Every election, political discourse revolves around old issues while key problems of the present are ignored
Try this exercise: Take a speech of many political leader from the current election cacophony and debug it of all individual names and references. Do not confine yourself to political speeches but also cover the commentaries of well-known television anchors. Cleanse the commentary also of names, dates or episodes which signify a calendar event.
In seven out of 10 cases, the content analysis of the texts, of either variety, will be a repetition of the 2009 election. ‘The country has to be saved for secularism’, ‘the disadvantaged must be helped’, ‘the opposing party has bad pedigree’, ‘the nation must be saved’. Of course, the Speaker or his party alone can save the nation! If his opponent moves forward from the script you expect him to read, he is an ‘opportunist’!
Statements from the 2009 election and those from this year are hugely similar. Only some personalities have changed. However, the five-year period from 2009 to 2014 is different from the preceding five years because the number of scams has gone up and the number of cases of aggression by the state has been on the rise.
If state is to be projected as the guilty-party by default in the episodes of violence from 2002, what can be said of the great ballet of flip-flops in dealing with the Anna Movement or Baba Ramdev’s agitationIJ There are many other examples.
One is not interested in personalities. One is talking of processes. One can have different views on Anna Hazare and his movement or whatever came of it. One can have many views of Baba Ramdev’s movement — not just the midnight police charge but also the preceding and subsequent events — and whatever came of that.
There are other symptoms of a severe political virus that has gripped the public. Even a casual analysis of the key appointments by the Union Government positions in the eight years between 2004 and 2011 shows a clear bias for persons from a specific background. That was also the period in which we were told that, “Prime Minister was ‘not informed’ of certain critical matters”.
Will this also be the model of future governanceIJ If eight years of visible bureaucratic manipulation does not even merit an analysis, there is always the danger of the virus getting internalised in the body politic.
Other dangers are equally large, even if they are subtle. Nobody seems to care to point out that India is part of an international community of nations. Consider a simple proposition: In 2009, Indian Oil was 109th in the Fortune 500 Companies. In 2013, it moved to the 88th rank. During this period, its turnover rose by 11 per cent.
However, because of the steady and continuous decline of the rupee, Indian Oil’s company worth declined by 16 per cent. The economic columnists have had no time to comment on the demoralising role of such a state of affairs on the corporate going-on.
India is probably the only nation in the world which has created an ‘inflation-proof’ national organisation which is simultaneously the biggest employer in the country. The reference is to Indian Railways. It is everybody’s case that rail services improve.
However, fares cannot be enhanced! Who takes the risks on safety and why must fare concessions of one variety even keep on escalatingIJ Is ‘political prudence’ so high that this vital Ministry has had to experience the largest number of leadership changes in the past five yearsIJ
Why is there such deafening silence on so many critical issues, including population explosion, which constitute the core of our nationIJ Indeed, if what one hears of the state of preparedness of our Armed Forces is true, it does not evoke unbridled confidence.
Battles political and personal skirmishes, led by its aligned cheer leaders, hog prime time news television and print space.The nation seems to be divided among those who do not know and those who do not care, with a small percentage of people at times struggling to be heard or hoping that their silence will be rewarded.
The only saving grace is that no time is constant and this too shall pass.