprehension of any progressive Indian, whether Hindu or non Hindu. But the dilemma is that there are millions of takers for such an ideology, people who vote for and give this ideology its voice. No wonder then parties would be formed and would continue to supersede matters of majority-minority divide over matter of national and economic significance.

And the more I look into the chain of events that have followed the publicization of this issue the more comical it appears. The poor judiciary just upheld the line that “There aren’t sufficient historical evidences to verify the existence of Lord Ram”, which is in no way derogatory or disrespectful to Ram or his followers and just reiterates a fact we all have read in history books since childhood that Ramayana and Mahabharata are works of fiction and not historical accounts. To make the maters even more amusing the simple English translation of the phrase “Vanar-Sena” to “army of monkeys” has been found highly objectionable and had to be reworded. And to cap it all NDA and its support groups are up in arms asking the project to be stalled so that the structure built by Lord Ram can be preserved, whereas the project was originally sanctioned by the NDA government in 2002. Such events just boost my respect for the Left, right or wrong, they atleast oppose and debate matters of national and economic significance, ensuring that the truly deserving news gets importance over insignificant ones.

Alas the 123 controversy may have died of without any tangible effect but this one might take a few causalities, namely the already suspended ASI officials, maybe a “Soni” cabinet minister, and definitely a big chunk of Brahmin vote bank from the Congress. No wonder such comical events would be played out on the political stage as long as we continue to empower people propagating this non progressive narrow-minded ideology.

—–Before anyone concludes anything, the author himself is a North Indian Hindu by religion